To mildly put it Andrew WK last night, playing at Middling City College's Spring Fest, was r-i-p-e, just the way he wants to be. Dirty white t-shirt, dirty white jeans and new white sneaks. Shooting from the pit I kept smelling something and realized it was him. Other than the aromatic category he looked hot. I nearly missed his spit, or vice versa, and was at one point entangled in his mic cord. The other bands, The Used and a regional hip-hop operation, One World Tribe, were good but did not approach WK's hype machine. After their set I talked with WK's bass player and asked if they were working on the second cd. He sort of looked at me for a while and then said, Well, Andrew is playing all the instruments and doing all the vocals. I actually have two other band projects that I'm working with.
So this is merely a touring band. And one of the crew pointed out, as we stood stageside, that Andrew WK and pals were playing along to a DAT. I was dubious until he pointed out that there were ghostly keyboard parts happening and Andrew was center stage brandishing his mic in his manic salutatory, repetitive sign o'the cross manner.
Tonight is Patti Smith. This might be the only other rock star in front of which I might be starstruck. I really cannot recall who was the first so maybe this is false - SHE is the sole rock star that may leave me starstricken. PJ Harvey did not do so, though her Jimmy Choo shoes made me a bit jealous.
All for now and over and out.

Big news yesterday was that some Americanos discovered suicide jackets in Iraq and all I could think was What a great band name.
Fav Middling City band is imploding, or exploding, depending upon how one fixes one's gaze to musical matters - both the guitar star and drummer of Last Conservative stepped off, Roger for creative diffs and Jeff because he would prefer not to tour. Not tour and in a band? Kiss your self-respect and prospects au revoir.
Monday I jet back into the Broome Street galaxy of Dorota for a few moments to schmooze my schoolies at Parsons and to hear ol' craggly ass Duane Michals who exhibits an enormous amount of that special X factor that makes us photographers amongst the most special people who walk about: resourcefulness. Michals shits resourcefulness, pragmatism and that Can-Do-ness that is infectious. Geez, I hope not infectious with all this SARS paranoia. Not so far from the Middling City Toronto is QUARANTINED for god's freakin' sakes.
And a few weeks ago Laura asked me if I thought it was worth the risk to shoot up their for some rock and roll and I put on my most Disdainful/Fuck-the-Establishment posture and said, Of course.
Wait a second, I have not changed my mind.
SARS, SIDS, AIDS, SCABIES.
I am seeing a pattern, all these pestilences have s's, they make a snakey sound.
You can take the girl out of the English major but you can't take the English major out of the girl.
Power to the People, right on.
Speaking of such: I have waited my entire LIFE to see Patti Smith and I get to shoot her twice this week - time #1 with Nalph Rader at a patchouli fest and the following night at a proper joint.
Love.

Minding my own business I was at my last Dyngus Day stop at the Adam Miskiewicziczicziewiczskiiewcz Library and then Krupnik started flowing like the waters out of squirt guns.
Also minding my own business I was talking in a corner to CG when a guy started squirting me in the face and I began swatting him hard in the ass and environs. Turns out he's an off-duty cop and shows us his piece. Just then an acquaintance who works at City Hall moseys over and the off-duty cop starts patronizing the little City Hall guy and then I point out the off-duty guy's piece in his belt, next to his Dyngus-worthy squirt gun. The little City Hall man says this, to the amazement of CG and I:
What are you fucking nuts, you're off-duty, drunk and carrying a gun? (he's moving aside the jacket of the off-duty cop to see his name emblazoned as he's dialing his cell phone)
CG and I are watching over the minor anti-Dyngus melee (well I did offer up the Hey, HOLD ON A MINUTE HERE GUYS, THIS IS DYNGUS DAY) to no avail so then the off-duty cop runs out after the man making the call to the other authorities and I wander out, too to make sure that the little City Hall guy doesn't get his ass whooped.
Despite that legal entanglement all was delightful chaos with pussy willows brandished, krupnik gulped and water pistols asquirted and new pals and enemies made.
Holiday love and mayhem.

