Completely forgot to mention that yesterday (2/2/02) goes down in epinw history as being one of thee happiest days of my life. In the midst of transferriing my energy from freelance to artmaking I received a phone call from a guy who works at the nearby mega music venue to ask me if I'd like a photo pass and review tix to see
*!*N*E*I*L***********D*I*A*M*O*N*D*!*this Thursday.
Never speechless, but I approached that state and then said Well I have put in a request for both, so, sure and... you rock.
He said he'll let me know fersher in the next few days.
I hope Neil's concert t-shirt designs have changed from last tour.

And who said that this artmaking racket is all fun & games & kissy-huggy art openings?
Why, last night I encountered (no, he encountered me) the guy who runs the gallery where I'm to be showing in May. Seems he's added a #3 artist and he was saying that he's called me 4x and I never called back. I said, Oh, (blank), that's not true, you called me once last month about something non-show related, I tried to call you back and you don't have an answering machine? On and on this goes until I felt the surge of a FuckYOU! emanating from the soles of my feet but practiced the most intense self-restraint ever. In the car I told a pal about my amazing feat of restraint and later I pondered driving my Outback through the gallery's front windows. My pal said You could tell him it was a performance piece. Does this architectural deconstruction fit into the show's theme of crumbling concrete grain elevators? You bet!

Flutters of panic.
That was just about today's first emotion. Freelance gig this early AM was to photograph an officer who specializes in incident management: in other words she is a psycho-going-nuts-in-a-public-place-taking-down-machine and I met her at a training center where she just taught a class to other officers.
And there was her drug-sniffing german shepherd. Flutters of panic.
Me, officer, dog. Not resin-coated, but still, had I been in contact with anything since laundry day a small eternity ago?
Me (in chem-free clothing) and the dog made friends.
Last night I spoke with Dorota and told her how I regretted not getting a counter on this blog nearly a year ago when I started it. It's been on epinw for 2 weeks and only shows to date a pinch over a hundred readers. Dorota told me that she was contemplating attending an overpriced MoMA affair and I said Forget that, for that kind of money take yourself out to dinner and go buy some shoes. Then I changed my mind, Maybe you should go to this MoMA thing and promote epinw so I can have more hits. So we hang up, I go to post and OK-Counter logged 8,565 or so hits on my site and I thought Wow, who knew that Dorota was secretly a computer hacker. I had the mild feeling that I had cheated on SAT's but was going with the lie of scoring a 1600.
Back to hits reality today. And I didn't score 1600 either.

I am being used as part of an experiment: how much caffeine can a person consume and how much adrenaline can course through their veins before implosion occurs.
Results to follow. Perhaps not from me.

Standing on the stage last night I was shooting the wowmighty dj from the middling city's black power station and wandered occasionally behind the curtain where a dozen or so guys were dressing for the fashion show. I have to say the students and The Source put on a great runway show. Saw a Pepe Jeans jacket which I'm now in the process of coveting, a total rock star number.
So onstage I was waiting for Tha Liks/Tha Alkaholics to get their set underway when a very large and very drunk man (his breath left me in a sweet boozey cloud - Courvoisier?), told me (taking me by the arm) that I might want to step away from the plastic on the floor which was about to become a 15-foot tall 40. Tha Liks were not impressive but the woman who hopped onstage in micro-mini and thong sure was.
My ten years as camp counselor/art instructor to crazed inner-city and rural 8-12 year old girls sure comes in handy on an almost daily basis. Secret: I see most of you as types of summer camp child. And this morning I began my day by doing corporate portraits for a company I've done loads of work for in the past. One of their oficers/founders/millionaires is a feisty crabass and as he squirmed around he asked What do you want me to do? Cooperate, I said, gesturing with my hands.
You are all campers and I, Perfect Nancy, am your in-charge camp counselor.
Cooperate.
Or else.

On break from Source Mag gig which is going swimmingly, hip-hoppingly, bustariffically, boombastically. Crudsville, I realized I forgot to have my digital likeness captured and tossed onto a faux Source cover this AM.
Source's website is down, so no special links to there. Laurent, man who hired me, says they don't know which direction to take their site. (?)
What was I shooting, you might wonder? A model search for tonight's fashion extravaganza, 13 girls and 40 guys chosen to traipse across the stage in borrowed streetwear. They were looking for size 6 girls who could float on air - which immediately (+ I am, like, working) disqualified me, a non-6-sized camera-slinging sloucher.
En route back to work hovel stopped at the middling city's sole bubble tea joint to write it up for AOL and Your Perfect Nancy let out a wonderfully unplanned EW when her first tapioca marble entered the double-wide straw and shot down her unsuspecting and unawaiting throat. This transpired much to the delight of more skilled sippers, those in the know. Second thought: can't wait to bring niece and nephew here for fieldtrip.

