Into the cab jumps Mohammed (armed with handy Glock) with a half-drunk bottle of red wine, from the lights-a-blinkin' squadcar to our trundling vehicle. He passes off his handcuffs to Rafi, the cabbie, who I'm sitting next to.
Oh, note to self: Next time in Israel, specifically Jerusalem, when wanting to acquire the front seat next to driver do not holler S-H-O-T-G-U-N into the winding and shadowy street.
So Rafi, Mohammed, Yours Truly, Beth and Sandra go to see DisneyHolyLand - the place where myth and martyrs collide. Every spot pointed out I'd inquire, being the star journalistically-minded femme you know me and love me to be, Oh yeah, really, is that true... Shrine to the BlahBlahBlah... Is THAT true, is THAT the spot.
Did some digvid shooting at the wailing wall and of some adjoining wall with weeds gently blowing against a shocking array of disarray.
So Jerusalem was left behind as we made our way back to Tel Aviv, via Peugot 505 manned by the hairiest, smelliest human known to ourkind, Asher. Having a propensity to drive in other countries (illegally, non-illegally, public transportationally like the jeepney in Philippines, etc.), and beginning to suggest to Asher the Stank that I do some driving I began to think how I'd be sitting on the same seat that he'd been sweating and farting into for who the hell knows, so I declined, realizing I'd have to fumigate my self and dispose of my outfit soon after arrival.
Speaking of arrivals, my departure out of Tel Aviv airport was an utter fiasco as security could not comprehend the very quick pitstop of a travel to their land of DisneyHolyLands. I showed them travel itinerary, explaining planular fiasco at JFK. I showed wedding favour. I showed them email from the bride. After 1.5 hours it was decided that I was not, am not, a terrorist. Bags were x-rayed, many times, shoes and camera equipment were examined for explosive residues (and it was at that moment I was so relieved I'd not shot off the Glock the previous night), this very same laptop was examined and manhandled and re-examined. Thanks to my dear little canine pal Ollie, who, once upon a time, leapt off Kennedy's sofa so vehemently that she pulled wire and laptop and nearly the lap of Yours Truly, too, several feet away, resulting in an unsightly bulge near the MacLatch. This created much consternation for Tel Aviv security. I re-enacted, with graceful and over-baked hand gestures, the moment when Ollie leapt and the man fondling this laptop (which I will be having disinfected shortly) was not moved. At all. I was, near the end of my security infringement, led off by a femme to a partitioned room and I thought This is not the metal detector test, this is the biological detector test. But nope, no derobing happened.
Upstairs, searching for Marlboro Mediums for JR and for lunch medium, spotted one of my security pals. Her unsmiling misery made me oso glad I'm not in the security racket, and glad I was leaving Israel for gai Paris.
Where I am now.
Where I must go drink more café noir.
Where I must go see a show of Francis Bacon paintings.
And shoot more digvid.
And blow smoke, it's mandatory, into the ancient streets.
And then, when that list is accompli, jet off to the Shiny Apple for more more more.

Particular Love.

Minding my own business I was jettisoned from my plane seat due to ticket misprinting. This did not please Yours Truly as they wanted to move me to the rear of the plane, in a center seat... for an international flight of interminable hours. So I grumbled. Said Look, I need some sleep, etc.
Suddenly a new seating op opened up, a nice roomy one with a next door neighbor who was in Air France's 1,000,000 club. No lie. So he's angling to get bumped up. Then he is. Now I've got no neighbor and the flight, or so I thought, was leaving imminently. Nope. The entertainment system was kaput and suddenly some kid got sick and had to himself be jettisoned. Then they couldn't find the luggage of the family who was deplaning. This all equals 2 hours. Suddenly Perfect Me is approached by a nice crewperson who had heard my stellar grumbles and this femme moved me up to 1st class. But the next flight was missed so instead of Tel Aviv I'm in Paris. Where I've been wandering for 12 hours. So tomorrow CDG for another attempt at Israel for Inbal and Gideon's wedding.
Today Paris was sunny and in its summery heyday packed with gawkers and wanderers and lookers and bona fide citizens.
Headed for the George Pampelmousse Centre and got lost in some good, some bad, art there.
Onwards to dozing and jetting afterwards.

Doze of Love.

Rimbaud believed that the poet became a true visionary by a systematic 'deranging of the senses' and by absorbing all 'poisons.' William Blake coined the maxim, 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.'

On an overly school-imbued day like today Yours Truly might think of days of yore when poets and artists were just that. Were they grad students. No. Did they jet to and fro to do things. No. Were they required to be other than somewhat irresponsible creatives. Nope. Did they hunker down and make art. Yes. Did they enjoy the thickening joys of wormwood-enhanced Green Fairy juice. Yup.

Where does that leave Perfect Me on a day. Like today.
Full of poisons of the caffeine variety. Full of excess of ideas ilk.
Wending my way to that palace of wisdom.
In my mind it's a ring road, not a path, to Wisdom Palace, an approach, a leaving, another approaching and on.

Approach Love.

If anyone suggests to you that you MUST see (misogynistic) The Saddest Music in the World (starring Isabella Rosellini), don't just respectfully decline, vehemently do so - peppered with words of both slang and salty varieties. Wasted two hours last week doing so, well, it wasn't a complete wash as I used said time to update my contacts in my cell phones.
Arrived in Shiny Apple mere hours ago. And speaking of salty, a renowned woman with a salty tongue who shall not be named, former top administrator of Middling City Hospital for the Unwell, was alongside JetBlue Yours Truly. I have done work for her in the past, political and personal, years ago. I intended to say hello when I saw her terminally in the Middling City and, as I fall into Travel Coma before planes are rolling, didn't actually realize she was next to me until I awoke from the deepest of pre-liquid nap (read coffee) zoo snoozes with my head back at a 90º angle and mouth at Venus Fly Trap ready. Then we deplaned. Public transpo was sought. On the way to JFK a few days ago started talking to two teens who shared with me some of their top slang words that they've coined and that they're trying to get into the public sphere. I did alert them that I'd be stealing some of these words. I did not, however, tell them that I blog and that I'd be bloging on their words in the near future. First word: chillaxin'. Second great word: conversayshuh (short for conversation, a short conversation).
Three or four times used and they are so yours.
From Kennedy to Kennedy to Parsons to Kennedy to Kennedy.
My jubilant whirlwind.
Whirled Love.

It may be grad school but there are field trips. However, no bus, box lunch nor over-sized name badge in the shape of an animal. To see August Sander's spot-on portraits of types at The Met and then on to Metro Pictures to see (again for me) Cindy Sherman's self-clown-portraits. Barbara Gladstone next door had the day's greatest surprises, a sculpture show that skewed one's depth perception with work that delves in unexpectedly on itself, in cast steel and fiberglas. Anish Kapoor.
Boarded the 6 to 72 and right about 23 in came what was the day's first surprise, all 5'8" of her, about 55 and dressed for dancefloor success.
Paying little attention Yours Truly was thinking, thinking, thinking when I heard Her say to no one in particular, well, a seated no one, Let me sit down before I break my ass. I thought Ah, here's the 6 Train Oracle to greet me, guide me. But then.
She sat and then a few stops later I sat next to her. She was busy, reaching and sorting on her lap an extensive array of makeup that she was slathering (hold onto that word, make it last a good three seconds) colors all over her face. Red Nike swooshes on cheeks and forehead and chin. Then blended in. Eye liner, shadow and then... navy blue and silver sparkles tossed on top and underneath her eyes with abandon. Across from both of us were two 12 year old girls and a woman about the same age as the makeup lady whose faces at turns expressed humour, horror and then sorrow at the sad and careless/free exploitation of the sparkles.
She toddled off at 59, giving herself the sign of the ol' cross four times before detraining, perhaps to apply for a job at Scores, perhaps to meet her lover.
She left us plain faced riders feeling grateful we had not personally, mentally chosen to board the P or the I.
Painted Lady or the Insane trains.
Trained Love.

Cadillac need space to roll.
- The Roots, "The Seed"

This is what I prefer to see, a band (The Neighbors, band of adept guy rockers with ever-shifting cast of players save one Allen) that takes the time – the time! – to espouse the rock aesthetic and m.o. of Yours Truly. Just back from an Oban foray (see, Blogger is a left coast operation so blogging after midnight means that you may not be into a new day, but hours behind in a Cali last day) with two rock & roll pals in these SoHo parts.
And what a bar it was. If the lights were not all about resembling shortie condoms dangling in circles I may have sworn the theme was Ye Olde Wild West, via 1985. If you catch this drift. I had flashbacks to clubs full of bad haircuts, shoulder pads, and not a touch of irony anywhere except in an occasional snark rock classic.
There was a non-drinking couple so resolute and silent, staring straight ahead that I was certain that this couple was mis-directed, believing that they were in a train station, awaiting the late-night arrival of a handy train.
But caveat, riders.
The 1 had a random act of not kindness but the opposite, unnameable and unforseeable, yesterday as it wheeled to a Chelsea stop.
A pop, a spurt, a stiff.
Frail biological love.

Meandered over to the nearest French joint for turbo-powered coffee and an American Splendour (as Kennedy calls them) this AM, for another early-AM gander at the asphalt triangle that is Lt. Petrosino Square and to send me on my reading way.
Had a strong visual dream this AM that awoke me at 6.
My hand was holding a very simple and monochromatic bouquet which I kept waving slowly in front of me.
Perhaps inspired by my walk back to SoHo last evening when I stopped to buy lilies and lisianthus and these flowers hovered near my head all night, filling my head and mind with pollen molecules and perfumed flavour and scent crystals. Not to get too technical for You.
In mere moments it will be time to meander again slightly north, near the French joint of turbo-powered coffee, for the 6 up 3 to school, where I'll meet yet another new instructor who I'll be regaling with my hot plans of most ambitious and perhaps eccentric variety, for the summer's public art project. It involves the demi-heritage of Yours Truly (the Italian portion), badass attitude, making a place really lusher and the celebration of the Underdog.
All dogs is good dogs but the underdog gets my hardest bite.

Love bites.

+
this just in:
No Lollapalooza. Poor Perry. But really, Morrissey as a headliner in this day and age. Meat is murder... to concert tours. Too bad for Sonic Yoof and PJ Harvey, however, no chance of corrupting younger minds with their audio this time around.

Green Line Oracles, 6 Train up and then 6 Train down, first and last ride of the day.

1.
Woman walking with purpose, belly out:
You got to be careful, he got the pills, she got the pills.
Not entirely sure who she was speaking to, too affixed on the Oracle.

