My Halloween, in a nutshell:
Last night, for the sake of documentation, began at approx. 830PM backstage at Kleinhans Music Hall with Midori warming up five feet away from me in designer photo print gown and metallic shoes (prior to my Bflo.Phil.Orch. gig and shooting the violinstar) and ended with a parade of Halloween parties until 4AM or so with me and five other members of the posse (Janet Reno Fan Club) storming in and out of various parties in bad-ass style. Highlights:
1. Your fav Nancy running, rolling, and coming up shooting faux gun in style at premier party stop in a very expensive house on the wall-to-wall.
2. Members of Fan Club collectively driving and entering next party in bad-ass fashion, creating some exotic limbo moment, helping ourselves to the rest of a bottle of Cuervo and leaving "to bring this orgy elsewhere."
3. Visiting a hot tub party and one member of Fan Club, partially nuded up, getting pushed into hot tub by bitchy bad-ass "Rachel" - usually known as Allen.
4. Whilst walking back to vehicle and passing party mentioned in item #2 "FBI" bad-ass suddenly inspired to streak through that party by entering back door. So, being the fab photojournalist that I am, set the camera on sports setting and got ready mid-living room to shoot his wantonness. Somehow we got in each other's way and there was a profusion of sequential flashing and I'm not sure what will come out of that moment. Oh, and what the photo lab will make of those tangled frames.
5. Next party was at thee famed Coatsworth Mansion and there we also left our bad-ass mark(s) by stripping one of the host's clothes off as he played onstage in the multi-level living room, destroying a shower curtain rig as one of the four girls sat tubside mid-group-pee, finishing up a bottle of whatever as Mr. Streaker/"FBI" bad-ass made "manhattans" for the Fan Club, "Rachel" barfing into a bucket up in the cupola beauty attic ruining the couch amouressness of a couple in heat, and then members of the Fan Club taking over the bandly activity onstage.
6. Going to a local joint and taking over a corner of it for more mayhem, etc.
7. Stop at a nearby diner where one of my cop pals, Eddie, had to come over to our table to: a. tell us to pipe down; and b. to keep our faux weapons on the table. (Two members of the Fan Club fell asleep at the table, very un-Bad-ass.)
8. This AM we reconvened for our weekly cultish brunch and only one of us had Partyer's Remorse and here's a hint, it was not me.
Love from your favorite Nancy/bad-ass.

ps: And to the woman at the gas station where I stopped between Midori and party moment #1 for some of that tricky lemon-flavored malt liquor, who told me that I didn't look like a bad-ass because my face looks too innocent - "fuck you, I am the baddest of bad-asses."

Last night I taped another episode of the infamous and highly improvisational Greg Sterlace Show and it airs on Friday November 2nd (November already? who the hell's idea is that?) at 8 or whatever on the landmine-rich cable access station and it features your Fav Nancy and one of her "pet bands" - Last Conservative. What a treat it was to walk into the building and see those four rock & roll 21-year-olds (*sigh*) and their case of beer. I have to say it's one of the better guest co-hostings yet and it was a fun dip in post-adolescent pheromones. I ended up bringing one of the LC boyz to a party after wisely purchasing some of that hard lemonade that has the world in a whirl, and then we (and another rock st*r = Allen) traipsed down to a joint for excellent music crafted in this middling city. This was the same LC boy who I took to his premier gay bar for his first-ever night of gay bar hopping with me and Crazy Jen.
This blogging, this visual flogging, is a pit stop between freelance gigs to be followed by Halloween moments. I'm trying to break in a green leather mask which was given to me today. It smells great but it hurts around the eyes. Wow, that sounds like a way to describe oh so many things.

Advised a pal tonight to not fry out his brain cells and try to determine a pat plot for David Lynch's latest textural treat, 'Mulholland Drive.' I dug it and was still haunted by images from it - his framing is exquisite – when I received a call on cell phone from one of two(some) Troy friends. They saw it and so we talked talked talked about it.

Note to self: When you make a rule that when a police officer is approaching your vehicle you have a story at the ready, please remember to do so.

Punchline: motoring along deserted biway was suddenly in the crosshairs of two bored officers of the law armed with ray gun.

