Back in whitewashed Middling City, aglow this fine morn with crystalline beauty and that hushed, winter phenom.
Regarding the lack of EuroPosts, as You asked.
In Europe there are opera houses in each small city, coffee to beat the band up with - as they say - in every establishment (including some primo clothing stores), that whole 'We are like so united yet do manage to still have a loathing for at least one ethnic group, especially those trying to be our cabbies, our maids, our benefactors" vibe, and museums and galleries that run exhibitionistic circles around any of those in the MC.
Yet, when it comes to the wi-fi molecules, they are sparse. And when one does find internet service in one's five-star hotel situation one will be charged out the EuroWazoo to use said internet. Like at College Hotel in Amsterdam. 14euros for two hours. And they mean it. And odd deals like if you - oops - log on before 11AM you will be charged the daily rate for the next two hours tops. But if you sign on at 11:01AM you will be speeding along the autobahnnet for 24hours. And 24 hours does not need to be translated into metric. Dig.
So there was a dearth of good internet situs, resulting in the sad lack of Yours Truly even being on the internet. A bad thing. A highly unusual thing.
Now, back in the USofA, with the oddest of presidents repped thusly in the international press, I am back to absorbing up as many wi-fi molecules as I can net into my aura.
Amsterdam was not the Vegas-like sleaze centre I had imagined but a much more (well it is November, fercrissakes) walking and usual cultural city. But here and there you do spot the lusty conventioneers, those men of all ages who are there for the p.o.t., the window shopping.
And jazz sax Peter Brotzmann's art exhib, a dual exhib with jazz drum maniac Han Bennink, stretched into two adjoined buildings, filled every square inch with their sculptural, painterly, collage pieces. The PB I have my eyes locked onto was #18 on his list/prix list, a small abstract blur upon which he outlined in red his right hand. A must.
So all was beyond fab. The usual wonderments of Europe: the oddities, the better food, the champagne, the walking, the art, the design sense that encompasses most things, the trains.
No jet lag.
But here, in the MC, time passes most days more slowly than elsewhere.
Out into the new snow.

New snow love.

Minding my own business, as usual, as You know, I have found myself in Europe once again. To glean information about art, things, people, more art, weather patterns, international canine practice.
I am in Amsterdam with Kennedy for a few as we en route it to Wuppertal Germany (as in not only about Oktoberfest any more, according to the pro-visit-Germany campaign I recently saw in the throes of photographing two German co-eds) to see the art show of Peter Brotzmann. And so much more.
Today my Perfect eyes vaccumed up many a 17th-century canvas, pressure on me to remember and re-remember for Brucey who will have a plethora of canvas-related questions about the repped artists.
Tonight is dining at Fifteen, the joint of famed Britchef Jamie Oliver. The one of slosh it about fame, along the lines of Nigella - that cooking is a sensuous and sloppy sport.
As is Euro custom, the food has all been excellent, inspiring.

Chef Love.

Note to self: do not buy any more Crumpler bags and, despite the snazzy design and price, take the bulky bag in your possession and burn it.
Photographers live out of bags, photogs on the run more so. A bag that is not helpful and well-designed (in essence my pal), deserves punishment.
Speaking of efficiency, I am currently in a shithole of an ersatz cafe in the Middling City suburbs solely because they offer free wi-fi. Wi-fi is a hot commodity in the MC and this fact has bottlenecked situations and thoughts of Blackberries have danced over my head.
I am embarking now to meet with a company about doing technical writing.
Yours Truly is a primo writer but what in hell is technical writing.
Isn't all writing technical.
The way the brain has to connect with its driving adrenaline and engage the muscles of the arms and especially hands while lapping at the pond of Wit. That is technical.
I am technical.
And wasn't that two and a half years at Parsons School of Deployment all about technology.
I am a technologist.
Now get the hell out of my technical way while I scream out of this mediocrity and head into a meeting, feigning benificence and the like.
Tonight is Christy Rupp's opening at BPAC, looking forward to seeing her and what she is tinkering with on paper these fine days.

Love is technical.

Squirrels, radiation, flowers, buds, elevation, altitude.
This is all about hair, not nature. But I'm sure somewhere in their artists' statement or mission statement there is a ramble about nature, power of green, chaos theory, the watery scents blowing from the Hudson into their hair cutting institute windows in warmer months.
I speak of Bumble and Bumble of hair fame, of course.
A woman named Chri (homonym - sounds like the Native tribe) cut my hair and so I asked her about this squirrel thing. It's their special B&B name for the way hair whorls. You know, like how the tulips open. And the radiating business is to avoid corners.
I pointed out to Chri that squirrels in fact have no corners.
She cut, she elevated, she checked and rechecked my squirrel.
To a result that is unshocking, sufficient, best yet - free.
I was a hair model today.
I have been a clothing model and a model of many many things but never one involving squirrels.
Time to head to the loft to a dinner laden with hijinx with Dorota and Jason.

Whorls of Love.

Can You say that You heard an off-coloured joke uttered by a person of the cloth today, in mixed company.
The set-up (of joke, not joke's utterance's setting):
a sauna, some high-powered women with cell phones implanted in their bodies, some errant toilet tissue. You fill in the proverbial blanks.
Well, Yours Truly sure the h-e-double-hockey-weapons can.
How does one know when one is working at a merrily-frenetic level.
When one has several paper coffee empties to and fro.
Last night gig was about cathartic power of dance and dance is one of my favoured things to shoot for the challenge of it, always likened by YT to shooting an unfamiliar sport, anticipating the next big thing.
Went to Dentist today and received a wollop of the caine they use, waning, finally, after five freakin' droolalicious hours. We got to talking, waiting for the caine to work and began talking about the neighborhood that the office is in. Turns out that Dentist et famille live a stone's throw away. I ask if he knows a different pusher of caine, a notorious man, from the very same street we are on. He not only knows this other but rushes out of the room we're in to fetch not one but two high school year books and there in front of me in a flash was that very same.
Moral.
When you use your words you never know not only which way they will lead you but what fun facts you will garner.
Another fun fact.
Minding my own business and shooting a Saturday night gig I am discussing some important political and musical matters with a Middling City musician I've seen about for decades. I see his drummer and, being YT, shout WIPEOUT. They know this about me, that this remains my absolute favoured song. The non-drummer tells me this. Tells me how they made the beginning tones of the song, how it involved a vintage-like amp and the kicking of it and he detailed the innards of this type of amp. Then, enthusiastic and noting my love of fun facts, he gives his own amp a good wack with the toe of his shoe, which then ushers forth the - digthis - opening tones of WIPEOUT.
Life, always full of not only surprises but scads of fun facts.

Big wide fun fact-filled Love.

Mad throes of deadline and pixel management madness with about a dozen gigs and clients and projects floating over my head in addition to the e-meet and e-greet of work online.
This is the specialty of Yours Truly = all of the above and it is my passion.
Thanks for your attention in this matter.
Gave the feral cats some snacks and for that not only are they sated and ecstatic but the good feline karma abounds.
Back from over there, to the east and to the west, a junket of socializing and imaging.
This must be said
Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square PA nearly sent YT into visual overload, complete botanica revelry with orchids of all types and their penned hybrids hanging and not only different variations of water lilies but a platter was unforgettable as well as their silver garden and the realm of fuzzy special grass that Phoebe and I ran out bare feet over and I really pondered rolling horizontally down a small and manmade hillock and sprinting out of there as I'm sure not only the guards and such but the patrons would have been aghast at my complete giving-in to the power of green.
Before entering the buildings I made a kite with Phoebe and Nathaniel and Oliver and it sailed head and shoulders with the others, all of us taking a turn running with the goddamned thing and then getting a bit restless and not caring too very much if our collectively-created kite attacked the others. I ran the kite down into an Edward Scissorhands portion of the grounds and then we lost Nathaniel in one of the topiaries.
All in all the trip was what a trip should be: exhausting, laugh-ridden, hedonistic, unforgettable, artful.
Back to the madness and all things Perfect.

Cross-state/cross-country/cross-platform Love.

Writing this on Karen's b-day, Halloween. Happy b-day to You, KC, out in the land of good music clubs, border food, ersatz cowboys and faux cowgirls, armadillos, and oso much more.
I did the requisite things. I made caramel apples. I roasted pumpkin seeds after eviscerating pumpkins. I scared small children and made them scream as loudly as possible TorT.
This is a good holiday, despite how the neo-evangels and neo-crusaders want to make one and all think it is all pagan and the like. This is a fine holiday as it involves creativity, caramel, masks, mischief (within reason), no gift giving (not counting candies).
Today, and this is truly Perfect, I finally pilgrimaged my way into Mutter Museum, a delightfully rather pell-mell amassment of vitrines of medical oddities, castings of same, lack of sense-making labels, no artsy-fartsy lighting, and a truckload more of medicinal bric-a-brac and inanities, and a stuffed and dusty brown bear, and an oversized colon, and more.
Yeah yeah yeah video taping is oso not allowed. However. Me being me, I checked the surveillance scene, found a very handy cul-de-sac in the Lewis and Clark display for readying the digvid and ya-fuckin-hoo away I went, wending my way through high school loudmouths to shoot a gorgeous angular sight I had predetermined - a tapeworm folded over neatly on him/herself or it, perhaps, in vitrine, just past a hand of skeleton wired bone and just beyond the gaggles of thrill-seeking teens. A triumph. And then I got the vitrine of brains of epileptics and the Akin & Ludwig and Witkin-famed face. Oh, what an art day. A day of resolute, no holds barred, and let's slide our ass down the marble bannister for good measure day.

Mutter Love.





ps: I heard there existed this image online, of Yours Truly working the Colin Powell hoopla. Do I own a crimson blazer. No. This blazer is actually burgundy. Do not color calibrate your monitors. Thanks for your attention in this matter.

