My aislemate and I were having a helluva time in #8 (A - me - and B - him), en route to the Middling City evening. First, the headphones. Whose jack was whose? Whose snack was whose? Then he was in the jack for headphones of the woman in C. I said Gees, yet more confusion here in aisle 8. At least he had a sense of humour, and did not fart during his nap.
I bid adieu to Parsons pals, Parsons the building and all that is good and educational in Manhattan. And, despite my capturing challenges yesterday in the computer lab, all went swimmingly with shoots, equipment, attitude, etc.
So on the plane, where I had expected, even planned, to stay awakened and all jittered out on Diet Coke, I began to read a short essay assigned by the Instructress for this week. Who needs sleeping pills when there's Michel Foucault? I ask you. One paragraph, two, three, stifled yawn, up to seven and mind wandered far away, sat out on the left wing and watched the city lights below. When I saw the chapter 8 then that's where things got all nappy. Ate mediocre JFK sushi, believe it, and then saw Marcel Thimot of the concert promoters monopoly fame, who was also nursing the throbbings of a headache. I ask you, once again, what percentage of airportees are sober, tipsy, loaded and hungover. I venture a guess: 10%/15%/65% & 35%. Shit, that's more than 100% but you catch my drift.
Bach on the hi-fi, a stack of mail, just-fed plump stray cats, the swingin' Hispanic evangelists next door going full-throttle, odd overhead lights, unfamiliar spaces. Welcome Home to the Middling City Baby Poet.

Some things just never do change. Like Michael Jackson needing, reaching for little body parts, like be-smirked Bush pretending to have read famous thinkers and Yours Truly procrastinating the beginning of digitally editing & enhancing her work of art. Amongst others in the computer lab last night saw Martha the Brilliant, the PSD instructress, who had heard, via classmate Lori, that I am making a video. Yes, making, I'm thinking... but finishing is another distant story. She asked if I will be showing this work for the grad open house and I sort of warbled out a Yes. Even going so far as to describe how it would not be the unabridged 50 or so minutes but perhaps a much-truncated 5 minutes... or so.
Saw Christy yesterday and meandered over to a show by her pal Joyce Kozloff. Was going to link You to a JK site but, interestingly (artistically) enough, there are none.
Off to pilates, off to Parsons, off to points beyond before my Middling City return.
Love of Travel.

More shooting of the dv tomorrow aft lunch and Chelsea art meandering with Christy Rupp.
So the dust has settled a bit on the graduate student discussion board where two damsels in distress basically stoked fires raging and deep by mis-understanding the usage of candy cig -instead of real - in my brilliant Isabelle Series. Then one of the instigators today refused to spell our classmate Erik's name correctly, and more mayhem ensued when he corrected her and then she jumped on his shit for having an identity crisis when a K became a C. Can't the 15 of us blend into one fine body of intelligence, wit and creativity? Shit I hope not.
I imagine advisor-to-the-grad-stars Jim Ramer rolling his eyes in slightly bemused horror. But, as Yours Truly Perfectly said to him the other night, as casting director for this version of The Real World he knew who was oil... who was vinegar.
Today picked up some colorful contact sheets from Duggal, still images of Tommy and red rose petals from my first official dv shoot.
Sat in a dim Mexican hot sauce fiesta of a joint this afternoon reading Final Cut Express for Complete Morons and Rushed Grad Students while simultaneously drinking coffee and falling into a coma of procrastination.
So, reading only the headlines about Bush and Iraq I am most confused.
One day it's
Let's Get the Hell Outta Here!!!!
next it's
Another Foray into the Badass Heart of Darkness.
I could read more about this matter but have been instead reading about other places, more intelligent, seemingly, leader-types.
Love of news bits and bytes.

