To be filed under L, as in Lynch, David.
There is a rather unspoken Middling City rule that no denizen is to crit too harshly any institution - cultural or landmark - within city limits. General urban demise and corruption are fine, just not the former. You will hear whispers of some thing/place not being très wonderful but there is such an underdog undercurrent that it seems there's a meme that if any soothsaying happens complete implosion might ensue.
Lest you yearn for a tip-off, I speak in part of the dreadful Hotel Lenox where last night's Squeaky Wheel event happened. The world is dotted with gorgeous hotels that, when successful, merge the best of functionality and architectural form, with the bonus (usually) of a fine in situ restaurant and complimentary and noteworthy periodicals.
The Lenox has been an eyesore for a long time with its decrepit sign, seedy lobby with filthy furniture and just on and on. Once I saw a photograph made just after the Lenox went up and noted the façade must have been updated some time in the 40s or 50s - and, in the process, ruined. Like the equally-tragic Hotel Lafayette, the Lenox stumbles along but is not the jewel it should be. But there are attempts in the Lenox: Nina Freudenheim made a respectable gallery on the ground floor, there are rooms being refurbished. But the hallways to that newly-sanded and newly-painted room are David Lynch-worthy with curious combos of faded-out carpeting, old light fixtures, mix-and-match mirrors, and (this comes up later) faulty elevators.
Yesterday a volunteer helped me hang seamless on a window and wall and she told me she's an interior design student. I said she should make the Lenox Hotel a project and then we looked around the lobby. We agreed, where would one start.
Of special note was the staffer who, as I was setting up, came by with a spray bottle of something, squirting all over the place and into the corners. She came to my portion of the lobby and sprayed as she made a circle around me. It's Febreze, she said. I thanked her.
So last night at the end of the event, sort of, Annie and I wended our way about. I needed to get back to my photo booth and left her and Michele and Gary on 8. Having heard several times as I set up various Lenox residents inquire if the elevators were working I opted for the stairs back down.
On 6, as I walked across the hallway to the down stairwell, I saw the elevator doors open and then noted that the elevator had stopped three feet below the floor. A guy held open the doors as I reached and helped half the elevator entrappedees get the hell out. Half did not need help. I asked if any of them had panicked or freaked out or called anyone on their cell phones. They all said No.
A maintenance guy showed up, glass of red wine in his hands. He handed that off to a stranger as he looked up into the gears. I looked with him. Let's just say that when one sees the tiny combination of gears and bike chain and dusty other parts that keep an elevator up (at least in the Lenox), one may opt for stairs.
Other notable moments include getting faux tattooes from Tony Conrad and his petite French helper Maria up in one of the more seedy suites and then discovering a small metal door that would give a plumber or onsite maintenance guy, if there were ones, oh, there was one, access to plumbing for repair. But it was a parfait Being John Malkovitch portal and I pretended to go down into it, while also trying to spy some long-forgotten treasure down in the crud.
There was another odd moment. Annie and I got a tour of a fixed-up room on 4. A real estate type was in there, chirping about the wonders of living at The Lenox. The restaurant will be reopening. Free basic cable. It was not very cheap but was, by Shiney Apple standards, a lot of basic space for a good price. And a fine view. But there was that feeling in the air, the I'm not as psyched about all this hoopla as I think you think I am supposed to be feeling.
Onwards to a lot of work at hand.

Hand me Love.

By now, this gray-skied day the Foster Kid Expo chalk&talk, deft slide presentation about hot photo tips, should have been completed. Only, mere moments after completing the slide show, the contact lady called to inform me, dig this, that the Expo attendees really wanted to discover how to acquire Foster kids, not glean hot photo tips. So that didn't happen and Yours Truly is on to the next matter at hand, readying my Polaroid photo booth for tonight's Squeaky Wheel benefit, entitled Peep Show. It's to be all about, shocker, love and sex and whatever other political issues installation artists wish to slay. I am making my fun and interactive Peep Shots, outfitted with some props, captions, and oso much more. Wondering how the Hotel Lenox staffers will feel about me taping crap up all over their abused wooden walls. As well as their large plate glass window. But if yesterday was any indication, the staff may be in drug stupours as YT wandered in, stood in my to-become installation space for a good fifteen minutes, checking outlet locations, touching walls like a lost and blind person and none of the employees ever asked Uhhh, lady, you need help. Or Uhhh, what in hell is up with the touching the wall thing.
Time to compile, leave, set up, collect money for Squeaky Wheel, as well as yet more party scenario memories.

Scenic and Installed Love.

Bandmate Scott's band, or some formation thereof, is going to appear on Love, the Greg Sterlace show replacement next month. And for the occasion the band is all geared up regarding decibels, video projections and oso much more. Wondering if pyros and spandex may also be involved.
To be filed under S as in Shocking . . . or So Outta Touch.
A non-loyal epinw reader of sorts last evening commented upon the self-focused nature of epinw. A blog. Yours Truly repeats - a freakin' blog. What is the title of this Perfect blog, I ask You. Correct - it focuses on all the fiascoes, the triumphs, the odd sightings in this world. Not YOUR world, My world. Thanks for your attention in this matter and, really, if this irritates you then shove off and read something less Perfect. Onwards. Oh, but first.
As you will correctly find foremost in Your own Perfect memory bank, epinw does seem, from time to time, to also examine and feature frequent appearances by a rag-tag cast of characters, including: adrenaline-raising editors, rodents of note, JW,Esq., erstwhile and hard-partying respectable member of corporate society, Sterlace, politicoes, boy colleagues, pals, and the odder denizens of the Middling City.
On a differing note.
Cheney's Got a Gun-style t-shirts are still hotties on cafepress.
Time to wend back to Land O'Meetings and suchlike.

Like, such Love.

Got an email from Harold last night, him musing on his Vegas junket still in progress. He had just watched gondoliers (yeah yeah in quotes) downstairs on the canal, You know, the one under the ever-changing sky sans planes, acid rain, birds and the like. Can one ever think of Vegas without opining about what is real or not. I think not. And I remarked about my two days there witnessing, literally & journalistically, many weddings as Yours Truly would, at most of these affairs, be the sole person in attendance/the audience and would be asked to be a witness. And in the beginning (no, not the word became flesh) I thought it was cheeseball, faux, plastic (well there were many wedding chapels featuring plastic cakes that couples could pose with - for a fee), sad. But gradually I thought This is no less real or fake than any other wedding. As I'm sure some soul singer crooned (I fantastically paraphrase) If it is love and passion then it is like so real, baby, so real.
Speaking of real v. fake and all, YT is embarking shortly to photograph the annual Middling City U engineering student contest of designing and then destroying tiny bridges to see which team can create the strongest fake little bridge. And, as if that were not enough, there is a bonus event - the annual and much-loved egg drop contest whereby engineering students design contraptions and containers to drop eggs and - hopefully - not end up with non-intact eggs.

Faux v. Real Love.

* This just in, from YT.
I heard from my beloved Rio that the sponge candy that I sent down to KY for her and her famille (that would be also-beloved Ron and their two perfect children) was not a raging success. Well, to further elucidate. SHE is enjoying the sponge candy to an orgasmic degree and is actually hoarding it whereas her roomies so to speak do not see what the hoopla is all about, them not originating from the environs of the Middling City. Those from the MC as well as certain corners of Pennsyltucky love les bonbons eponges whereas les autres say what is le grand deal stinké.

Important lesson gleaned by Yours Tuly a few days ago involving a case of champagne and a delicate houseplant of African Mask variety. Attempting to shop like one shops in the Shiney Apple within the boundaries of the Middling City, tragedy ensued. You see, in the Shiney Apple one moves from one store to another whilst weighed down with baggage - both emotional and mercantile. Nobody looks at you oddly when you waddle through their shoppe doors in such a condition. Now, mind You, if one were to purchase a case of champagne in the Shiney Apple one would sensibly have it delivered, but YT digresses. So I am meandering from one shop to another in the same plaza and, in lieu of moving the car, decide to move instead a cart with lamp shade and aforementioned African Mask to get champagne. Bumping back out to car the case shifts and tragedy befalls plant. Moral: When in the Middling City, adopt appropriate MCesque shopping practices for sometimes what works in the Shiney Apple, however modified, is one large flaming fiasco on the state's left side.
Time to wend again towards a moderne dance troupe and document their twirls and such.

Twirling, sashaying Love.

What sort of began as self-amusement has become a fab piece of merch by Yours Truly and it will be uploaded shortly onto my favoured merchstop, cafepress.com.
Being no PhotoShop wiz, humbly admitted, I am still trying to incorporate a good rendering of the NYT illustration of where Cheney's pal, Whittington, endured the buckshot blast.
And another thing.
For the fete/feast of Valentine dungeness crab was ordered, they were to be nude. They arrived in all their armorous glory.
Upshot: delicious but my hands suffered in the battle to wrangle them into the pan.
Moral: the sea always wins.

The sea, Love.