2.
Yours truly, after a full night of grad school imbibing with colleagues old and newbie, watching three trackmen working on the quiet 4 Train tracks, flashlights out and down about 100' from where I am impatiently awaiting the 6. One man walks along and over the top of the third rail, without fear.

Deducement:
1.
You never do know what lurks in the pockets, the secret compartments, of others.
2.
You don't always need to fear the third rail. The reaper, yes, the third rail, no.

Love Oracles.

Stuttering and faltering, like a Middling City car engine mid-January, my memory caught up with a recent past happening, at this weekend's CT wedding.

This morning, as I was reading the required readings for grad school, and with my brain looking for a hale escape strategy, I recalled one of the weekend's most interesting conversations - a primo blend of fiction (via Yours Truly) and a man named Obediah (the non-fictive part of the blend).

I thought of his full name, something biblical, and how he introduced himself as Obie. Over a dozen years ago I met this guy who was then a kid in tow with his hippie parents working where I was working in Maine - at my third month of summer camp art teaching, at Samantha Smith Peace Camp after my usual art teaching gig for Summer Camp, Inc.

Obie then was a lanky teen with wild hair. Today he's a full-bodied guy but with more tamed hair, and a tiny wife.

He told me and some random gay male wedding guests a hilarious (well, we made it hilarious) tale about his do-gooder hippie mom who was at one point a Black Panther (is this possible) and how she dragged her brood off to the local prison to visit a woman incarcerated for life, a woman who killed (or possibly did not kill) her lezbo lover. The lezbo lover was beheaded and a gang of teens and 20-somethings somehow, the story gets a little convoluted here, pointed fingers at this woman. Who swears, I think the story goes, but then again I had had a heap of white wines (replete with sulfites), that she is INNOCENT.

Before the tiny wife joined our tell-tale circle I told the group that I, too, had been incarcerated before, for killing a man. Actually, I called it circumstantial homicide. Is there such a thing. I said I killed a man, but it was not my fault. They asked my method and I replied that it happened with a pair of shoelaces. In some confusing twists and turns of happenstance the man had bent over to do something with shoelaces and somehow I had caused his untimely death as I knocked into him, perhaps somewhat with purpose, resulting in his falling into oncoming traffic. Circumstantial homicide.

When the tiny wife joined our circle she was being caught up on the story that her hubbie was telling and then one of the gay men said She (pointing at Yours Truly) killed a man. I said That's right, I am a former convicted felon. The gay man, Tommy, chimed in But you were a juvie, you were only in for how long. The tiny wife's eyes widened unbelievably and, revelling in the feeling that those who have been rehabbed but yet still encounter the suspicious eyes of others, I went along with it, basically, to fuck with her and her suspicions, preconceptions of a Criminal, rehabbed or not, and her tidy littleness.

So now I think I have to contact the B&G (the groom, I delightedly found out, is a Bonesman) to see how to contact post-hippie-mommed Obie and say Hey, I met you way back when in the woods of Maine.

Maine Love.

One worm, a dead fly and a bunch of small spiders.

So said the uniformed man on all fours, muttering into his walkie-talkie, in the middle of Yale's Museum of Art, in the Asian/African sector - an inventory of their lower-order interlopers.
The smattering of Asian art in the house was non-impressive, especially not the silk scroll painting fading out from bad lighting. The Yalie curators might consider visiting the Asian art collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, as I reach for my imported and stylish art snob cap.
And the prints and photo section of the Yale Museum is open only after a rez is made. And I thought And this is the joint famed for its photographic offspring and faculties.
The African section featured a wall of masks that simply did not rival the collection of the Clarksons but one, Hook spirit mask, was mesmerizing with angular deep sensory organ recesses.
New Haven also offered up a shop that had such great shoe wares on its shelves that the choices were overwhelming and I was turned on to the Austrian shoe line Think! as well as CYDWOQ, created by an American architect.
Needless to say, I have samples of both lines's product. A triumph!
Within an hour of being in New Haven stumbled upon my art target, Skull and Bones's h.q., The Tomb. Too dark at night for filming but gathered up the camera, an Americano and my senses for some morning shooting.
Onwards now to Cubanesque food, Canadian film, art reading.
Sensory Love.

Yup so I'm a communist so why not report me to HUAC. Living communally in SoHo means that outside the shower you are aware that maybe someone wants in but you are not so sure. And when you round the corner to fetch your Post Toasties there is a lanky boy in a towel. Shaving no less. Just drags me, kicking and not really screaming, to the Richmond Avenue days when I was den mom and lease holder and one of seven one summer. And one bath and it never felt like trouble to anyone.
After school (oh, and my stellar screenings of the short & sweet digvids) headed over to the Mac Clubhouse (where, once again, Final Cut workshop was usurped by one for... Motion) and then onwards to Angelica to see some Italian movie, I'm not scared, which featured Courtney Love (represented by a bedraggled Italian kidnapping victim in a pit near an abandoned house). And, as usual, nearly expired due to hypothermia in the theatre as they like to, despite seasons, keep the theatres at a nice, bracing 40º. Afterwards I spied an Italian wine bar and we proceeded to meet two new people, Megan and Dino (2 of the 3 co-owners). At some point, after some white sangria(s) I decided that I had to, just had to, danceresquely gambol down the long hardwood floor of the adjoining clothing store (a good 200') towards a giant, 3-way mirror. And then back towards my stool, the concrete bar, Beth, my sangria.
The manager of the store, a humourless gay guy who came in to order a ginger ale (barf) was not warmed by my self-introduction as fashion model. Nor my suggestion that he phone me if ever he needs a fashion model.

Amongst David's books, around the bend from my sleeping corner, I discovered a copy of Bukowski's Shakespeare Never Did This.
A snippet from it, which warmed the cockles of my tarpit heart:

3.
We were driven to a Paris hotel which was right across
the street from the French editor's office. There were
2 French editors: Rodin and Jardin. I sent down for 5
bottles of wine and Linda Lee and I went to bed and
started drinking. These 2 French editors were
publishing 4 of my books. After a bottle or 2 I picked
up the phone and called them. One of them answered.
"Listen, you son of a bitch, are you Jardin or are you
Rodin?" Whoever it was, I cussed him good for 5 or ten
minutes. Then I hung up and Linda Lee and I drank some
more. Then I phoned again: "Listen, you son of a
bitch, are you Jardin or are you Rodin? I demand to
know who I am talking to! Are you Jardin or are you
Rodin? Are you Rodin or are you Jardin? I demand to
know!" After a while we all went to sleep.

Time to tug on my kneesocks and part my hair, grab my protractor and head back to school.
Protracted Love.

I suppose there could be far worse things than having Queen's Bohemian Rhapsodywhirling through one's head first thing in the morning. Is this real life. Or is it just fen-tess-ee. Oh, I am so caught in a landslide.
Asked Dorota yesterday So is that MCCR (Mysterious Cat Carrier on the Roof) still out there, while turning towards the windows. Well yes, it is still there, down two floors. I imagine a cat skeleton in there, or that the wily cat, spotting the carrier, shimmied down the side of the building to escape the plastic cluthces its owner had in mind for it.
Last night, following a trek to Sweet Rhythm to shoot pianist Pete Malinverni, saw the most gorgeous thing which was digitally captured by Yours Truly: a hybrid and overly-manicured tree that resembled an overly-manicured poodle was lying on its expensive side in SoHo so I shot it. From the trunk out and through the expiring foliage are city lights, passing and changing. And then a few more shots of reflected and changing light on a somewhat static object. In hours is the first group critique since winter, all of us remaining in the MFA class of 2005 huddled together for 2 days to look and talk.
Time to capture and render and burn.
Captured, rendered and burnt love.

Some little geezer walked in front of my shot and internally I was sniping Hey, down in front, yoo-freakin-hoo.
And that sniping would have been directed towards the very legendary Les Paul: O'Doul's guzzlin', double hearing aid-wearin', guitar and audio device devisin' guy who had to table hop throughout the Jazz Journalists Association awardshow that I shot for All About Jazz last night at the BBKing joint in the midst of Manhattan's version of Disney Land.
So AAJ wins best jazz website in the country and they have a plethora of shots by Yours Truly and they are as of yet not uploaded. So here is something I didn't comprehend until this moment's gleaning - jazz guys can be oso slacker guylike.
After awardshow went to see doc Bukowski. Bulbous and battered and belligerent Mr. B. Made some parallels between him and Creeley. Dukers with hearts of gold. Who believe in the old-fashioned institutions of the heart. Who wrangle words in seemingly simple trips and turns.
And Bukowski, it is revealed, hated Mickey Mouse more than any thing on this earth. And to that fact I chortled loud and clear in the theatre full of hanger-ons and hipsters. He hated that Mickey stood for nothing. That he had only three fingers. Bukowski's goal, it is said in the doc, was to kick the Disney out of our collective heads.

Disney-kickin' Love.

Eve, the woman who recently went postal on her roomie and whacked her in the head with a telephone, whose dog, Jazzy, who stinks to high heavens and who rubbed his face all over my khakis this morn, whose eyes look a little dark and such after the thorazine helpers that she was administered after her little visit to Bellevue's Psych Ward, asked if I knew of ANYone looking for a roomie. I stated that I knew of no one but would keep an eye out. An eye out. Like what does that mean.
In mere moments heading over to the BBKing Hall of Blues and Whatnot to shoot the Jazz Journalists Association jazz award show, a real early 4-7. JR and I decided that this, instead of being a din-din (as stated on all promo materials), is in fact a jazz brunch.
Shooting then burning a cd on the spot for the mag who has me sitting at their table before the shoot shoot shooting.
Note to self: hold off on the Oban, these are not Your People. Yet.
Holding Off on Love.

Back in the schoolgirl saddle and I forgot to purchase all brand new #2 pencils and such.
Six minutes to the next *ding-ding* thing so this must be snappy.
Arrived in the Shiny Apple yesterday with several bags and artwork in tow - the artwork has the dinstinction of having ridden on the lap of Captain JetBlue from Middling City to here. Well, nearly on his lap as it was behind his seat.
Immediately picked up by Justy who drove alongside the espressoway onwards to a primo brunch joint in Cobble Hill where we were met by Steve Bartoo and Jen and then I proceeded to turn the whole crew on to the concept of the Salty Dog = tequila and grapefruit juice and even our waitlady started knockin' them back on the job.
Suddenly I noted that the busser girl had an enormous hickey alongside her neck, upon which I commented immediately, of course. She turned on her teenaged heel and literally ran away and hid. I told the drunkard waitlady Hey, tell that busser kid I'm a blogger and I stated maybe over a month ago that the hickey is my pick for hot new spring accessory...
On this note I traipse back to Student Land.
Land o' Love.