Ohmygod Beth, there's a man with a pompadour here.
And what a pompadour it was, heaped and starched to a sleek perfection atop the head of a 40ish art patron at one of the art ops I went to last night. Solo, looking for a place to shoot randomly the hand and eye coordinated interactions of strangers but deciding to move along (the white - wine - was excellent) but the atmosphere, including seriousminded/wrongheaded pompadours, was a bit stifling. Art ops, think revelry. This building, top to bottom art galleries, was filled to half-brim with folks who thought long and hard about which garish pair of shoes to wear, which brush to sleek over the pompadour to utter perfection.
I am off now, no comment from You, to purchase bagels, champagne, head down to SoHo where I'm shooting a couple in love in gesture in video in project in situ.
Off I go.
Production Love.

My image of toddler Isabel with candy cig has created much gnashing of teeth for two of my PSD classmates who have had little to say previously on our online class discussion board. Suddenly there they were, these two righteous women, stating how onerous I am to have photographed an innocent child with a cigarette = HOW could I?, where was the parental consent. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I wrote back a short & sweet, sweet & sour, response basically stating that the child's guardian, another of our classmates, was present, and that no childish lungs were charred during the filming. I made a reference to the rampant moral righteousness in the USofA, both of the wrongheadeds took that and ran with it down the corridor of nincompoopness. My two best classmates, Beth (the aforementioned nanny) and Vanessa, hopped on to the cause defending my artistic and moral integrity. V was right, I believe, that these two are feeling out of the loop, excluded from our reindeer games.
All for now and one for all.
Have set up times for video shoots with suspecting others. Spotted a perfect ramp that is part of my school, indoors, and am wondering how and if the guard will have to be bribed to allow shooting.
Location scouting, production managing, etc., what a racket.
Production Love.

So last night, here in the good city of New York, I came to the aid of a man lying lifelessly on 14th Street near Parsons. Me and another cell phone afficianado were on the phone calling the ol' 911 and were told not to touch the body. Help arrived but not before a few well-wishers tried to touch the body. One person, a concerned man, put his hand under the body's nose to feel for exhalation. I had a paranoic image rush through my mind of the body suddenly coming to and chomping on the hand. It didn't happen.
So help arrives. Two ambulances, one for each caller.
I had located an empty plastic bottle of methadone at the body's knees and thought Aha, a junkie. Who overdosed.
So the emt's shook the body so violently that he was yanked from death's door and he stood, very slowly, wobbly on his feet, his face bleeding from falling. I moved backwards away, watching the proceedings and noted that one of the emt's, the smuggest of them all, swept his arm in a Carol Marol-like gesture, to show the former cadaver/junkie all the worry he had caused in the arc of onlookers.
Ongoing, I am working at school, on the video project, and am meeting with the mentor/advisor in mere minutes. To show the footage. To explain myself. To explain my process. Then it'll be off to the Mac store to ponder the other things I need: more RAM, another cable, the time to edit. Oh, and the time to shoot, to gather the cast of characters and shoot away.
Processional Love.

Here is a very educational site for your edification and erudition and such, compliments of pal Paul Morgan who suggests that you have your computer's volume cranked.
Going to delve in to video, digital video, for art's sake and delve into the video realm at Parsons, also for art's sake.
So, for art's sake, I sign off for now to make the cash money to support the art.
For its sake, my own.
Also: visited the life-sized Buddha at the museum, experienced two years ago, which had me magnetized by some internal energy. Thought Oh, that was then, a mood, an inner commotion. So.
Went back to said museum, paid a visit to same Buddha - Japense Heian period, mid 12th Century, gilded carved wood.
Felt nothing and then a click in my chest cavity then a warmth that held me in place so intense that I didn't feel I could move.
I'm going to write to the administrators there and ask what is this Buddha's story? How does he magnetize? Does he magnetize others? Any other tales of magnetization?
All for now.
Buddha Love.

Masterpiece!
A triumph!
I laughed, I cried, I rode the subway!