So there Yours Truly is, truly, minding her own perfect business.
Let us regale in the present tense, for dramatic effect. As dramatic, shall we say, as Nor'Easterly Blazing Tree Glory.
I am waiting for Scott, for a so-called band meeting for our excellent-to-be band, Knife Call. We have all, as I have written previously, together except for my musical contribution. So we are meeting to view and review some software for digmusicmaking.
Scott is late. Scott is a real musician so time is never a critical factor for him, for his planning.
While I wait I talk to Jeremy, one of my favoured bar people.
I note that across the way, a mere, oh, ten feet away, is a person I worked with at the Middling City alternapaper. He was the art guy. I was the photo gal. He was there maybe a year or so. I was there for fifteen. He's a Brit, he likes to be in his cups. He comes over, normal sort of socializing behaviour. We converse for a while, well, until my so-called bandmate, errant and time-shrugging Scott, arrives. Cupman tells me that he is back in the MC for work, that he's actually been gone, in that city that just won that hardball thing, for a few years and will be a regular feature, assuming all goes swimmingly and such.
So, now that my bandmate is here I pronounce we are about to conduct a meeting, waving over at a table nearby with requisite and handy outlet. Cue to end convo. Cut to end of convo.
The former co-worker says to Perfect me this, thusly, trepidatiously:
You know, Nancy, you were one of the people I was really dreading seeing back in this city. I am flabbergasted as I abso-freakin-lootly didn't relate to how he described my c-word attitude towards him at several social functions. I attributed it to perhaps his paranoia.
But then, today, I recalled:
Cupman was at one of my truly delicious fetes and he became quite very amazingly unruly and I recall sort of booting him out. This was several years ago and I think the kickout scene may have involved broken glass, flames, skullduggery.
Anyhow, mystery solved, sort of.
But, really, how could anyone in their right mind loathe seeing Yours Truly, belle of every single ball and then some.

Love belle love ball.

An uncensored glimpse into conceptions of painters known, studied and/or admired by Yours Truly. Or why YT usually prefers the company, conversation and art of photogs.
Painters are a quirky bunch and are manytimes planted stubbornly on the introverted quadrant of the chart of personalities that I am looking at right this very instant, (well a representation of same) scrawled on a shabby piece of paper outlining how me and one of my X's were never going to work out (and, by golly, he was like so right) as I was in one quadrant, he in the other. I see that he, I forgot this, put me in the same quadrant as Bill Clinton. I am good with that. I think, looking at this scrawl, he put himself in a box with Tolkien. Or maybe that is John Wolffer. Who in hell is John Wolffer.
Anyhoo.
Painters fret too much. Whereas a photog, or a group of photogs, gets down/off on chaos, good old-fashioned adrenaline, extreme physical feats and geeking on equipment, painters are all into organizing studios, getting the light right, nay, perfect, being solo, being in control, making just the right swerve. And for all this Fret there are so few grand painters, those whose canvases or boards whap you upside the head.
Photography just simply rocks.
So, why am I jurying a painting show in January.
Well, I will tell You.
A painter thought I'd, as a photog, be a good judge of what sucks and what does not.
I said I am honoured.
And, really, I am.
Perhaps during the opening reception, amidst all the cheese cubes and white wine in plastic cup swilling, I will expound further upon my Painter v. Photographer special thoughts.
Until then.

Cheese cubes of love.

Breezing about on the ol' PowerBook I chanced upon this image and Yours Truly cannot at all recall if this has been posted before and if it has not then why not and so then here it is in all its ironic glory. This is from a pow-wow, a real freakin' pow-wow-wow, outside the Middling City in some hillock-strewn landscape and this image post is inspired by the NPR story today deriding fry bread, mainstay of Native Americans, focus group of pow-wows. In this NPR snippet of life I learned that frybread is so not a native Native dish, but a culinary/nutritional disaster made from surplus ingredients handed over to the natives by the government of this country. Remember, do You remember, the newsbits about twenty or whatever years ago that crack was the white man government ploy to kill off the inner-city yutes of colour. Well, Yours Truly is reading between earnest NPR docket lines and seeing a ploy to harm the natives who are now 70% diabetic, about same rate for obesity and frybread has a lot to do with this. Now, look at this image. The bear has no eyes, they are dried slits for the bear is deader than a proverbial doorknob.

Proverbial Love.

Minding my own business, driving back to the home office hovel, had a conflation of visual imagery, a collage of sorts that was delightfully confusing. Such a bonus to one who slings not hash but images, in this over-imaged universe - a virtual sea of sights.
Driving down one Middling City avenue, Jefferson, to be exact, I look up to see a set of those iconic golden arches. As we all know the season is autumn and Halloween is pressing upon our sensibilities. I look to the left and see two women exiting a building, one woman in a golden pirate hat. At second glance I realize that she is exiting an ancient church, that her pirate's hat is, in actuality, a Sunday chapeau.

Misconstrued visuals Love.

Been gathering objets d'arts, or rather devenir art, things like little odd metal pieces and perfect little green crabapples, for art's sake. Still trying to reclaim art life after art school. My mantra of Art is supposed to be fun helped me get over, somewhat gracefully, thesis deadline hurdles but now it's time to forage on to works on paper, ideas in head, images on paper, items under hot lights, art under glass.
Got an email from Rio that she's giving up her long and lovely and straight hair for the charity that makes wigs for children with cancer. Of course lovely Rio is making such a gesture with her hair.
I am supposed to be succumbing to someone's whimsy at a hair school some time next month. Hair is only hair. It grows. It turns, with a lot of help, from primary red to normal after one's pal's experiment, guided foray into hair weirdness, runs amok and then fades out to further oddness of colour.
Today is a gray Middling City day, typical of later autumn.
I do not have more than a few gray hairs, despite my tribulations, and thanks to Gramma Vickie's excellent hair genes.
Today is a wet Middling City day.
Do not leave the house in cold weather with cold and wet hair for you will be inviting sickness to land upon your head and crawl down the back of your neck, lodging itself in your lungs for an indeterminate amount of time.
Next hair/health/weather question, please.

Chestnut hairballs of chestnuts and wisdom Love.

Just returned from the Liz Phair Extravaganza featuring her, her pretty guitars, her nice boots, band of Scruffian boys, and some odd onstage lights that looked like supersized Ikea items. Deb took me, Katherine, and Karen to the gig and we were to be seated in row G but, upon seeing the empty spaces, I insisted that we move into the front row, center, which we did. What did I learn at this show. That her new songs, like her old ones, are fine poetry that appeals to bandguys as much as earnest girlies and art types.
Before that made some images of the nouveau China art shows at Middling City U's two galleries and one of the moments at the suburban gallery was a performance featuring a woman artiste, sitting in a shopping cart putting on makeup while wearing a wedding gown as eight men in collars & leashes pulled towards their individual cupcake before them on the floor. The strongest neck and larnyx which reached his treat was performistically rewarded with the bride. I got some shots of one puller in particular who looked like his temples were going to explode blood all over the terrazzolike floor.
The cat is angry about the annual turn of the weather, angry at me as if I planned this to irk him in some way. He gets quite vocal in the autumn and this does not wane until spring's melty goodness.

Melty good love.

As is my wont, in the midst of turbo-powered deadlines breezed through Blogville to see what others are up to and located this must-see: go here for a neato-gleato treat.

Boom Love Box.

Did the Greg Sterlace Show (Yours Truly uses that term ultimately loosely) last night, arriving for taping and waiting a long while for some stoner musicians to show up - their band name was . . . Dyspepsia, no, Dysorg, no, it was Dystopia or Dysmorphic. It was a duo and they brought along their pal, Snake, a very Guns 'n Roses-lookin' dude with aviator shades and bandanna who said very little. I refer to him during the taping at one point as the show's potted plant. I did, most importantly, get a chance to do my famed rock jump during the band's "performance," over the top of the percussionist's head. Annie Deck showed up so she appears in the group photos, next to me for some. Oh, and Bad Ronald and I renewed our vows and the attorney who married us on the GSS a few years back couldn't make it so Greg did the honors. Standing in the background for that moment was a guy named Jim who showed up in a tricked-out suit fabricated from some classic PlayBoy fabric. His shoes were a rollicking shade of Pepto pink. All in all, the usual mayhem. After, headed out with Annie and met up with her brother Tom at Hardware where there was actually good live music warbling throught the convivial molecules.

Love conviviality.

Began the day just post asscrack of dawn and drove out to Middling City U where Yours Truly had an odd conversation with a student receptionist with listening comprehension issues. Apparently all the staff was in a meeting or vaporized and I was awaiting the arrival of my photo subject, a man who works at a top-secret defense contracting site associated with the U. As I am waiting and dropping off work for one who works at the desolate Friday office, I make some chat with the hearing impaired girl who, I am gathering, is probably a gigantic follower of all things sci-fi. Why, You may ask, is that my deducement of her. It had to do with her aerospace engineering studies, her manner of speaking, her sci-fi-looking shirt that would fit into any movie which outfits the femmes aboard a celestial ship of sorts in concurrently fetching (read revealing) yet sturdy and work-ready wear. So we're talking as the man/subject is late and then later yet. She says she's going on to grad studies in all things aerospace and so YT states Oh, you're done. Well, nearly done. She is squinting her eyes. WHAT, she replies. You are done, well, nearly done. Repeat exchange once more. Then I realize that she thinks I've called her dumb so I re-say You are nearly finished. She gets this.
The man arrives.
I have been warned that he's been hard to agree to being photographed, harder to schedule. This shoot was arranged by one of my editors so I only just found this all out yesterday.
He is sweaty and apologizing and says he could not find the building.
I suggest we leave this building and expect an argument but YT has gracefully pointed out that we will have a better time of portrait-making elsewhere. I give the nouveau location and off we speed. He is then late and then later still at the other spot.
I think he's pulled an archetypal male move of not saying he does not know how to get to this new destination. A car pulls up and it's not him.
Ten minutes drift along and then he arrives, saying he ran into someone he knew in the parking lot.
So we're making small talk as I photograph him and he goes into a rant about how his business is super-secret and that he's jetting off a lot to lobby in Washington and we discuss airports. Then he returns to ranting about how the Middling City Daily has misquoted him severely four times and the whole time I'm shooting away, offering some compositional strategies and thinking Uhh, okay, I'll be certain not to misquote you in any photo captions, Mr. Secret.
He wants a jpeg sent to him to prove to some of his colleagues far away that it's not always snowing in the Middling City and then I suggest we do a few portraits outdoors. He declines.
So, I'm thinking Wow, Mr. Secret is kind of kooky for how in h-e-double-hockey-sticks are some images of him standing inside a very neutral building with some very natural and pleasing window light going to prove a damned thing about weather maps in this region.
Moral:
You may be a lobbying scientist but that does not make you a MapQuest or Art scholar.