Finally a call from recuperating Lead Boy Colleague, who phoned as I was about to be hit upon by the fat-headed, RayBanned Canadian border patrolman. I says to LBC, call back and then *poof* I was outta range for the next 8 freakin', unbearable, no-cell hours.
Patrolman: You an artist.
Yours Truly: Yes.
PM: What kind of art.
YT: Photographer.
PM: Have a CAMERA in there?
YT: Um, nope.
PM: What if something happens.
YT: (pause... thought of cleaning up salty tongue) Well then, I guess I'll just be out of luck then. No, I'll SKETCH something.
PM: Eww, I love beautiful, multi-talented women. Would you take my picture.
YT: Would your family buy it.
PM: No, probably not.
YT: Well then, Cliff, let me proceed along to exchange my dollars for doe-lerz and be on my way.

And then on way back:
YT: A box of crackers. (to query on American side from crimson-faced codger in the bigshot/security/First Line of Defense boof)
CFC: Crackers.
YT: Yes, crackers.
CFC: (pointing back to stopsign I apparently breezed through) That octogon is a stop sign, we don't want you sending any pedestrians to the (note article, we are back in the ol' USofA. To non-Middling City people - Canadians are articleless in ref to institutions. Example: We Don't want you sending any pedestrians to hospital.) hospital.
YT: (paint melt stare)
CFC: ID please. And open up the back window.
(time elapses)
CFC: Open up the back hatch.
(closing hatch he comes back to my window, hands me driver license)
And get yourself a CLASSY bumper sticker.
YT: Funny, that's what my father said.

*Thanks Rio and Ron for getting me so in trouble with the border authority.

Last night's Buffalo Conversation 3 gig had an odd snare when a producer from the television station had had enough of seeing my illustriousness on camera, stating this thusly
YOU are in too many shots, move back to here (leading YT to an outer ring).
Fine.
Then, as luck would have it I was featured prominently in the next several shots. Much, I'm sure, to the chagrin of Mr. Producer.
Smoke may follow beauty but television cameras follow rascals.

Rascally Love.

PostScript:
I am more saddened by the loss of Ray Charles, a man who filled my ears with beautiful voice and music, than that of the 40th U.S. President who I protested and abhorred vehemently a few decades ago.

Ron and Rio (of KY fame) sent me this bumperwizer (along with two new musical choices. Presents are on the Things That Rock list. I need more presents. Thanks in advance.):

You say tomato.
I say Fuck YOU.

It immediately was slapped upon the car and now I have got to thinking. Say, for example, I'm at a gig and all dressed like a hotshot with the 50 pounds or so of photon-capturing equipment. Some client takes a gander at the bumperwizer. Are they offended. Do I care. Onwards.
As if I need further post-hippie, Niman-esque reasoning that WalMart equals the downfall of human civic planning and civil interaction the following happened to Yours Truly this past floral-enhanced weekend.
Bought the mower. Let teen gangmembers assemble it. Oops, they forgot to insert the oil into the engine, but I'm getting ahead of myself and my story. They take turns gleefully mowing down the grassy chaos that was my backyard until said mower is seized, over, kaput. Sunday I used my geometric knowledge and, making calculations, tipped the mower over and stuffed it into the automobile. En route to WalMart/EvilCorp began to notice a most pungent smell of petrol in vehicle. Way overpowering. Arrive at WM and wheel the mower to the outdoorsy section where they say Nope, head over to the Customer Service Desk. En route there one of the wheels wheels right off the mower, damned teen gangmembers. The greeter greets me with a smile (assuredly 100% dentures) and slaps a sticker onto the errant wheel, directing me to Customer Service whereupon I stand in line marvelling at the girth of the neck of the man in the super-extended wifebeater in front of me. My turn at last and the woman behind the counter asks Is there gaaaaas in that. In my best squeaky dumbass girlie voice I say I don't know (I reek, the mower is covered with gassy juices and there's gas on the lino). YOU CAN'T HAVE GAAAAS IN HERE, IS THERE GAS IN THERE. She runs from behind counter, opens gas cap and runs the 3-wheeled mower right out the front door, past the aged greeter. Many minutes later she returns, I get my money, I leave and head to a real store. Another corporate giant, for a re-con (as they say in the mower biz) machine and get indoctrinated into the sphere of those who KNOW small engines, mowing, oil pan dripping, mulching v. shooting. My prof was a man who saw in me his accolyte, a ballcap-wearin' butchy (ha.) type to impart all his mower wisdom and I soaked it all in, for the moment.

Mowing down Love.

You have no idea.
No, you have idea(s) but I'll fill you in on mine. Mine ideas post-nightout, trolling for serendipity like I troll my happenstances with all of You for blogposts. Yes, I've become one of those writers who elevates, who alienates, a few. For art's sake. Is the muse forever a shining golden figure with snacks for one and all. I think not.
Tonight's gig yielded this unfortunate, yet fascinating, result. A woman with mental derangement (perhaps sensing in her condition that her kindred spirit, RR/666 had expired) was lost for hours.
Cops were called, flashlights were lit.
And two hours later she was retrieved.
As I left said gig I noted some with cell phones at the ready and flashlights out at the ready and thought Perhaps I should inform them that Ms. Kook turned up in the Cosmic L&F (lost and found, getwithit) but then again this is like summer camp when some knew and some found out and some never found out until the next morning over waffles and it was a study in political interpersonal honing. Hone in or be lost on a suburban street corner for too long, missing out on festivities.
Onwards was girl-on-girl social interaction and deflecting the unwanted attentions of male arrivers.
In one week the plane for complicated, not plain, grad show and tell and do and say and talk about get withitness.
Note to self:
David Beckham is allegedly soooo hot, yet not for Perfect You. Give me Kennedy and his wanton fuzz any ol' day.
Hot Love.

By daylight, as opposed to full moonlight, the lawn is a study in multiple layers, perhaps referencing the rice paddies that fly up into one's face upon descending upon the seaweed-rimmed, paddy-dense, plastic gadget-dense, and arid-in-parts country of Japan.
How.
Three boys, one bored girlfriend (with charming speech impediment) of one of the boys, two lawnmowers and one inattentive, weed-pulling adult (Yours Truly).
In a move to eradicate the Rube Goldberg miasma of the X (who should move to Tex), a new mower was purchased. Hip hip.
The boys complained of the shin-high blades of grass cutting them like hundreds of knives.
A glance from YT, over weeds. No blood, fine, just boy whines.
A glance over at the teens/kids to discover the bored girlfriend with her hands around the neck of the teen gangmember she's "dating," my pal, Andrew.
Back to weeds.

Weeding out loves no longer lovelorn.
Shorning love choking out perennials.

Love weeds.

"saw your blog about dead bodies in NYC.  remind me to tell you about the east-river-dead-dog-wedding story."

This just in, from a true, dyed-in-the-soul epinw reader/fanatic.

But, fercrissakes. Cliff-hanging in this day and age is so two hundred years ago. If you are to write to Yours Truly give full details, details, details. Do not, I implore you, casually toss off some Oh, remind me sentence for another time. This does not fly in my Perfect World. Dig.

To the penner of the snippet, more.

More.
More.
More.

And know, to not cliffhang others, your whole tale will be forwarded onwards to your epinw teammates.

Cliffhung Love.

11 days to blast off.
11 days to grad school summer session.
11 days to marathon art making and thinking and doing.
All in the super-charged environs of the Shiny Apple - delightful distractions and all. Suddenly memory rewinds to one day, when the pressures of one day in particular were so great that I escaped our building, 66 Fifth Avenue, for a one-hour walk around Union Square - OFF THE GRID, unfettered, notebook-free.
Strains of DreamWeaver back, too.
For art's sake am reading Mary Roach's book Stiff and now have a deeper gleaning into understanding how J.P. Witkin procures his own for his own. Bodies, cadavers, stiffs, they're freakin' everywhere.
Had to shoot an autopsy/dissection last year for Middling City U and the stench of formaldehyde or embalming fluid hung in the air like a swarm of bees.
Knife Call meeting coming up, more making, more doing, with my new bandmates.
Who rocks.
You rock.
I rock.

Love rocks.

Logic will break your heart.
So goeth the title of the disc by The Stills purchased this gray-hung day, along with the nouveau Stereolab (their usual and unshocking textures) and other items so sundry, so necessary, so small - like Italian curly paperclips. A must. The Stills, to not be confused with The Chills, The Spills, nor The Schills.
But the true reason I was even audio hunting was to procure something by New Zealand band Stereogram. None of that and note Stereogram and Stereolab are but a few short letters away in the great ocean of rock music.
It is completely official, Jen + Jamal are a unit, a bliss-drippin' post-nup couple. She was supremely Jen-like in her tardiness for photos and when she finally emerged and came towards me in the woods my eyes nearly dropped salty waters as she was so beautiful. And Jamal looked pretty hot himself. When we photo finished they were married by the rotund minister who married the couple I shot the previous day. Ministeressa is smooth on the mid-wedding patter, a real Hey, folks it's a wedding, fercrissakes, let's be all joyfully giddy and never waver from the reason for the season: Luff. Jamal picked some love-related quotes, some shockingly and deliciously snarly. My fav by Kate Hepburn on how, as a woman to trade the adoration of many men for the contempt (or some such appropriate word) of one. Marriage. Punch line. Dig.
Jen came down the aisle deal and began sobbing. So Yours Truly began to basically jumping jack with camera gear to lighten her up. When she was halfway down I turned back towards Jamal and said Jamal, you made Jen cry.
Highlights include:
finding a clump of faux hair on a pathway and telling the bonfirees that it was Alan's pubic hair that Liz shorn, practicing my tennis serve in terry bathrobe and heals with glass of scotch nearby, mucho.
Onwards.
Logical Love.