*Recommended listening material for this post - Tricky's Angels with Dirty Faces*

Tomorrow I will be hiphop photo girl, booked day and night for Source Magazine. So I flail to make today a today and tomorrow deadline day. Meaning, I'm typing like the jaws of hell are snapping at my ass and the Oban delivery truck has its back door swinging open and I'm running towards a case about to fall to asphalt.

One of the weekend's top images, seared into my distracted mind: a man, halfway between old & middle, doing a drunken limbo under the outstretched legs of a hippie chick sitting on a plastic lawn chair in the midst of the bomb shelter bar/music venue, her comfily-shoed feet resting on the edge of the stage. I had no idea who was playing as I was there for a small journalistic favor (and microscopic adventure) for Saturday's final destination. A highly-regarded musician walked in and it was a what're you doing here/what're YOU doing here moment.
Band comes back from break and two notes into the first song I turned to my pal and said OHMYGOD They're doing Echoes... off of Pink Floyd's Meddle... it's one side of an album, I hope they do the entire thing.
His face shrank.
My heart exploded.
Except for the paltry vocals they did a fine job. 23.5 minutes later, we left.
Still scraping fun off of my ceilings after Sunday's fete.
Please pass the espresso.
All of my bean-fuelled love.

A stop last night: annual winter fete where I par-tay with the poh-lease and the cute young one who missed his (I think) better calling as a model was there with his sporty wife. And I approached him and said Well, there's my favorite cop. Then, suddenly, in the Libran diplomatic sphere of my mind I wondered if cops like to be called cops. So during our conversation I asked Can I ask you a traffic court-related question, anticipating a surge of sighing air in my face. But no.
I said Well, I thought it would be like when I'm out and about and someone asks me to tell them all about $80 point & shoot cameras.
So I set up the I'm driving, right, down the z-curvulating street when a cop er officer does a crazed u-turn to pull me - ME! - over... and so on and so forth.
Cop pal: were you argumentative with the officer?
Me: (thinking non-aloud) wow, first question is that and not was said officer a nincompoop? (speaking) NO.
Cop pal: I didn't think so, you don't seem like the type.
Me: (thinking non-aloud) should've seen me quibbling with the man outside of the Vatican to get my souvenir way. (speaking) No, if I had run the light I would admit it and would've written the check and be done with this. So I'm fighting it (etc. etc.) because I know this OFFICER is wrong (thinking) that little rabid evil rissarassa.
Cop pal: Call me and tell me his name and I'll see what I can do.
And further secret details. Moral of scenario: cops are your pals, some of them, and cops sure know how to party in style.
Next stop last night I cavorted with mobsters and drug dealers. Ever striving for celebratory balance I am.
Mid-deadline and happily the hair smells like fixer.
Just returned from a work delivery and stopped off in the record shoppe and had thee Daryl from Snapcase aid me in finding a nice new little recording for a fete I'm hosting tomorrow night.
Invited: cops, passengers, mobsters, drug dealers, record shoppe employees and stray cats (as in real animals, not cheeseball band).
Love to you, wherever you are, in whatever condition you find yourself, always.

Johnny Depp, if you're reading this, Will you be my utmost Valentine? Dump that French bitch and BE MINE.

Living in the near-shadow of a certain circa-1950's St. Valentine's Church I wonder about this saint. O patron saint of crazed BINGO players, bad car parkers (see aforementioned) and modest stained glass windows?
No.
Valentine was one, maybe two, different people. One was martyred in or around 273 and the saintly guidebook states that both accounts of these guys "are equally unreliable." Then Chaucer of all people gets involved, although they don't mention in which part of his oeuvre mention of Valentine happens but then that gets all screwed up as Chaucer might have been talking about when birds mate mid-February, or maybe a royal hooking-up. Or it might be some remnants of the Pagan Lupercalia festival.
Anyhow, Valentine is an all-purpose saint:
beekeepers, travellers, youth, epileptics, fainters, victims of the plague and lovers can call invoke him for their very private physical reasons.
As a 70's-era rocker said:
Love you like a rock.