Scholarly Love.

Hearing this soundbite from unsound GWB yesterday on NPR I thought I'd e-fetch this quote, brushoffalicious and diabolical, regarding the press pressing on about the background of the next possible Supreme Court appointee.

"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers,'' [President Bush]; said. "They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion.''

With logic akimbo, sidesteppingly the President answers nothing. So, as an exercise, is some self-MadLibbing below:

'Blog readers are interested to know why I picked Nancy J. Parisi,' Yours Truly said. 'Middling Cityites want to know My Perfect sport utility wagon. They belch to know as much as they possibly can before they form monkeys. Part of Yours Truly's perfection is her Oban.'

MadLibbin' Love.

Live and clean forget from day to day,
Mop life up as fast as it dribbles away.

-Sam Beckett, from
Collected Poems in English & French

Some birthday wizened words from the Sam, this emergence anniversary after picking up the niece and nephew and quote unquote kidnapping them for a sojourn to the avenue for some caffeine, sugar, cd's, rollicking hijinx before returning them to their more steady advisors and handlers. Time to head out with Kennedy and then points beyond.

Wise Love.

John Lennon's birthdate. Today.

Yoko always suggests to remember the beginning, not the ending.
Ending time is near, the garden the yellowed green and withered leaves and bees searching for the last pollen morsels, and the Middling City sky turning its customary Autumnal Gray.
Tomorrow is my own day of reckoning and it's usually a day I work and sort through matters but tomorrow I'm holding off on work, à la Day of Rest, for a change. Brucey observed that I have a hard time with the 10/10 and to that I said It's one's own special private New Year's Eve, in a way, a time to assess the highs, the lows, the plan of action, the bell curves, and pie charts. Yours Truly also believes a person's b-day is, if you care, love, like a person, a time to say Hey, you came out into the world and yafuckinhoo to that. Belated Happy B-day to JW,Esq., who, I am certain, spent his special day body-painted and addled in some club after hanging up the BBsuit. Tomorrow is also Katharine's date of birth, the niece, who plopped onto the scene on the 10/10.
So yesterday was Marty and Susan's wedding day and in lieu of being there in a cute black ensemble amongst some of my most favoured people and giving a reading penned by YT, I was a hired camera at a wedding of near-strangers who booked me over a year ago. And I did her sister's wedding and there was no way in h.e.l.l. I could say Oh, oops, sorry, I won't be there. So there I was. Encountered the sociopathic priest at Saint Weirdo's, I'm sure I blogged about him at last year's wedding of the sister of yesterday's bride. He didn't perform the ceremony yesterday but there were stories about him from the rehearsal run-through, of him pronouncing that there would be no alcohol, cigarettes, shenanigans on the premises of Saint Weirdo's. Nothing of the sort. So he's nowhere to be seen, whew, but then, during the formal fam photos in the church he appeared. He, as is his wont, approached me discreetly and mustered up in a most astonishing hate-filled and passive-aggressive stylee This is NOT a photo studio . . . you have TWENTY minutes. I informed one and all. Then I requested that the couple stick around with me when we were done, they had asked if I needed anything and I said Yes, please wait with me while I break this all down, last year this priest waited until everyone had left and came from God knows where to harngue me and scared me a bit. So they did, and, lo & behold, Father Creepo appeared and, when seeing that I was not alone, sort of disappeared again. Thwarted.
At the reception I was seated for dinner between the d.j. and a retired, 80-year old cop. After several attempts to ask the retiree about his former career as cop and boxer I gave up, his suspiciousness from years on the beat preventing me from hearing some good tales, I asked Andy the d.j. about his side job as a d.j. at a Middling City strip joint. Far more interesting, and rewarding. Now teeming with fun facts about the dancers, percentages, strategies, etc.
YT does have a priviledged purview of an enthralling cross-section of an odd assembly of people on any given week.
On that positive tale-rich note I end.

Love of rich tales.

At last evening's gig was seated for dinner, between two music types, one wearing his Africaner tie of jazzy hues. Someone at Table 10 commented on the tie and he quipped that this tie was responsible for thee Hillary Clinton going all woozy at the luncheon You might recall this past winter in the Middling City, when her eminence passed out c.o.l.d. and The Globe, with giant photo (pre-skid-hitting) of same by Yours Truly queried thusly: WAS HILLARY POISONED.
Well, in the mind of this music type he and his tie did it. I do have an image of him greeting HC at the door, her hand outstretched for him and the tie is there. There was a movie and/or t.v. star who I did not recognize, I thought him to be another grad student being trotted out to impress the major Middling City U donors, a look-see visual aid. But, no, this was a living, breathing, smiling widely movie/t.v. star who I could not have named, fingered in any event to save my precious, perfect life. So, being YT, once I did learn of his pending bronze star in Hollywood I jumped on the op to photograph him merrily, even posing him with a few people in the room who did know him. And this is not the sort of image that, say, my pal at The Enquirer would salivate over. Now, had he choked on the extra-brut chicken on plate, that would have been a, what we call in the trade, windfall.

Love windfalls.

Love Post.
If the title is too much, please do scamper now.
No time for non-Bryan Ferry-luvvin' fairies at this juncture. More than this.
The weekly therapist/mixologist Jeremy says Nancy, do you recall a morning at X. I say Yes, I do, regaling him with his own self-made details. They include a girl I do not know and Jeremy carefully purchasing a mug, a thing, a gift. I ask Do you LOVE the girl and he - sadly - balks. This boy I pegged as human, as genuine, as Real, as It All. He says I have said It but I don't know if I mean It. Plunging toward sad I ask Then why say and he say c o n v e n t i o n. Which leads me to the next scene of my lifemovie when I am driving aimlessly without a real home towards wherever and sobbing - the last time - for him. Concurrently, writing the first airy draft of a poem called same, the last time I cried for you and it's sad, sweet and liberating as it's - get it - the last fuckin' time. The last time a person can touch you somehow with words, memories, or remnants.

One of yesterday's gigs was to make some ports of a Middling City suburb political type, running for (and from) only God, voters, party planners may know.
So I show up at party h.q. and there he is, one of his brochures sticking out of his shirt pocket. This was there on purpose. I know, I asked.
He balked when I said I'd like to have his assistant (with my assistance) tape one of his larger signs to the wall - for a thrill, for a prop.
I wanted to shake him firmly by the shoulders and say this
Look, X, you stick to what you know. And I'll do what I know best. You stand there and look political, no art directing. End of orders.
So all worked out swimmingly, him finally succumbing to the art direction of Yours Truly most perfectly.
Time to press on with deadlines and hit the highway for two back-to-back jobs making all in front of the d2x look beautiful, pensive, pixel-worthy.

Pixel-worthiness of Love.

Not to be like so totally biting on OnlyInNewYorkKids,OnlyInNewYork fame - Liz Smith - but the fabulosic newbie to the eating and see-and-be-seen scene Freeman's has this majorly fun fact attached to it. Apparently those wretched Bush twin girls tried to sup & sip there and, noting their wide and over-priviledged faces. the hostess, when asked by one of the twins (who knows if it was the fat one named for that one grandmother, or the dumber-looking one, named for the other) how long of a wait it could/would be (after the furtherance of their stance at front of line was not helped one teensy schmeensy bit by their surname, which they brandished like a truncheon) were told Four years. Only in the Shiney Apple could a hostess come up with such a superb utterance as she was probably also a writer of some sort, or a comedienne, or a diplomat.
Speaking of such, had to shoot a Canadian dip today with the prez of Middling City U. And I thought how easy it was to spot him amongst the MC bunch. It harkened back to the wine centre/vintner joint up in Fort Erie somewhere where, like the Mainland Chinese, suddenly it is noted that the humbleness of yore is more yore than before.
Overheard on the streets of SoHo: uttered by a guy with a curly mullet who, it was quite obvious, thought himself an eminent metrosexual type was, him walking quickly and speaking in a gush over his shoulder to three people behind him New Yorrrrk is like mental Ritalin, so perfect for someone like me.
I mean really.
Flew back to Middling City in an inward snit and sat next to a small dog (half chihuahua and half terrier... a good mix) who popped out of his bag, first staring at me and then offering me some languid kisses and his handler, a lesbian sex worker.
We spoke and then came the certain tone of voice asking if I do portraits. As I told Kennedy this conversation has happened countless times, it's sort of along the lines of the invariable male who asks Are you the OFFISHull photographer. She needed a Bunny Yeager and I was like so not into being her Bunny Yeager. Onwards.
Yesterday's shower for Susan was good old-fashioned all-girl throwdown with the usual bunch of girlies and ruffians. I won a prize, a door prize - a shopping bag of things that smell good and then a femme won a bag chock full of Ani merch (hostess Mary works for RBR and the lil' folksinger . . . Laura is right now barfing on the floor wherever she is) and gave me the tiny girlie tshirt she knew I would fit into and she would never. A bonus. A bonus in this Perfect world.
There are exactly seven shopping days until the birthdate of Yours Truly.
Fav colour: green
Shoe size: 7
Ring size: 6.5
Hat size: who the fuck knows and don't buy me a hat.
Fav restaurant: Gotham
Fav scotch: Oban
Look, this is enough to get You started. Happy freakin' shopping.

HFS Love.