In the voice of one about to engage in !Meltdown! I said to famed filmmaker Jon Hand this: I am nooooot taking any more photos, as he was nearly dragging me by my right elbow towards the dancefloor where 50 or so did their best collective FunkyWhiteFolkGrooveThang, post-nuptials, mid-reception.
No. He wanted to dish on a Middling City luminary who shall be unnamed, who is of ill repute, &C, on a smoking balcony of the wedding reception factory where we found ourselves mere hours ago gainfully and freelancefully employed.
And, as we ran into a cigar sub-fete on said patio one of the puffers, remembering or recalling Yours Truly as an imbiber of stogeys, planted one in my hand. I proceeded to crumple the sad brown thing unintentionally and smoked it from the crack down.
The theme of this weekend is weddings. Unrelated song quote happening concurrently to this post: Aluminum tastes like fear. Compliments of Stipe and Smith, REM's New Adventures in Hi-Fi or whatever the helk it's called.
To date I have made images of perhaps 6,783 of them. And some of them confirm that people have love, real-live love, in their hearts. Today's was one of those, the look on the groom person's face was a study in intent desire, love, yes. The look that inspires this very - and temporal - thought: Hey, I'd like to have a look like that tossed my way from time to time.
The wedding of yesterday, I explained to one a week's worth of beautiful blogposts, and this was harvested from that one:
(Woman meanders up sun-drenched sidewalk of a church in toxic Niagara Falls, NY, a shamble of a building alongside some dismal, mustard-coloured housing projects. She is speaking loudly, nearly panicky, into a cell phone.)
This is YVONNE, when I left your house I had a LIT CIGARETTE IN MY HAND. Did I put it out.
This got my artful mind to thinking of a home in the toxic Niagara Falls area bursting into flames, aluminum (tastes like fear) siding melting off of the sides faster than you can mumble unfortunate fire. No, really, unfortunate fire.
Love's Fire.

Chomped on some jerky, bison/beef jerky, as I left the Middling City behind me for a few days of roadtripping with Kennedy. Sucked on the sinewy meat product until but a clump of protein-rich mass was in my mouth, then time to unroll/download the window for a ptewee out into the highway wind.
On this trip met a girl named Phoebe who showed me how to suck (no, not sinewy masses) the nectar out of honeysuckle. A miracle. At this advanced and garden-centric age to not know that the central thread may be pulled to unleash a drop of bee-left nectar.
Last night, post vino with Laura at the Goldman Joint, discovered my wedding outfit for Jen and Jamal's unity, part Diesel, part swooshy velvet.
Back to work marathon, Middling City gray sky, and the rest.
The Parsons School of Law co-profs landed me a B+. B as in boo, as in b.s., as in bitchy, as in but...
B+ Love.

To Whomever it is/was that designed the miasma, the horrific headache, of cul-de-sacs, pain-in-the-sacks and chaos of suburban "streets" with quaint names with twinnish names in Court formation bending off and bending off into oblivion.
Why.
Why not think in terms of the tried & true grid. Blocks. Streets with names of substance. Relevant to location.
Not Poofery Splendour Way, doglegged off of Poofery Splendour Court, for the love of Urban Planning.
Needless, I think, to say/write, I spent the better part of an HOUR this evening trying (stubbornly refusing to resort to the ol' cell phone appendage for a whine of assistance) to find a locale, a client's home. I meandered and re-meandered looking for a certain #36.
And then I realized this very important realization.
The planners of said sub-sub-sub-division, nestled into former wetlands near sinking Middling City U, decided it best to have all mailboxes on one side of the street/court/cul-de-sac to facilitate strongarmed and righthanded delivery.
So a mailbox offering up a #35 blocked the destination's mailbox. And so on.
Now a memory floats to the surface, like a fiber-based masterpiece in Dektol:
Fanny, the Poland Spring postmistress, who had perfected the art of delivery from her K-Car, leg stretched over the car's median hump to allow her the requisite right-armed delivery. Irascible, chain-smoking and intrepid Fanny.
Intrepid Postal Love.

At it again, Yours Truly, Martha Stewart of Middling City's Old First Ward.
Repotting plants - with hot inner-city agri-tips - for neighbor juvenile delinquent.
Potato salad recipe dispensing to Dorota, calling whilst SoHo grocery shopping (no small feat), replete with firm instruction to blend the secret blend of condiments and sundry spices while all is HOT.
And, finally, a quick parfait pedicure while watching Kurosawa's Dreams and burning cd's for freelance gigs and drawing this conclusion:
I don't give a wet soba noodle about all of his Dreams. Some, yes. Some are deserving of an efficient FF.
FF Love.

Golden urban goddess... or oompa loompa.
The question posed by Yours Truly to a gay couple making their way into the sushi joint I happened to be leaving with dear Laura, who had just dolloped some insta-tan crap into my hand, which I promptly slathered on my face.
The jury, so to speak, is still out.
And, JW,Esq., if you are reading this, I may need your services, despite the fact that you're the high-test corporate attorney that you are, well, in between bouts of music fests and the like.
Beth and I delved into some role-reversal this fine evening that went something like this:
Beth: Oh, I am so hungry.
YT: Fercrissakes, eat something.
Beth: But I don't know what to eat...
YT: Guacamole, it has all the food groups - lemon, avocado, cucumber for dipping and salt. It's perfect.
Off I go to make others happy via my photo vision.
Visionary Love.

Apparently, according to a strange man who called my rez, my image Street Lock Lady won honorable mention in the ASMP National Photo Contest. This same day that that venerable Middling City org, Albright-Knox Art Gallery jettisoned me from their WNY ranks. The good, the bad. The yay, the nay. The heyYEAH, the fuck you.
Promised Marlene that I'd head over to the ER as I think the bug that flew into my left ear is nesting there but I am not sure. Rich at the most recent gig's venue fetched a flashlight and gave a look.
To ER or not to ER.
But first a vino date with Liz and Cheryl.
First things first.
First and thirst for love.

One of the weekend's highlights, to be filed under s - as in stealth - was hanging with a certain cadre of jazz guys post-gig and then the sighting of a, now, what is the correct term, little(r) person. It was the gathering of Imperial Courts, the annual Middling City Coronation Ball. And I was not there to document it, as I had for 15 years, but to get glances of be-tiarad and tuxed-out and leathered-out attendees, post haste. As I had my Olympus 5050 in my hands (a stealthy bit of equipment) I suddenly thought it a great idea to follow the little(r) person about. Through the lobby, into elevator, even up to her room's door. All stealthy. The images are a study in patience, composure, littleness.
That same evening talked with Scott V about being in a laptop band and we are going to give it a whirl.
Have a great name, a name I discovered on the pages of the 12-page West Side Times, in the Crime Blotter section: Knife Call
A good band name = half the ol' battle. And this is a primo one.
What exactly is a laptop band (really, I prefer MAC band) and what does one sound like.
Today I meet up with Pam, a Middling City rez, to discuss, hash, rehash the comings and goings of our recent Parsons School of Law class. And oh, so much more.
Knife Call Love.

Happy freelance day to you, too.
Just returned from one and am about to embark on another until god only can say for sure. The season of mai flurries to bring juin checks.
A bunch of white men in suits with a PET camera, had two of them looking at Yours Truly through the scanning bed hole. What people will do for a camera, how they will bend.
Listening to a mix made for another and, quite truly, it rocks, what with all my favs and all. And somehow PJ Harvey made it on not once, not twice, but thrice.
Showed newest of digvids to JR yesterday, as we talked art and other technie matters for what seemed two hours. Safely, I can state he dug the new ones, all looped and short and beautiful. The work made in the Middling City definitely has a different palette, flavor. Thinking I prefer those made over there, 400 miles to my immediate left.
Ron sent me a late-nite email telling me of his complicated, recent journey and, at one point, he mentions wild boars that root for truffles. Only a snippet of epinw readers will know my fondness for Rooting for Truffles, the game.
Restless, after jetting back to the Middling City, headed out to a tried and true music joint (where the doorman gave me the icy shoulder for not being a regular as of late but this meant I didn't reek of his cheapassed cologne the rest of the night. Brute. Hai Karate. Stetson. Jean Nate for men) for some talk, laugh, smoke, drink.
Vice Love.

Geeked out with Justy and his pal Mattie last night in some dark hellhole not too far from Union Square about noo music and talked about our favoured wrecked voices when - suddenly - I looked under the world's most uncomfortable boof to discover hell lookie here someone had forgotten, left behind, their iBook and other sundry accessories. Justin suggested leaving it with the barkeep. I thought better of that and opened said iBook and traipsed about the info, the saved emails on mac.com as Justin slipped off to acquire more booze for us and I horrified Mattie that I was familiarizing myself with this woman's life. He started off familiarizing himself, too, but became horrified only when I began getting engrossed in a rather long email about a certain Nate who was a real shit, who wanted only to fuck her but I couldn't decipher (because A numero uno I do not really know her and her sense of propriety) if she dug this - or not.
So Mattie and I spontaneously spot an Asian woman who fit the name on the emails. A Columbia stoodent, no less. Dumbass. Justin and Mattie are New School alums and I will be one in 1.4 years. So we spy the Asian woman. I approached her at the bar.
Are you Helen. Yes. What's your last name. She tells me. Oh, how do you spell it and where's your iBook. Over there (pointing to beat-to-krapp sofa) with my friends. (apparently not thinking it odd that I'm asking about her Mac) Well, no, it isn't, I have it over there (gesturing).
Did cheapass, ingrate Helen buy us some booze. Nope. I proffered that next time I find an iBook I'll hit the street fast & hard and make a cool $100 or $200 before handing it over to a dumbass Columbia person.
&
Today had a gig for All About Jazz mag, shooting bass player Bob Cunningham in his amazingly New England stylee pad with the writer there, too. At the end of all the hobnobbing and such BC gave Terrell and me glossies. I fished for a Sharpie. He signed mine: To Nancy, Lots of Love, Bob Cunningham. And for Terrell: To Terrell, Best Wishes, Bob Cunningham.
No love for Terrell.
After that headed straightaway off the L to Chelsea to see the new Cindy Sherman clown self-ports and Gursky's new gigantic heroic surveilling works.
All good and the rain came down and as I made a digvid short in Matthew Marks Gallery a surveillee began shooting images of Yours Truly.
Double surveyed Love.

THIS JUST IN. to be read in the voice, in the spirit of the woman who is atop the diner table in the Quentin movie, screaming, in a Brit accent, that she'll blow the heads off of every last muthafukkin one of themmms...
I AM DONE. I AM DONE WITH THE PAPER. I AM DONE WITH THE RESEARCH PAPER. I AM DONE WITH THE RESEARCH PAPER THAT HAS PLAGUED ME (AND ALL MY SPECIAL FRIENDS) FOR TOO LONG. AND, THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING WHO WERE ABSO-FUCKIN-LOOTLY INVALUABLE MINDS: Beth, CentricS, JW,Esq., Kennedy, Laura (for that special urgent push today) and JR. You all rock. And now I must drag my sorry grad student carcass out of this library and out into the warm night to meet Justy for a nice jeroboam of white wine. Addended Love.
As I cannot possibly, though try I might, steal wi-fi molecules all the day long I was, sadly, offline, missing an email from Mentor JR instructing - or advising - me to head north rather than south. And it was too late, for I had gone south and proceeded to, as I only just recently replied to him, waste some time and then write - as opposed to reorient myself in the north at the Whitney for another biennial look. Assume Vivid Astro Focus bellows me to sit again in the corner, on the floor, and mesmerize away some time. So instead I whiled away time by working, yup, you got it, a bit on the (fucking) research paper which is now an appendage shooting off my left shoulder and sticking out a good two feet, whapping people in the back of the head as I squeeze past them on the Fat Apple sidewalks. The only Alfred I know was not in the proverbial house last night, although he had instructed the staff of Gotham to keep me in (no, not stitches) booze of various colours. As I ripped into my duck's flesh the sommeliere sent over a bulbous glass of an oaky red and I just realized it may have been polite to inquire whatinhell it was. Not that I'd remember. Really, no, really, it's time to finish off the misery. No more wasted ops to look at art while I stare - no offense - at this PowerBook and formulate some brilliant or near-brilliant or non-brilliant phrases and passages about who really cares what. Oh, and suddenly I discover Interpol to discover that they've already been discovered by Laura and JW,Esq. et al. Thanks for the sonic suggestions, pals.
This is spring fever.
Feverish Love.