That's what I imagine the literary critics will have to say about my newest, latest piece for the shiny-happy mag. Truly, I mean it, a triumph. It's not often that I bust open that word.
Had a discussion with Lead Boy Colleague yesterday about all sorts of photographic and psychological matters. Conclusion? Both are slippery slopes.
In e-discussion with Lori yesterday we co-thought of creating a small and select reading group of Parsons grads. First on the agenda may be the Bataille book about eyes. Been thinking, apparently she has too, based on our class work, of seeing/eyes/cameras lately.
Did I mention that my article is a triumph?
Got one of those personality revelatory evaluation forms from Gary last night and actually filled it out as I had a whole lot of procrastination to accomplish.
One of those things that assume everyone watches television, eats poorly and thinks of trashy cultural icons.
I do none of that, I'm too busy attempting to create my own trashy cultural icons.
Speaking of such, my muse/the Girlpope boy, is coming over for a shoot on Monday night so I'd best be knowing my new video camera by then.
All for now, time to slink off and procrastinate about something else.
Love of this, love of that.

As the director was giving notes I was packing up my gear, listening to his, I thought, overarching negativity. I wanted to pipe in and say Hey look, I have abso-fuckin-lootly NO patience for theatre and I wholeheartedly dug it - don't listen to him kids.
I'm not sure of the title. Way of the World might be it. I was, of course, shooting, shooting production stills. What did you think I was doing there, understudying? I whispered, as I clamored over them, That was great, really great. I slunked off to the front door of the converted church/theatre to discover it was locked and I had to reappear from the shadows to exit rear church out into a bracingly cold night. What a scent, all the rotting leaves and moistness in the air made my heart explode with rapturous life. Rapture in the dark. The title of my first romance novel. The ride that I derailed on at Crystal Beach in Ontario. No, that was Laff in the Dark. And that's another story.
Arrived at the photo lab to see Adrian still working working working at printing orders such as mine. Slipped my envelope of film through the slot as I shouted Don't work too hard, a cliche that slipped out before I could catch it. And he replied I don't, that's why I'm still here.
I began my work day at a grand opening of a business, much joviality in the air, much praise for the man who is a Duke grad who will, by golly, make this business the best business in The Land.
I am off to do more work of non-blogly proportions.
Workaholic Love.

This poor overtaxed iMac dv special edition.
Groaning under the weight of my graphic demands - crop this, post that. Are our days numbered. Only if this discly attitude improves.
Super props to Ron for coming up with a theory that is True. What makes to-go coffee so special is paper cups. I have proved this thesis. What a difference disposability makes.
It is time for Yours Truly to go off into the dark night and vote, polls close in half an hour and I don't want to roast in anarchic hellfires ruled by Republicans for eternity so for now I sign off
Voting Love.
ps: Middling City model Tom the Rockstar is musing for me on Monday evening, part of the Parsons work-in-progress.

Closest I've come to giving someone a well-deserved klunk on ze head in recent memory.
Shooting a race at a college. College has a will-do (by all outward appearances) undergrad to chauffeur me and the video guy, who I've known since his heady rock and roll days, out amongst the race course to get some ACTION shots.
So we pull away in this physical therapy major's micro-mini vehicle... of which he is very very proud. You can tell by its embellishments, his dusting of the hi-fi with his fingertips.
We crawl away from the college, he's a really cautious driver and 100 feet away from the college my suspicions are aroused. Mr. PT Major doesn't seem to realize that me and the vid guy need to get There and get back to the finish line quick fast in a hurry.
He is driving 15 mph. He doesn't know the race course. I should have bailed immediately but decide to, to paraphrase John, Give Peace/Trust a Chance.
So.
I am in passenger/shotgun seat watching his dashboard. We need to drive faster, I say.
Mr. PT says to me C H I L L.
Now I am mentally lunging for his throat.
Me and vid guy shoot race action and rush back to car to make it to finish line when the kid further freaks on us that he WILL NOT GET A SPEEDING TICKET, THAT HE'S VOLUNTEERING TODAY, NOT GETTING PAID, WILL NOT RISK A TICKET.
I say
Look...
now if Yours Truly ever begins a statement to Yourself Truly you know that it's an aural paint melting off the walls kind of statement.
... you are driving 15 mph. The speed limit is 35 here. Mr. Vid, hanging out the hatchback concurs with the pro-35 stance.
Kid tells us both to C H I L L.
We meander back to finish line when I see the first three men in the race chugging up the street, yell, Oh Fuck, open door and hit the road running...
remember we are going a mere 15 mph.
Me and the vid guy are running along with first, second and third place men and I'm thinking not only am I glad I work out 4x per week doing cardio, weight lifting and Pilates but my impulse is to yell Hey GUYS slow down.
I get the shot, vid guy gets his footage.
After the heat of the heat I find my booker and tell him about PT's freakout.
I'm not 100% fersher on this but think that kid might now be in super-detention or expelled or maybe sent down the lake to a really nice state school.
Momentary Love.