Minding my own business, as per usual, ran into a Parsons School of Debonairity grad of second class (as opposed to the premier class, the class just spewed back into the harsh reality of the world, i.e. Mine) at the Sugimoto show at Japan Society.
Two wows: 1. Serendiptity. 2. Show.
His seascapes and waxwork viewing boxes are there as well as a hardcore fossil collection, his thoughts on fossils and photography (Photographs are fossils of the present.), and some Japanese antiquities shown as they are right now and some with his photographs fused into what they are. It's shadowy, poetic, surprising and the only factor that is a minus are the overly-vigilant guards who must have taken a lead from the obsessive watchers of The Whitney. They don't serve sake or tea in the joint which has always made me want to find the director and ask Why. Ate dinner at a new joint off an alley off Rivington off Bowery. Freeman's. It like so totally rocks and there was consumption, amongst others, of those little UK morsels Devils on Horseback. I mean, really, what is there not to like about a morsel with such a name. Another bonus thing is the smiling head of a wild boar looming over diners. Other taxidermied former fauna include a geese with feet out, appearing to be about to crash land upon a table for a feast. Not him.
Speaking of morsels, Yours Truly has been making visual morsels. And like Devils on Horseback they rock. Perhaps my next show will be called same.
Faithfully sticking to the fun facts, the high times, the misdemeanours, I end.

Love morsels.

OK, this is truly truly horrifiying.
Somehow, and I reiterate Some... how... some radio station was on and I was minding my own stinkin' business and then they were playing BILLY JOEL AND IT WAS REALLY BAD, AS USUAL, BUT I MEAN I REALLY DO LOVE TO HATE THAT LOSER BUT REALLY . . . DID YOURS TRULY NEED - EVER - TO HEAR youmustberightImustbecrazy ON MY HI-FI. No, the answer is no, no, never, no.
Onwards to more Smog. Oh yeah and all is good in Perfect Nancy's World once more.
An I Really Hate Billy Joel Story:
(god there are so many, where to glean)
He is about to go onstage in a Middling City arena. As is his custom he has his handlers basically shake all us photogs down. No this, no that. As if.
He comes astage and is promptly teleprompted, the screen facing him atop his piano, his chubby little fingers working away on his tunes.
That's enough for now.
Shudder.
Jetting tomorrow to the right side of the state and have sent out appropriate warnings and such. Jubilantly, I discovered a credit with the company that became for years my school bus, my networking tool, my saving planular grace.
Off I go to make art. I am so very happy to be on the brink of tossing myself into my ideas.
And the rest of it.

Rest, no, never love.

Well, well well, well well well.
Firstly,
minding my own business at one of last evening's photographically opportunistic gigs, a private all-femme high school reunification, I was smiled at by a woman proudly wearing her clipped-out portrait from thirty years hence, not sure if she knew me or not as the room was only full of this class as well as a few waitresses filling chafing dishes with chafing waters. I was there to wrangle all of the amassed into a portrait = a pending summer Olympic sport, and more fun to watch than ribbon dancing to boot.
I though OK, she knows me so I says my name and she says in an odd voice OhMyGodYouLookGreat whilst hugging me.
I then realized she had no idea who I was and thought of telling her I was merely the hired hand photog but let her swim in her case of mistaken identity as, You know, sometimes it is just so not worth the price of admission to get into details.
This fine morn gig was a race and the road crew included a group of Middling City U students all decked out in the decade of their births - the 80s - all grooving on the tackier edge of those mauve and teal-infused, teased, bisexualized times. The group of them, about half a dozen, came to shepherd runners dressed as an 80s band and they were outfitted well and accompanied by a vintage boombox blaring Journey. A few of them gleefully asked if I was down with Journey and I assured them I was. Then they also gleefully showed me their vintage cassette tape, a holy rock relic of sorts. Who can forget the new mode, compact disc, when some of us owned but a few and we thought it could be a passing fancy, reading audiophile articles that they would be a flash, a lower-rez version that would be outpaced soon(er than later) - but no.
Haunted by a Chaos song heard on the radio, finally something new to get auditorially hepped for. Bought the last Smog. A gem.

Smoggy Love.

Inspired quite a skid mark today, a good seven feet of burnt rubber along the Avenue, as Joe Rozler concurrently shouted my name as I was walking in the Middling City sun across said Avenue and laid hard onto his bike's brakes. I had just said byebye to Mary, Kunji, Allen and was wending back to the historical Old First Ward allegedly being bought up like beautiful wampum (according to Gilian Brown, Esq. and old college pal who I also saw at the coffee joint). Joe Rozler said he was just recalling my gracious thank you note for some vino he bought me for my last b-day and thinking about buying same bottle for some person who has a b-day today and all when *ka-poof* there was Yours Truly. And then the skid mark.
Two things of yesterday.
1. Gig was jam-packed with hundreds in a poorly-designed new build in the exurbs and as I elbowed (OH! what training not only being a camp's art lady for a decade was, but shooting rock shows for two decades was too in this madcap world. . . patience, resilience, respectively) others away for a set-up moment featuring five VeryImportantPhotographees a man's voice slithered into my ear. Do you EVER photograph yourSELF, it asked. Not taking eye away or turning head I summoned the paint melt stare© in audio out of the edge of my mouth:
Absolutely not.
Marky Mulville showed up amongst the throng and I shouted Marky, surprising him greatly and he looked up from his, he said, malfunctioning D2X, which had made several black frames = really, really bad news. I suggested he pose the honoree with her sheet cake. It was festooned with flowers of an odd brick red.
2. Approaching the bar to approach a social gathering I then approached the actual serving station manned by Scott leaving for a rock gig. I asked what position do you play to which he exploded DRUMMER. I asked are you a power drummer. He said I am THE drummer. Apparently, he's in the Poptops and he was grabbing champagne splits for his Mohawk Place gig. So Lovelorn Jeremy was left and so as I waited for the others I asked Jeremy, you hear a lot of things, you offer up lots of answers as a bartender. What do you think I should do with my hair, let it grow, cut it. He spent some time looking at what it is doing and then said Keep it like that. Noncommital perhaps. But I agreed.
Hair, like dreams, is not only subjective but ephemeral.

Love ephemeral tales.

A few nights ago had a gig to shoot a pop starlet emulating DMB - Josh Kelley - who was performing at Hilbert. The spare crowd was a girls gone wild scene. Overall, Kelley was harmless. Moved on to SoundLab to see Tony Conrad and the cowbell lady, Steve B, and a few others in the dankness, avoiding their liver-non-enhancing Yellow Tail poison.
Trying to upload a Josh Kelley moment and Blogger is not giving me a helpful link so here is an apt description in lieu of actuality. His fist is raised, his face is beet red. He looks angry. He is singing a pop song about love and such so, we might ask, why such rancor.
On the other hand, a study in comparing & contrasting, Tony Conrad was all beatific wall of sound noodling, no fist in the air. Only studied composure, although he did raise an eyebrow, I think the right, when he noted Yours Truly at the stage edge capturing.
Yesterday included getting into the car of a stranger for the sake of journalism. The subject: man who commutes from Buffalo to Rochester. Posed him alongside his car in a lot of Middling City U and made an executive decision - this said more used car salesman than commuter. So I says to commuter How's about we take a ride. He obliged and we sped up and down downtrodden Bailey Avenue until I had what I needed. Until I pried my editorial sense out of him, who, all the while, expounded upon the racist happenings down in the Gulf region.
For the sake of experimentation I had my camera for some moments on his dash, shooting from the hip as They say.
What are we aiming for, we journalists.
A Pulitzer in every frame, every take.
Time to compile orders and dispense them to the awaiting.
Art calls and plans are being formulated as I blog about a few upcoming projects, including the foursome show YT planned recently for an unsuspecting arts venue. We have even discussed site-specific works. Oh, this venue will be most surprised. They will comply.

Complied Love.

Arrived at the gig last night under the blaring lights of Middling City U's football stadium (too bad it does not rhyme with tedium but for the sake of poesie let us say that it sure fuckin' does) to hear the screeching intro by a local radio personality for American Idol John Stevens - or is that John Stephens. Let us say, again, for sake of poesie and argument, that Yours Truly does in fact not only know the correct spelling but might be able to recognize this fledgling celeb visually. So he, the American Idol of Middling Cityesque heritage, begins the theme song for the United States of America and the preamble to every sporting event in this fair land. Upon singing the phrase Rockets red glare four fizzylicious pyros shot up from the ground behind the singer. A great visual to be sure. But auditorially not such a good idea. There were more pyros, drowning out completely the song until its very end.
Yours Truly, intrepid and ever-quipping journalista, was up in the boxes, prowling. Found President John Simpson, entourage, three Tulane evacuees, a crock pot full of burbling orange something, salty snacks, and oso much more. Shot prez and the trio of students in a set-up GettingToKnowYou moment. Noted aloud that one of the students was outfitted with some academic reading should the sporty going get boring. Kennedy and I read the sport section in part aloud and lo, behold, the Middling City U Bulls still kind of suck a lot. They remain #115 out of 115 teams and, as I discussed with Laura this AM over brunch at her joint, if there were a way they could perform themselves off of that list we are fairly certain they could - or would.
On a less sporty note.
I was approached by a femme I know to join a group of artsy types who want to start an outdoorsy kind of club of sorts. I said sure, as long as it included sharpshooting as I freakin' rock at that, and maybe some snowshoeing. So there's a listserv sort of to and fro of messages and this list encircles some associated with the Greg Sterlace show, upon which I was married by ever-tanned attorney Ross Runfola to Bad Ronald - amongst other adventures. So I send out a reply to the query if RR would participate in this group that I imagined he is not much of an outdoorsman despite his George Hamilton tone. To this I got a très zanyrific reply allegedly penned by YT, basically professing some sort of undying love for RR. I would cut and paste but You get the idea. I group-replied that I will be pressing charges for sure unless there is a full retraction.
Oh, aren't these litigational times.
Just got another gig in Roch, perhaps one in Boston next mo.

Moving and grooving love.