Landed in Land of Big Apples this AM, suddenly transported into my Perfect Conventioneer status. Immediately detrained and retrained and retrained again to meander into Virgin Megastore where I acquired new Patti Smiff and Interpol, listened to over diesel-fueled French lunch at Marquet, where I sat and read and read more about copyright world and Time Out New York. Now entrenched in Parsons School of Law and Ideas Design Library, overly-flourescent and beat to crap, where I'm attempting to construct The Paper. To my immediate left a large-scale oil of an important-looking woman in yellow jacket, taupe gown, hands folded studiously in her lap. She keeps watch over these several PC's waiting for genius.
Faded beauty Love.

Roughed up an artist, Tom Holt, last night. Actually, to my recollection, it was a friendly conversation about me buying his wondrous painting of a "creature" who ingests stars and other geometric shapes and has a stream of them shooting out of his posterior region. Suddenly, to be ridiculous, I had him by the lapels and was shaking him, in Mark and Polly's kitchen. Now, I wonder, does Holt, in his fury and humiliated condition, want the stinkin' painting back. He willn't. It hangs, most perfectly, alongside Dorota's landscape I received post (Doug Lavere's suggestion) concussion after I wakt the shit out of my head on a metal eye-beam in her studio offa the Bowery.
One man's horizon is another creatures poo stream.
Streams of Love.

And this, just in.
Wi-o-wi does a high-powered corporate attorney, dear JW,Esq., get to traipse off to Coachella and witness the complete magic of the reformed Pixies (my heart races with envy) et al et al et al while Perfect Me, an artist, a grad student, (!), has to suffer through legal mumbo-jumbo when I should be the one jetting to infamed rock shows and he, with mind chock full of caselaw, should be sequestered in a room with tomes and mold and dust and words and flourescent lights. He finds role reversal "sexy." I find it objectionable, Yer Honour.

Photographed a few juicey items yesterday, Middling City U's new provost, a man who was feted for having a great sense of humour. Funny, I didn't witness any. But perhaps imbued in the administrative life one begins to find great joy in the most offhand joviality. I told my editor at MCU that if I was an FBI employee I'd have noted, I think astutely, that he seemed most nerve-wracked, maybe something only I could see through a long lens trained on his wavering face. Next was the premier Commencement of one of the long arms of the med school, a two plus hour affair of the general and usual pomps & circumstances. Giving the keynote was a Nobel Laureate of the Middling City, Hauptman, who rambled on and on and on and on about crystals and x-rays. How New Age, I though. Crystals, I thought this was science. But seriously, folks, there was much scientific in-joking and how then I yearned for the presence of another artist, anyone creative, someone who does not know the interior of a lab inside out.
Transfixed by the research paper deadline, as well as sundry others.
And, You ask, what else is new, Oh Perfect One.
Loaded up the PowerBook with a plethora of favoured music to listen to on headphones whilst across state editing DV, to avoid the sonic assaults of random strangers in public places.
Onwards to research, onwards to yet more creative time management and thinking.
Managerial Love.
ps: Kristin Hersh's 50Foot Wave hits the scene on Sunday night, oh jubiliation and joys.

Flurry of bizemails to and fro, fro and to, this time when I should be subsumed more more more in this "research" "paper" for "art" "class" in "NYC."
As one orchestration of Radiohead is looped and loops and loops and, as is my wont, I am occasioned to meander over to here, to there, for distraction's sake. It is suddenly very important to hang that excellent image I made of Jonny Lang, for example, right NOW.
I am falling in to a circle of jazz journalists, or so it seems. I'm going to shoot some portraits for them of the "legendary." I am shooting, also, the annual Jazzy Awardshow at ol' BB King's. I remember back when BB King played standing. Standing. And one time, while he still played standing, there was a beautiful woman in the front row so coiffed and so intent with that backstage know-how look you only see on the faces of women who are thusly intented to squeeze some fun out of the onstage idol. I've never seen that look on the faces of men or boy fanatics. At the BB King standing gig a handler told me that that frontrow woman is his Middling City woman.
A port in every storm, or so the saying goes.
A cool, welcoming cave in every desert.
Updates:
Ron is apparently missing and I am afeared he's been eaten (or gummed by) a band of roving toothless backwater hillbillies in KY, Lead Boy Colleague is way broken and am awaiting a call-back after a snappy send-off yesterday, Jules and Jim (a Frenchie movie, to You non-cinés) featured the elegant and gorgeous sculptural nose of one Wutzizname Serres... YUM, haunted (in a good way) by pending video images and am wondering who will be cast in a few roles - one being the boy hands rolling and unrolling/wending/unwending in white sheet, Mr. Hung celebrates a big OJ Simpson b-day tomorrow/the tender age of 32 on the most tequilest day of the year, Faux Extra (in the process of expiring) has disappeared and amn't sure if this is IT or not, scheming how to Manic Panic the nephew's hair into a nice blooo sans a parental freak-out as he's distanced from the strictures of middle school, and, lastly, wondering how many cuppsa joe I can have before my brain explodes (that ol' occasional science project).

Projected Love.

Forcrapsakes. Could this Parsons School of Law research paper please be fucking over already. Cheese & Crax, it was really swell getting turned on to Larry Lessig and all (and now I hear the deafening chortles of JW,Esq. coming from the west) but I mean really. So I decide to write about the music industry and P2P stuff and music © and such. It is interesting. It is info I'll spout out at cocktail parties, whenever the occasion rises. And, after these measly 3 credits for $6K you can bet your Intellectual Properties I'll find a shitload of occasions to bust out fun facts of fair use, the four factors to determine such, odd assortments of caselaw and the Copy Left treatises.
Suddenly, oh, about half an hour ago, it became URGENT to listen to Dark Side of the Moon, the disc that changed the life of Yours Truly at the tender-headed age of ten, the year of its appearance on the sonic landscape with the band's electronic fiddlings and poetic ramblings that still, in my non-humble estimation, carries forth in ageless beauty. Now there's some post-AOL/digitalcity.com well-honed verbage for You.
Last night wished a Bon Voyage to Paul Deck who is departing the Middling City for points beyond, at the wise/clueless age of twenty-two.
Drive Fast, Take Chances = Travelers' Perfect Send-Off.
Decided that the Parsons School of Art/Law thesis must include some rock lyrics, including "Ooh Child." And it make no never mind whose version.
Someday we'll get it together and we'll get it undone.
Someday when the world is much brighter.
Someday we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun.
Someday when the world is much lighter.

Someday Love.

As it's spring (although troublingly the wall of bushes has lost its ability to bud, remaining a wall of sticks all dry and casting thin shadow) chanced upon a Mercury Rev disc (stereo phobic '92 Yerself is Steam) with David Baker (Alf-obsessed roomie of yore) howls. Now it's time to move on to the '98 Deserter's Songs, never kept with the others of the collection. DS, no Baker howls, bordering on Wayne Coyne reedy voice and a sonic landscape everyone needs to give a whirl in spring.
Justy alerted me to the fact that Kristin Hersh is actually heading towards the Middling City on May the 9th, a day to Sharpie down as being important as 50 foot wave plays Mohawk Place. Actually a show to anticipate. And buy merch at. Justy may actually jet in for this event and jet back with Yours Truly to the Land of Apples across the Empire State.
Oh, if anyone has seen my research paper topic and its attendant interminable hours necessitated by it, and my enthusiasm and care, please contact me immediately.

Distracted Love.

Hello confused readers.
Beth called my attention to a pertinent fact that I described the creation of a cocktail of Maltov proportions but not its intended target. That being the rollicking evangelicals next door to Yours Truly, who have a knack of salsa-ing for the Lord on nights when my concentration is most needed. That's the story.
Booked r/t flight to Israel today with an extended layover in gai Paris. Just enough time for a few kir royales and some art looking.
Onwards to digital editing.
Love edits.

nancyjparisi@gmail.com
Wowee. I am a Gmail pioneer. First, a Blogger pioneer (though these fuckers have never selected Yours Truly as a Blogger of Note but, to borrow Brucey's patented phrase... They'll be sorry.) and now this.
Yesterday's toppermost of the poppermost happening was the shooting (no pun intended, for real) of an army lady who is also a college type who has returned (4 days and counting) from Iraq. Who is shell-shocked. Who is shellacked.
I was in her mother's kitchen discussing the various poses and stances and attitudes and such I wanted from her and her likeness (as Avedon says, an OPINION and so freakin' be it).
Her mother trotted off and retrieved this femme's helmet, pointing to a sore spot, a bullet hole made when little army returnee was over there in the hot hot desert, in the hot hot action. A graze mark. While on her head. And how did this happen, I asked, her mother wanted me to ask, the army girlie did not want me to ask. Well, she began, one of the new recruits emptied his round accidentally. Accidentally nearly shot her head off.
Blowback nothing.
Friendly fire.
Shot her amidst some flags her mom had festooned in front of the family's suburban property.
Plastic flags for a nearly gunshotheadoff lady.
Sounds like a song.
Patriot Act of Love.

Plastic, nope, plastic is a mistake for a shattering is necessary. And there is not enough gasoline in the lawnmower out in the barn for over the sultry winter it has apparently evaporated. So where is a siphon. Who owns a siphon. My father, for one, but I'm not driving over there to siphon gasoline into this bottle. So it'll be off to the gas station for a gallon in the handy red plastic. Then the bottle, a funnel. Whatever. Then the fuse. What to use. An old tshirt. But which, since after the cleaning and purging and corporate reorganization there is less clutter, or so it seems in my mind. Tshirts are all concert tshirts and things relevant. So which. An old rag. The SoCo bandanna that lingers somehow making it past all the purge action. Stuffed into the bottle. Tossed. Flames. Smile.
The End.

Maltov Love.