You know when you begin reading a Perfect Nancy blogpost which begins I was minding my own business when...
that you're in for buckets of evil malarkey.
So, I was minding my own business filing my newspaper column early, checking all facts, being so diligent, waiting for Jen to arrive so we could begin our mischief.
Diligence (OH, I should mention that I'm listening to Radiohead's The Bends in honor of the kaslosh-kaslosh in my head as my eyes move in any direction - sing on Tom, you fucking genius, wail away this hangover, suck the toxins from my cells) was replaced with debauchery in baby steps. First dinner, hobnobbing. Then the rounds of (OH, I should mention that before filing I froze my ass off waiting for the middling city's Mardi Gras micro-parade to come sailing by, wearing the odd tapestry coat with big fur trim I bought with the intention of mailing it to Dorota in NYC until I described it to her) bars and parties.
Censored highlights:
1. finding... okay, maybe not that one.
2. Convincing (I am the convincing champ of the Universe) the parole officer behind the bar at one joint that he not only should do his neat fire-breathing trick but that I should document it for next week's column. The manangement was afeared for their paper streamers and balloons. He did the stunt, I had the f5 on snap-happiest of sports readiness modes, shot away and then felt for my left eyebrow. Still there. Made further pals with strangers singing karaoke.
3. Hopped into a limo filled with drag queens, telling the driver, don't you dare leave with me in this car, dig? And as I put camera to eye more and more and more and more and more drag queens were filling the frame. I kept backing up up up in the limo, a stretch SUV limo.
4. Learning about these kaslosh-kaslosh-inducing things: IRISH CAR BOMBS which I slurped with Kelly et al as I was flailing as impromptu celebrity guest bartender, much to the delight of whoever.
Well all for now. Binges of Love.

Schedule in your disco nap, baby, because tonight is the night to be your baddest and bad-assest self:
IT'S MARDI GRAS!
This is the night, almost like Halloween, when your alter ego can and should bust loose after slipping into some party clothes and slipping a few potent beverages down. For me it's the night to photograph a slew of primo bands and to document the debauchery I might wander into.
And then, when I feel my column is under control and that I've got enough images, it's time for Perfect Nancy to become... Mardi Gras Nancy.
Love and be bad, me.
XOX

ps: theoretical question: which came first, the debauched or the debauchery?

Appeal to the Almighty, ever-able to unloose pestilence and woe:
O Mighty Numero Uno, please make those hee-haws next door who evangelize at inhuman decibels be forever vanquished from the Earth. For don't they Knoweth, Mr. Big Man, that He who screameth in your name and pisseth off the neighbors create bad Karma?
+++
Mentor #1 said that I should march into there during one of their services with my 2,000 year old arm bone - a holy relic even though it is a pedestrian - and proclaim that I'm taking over their church, heretofore known as Church of the Immediate Silence.
+++
ps: God, thanks for inventing Mike's Hard Lemonade!

Music purchases du jour:
New Jagger (his skinny ass + Lenny's skinny ass = YAHOO), Etienne de Crecy (techno pioneer from France, land of strong cheese and long handsome noses), best of CCR (everybody needs this for when the workload is piled up to one's eyebrows) and the new Chem Bros. (perfect).

Everyone, go HERE and make someone you like something nice for Valentine's Day.

The scent magnet (i.e. my hair) is full tonight: chocolate, vanilla, smoke and old perfume/Coriandre. Yesterday I thought It's been a while since my hair smelled like fixer. Soon my hair should be reeking of fixer as I should be in my fucking darkroom making art and not just documenting the artwork of others via my camera and my head/words.
Lead boy colleague wrote to me an email that says I should know better than to contact you on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays because you are a witch on those days.
Which got me to thinking about the translation of Hansel and Gretel that I read online yesterday to write up the upcoming dance production of same name.
H & G had it real bad and if you are ever feeling sorry for yourself you should think of those poor little children whose dad was pussywhipped and the stepmother wanted them outsville and they were left to die in the woods but found their way back and then it happened again and they didn't find their way back and they met a witch who fattened up Hansel and she tried to gas Gretel to death and those were some savvy kids and they got the hell out of there after robbing the witch's stash of jewels and they find their pussywhipped dad again and lo and behold their horrible stepmom croaked and they all live onwards, happily or not we just don't know.
Here's a fact I learned today that I know I'll never forget:
Islamically-approved butchers butcher animals after first looking into the eyes of the doomed and then kill them whilst they face east/Mecca.
That and that Hitler loved golden showers - I'll never forget.
Here's a link to the fine fine Italian restaurant where I ate the best meal of my life.
Love from this perfect perfect sphere I am in at this moment.