Went to that Middling City theatre extravaganza many get all jazzed up about with a posse of girlies. We met up at the CEPA opening where I was harangued by Aaron and where I was (whewww) not recognized by one of my (former) stalkers as apparently I've successfully avoided him up to now and he doesn't know me with shorter hair (whew again). But the stalker did strike up banal conversation with one of the posse and when he asked her Where do I know you from I proffered up quick fiction that he might recognize her as her job is as a Kenmore (M.C. suburb known for hosting the hellacious private high school where Yours Truly, Loomis, and AEDM attended, amongst others, brutally racist cops, and a strident and long-running sex shoppe) traffic cop. Lauren looked at me with eyes awidened but somehow the stalker didn't grasp that or that we might all be trying to give him the ol' Slip. Onwards. Meandered along to the Hallwalls opening where I bumped into Leslie and Bernie of days of yore. Bernie once wanted to beat me up for some (here's that word coined by the mechanic, this logo-gem) misconfusion - really. We were near-teened folks in our 20s when spirits run high and quite erratic. After the near dust-up we became fast friends and engaged in very Bernie-esque adventures such as, for one, canoeing from Manhattan to Brooklyn. You know, things of that nature. So the Hallwalls situ was wide-open, dusky, full of odd chip dips. And now this is where the posse fell to bits as Laura called me on my cellie to say that everyone was upstairs at my pal Deanna's joint. So up I go. To then bump into several people I know, including a feuding newbie couple. I lost all the girlies. Then I got calls from all of them. You know, that happens. Let us call is The Party Scatter. But it is not a tragic thing, I liken it to a good abstract painting, a rarity. The deft layering of things to a fetching result. Laura and I created a little side project that never came to fruition. I really wanted to trip someone and I spotted a small gang of cops lurking in a doorway on dead-to-the-world Main Street, glancing (I thought) discreetly at them. Laura shouted OHNO. Whaaat, I asked. She said You can't trip cops. I said But I wasn'.... no use. Laura, Gestures Specialist, read the whole thing transpiring. I think Laura is missing her calling as a Border Patrolist.
Time to wrap things up here before I make my way out to Middling City U to shoot the president of it all entertaining displaced New Orleans, LA students in his private special catered box to watch the worst college football team in history.

Historical and Sporty Love.

So I tell my dad about my recent vehicular woes, mostly because he noted I pulled up in a very different car from the usual. To be specific: a piece of poo Neon or is it Freeon, a car that is nearly impossible to see out of. A car that gets fab AM reception, however.
He hears the ins, outs, details and says he will call the repair shoppe on my behalf. I dial the number, hand him my cellie and he goes into his house. The screen door is open but the kitchen door is closed and I can hear his voice. Then I hear his voice get much much louder. And then louder still.
He comes out. In a nutshell (oh, let us say a nice crackly pecan shell) he says that they did the Evil Mechanic Flipflop, the Well you said X and we did Y. Which later becomes Well you said Y and we did X.
The EMF includes this important detail - rims were ordered and there was a choice. A mechanic asked me what type of rim I have/had on car and I said, in that nutshell, Ummm, Mis-TER what in hell, how would I know that. He asks for the VIN, which usually tells a shoppe Everything about a car, especially juicey for a dealer, which this is. So there is VIN confusion.
Oh, one more fact is that one of the mechanics last night kept saying misconfusion. I really thought he was joking. He said it a few more times and then Yours Truly had to give this word a spin. To use it in a sentence, EMF style:
Look, ma'am (grrrr) I don't know where this misconfusion came from. . .

Love, Misconfused.

Blogger has this neato newbie feature: type line number one of ruminations and quippifications and *ka-poof* it goes away forever. And I do mean forever. So Yours Truly has learned to toss off some (no, not cookies) cursorial thoughts before digging deep.
Mazzy Star's Among My Swan the disc du moment, specifically hovering along to Take Everything and duly note that there are songs that inspire different activities and this gem inspires drawing. Recently did a supersecret public drawing on a site and I do hope it was appreciated by some. One odd and recent day I had a hankering for my tagging and public artmaking self and She popped out quite surprisingly one eve and thusly the drawing, too. A one lined affair with some quick words of pometype thinking. Just had a delivery meeting with the sister of a recently-moved client and somehow we got to talking about the Middling City's Old First Ward (you know, in the esteemed and famed Cobblestone Districte, near the Ye Olde Elke Terminale Loftes) and, as it turns out, she knows the creepy baker, You know, the one who keeps paying other strange men to trespass onto my prop and cut down bushes as he believes that vermin crawl up the branches and wriggle their way into his building perhaps between bricks or from the rooftops, rapelling down the sides and kicking in little holes in the windows. At least that's what I gleaned from his creepo rambling, trying desperately to fade out before the sight of him in his wifebeater and baker cap sunk in too far.
It is a fine pre-fall night. Some flowers all blown out (like a lady's hair on a Friday night) but not the turtle heads who patiently waited their turns.
I end here and speed off into this fertile and pre-dark hour to points and adventures beyond, my head right now wrapped again in wishes for being on the Shiney Apple streets, wending, wending, wending.

Love Wish.

Blogging from a garden and, I tell you what (pronounced in my best Texarcana accent as such, for dramatic effect: AHH tee-EUL you what), that is a freakin' toppermost manner of doing such.
This late summer night there are murmurs from a nearby patio, a warmth in the air, and, if you zone into it, a deafening layer of insect noise.
This is the time to be jetting off to The Shiney Apple to make and do and then do some more. I have a slammin' b-day gift for Dorota and planned on hand delivery but, just in case, I will mail it tomorrow and cheesh I'd love to share what in hell it is but then there would be no big surprise. Laura, she informs me, is jetting over to the right side tomorrow morn and I got the JetBlue/early/queue/badcoffee/commuter pang.
Time to make time to make more art, to wrangle the late summer garden into control.
In case You are interested.
Ice pansies rock and this is the time to buy them and stick them in the dirt and then, in the sub-zero times just weeks away, they burgeon their heads out of the ice and tundric conditions to make flowery love to their environs.
I am being called upon to not only make photographic images but to do more public poetry, to co-host Greg's show again. I used Greg's show as finishing school in a way, which I have mentioned previously. One third of the night of taping is prepping for the taping. Second third is taping itself and all that lovable chaos that that entails. Third third is the watching of the net results whilst huddled together, camp stylee, muching on microwaved popcorn. There is lots of praise, self-deprecation, pats on back, guffaws so powerful popcorn threatens to be lodged deeply.
Today is primary day for my brand of voter.
I made my three picks in record time and realized had I waited for this day to make my voting digvid how freakin' fast it would have been - approximately three seconds.
I walked in and the bored ladies, some in bedroom slippers, asked You are a Democrat, aren't you. And off I sped into this moment.
The results of tonight's Middling Citycentric primary are sure to be low on surprise factor.

Love's surprising factors.

Today was a day most grand, a day of observing great love amongst others, so much of that that it spilled outwards towards Yours Truly. Also a day of deep thinking, not too introspective, but cursory and fleeting landings on big quests, questions, and answers. Now listening to Roger Bryan & The Old Sweethearts's song Rocking Chair and still thinking this is on the digvid back burner, illustrating this as well as Sam's most favoured play.
Phoned the residence of Rio and Ron last night, armed with the mouth harp given to me by my dearly-departed grandfather who loved me best. Edgar, who would send me boxes of books and take great delight in my young intellect and humour. And homespun plays, performed in the cactus-ridden and bamboo-edged backyard of him and his Bunny, my maternal beacon, Victoria, in Smyrna outside of Atlanta back before - well before - it was Hotlanta.
I blasted out some bars and Ron said Why, HeLL-OHH, Mister Blinky. I played more. He conversed between bursts of neo-blues.
Today it was a wedding and I cannot say when in recent memory I've had a gig where I've been so overcome with praise and good vibes.
Time to gather up my post-work senses and forge onwards into this slivered moon night.

Slivers of Love.

This just in:
Moments ago received word from reliable source (i.e. parents) who attended art auction/benefit/shindig pour moi that my drawing made yesterday (deftly entitled Edges: Ohio Street, Tifft Farm Pond, Cargill Grain Elevator) (whewwww) went for a fetchingly respectable price. Love being a drawer, a dispenser of happiness.

Woe is education: first wacky low-rez MFA programs and now transponders in lieu of intra-student, inter-classroom exchanges. Had a gig this AM at Middling City U documenting a newfangled thing that is like a remote control but allows students sitting in mega-lecture halls to point them at receptors on walls and answer impromptu or lesser-promptu quizzes.
I happened to know a girl sitting in the front row, a would-be photog who would follow me around a bit at rock extravaganzas and the like and ask several questions. I always gave much time to the learning with questions, especially the girls and my wisest words were to just keep shooting pictures and to get business cards and pass them out like mad fiends. So this girl, Emilee, is sitting there and complaining bitterly about the remote answering device. She said Middling City U wants to pretend you're not just a number and then this. She showed me the back of the device (that the students had to pay for - $30 with a $20 mail-in rebate) and how the number on it was registered to her so if she or I went nuts and started pressing madly it would record that Emilee suddenly had answering anxiety or inappropriate transponder behaviour and pressed madly. The prof was a bit awkward (NB: he's the showman type of teacher, all big gestures and phrases he's got down from years of the same materials . . . basically, he's accustomed to being the genius in the room) when I asked to make some pictures of him before the lecture holding the dang thang. I did after his hemming, hawwing. There were a few areas of buzzing and tittering in the gigantic hall and I feared I'd lose his concentration and kept shooting, giving him a bit of direction. So I'm done, the lecture is underway and Professor Showman announces that he'll be showing some slides and the show begins. Some of the slides are quite old, bad, out of focus. Suddenly there's one up of a bog person. Cannot recall if I've blogged about the bog people, the people who were murdered and who were tossed into bogs and preserved quite well and are not hanging about in Pittsburgh's Hall of Oddities. So then there's another slide, one of the burbling tarpits in L.A. Suddenly my pal Emilee is waving her arms as if her transponder is shocking her and Professor Showman finally sees her in the darkness. Not knowing her name amongst the print-out list of perhaps hundreds of names, he offers up a very friendly Yes. . . and Emilee blurts out a tale.
I was just there, at the tarpits last week and I can report that they are still active and I watched two pigeons die an untimely death.
I can see the face of Professor Showman change a bit and then he blurts out a generic Well, thanks for sharing and moves along to the other side of the lecture hall, not wishing to share his stage with such spunk.
I thought about saying bye to Emilee but thought You know she just might, being so jaded with this scene, use this as an op to blurt out who in hell knows. So I planned my exit strategy and drifted away, drifted into the abstract embrace of deadlines and such.

