Back from a Planned Parenthood (today is thee thirty-fifth anniversary of Roe v. Wade) benefit at the ChipStrip dance club Level, also a mini exhibition for K.C. Kratt - images of femmes and hommes with tattoos.
Much discussion about pros, cons of inking.
And, of course, Yours Truly had to mention to a few the (unfortunate) ink from the X, a small nearly-complete star on the inside of an ankle.
This is small enough that YT knows that it's there, and most days it's forgotten.
It's a funny small collection of dots.
I told K.C. and Deb that I'd love to do a cover-up but then, really, why call more attention to this little dime-sized area.
Deb and I discussed the state of dancebars in the Middling City, not a really great one.
Level happens to have a lot of potential.
Still do miss the passing of The Continental, that imperfect joint with really fab dancefloor lined with mirrors and sternum-crushing sound.
The MC is covered in perfect snowman-making snow.
Making snow Love.

One Year, exactly one year.
Pam gave me a 1-20-09 t-shirt this past Friday morn (along with a bevy of other wonderful belated b-day gifts) during our java klatsch at SPoT. It's a nice pale green. It is now one of my favorite shirts, to be placed atop the other of similar ilk, purchased on Lafayette en route to school one fine sunny day:
The only Bush I trust is my own.
Today is also the birth anniversary of Pahts in MN in, undoubtedly, minus five degrees and layers of snow. And, quite probably, his warm kitchen cooking something wondrous. He was the first person I knew that made confit, he put it on my (and several others') culinary atlas.
On my birthday he sent me excerpts from his journal of all that happened on my birthday through the ages - a very touching gift indeed.
Meandered about the campuses of the Big U yesterday in the sun-blasted, pristine snow, trudging along with cam around neck, breathing laboriously into a scarf tied tightly around my neck to keep my face from freezing.
The images are striking, frames full of frozen buildings, trees, shadows.
There are more Perfect cloud-strewn skies and sun and it may be time to wend to shooting in the next few hours before all goes too blue.

Not too blue, Love.

Above is a holiday image outtake, something that illustrates nicely how digital doesn't quite render reds as well as other colours.
Speaking of images, the image posted on epinw yesterday sped off to a new home via the Trinity silent auction. Not sure for how much, nor to whom, saw it across the very crowded chapel.
Swam through the chapel trying to view most or all of the profferings and was enveloped in some hearty conversations and belly laughs. All whilst drinking the requisite auction glass of wine. From plastic, two-part glasses. Noted that several in attendance lost their bottom halves, their cheapo glasses suddenly transformed into those curious and trendy glasses with cups and stems but without a way to set them down.
Minding my own business actually found myself holding up my placard - 386 - to bid during the live auction, on a joint for a weekend up in Canada. Until both the numbers got too high, and me, Annie, and Heady realized we would rather not vacation a mere twenty mins away from the Middling City. So no more holding up 386 once the price reached an astonishing $425. It went for $450, same as for the Visser't Hooft that appeared on the block.
Afterwards enjoyed a few primo glasses (glass! not two-part!!) of white Bordeaux at Rue Franklin's bar with Heady, enjoying the moments with her and DeeDee, as a nearby table of international students celebrated a birthday and sang their rendition of a birthday ditty, and several other familiars and knowns leaving the dining room.
Today is a sunny day, and it is time to grab the cam and meander the world in search of Perfect pixel alignment.

Aligned Love.

Yours Truly has been up since quite early and has already been treated to hearing three - count 'em - three Billy Joel tunes via public address systems in two different locations. As You know, YT is one Piano Man non-fan.
The last was the Italian Restaurant epic tale of kings and queens never being able to return to somewhere, and the dramatic summer of '75 and the greasers ... rhyming with pieces. Greasers/pieces. I see no kitsch value in that pairing, that so-called rhyme, YT would not even tackle this ditty in a scrumptious karaoke moment.