OK, so my Good Friday greeting card scheme never panned out.
Happy Good Friday!
-or-
Remember! No Meat! Good Friday! (the tri-fold)
failed to capture the collective Christian imagination.
Living in the vicinity of a Middling City Polish bakery one cannot forget annually that from 1-3PM the hardcore and zealous do not speak! Do not shop! Do not a thing!
Then they queue up outside the bakery door, somber, like the joy has been drained from their forms, so long a line that they block my driveway and, invariably, I'm in a special super rush and one of the somber has left a shitty American sedan in my drive and I must get out and push through the line to yell this special annual Good Friday greeting in my best and richest Episcopalean Church Choir/Diocese-trained alto:
Whomever is in my driveway will roast in the conflagration of Hades for all of Eternity much like they've eaten a Middling City Sahlen's hotdog - displeasing God and his cohorts all the while.
Off to write poetry, nay, to fine tune my pomes, for a marathon poetry reading in 9 days or so.
The Resurrection of Baby Poet.
Post of words from my irreverent post.

Monday = Dyngus Day... yahoo.
Dyngus Day is when it's absolutely okay to whack complete strangers/men usually with pussy willow branches. And in turn these strangers squirt all the ladies in the house with super soakers (actually most joints allow none of those any more) or squirt guns. Recalling a few years back when I loaded my squirt gun with cheapo vodka and fired into the mouths of strangers and new acquaintances.
Yesterday went with Lead Boy Colleague to Middling City's famed Broadway Market and for a Wednesday avant Easter it was fairly crowded with those tooling around to buy their butter lambs, fat sausages, plants, buckets of candies, pre-decorated eggs. Shot from the hip which is always a gas - wide angle at the ready, everything preset and then the funnest thing of all, floating invisible amongst the unsuspects.
Bought $7.50 worth of pussy willow branches which is a heavy armload of them - three bunches. The hardcore vendor/carnie/haggler wouldn't cut me a break. After leaving the B'Way Market, and back on the sad east side street I wound up and gave Lead Boy Colleague a good whack on the behind area, sending those tiny gray kittens shooting all over the place.
After that we went to GiGi's Soul Food joint, my idea. Note to self: GiGi's makes the best tuna fish sandwiches in the world.
Soul Love.

Fired off, armed with caffeinated recollections (exhumed from as far back as fourth grade) and très dusty Compact French Dictionary, an Easter card to ma famille Française. They might write back that I've made a hopeless hash of their mother tongue, that I might think of practicing a bit before tossing malapropisms across the universe. They wrote to me and I responded via the French Yahoo site link: I chose a template incorporating an odd face made from a coconut with a ribbon about the head. I think it was an Aunt Jemima-esque Easter coconut and it'd never fly in the USofA.
I assured my French family that I agree(d) with Chirac, as do most of the people I know.
Mais maintenant la guerre pour pétrole est fini.
(But now the war for oil is over.)
Joyeuses Paques.
And Happy Passover to you, too.
Joyeux Paques is like Aloha... means both Happy Easter and Happy Passover.
Off to newsy deadlines.
Paques of Love, incorporated from lush and lusty France.