Whereas the room was a flat, frightening medicine pink now it is Shimmering Lime after Dr. Waffner and I painted and rolled the stomach lining colour into oblivion in anticipation of his and Jen's pending daughter. Mid-paint Deb and Sarah came by and I gave Sarah a brush to pretend paint a myriad of colours - I do not think that she was convinced.
Lead Boy Colleague called to tell me that he broke his ankle. In his driveway. Playing catch. Now I am mindful of the pratfalls of mine own driveway, its hidden dangers.
Watched moments ago the thrilling conclusion (to borrow this recurrent phrase of one with whom I mingle) of the doc about architect/artist Maya Lin, the femme behind the VietNOW Memorial as well as the Civil Rights Mem in Montgomery, AL and others. I'm about to transcribe a speech she made after receiving an honorary doc at Yale. And portions of this speech are going to be transmogrified into my thesis statement for Art/Law School. So, JR, if you are reading this, these brilliant haberdasheries are really the brilliances of Yours Truly. I meet again with JR the second week of mai when I'll be regaling him with tales of waiting for action, action, action on Middling City industrial sites and my bumpings into words like aforementioned. Maya Lin, Sam, the movies that Kennedy shows me, my own random art awakenings are the thesis with the mostest.
Awake Love.

As if the world doesn't inspire enough confusion there arrived this snippetlike story on televised and self-imported Middling City local news, burst into the midst of the international news of MidEast sandblasting.
An Eagle Scout of long face and local suburb had gathered canned goods for a Middling City food pantry when "his collection went up in flames."
What the fuck, I say and please pass the thorough journalistic edge, s'il-te plait.
Flames. Cans. A home burnt to the ground? Where in hell was Eagle Scout hording these cans. I need answers. I find none.
Canned Love.

I'm, like, so totally jealous of this guy who's writing a blog about working at a boobie bar and whose writing style is A-OK but, I mean really, whyowhy is he a blog of note when Yours Truly has never been? Kev, if you are reading this, no hard and craggly-assed feelings, but, again, really.
So yesterday I was fondling (no, not boobies, pervert, skim your thoughts along anew, afresh) articles from the James Joyce collection of Middling City U. It had been a good 20 or 25 years since I had last done so, when ol' pal/flame Patrick G worked there and I rap-a-tapped Joyce's walking stick along the orange carpeting and wrapped his specs around my inquisitive and illustrious head. So now, a few decades later, les lunettes are broken beyond belief and repair and the walking sticks are still intact. I had a walking stick in each hand and walked towards the nice dear folks who had hired me, both not very observant of the most archivist laws of the land (you shoulda seen the way the texts and such were manhandled) so they were not alarmed by Yours Truly with a Jimmy J walking stick in each hand complaining of severe knee pain. Shots by Me of the collection are in celeb of the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday upon the Emerald Isle. My shots'll be used in catalogues, in journals far and wide. And they are smashing. Not as in smashing artifacts. The rez Joyce scholar was a quippa minute about all things JJ and after a few hours of his gushy reliquary reverence I wanted to stuff the large Motherwell-illustrated Ulysses up his arse. Which would have made Joyce, dear sweet stinking coprophilic that he was, darnt proud.
Poop Love.

Yesterday was Deposition Day. The day that I first-ever laid eyes upon the woman who nearly crushed Yours Truly with her mother's sedan exactly two years ago on the 21st of avril. A quick glance was sufficient. And her mother was there, and she sat, non-stoically, during my interview, rolling her eyes and sighing aloud and shaking her head as if she had written - even produced - the accident. The other driver woman was mysteriously absent, sent down the hallway to wait the two hours. I had to divert my attention from the shaking and sighing mother by telling myself that she was deranged and had a nervous condition to not glance in her direction with my patented paint-melt stare. I had met earlier with my attorney, Tom, and told him I was afeared of becoming emotional rehashing. I did not, only once I found myself sort of lost in that memory, looking perhaps too intently too long down at the conference room table. So, the joyous part of this accidental tale is that Tom hammered, to usurp his verb, the other driver woman until she admitted that she ran the red light. Lead Boy Colleague, an expert in all things depo, said now my fate, or case, is sealed. Or something to that effect.
And so on.
Convinced Middling City U's Law Library that they should indeed give me, a litigious alum, a permissive card to fondle (not borrow) all their legal tomes for the next year. But, thankfully, that'll be necessary only until the end of my Parsons School of Law course in IP. . . a few more months where I can glean more info about all things CopyLeft. JW,Esq. thinks I am now an IP geek and, coming from senior corporate counsel for Oracle of the left banks of the USofA, I take that as a compliment most deliciously supreme.
After this long-ass day of freelancing, regal legal researching and more more more I find Oban and Orton and some digital editing to be just the thing to usher in a new day.
New Love.

special ps: link to this Kill Bill-related game, discovered as a link on a Japanese blog.

Sent to Yours Truly by David Hoffman, epinw-mentioned previously, pals with this rock & roll trio that includes a girl who used to revile me and my newspaper column, who moved from the Middling City, and who apologized to me years and years later.


Fancy Pants by Kate Mosstika

Live thinking that you brought yourself out the waste
So sly thinking that you caught yourself - I'm the slave
Don't lie to me and tell me you disagree now
'Cause I know just what you're freaking on
When the times change and you want in on our palisades
You'll find that you're not wanted anymore
Lay me, oh my Amy, but you're just too messy late
Fancy pantsy Nancy J. Parisi -- Jeez he's singing about me
Blah thinking that I brought yourself up the blame
So sly thinking that you brought yourself up the same
Don't lie to me and tell me you disagree now
'Cause I know just what you're freaking on
When the times change and you want in on our palisades
You'll find that you're not wanted anymore
Lay me, oh my Amy, but you're just too messy late
Fancy pantsy Nancy J. Parisi -- Jeez he's singing about me

Where have I been. I will tell you where I have been not. Not at the law library of Middling City U. Not getting my artwork ready for the somewhat venerable CEPA Gallery auction with a cocktail preview reception TOMORROW night and there they are, I'm certain, the entire staff, pacing pacing pacing Where in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks is her Perfection. And not avoiding the grand tradition of too many turbo-powered Polish beers and honey liqueur/Krupnick at my favoured Dyngus Day extravaganza nestled deep in the Middling City's east side. Much to my current chagrin. Highlights include: a conversation with a woman of a certain age who informed me that she dates her Dyngus Day date but once a year and that she likes to beat the crap out of him, a man most Slavic who had the most dense chestpatch that I couldn't help but squirting and marvelling at in sheer disgust until his large-scale lady friend dragged him out by his dishevelled blonde hairs, my dollar store faux camera which does not leak and has a powerful jet of water reaching upwards of 10 feet to my utter Perfect dee-light and a collage of faces dripping with water and red from the aforementioned bevvies.
Lead Boy Colleague left moments ago, helping me scrape my framing brain cells together in his usual helpful manner and JW,Esq. contacted me commenting that to round out the post-Dyngus malaise I should have thought to ingest Jaeger shots and cheap red wine as well. He also thinks I'm a perfect Intellectual Properties nerd, with my Larry Lessig fanaticism and all and I heartily concur and rest my case, yer honour.
It's a Fake Plastic Trees re-re-re-&-repeat sort of grayness and now it's time to wend my weary-assed way to CEPA where the people with the white gloves are salivating awaiting my arrival. ETA is like so now.
Salivational Love.

A flurry as of late of Nancy Pants references, much to the astonishment of Yours Truly. First the long overdue email from NYCbased David Hoffman (not so-named barkeep with heavy hand at Hamlin House) who had heard and then hunted for a song by a woman who names me in her song that sort of rambles about. Then that harkened up the song of way-yore by Kenny Kearney, "Nancy Pants," whose lyrics I will not quote here and now. Then a Friendster testimonial by Steve Bartoo, then another ref to NP. Fascinating, Jung-style synchronicity. And there should be no mental leap to the Police. Thank you.
Out last night following a full day of scholarly activity with Justy and Erin, flitting from bar to bar to bar in Williamsburg and at the first one one of the boy Marc Jacobs models lounged about looking somewhat extraterrestrial. Ended the evening by making the aforementioned sibs give me a whopppppper of a hickey, the hot new spring accessory trend that I am starting. Now. Go get one for when is the last time you had a well-placed hey get a loada this hickey. I rest my bruisish case. Now that I've informed New School U that I do not care to be innoculated contra meningitis thank you and now been free (ha!) to register for not one - but two - (ha!again) terms of Parsons School of Law/Art/Teaching/Snark I am free to leave this melodius metro area for the trans-statal crossing towards the Middling City and Kennedy.
Hickey/Vehicular Love.

So now is the cd of choice.
That line confused You and for that I am not sorry for mustn't we, from time to time, challenge the syntax, the lack of commas and other dashes and hoopla.
So, Peter Gabriel, holy crap '86, the fortuna of Red Rain (with its quiet and building start) and In Your Eyes (with its Perfect timed arrivals into moments of driving), the unfortuna of Sledgehammer. And I'm sent into a moment painting Scot Fisher's mother's house out in Hamburg/Angola with Ani - and Scot came to say Hi and there he was, on the sofa we had drug over to the kitchen area, sprawled watching a Gabriel video on the television but I think most assuredly now, truth hovering just over and left to the scotch fumes, that it was for Big Time. Gabriel disc in the midst of where I rest my head in NYC, appropriate as I'm about to dive into Gabriel's online world of concerns via his site MUDDA. I'd link You there, but oh well, link to it here if you are so inclined and not on a speedboat of hurry and worry. Last night Beth (who puts me on buses) and I stood on a transferational platform (the first, I will indent, was a platform where not trains of any Letter stopped and we stood there talking for moments until we noted this and replied Hey, no trains stop on this side fercrissakes and righted our Gotham-crawling path) for the F to Essex Street (from the J/M/Z from the 4/5/6) to get to Tonic for Yours Truly to shoot some jazz creatures before the red velvet and before the adulant crowd.
In Your Eyes, I mean who really doesn't dig to the max a song (well perhaps anyone within earshot who hears it being played and replayed and rereplayed and rerereplayed) about driving and beyond. And who can't float with ideas looking at the wooden joists above free jazz while players slip and slide along instruments of choice. Chad Taylor, a drummer to excavate, and elder saxman Fred Anerson and the kid bassplayer = primo. Beth, in my eyes, transformed herself into the most effusive jazz fan and I was duly impressed.
Joist Stare Love.