Such love.

Referent for You to glean what I have about blood bags. That they are not only disgusting and undoubtedly warm and squidgy but magnetic in their eye draw. This is image du semaine par Yours Truly in The Reporter. Wonder how many fries were abandoned as hapless readers looked at the blood bag whilst lunching, supping, noshing. Oh, right, I am no pussy. Note the amazing composition. This like so rocks. Don on.

Soaking up the wi-fi at the tea joint once again, Yours Truly their sole squatter.
This just in: heard from a photo pal moments ago that someone I know lost his leg a month ago due to a bad motorcycle twist and turn of fate.
Assessment: motorcycles = unfreakinnecessary.
Did a gig for an ad agency in Rochester about an hour ago, another hurricane-related photo op, this time with trucks . . . and cheese. Asked one of the drivers very diplomatically if the evacuees relocated to Atlanta knew to expect 38K pounds of cheese. Where were the crackers. The wine. Wished him a safe drive and noted that there were no silver naked ladies (cue Westerberg) on his mudflaps. Not a one.
The tea house girls are playing The Sundays and what a reeling and dragging back to the past this is right now.
Time to edit, to slice, dice, crop, invoice, muse.

Love's directive.

Yesterday, amongst other Middling City U gigs and affairs was sent to shoot a blood drive for those less sanguine post-catastrophe down there in the Gulfish areas, to discover that the drive for bloodletting was not happening. A quick scout-out of vicinity revealed no blood, no where. Quick call to editrix revealed it was a ruse, there was no blood, yet. Today was the blood drive, manned by a bunch of femmes from American Red Cross, a bunch of humourless ladies but, I suppose, when brandishing large needles and colorful bandages (gone are the days of buff-coloured plastic strips and HELLO to ribbony and gauzey multi-coloured choices . . . I was like so jealous) it is white coat appropriate.
I have shot other blood drives in my full-throttled and illustrious career and have always made it a real rule to not look at the bags, the plastic tubing draining the blood away from the bodies. In a fit of perversity I looked at one student's filling bag of A+ (I asked if he knew his type and he did) and felt my knees get all loose and carefree about staying afloat if You will. I said OOOO, I feel woozy. One of the humourless said I should sail over to the snack and juice station. I snapped out of it, those were mainstream snacks. And I recovered, self-realizing Hey, Perfect Nance, you are tough, deal with this, you are no pussy. And so I carried on, making more images of dramatic slices of reality - the grimaces, the plastic bags, the bandages, the good wishes, the concern, the editorializing of the slice of reality, the crafty angles to show face and not too much crotch or chest and personality more than prone donor.
Wow, Prone Donor - yet ANOTHER great band name.
Time to continue along this strange work day of portraits, blood, more images and paperwork.
But, always, there is time to give You a piece of this Perfect World, these odd and even days.

Odd, even Love.

Happy Labour Day to You, the day when all Americans tip minimum wage-earning countrymen and present them with small tokens of appreciation: items such as running socks, boxes of candies, a homecooked snack, a gift certificate to Starbucks (lest one is paying tribute to a barista there already).
Just off a multi-day labour-intensive bout of gigs and now to organizing and shipping and the like.
Amongst other intra-happenings was the apparent journalistic binge of a wedding guest yesterday who sidled alongside me and pounded me for about half an hour with probing and work-related questions. There's usually one of this manly type repped at each gathering - their attempt at engulfment fuelled by the sight of a woman carrying ooo-eee complicated electronics worth more than their cars, dressed well, at their social mercy (they believe). I suss out if they are a smart man or not and then enjoy watching their demeanours change as they realize that they are not talking to, sidling alongside, a complete nincompoop that they might flirt with a while.
So. Yesterday the wedding guest pre-toast decides to approach and I'm waiting for the usual banter to begin and it does. Are you . . . YES, I AM the official photographer. But then the banter plunges deeper as he is a smarter-than-most sharpshooter.
Do you feel like a voyeur at these things.
*Perfect thought bubble, edited, of course, tells this stranger how much I do enjoy a good round of voyeuristic watching.*
But the answer is: In a way, yes. I continue. But don't you feel like a voyeur, as well. I assume you don't know all these people in the room and even if you did don't you enjoy watching them, the interplay.
Yes, he answers, but do you feel like you're intruding.
*Thought bubble answer = I am being paid to be here, to intrude for pay.*
Answer: No, I think we are all in the same situation, all watching and I bet some people here are not that close to the bride and groom, that happens at all weddings, so they might feel as distant or watchful or voyeuristic, in a way, as I.
He's on a roll with the line of questions.
Do you feel like it's cookie cutter, that it's only a job, that it's formulaic.
*Thought bubble = Where's the little lady, go away, go away, where the F are the b&g to get this toast action started p.r.o.n.t.o.*
Answer: All gatherings have a similarity, there's a typology of people. Like, there are the men who are obviously uncomfortable in their ties, who never wear suits.
You can tell all that.
*Though bubble = what are you, fuckin' kidding me. This is the most obvious thing to mention.*
Answer: Yes, I nod to a man in that category. And then there are the people who obviously never go out with their partners/spouses, you can see how little they usually interact socially . . . at something like this they are awkwardly standing near each other.
And on this goes until he thanks Yours Truly for enduring his Larry Kinging.
&
Had an interesting conversation with the d.j. at the same wedding last night. He had a rather personal harrowing tale of the heart and we bandied about tales, anecdotes, advice until we ran off into separate directions, to our respective duties.
&
There were a few 10ish boys there with not a thought regarding what to do so Yours Truly, in camp counselor mode, directed them towards some good, hearty and healthy mischief such as: sliding down wide wooden banister, dipping fingers into the wedding cake's frosting (I provided a demo), and searching for the venue's secret passageways. And more. Somehow these kids had missed out on the possibilites for discreet good kid times, those heady adrenalized and unbelievably unfettered intra-happenings, not unlike those previously reported by Yours Truly.
Take this with You:
When life gives you happenings, grab onto your own mischief-laden intra-happenings.

Intra-Love.

Had The Raucous Girls over last night, ate and all under the pines as Extra lurked in the shadows and suddenly the Church of the Loud featured their pastor on mic for a shouting half an hour. They must have been having a vigil of sorts, no rockin' band, no shrieking singer.
In throes of marathon work weekend, the sort that makes you pine, speaking of pine, for some free moments or self-directed times.
Time to head back to the 'burbs after this Historic Old First Ward respite.
All for now and over and out.

Respite Love.

Welcome to Perfect Nancy's Cooking Show.
zippy logo and quickcuts of cuisinating heroine, smiling and alternately looking très serious, holding (à la Julia) a robust glass of white wine in one hand whilst stirring something with the other. Fans might note Perfect Nancy drinks left-handed.
Cut to commercial break. Show sponsors = Johnson & Johnson brand band-aids, Pier One, some shoe company and the biggest sponsor of all . . . the makers of Oban.
Back to Nance.
Salutation and description of what's to come in segment.
Background music alternates, Libra style, between heroine's eclectic music styles. Think Neil Diamond, White Stripes, a smattering of Bach, some dj pal's cd, etc.
Hostess says every dinner party needs some fresh flowers and camera pans to the newly-purchased zinnias bundled nearby. Two bundles, assorted colors.
Heroine gets up on a stool to reach two of the various selection of colorful vases. When reaching for third vase all hell breaks loose as it slips through the culinatious fingers, crashing to floor.
Cut to chefemme, smiling impishly. (NB: Dragon Boy made this adjective stick for life, unlike a primo Le Creuset. . . possible new sponsor)
Laughing all the while for camera's sake glass is cleaned up.
Then onwards to cutting and arranging of flowers, making of Brazilian soup, a slammin' in-season-fruited cobbler.
Toss in a few other commercial breaks.
Then a shot of hostgirl with glass aloft.
Cheers.

Love's good cheer.

My houseguests yesterday were all instructed to watch out for the grasshopper. And I meant it - I did not want to suddenly hear a sad and errant crunch.
So I constructed the Have-a-Heart-Trap:V.Gr.© to catch the critter (had a catch and release about five mins ago): a large colander and an l.p. (in plastic sleeve).
It went swimmingly, as I am wont to say. The grasshopper sat in a daze in the sun and I watched him, his bionic legs looking a little dehydrated but he was relieved. And then Extra meandered toward me, excited to see his favorite person squatted down and already at kittie-pet height. He nearly crushed the newly-released grasshopper and I had to push his oversized paws out of the way.
And, lest you wondered or could have possibly questioned this (and here I must mention this in my most enthusiastic tone) The White Stripes, gifted to me this summer by a fellow enthusiast, utterly rocks. Each and every twang, note, turn.
It is time to work along this work marathon as I have a new corporation to get off the ground. You remember - Have-a-Heart-Trap:V.Gr.©. Investors please contact me at once.
Further parting positivity comes from down there in the south, via an email received by the epinw fan club a few days ago.

Walk the fields. Smell the most wonderful air and squish your toes in some mud. You'll regret it if you don't. Be wild, in the wild . . . Scream 'I am Nancy and I win.'


Love's Winner.

A bientot placid setting.
Hello oddball Middling City.
Back from five or so day sojourn with Kennedy et al up there in the north next to a multi-bayed lake rimmed with rock and bass and tree life.
Was alarmed into abode and drifting away into Z-Land when *suddenly* there was a loud bang. I had my cellphone in the room and after my heart jumped out of my body and I listened for what might come next I knew I had to make a call. In lieu of 911 called my mother, who I knew would still be up reading.
I described the noise. Twice.
A LOUD BANG. Then I said Wait a minute, I want to be sure I don't hear anyone in the house.
My mother had me describe the sound and then offered this comforting question:
Do you think it was a shotgun blast.
Onwards.
Had to do some tech errands today and get a new surge protector as the dang-blamed thangs do not last for forever. I had a thought to replace its sealed lead battery but changed my mind once I saw the warning about electric shocks and the like.
Settling all sorts of client-tech problems or miasmas as well as feeding the lurking and feral cats. Are they responsible for the shotgun blast sound. I think not.
Could it be the nearby crackhouse.
Could it be the Rockin' for the Lord church.
Someone I spoke with today suggested weakly an earthquake.
Speaking of weather-related items, Karen informs me that her new home in LA (as in Louisiana, not the city of angelic rockstars) is not affected by that bitch Katrina.
And onwards again.