Random ruminations of varying import.
As U2 warbles on the pop rock station (here's an antidotal link to horrifying pop) which moments ago had me quietly puking into the office's corner (in lieu of changing it I suffer, an anthropological experiment of sorts) over yonder, I think of the report of their SuperDuperBowel performance. I was informed that they are still using their heart-shaped stage and in the midst of their set they erected two "towers" with the names of those 3K Lost Ones. The person reporting this was disturbed by the "towers" and that they were dropped dramatically to the ground at song's end. Wonder: was it their song "Stuck in a Moment" - the one where HEWSON (Bono's real-live name!) is the football player who misses the big kick, Scott Norwood-style. What's with these Celtic pop rockers and football, it's not even their type of football.
Onward to better music: Luna (omigosh thee Luna) is releasing a new cd, Romantica.
The shiny happy magazine piece is done, euphoria floats about in the cockles of my caffeine-drenched brain folds.

OK, so maybe I was being a bit of a pisspot as I was leaving NYC to return to the Middling City and I had angry vibes pouring from my usually pleasant being. But was that any reason for the team staffers (perhaps on high alert due to the World Econ. Conf. at the Waldorf Astoria - but wouldn't that be surgically examine the incomings rather than excomings?) to double x-ray my bag after a handcheck, x-ray my shoes and then swipe them with the pads which are placed into the explosives-testing machine, fondle me, wand me, x-ray my money belt, ask that I watch the handcheck proceedings and not turn my back in a state of resignment. Oh, and to confiscate my brand new Sephora cuticle snipper valued at $16. Luckily they didn't ask why there was a 2,000 year old arm bone in my bag as there's no good official reason. Of course they're doing their job. Of course I was foul-minded at having to return to this place.
More thoughts on that later.

Now, another Perfect Nancy Prayer to God, ever-looking after her deadline welfare:
Almighty One, who knoweth all and understandeth the power of adrenaline and caffeine having created them, thank you for fashioning another state of weather emergency throughout the land upon which I currently reside in order that I finish my latest piece for the shiny happy magazine. You fuckin' rock, God, O Master of Timing.
And, one more thing, please let the editrix, my pal, not regain her email capabilities at her office until tomorrow when the shiny happy piece is completed and she will be none the wiser, none the worse for deadline wear and tear. Amen and Love Ya.

It was hard to leave Rome.
Note to self: after seeing so many beautiful life-digging Italians with beauty marks like yours you are so not ever removing yours from your face so remove that thought from the In Basket. You have a genetic thing going on in that little spot, baby.
One moment included a tour of San Sebastiano's catacombs, something I had to do. He's one of the Bible's sexy characters and allegedly this place not only was extensive, the oldest, the baddest but where his remains, and one of the actual arrows which pierced his Biblical flesh, linger.
Tour is 5 Euros (the Italians I asked are not digging the conversion and most shopkeepers counted the money out slowly, especially the seemingly endless variation of coin denominations) and we had a tour"guide"lady who spoke quickly in an Indian accent and she marched us along. At one point (being highly accustomed to the tour and the being led around from my international travel grant experiences) I lagged way behind to get a sense of the space on my own terms. I poked about, breathing the old dirt air. I looked into one of the body coves and discovered a small thin bone. Or stick. I put it into my jacket pocket and felt its moistness.
At the end of the tour there was not a mention of any arrow.
Where is the arrow? I asked.
Answer: In one of those boxes up on the altar (gesture of waving in general direction), it's not visible to the eye.
Wait wait and tour lady disappears behind a door and just then another tour appeared. This tour guide not only mentioned the arrow, but flashed his flashlight up onto a glass-fronted box and guess what the hell I saw? An old freakin' arrow.
Note: if you want a right answer sometimes you must wait for the right tour and mind to float along.
Examined the bone/stick later in my pocket in the sun. It's a 2,000 arm bone fragment. I told whoever's bone this was to visit me in my dreams and say Hi. They didn't, must have been a busy catacomb reunion or something.
After catacomb visited an Italian photojournalistic exhibition in another primo neighborhood, full of feistier people and the shops they require. Saw a poster advertising a Ninja Label of London event at a club in the Piramide District and at what I began to call The Embassy (vaguely English-style bar merging Italians and the English-speaking and whose slogan - on t-shirt I'm now wearing - is Forget the Trevi, Have a Bevy) asked about this hipster Piramide District. A whole mess of clubs. Went there. Ninja thing was slow at getting off the ground and into techno wonder so we walked along a street lined with dance clubs, people walking along in the warm winter air, some food vendors and cars also on the scene.
Into another club. As I watched the dance floor grow and grow I felt the moist 2,000 arm bone with one hand. The other hand held a scotch and tonic. Italians do not understand the Scotch and soda combo so I started drinking Scotch and tonic to be diplomatic and you know what they say, When in Rome.
Saw last night/early Rome morning filtered through a cloud of hashish thought compliments of generous and happy Italians having another Roman Friday night.