Onwards.
Or, technically, backwards.
Yesterday YT was minding her own business in Sisters Hospital, post negative-results mammogram, looking forward to seeing that eerie portrait of Saint Elizabeth Seton on that hospital mint green wall, her profile floating in a giant, foaming see of hospital passageway.
In my wishing that I'd a cam to document the portrait in the sea YT rather distractedly pushed through on one of those safety bars that pushes open its attached door, not noting one of those red Alarm Will Be Set Off stickers about five feet away.
So, there YT was trying to push into Building D without purpose, reason, permission and then a big, hair-raising alarm did suddenly begin to screech as I was in Building A or C and was needing to get back to Building B for the proper elevators to let me out of this petri dish, this microcosm.
I stood there momentarily thinking attendants galore would come galloping 'round the corner and YT would casually announce I'd made a wrong turn, that YT was truly sorry to disturb the peace. No one came.
YT walked around the corner. No attendants, no one even in sight.
YT backtracked, found Saint Elizabeth again, gave a quick look, and got the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of there.
Tonight is the first of a series of art auctions that YT has generously donated a piece to - tonight's piece is Be Good, an appropriate ValDay image of a hand holding forth a scalloped-candy heart.

Scalloped Heart Love.

Utterly minding my own business found myself in a truly, Perfect situ.
Yours Truly was on photo assignment mere moments past dawn this gray and muddled Monday, the light reading five in the evening of any old day. But the slushy flakes falling from above read winter, winter, winter.
Met up with a campus officer to document him placing personal belonging theft warnings upon car windshields parked in several surface lots on the urban campus.
Said officer was in his cruiser, and alongside him was another, newer cruiser with steel crashbars on the front grill. A more serious vehicle, its white and black paint job denoting more grim matters at hand than the former blue and white model.
So YT was behind the two cruisers and YT stepped out of her own non-cruiser ride and up to the officer's window that he rolled down.
May I see your license and registration, YT uttered.
The officer stated This is the first time I've been arrested by a citizen.
YT wanted to correct the officer (but did not want to push my proverbial luck or threaten the good, jocular vibes), but did not.
Rolled on to document his task at hand and then bleary-eyed students sleepwalking to their first early-morn classes this first day back in the saddle again.
Keeping close tabs on the runs for the oval office, today's hot topics are: an ill-advised comment about civil rights, gasoline on fires, past drug use, emotional involvement in issues, touchy and coded stepping-about of racial and sexual matters.
Onwards to edits.

Non-censored, yet edited, Love.

Here is Yours Truly with her new pal, Stanley.
Went to Albright-Knox's pro sporto Hockey Night last night and saw wonderful large-scale hockey-themed Polaroids by David Levinthal that I need to look at again.
Mish got us VIP tix so we could eschew the whole timed-tix matter and march to nearer the Cup. As we waited in the subterranean hallway of Clifton Hall, got to look at the Levinthals as well as some other Hall of Fame images like a 70s-era photo of Schoney.
Inside Clifton Hall we teammates were allowed thirty minutes with the famed memorabilia which had been driven down from TO.
Saw Stephen Brereton, the Canadian Consulate General, as well as a throng - many in Sabres regalia. One teen had a jersey, presumably a Briere, with rows of masking tape and the Sharpied name Miller atop.

Being allowed to touch the Stanley Cup created a nice gentle fervor, people awaiting their turn to touch and be documented doing so. Others studied the names, maybe even making some macro images of same.
Some other images from there.
Off to a nice personal art project to keep those juices flowing.



Flowing, loving lava Love.

Happy Mill Fill Day to You.
Happy Mill Fill Day to You.
Happy Mill Fill Day to Yoooouu ...
Happy Mill Fill Day to You.

Today is the, uhh, according to the calculations of Yours Truly, 207th birth anniversary of Millard Fillmore, US President 13, a Whigguh, and late in his career a founder of the Big U of the Middling City.
His alleged final statement before shuffling from Buffalo to the other big U's (Universe's) Nether Regions was "The nourishment is palatable," regarding some soup someone had slipped him on a deathbedly spoon.

This image, You may wonder, is a pretty wreath laid at the monument of Fillmore. Each year there's a gathering at this monument in Forest Lawn Cemetery and wreaths are presented by the President of the U.S., Buffalo Club, and Forest Lawn.
There were three tiny flags in front of the obelisk, quite poetic in their diminutive statement, thrust into the thawed mud of winter.

Green is showing all over as the snow is thawed away.
Yours Truly is next tossing together an art proposal to make and do in the pubic sphere, a benefit for Squeaky Wheel.
Details surely to follow.

Following, detailing Love.