Yours Truly just discovered a gorgeous mystery bouquet of roses at the door. No card.
If You are the sender, thank you beaucouply.
Following is my annual saintly analysis of Saint Valentine, ol' Mysterioso.
As You epinw fans do know, Valentine remains a special combo platter, an amalgamation of two persons, possibly both saints – a veritable tag team of lovelorn, perhaps matchmaking, men of circa 269, to be rather exact in a circa fashion.
According to the yellowed Dictionary of Saints in the collection, Valentine had not a dangblamed thing to do with courting couples but, rather, in some geographical places birds court each other this very day. Courting birds. . . courting couples. Birds of a feather. . . commercialization.
Makes complete and utter sense to YT.
Geo-san moments ago reminded me of the glories of the Acme HeartMaker, a bona fide (since we are also speaking of saintly matters) treat.
As I blog I should like to note my excellent, Valentine (whomever the h.e.l.l. he really is, somewhere)-approved cd choices: a compilation (who says friend-made compilations are like so dead) of love-ly tunes by Reese, as well as a comp of re-done classic love tunes acquired yesterday at Starbucks. The re-do of the Smiths's (lovingly referred to by me as Smiffs) There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is remarkable.
Lisa Forrest sent a beautiful VDay poem today to her friends.
Geo-san also turned me onto this, go there at once.

All my Love, imagined & possible.

The Danish bomb. So this is what all the hoopla is about, lest You have not seen it, as Yours Truly did not - until moments ago. Yesterday there was a radio tale that several editors and a reporter walked off NYPress because their higher-ups believed any curiosity-seeking reader should google this to have a peek.

From the GM of NYP, Peter Polimino:

New York Press takes our responsibility to our community as a “Free Press” very seriously. We came to the same conclusion as many other responsible newspapers and media outlets that have chosen to not run the Danish cartoons. We felt the images were not critical for the editorial content to have merit, would not hinder our readers from making an informed opinion and only served to further fan the flame of a volatile situation.

And from the former editor, Harry Siegel:
We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.

YT has a long history of working with alternative publications and found this story, given the sad state of first amendment rights in this wartime, under the auspices of an unbalanced prez and the fearfulness of speaking out, epinw-worthy.

No Love for censorship.

PS: and if YT ever shoots a pal of hers, I do hope that it will be referred to as one Mishap, as the shooting of Cheney's hunting buddy by himself was in the NYT.
&
*This just in via epinw LeftCoast Correspondent JW,Esq:
He tells me that tomorrow, for the date commemorating the life + times of mysterious Saint Valentine, he's attending this affair.
The Middlling City could use its own v of the pillow fight. Niagara Square.

Last night I co-co-hosted the Greg Sterlace show with Paula and from the moment of my arrival at Home of the Future I thought Wow, this is going to be one. . . how shall Yours Truly say. . . odd show. And my hunch was right on, the show featuring, amongst other things, a warbling guitar player with total recall of every time he's met YT (to the point that I regaled Paula with the recent email about one of the Middling City's most ranting weirdos and my suspicion that this could be, theoretically, one and the same - he was not, as I later realized), an earnest femme poet, GS removing his shirt and tucking himself under Paula's dress for an interminable amount of time, and on.
YT hosts - I repeat - hosts the show on March 10th and I think I'm dubbing it LoveFest as a wry ref to the mag I founded and published during fourth grade - Love Magazine. A hit.
I've already lined up a few grand guests and have to speak to BandmateScott about performing on LoveFest.
This is how I described the GS show to one of my pending guests: Kind of a show about nothing. I'll give you beers. (he went for the bribe)
And now one of my patented sayings:
Time to g.o. go.

Going Love.

So things have taken a turn toward Interesting, at the corner of Serendipity.
As in last evening's forwarding of nutty bumpersness of the strange man rantings in the bar via the art student. We emailed to and fro about not-so-fun facts and ultimately, or penultimately, I wrote Let's end this more positively, let's tell each other what we're doing as creative people.
So we did. Suddenly Yours Truly had a fab idea so I wrote the student back and said
Let's collaborate on an art project of sorts
and YT also wondered if he could be my roadie, my tech support for the pending art project in June when I'll be projecting some elemental images far and wide in a historic Middling City church that teeters on transcendentalism (i.e. not too heavy on the schtick, if You catch me).
Moral: make weird and bad, despite their kicking and screaming, be something good, even delving upwards into the realms of art, if possible.
Call me the lion tamestress of beasts weird, bad, and ferocious.

Taming Love.

This just in from BizarroLand.

Hi nancy,sorry to bug you, you dont know me. my name is (omitted by Yours Truly), im a film/photography student at UB. i thought i would tell you something strange that happened to me last night...
i was out at a bar with some friends and had my camera on me. this very strange man who was obviously drunk and possibly more came up to
me freaking out. he kept asking me if i was 'nancy parisi'. he had long grayish hair and glasses. he told me he was a felon and that he
would kill me. he kept asking me if i was you... he was quite strange....he told me that he thought i was pretty and
would say all these sexually explicit things he wanted to do to me, and then he would tell me that if i am involved with YOU he would
track me down and murder me. he tried kissing me, holding me, and then asked me to fight. he told me many times that he would kill me, but he
was clearly not in a clear state of mind and i didnt take him very seriously....he couldnt even stand up straight.it doesnt bother me, im not upset or anything, i just found it
bizarre. i recognized your name, and thought i would tell you....haha.

haha.
I did write this alleged student, harbinger
of wack behaviour (and possible practioner of same) to inquire thusly: How in H-E-double hockey sticks
did you get my email address.
Onwards.
Time to meander off to Foster Kid event #2 in a series of 3 and then
points beyond.
Had a pharmaceutically-related gig today, shooting some reps from the ill-fated
Pfizer Corp making nice, spreading robust karma by tossing millions at
the university for yet another center/centre of excellence.
Philosophical quest(ion): do so many centres of fabness dilute the excellent
powers.

Fab, undiluted Love.

Here he is. Who, You ask. Ridge Lee Larry, fercrissakes, the rodent prognosticator of Middling City U who Yours Truly photographed last Thursday. Note the green grass behind RL Larry. Today the MC is coated in beautiful flakes of wintry goodness. According to RL Larry, who did not see his shadow, spring is a stone's throw. Meanwhile, back at the weathered ranch, down south that is, in PA, RL Larry's mentor Phil did see his shadow. I might add here that Larry is deader than a doorknob, taxidermied if You will, and his chin strap is not under his chin, as he has no chin, but in his mouth. Is this dignity, I ask You.
So JW,Esq., being a big epinw booster, reads my touting of I Will Survive recently and sent me a little QT movie of a JC-looking character (NB: middle eastern, thick-bodied, not a CK-lookin' boy) lip-synching away to the same tune, ultimately meeting a sad end via a big city bus. And he informs me that he's heading to South America. Kennedy and I watched A Fish Called Wanda last night and now I believe JW,Esq., despite the Esq., is running from the law.
Out to a delivery of work, a show&tell of artwork, points beyond.

Signed, sealed, delivered Love.

Yours Truly first recalls writing a poem in the garden of her parents, and it was about forget-me-nots. Today the first of the duo of pomes pennyeach hit the stands via Middling City News. Here's Your link to it.
Next month, first Sunday of mars, is the Creeleypome, printed in honour of the year anniversary of his sneaky TX dying.
HAPPY SNOOPY BOWL today!

Cartoons of Yore Love.

*This just in, from Jerry Mead:
"Nancy - Just read your poem "Valentine" in the Buffalo News - How cool was that... - Could
you become more fabulous? You just did! Congrats-Jerry."
Super bonus points for Jerry!

Caught up with Leah today over tea at the teahouse and stayed on to work on the ol' laptop. Georgisan phoned then he and Simon came to visit. They were looking for MattK and I said Well, you just missed Leah, Matt's apparently dogracing in Montana. They expressed as much disbelief as I had, but it's true. Had plans to see Liz at Thursday's hangout and told the guys to see me there. They arrived as I was trying to redesign my business card and after I got yet another haircut to fix the previous cut that had zero flow. Both Geo and Simon say they liked the previous, that it did have flow. Went to salon that Teahouse Jen suggested next door and gave the guy some parameters - I want flow, I want sexy, I'm growing this out, and you have twenty minutes. He did it.
Time to rush out to Middling City U for a gig and then many points beyond.

Flowing, hairy Love.

Homework assignment:
1. Drink too much
a. coffee
b. alcohol
2. Make a quick list (jot, if you will) of various members of the rodent genus.
3. Ponder differences (biologically, aesthetically, sociopolitically) between different rodent species and write 50 words on why one may favour one species over another.
4. Look at image above. If this groundhog were your pet what would her/his name be?
5. Bonus question: Why are rodents cuter than birds? (worth 10 points)

Yours truly is off to photograph the Middling City v of Groundhog Day. Good ol' taxidermied Ridge Lee Larry, festooned in his annual hat and sash, will once again emerge from the bowels of the Geology Department at MCU to maybe see a shadow, to maybe fall over, to just take in the fresh air and loving looks of those gathered in the parking lot where show/magic happens.

Magical Love.

UNABASHEDLY
and I do mean un-fuhreakin-bash-edly listening to disco. Disco. And Goria Gaynor's I Will Survive (although co-opted by millions of dragqueens and I can envision all the merry lip-synched versions I have seen of this anthemic beaty tune onstage, accompanied by boas and the like, is so Everygirl) is on right now and I just got up from the office chair to do some hai-karate kicks.
This just in:
Received email today informing Yours Truly that YT appears inside a sonic relelase by The Spoons. Apparently I'm holding one of my cameras, am in the pit of one of their shows.
Fame by Irene Cara (you see, it's a greatest of the Disco hits), appropriately enough, is like so on right now.

Dance Fever, Love.