Two things seen today, one publicly angelic and one publicly tragic:

1. Finally picked up drycleaning and was thrilled to see that the Christmas ornament, a ceramic angel with arms outstretched, was still standing on top of the payphone in their lobby where I left it.
There are lots of believers in that neck of the middling city's woods and I imagine that some think it's a sort of Prayer to St. Jude installation.

2. En route to that neck of the middling city's woods I saw three teens on cell phones next to their car, which they had driven off the road. They were staring at in what appeared to be shock, and not an ounce of mirth. They missed their intended street by a good five feet.

In 14 hours I'll be checking myself in for international travel (with, amongst other things, helpful counter-fellow travellers tools: Radiohead cd's, Japanese music compil., earplugs, handiwipes-sample pak-, cd player). I may e-check in from over there but in the event that I do not, here are a few happy wishes from your Fav Nancy.
It really isn't possible, but I have to say it anyhow:
Don't have fun without me.

Minutes are streaming by like heliumated balloons out a speeding car's windows. Leaving in moments for Roma and still I can't say much more than Me Nancy Me want food Thank you Excuse Me. All the while trying to translate the Italian sounds into French ones.
Amongst the last several days' responsibilites was shooting a 100% dry wedding reception. Towards the end of the night I was having a Coke and a smile and a talk with the snappily-witted "bar"tender Steve and a waitress who was merrily doing "dips" and other 80's-style dance movements out of sight of the guests.
It was revealed to me that several of the guests had imported spirits in their pockets. Steve asked if I'd like a "water." I gave him the raised eyebrow in response. Older guests were drinking good ol' h2o whereas the youngster set was drinking something far far different.
Steve produced a second pitcher of "water" which was actually a pitcher of Stoli.
Being around all those good people made my badass tendencies rise to the surface at a surprising rate and, although I don't drink when shooting weddings, I had to have a glass of cool refreshing "water."
Oh, and after.
Events were documented, tequila was sucked and a house party was vacated until the youngest hours of today.
Purity is boring.
Bring on the obfuscated chaos of perilous Sin.

(another transparently ass-kissing note to God)
Almighty God who knoweth All, thank you thank you & thank you some more for hearing my super-timed and heartfelt wishes and for sending Dave Matthews Band back to Buffalo to make me happy. You fuckin' rock, God. And please, Omniscient Power of the Universe and Rock Stadiums, let me keep my head and when and if I'm near Him (oops, him) again help me to not raise my fingers in the sign language ILOVEYOU and scream DAVE I LOVE YOU, YOU ROCK - as I've done these last two times to the delight of my boy colleagues.
*
Two things, sadly, which I didn't get to utter today after much practice:
1. Ubb-jekk-shun, your honor.
2. May I approach the bench?,
as I had the wrong court date, had to post a BOND (?) and said then to the parking lot man Well, apparently I'm in the Twilight Zone...

Note to self:
I would have more confidence in our President if he were cutting lines in the Oval Office instead of choking on pretzels for crissakes.
And another, related thing.
Poor poor Prince Harry. A little teen experimentation gone from awry straight into tabs and a visit to a rehab centre.
As his wiser, better-looking older bro allegedly enjoys X like no other.

The sun is out and so is the Holga, to capture what appears to be sun out in the world. Yesterday had the most Medieval experience, as I was leaving the house I saw the blue sky reflected and sun reflected in a puddle on the driveway and was startled. Last night with each shot of Cuervo as I did some celebrity guest bartending the night became more dreamlike. Someone handed me a letter from a guy I met ten years ago at a memorial service for a poet artist who hanged himself. The letter was c/o a gallery where some of my artwork hangs like the poet was.
Hawksley Workman was doing showman things onstage and I shot his pinstriped self and after he was way done I saw him walking through the bar, trailed by a catgirl who had been perched, lips wet, above the stage on a balcony, leaning into his aura. Catgirl followed him through the bar and was collecting the posters and flyers with his likeness because, from the looks of it, she wasn't going home with the real thing.
Last night someone told me that they looked at my artwork hanging like the poet and that it ripped into his soul. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. But he did say it made him feel... I gathered it was horny.

Lest you think I've been blog-slacking, Blogger was unable to publish for seemingly aeons as their server was overloaded.
As every minute passes I'm closer to photographing Barry Manilow who, fittingly, started his mega-tour as a 4-night stay in Vegas/Land of Overwhelming Plastics.
LOOP.
Barry, although an obvious patron of elective/enhancing surgery, is forcing press photographers to shoot from miles away (check linked evidentiary image).
Like those suffering from what I call Aging Rock Star Syndrome (or ARSS) Barry will have us photogs at a distance so every creased nuance will be difficult to capture.