En route to the Slavin family seder in Harrisburg - as in PA - made a quick sidebar foray into the Zippo Centre, rimmed with lighter lamps along their driveway. Inside, Zippo art and all things merch. Had mysteriously forgotten my sunglasses when leaving the Middling City and, lo & behold, there were several Zippo sunglasses (not fabricated in Bradford but in .5 my motherland, Italia = even better). Have to say Zippo makes a better sunglass than Revo, Brooks Bros., and that other old-school company. Then came lighter shopping. Met a 12-year old kid, Brandon, who happened to be purchasing the same model that I was oogling. It looks like the body of a beetle in the sun. So we're both at the checkout and this kid, completely eyes glazed over with Zippo lust, gave me a quick tutorial on how to undo the Zippo screw to douse the Zippo cotton while his puffy mom hovered over this Zippo kid talking to the eager-to-learn older lady who, I'm sure in his kid brain, seemed at odds with the moment as she, at her advanced age, had never ever loaded up her own lighter with flammables. Onwards to PA for seder and four glasses of wine and mucho laughs and this morning a quick spin in the Porsche of Stu, Beth's dad.
Now time to push towards NYC for high times and Parsons-related misdemeanors. And how I mean that.
Zippo Love.

Whilst listening to the Spinners on a Middling City classic radio station I multi-tasked by driving down Bailey Avenue, marvelling at what it is in the sun. When, much to my astonishment, moments later, I spotted up yonder The Statue of Liberty drifting down the sidewalk up on the right. I noted two gangstas in uproarious laughter, so obviously not fans of the far-flung genre dubbed Performative Art. After a red light moment passed The Statue of Liberty in his perfect oxidized bronze robes and beacon headdress. Gave him a big beep beep beep and he turned most beatific towards my golden Forester, right arm upstretched to the sunshine of Bailey, a ray of good old-fashioned American know-how.
How to Love.

Champagne bomb went off in my head this AM.
Slargled champagne at Marty and Susan's Mexican fiesta last evening starring Yours Truly, them and Janine, who skips to and Empire State fro.
Marty, bien sur, hard at work at table to stove to table to sink to stove to oven making and doing. And then the champagne. And then an excellent Frenchie red I brung to said fiesta.
So today back to Law School, dragging the brain to the four fair use factors, kicking and screaming. Spotted a boy colleague at Nova Photo and he provided a necessary and helpful CamelLight to the bomb scare as I picked up some excellent would-be starlet-heading-to-Hollywood work I shot yesterday.
Yesterday, as well, was treated to the entire side4, as in Frampton Comes Alive, the album of my nearly Perfect formative years when I wore the shit out of that vinyl. 97 Rock didn't play the lame cropped version but let Frampton and Pals wail away, voicebox away, and I thought about the song being a mantra (Do Youuuu FEEEEEL Like I Do) for the Good Times, Good Times, Good Times, Good Times. Hell, it was the late 70s. I had just had my head blown by Dark Side of the Moon, as I've regaled You, harangued You about for years now, and FCA was a furthering of the ponderous teenaged condition of things getting better, of crazed adult super-freaky concert and disco times just out of my transformative reach. But I ever thank the vinyl and babysitting goddesses for sending me JoJo and her daughter and the weekend-long sitting gigs where I discovered the aforementioned rock and roll joys of yore.
Yore Love.

first things first to You:
I am the mistress of April Fool's Day, practically inventing it, so do not attempt to swindle, hornschwaggle or misle me today. Thanks for your attention in this matter.

Minding my own business was en route back to the home office hovel for school workings when suddenly, sonically a grand ol' VH song - via radio waves - appeared, so to hear/speak. So I had to keep driving. It so perfectly antidoted the weather that it was necessary to meander along, calculating arrival after the song's last notes hung in the car air. Stopped off at SPoT for an Americano and gave a giant hug to giant Geoffrey, who no longer works at Cybele's and who works the counter of SPoT as well as Goldman's new wine joint, whatever the fuck it's called. We strategized about eating healthily in the Middling City. I pondered that I may have to move across the way way east in order to do so. Signing off with a VH song in my heart and Larry Lessig (link along here to his très informatif blog), Intellectual Property guru, in my mind. And tarlike coffee coursing madly through Perfect Me.
Course of Love.

Yet another Perfect chestnut emanating forth from Yours Truly.
Way to keep smile/smirk on face in midst of formal freelance gig =
find mischief, critique matters in behind-the-scenes fashion with fellow freelancers suited up as chefs/waiters/barkeeps/musicians, and snack when possible.
Told some chefkid that I hate coconut. Loathe coconut. Queried, in a secret room behind a secret door that the revelers would never discover, what's in these pink cookies. He said They're cherry, or raspberry.
Well, let me tell you. They were nothing other than dyed-in-the-can coconut and I later told another freelancer that this guy (who, at another gig, I chatted with as I hid behind a potted plant behind him to get some surreptitious party photos) had nearly poisoned me.
One more scenario. Bloated from booze and self-importance, one male lens victim said I'll strike a captain of industry pose. uh huh. So I made him and his mate put down their plates and cocktails and turned to her and said So he's striking a captain of industry pose, what do you want to be. To which Mrs. Him Whomever burst out laughing.
What was sorely missing tonight was the archetypal, booze-breathy question -
So, are you the OFFICIAL photographer.
No Captain, I'm actually a p.i. hired by your mistress to document your other life.
Snark Love.

Called upon by more Middling City culturals to make and do, including WomenStories for whom I'll fabricate another art bra. Yup, you read that oso correctement - ARTBRA.
Last year I grabbed (oops, no pun intended, intentionally... or internationally) images of boobs of three gal pals and let me tell You it was a really beautiful creation. Black & white photos, grommetted together with approximately 150 tiny silver grommets then with the separate bra pieces (nearly 20) lashed together with thin red ribbon. This year? Grain elevator boobs/bra. Who can really freakin' say at this juncture.
True Confession:
Now that I have your attention let me tell You how Kerry reminds me of Abraham Lincoln, the president who drew on a shovel with coal alongside his family fars and embers. No, really, this is the confession...
I own two copies of PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. As far as I know this is the only disc whose initial purchase I replicated. Because I love it so much.
If you love someone, do not set them free.
Go out and replicate them.

Replicant Love.

Thought I was in for a teen gang shakedown mere moments ago, as neighbor pal Andrew wheeled into the backyard with a silent teen girl and another boy. They rushed back as I arrived, I made no great welcome to them and then we spoke. I'm thinking Cheesh, what's this, these kids going to case my recent purchases in the car, going to ask for some money or beer-buying favours in exchange from protection from the band of roving teen thieves who are First Ward-bred.
Nope.
Andrew, who, with his twin would be excellent models for my work however their crack-addled pops keeps that sentiment from becoming realer, had hands that looked like they had recently been dragged from the back of a moving vehicle for a moment or working on a highway teen chain-gang. What the HELL happened to your hands, I queried, being the hand aesthete that I am.
Bikes.
His teen answer. Short, sweet, succinct.
Ah yes, bikes.
Fucking bikes with spokes and things that are all gunky and sharp and such.
Onwards to Sunday meanderings.
Teen Gang Love.

Gadzooks and pass the holy guacamole.
A lawyer type called me yesterday to inquire about my Perfect Foto Services and, after talking official imagistic this-n-that, said Oh, I, in searching for you on the Internet System saw your blog.
That's usually then the prompt for some slightly discovered, well-placed Heh-heh-heh's.
Today I jet from the east side of the state back to the Middling City and am pondering how best to not squander these next seven or so hours. Another visit to the Whitney. A foray into Chelsea. Another caffe con leche at Habana.
Hung off the FDR a few (sunny) days ago to re-shoot the pop of colour and light through the iron square that keeps the garden watchers off of the FDR itself. Out of harm's inevitable and invisible way. JR said Nice work to the ten new pieces that I PowerBooked into his consciousness. And then Ronnie joined in on the fun. They are about anticipation, passage of time, my breath (homage to the fundamental idea of Sam), that'll do.
At the Whitney every video star has a distinct way of showing their work - on plasma screens on pedestals, as double-hung heroic pieces, in a darkened room on three walls, more.
I see my pieces looped and composited on walls, each in its own moment, overlapping in their idea, a collage to wander in and out of. I'll be experiementing next time with projecting the images onto mylar, onto different textures.
Now is the time to think of one's big-ass thesis presentation. Now. Now. Now. Not then. Then. Then.
JR kept insisting These are all about you. You are the weed. You are the tree.
What the hell is NOT about me in this Perfect World, I ask You.
Beth and I met up with LA pal Jodi yesterday, at the MAC clubhouse where we had missed the FinalCut time and were regaled with somewhat related iDVD info. Then we went next door to Jerry's red diner to compare lifeal notes.
Today is the day of art, shuttling off a jpeg to CEPA Gallery for inclusion in the catalogue for the Auction. The Biennial Auction. So whatever I've got here will be there, via technology.
The merging of art, technology, high-test espresso and rushes of adrenalized chutzpah = the spice of Friday.
Freya Love.

Met Mr. Lessig last night at the 92nd St. Y, before his little talk on intellectual properties and pirates and wizards and laws and such.
Arrived with Beth and Inbal despite its sold out condition assuming that rush tix would be available. The rude little man in the ticket booth actually made my Perfect face crimson with his insolence. The Y had released more seats/tix yet were, contrary to their policy, no longer offering students the half-off price. I nearly tossed out my copyrighted and famed Do you know who I AM, little man. I walked away, thinking I'd approach one of Mr. Rude's colleagues, when I spotted Mr. Lessig in the lobby. I had my copy of his Future of Ideas and compared and contrasted the author photo with who was standing before me. Lessig was having trouble getting in, being recognized, as he looks like any ol' typical lunky lawyer. I shouted Mr. Lessig, turning to the workers I said That's Mr. Lessig, speaking in an hour, you have to let him in. I got his autograph, in the book, with a blood red Sharpie, and Beth did the same.
I said Mr. Lessig, we're impoverished grad students from Parsons who're studying your ideas and books. We can't get in for the student discount, is there anything you can do. So off wandered Mr. Lessig, over to Mr. Rude. Then all was magically changed. Three tix, half price. And there we sat in the front row soaking in his brilliance. Beth acquired an advance softcover of his new one from the ME (oh, that's managing editor to your unjournalistic self) of WIRED mag.
Our Parsons colleagues, about five more of them, joined us in the front row. Esteeemed esquires and justices, is what we harangue.
Off to digital worlds beyond, to shoot alongside the FDR and more.
WiFi Love.