Had a most pleasant DIY car inspection experience today, just like days of yore when Yours Truly drove questionable vehicles and would arrive on the scene at an equally questionable car repair shop where you'd be asked It's a good car - to which the reply would/should be Ohh, yes, it's a great car and then there'd be an exchange of some cash for a sticker, which would be affixed not by said inspector but by the faux-inspectee.
So I arrived as scheduled and there was a look-over and, with a mere 16K on the odometer, I was put in charge of filling in all the numbers and such on the computer which apparently is linked to some wired NYS office of inspectional matters.
No pesky car on lift, no removal of any car tires for brake look-see. With socializing the visit was about 45 minutes, far more efficient than the hour+ a down&dirty inspection would be.
Onwards.
Today was a day of official business accomplished and to celebrate YT purchased her first-ever (and probably only-ever eyelash curler).
After all that motorheading about I think subconsciously I needed a good girlie fix.

Motorhead/Girlie Love.

NB:
If anyone has found my art impetus please tell it to come back to Yours Truly. Like now.
Events as of late have conspired to keep general creative endeavors from being within reach. But, in prep-mode, things are organized, the car is clean (outside), the sketch books are full, art supplies are at the ready.
Suddenly realized in a panic today that I have forgotten to register for the NC-based HGTV dream house, and I promised Loomis I'd be diligently doing so. I informed Lauren over coffee at SPoT last week that I will possibly be hanging out in the NC mountains until the utilities get shut off as I'm sure HGTV is not footing all the future bills and who in hell can heat a 1,200,000 s/f home.
Now, suddenly, the slogan The road to hell is paved with good intentions simmers in my mind like that Coldplay song was much earlier this fine springy day (and who can truly enjoy fifty degree dead-of-winter days, warmest in over a century, and not ponder how we are roasting away the atmosphere with CFCs, SUVs, BYOBs, and that NYT story detailed how an environmental whistle blower/freaker-outer has been quieted by Bush et al). And, speaking of perfect homes, home improvements, paving jobs, somewhere, I imagine, someone has fabricated paving stones that read 'good' and 'intentions' for some alternatingly, hilarious garden times.
As I waited to speak to Lawyer Tom today to wrap up smatters I caught up on the fandom vortex, the weekly journal of amnesiac fun fact: People mag.
YT is both an inhaler of pop culture and mag addict yet somehow the whole Eminem/Kim story fell through the cerebral cracks. The reconciliation that tops all somehow slid right by my astuteness. I think I might be the only person I know who saw Eight Mile, in the Shiney Apple, and dug it, and (super-bonus points)photographed him as he was ascending.
So how did I just not know.

Love, sometimes you just do not ever know.

Yours Truly is planning to post this day's blogpost as parts A & B.
Post A will be the before, so to speak, and B later in this day.
What is this day, You might wander as you wonder.
A:
Today is the day that X finally - finally - not only picks up his flotsam and jetsom that have been hunkering in the far reaches of my home, but signs off on the deed. As well as the MIA third party who was still on the deed despite the fauxfact that X told me that this thirdly person was off the deed years ago. So for the last how long (Deb and Kennedy would probably know better than Yours Truly who does not want to succumb to the reality that this has been dragging along for two years, and this final stage for three months) an orchestration of concerns, emails, lawyerly conversations, moola, times, movings, groovings.
An interesting cast of characters will be on the scene (including my lawyer, Intrepid Tom) planned for early afternoon: several have referred to all this as having the potential of being a Jerry Springerlike event.
Hope it's more Here's your hat what's your hurry than A flurry of fury, and tossed items.
As I hand off the (extortion) money to X I would like to say
Here you go. . . now please go away.
Cheryl advised more snark, (I did invite her to come and videotape this moment, thinking it'd be a grand project).

Legal extricational love.


B:
Things are wrapped up. MIA and X showed up, as did Lawyer Tom, Kennedy, and Steve the Bouncer. Things did wrap up after things seemed heated for a moment. Then there was a flurry of signing (not singing, repeat, not singing) and then the removal of objets under vigilance.
It is done.

Rarity to follow.
I admit that at this juncture I was so not minding my own business and this ref goes back to April when I was participating/performing for Urban Epiphany, I think the fourth annual, and RD Pohl was amongst those in attendance. So I read some new pomes pennyeach (by YT of course) and each writer is given a slot of two minutes and, like in the digvid world, You say two minutes all the time, two minutes is like the amount of time it took for coffee from the barista, the time at a red traffic light and other, urbane situs.
So I read two minutes and I recall that I had blustered into the auditorium, overly-caffeinated and in a general state of grad student flux and freak-out. Afterwards, RD Pohl, who edits poetry for the Middling City Snooze, amongst others, came up to say in a nutshell Hey, dug them words, &C. Pohl said to send him some fine specimens and I, in my usual people-pleasing fashion, said something to the effect of Abso-freakin-lutely.
Months strolled by. I was not a grad student in a state of flux any longer but had moved on to newer types of flux and freak-outs of a generalized grownup sort.
So last week I decide I should email two to Editor Pohl. Two - Valentine. and Believe.
Upon receiving them EP calls excitedly to do various things:
-tell me that the poems are great
-tell me that both are going to be published
-tell me that the MCNews pays for publication of pomework
-tell me that above has never printed two by one in two consecutive months but one is timely for V-Day, one timely for the year anniversary of tragic death of Creeley
-tell me that he can't believe I was holding out on him for decades.
I returned his call and did not tell him that I was once a rabid public pomereader, an organizer of poetry readings at UB and via my Writers Cramp Series that I ran with Paul T. Hogan.
So words are coming forth on a printed page and although I have imbued myself in online work, reading, blogging since It happened, there is still beauty in/on printed pages.

Love, beautiful in both online and printed versions.

In the midst of what I now refer to as Asphalt Planet, the suburbs outside Middling City, where driving is de rigeur and the landscape is all about shopping, trees in smatters.
En route to the morning gig saw what appeared to be a highly disgruntled hired hand for Liberty Tax Services, in full Lady Liberty neoprene regalia, heading away from her/his post at the busy corner a stone's throw from the expressway, heading down an embankment, torch low.
I feigned enthusing, beeping my horn madly, so Lady Liberty would cheer up. And she did, turning and raising the torch at me in a commuter-worthy salute. Bartholdi shone down upon the moment.
Listening to Canadian radio the young announcer announced that yesterday, the country's national election day, was the saddest in a very long time – much like the aghast feeling when the current president of the US (you know, the one mucking up all foreign relations save a few, the overnetworked rube) allegedly won here in the lower 48 +2 – as now their gov is the big C.
Kennedy and I saw that new Pocahontas movie and I forgot to sing Neil's (as in second-fav Neil love, Young) song of same name. Actually, this movie has the forgettable title The New World and I imagine that its Euro title will have more poesie about it. Jewel's cousin, the femme of same last name (Kircher) and complicated first name beginning with Q, did a fine job of being beautiful in deerskin. Not so much later in gingham and such. I would not know Colin Farrell if he literally bit Yours Truly on mine arse and I found myself cringing at his mutant eyebrows and could not get the horrific thought of Scott Stapp formerly of Creed out of my mind. He also did a fine job of reminding YT of her college pal David Coleman, another introspector.
Time to burn a cd of primo images and drop and dash and more business as usual.

Love, usually.

Generosity flows in abundance within Yours Truly. You know this.
*sidebar:
As I'm thinking of flowing, i.e. coursing blood and guts, I am transported back to yesterday's photo shoot with yet another mad scientist dealing in RNA. Being an M.S. he would take my 101 questions and run with them charmingly, breathlessly, at one point trotting me across the hallway to see a special reusable plate, its viewing light table of sorts, and the scanner upon which the molecular info on the plate is recorded and printed out after I think I may have queried about some shadowy shapes pasted into his notebook. After spotting it, I was going to comment upon his very Euro and artful-looking handwriting but thought he'd suss me out as a hyper-curious chronicler interested in most things and a follower of scientific developments - to a serious novice point.
Cryptology, I am certain, would not have been among his mad scientific interests.
*sidebar complete.
To prove this point Perfectly go here, enter, and if You do win and YT does not (nor Loomis, who turned me on to this dream thing), I get a key to the joint and the op to drop in any time. I will also demand that a Japanese tea house be constructed in the garden, I have one in mind. And within the house there will be a studio for YT. I mean really, I told you about this stinkin' contest.

Love, a good contest.

Explosions of good vibes out to boypals Last Conservative, opening for (wretch, small one) Bon Jovi of gigantic teeth and tight leather-wrapped arse fame.
As MikeZ is no longer in LC I am so not all over shooting this gig and heard this week from his cousin James that MikeZ is going to be re-emerging with his brother, and other familial ensemble in a rollicking blues band. Apparently they've had a gig and people were essentially throwing veritable undies and the like in glee.
Last night's Soup Night like totally rocked, with Yours Truly preparing a newbie - roasted carrot and parsnip with ginger and it really was fab - as were Blair's two soupy constructions.
Good people and then met Hilary notClinton out and that was high times, a few misdemeanours, especially some really bad art that persists in this venue. The bad art in question involves a lightbulb and I sort of mentioned I would buy it for Hilary and her fiancé Matthew for a wedding gift as they'd never be short a lightbulb. Unless, of course, they did not replenish that upon the bad art.
Yesterday dropped an art piece at Trinity for Colleen's art bennie tonight that I will breeze into and today dropped two portraits of the Foster kids for a show of sorts opening early next month.
A dose of Mercury Rev before rejoining the public of this unseasonally warm Middling City with eveningdreams of hightailing it to the Shiney Apple as homesickness is raging and Dorota et al beckon.

Love is a beckon.

In this crazy online world one can find virtually everything for sale, including ponderous and zany Evangelware such as this tshirt above.
The designer of it has another few gems for kids, too, like shirts emblazoned with cryptic messages about cleanliness.

No love for ill-hitting irony.

