So Vincenzo hands me a bag last night. A reused holiday giftbag.

*sidenote, to be read/thought in bitchy intonations: I hate giftbags, especially those bedecked with Whimsy. Wrapping with personality is the way to go, is my gifto credo. End bitchy sidenote*

I open the bag to learn what the trinket, as he'd described it, is.
Two cd's with John Lennon's ultimate radio interview burnt upon them.
His vibrancy about the pending album and how grand his life was feeling that day, December 8, 1980, his last one.
I looked down at the cd's and, after Vincenzo told me what they are, I felt almost like I did when I peered into the plexi box those several years ago at Rock and Roll Hall O' Fame at the brown paper shopping bag from the hospital containing his personal objets, and the broken and blood-spattered iconic lunettes.
Just overcome with It.
I have not listened, yet.
+ +
With assurance I can say that Yours Truly began her day in a manner in which You did not.
I began my day, nearly, at Forest Lawn Cemetery hunting for the god-danged gravesite of one Millard Fillmore who did some nice philanthropical things for the Middling City and who, according to some, was the anti-christ who prolonged slavery via The Compromise of 1850 of which YT needs to learn more about.
To get to the designated photospot I had to wend and wend some more back to Forest Lawn's gatehouse where I checked in and checked out their bitchin' 2007 calendar. Actually, they need some art direction. There was a ledger on the front desk and my hands were doing their own wending toward it but really I needed to find MillFill's space amongst the still-wrecked trees, rolling hills, restive vibes in a flash. Please enjoy my small photo pun now.
A small woman with large hair with the features and make up choices and such that seemed utterly perfect in such a setting (a stone gatehouse in a sprawl of eternal repose) grabbed a map and drew a line for YT to follow.
I shoot this every year and I can't find, I follow the YELLOW line, right.
She, The Diminutive Messenger of Deathly Orientation, said YESS, follow the yellow line until here (gesturing, drawing) and continue here to here and you'll see it.
It was found.
The regular KofC gentlemen were not at graveside and, to be quite journalistically honest and photojournalistically frank, it was a loss visually but a treat to not have to shoot above and around the epaulettes, the swords, the Columbus-worthy caps with plumes out the Wazoo.
In lieu of the annual freeze-out today was all graveside mud.
+ +
I dreamed last night of dancing/swimming through familiar and sunny Shiney Apple streets, directed at one point by two aproned waiters on the patio of a French restaurant and then swam over to a flower shop where I swam/flew into a hummingbird.
It was magical and is stuck for a while.

So like MillFill, stuck in his mud.

Muddy Hummingbird Muse Love.

Yours Truly has decided that in this newewst of world years to create an exciting new twist on the resolution concept.
This year YT is doling out corporate resolutions to benefit me.
1. Starbucks will deliver to me, via the location closest to me to be determined by GPS device, a grande coffee du jour as needed. Black.
2. DSW, recognizing the magnitude of their allure on this blogger, will offer me a special discount in this new year of 50% on all styles.
3. Subaru, recognizing me as a longtime consumer or participant in their brand, is to extend to me a special few months of lease free in exchange for my thoughts and feelings about said brand.
Tooling about on the internet last fine evening whilst researching an article for the Shiney Happy Mag (before stepping out for a party) Googled the following keywords: patron saint internet.
Lo, Behold, and Alle-freakin-lujah there is a proposed patron saint (a karmic lookout, if You will) for the masses who spend time reading from The Backlit World.
Saint Isidore:
And here's a snippet of the invocation for Isidore to guide You through the dodgey online landscape:

... through the intercession of Saint Isidore,
bishop and doctor,
during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee
and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter.

If this whole wobbly patron saint thing does not work for You, give dance pioneer Isadora Duncan a whirl.

Patronizing, Dancing Love.

Just completed shooting a house wedding, truly the most enchanting of the wedding genres usually. There was much tear-shedding by bride, groom, two singers (one of which was Sean whose drag name cannot be recalled at this juncture), various guests, and Yours Truly. As I am wont to say Any wedding that inspires a few tears out of this wizened/hardened photog must have Something.
Annual Friend Dinner was fab, as usual. Actually, there was some early sniping and I pointed out that as a gang of old pals this was actually very good that we could verbalize our various annoyances whereas with family and others less familiar all that irritation is encased.
So today is the final day of this year.
A year that was fairly positive and suddenly I am recalling a most horrid year, I think it was 2003, and I shouted from Matt Kantar's rooftop on East Huron out into the fireworks before our faces GOODBYE 2003 YOU SUCKED with such vitriol. That is past.
Onwards to another year of travel, art, friendship, general bon vivant ways tempered with general workaholism.
At today's wedding I had a brief, parting conversation with the mom of the bride as we stood near some true Anglican Christmas cake, aka fruitcake. The real fruit cake. Actually, I can imagine legions of Americans still not digging this but who cares about their pedestrian tastes for fast and fried foods, religious zealotry and Republicanisms.
So, there we are, mom of bride and YT grooving on the fruitcake. I asked her, the mom of the bride, Paula, So, do you find that you are the only person that you know who loves fruitcake.
She replied a Yes.
I said Same for me. Did not mention I've been known to enjoy very antique fruitcake found in and on top of refrigerators.
We merrily munched through some slender slices when the groom and groom's father (both Scots) appeared from around a corner.
I merrily blurted This is the besssst fruitcake I have EVER had.
To which the mother of the bride/Paula spit out her mouthful of the imported cake crumbs in a quick, heaving gesture.
I pretended to not notice, as did the Scotsmen.
I was not sure, as I made my exit then, if she spit uproariously because of my unbridled enthusiasm or because she thought I was a fruitcake newbie.
In either event YT wishes she had more.

More Love.

parting. thought.
Passed a bunch of flagstaffs the past few days and marvelled that the Middling City was so musical, so on top of pop milestones. Wow, City Hall's flags at half-mast for the passing of James Brown. Only about an hour or so later did the sooth emerge that it was all, that half-masting, for departed Gerald, who YT sent a fan letter to as a very young person despite the fact that deep within my heart even back then I knew that I was a liberal Democrat.
The body of James Brown, I must docublog, made its way from the Shiney Apple to Augusta, GA this week.
And there was a wardrobe change - purple suit in the Apollo. Black and red in James Brown Stadium.
What next.