Last night's post-party revelry included an aerobic activity recalling the name of a Billy Corgan band. Hint: it's not Zwan.
After Cheryl and Ed's soiree I left with Doug, Laura and Kunji and set off to points beyond. Along the way I thought aloud: You know, I've never swept a jack-o-lantern off of a porch and indulged in age-old pumpkin smashing. Process: leave the car idling in the middling of a side street, creep up to a home, lift pumpkin and charge toward the street, pumpkin aloft. Kunji documented all with her digital camera so felonious results were immediate. I was doing all the robbery. Then I got the others involved. Doug insisted on creating a shaving cream (oh, that's another story involving a couple who would not come out and play and their automobile) target before his alofting and lobbing moment. To our great impatience. My great self-challenge was to steal away - actually I prefer the term LIBERATE - a pumpkin from front stairs where about 2 feet away a group of women were having drinks and smokes. I crept up below the screened windows, lifted up the pumpkin, realized I had only its top, put that in left hand and pinched the pumpkin with my right. A delicious thud ensued. After a while we went to another party where the owner and roomies are satanists, something that seemed appropriate for last night. But, mid-party, I pondered how horrid the black and red rooms and their various altars would look mid-day. I convinced the facially-pierced, dredded and skirt-wearing heap of a man who was the host/owner to let me touch his actual computer in his room to check my email. And then I cleared the room of Satanists by mis-pronouncing Samhain. One of them, a dabbler in filmmaking, said You pronounced it wrong with the most derision I've heard in a voice in quite some time. I said But I prefer to pronounce it like Sam Beckett... Sam Hain... They were not at all impressed.
Earlier in the day, yesterday, I was directly across from the Middling City in NYC and having coffee and a smoke when a stripper named Terri approached. And how do I know these fun facts. Well I know a lot about Terri now. Among the list: she has had her teeth done, she just purchased a Badgley Mischka jacket for $4K which she's returning to the boutique as now it's on sale for $2,300, she has 2 daughters, she worked for the UN as an interpretor, her first language is French - français - and that she knows 10 other languages, that she makes upwards of $2K per weekend dancing at Calypso and that she had just paid $10K to the Montessori school nearby for her younger daughter who does like school as opposed to the older kid who hates school and who spends all her time on her cell phone and watching Kid Nick.
I think that's plenty.
She told me she's pushing 40.
I thought she might have already seen the other side of 40.
I told her I just turned 40 and that it's a great age to be.
I told her that it sounded like she'd had an interesting life thus far.
We wished each other the best of luck.
Were those pumpkins in the middle of the street full of luck.
Does that overfed cat living with the Satanists have a life of luck.
Are my pals lucky that we hooligans took to their car with shaving cream instead of sledge hammers.
Lovely lovely luck.

Minding my own rainy day business, having a super-caffeinated respite, I looked down on the ground and received a message from - You guessed it - God.
The message is on a little yellow construction paper heart that someone carefully made by folding the paper in half, for symmetry's sake.
On one side reads this carefully inked message:
If I have no Love I am nothing.
Right on.
So as I blog this message of import to You I am concurrently missing the special presentation and thoughts of one famed John Paul Caponigro.
Flailing away on my shiny happy mag story about chopping in NYC, and it's centered around the Green Line - the ol' 4, 5 & 6 trains. It is brilliant, full of red hot tips and the like. And also slammin' images. Amongst them images made at the Michal Negril boutique within ABC Home. Michal Negril is a jewelry designer and clothing designer and musical producer. I purchased her cd last time here in NYC and upon returniing to the Middling City and to my hi-fi went to play the cd. Only there was NO cd in the package. I wrote to Adva whose name and email address was in the cd expressing my heartfelt disappointment. She wrote back and told me that the company would be sending me a new one, etc.
The package arrived from Israel and in addition to the new and improved and present cd was a trinket that Michal made. A very crystal-encrusted icon for the walls of home. A good luck charm about six inches high in the shape of a hand. Good luck.
It is a very generous gift.
Moral of the story. When disappointed be gregarious and gregarious returns to you in buckets. And lovely messages on paper hearts.
I rest my case.
Love.