Had an unfortunate run-in with the talents and scissors of one Middling City hair stylist who swore he was adept at all things Bumble and Bumble. His interpretation of the haircut I had had was to send me out into the world with an oddball suburban 'do, slathered in product - as they love to say. I washed out said product and took some nice sharp little scissors I bought to cut Kennedy's hair to the bangs that I did so like and which were a disastrous heap. To more interesting result. As I like to say, It's only hair. In months and months it'll look, it'll be ready to take another stab at trust and cut.
On a less hairy note, I photographed the bald new Chancellor of SUNY system twice today - on his special tour of the earthquake center where all of us watched a 3 on the Richter scale faux quake, and later at a speecherific thing. He is John Ryan, very humble, referred to himself as Your bald Chancellor.
After the second gig and the furious burn of cd's for my editrix I saw the just-completed catastrophe of a two-car crash via one driver having sped through a red light.
Nobody was able to get out of their respective cars and three firetrucks were on the scene.
Do not, repeat, do not run red lights.
Oh, on a very light light note I laptopped at a very mediocre lunch joint near a puppy salon so, of course, I had to rush in and play with a few pups. Later, at the second portion of Chancellor Love, while talking to a few others, I realized I was covered in delicious puppy stank.

Puppy Stank Love.

Today the Native-financed wrecking ball was raised and lowered, raised and lowered, raised and lowered on the brick portion of HO Oats. The duet of Empire Dismantling apparently not taking a federal-style MLK, Jr. Holiday. No matter when I stray over to the site there seems to be several on foot or in cars stopping to watch the destruction and, as a matter of Perfect fact, saw Liz & Alan in the shadow of HOO yesterday afternoon.
Above, for your edification and plaisir, are two images from yesterday's foray: if, for whatever reason, You find yourself not understanding why these constructions deserve to live I will link you for a quick - and mind-altering - lesson in most matters grain elevatorial.
Did the post-Druidical people of the Land o' Windsors, windsor ties, curries and such rush to wreck freakin' Stonehenge fercrissakes.
I rest my grain elevator-adorationializing case.
Super BONUS:
A fine fab link to a smattering of work made by my pal Mark Maio of the constructions in question.
The Middling City does not have many things but one thing it does have is a fine assembly of its complicated industrial past.

Love is oso complicated.

This day's blogpost could begin much like the former.
But premierly, a word about dumplings or what Yours Truly is now dubbing puffballs.
Last night I made old-fangled beef stew and decided to, following culinary guidelines, mix up dumplings for the first time. One thing to dig about cooking is gathering some know-how, riffs of sorts, favs, standbys, tricks, avoidances: but the first time with a recipe means following along, usually. So, not ever having made dumplings/puffballs Yours Truly (as is so not my wont) followed rules. And when I got to the part about adding in baking powder YT did some measuring of sorts and then actually became a bit alarmed as the baking powder hit the wet ingredients with the now fizzing concoction resembling the neat baking soda/vinegar science experiment of yore, emulating volcanos. But, adding in some flour, disaster was assuaged. Then the delightful plopping of dough into the magma stew, covering the pot, and then the voilà moment – dumped-up dumplings.
At the Hallwalls opening last night I talked cooking with a few pals who had already discovered the joys, the scientific mystery, of dumplings.
Artist Suzy Lake strolled about, as did about 700 others, down corridors until it was time to gather up the entourage and move along to Prespa for some background techno music, some more hijinx and then onwards into the icy Middling City night.

Onwards, Love.

Last night was the grand hoopla of The Church, the Limelightlike former congregation centre turned into a concert/revelling venue. Ani was there and had her tresses dyed darker than I've ever seen them before and we exchanged a nice embrace and a few words before Scot whisked her away, so she could stand at attention whilst some requisite speeches were proffered up. People paid attention until they did the B.S. (that'd be the Bored Shuffle, the weight-shift from left to right). Saw a myriad of good people and had a pleasant social onslaught.
Courtney Grimm and I walked arm-in-arm to the snack table (some sooth - poor aesthetics and an unappetizing mound of wraps... we sampled greasy crab cakes and moved along) until I became much more interested in introducing myself and her to the most interesting-looking man in the room. His name - Junior. He, as all Juniors and Tinies are, is huge, maybe 6'something" and he weighed in at about 300lbs. There was a woman hovering nearby and I asked if she was in Junior's entourage. That's my wife, Junior said.
Deb said she was there and I did not, sadly, see her. Dr. John, for whatever reason was there, I did see him and his spindly date.
The space: what was the big-assed church is now painted well in greens and gold (as in color, not leafing), is lit better, has no more pigeons, and is going to be the big-assed rock & roll venue.
That is impressive. The Hallwalls spaces I found less so - the gallery has a nice basswood floor and much has been made of its malleable wall formations. I thought their basement screening/rumpus room was disappointingly small. I imagined the org having to turn away scads of would-be viewers as the room's capacity is a mere 65. Think big. Think bigger.
Glad to see Hallwalls finally in their new home and it is impressive what's transpired under the renovated spires. Good for the Middling City.
Today it is a smattering of snow, a day to work and work and work before play and play and play.

Love to play.

Well. Well well well.
Very well, indeed.
Yours Truly has been, off and on and mostly on, imbued in the oeuvre and it has been a Pleasure, wallowing in this huge collection of art, publication samples, words, even old posters from the feted and fated Writers Cramp Series that Paul Hogan and I ran for aeons.
Found some surprises, like old coins from dead Uncle Richard, personal and historical photographs, a stash of forgotten ca$h. But not even what I am searching for - yet. When and if this objet is found I will then say what it is.
Delivered some super-fine images I shot for a campaign for a Middling City org to an MC ad agency and while going up I nearly lost my foot in the steel doors for one who came a-runnin'. The proverbial voice of Holdit. And what a one he was, a visual surprise, a Shiney Apple-like man that one does not usually see on this edge of things. As we noted that YT nearly lost a foot he got off on 8, wishing me a fine weekend. Manners to boot.
Tonight Kennedy and I are attending the righteous Hallwalls/Righteous Babe Records grand hoopla, the one that shows off what is nearly done. Tomorrow night is the Hallwalls-only opening of a show of work by unimpressive Suzy Lake. This event is to trumpet a grand addition to the MC art scene. I discussed this with Bruce who asked What art scene.
My pal Pam is catering tomorrow's affair and she told me she's donated all the food, roughly to the tune of $1K. Absolutely one of the most generous people ever.
Amongst stops and sojourns last evening stopped into Charlie Quill's b-day fiesta at Nietzsche's and was happy to see Kelly et al and then on to the usual spot to see Shana and Jeremy and the music was surprisingly quite compelling.

Love is compelling.

The theme du jour is rubbernecking.
Good, old-fashioned swivel-heading, as Yours Truly prefers to call this phenom that swims deep within our human genome, to witness with our own eyes, via reality or other, handy media, the turmoil of others.
En route to a gig this fine and magical AM with the Middling City air teeming with the vibes of spring, I nearly landed in the midst of a parking lot freeway situ but exited promptly on one of those handy north-south streets that one discovers only from having a freelance career involving deadlines, and loads of driving to the sub and ex urbs.
When I arrived at my gig I was informed that this traffic miasma was due to a truck lying on its side, an accident that happened yesterday.
En route back from the gig I could see the truck, still ominously occupying the left shoulder and the backed-up traffic behind it so everyone could get a good gander and a half.
While at the gig YT photographed various people who use the facilities in which I had set up my temp studio and then made secondary images of said facilities. While wending through the sweat-infused gymnasium and weight room and rooms full of those silly machines, there in front of us was one MC newscaster femme fatale. Attempting to avoid rubbernecking, she had outfitted herself with very dark sunglasses. The sporty portion of this joint is not bright. The newscaster f.f. was just looking to not be noticed. I was fantasizing about rushing her with a Sharpie, asking that she sign... something, anything.
And I culled from the Memory Centre how once, perhaps a decade and a half ago how YT was in a fashion show at a television studio, produced by a couture collector. If you can imagine some such thing in the MC. While readying ourselves for our face time, I'll use that phrase as it's so... now, so industry-savvy, we were bombarded by the very same femme newscaster who burst into the dressing room where about five of us were getting made up. She blustered in, bitching fiercely about her blow dryer. Now, not ever having been much of a television afficianado, I asked one of my fellow models, as the blustery newscaster f.f. was, I thought, just out of earshot Who the HELL was that bitch.
As You may have guessed. Yes.
We have necks, we use them. We have insights, we use them.

Rubbernecked Love.

As is my wont, I was minding my own business and found myself looking at a large display of seeds, following a business meeting. I first looked at the oversized packages of vegetable seeds and then moved around to the flowers, thinking all the while just what and where and how.
Then I followed along the quite remarkably gigantic half-aisle of bird feeders (oh, did I tell You that I recently bought the absolute Cadillac Escalade of squirrel-proof bird feeders) to the shelves of confused houseplants and found myself then shoving three of these sad little orphans into the cart. And then moved on to the nearly-free racks of narcissi, buying two. It is not too late in the season to force bulbs as, in this Perfect world, bulbs can be forced until it's the season of deep-fried skin and popsicles. I rest my flower-luvvin' case.
Speaking of case(s), what needs to happen to keep that forgetful racist Alito out of the Supreme Court, short of driving down to Warshington to protest. NPR did a wacky thing today, calling one Al Ito to ask him some trivial questions.
Blogs do rule and they may just become the sole way to keep up up and away with the news.
Lest you have missed this grand blog, go here now.

Memory of shooting FBI-issued firearms love.