Special thought: there is no correct or smart response to the question "Do you know how fast you were going?"

Halloween - delightfully confused mix of religious iconography, pagan ritual and candy (like Easter and Christmas, too, for crissakes). But spooky faux webs, jointed skeletons, hand candles and lifelike skulls THRILL.
Although I participate by documenting the big H happenings all over hell's half acre, I prefer not to costume myself materially. Instead I have always chosen the conceptual costume and for many years (before the unfortunate Princess Di Thing in the Parisian Tunnel) went out as a French papparazza.
Then that, then that idea went the way of so much flotsam and jetsom.
Back in college days, when I was grappling with my fortitude, I would pleasingly go to parties obnoxiously costumed. There was the (I shudder) woman's KKK auxiliary member with floral sheets and floral hood, and then the Roslyn Carter as Assassin costume fashioned from a Newsweek cover.
That featured a perfect Roz dress and an unloaded handgun.
This year, after much thought, I've got my costume.
I'm to be a bad-ass. A bad-ass photog which means I'm going to push people all night and yell at them. Yell their names if I know them. Get really close to their faces and POOOOF will go my flash.
And I'm going to wear my most bad-ass ensemble. No Ms. Nice Guy that night. Nope.

I found myself at one point last night backstage at an all-star (to this middling city) guitar player x-travaganza and one guitar x-travagant was saddened that I didn't know who the hell he was. But Guitar Star, I said in my best and kindest soprano, I have never seen you without a Harley-Davidson leather cap on your head (and in so much backstage light) so how in blazes could I know it was you?
This is true and made him oh-so-happy.
The x-travagant guitar ego, example #34,776.
Surprised today to see that at the airport curbside check-in has resumed. So much for anti-American in-convenience.

Today's Bloggal theme: "Technology, Friend… or Foe?"

1. Lead boy colleague, fed up with cell phone nonsense with employer complaining about his work-issued phone bills vows tonight (like right NOW) to let said phone sail from his fingertips out his speeding car's window and through the air and off of a high steel bridge.
I am despondent that I cannot be there to photographically document this event.
Technology - pure foe, leading to exciting yet x-treme behaviour.

2. My so-called rag employer (being freelance I view the universe as my employer) wants to quibble/nickel&dime about an equipment fee of $50 for a pager which I use for the newspaper gig. My first pager was provided by Yours Truly. This so-called employer of your fav Nancy wants to provide me with another pager turned in my a sensible employee seeking employment elsewhere. And then, after a dozen years, I would have a new pager number. This so-called employer doesn't drop one drop of gas in my gas tank, hasn't come up with a digital camera which was a condition of new era of this job (and not leaving to go elsewhere), hasn't provided me with a raise ("salary" = abysmal) in a number of years. Oh, after a dozen years I got health insurance and he yelled at the person who works at the newspaper who gave me hard facts about who has h.i. at this establishment. I have been consulting mentors about leaving this job for forever.
Technology in this case - friend, it's inciting productive thought.

3. Camera is a machine, responsive and durable. It's a helpful tool.
Always a friend.

4. Through a bank of technology next week I will appear on television as a co-host on cable access, yet again. Single malt scotch prior to the appearance is a tool to help words spill out in a cascade of lyrical brilliance.
Scotch, a techological marvel.
Friend or foe?
Silly question.

Being the lovable scamp that I am I'm pondering how to get the editor friend who never learns her lesson(s) and keeps assigning me stories for her shiny happy mag to fly me to Las Vegas for a piece I dreamed up. It's for their wedding issue and again I'm a contributor to the trillion dollar wedding industry - and wedding fact dissemination machine. Just doing my share. And so the piece is to be about ten of the weirdest most x-treme weddings that ever were. I'm thinking Hey, wait a minute, why not fly off to Vegas while it's still really cheap and interview people in the midst of the hurricane of love and vows and paperwork and cheez whiz? And then I can go to the all-you-can-muster sushi bar Karen keeps telling me about.
Always thinking, always thinking, your absolute fav and industrious Nancy.