Love of mystery.

According to my epinw Blogger dashboard this is post 912 - meaning Sunday, when last I posted, I could have made a deal (grand, big, done) about the previous number.
But I did not.
In mere moments I will be in a car for a long while as today is the day Kennedy and I et al are heading north for a few. And therein lies the sad news for You for today. I believe wi-fi molecules will evade me this sojourn but You know intrepid Yours Truly - ever dousing-sticking my Perfect way towards technology, geekdom, access.
I will look.
I may blog.
Today for certain JR should have the final tiny slice of the thesis documentary pie in his mentor hands, widening the 3-ring (no, not circus) binder to add the slides I had made over at struggling Campos (mad props to their slides-from-jpegs capabilities - again, technology rocks) and a page of follow-along notes.
Wilderness. Naturally (literally, figuratively, sensationally) thoughts turn to other outdoorsy moments: encounters with wild animals, strange ways of cooking, unrelenting Nature and its practices.
Speaking of such, Brucey informed me I need to work harder. Harder, I asked, how so. In art matters he answered. Work harder - More Art Now.
Now.
Time to move along the northerly path of Fate, rimmed with wildflowers, berries and mushrooms that could be poison, whispers of scared small animals, an occasional danger-fueled and speeding car.

Love of the North.

Seems one of mine own photo bros. signed me up as a judge for a photo contest in November and the p.r. lady at the venue has been referring to it as not only a Low rent contest, but a low rent judging gig. Gives me pause.
Speaking of pauses.
This is the day that the lifeforce (just the fact that being happens) misconstrued as God in the minds of some and molded into varying righteous incarnations took a day of rest. Rest. Is for the wicked, as the saying might go. You see, this blogpost is mired in the quest - and recognition at the futility of such a quest - for accuracy. Idle hands doing idle things. Rest not on Your laurels. Rest not on the pause button and subsequent paperish accomplishments in the form of degrees and focuses.
On this day of rest Yours Truly mere moments ago channeled her former go-go self and worked the final nonrest-induced kinks in the back to Le Tigre's On the Verge.
John Irving, now there is a man. Handsome, lives in TO, writes like nobody's business.
His newest one, Until I Find You, has a prequote:

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory - meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion - is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.
-William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow.

On the subject of lies, or changing and fictive and un-fixed (in photo sense as being unfixed and impermanent) moments.
That I will ever get to Tattoo Don's with one former kid neighbor who I saw at last night's nuptials, that he can get me in somehow some Monday or Tuesday night to get the small post-degree self-gift. This will never happen.

&

Going away with Kennedy et al for a spell and was looking for a mid-sized sketch book to go along with the excellent new graphite. Find a fab Italian leather book I've had and flipped through. To the non-cognoscenti: when choosing a sketch book size and page color and tooth are important as well as what is already in the book, as people flip through without asking, with abandon. So you look to see what the pages are holding. So this book I recall drawing and liking outcomes and ripping out a few pages. But amongst the waiting blank space was a small note from the X - about permanence and such, tucked up into a corner in that odd and small hand. It is too ironic to discard and now the book beckons to overcome such fallacy.


Fallacious Love.

At the end of a longassed day of working matters found myself with a decent glass of a faux-oaked chardonnay on the beach and realized the last time a beachy coast saw me was in November for Jordan's Bat Mitzvah when TMO got me that swingin' ocean-viewed room in Myrtle Beach and the morn aft I took, after some excellent digivd shooting for art's sake, the nap to end all naps as the cops (there for a convention of questionable purpose) stormed the hotel after Yours Truly checked out. Last night it was a Canadian beach, a thinning and limited public access beach on the lake rimmed with bays of various names - and landed Americans.
It was the 50th b-day party of Mark Griffis. The night before Hunter S. Thompson's ashes and boney remains are to be shot into the sky via a giant red-fisted cannon and with pyros and beloveds.
Upon seeing Mark I gave him fifty hard whacks with my hand and a hard pinch afterwards, a tradition, a bruising and let's-face-facts tradition.
In post-school flux figuring and making calculations as to the next phase and step and plan.
Time to rush about and then shoot what Kimmie last night dubbed a day of someone's new beginnings - a wedding.

Love of new beginnings.

One installation shot of Endmatter, thesis show.
This past Monday and Tuesday enjoyed sneaking up on the looped digvids, sort of still awed by technology, how my edited clips and their pixels became this grand display. It plays and plays from nine to five until August 24th.
Uploaded this +19 to a site to have digslides made to send to JR today to add to the packet to document the joys and the culmination of school.
Time to work on finishing up the building shooting project and deliver this bundle of joy to Liz at the Shiney Happy Mag for the annual Secrets of Allentown hushhush walking tour.
Last night dined under the stars at Cheryl and Ed's on the occasion of the visit of Kat and Nick and their new kid - Emma, a sociable baby. Brought a SAfrican white which was great but, considring that Dave Matthews emanates from there, what else could be.
Time to work on this gray matter Middling City day.

Endmatter Love.

Firstly, I must thank one of You, the inner-circled, Perfect fanbase, for referring to me as Master of Fucking Awesomeness.
That is the spirit, as they say.
Today awoke in Soho after a fabulosic dinner at Barmarché with Dorota and Jason and some much-needed sleep and some odd dreams and an early morning remembrance of the video for Big Electric Cat (Adrian Belew) that I saw at the tenderheaded age of whenever at Danceateria, seated on a comfy armchair alongside my pal Ruth Klein. I not only had a strong vision of the animated drawings of the vid but of Ruth's 80s, assymetric hair and a curious eyeliner line she made, dragging the kohlpencil across to her temple.
Just working on my ultimate Parsons hoop, getting the binder of documentation together. This means along with classmates the frantic assembly of images on slides, on cd, on dvd, of installation shots, of smooth copies of thesis and a few other items. I was working on getting digital images together, actually on the final of 20 all sized to perfection when a poltergeistic moment happened in the computer lab: a flickering in unison of all the screens in the room (about 15), a strange whirring noise, then a silent and awful kapoof and my screen went all dark after the open applications quit by themselves.
Technie Kimberly came into the room. Ooops, she said, I thought you three were just clearing out your lockers.
Communication is not ever a central issue at Parsons School of Demystification.
Time to finish, time to play in the Shiney Apple before returning to that Middling City.

Finishing Love.

Amongst other things, like the requisite groomsmen sloshing of pre-beers, all-around jitters and last-minute panics, there was one thing I never saw at a wedding before and never hope to again. It was as I was leaving and it was a heartwrenching thing to see and is amongst reasons why I am sometimes drained, as an Empathetic, from such emotion-drenched affairs. As I wended my way to the golden Forester the bride's dad was stomping across my path and I noted his gait. As he passed to my right I heard a bellow whose emotion to Yours Truly is oso familiar but a thing of the past - a PleaseDon'tLeaveMe. And there she was, in her flowing gown and veil, running to her father as he turned towards her and yelled I am out of here. As I drove away they were talking and I was sad for them both.
I am in my post-school, end-of-summer mindset which involves a rather feigned enthusing for the Middling City. And truly it's the mark of being a vagabond, of feeling that I am not sure where my home is or where I belong. And this is not a bad thing, in my Perfect mind. I explained this to Brucey. I would prefer at this juncture to have two places to stay - one in the MC and one in the Shiney Apple, flowing between them. An experimental sentiment.
Brucey told me he drifted into sleep whilst holding a smoke and awoke to the scent of scorched trousers. I told him I'm buying him asbestos overalls to wear after our cocktail forays.
On a related note, my Perfect dad turns 70 today.
Mr. Leo Man, I've always been compatible with those who are of Leo blood.
I made him a from-scratch cake and it was not so perfect and I blame the humidity. Really. So I placed 70 + 1 candles atop and we family people met at a restaurant in a suburb. The staffers whisked my cake art away and it reappeared as we had some coffee, I spotted it coming at us, held by three waitstaff behind a sizable tray. We all began to sing the requisite tune when they dropped the tray alongside the table and all one could see was a sizable blaze, the melding of candle flame. It was spectacular to one who relishes the flame.
We got one half of one stanza of the requisite tune out when my dad, in an apparent Safety First Mindset, blew the goddamned glow out completely and Yours Truly has not laughed that hard in geez a long while.
I sign off.
I think, plan, conquer, rest, think some more, and shoot.

Love's Agenda.

I am a video art star.
Lurking in the corners of the specially revamped room, I watched watchers watching the entire cycle of the thesis piece of Yours Truly. Did I tell You it's called Endmatter. Happily, wine was in the next room/lecture centre so I could tell my guests to just pop around the corner for a thimble of oso mediocre red and white.
The screen worked and to that I say hooray to the inventor of gaffer tape.
I got many congratulations from strangers and unestranged and it felt wonderful for a newbie like me in the video showing realm.
One of the evening's most memorable moments arrived with Anthony and Martha who absolutely gushed at me and the transformation of the room, AA shouting over the hush of the crowd THIS IS GREAT. Towards the end I talked with Adjunct John and I said You know, I think I should go and thank my mentor, JR. He pushed me towards that edge so I found JR and gave him a hearty hug, kiss, thanks. He said Thanks back. Now that's a mentor for you, always doing this guruistic Give & You Receive Thing.
Afterwards, as the crowd waned, I had a small after-party soirée at nearby Marquet and lavished wine and snacks with the help of Nana. After that the Brooklynites encouraged me to jump into a cab (with them and the Buffalo triad) to make my weekly foray to Boat, home of Brooklyn's best jukebox, where Renata does a bang-up nurturing barkeep trick, and Steve Bartoo makes drawings. He and Jen are having me over for some sort of dinner and art gifting extravaganza. I explained to him how one of his works would work magic in my straggling and emphatic collection. Speaking of such, one artist whose work I have followed, who I met in the Middling City and who now lives and works in Brooklyn, has a new smallish showing in the MC and I am sorely disappointed in his late-in-life turn of interest toward what I see as an attempt at what he should leave alone - still lifes.
Yesterday, speaking of still lifes, told my parents we should meet for art and lunch at The Met. The Matisse Lovin' Fabric show is fine for seeing another informative facet but some of his earlier works are cartoonish, with a heavy reliance on black lines. It was while I was studying some tiny drypoint I thought Hey, where are those parents and went through entire show and swung back in again thinking all the while Wow, my parents gave me the SLIP - if they wanted some alone time they should have said so. Then I found them, intently reading wallnotes in the first room.
I said Hey, have you two ever been on the roof. So up we went to see the master of idea, Sol LeWitt. Then I said goodbye to the parents and told them to Read faster.
Now time to fashion a short paper for Mark the Shrink and head back out to The Guggenheim of the Far Rockaways.
Time to time to time to.