This just in, from a loyal epinw peruser.
Yours Truly awaiting rock & roll action. I look very unpsyched, must've been Bon Jovi or some such nonsense.
Misty water-coloured memories...

Misty Love.

The Shiney Happy Mag piece is done. The jubilation which follows the hand-in/the email-in is incomparable. Really. I mean, really, would Yours Truly lie to You.
A scintillating piece of hard-hittingness about where in Blazes to purchase excellent crap and the like for your joint. To make it, shall we say, sophisticated.
Here is a shining example of my flavour:

Décor, like a wardrobe, is a personal collection ever in a state of flux – assuming, of course, that one is not clinging stubbornly (or ironically) to tired, decades-old articles. In both matters home and sartorial, pieces illustrating personality are amassed in the same ways, on jaunts of all sorts, and as gifts. And both may suddenly fall out of favor and be taken out of circulation in a jiffy.

Now that's writing. A dash of irony, some handfuls of fact, some Perfect personality all melded together in one informative, cohesive stream.
I began the finishing across the table from Laura (who was knee-deep in homework) and now I am across the table (kittie-korner) from a stranger named Gina. A teacher. A person who sings to herself. If she had kept that little habit up I would have dashed the rest of my venti coffee du jour at her. She stopped. I sipped. I split.

Love's split.

Yours Truly began this fine, sunny Middling City day at the gravesite of a dead president of the United States of America. Today, lest you don't have this inked into your Day-Timer, is the birthday of one Millard Fillmore, also a founder of the MCClub and MCU medical school. What happens at the event is the laying of wreaths, some speeching, some singing and/or bugle reditions of tunes, all under the ever-watchful gazes of two members of the Knights of Columbus, in capes and feathered hats. As is custom, it was a freezing cold morn and after the last notes are still hanging over the tombstones, all in attendance split to their cars lining the cemetery roadway.
Onwards then to search out a few more joints to include in the Shiney Happy Mag piece.
As I motored back to the home office hovel I spotted a woman maniacally talking in her automobile and wondered a very modern thought:
In this day and age does one suspect another of insanity when said other is speaking to apparently no one in the auto - or, more tech-centrically, does one assume one is speaking to another, distant other via a cellphone set to speaker mode.
I ask you.

Asking Love.

As a guilty pleasure, namely Norah Jones (that track #5) warbles in the background and every record store geekboy I know and have ever known I hear cackling & moaning & groaning now suddenly so heartily I can barely hear her singing about that yellow or whatever grass all high and shit any more. Thanks, guys.
Because I can I am deciding I must paint my nails Red, Red Rhine. You know, I must have selected this colour as I do all of them, by name, and as We all do know Yours Truly loves Neil Diamond more than most people, etc. and Neil did pen that song Red Red Wine. See, all things in sooth can be Perfect if We just freakin' look hard enough.
Yours Truly has just been tweaking, if I can deign to call it that, a hand-crafted website using some allegedly simple software, Freeway. I have been communicating today with websitegeekboys, none of whom were able to offer up any super-helpful hints and there were no offers of an onsite rescue effort.
So Imagine:
YT sipping a coffee, nervously following along with the pamphlet that came with Freeway, all stressed out as I am having flashbacks to art school and that godawful and binge drink-inspiring weekly seminar called god only knows what... the one in which YT struggled not only with the diabolical DreamWeaver (amusing myself, and classmates, as you loyal epinw'ers know, by singing, fingers up in my rock gesture, the song DreamWeaver) but to hear the instructress's pianissima voce over the whirr of the Parsons School of Diabolical Seminars's a/c system, set to Arctic.
DreamWeaver, Freeway, Passports to Hell.
Well, I did follow along paranoically and did build myself a slammin' 1-pager and finished and thought Cheesh, I wanted a mega-page site. Now I'm trying to retrofit some more intermediate info onto the rickety and rinky-dink 1-page wonder to not-quite great effect. So I just randomly began toggling about like I knew what I was doing. I did and still do not.
As an artist I do resent having to follow directions and I think directions sometimes are for followers, the weak-minded. But it appears I'll have to follow a bit closer to get pages 2, 3 and beyond flowing like a DreamWeaver towards the morning light.

Always. DreamWeaver. Love.

Richard Wicka has been kindly sending me along commentary about my Five Minute Video Series contribution and, surprisingly, there have been a smattering from far and wide - not just emanating from the Middling City. One person from MC, however, did review my tale and ended by referring to me as a Snuggle bunny. Yipes. I gave a hard-hitting account of an event, presented it in a gripping style veering into comedic interludes. I would hardly classify this narrative style or presentation as being that of a . . . Snuggle bunny.
So another holiday slew of mayhemic events has passed and it's back to beeswax, so to speak, getting the last of the wrapping paper jetsom into la poubelle.
Wrapping up a little piece for the Shiney Happy Mag, a Pulitzer-worthy assessing of joints to get home accessories and the like. I walked into one place in the midst of an MC storm looking quite like a girl version of the Unibomber before I defrocked and let the proprietess know I meant her no harm, just free publicity, some glorious ink.
Time to sort through matters, snip off loose ends, correspond and more.

Corresponding Love.

O, happy day.
Moments ago received a package from Bill down in the PA and much to my joy and amazement it is much-coveted venison jerky that I found a few times on non-aimless roadtrips and never could ever quite manage to find again, though I did look with racing eyes amongst the sad racks of mass-produced beef teriyaki product and such.
A whole pound of venison jerky is mine, mine, mine, mine.
I will share, however.
If You would care for a slice of deerly flesh cured and spiced up, just freakin' ask.
Resolution of new year: Meet Yoko Ono.
Off shortly to purchase some lobsters, dead.
With a gift cert from Perfect Mom & Dad I did purchase my first-ever Big Girl matchy-snatchy set of cookware (including 8-quart stock pot with fitting steamer ever-ready for lobsters and such but I'd rather buy them dead, maybe even beheaded). More about the pots: I do have a rag-tag assemblage of pots and pans that are excellent but needed more (some cast iron, some Le Creuset, some other heavy-enough-to-be-weapons items). These pots and such are not all related Le Creuset in that gorgeous sage green they have now - but they will do.
Oh, more than do, they will make, do, and be.
It has snowed out in the Middling City, one of those half-assed droppings just enough to make the wearing of suede boots or shoes not such a good idea but not enough to make some quality snow sculpture.
Parties as of late have been satisfying and far-reaching of cast of characters:
- Jamie and Paul Johnson held their final holiday party on Ashland in the Big House before they move to their improved row house around the corner. Paul has turned into quite a real estate mogul. At this party I was informed by one that he, in a cold meds haze, caught my Five Minute Video on cable access in the dead of night. I also saw Rockstar Tony there which was great, as was getting reunited with Hillary H, not to be confused with Hillary C.
- Loomis's parents - Ed & Joan - held that swingin' party up in Canada and the only bad spot was when she insisted on feeding the two fam dogs generous hunks of Stilton. As I informed her last night as we swung ourselves down to Hardware for yet more holiday action, Stilton is for Nancy, not for dogs.
- Was invited last night to Deb's for some of her supreme matzoh balls, and soup. What do I dig more than mballs+soup, fruitcake (for real), venison jerky. Well, alot, but hell, for literature's sake let Us say Not a dang-blamed thang.

Pyrotechnics of a New Year's Love.

I left the slippery to drive along the slippery to the even more slippery, steel bridge, to the party this strange winter night. I wended through woods and roads thinking I'd miss a sign but no and ended at the house somewhat familiar. There is nothing quite like the feeling of arriving at a party, of seeing faces through the windows smiling, thinking in a flash, in an entrance, in a scrape of boot, I will be joining, will be a guest, one of them.
I demanded a fireplace moment, Loomis made it happen as the logs had dimmed. I needed a full-on, full-view of a heap of logs afire. Maybe like others need gravlax, or a withering christmas tree, or cocoa. I needed the stinkin' fire this night and I got the fire.
I Got the Fire: The Nancy J. Parisi Story.
Amongst others tonight, as at last night's fete, I met a person who will catapult me into my new venture/adventures.
I am not delving into detail yet.
What I will say is that the nouveau Neil Diamond is Perfection.
What I will also say is that the new Mercury Rev is grand but track #7, In a Funny Way, is a song that gets Yours Truly SCREAMING with delight.
And that is always a delight, the delight of YT.
In a funny way I am ever your epinw correspondent.

Ever Love.

Sometimes precautions backfire.
Not only might this be attributable for perhaps, for the sake of epinw argument, 10% of the planet's human population - certainly not that of bombus fervidus - but of belongings gone missing, good intentions and plans gone haywire.
sidenote: Yours Truly thinks that this haywire business might be yet another example of agrarian holdover in our lingua that we no longer recognize as such. And, I imagine, that haywire was a farmly article that could, from time to time, snap back, break loose, causing some sort of bodily harm.
YT is in process of a refinancing/reevaluating kind of thing. Amongst trudging duties is paying a wack of dough to have a building rescoped/reappraised. This meant an appointment with a stranger and an agent de moi suggested that, being a femme and all, a femme surveyor of scenes be used. So I do not confirm a theoretical reappraising situ for today but get a message from the femme in question that she'll be present and accounted for and accounting all things good & bad in a few, as in hours.
So this appraising femme shows up and she scares me.
As I told Kennedy if she had said Oh, I am a bounty hunter in actuality and do this property-related shit on the side I would not have questioned her burly faux-blonde figure at all. She clucked her tongue in a most peculiar manner, made odd comments, asked even odder questions, and was ever curt and snide, matching the demeanour at hand - or afoot.
She did not bother to open doors to things (hey, who the hell is YT to tell a bounty hunting appraisor how to do their gig) but instead would inquire as to what lay beyond or behind things. She did note decrepitude and such and when she left I felt a need to burn sage but had none so a quick vacuum of her bounty hunter bad vibes had to suffice.
Moral: bounty hunter types walk amongst us in a cornucopia of forms, including the mall-esque lady version, but if one is not a scofflaw one must only dodge verbal barbs, not TASERS.