I bought the new edition to one of my fav photo textbooks from my formative college era. It was, back in the day, referred to as Upton & Upton but since the divorce it's London & Upton. If you can't admit that you're always learning you are an arse.
Stopped on way back to home office hovel/work shack in the scary version of a locally-owned record emporium where an armed man stands guard unsmilingly. Can't one be armed and peppy? They had Macy Gray filed under some stupid new hits section at the front of the store, not under G in pop/rock. As I was meandering and lusting I overheard a great disc on the pa and asked the gangly record shoppe boye what it was. And he told me it was a used cd from a great NYC label. The disc he snapped onto the counter and it was $6.49 and then he said if he sold it to me he couldn't enjoy it so he turned me onto that label and another, Ninja. No compilations were there so I took a $15 plunge off a 300' cliff and bought a double cd from Ninja featuring 3 dj's doing their respective and respectable things. I might have to return to tell him he ROCKS but I sensed an already healthy record store boy ego. So no mo ego flo.

On Friday The Donnas performed in shitty lighting in front of the requisite boys watching them with the respect they'd shine on The Ramones - with the bonus of being able to watch boobies bobble up and down. Singing Donna is now not the cutest Donna, drumming Donna is. And, quite frankly, I'm way too busy this lifetime to memorize their appropriate post-Donna initials. They're a good antidote to the surging corporate rock in the world. Now the phrase corporate rock is making me think of Kurt Cobain's RS cover t-shirt "Corporate rock still sucks."
On Saturday, mid-day in the sun in the middle of an exurb of the middling city, I was surrounded by lady bugs. Usually, in the city, in my garden, I see one and maybe it's one which has departed for the big azalea in the sky and its legs are dried up but its red is still shining on. These were hundreds of living, buzzing, flying lady bugs.
On Sunday an evening meeting in a faux jungle cave with a gathering of favorites. And then there was the faux boxing. Me in the ring with a faux opponent not in my weight class and not in my sexual or racial category. And I beat him down. And I was dripping with real sweat and triumphant and did a non-faux boxing move I've seen so many of my boxing brethren do: punched my faux gloves together as a symbol to the faux opponent to bring it faux on.

Sleep, a waste of time.

What a marathon last few 24 hours. I can't even begin. To tell you.
Money-making, people-schmoozing, fun-ingesting = my perfect perfect world.
REM Perfect Circle kind of night, back in the work/live space and it's now programmed into the cd player to play meaningfully, consecutively, ten times.

Heaven assume, shoulders high in the room.
Try to win and suit your needs, speak out sometimes, try to win.

I'll never forget the time for the first time those words hit my awaiting mind. I was typing on a portable typewriter in spring in the middle of Japan. I was writing poetry and I was alone with the music of another and then Perfect Circle.
There was nothing like Perfect Circle in Japan, and the scent of night-blooming jasmine hitting the face while walking down an ancient and curving quiet street.
Japan in Buffalo and vandals: to halt a soft memory train, today I took my freelance gig people to the Japanese Gardens in Buffalo and was sad to see that vandals destroyed expensive and spirit-housing items. Why are people imperfect.

This night is full of warm breezes.
This weekend is full of delicious rockstar moments.

Some great new Nancy helpful hints to print out and scotch tape to your bathroom wall over the sink, atop your dashboard, or on your fridge. Or in it, if you prefer.
1. When and if you fly Vanguard, BYOBB (bring your own barf bag). They fly small planes where other airlines might go bigger. In cloudy weather the small planes bump up and down. Up and down. When your stomach rises and falls it might need a respite from working on (think waitresses who crassly asks Are you still workin' on that? but perhaps in this case she's floating like those people in rafts in volcanoes upon your stomach acid asking that question to your stomach) things and you find yourself reaching into the pouch in front of you and cheapskates!!! No barf bags. So you hightail it down the aisle, airplane pitching, to you know where.
2. When making a jack-o-lantern be careful how you hold a small serated knife. All.