So Voilà 2008, spring Sunday, snippets of new images made during the past week: an intense, many splendored image shoot with singer Paul Safy, for his move to the Shiney Apple to pursue his dream; AmberWood, rollicking and new & improved band of the Nephew et al, who played a battle of bands gig last night at that former cowboy bar in the suburbs with primo stage; and an image classique from the Ball Fall Down and the exquisite sparkles and explosions that emanated forth from National Grid (forever truly known as Niagara Mohawk to Middling City Originals).
It is time for Yours Truly to blast off to the quadrant south of the city for a big mag shoot.
Over and out, for now.

Not over, not out of Love.

Well, You ask, what does this image have to do with the price of bananas.
Nothing.
For they don't seem to sell bananas in Sicily.
At least on the eastern edge of things.
Thought a nice sunny image was in order.

One thing Yours Truly is NOT doing today is hearing Igrid Michaelson live on the property of the Big U.
YT had an aural mishap, misunderstanding the sonic matters at hand, that the local NPR affiliate was airing a prerecorded concert of Ingrid from a gig in Philly, and that she is not to play today, here, nearly now.
An on-air personality says to Reserve space, sounded to me like one and all could, with an email, some eluck, watch the on-air show.
But nope.
Oh, velcro and onwards.
Rob Zombie comes to the Middling City oso soon and for that there are supercharged ions in the MC's wintry air.
Once YT witnessed RZ become distressed when a young fan broke his arm right in front of him, and YT, who was standing shooting in the pit - one of those live music mishaps that is sometimes part of that big situ.

Saw the new Johnny Depp vehicle last night and have this to say about it all.
He is a song and dance man, whose face ages poetically, and he still moves like the lithe Euro-living and loving artist that he is. Sigh.

Euro Love, Love.

Early this very a.m. the Middling City News had arrived in its toxic orange plastic baggie and Yours Truly was reading along while the laptop was firing up.
Sadly, read the online news (too late for ink) of Bhutto's assassination today around the other side of the Earth, the second attempt recently on her/her life.
YT followed the story of her return from exile, and was entranced by the image of her bombed-out stumping bus about one month ago.
Her haters did not like that she was a she, that she was Westernized, that she was on the hunt for the big D.
Democracy, not Death.
Read some updates on the Guardian site and was struck by the diff between the condolence vids of Bush and Britain's P.M., Gordon Brown.
There is Bush in his best suit, in front of the White House seal, speaking in turns sadly and in his usual paternalistic tone, eyes glaring at press corps and into the giant eye of the cam in front of him.
Conversely, Brown is in what appears to be a new holiday sweater, in front of a modest row of books, looking down.

∞

On a different note, going to see the new Depp vehicle this evening, Sweeney Todd.
After an appropriate meal of Indian fare, neighbor of Bhutto's homeland.

Land of Love.

Happy Boxing Day to You, from this (at moment) Perfect Prose-spewing Pugilistic moment, where the Middling City shines as bright as a newly-minted Indian penny.
Since just about Thanksgiving it's been a cavalcade of parties and holiday madness continues with a few more to lead into 2008 - which Yours Truly has deemed Year of Art.
In summation, or to create a bit of a Holiday Party Tableau, here, in no particular order, are some musings and happenstances from a hand-picked few sans all names of the cast of characters, no dates, no definite placings – for privacy & magical mystery's sake.

• A nice little electric blue fireball shot above a cast iron sauce pan on stovetop after being ignited to fabricate a lovely, festive rum punch. Manning the handle, the person who'd lit the 1000proof liquid shook the pan, further enabling the fireball. YT took matters into her right hand, reached for a nearby frying pan's lid and dropped it atop the situ. Nothing but rum and sundry other ingredients was scorched. YT was praised by a third person in room for Being good in an emergency. I was a camp counselor for ten years, YT proffered.
• Following a party in the late-night exurbs a nearly-vintage automobile was driven off-road. NB: not an SUV so off-road not so good. Especially at early morn hours of Christmas. In a frozen field. Roadside discussion ensued - to return to party about one mile away to fetch some big, burly rockstars and the like, or to use a missing AAA card to acquire some assistance. But a cop was part of this situ, and a license was also not so present, and things got so complicated but worked out alright in the end. The MC's exurbs might look very benign, but taking it low & slow (as they say in the aeronautics world) is very wise indeed.
• Figgy pudding. Figgy pudding. Figgy pudding. Served amid a lovely meal of trad and nouvelle cuisine. And, like a dream, figgy pudding. As well as Bouche Noël. Speaking of flambé, some of that action for said figgy pudding. And then the screeching of culinary brakes as most at this fete dutifully eat, or feign to eat the fruity, raisin-rich, creamy treat. OK, YT loves figgy pudding. Not one other person in this room ate more than a spoonful. YT received a nice Veuve toast, and applause.
• Amid a holiday gathering someone mutters, kind of sadly, or wistfully, Are the holidays over yet to a rather equally-mixed effect.
• Grooving on Old School MC Vibes, a few guests at a gathering decide to rearrange artwork on the walls. Hostess tipsily compliments the bold moves. It is not discussed again.