Sage Love.

Two somewhat horrific things Yours Truly includes for dramatic and narrative effect.
For f-b*mb's sake, YT is a writer and may a: let It all hang out; b: investigate the incomplete and the effusive and the uncomfortable (related to a.); and c. narrate and dramaticize.
So, there YT is, in the midst of the familial portion of this holiday, this mid-Hanukah and Kwanzaa Eve = Christmas. The one with Jesus is the reason for the season, key player.
sidebar: Rio informed me, non-truthfully, that a banner hangs above her familial KY home stating same so that Santa knows that we are not heathens. I move along.
I am at the home where I was raised, so to speak, from age 2-20, before I hit the awaiting adult world that has led me, convolutedly, to this place. I am in that home, Christmas night. The place where my parents live, where I am from time to time bumping up against the past of me that is awkward and I would like to say jam-packed with familiarities that are pleasant but I cannot.
The usual hodgepodge, collage of the good, bad, adolescent, etc.
At some point in the holiday proceedings two highly evocative/awkward things happen.
The first is that, in the midst of one of my tales, my father claims that he has heard the tale-in-progress before. I question him. A few times. I realize that the only place he ever - ever - could have heard this traipsing and difficult tale was here, on epinw. epinw. My dad is an abashed epinw reader. For once he was busted he could not admit to anyone, even Perfect me, that he reads this daughterly blog.
The other horrendous thing was this.
When I was a child I wrote poetry beyond the abilities of a child but nonetheless I was still a child. When I was a child I lived at the home of my parents and discarded a few hand-written books of poetry written by me as a child into the ol' trash, to learn, in complete shock and horror, that these books had been dredged from the trash by my mother and were being not only read by her but read aloud to gatherings of her lady pals.
I have told, here and there, others of this not only lapse of judgement but lack of homestead privacy and tonight sat diplomatically as one of these high school books of pomes was again extricated from the archive, cracked open (I was catapaulted down memory lane when I saw the little Asian, hand-bound volume) and in-part read aloud.
I had to step outside of myself and say to YT OK, this is your mother and obviously she derives some happiness out of this and your ever-thickening skin can survive this newest fiasco.
What made an entire weekend of ebbing & flowing, self-congratulatory holiday smarm tolerable were a few final hours spent with old friends - Erin and Justy - at the newer Middling City joint of gatherings and such. And what really was the proverbial whipped cream and jimmies (if you go for that sort of thing) on the whole tasty escapade was a meeting-up with a woman - Peggy - in a wolfhead. I made her pinkie swear we could be pals. We did. She is the assistant to the director of the Salvador Dali joint in Florida, so close to the land of Papa and cigars and home to alligators and whatever else. Oh, that team.
So Peggy Wolfhead when saying goodbye opened up her plastic jaws and spread them atop my head and I let out my patented MeatScream that was perfected oso long ago by YT and Elba in the midst of Summer Camp Chaos. It is a from-the-toes kind of scream and one was emitted by Perfect me as the faux wolf had my scalp, stopping all action in the room, a similar sensation was being hit by that car whilst riding my bike, the feeling of being in a vacuum.
The moral of the story is this.
Every counter-intuitive event which cramps the soul and psyche and style needs an antithetical faux-wolf moment, a delicious and spontaneous encounter with grace and art and kindred joie-de-vivre.

Faux Wolverine Love.

Today Yours Truly is photographing foster kids who are pre-teenish and looking for a permanent living gig. The two I'm photographing today are siblings and are in a temp situ. I was just talking to teahouse Jen telling her of my next stop and we discussed how foster girls at this age sometimes land in less-than-stellar places - sometimes to be the live-in babysitter, sometimes worse. I told her of my decade of working with the Summer Camp, how half the 8-12 year olds there were fosterized, how some of them had horrific tales. My assignment is to make these kids look so adorable that they get scooped up by good people. There is a slew more of occasions to bust out holiday tights and the like. Jamie and Paul are having their ultimate gathering at their supersonic house that they redid from shingles to front steps, before the relocate to a rowhouse somewhere nearby. Then there's another soirée in Loomis's honour in a week, at her parents's Canadian shorehouse. Jen, rushing YT, just slapped my check on the table stating Time's a-wastin'. So off I go there and points be-be-beyond.

Foster Love.

Dubithy:

Somewhere under the radar, way down low.
There's a land that I heard of once, where the oil still flows.
Somewhere under the radar, folks are screwed.
And the schemes that you dare to scheme really do come through.
One day I wrecked the family car, and daddy and my mummy Bar remind me,
Of my troubles taking acid drops, the night they had to call the cops,
And then they fined me.
Somewhere under the radar, I'll get high. Drink Rye under the radar,
Try, oh yes I'll still try
Why, why must I be dry?
(The above was forwarded to me by Paul Morgan of Avalon Scarves fame and the entire, brilliant adaptation can be seen here.)

This notion that El Presidente is in fact dry and ryeless seems rather at odds with his behaviour as of late, most notably his press conf yesterday about spying and wiretapping any available and questionable American up and out the wazoo as Papa/El P/Bush deems necessary. I did catch one quick visual soundbite with him answering a press corps question. To paraphrase: It's about your safety . . . it's about your civil liberties.
Hmmm, last I heard this genre of practice was completely opposite what good ol' civil liberties are about.
Onwards.
As there is a transit strike in the Shiney Apple, something threatened for about a week, I opted out of pre-miasmic - nay, make that Double Miasmic - conditions and am hanging in the Middling City until post-strike, post-holiday-travel-meltdown.
Over the weekend Yours Truly met up with a college pal, writer Harold Goldberg, firmly entrenched in the Shiney Apple and writing each and every day.
Besides the Perfection that is epinw, YT does a smattering of writing.
I have been back to drawing, not the drawing board, but grooving on my pencils and such and do still feel slightly bemused when others find great joy, etc. in this scrawling.
I now embark into the MC WW (white wasteland) to pick up Dorota and Jason at the MC "International" Airport and then points beyond.

Well-balanced Love.

With the help of Nick, my new record shoppe pal, I discovered that the Nouveau Neil is out when Yours Truly believed there must be weeks to go. But of course Neil released his new gems out into the world now, in time for the holiday hoopla and gift-giving sector of the calendar and such. What I've paid attention to so far has been wondrous - Neil (and fercrissakes I do hope that you know I write most lovingly and obviously about Neil as in Diamond, resonant voice of the 70s and beyond) and backup musicians, all new material written by Neil. At a soirée last night I revealed my Neil Luvv and an alternamusician claimed to love Neil, too. I suspected that this was a move to sound hip, now, etc. Other record shoppe purchases that sojourn were the new Sigur Ros (always a grand choice for winter), the digital v of Bright Eyes, and partyrific Gorillaz (featuring that inescapable iPod song so overplayed at the Geek/Mac Clubhouse).
Worked an hourly wedding last night that stretched and stretched away, so much so that it caused me to pass on party number one. I did my trademarked party drive-by, sussing out if it was in high or low gear, gleaning info from the shadowy heads or lack thereof and clues from nearby cars. My clues pointed to move on. And so I did.
When I did arrive at the second joint I informed my co-hostesses that I had been held hostage by a wedding. I attempted to eat snackdinner but was thrown off my nosh course by Mary who desperately wanted me to dance. So I said Cheesh, my friend May wants to freakin' dance, who cares any more about stinkin' bean dips and such.
At some point I decided it was necessary to get a running start and skid along the hardwood floor into the dance floor action. I made a few others do the same.
I busted out my new toy, the iZone digital camera and found it to be fraught with a few glitches but do love its size and design.
It is time to call this a wrap and do some holiday wrapping and wending through snow and sip and sup some holiday cheers.

Love, wrap it.