Returning from a foray into the night world that is my new year. Met people out for frivolity, cake, and the other party thing = cocktails. At one point I proposed a toast, to John Lennon. A chocolate chip-encrusted cake appeared with some candles and the requisite song. As the evening wound down a band from Seattle was setting up in the back room of the bar where we were hanging out. They were a three-piece. It appeared as if they were anticipating rocking out into every square inch of a stadium and we left before they were close to being finished setting up the drum kit, atop an imported carpet. For this gig the bubble hockey game was precariously lifted up into a booth in front of the television. I anticipated a slip, a knocking into the t.v., and a small popping/explosion complete with sparks. No. Just a sad bubble hockey game perched in a booth. And three boys from Seattle setting up carefully, ploddingly, langorously, as we all slipped away into the night.
It is the perfect anniversary of me.
Happy me to you.

what is up with blogger the past few days? I was thinking perhaps there was a block against any posting whose theme is anthrax.

Today is John Lennon's birthday, he would have been 61. Yoko made a statement, at the time of the twentieth anniversary of his death last December, that she prefers to remember his birth and not the yang. I always wished that my birthdate was his, but my mother swished me into the world tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow is my happiest day, the day I became me to the world, in the world. It's like one's own personal Mardi Gras, a chance to truly bust loose and it's all OKAY.

bacteria = bad.
Today I kept wanting to hear more about the anthrax scare (no, make that 1 death, 1 scare) in Florida. Enough already with the focus on the new declaration and formation of the snazzy new Inpatient Security led by the former PA governor, no, Incountry Security, no, well, whatever the hell it's called, I wanted to hear more about journalists inhaling gravely bad things. Doctors or clinicians put q-tips in your nose and then see that you have evil spores lingering in there and then you are Doomed. After online research and NYTimes perusing I've learned one thing: if it's your time to go, you go. Maybe antibiotics will help you, maybe not. (Sad: people selling, and buying, sixty-year-old gas masks) With some of these viruses and bacteria your muscles relax to the point of not just retiring but careening down a sunny highway in a gigantic recreational vehicle with a brick under the brake - if you catch my news-drenched drift. Peace. Say it Loud.
homework assignment to get your mind off anthrax (for me and you) go buy new music for not only will your mind delight in wrapping around a new thing but our president will personally slap you real hard on the back for boosting our economy.

Accidentally just purchased six cd's, including Live Phish cd featuring my photographs. There are only 4 photos on accompanying paperwork in case and they're all by your fav Nancy - one for each member. The packaging is extraordinary, usual paper foldaround enclosing a nylon 3-cd & paperwork container that you must unfold, unfold, and unfold and VOI-fuckin'-LA. Happy. Excellent purchases:
1. Tori's new cd (more literate Tori stories); 2. Live Evil by Miles Davis (heard a drum & bass track yesterday and had to have this immediately); 3. PowerPuff Girls soundtrack (blips, bloops, etc.); 4. Aforementioned Phish; 5. Oysterhead (side Phish project feat. Trey Anastasio, Les Claypool, & Stewart Copeland); and 6. Say it Loud!: Black Music in America (with 20 super-hitz from Louis Armstrong to Grand Master Flash).

Things are not as they seem, usually. Two pieces of evidence.

1. Cult members in white with bright red sashes around their waists walked en masse down the street at 10PM the other night. They were all women, about the same height. And they were all wearing white shoes. Upon closer inspection (necessary so many times in instances of the bandying about of evidence) they were waitresses, classically dressed, leaving the old-school Italian (eye-tail-yun) restaurant called Chef's.

2. A fire burned brightly in a fireplace last night. Logs a-cracklin-, flames a-jumpin' and the scene screamed for marshmellows. But, dig this, this was a faux fire in faux fireplace in a limousine owned by CAESARS limo co. In I crawled, with two friends, into a stranger's limo. He was sitting in the limo. His girlfriend was in the bar where we had been, talking to the limo driver. I smelled trouble for this relationship. The guy was friendly, non-plussed by the sudden appearance of three strangers as his love interest was schmoozing the limo driver. There were also three crystal decanters of bright blue liquid and I said to my self Nance, that's a whole lot of blue curacao. And guess what, epinw people? It was not what it seemed - it was blue water. I know, I made jilted boy sniff it.