Onwards to creative high times.
Boxing, Love.

This is Extra.
Extra is My Little Angel - yearlong, not seasonal.
He is angelic in the sense of manifestation of glowing Love, not lolling Medieval cherub.
But he is a solid champeen loller.
Presently he is thirteen years old and we've known each other his entire life.

backstory: I got his mom and sister adopted; he and his brother were uncatchable and gradually became non-feral, hanging about, and becoming demi-pets.

This is a case of the shoemaker's children having no shoes: Yours Truly realized that Extra has never made an appearance on epinw and it is high time for him to have his fuzzy countenance splashed across the e-universe.
As he is usually in motion, it is appropriate to have an image of Extra motion, conjuring up his active lifestyle: snacking, hunting, meditating.

Pals have asked at what age I stopped believing in Santa Claus.
And to that YT truthfully answers Never, because of a big impartation by first cousin Stevie.
Stevie, who gave YT hair-raising joyrides up and down sidewalks in stroller, blurted out that Santa is oso not real. And I do not recall feeling very sad about this at all, it was probably feeling more like I'd avoided this child-centric ruse.
Invariably, everyone who has asked the question then asks where cousin Stevie is today.
And that answer is he's been M.I.A. for a very long time.

Just spoke with Dorota, out in the midst of some mall situ, having to share her ops about whatever wares were being held in front of her by her mom, her holiday shopping partner.
Onwards to more holiday jingles, tingles, and mingles.

Mingling, Love.

+ And Happy Birthday again to MerryMary.

Minding my own business and motoring in a southerly fashion down Elmwood Avenue in a Middling City blast of this day's late-morning sunlight, did spend a red light's amount of time gazing up at Bubble Man's efforts.
Despite the 30 or so degrees his apartment window is open wide and a fan, facing out, transports bubble making liquid from his oversized wand to the open air, the MC's Allentown landscape below and beyond.
Yesterday, speaking to a couple of architects in verysame neighborhood, discussed briefly some of the characters of the neighborhoods: Walking Man (who has been M.I.A. for a while, who has good luck charm), Wesley, The Lady in White.
We all know their appearances and just run on rumour with their backstories.
Is The Lady in White truly a nurse into keeping germs at bay, or is she afeared of the sunshine.
Is Walking Man an OCD sufferer who must walk and see every square inch of these parts, or is he overcaffeinated.
We just do not know.
Yours Truly is coming up with a sketch for Squeaky Wheel's Peep Show in February, their Artists & Modelsesque benefit event. This year to be happening in the beyond-its-prime-by-about-half-a-century B'Way Market.
I have an idea.
It will fairly rock.
It involves cardboard, and a child lit figure.
Who, like the MC's characters, we just do not know they why's, the whereabouts, the provenance, and the like.

Time to head out to meet, greet, document, and soak up sights just out there for the taking - and making.

Love's Provenance.

There is a time when one may look down at one's toenails and, after some light soul searching, realize - or admit - that the nails in question (and in gaze) have become weaponry.