Completely, resolutely minding a business that was nobody's but mine own, tonight, the following transpired out in the Middling City suburbs, during a freelance gig.
I arrive during an ice storm, a real throw-down of crystals thick and hard, rendering the landscape a death trap, a suicide rap. Baby, you like were so not born to run during this shit.
I digress. Momentarily. As is my wont, and your pleasure.
I am at the gig. I am waiting for things to get proverbially rolling. You know, things like intros, helpful hints, a discreet waiting and drawing-out of time as if another few dozen may traipse on in during the death rain of icy terror. Death Rain of Icy Terror: Middling City Winter Rants.
I digress again.
So I am waiting, even leaning against a wall at one point when I note a rustling on the other side of the wall and this rustling is rather loud during the intros which have finally begun. There are blinds on the inside of the windows to this glass-walled office I am leaning on. I peer into the blinds and note a small old man on the other side of the glass/blinds.
The man keeps rustling about. Perhaps he's trapped, Perfect me thinks to my ever-helpful self.
More rustling.
Finally, I try the door and it opens.
I stick my head in and ask the codger Hey, do you need to get out of here. Thinking he's demented, stuck, lost, disoriented after hours.
The man says nothing and just stares at me rather oddly. He may have muttered something but it was so illegibile, as it were/was/is as to be ignored.
So the intros continue. There is even an intro video that the guest artist has provided, probably carried with him in his carry-on. And here it should be noted that the guest artist is a world-renowned vocal coach who has worked with the likes of Judy Garland's equally-doped-up kid, some other vocal luminaries. Et al. Et freakin' al. Testimonials are read. Famous names such as Tony Bennett praising the work of the featured guest artist.
So all is finally stinkin' over. It is time for the guest artist to hit the stage, actually just a few simple risers fronted by some super floral arrangements that would be suitable for any gravesite. So it's time. The guest artist is to appear. Is he sitting in the front row. Will the guest artist descend from the stairs like a cheeseball musical.
No.
The guest artist emerges from behind the blinds/glass office.
He muttered in shock, Yours Truly imagines, for YT not knowing who his vocal eminence is.
Hey, I see a senior in apparent need and I dive right in. You know, being ever-helpful.
From there it was on to Soup Night at Monique and Blair's joint.
I had dropped, pre-gig, my soon-to-be-famed Brazilian soup and by the time YT appeared in their spec kitchen it was nearly a distant evaporated memory. So I ate Blair's scorching soup instead. It was high times, subtle misdemeanours. I realized at one point a demi-room of people was hanging on to a story I was regaling at some familiars. Then the somewhat edited version emanated.
It is time to move along.
It is time to think more art thoughts.
And dream soupy dreams.
Beautiful soup, beautiful soup, soup of the evening, beautiful soup.
So said Mock Turtle during Alice's foray into the Fantastic.

Fantastic, soupy Love.

(Perfect me wished this what does this have to do with the prix of bananas image at the end of this post but here it rests front and center. It is a shot of the nouveau flagship pornorific A+F store in the Shiney Apple, outfitted with oversized photographic images of models with oversized ab muscles. Focus in on the ab muscles to the right of the image. Terrifying.)


Just downloaded a plethora of musique, via the full-on wi-fi molecules emanating from the Airport of the tea joint, and for some oddball reason FireFox was unable to hack it and had to use boring ol' Explorer. I mean really.
Jen just lit my little tea candle and, before setting it down, asked that I not set anything afire. I asked if I had before. I do seem to recall something nearly blazing at this tea joint but think it may have been Allen's fault. I did set a menu afire at another nearby restaurant whilst resting it upon a candle. Perhaps Jen is clairvoyant. Perhaps I emanate pyromaniacism.
Perhaps I should depart this tea joint as I've been sitting and working here so long on their hardassed wood chair that I am certain that the arse of Yours Truly is as flat as they once believed the Earth was centuries ago.
I have slightly committed to an art exhibit and have work shuttling off to the bi-annual CEPA auction next month. There's creative fire for You. Some good-natured fuel for the artful adrenaline boosters. Technical shit.
More tech shit:
satellite radio, not nearly as expensive as You might think. And shortly the sole way to hear beloved Howard.
Trudy of the tea joint just gave me a graduation present after explaining that I completed my Master of the Universe degree late August and now am ruling my own aesthetic universe.
Tonight I make soup. Tomorrow night I make soup for a party. Saturday I make yet more soup for yet another party.
Soup, like photography and other genres of creative expression, is art.
Like a good bowl of chawan mushi - each bite/spoon a tiny universe, a whorl of opposing textures and colours.

Love's textures, colours.

Last night I was out with Liz and JimB and at some point they mentioned that HOOats is under attack by the Natives as this, it turns out, is the future site for the dreaded Middling City casino. Not the waterfront, really, as described by Middling City News, but a distance away on an industrial block with a few businesses, some open space. I drove a short way to this wreckage and felt like my parents's generation may have as they watched Olmsted's Delaware Park get sliced in half for an expressway. Progress and change and history slips away, bit by bit, in this Middling City. I watched as the cast iron bridges were torn down in my neighborhood/The Historic Old First Ward, told my engineers and planners and politicians that these were hazards and were too costly to fix. So I shot them, preserved their images, and down they crashed. Now HO Oats, immortalized by several photographically (YT, the Bechers, et al), is being wrecked by the Sovereign Senecas. They are saying that the brick portion of the grain elevator is getting yanked down (JimB pointed out his buddy's company name - Empire Dismantling) but not the elevators themselves. We shall see. The head of the Sovereigns stated that the Senecas were once chased from Buffalo Creek and now they are back, Forever.
About to embark on a sleuthy gig for a woman, documenting someone, unbeknownst to them, for a holiday gift.
Parting mantra: Industry is beauty.

Beautiful, industrial Love.

The year before the shit hit the NJP fan, the year when Dark Side of the Moon landed in my ten-year-old hands and changed my mind about all I thought I knew about understanding and poetry and such until that point, there was John and Yoko on Mike Douglas. Somehow I watched Mike Douglas, a grownup talk show in the late afternoon. (Somehow, also, I watched the inappropriate-for-kids Love American Style at lunchtime, munching on my pbj as I watched comedy about blow-up dolls, oral, and the like). These two took it over, so to speak, in '72 and I watched it all. The militancy, the guest artists, the staccato explanations of the way things were. And Mike, earnest Mike, watery-eyed, took it all in, as did I. The only way I heard the Beatles music and Lennon was via my older cousins as I was a freakin' kid with no money but an AM radio, cousins, a cast-off manual typewriter from my father in the basement on my grandfather's cast-off carved desk, and daydreams. I loved John before most men I have known (or sort of known) because of his earnest artist demeanour - that what he made is serious so, therefore, what you made is and could be, too. His music went beyond entertainment, became the music of dreams, of psyche, of inspiration, of pain, of all the everyday welts of life. His nose, in my opining, surpasses those of all others and remains the greatest nose that ever breathed upon the earth. His eyes were those that are a surprise, the type that no matter how many times you glance into surprise with their colour and depth. He wrote, drew, protested, loved, and still wanted to, despite the CPW situ and such, remain a pedestrian, someone who could walk in the park and breathe and be. John Lennon's legacy is to remind all artists that it's not only important to make work and be true to the muse, but to use the muse to push social change, what is good for the world, a goal that surpasses those flimsy goals of most politicos and so-called spirituals.
All we are saying is give peace a chance, he wrote as an artist, he said, to update the message of peace beyond We Shall Overcome.
Imagine.

Imagined Love.

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of John's death and I will not be in the Shiney Apple in Strawberry Fields as I was five years ago. But at midnight tomorrow night, wherever I find myself, I'll sing Imagine as They will be over there, as is custom.
To commemorate, celebrate John I've been looking at Memories of John Lennon which I bought last week - a compilation of essays by people who knew him.
I like what hardassed Norman Mailer wrote:
We have lost a genius of the spirit.
And the whole assemblage of Annie Leibovitz's rolls from the famed shoot mere hours before The End are in the book, You know, the famed clothed Yoko/naked John shots.
Last night, post free free jazz gig, had a band meet-up of sorts with ScottV and then suddenly Kunji, who was also there, presumed that she could join Our band, KnifeCall. I said diplomatically that Scott and I needed to have another band meeting to discuss. I threatened to leave the band and begin a solo career.
Kunji, not even a member (!) wants to change the name.
She also did not even seem agreeable to the band uniform.
The Who's Pictures of Lily (about porn & such, lest you did not hear the news about three decades ago) is on the hi-fi, a fine place to sign off in a post about feting life and creative expression, even if it involves some good-natured sparring.

KnifeCall Love.

ps: should You be so inclined, check out my FiveMinuteVideo, edited by supersonic Richard Wicka, @

This, Yours Truly is pleased to pronounce, is one well-researched blogpost: as in field work, a lifelong string of taste tests, and a half-assed Google search.
Wow, and what a Googling that was. And no Wikipedia ref . . . yet.
This holiday season (trust me, You must, this will be all handily tied together but you must slog through, like a well-hung Dickens paragraph) I would like to propse in lieu of guilt-addled resolutions (and I've blogged many a year about this practice of resolving) that each and every one of You instead embrace a guilty pleasure. And embrace this guilty pleasure, whatever it might be, at least once a month for in embracing such we embrace who we ARE, not what we think we might like to be. And by guilty I think of things that are silly, out of our alleged element(s), kitschy, crapful, puerile, adult.
A few days ago, while merrily lunching on a gas station tuna sandwich I came up with all of the above, now blogged to inspire You.
I have horrified some by my love of tuna (even eliciting tales of poisoned horror, warnings from strangers - the old retired engineer in midtown East, for one) to begin with and even more by my adoration of the gas station tuna sandwich. I am a food snob yet love them. It's like that Middling City sushi chef who dug hotdogs. I speak of him in past tense as he split the MC.
Perfect gas station tuna sandwiches have a strange sweetness (NOT like the egg salad sandwich I ate in the Shiney Apple this summer whose underbelly was covered with a black mold that tasted oddly sweet-n-sour... until I wretched it into a garbage can), are wrapped lovingly, have little chunks of color. Cost about $2.
Yours Truly plans on eating at least 1/mo. in '06.
Thanks for your tuna attention in this matter.
You can share your guilty, sanguine, secret pleasures with me any time before 12/31.

Guilty, delicious Love.