Love is Time.

Seven of us (Pam & Pat, their three daughters, Alex the Bearded Tech, and Yours Truly) hauled ass last night to get my exhib space in order for tonight. After trying to visualize the prefab screen in the room - hanging - with desks and classroom amenities Pam and I asked the daughters to store the desks in the storage space in the room as we hauled a podium and chalkboard and garbage can out of there. Then, while Pam stood on a chair and held up the prefab item I could see it could work but would not be parfait. Looked again at the screen in-room = damaged piece of shit. Pam said What about seamless and the rest is now the stuff of grad show lore. Alex and I searched about the studio upstairs and found, finally, a bright white paper. This was then carefully raised to the wall by me, Pam & Pat and gaffer taped to the wall to match the size of the largest-possible projected video image. Hours later it was done and it looks amazing. The daughters hauled the two wood benches I relocated after their disappearances up on 5. The room is done, the dvd runs sans a hitch, the screen is huge, we worked out the lighting, the classroom accoutrements are nearly all cleared out (defending happens in the very same until 2ish) and I hope beyond hope that someone might think to get the two tables and six or so remaining chairs out of there and into the next-door room, an auditorium. I have a seminar today at 3. I will ask Mark the Shrink if we can have class in the aud. At 530ish I will begin putting my artist demeanour on and at 6 the hoopla (hopefully) begins. The post-exhaustion, adrenalized jubilance of an art opening that follows all the harrowing ups, downs and in-betweens of getting a show together. In some ways it is a lot like the newspaper racket: the work is huge, the stress the same and, when all is done, there is a (for YT) a curious sense of amnesia and a sense of Now What.

Now What Love.

Well, that can be filed under P, for pleasant and P, again, for unwarranted Paranoia.
I blog, of course, of the thesis defense, which went swimmingly this late morning after a panic of lost file on laptop, some turbo-powered coffee via Dorota, a run to subway, and a wait as the committee people straggled into the classroom/auditorium/exhibition space of Yours Truly as of tomorrow night.
Several of them (and them is Martha Burgess, Stacy Miller, JR, Anthony, chair Michelle Bogre) commented that they'd enjoyed reading the big D, and watching my presentation.
Michelle asked about Beckett refs and I said I'm glad you asked that question before trailing off on a short talk about all things Sam, the Middling City's illustrious Sam-infused past (productions by Josef Krysiak, and Federman, bien sur).
One of the commmembers commented thusly You would be a great visiting artist. To that I stated Well, ask me back.
It is over.
Now it is time to get my screen in order and get ready to hang the damned thing and get the digvid up and running and then clear much of the classroom accoutrements out of that room.
I think the fly has left that room, thankfully.
Time to keep working on art installation prepping and hear more tales about the post-D states of my classmates.

Post-D Love.

At one of the branch offices of Yours Truly that proudly serves You - Our Far Rockaways Branch - open all day, all night, with wi-fi, pay-as-you-go snacks and massage.
Onwards to school matters.
The room where I am to install the culmination of this school experience is also the room that is still a classroom and will be the room in which we defend our dissertations. What does this mean.
This does mean that it makes it very difficult to install what I need to install in the amount of time available. To this JR said Where were you all week. Ummm, working. We thirteen were to install on Wednesday. Wednesday I was in Rochester. Most of my classmates are hanging or have hung prints. They are done. Those of us who are showing video were told that Monday was tech day. Thursday I ran from this branch office to B&H to seminar which ends at 540PM. Then rushed out to do more art errands and returned to school where we are kicked out at 10PM sharp. Returned to school this AM at 10AM and was there until 3, really pushing the shit out of my getting-to-airport luck. Happened to see JR, no tech support was there and the gal who was there reconfirmed that Monday is the day. So.
I purchased a screen that needs to be hung. When will it be hung. Monday I can do this after 530PM as my classmates are defending. At that hour no tech help is available. I can do what I can by myself until 10, when I get tossed out again. The next AM, Tuesday, I defend first, at 9AM. It would be really great to get some sleep, to do some reading beforehand.
I am beyond annoyed at this additional, annoyingness.
Still have to get a good dvd burned, have to get screen hung, have to locate player + projector, move classroom accoutrements out of the room, have to move in a bench.
Time to do some scholarly reading and figure out how many more minutes my plane is delayed. Ms. Announcer just announced not only a gate change but a time change.
Grrrr.
Time to do some coffee slargling in addition to the reading.

Slargled Love.

Despite the fact that there was no pole to slide down, the visit and lunch at the Art Deco firehall in Rochester yesterday was good. As I wandered off to the ladies room (really just a small private bathroom which one of the firemen ran ahead to check for me and was in there for a good long while and when I entered I was nearly overcome with the scent of Lysol which I could taste for several minutes), I contemplated searching for the allegedly-missing pole, believing that that might be a stock response to that query, in avoidance of truth and law suits.
The chief said he could, if our group had time, drive me to a station with a pole. But we (me, Evan of the Shiney Apple p.r. firm, the judge, the judge's handlers) had no such thing and after beans, greens, diet Cokes, we sped off to the next photo shoot spot, a scorching public park in a suburb of the post-industrial city.
Shot hundreds of images of the judge, also manhandled her all day, getting hairs to stay just so, giving her short demos of how to stand, how to rest her hands in a natural manner.
Now, back at school, where tensions and exhaustions are running high as the defending process happens next week Monday-Wednesday just before the opening on the 10th. I go on the 9th, first, at 9AM and plan on rising and shining early, meandering to the French pastry/coffee place near my subway stop, getting all cranked up and heading into god only knows what. It was suggested to all of us thirteen that we devote the first ten minutes to presenting a historic sweep of our work. As this is the new directive I must add some more material to my powerpoint amassment.
About to meet pals out at Sweet and Vicious, to soak up some real life after a full day of school, travel, inner-city travel.
Tomorrow a further quest for materials to hang the screen I purchased earlier today at B&H.
Yesterday, I'll end with this tale, I took a ride from a stranger as I was rather in distress.
The judge and one of her handlers took me down the supersecret judge elevator in the court building, depositing me in a sector of the parking garage's lower level/deep bowel. This whole ramp had no signage, no clues as to where or how to find one's vehicle ever again.
Spotting me a man in a conservative navy blue sedan stopped and offered assistance, informing me firstly that he is a divorce lawyer and secondly that I was to become the third lost subterranean person he aided in this manner.
We drove around for about fifteen minutes, me looking for any sort of guidance from the endless array of concrete pillars, explaining how I'd entered this fracas in the first place.
Finally, the car. Then, as the man/divorce lawyer gruntingly got my lighting bag out of his sedan he told me he had done some archival management of a firm that had records of many prominent people of the Middling City, Millard Fillmore amongst them. It sounded interesting. Or was I just a grateful listener.
Last days of school are upon me. I will forever be back in the travel role of coming back to the Shiney Apple as a person with an art agenda, not as a grad student ever again.

Ever Love.

Merrily emailed off the thesis approximately two hours ago to JR. It came out as 2200 words and received a panicked email from Beth this AM who said that our theses (which, curiously, rhymes with feces - another post-ingestion product) are not to exceed 1500 words. Which I find odd as it's to be at least 1K. That is a tiny wordy window. I imagine someone at Parsons taking a giant marker to my thesis à la CIA and x-ing out all brilliant phrases, passages, footnotes, ruminations from word 1501-2200. That would like totally suck.
So now onwards to finishing up the digvid edits and then kapoof. Almost done. Let us not put our champagne before the flute shall we for Yours Truly still must defend her watertight diss on Tuesday. For that You must burn candles, think fine positivity-rich thoughts and oso much more.
Onwards.
Tomorrow is gig in Roch all-day with a politico.
Speaking of pols, just picked up lit by/for a would-be politico who is a restaurant man. He knows lines, he knows 86ing. Does he know how to run a Middling City.

Pol Love.

Stopped over at Liz and Alan's place today amid the Garden Gawk to give her the gift from The Frick that I forgot to give her last evening at my pre-grad soirée that they held for me. As I walked up the walk, underneath the mock orange they spotted me. They approached me and queried thusly Was it you two (meaning me and Kennedy) who bolted that thing to our front railing. I attempted a boldfaced white lie in the spirit of a prank but thought Really, it is rather obvious. But if they didn't think it was us then I wondered if Liz would presume the thing bolted to their front rail was left by a cross-town garden foe and then an all-out garden war would ensue. Last night's party was a raging success - no gunshots, broken coffee tables, no fisticuffs, no fires. Made one of my famed green soups and made sure that Blair et Monique (the affable hosts of the dinner party series Soup Night) had a slug or two of it. I told Blair that I am already excited - way in advance - to make again a fine Brazilian potage I made not too long ago. Cue following remark from Kennedy: This from the woman who not too long ago stated that she HATES soup. Well, here it is, for the record. There are many shitty soups that to me resemble something perhaps that'd be served in a 19th C halfway house: all water, no body. So I've been crafting soups that completely rock. The end about soups.
Time now to sign off for now to do a bit of online stalking of the famous photog Hiroshi Sugimoto for The Thesis.
Onwards to that.

That love.