So, minding my own business, and on a deadline, was heading towards a familiar suburban Starbucks to edit & burn.
In front of me, in the line of characterless businesses, was one of those instant nail joints that had sprung up in the Shiney Apple many years before they migrated to the Middling City. Its name. Who cares. They were open, and empty.
This short tale may be entitled Tuesday's Pedi.
So, as is custom, signing in is necessary. Probably so the evil owner somewhere else can see that the girls are not ripping them off. You write in name, circle the reason why you are there in sort of a clinical fashion. Then choose your colour.
At this particular joint you also choose your lotion - all polishes and lotions are behind some glass doors, not the usual immediate snatch from a wall display.
Also noted some faux palm trees, requisite waiting area mags & sofas, and a tiki bar in the back.
The place was screaming Welcome to Your mid-day get-away.

Yours Truly is an unrepentant laptop worker during pedicures: one of my ultra-fav nail emporiums features a hefty four-bar wi-fi signal.
I was happy to note that there was an outlet just behind my massage-o-lounger, and even a small table to rest the laptop.
The woman who did said pedicure spoke less of the U.S. lingua but no matter, we were both hard at work.
No mishaps ensued - no overzealous filing, no over-tickling of feet whilst in the smoothing process.
Zoom forward to the drying step, feet are under a UV light. For a long time.
Whilst in this phase of pedicure I've got the laptop up on a shelf and, while waiting for some files to open, look over at the holiday display of airbrush design options - tiny pine trees, snowmen, Santas, etc. And ... hmmm, what is this, leaning in ever closer. A silhouette of some tropical animal ... a couple in flagrante delicto ... on what appears to be a massage-o-lounger. I thought perhaps this had been mis-displayed, that one of the mani-pedi girls didn't realize that the tiny gettin-busiests should be in with the Bachelorette or Valentine's Day options.
So, feet drying when pedi lady comes over to check the polish.
She reaches for a maroon can of what appears to be good ol' Aqua Cement but this stuff she's spraying all over the feet of YT smells so utterly cloyingly sweet that not only am I gagging from the smell, but the fumes are making my post-standing-in-cold shriveled lungs fighting off a cold quiver.
More minutes.
More spraying of mystery canned napalm nail drying agent.
More minutes.
More touching of polish.
One more ... No, YT says, please, no more of the spray, I'm kind of sick and it's bothering my lungs.
Back to drying.
At some point, while the disc of images is burning, YT peeks around the corner to spy an older lady's feet slathered with what appeared and smelled to be Nair.
Now I touch the polish and off it swooshes in one swoosh. Another nail, same swoosh.
I point this out to pedi lady, who had come trotting over, and say I think you left oil on my nails, the polish just comes off.
She takes it all off, and repolishes.
More drying.
She comes back (not with the drying agent mushroom cloud) but to pantomime the act of driving.
You drive, she asks.
Yes, I answer, not sure why she needs to know if I drove.
She wished YT to keep the disposable slippers on and leave with my boots and socks in a plastic bag, she put them in a bag, and I explained that as I'm sick and it's cold I would like to leave wearing boots.
She looked cross, and concerned.
I left with boots on, much to her chagrin.
In all the other MC seasons a girl who has just meandered down the pedi path think nothing of shambling out the door of a nail joint in disposable flip-flops, careful to not scrape up any asphalt in the parking lot or street.
So, in summation.
YT had not the good sense to wear winter coat during outdoor shooting on Monday.
But fercrissakes I was not in hell wandering about in foamy sandals on Tuesday after Tuesday's Pedicure.
The End.

Shambling, shiney Love.

Nature. Nature. Nature.
This is an outtake from today's blossomy photo shoot, helped the proprietess and workers to select one for their holiday greetings card.
A delightful bonus was a little visit with Ben, who works there now.
Still have to post images from The Fern Room in ChIll, where Fred's sonic installation made small and unexpected and solar-powered utterances.
Taking Little Laura out for her belated birthday dinner this fine evening after the alleged storm.
Alright, there was a storm but in these Middling City parts it was nothing to even sneeze at - blustering happened but is that not what is the wont of Winter.
Thinking that that is the sort of day on order for the pending Ice Bowl, when JW,Esq. will be jetting in for some iceside hoopla, along with - what - 80K others.


Voilà, Fern Room image.
Time to Judy Jetson yet again.

Verdant, sylvan Love.