Micro pit stop between freelance shooting and journalistic shooting. And yippieyahooaroonies there was a message on la machine that an editor from a respected pub(lication) would like to have me do some writing for him - I'm filled with silly giddy elation, always a pleasant feeling before hitting the streets in search of perfect moments, smiles, and notes hanging in the air.
Is it me or does the fall air have the faint scent of fourteen year old single malt scotch.
A parting thought for this perfect Friday: a pal just about fell off her barstool with oddness when I self-mentioned this blog. You know that thing people do when they are not along for the ride with whatever you're espousing? She threw herself into implosion. Gasoline on epinw bonfire of fun, I say.

I'm so certain that I won tonight's $6,000,000.00 Lotto jackpot that I've been phoning realtors in Manhattan to inquire about purchasing a condo, preferably on Central Park West. And then I'm going shoe shopping. And then charities. And then sushi.
Heard from my long-time friend and fervent art curator that I'm to be part of an exciting collaborative project which funding just came in for. Just when I was forgetting that I'm an artist, too, the art poop hits the proverbial fan.
Long live art poop and the people who make it, including me.
Time to be out and about.
Fear not.

Power to the people. Power to the people. Power to the people.
Power to the people right on.
I've been listening to the John Lennon tributary night wailing away in the other room as I've been flailing away in here, for deadline peace & unity.
Heard Dave Matthews singing John Lennon, almost as perfect as Neil Diamond singing the Christmas Song on a ND collection.
Nearly missed the grant deadline today, as luck would have it I was talking to a friend who happened to utter the word deadline. Terror set in. Then high-speed slide collecting and rapid bio-amassing set in. Told Mr. Mailman about my near-deadline fiasco to his great Going Postal amusement as I handed off the hopefully lucky packet.

Long hair phenom: the smell of people sticks in hair long on length and now I'm sniffing the scent of someone's perfume and I am not so sure who...oh, got it. While at the absolute last outdoor festival of season - Snowjam - a woman of same name embraced me. Was on half-pipe and yesiree those will be gorgeous images. Goldfinger headlined, but before they arrived onstage all the x-treme athletes lined up in all their Molson-sponsored tipsiness and buff glory, many of them hurling (no, not chunks) their novelty oversized check money checks into the throng.

Good deed for the day/month/season: arriving at a backroads countrytime crossroads en route to cornball smalltown art & craft fest I spotted a sign which read: PUMKINS FOR SALE. So I sez to daytrippin' companion: I'll be right back. I grabbed an ever-handy black sharpie and jogged back to the sign, adding a helpful arrow notation and the necessary P. And I drew smiley faces into their two poster pumpkins, adding some friendly zest. Mid-P some lost people from Pennsylvania pulled up in an enormous SUV, having lost their way to the Bills/Steelers game. At the art & craft fest I had a hankering for a caramel apple and nobody in that godforsaken place had even heard of caramel apples, let alone fashioned one. So I headed to a small Masonic Temple (fueled by my lifelong fascination with secret societies). Inside I purchased a slice of apple pie and one of the universe's weakest cups of coffee. Oh, but it was so worth it: for inside, in the kitchen at the rear, were two ladies of the Star, I was told. One was extremely busied with her 120mm cigarette, swatting flies madly. The other was of the white acrylic sweater-wearing genre and she was most kind until I started pumping them both for info about passwords and such. One was a Star member since '42, the other since '73. At that point my thoughts zoomed over to Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon but I didn't think they'd understand. While I was making nice with the sweater lady, smoking lady was swatting out into the middle of the Masonic Temple. She unleashed one giant swat which sent the temple's Star clock made of various colors of plastic at each point crashing to the floor, shattering it. The people inside the temple went silent. I offered helpful advice: 1. superglue would fix everything...and 2. perhaps they might want to shut the temple's front doors to keep more flies out.
As a non-knower of secret passwords my advice was lite.
One weekend highpoint: listening to Hüsker-Dü on vinyl with pals.
Another: hearing how the FBI (as in thee FBI) forbade the Molson Snowjam from acquiring tons of farmpoo/manure to make fake snow from the woman who scented my hair. It all goes back to hugs and hair you see.
Peace for now, perfect oNe.