Lest you wonder.
Lest you wonder where Yours Truly might be post-asscrack-of dawn tomorrow.
You will find YT at a ribbon cutting at Middling City U.
Bright eyes, tail all bushy, as they say.
Meandering through my beloved SPIN I discovered there's a new Sigur Ros and that is also on tomorrow's make&do list.
And then there was an ad in the same issue for Lady Sovereign, which thrilled me as it jogged the memory of the words of rec by Mats as something to give a whirl to: he is a jazz star but one who straddles the world of alternative rock and sometimes combines the two in practice, who is not afraid to have The Thing (his trio'd jazz ensemble with guest *'s) cover, for a primo example, The White Stripes. Though you may not be able to hum along, it's the melodic and appropriative thought that counts.
So over drinks post-Thing gig Mats raved about Lady Sovereign, a young lady rap artiste.
And together we enthused about White Stripes' new one, a perfect assemblage.
I neglected to ask Mats if he ever puts forth a cd with any known weak links or if they are all, in his mind, or his producer's mind, a string of perfection.
String of Perfection, dang, another fine band name.
Bought last Beethoven's 3rd and 4th piano concertos, inspired by hearing one of them on a radio station beaming out of Toronto's environs - one of those perfect moments when music matches landscape. But, in record store situ, I could not recall if it was indeed B's piano concerto #3, #4, or #5. I figured that the Frenchies effusing over the recording must be doing such for a new recording so, super-sleuthically, I had Mary at B&N record centre Google away and she said there was a new v of #3 and #4. I have listened. I think it is the rondo of #4 that had me.
Interpol out of iTunes at this second is matching my landscape.
Without music life would be like food with no taste.

No taste = No love

Tech disaster.
Why o why is the epinw OKcounter suddenly askew. The people who made the skin for it are in Korea and their site is a bramble patch of demi-English and demi-Korean = a challenge for sure.
Online at Middling City U in a quadrant of the library I thought was reserved for collections searchers. How utterly wrong I am for this is, unbeknownst to me as of 15 minutes ago, The Gratis Online Centre. So what if it's on a crappo Dell pc with blindingly wiggly-jiggly screen that seems to be in green-o-vision. Hey, I like green a lot but this screen is making me feel sea sick.
Heading out to Toxicville to perhaps acquire some holiday gifts and cheer for others.
Time to head north.
Time to sign off.

No love for Toxicville.

Today has been one Perfect, well-balanced day of excellent freelance gigs of a photo nature, of interesting people and so engaged was I with photo subject numero uno that we talked for over an hour which floated by in a freeform, coffee-fueled blip. This is one thing I most dig about my life: I get assignments, I arrange, I arrive, I engage, I shoot, I leave. This first subject was an MD associated with Middling City U, a dog lover, and we shared political views. She asked about me, she asked if I had met Maureen Dowd. I said Not yet. And I mean it. This woman doc knows Dowd and was suggesting that I do meet her, that she become my mentor of sorts. I have just purchased Are Men Necessary?, her new book, inspired by not only her but a profile of her in VF so this was more fortuitousness in today's numero uno meeting. And, when I explained how her directions via email first landed me in the wrong parking lot and then the wrongo buildingo she asked if I'd ended up at Middling City Morgue. I replied NOOO, but I'd like to. To much concurrent mirth and amazement by numero uno and her colleague. I explained that I've always been intrigued by the MCM, that I had a college photo colleague who made work in there, heads in buckets and that sort of thing. I have no apparent desire to make work of heads in buckets (although I have photographed Buckethead, but that's another story completely) but do have that Mutteresque/Witkinesque thread in me.
Photo subject number two today was a hard case, an arms-crossed crank until I worked my Perfect magique upon him, ending our photo engagement with laughs and such. At one point when I was making images of him, posed in the midst of a complab of sorts, a frat boy shouted out Hey X, what's all this. To which I replied on his behalf... Swimsuit Edition, SI. This kind of shocked my subject. And to that I say Oh, velcro.
Between and around these things were social and shop engagements and at one point I was checking out at a bookstore, minding mine own beeswax when the clerk asked if I'd like any gift receipts. Gift receipts, I questioned back at her, NO, these are all for me - the holidays are not JUST for others. (In keeping with the holiday shopping theory of Yours Truly that one should not forget oneself in the throes of heartfelt and pressurized holiday acquisition. My solemn decree reads as such: Yeah, sure, buy for those others but treat yourself, you deserve it and will enjoy the holidays oso much more when you're in those new duds, having arrived at the holiday soiree having just listened to some shiney new music, spritzed-up with some new fab scent... and the like.)
A parting holiday shot is this.
Every part of the year we should remember, recall our friends, acquaintances, family, helpers, etc. and the faux sense that all is heightened or that the sense of giving is enlarged now is shit. Be generous with your heart and time and money all the time. This is a time of pandemics, war, desultory vibes and no person in your life should be taken for granted. All through the year, not just Now in this fabrication of joy, love, bon vivant espousal.
And with this, I virtually hug You and speed off to a holiday party for writers for the Shiney Happy Mag, the annual throw the freelancer writer tipplers a festive little bone.

Festive bones of Love.

O happy happy, snap-happenstanced day.
A new Johnny Depp movie.
Well, the good news is it hits screens in the Shiney Apple and I know how to get there and the bad side of the news is it will probably not land in the Middling City.
The movie is The Libertine and the good news, again, is that he's in the damned thing, a biopic type of film about 17th C writer/poet/libertine/sex addict John Wilmot (so on-screen imagine he didn't have to think Mynameis Mynameis because it's handily one and the same).
The bad, again, is that like in that thuggish movie about blow he'll get all ugly at the end and word on the street is his character lost and loses his nose via some bad molecules that entered his libertine body.
Chronicler of the times Sam Johnson said he 'blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness.' Let this be a lesson to You. Or a touchstone for some remorse or even still some cause for tales of the ol' glory days.

Libertine love.

Just completed what felt like on-camera therapy, at Home of the Future/Richard Wicka's joint, for his ongoing Five Minute Series.
First off told the story of when the life of Yours Truly felt like a bad reality t.v. show - when the breakup with the X happened, when all came to fortuitous fruition after receiving two emails from a stranger (the Angry Husband) in Cleveland, OH.
Then he presented YT with a list of scenarios and I was to expound if one hit a chord, so to speak. One of my favorite expoundings was about an encounter with an insect and I told of how as a child I was stung repeatedly, how my mother noted that in a playground there could be a group of players and a bee would dive-bomb me.
So, one family car trip, I had a wasp stuck inside the sleeve of my blouse. Which I did not realize until I felt something and hit my shoulder and then was stung and went hysterical.
My mother, turning from the right passenger seat, struck me with an amazing blow to my face, an open-handed slap to assuage my hysteria. It worked. I was stunned and she ripped off my shirt, exposing me and the newly-dead wasp.
The End.
And so much more.
I feel slightly mentally depleted from this Five Minute experience,
now onwards to Kennedy's concert this fine Middling City evening, to hear The Thing at SoundLab. Chilly, frigid SoundLab.
Yours Truly is dressing accordingly - layered beyond belief.

Layers of Love.

After a few rounds of saber-rattling, Yours Truly confronted this holiday, the first of the triad, and at the moment I am on top, perhaps prematurely brandishing my saber in the air, waving it in triumphant loops overhead.
Ran into, amongst others, Bob Stubblebine last night, of Flynn's and BoHo fame. A past regular of my feted and fabled Thanksgiving feast. He queried and I replied that these past two years I have become a spectator of the day rather than an Olympic athlete who prepped and trained for weeks whilst amassing recipes (in addition to what I deemed a tradition, the somewhat godawful ginger candied carrots I made at my first feast fourteen years ago and subjected all others to from then on), getting the work/live space into a suitable dining room situation (replete with two very long rectangular tables side by each to make one fucking huge table) and scrape the photo dust bunnies off the ceiling, making calls, fielding the RSVPs, shopping, cooking, cooking, more cooking, then the big E, then the big C.
E = entertaining/good.
C = cleaning/bad.
I did squeeze in some excellent cooking today for me and Kennedy (before I trek to parents' place and visit and see the fam) as that is what I do. I read the recipes, I imagine, I shop, I slice, I dice, I spice, I serve and eat.
Just spoke to Rio and Ron (again, amongst others) and they are right now en route to Nature. If it was not 23 degrees in the Middling City I might appropriate that idea.
And Thanksgiving can only mean another thing - in two days it is the annual World's Largest Disco, a slopfest of non-stop memory lane hits. Was involved in a burst of emailing a few weeks ago with some North Buffalo fellas about this so-called event as JW,Esq. got all high and Cali mighty critiquing one of the MC's best attributes remaining. I jumped on his e-shit, noting that he is a walking disco narrative, a f/t party boy for certain.
And now, a fable:
It was roughly about a handful of centuries ago that some renegades sans polar fleece braved the Atlantic Ocean and headed out for spices and freedom and fresh air, so to speak.
Upon their journey they might have become hungry and eaten one of their group who perished. They landed. And upon the place they landed, a beach of rocks, they clung to one rock in a style remiscent of the Transcendentalists - deeming this rock, this place, this beach, this new land of spices and such heaven on earth . . . as suddenly an arrow whizzed past one of the group's head and then another whapped into the rock. They called it Plymouth Rock but it should have been called Pilgrim Rock. They did not sail in on the Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria as that's another story. So they were then surrounded by natives in animal skins, who kind of laughed at the newbies in their light woolens and uncomfortable shoes. So they communicate as one does in the throes of travel, all voice and face and hands until they all became pals and feasted together. Actually, the natives did all the cooking. The arrivistes did not dig the maize soup or the newly-slain animal of undetermined origin but they feasted so as not to be rude, or at least they gave off that vibe. Cranberries, a native plant, were on the tables. Time went on. Cities were built, the natives faded out, the maize soup persevered. A meat that nobody particularly adores, turkey, became the representative food of the vague anniversary of the landing. Stuffing, everyone's fav, came later.

Stuffing Love.