Meandered into the favoured flower emporium of Yours Truly yesterday to purchase armloads of green things - to be shot for still-pending holiday card.
As I know the proprietress, talked shop - both floral and imagistic.
Monday YT will be high atop a ladder making an overall of the proceedings in the shop for a holiday card that I will upload on the spot.
Pixels darting through camera to laptop to netherworld to printing joint and back again to the Middling City, to the femme of flowers.
Had a very Perfect gig at Salvatore's Italian Gardens last night.
Must I say that the holiday decs were resplendent, transformative, Renaissance, Victorian, Hallmark, Barnum all at once.
At the rear door, where YT had just slogged through about one hundred or so seniors about to board a touring bus to Anywheresville, USA, there was an ultra-complicated tableau of lights, reams of cottony faux snow, car-sized tree ornaments, and oso much more.
I had the urge to dive into the center of this beckoning, warm holiday womb - perhaps not unlike those who, at the precipice of The Falls, get hypnotized and just fall in with Nature.
Afterwards headed to the holiday gathering of where I once worked, where I worked for fifteen hyper-adrenalized years.
Jon and I decided to do a little aesthetic rearranging in the kitchen - to move a very stellar piece by YT (Snake in Martini) into a place of greater prominence, switching it with a wall clock.
There have been two other occasions when YT has shown up at a friend's home and installed in immediate present an artwork. Once a painting that I now wish I had back, that emigrated to the h.q. of an org that deals with children on the skids - and the children love it, I have heard. The other occasion was the installation of a very large piece as a very special gift to a very special one.
After the former workplace party, which was a lot of fun, especially after I located the sole bottle of white + ice cubes, it was onwards to Club Ukie as I've dubbed it, the Ukrainian Social Hall on Military Road, where Roma et al tend the very lost-in-70's bar.
There is a nearby wallpaper that resembles an EKG in process, in process, and in process still.
Never did meet up with Reese and his mysteriosa last night or this fine a.m.
Onwards into what apparently is a ruse, this speculative blizzard that seems to have blown past the MC at this juncture.
Just in case there is a can of chicken soup in my pocket for one just never knows, now does one.

Meteorological, speculating Love.

As they say in France Il neige.
But here in the Middling City it is like so appropriate to say au jourd'hui Il neige beaucoup.
The city is awash with snow, and it's not letting up for hours to come, according to the voice on the radio.
As is MC custom, people are driving like nincompoops, decades of snow driving experience sailing out their wintry car windows every premier snowfall as they stomp on brakes, turn too tightly into a turn, accelerate with abandon.
With every e-correspondence today have been sending out mad holiday driver advisories.
Went to see my rockstar financial adviso yesterday, who actually saw fit to whiteboard, as they say in the corporate spheres, some fun and succinct facts about The World of Finance.
I alternately - by design - looked serious, then bemused. I was trying, really Yours Truly was, to follow all the sub-genres of stocks, and then the various markets for bonds. I did walk away with the term bond fund in my mind.
Time to brace myself for the next whitened foray.
A pal yesterday texted me a phrase that I will be using in a pending pome because, as You know, good writers borrow but great poets appropriate entire excellent phrasings.

Phrases of Love, Love.

As we Solid Gold Bookers read Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden for our latest reading, we en massed at just buffalo lit center's presentation of same at Babeville. The Church. Ani's Church. Asbury Hall. Home of Hallwalls and RBR, where several friends of Yours Truly work.
Zoom ahead in this past weekend's planned itinerary that included one party in Middling City's University Heights District in a beautiful arts and crafts home.
This District is the melting pot island district of owner-occupied homes, student-rented duplexes, and locally-owned shoppes bordered by Bailey Avenue and Main Street.
At this party I noted that from that moment on I would prefer that my property be referred to in perpetuity as Nanceville.
It was fortunate that I was even at this party and had not been abducted, having shown up at the wrong house with a bottle of nice white wine in my arms. I had been given the wrong house address - two of the numbers were correct, though, I must report.
This weekend also included the grand opening hoopla for Heady's new vet office digs in the MC, replete with treats for animals and people. A man grabbed a dog biscuit that did look very human cookie and shoved it into his mouth. You are not supposed to be eating that, I stated. He probably thought I meant it in a dietary, holiday-watch-your-weight way. I did not. He was shoving a biscuit into his hungry party mouth.
I did Polaroids of pets and Santa. The man designated to be Santa was not there yet so I asked the other owner's son to be Santa and he obliged. At one point I saw that he was napping under his Santa suit and, when he awoke, he said I don't want to be Santa any more and marched down the hallway to ditch the costume.
The next Santa was a man who relished the role, as well as posing with the ferrets in attendance. All the dogs were well-behaved. A rat came, too. No cats, no snakes.
Hung a few more animal portraits and rearranged a few others. Replaced one snake image with another of Samantha, the port I made of her at Harvey Her Dad Siegal's office.
After that ran over to Deb & Jamie's for an expedient visit.
'Tis the season for visits large and small, gifts large and small, joys large and small, shiny plants large and small.
Time for more making, doing, large and small.