Tonight I told one of the richest men in the Middling City this, as he was en route to the podium for a little mid-reception intro-ing:
And remember to smile, in my most self-surprisingly snarky voice.
So he did smile, right at me, and said, into the mic, Look I'm smiling for you.
This would be the same man who, as I was speaking to a venture capitalist (perhaps one of this great land's last) I know and who I've shot for, bragged about his Leica collection, who took my camera out of my hands to shoot me with the venture capitalist. How did he do? He probably does better with a Leica, less of a complicated machine, in his hands.
At one point at aforementioned reception a student/server asked me (well before his time) Are you a professional. Only a stone's throw from the question mentioned in Sunday's post.
I said, over my shoulder
Of course I'm a pro, can't you tell by the way I can shoot through this floral arrangement.
I mean really.
Student/servers and their silly questions these days.
Today snarkiness at the deserving.
Tomorrow I jet off to Manhattan for high times and misdemeanors.
All my jet stream love.

Setting:
Halloween-themed wedding. First-ever wedding happening at a downtown Middling City venue. The venue put finishing touches on the room 45 minutes (according to my former chef friend Paul et al who now happens to be the new venue's GM and it ain't motors we're talking here... we mean suit, tie, pressure, eyes all over details and the staff) before wedding reception, much to the Type A Chagrin of bride. Bride is dressed as a bride. Groom has changed into a devil costume. If ever there was a man undeserving of a devilish costume, it is this man.
I am the wedding's photographer (if I had a Euro for every grown man who has asked the question - drunken and non-drunken - Are you the Official Photographer (emphasis on Fish) I'd have enough to retire tomorrow to a French chateau and employ a houseboy and have enough guest rooms for all my pals.
The reception is underway. Guests are still arriving in costume when Yours Truly spots a man leaning with shitloads of attitude against a wall near the patio for smoking.
He is completely dressed in black leather, is wearing cowboy boots, aviator frame shades, a duster overcoat and has shaggy, circa 1970s hair.
I approach him not with the intent to shoot but talk.

Bob Seger, you're Bob Seger, right.
silence, more leaning.
Bob Seger, right, you're dressed as Seger - Night Moves?
silence, more leaning.
Suddenly I think No wait, maybe it's Neil Young. No, Neil wouldn't be fucking caught dead in a duster jacket. Paul Hogan? No, it's a rockstar.
You are supposed to be Bob Seger, aren't you.
"Bob" takes off his sunglasses, revealing blue eyes rimmed with crimson.
I AM MYSELF.

Later in the evening I found myself in a storage room with Paul, who whisked me away to have me paint his face Like Alice Cooper.
What exactly do you mean by Alice Cooper.
I wanted to be sure as I've known Pauly for a long time (he's one of the few who still calls me by my self-Italian-nickname Nunzia) and didn't want to drive a Halloween makeup fuckup wedge between us and our longstanding joviality.
Tear drops, he instructed, one on this side, two on this side.
I added shadow. I said, Relax Pauly, I'm in art school, I KNOW how to do this.
He laughed.
I said, No really.
Then while I added blood spilling out of his lips he told me he's getting divorced and other fun facts.
I shared one of my several theories about relationships.
I was done with the makeup and he offered me a scotch and soda. I said Only if you can make it look like a tall ginger ale.
After finishing the "ginger ale" I sought out chunks of gorgonzola and strategically-placed Halloween treats to mask the scent.

Masked and scented luvv.