Artist Michael Straub is gone. Dead. Last work. I still have one of his pieces unframed - waiting - and it has to, now, be on the walls. Amongst the other risers, fallers and dead. While he died today, at 3PM, to be exact, I was editing dv. I was sitting and thinking edgily of my own human and earthly and meaningless deadlines, and he died. Left here, said goodbye, unclung to the body and lifted away to that place I saw once when I was drowning in the lake and was ready to go. Got an email from Pam who is sad, despondent, said what life is, and that's fleeting. No sense is made of this, we forage on and do what we know how to do best.
Foraging Love.

Both feet are Whitneyed, the syndrome of spending time at the Whitney Museum with its unforgiving concrete floors. Experienced the biennial which I dug completely, especially the video work, shown in seven different styles. Will go back this week for a longer look as me +3 had 2 hours to view after I procured, with my rockstar charisma, the requisite square green stickers for all of us. A guy passed me and stuck his sticker on me, and it was printed out for a student no less. And then I found a sticker on the ground, for Beth, which labeled her Corporate Sponsor. Then I approached a couple and asked for a few Euros if they'd give me theirs and, in a flash he gave me his off his jacket and she handed me her whole dang ticket. That got the four of us to the front of the line, in the returning and member line, avoiding an additional hour of wait. Onto the sights, the sounds.
Saw again tonight Peter Brötzmann, sax, with drumming Milford Graves down in the old stomping centre from the mid-80s, the easties - two more sets of free jazz. Just returned from the gig. It rains in NYC. The pending scholastic deadlines are storming in synchronous pelts.
Last night's Brooklyn foray ended late, a fine blend of JamMasterV's loft, a swillhall, a return to lo-key Boat and intermittent emotives in between.
Emoting Emotional Love.

Minding my own business landed in the beloved Diesel Store, Union Square and, before I knew it, I had a most gorgeous leather halter top, on hanger, in my hands. I meandered through the Diesel Store, grooving on the dj's peppy beats and then, before I knew it again, it was mine. Mine. Now to find the perfect place to wear this perfect black leather body sling with silver grommet holes and thick cotton keepers. Just dined with Phillip up in the cage area of Parsons, him hopping up from time to time to help out the checkers of equipment and I'm about to meet up with schoolmates and Brooklyn pals for a night of grad studentesque debauchery. I'm sure JR would be proud. It promises to be a Grads Gone Wild kind of night, hopefully no arguments or punches will be bandied about. Still searching for the parfait paper topic for Law School. Wanted to do something music industry-related but thinking maybe it'd be more joyous to write about visual artists. Having breakfast with Painterly DK at Habana. Said Let's meet at noon before everyone shows up, sans place-naming, but she knew. Oh, how she knew.
Justin jets off to a Pan-Euro Voyage tomorrow so he's one of the cast of characters for the Friday Assault of Brooklyn. Biennial may have to wait until Tuesday. And it appears the Peace Rally, in honour of the year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, may be in the Not Happening heap.
Heaps of Love.

Careening towards my freelance gig today (the ever-famed Match Day of Middling City U whereby med students find out where they'll be schlepping their worldly goodies for several years to come to become... officiants of all things med) found myself in the midst of traffic and yet more traffic as thousands were descending upon HSBC Arena for some reason. Open bottles of beer walking alongside cops, the scalpers doing their thing, cars resting here and there waiting for a few more inches. A mess. Meandered into the gig as it started, the handing out of the envelopes. The jubilance. The popppping of flash cubes.
If you ever needed another reason to know how or if the Great Photo God Almighty, let us call It Photon, smiled upon Yours Truly here is YET another example of Perfect Fortuitousness:
No parking. Then, as the curtain of the sky parted (ie: clouds) a beam of sunlight shone down upon a discreet and attendant-free lot where I abandoned the golden Forester for a while. Free. As in free to be, you and me.
Big P Love.

Now, fully oriented. The merging between sleep and ideas and study and sousing leads to calendar confusion. Meaning. Wednesday. Thursday. When is the flight departing for the city opposed to the Middling City. And the breathtaking discovery that the flight is Tomorrow. That TODAY is the deadline for school. TODAY is the uncovering of my auto, the driveway, the walk for the asshole mailman (who suddenly decided not to risk life and limb this season by chancing the driveway's few inches of crusty edges and had my mail hostage for a week, a stinking week, in his government-issued rust) and my joy. Shovel. Snow. And, if this can be accomplished in one hour from now - rightnow - I can have breakfast with Deb and Sarah. Kennedy escorted me to the suburbs for some errands and, joyofjoys, we meandered into WalMart Palace of American Taste. Me, searching for a now-rare Spectra Polaroid camera for the 3/27 gig. Him, entranced by some "electronic" objets d'art. Kennedy gave me and the Perfect subsumed english major self the stories of Henry James. A book that invites the nose to sniff the page notes and bouquet.
As Beth Orton warbles with the near-power of Marianne Faithful and the intriguing controlled passion of most of us I think:
1. I really should be shovelling.
2. You should really be looking at this.
3. We should all look up and say Hey, Saint Patrick, whoever the fuck you were, described in Histories of the Saints (and other Tortured Souls) as "an ill-educated but passionately sincere man," thanks for the nature analogy of the shamrock and hope you weren't too passionately sincere at those harmless Druids.

Natural Love.

Roared east with Kennedy (and in this cast of characters it's as DK as mine other DK of urban(e) painterly fame) to Rochester last night to shoot the moments as I am wont to say. Milestones. Free jazz. Peter Brötzmann (sax&things) and Hamid Drake (bangers). According to my astute calculations I believe we made the journey in 20 minutes. Or so. I still don't understand the Audi's red dashboard. Do studies indicate that red is the wake-up call of drivers. Continuing on I'm still pirating the day away, infringing copyrights all over the damned place. I created a company, CLeft Designs, and our motto is: Your Design... Our Design. Not really, but I thought I'd toss that into this narrativational mix. Following the free jazz I asked Peter B if he had a website, half suspecting not but it is a question that one asks in the getting-to-know-you scene, as if asking for a bizcard. He said no and went on to say that there are sites out there that enable complete strangers to know more about his life than he does. Leading me back to thoughts of the tangibility/intangibility of the world that is cyber.
Distanced Love.

One of the favoured Middling City features has shut its proverbial doors and I'm in mourning. Cybele's, both restaurant and bohemian cast of characters resulting in a satisfying blend of sustenances, is no mo, thanks to the building co-owners. Shot a documentary-style video of their last day, first at brunch with sister and pals, then in the evening when things were much more sloppy.
So now's the big question. Where do I feed my Perfect self.
Blogging as I'm speaking on the phone with Lead Boy Colleague who's telling me about his sphere. Now we're speaking about the Goo Goo Dolls. And now we're talking about Tom Calderone of MTV fame, little buddy Tom formerly of the Middling City and WBNY fame.
Onwards to the mid-term assignment for Law School, whoops, I mean Intellectual Properties class for the grad school experience.
Delayed Love.

So the distillation of Secret Window, the Johnny Depp wonder, is this:
Cheating = BAD.
He's nearly in every scene and for that it gets six stars in my Perfect book.
There, too, is Timothy Hutton with an unsightly zit resting on the side of his nose. Where was the makeup artist to squeeze that shit.
This morning I regaled my breakfast pals with the tossled look of Johnny's hair as he arose from his many movie naps. Short, blonde disaster.
After Depp Time Laura and I revisited The Rendezvous and it was pleasurable, back to its old self with the dinge-riddled booths and smattering of vintage artwork and signage.
At one point, after several tall scotches and sodas, did an extemperaneous dance to the hell that was the jukebox run of songs from the oeuvre of Frank Sinatra. With a paper napkin stuffed into each cuff I twirled and plieed and whirled through the barroom.
Today I shot a Bar Mitzvah to fund my high life and there was one fourteen year old boy who kept giving me the eye and at first I thought Jeez, kid, what's up with you, what'm I blocking your way to the ice cream station. It, the glance, rehappened three more times and I realized Oh, this kid has crossed the boundary from the innocence to the practiced. At that age kids now, and any parent reading this stuff your ears, are doing It. And It hangs over some of the teened heads like the smoke from a cherry bomb.
Bought four new ones: Matthew Sweet's Japanese release, new Beth Orton, and two clerk recs - TV On the Radio and Zero7. So far, so good, so acceptable, so interestingly swingin'.
Onwards.
Sonic Love.

Recently distracted by oso many things. To begin.
Firstly the idea of a blogger convention of sorts at this year's SXSW, Monday. Has Marty Boratin departed? Is it feasible to travel to TX mere days before departing for the BigA? As I'm an official grad student, and an art one to boot (and did I mention that I've resurrected the dusty Frye cowgirl boots and that they could harm you), I believe it's in the bylaws that returning to one's roadtrip days is advisable.
Secondly it's opening night of the new Johnny Celluloid Explosion. Story line, schmory line. It's all in the orgasmic casting of the lead, baby. I mean, who even remembers whatinhell Donnie Brasco was about, to Perfect me it was all about the scene when he does pushups.
Thirdly is the return to basics on this fresh-snow day. Meaning The Bends and all its sonic and poetic merits.
Fourthly is the piracy that I've been engaged in for my Intellectual Properties class, and I cannot divulge any secrets but I'm in the process of setting up an online business of copyright-infringed works. (my head rolls back, chin up to ceiling, raucous laughter).
Parting thought is that that little sneak, Beth, took all my epinw closures, the love-full gestures, and created icons for about two months of them. They are beautiful, in the spirit of the Starbucks Do-This! campaign of drawn-upon cups meets Jim Dine and were produced on the nickel of some Manhattan corporate giant that believed the sneak should be paid quite handsomely to do... something. Only she wasn't doing that... something. She was surreptitiously sending me my mad props.
Cowgirl Love.

Spalding Gray, floater found.
Now for some Perfect name-drops.
Commissioned I jetted in to JFK and was picked up by Justy and Erin in the trusty and trusted Honda to haul our collective arses out to the Hamptons breathtaking home of Richard Ekstract to shoot in my special minglous way. I was dressed. I was laden with equipment and notebook and set out. Searching for Hamptons celebs, for bigger, more expansive celebs and in a corner I discovered Spalding Gray, hunkered down and talking to a younger woman. Actually she was talking, he was sort of ingesting impassively.
I hovered and dove in asking to steal their souls and they agreed and I made three frames of the two of them. Later, when editing the images for Hamptons Cottages and Gardens shiny happy mag I looked then closer at the reconstructed face of Gray. How he looked like himself, sort of. It was understood that he had had a major life-changing accident, like I had in April 2002. When you're surrounded by the vacuum of disaster you never forget that sound and you never live another minute, nearly, forgetting that fate missed swooping you away by a fraction.
I was down by the East River a few weeks ago making art with the DV camera as Gray was still, submerged. Body floats as fish and people and other forces do their usual. Seizing the day.
Floating Love.