Petite and grandiose Love.

Al emailed me last night to stand with him in Bali.
Hmmm, I thought, a rather odd request to travel with him - where was Tipper?
Opening the email from Al I learned that he's speaking to U.N. delegates in the aforementioned about global warming, and could I please sign this petition.
I did, bien sur.
Off shortly to the holiday fete thrown by the Shiney Happy Mag, at Empire on Hertel. You know, Hertel, the desolate wasteland of the youth of Yours Truly which now sports several places to sup, sip, shop for do-dads.
The last-running Republican candidate, that oddball Mitt Romney, was heard moments ago on NPR blathering about his religious beliefs. Stating also that this country is ever-espousing a religion of secularism.
YT imagines the ghosts of all our fore-Americans quivering with not only mild rage but an awe at how a concept - a humble attempt at explication of the spiritual/unembodied - had become a political tool.
As it soon is the birth anniversary of The Nephew, meandered into Hollister to glean a gift of some sort. He's selected a fine restaurant for the fam to sup in celebration of his emergence. And, like his crediting YT for his rock & roll tendencies, for this I am quite pleased and proud.

888-995-hope, not 800-995-hope, as our president stated earlier, is the number for Americans getting bounced out of their homes to call for squeezing into FHA loans.
Apparently the wrong people were barraged with calls from their freaked-out countrymen.

Far-reaching, Love.

I heard the unmistakable clang-clang-cluh-clang of a handbell in the midst of a rollicking rock & roll exhibition at MCA in ChIll.
That'd be Museum of Contemporary Arts in Chicago, Illinois to those in the absolute Know.
There cluh-cluh-clanging as he did a little jig was Tony Conrad in usual ensemble of simple t & shiny pants, as part of a video installation by artstar Tony Oursler.
A really fabulous moment of unexpected delight when one rounds a corner and is in the midst of a living art dream.
Oursler made separate vids of five musicians, filming them and then adding a color atop their segment, projecting them onto various plastic screens all about a gallery.
All together the looped vids of varying lengths became an improv piece of music. Suddenly there was Kim Gordon down on her knees doing her guitar thing. Then she'd fade out and there was Tony again. And Lee Renaldo, and others.
assume vivid astro focus had some - bien sur - complex decals roaming up various walls in MCA. Definitely not as powerful as a full-on avaf installation with music and lights as experienced at Dia or Whitney Biennial in recent past.
MCA in ChIll was also venue for Chicago Tentet gig that was sublime, really the best heard by Yours Truly to date.
To steal an apropos adj from a reviewer for the Tribune, the leathery phrasing of Peter + the international superstar players.
Added this time, newbies to YT, were Jeb, and Johannes. Who've been Tentet members before but not whilst being listened to by me.
Me, Kennedy, and MaryD crashed a party (after more five-star ChIll sushi at Kamehachi) that PB invited us to in honour of the nuptials of Jeb and his wife Jaki.
We climbed several flights of stairs to discover a warm buffet of conversation with the newfreejazz people - and additions.
Saw the sound installation made by Fred L-H at the conservatory of Chicago, in their Fern Room, which, actual signs posted suggest, would make a small dinosaur feel at home.
The installation is solar-powered and is discreet cello feedback.
Also saw PB's exhibition at Corbett v. Dempsey, and acquired a signed copy of the catalog featuring a repro of the PB piece that is owned by YT.
I was slightly shocked to learn, after its pub, a few months ago, that underneath the repro is stated Collection of Nancy Parisi. Sans big green light from me.
Plane to be stuffed with those heading back to the Middling City shortly for an hour or so of cannery before landing in what promises to be a dusting of MC wintry goodness.

Winter Love, for goodness sake.