Bumper cars of logic and change cavort about at this moment as Patti, thee Patti, thee only Patti, thee only wall-eyed Patti, sings Because the Night as I crave and yearn and post and am about to head back out for ding-ding round 4 rest of the night.
Had dinner with three lovelies (Kate, Liz, Cheryl) this evening and at one point snatched the comical/seriousical Middling City weekly out of Liz's hands. She tried to stop me, suspecting the brakes would be thrown on my good times. Wrong. I leafed through in smirky silence. Cheryl: We're awaiting your colour commentary, Nancy. Then it was unloosed from my honest, journalistic-raised and diplomatic pair of lips.
I was très inspired to evacuate the premises and squat in front of my very illegally sidewalk-parked car to change the sidewalk sandwich board. ARTVOICE became Fartvice.
Immature.
Sated.
I have simple goals, simple pleasures.
You should all be so lucky.
Yours in Immaturity.

Despite my somewhat dishevelled and over-caffeinated grad student condition (in case you do not know this means hair unbrushed, eyes glazed, shirt not really thinking of being tucked, curvature of the spine and wait... oh, matched socks) you do really want to be my pal as today I finally received my official and really great (despite the 50/50 blend) BLOGGER hoodie. Now I can wear my colours with pride, with urban abandon.
So that depressive singer/songwriter Elliott Smith self-dropped out of the life race, no surprise, having heard his oeuvre.
All and now it's time to race out to the suburbs once again to deliver my handiwork that makes people not only smile but pay me.
Love.

One of Yours Truly's dabblings (dalliances) is saintly historical fact or lack thereof, the miraculous administrative process of beatification and the life and high times of soon-to-be-saint-to-you Father Nelson Baker of Lackawanna-based Baker Hall/Orphanage fame.
So imagine my piqued curiosity and Catholic-induced intrigue when Mother Teresa of India is in the Express Lane to sainthood. The Pope, as I've always said, is No Dope. About to leave this un-astral plane he's shoved his bud to the front of the line. And yesterday elevated several cardinals to boot.
Imagine my glee upon reading VF contributor Christopher Hitchens's piece in one of today's Slate posts. If you have a desire link
here maintenant.
This story digs deep and reveals her unmatronly duplicity.
Amongst the piece is an excerpt from her 1979 (hooray at the Memory of Jim Carter, decidedly un-hip, cause-ridden U.S. prez) Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which she states I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself.
As I listen to John Lennon, amongst others, on cd shuffle, and among the music Imagine popped up moments ago I find Teresa to be (one of my favored words of late) just so wrongheaded.
I rest my rightheaded, really not righteous, case.
Libra Love.

Since seeing his holy rockstar likeness on VH1 (with an odd new logo, I might toss in to the fray), I am wondering how it is possible that Michael Stipe of REM stellar humanhood has begun to resemble Woody Allen of all men. Stipe was never a handsome man, even with his early 80s tossled hair (yikes, and then that frightening longer hair pulled back into a braid - the hairdo I witnessed in that thrift shoppe in Athens GA when I spoke with him that empty early morn), and his eyeliner underscored his gauntness - but Woody Allen?
It's disconcerting.
Another cd, another tour are coming from down there where vines grow visibly and the voices of men rattle basso profundo with mystery.

There's a night of Beckett/Albee near PSD/Union Square and that's on the big to-do list, experience one of the muses firsthand.

Muse Love.

Yours Truly, a Geek, a Gear Head. Evidence.
Was at the NPPA conference, Northern Short Course, yesterday in Cleveland. As in O-Hi-Oh!
Touched a Nikon D2 yesterday (eta: 2 weeks on the international photo scene), slithered around its newer, larger back-end controls and its other bodily functions, like a hungry non-poisonous garden snake.
Power: wireless transmission from camera to laptop.
Power: improved snazzadelic magnifying of captured image.
The nice Nikon repair man onsite, Michael, fixed my f5's.
Not just the loose/missing screws but the flappy grips' rubber.
Hovered back twice in an hour due to separation anxiety.
Spent much time at the Olympus table querying about the in's & out's of my 5050. Things like super secret metering items, and much much more.
Three photog speakers waxing big on the craft, the Zen of ops, rush of priviledged view, more.
Wondered how the Parsons others would find the other realm of image, of non-art doc work.