Tossed Do You Realize by Flaming Lips on the hi-fi for wordy inspiration. I want to see them again soon and bask in their superstardom.
Tonight I'm returning again again a-fuckin-gain to the suburbs to see famous photog Joel Meyerowitz give a slide show & tell at an extra-Middling City college.
This past Saturday night went to an art op following a freelance gig and upon entering several people scooted up to pronounce that an SNL castmember (don't watch it so I don't know if she's current or not but crikey I better do some online prodding so I can write a snappy and quippy and informative kapshin) was IN THE HOUSE = Molly Shannon.... Shannan.... Schannihn?
The one who was shot for the cover of RS a few years ago with fellow SNL castmembers and I'll never forget the following month an astute RS reader noted that nobody bothered to airbrush Molly's stretch marks. I was so curious I looked back and thought What stretch marks?
Talked to her and she was small and wrinkly and very nice.
At thee very same opening met someone much more significant for the likes of me: the current director of Visual Studies Workshop (Scott David Laird) who I chatted with for a long time, drinking much of his booze he had imported for one of the Brooklyn artists strutting his visual stuff. It was the sugary crap that the uninformed drink - bourbon. But it was a better one and it was passable. Especially that I was too busy schmoozing to really allow my honed tastebuds a true embrace.
I asked Don't you know that single malt scotch is better? He insisted he did. Then what do you like? I asked, suspecting that he lied.
Oban was on his top three list and now I not only think he's worth schmoozing for art reasons but for other, nearly more important matters.
Over and out to the 'burbs for erudition.

Tossed Do You Realize by Flaming Lips on the hi-fi for wordy inspiration. I want to see them again soon and bask in their superstardom.
Tonight I'm returning again again a-fuckin-gain to the suburbs to see famous photog Joel Meyerowitz give a slide show & tell at an extra-Middling City college.
This past Saturday night went to an art op following a freelance gig and upon entering several people scooted up to pronounce that an SNL castmember (don't watch it so I don't know if she's current or not but crikey I better do some online prodding so I can write a snappy and quippy and informative kapshin) was IN THE HOUSE = Molly Shannon.... Shannan.... Schannihn?
The one who was shot for the cover of RS a few years ago with fellow SNL castmembers and I'll never forget the following month an astute RS reader noted that nobody bothered to airbrush Molly's stretch marks. I was so curious I looked back and thought What stretch marks?
Talked to her and she was small and wrinkly and very nice.
At thee very same opening met someone much more significant for the likes of me: the current director of Visual Studies Workshop who I chatted with for a long time, drinking much of his booze he had imported for one of the Brooklyn artists strutting his visual stuff. It was the sugary crap that the uninformed drink - bourbon. But it was a better one and it was passable. Especially that I was too busy schmoozing to really allow my honed tastebuds a true embrace.
I asked Don't you know that single malt scotch is better? He insisted he did. Then what do you like? I asked, suspecting that he lied.
Oban was on his top three list and now I not only think he's worth schmoozing for art reasons but for other, nearly more important matters.
Over and out to the 'burbs for erudition.

Minding my own business at an art op last evening I was approached by a burly boy grad student who wanted, he said, to give me a video tape. Why do I get a present, I asked, and how many of these tapes are you giving away? He said 50. I said Well let me shoot you handing the tape to me. Then he handed me the tape, saying There are instructions inside the tape that you have to follow.
What, I asked, like get naked and run down a busy street?
Smirking all the while he handed it to me as he slid it open revealing that he was putting a 'subtle curse' on me, à la The Ring. How... unoriginal.
Well I didn't watch the video at midnight, I have as much subtle curse upon my head as the next photog and HOLYSHIT, I just made Dorota-style coffee that might just eat the enamel off of my teeth.
Onwards to weekend photo and swilling ops.

The day's last gig is shooting a Middling City band who doesn't quite pack the nominal punch of, say, Anal Pudding. But Last Lemming is still a fab rock name.
Opted last night to not shoot The Vines and am focused on rock things ahead. I heard The Vines show did not sell well. Could it be as they were so hyped at the beginning of the year? Because many possible audience members cannot distinguish between The Vines and The Hives.
Vines: cuter boys.
Hives: more screaming.
Oh, the fucking chair project was jettisoned. It was not simply a fiasco but a flaming fiasco, as I am wont to say.
In lieu of handpainted and shellacked wonder they're getting a handframed and non-shellacked photograph and damn well better love that.
Over and out.

Over-charitied out once again and find myself painting a chair for the annual theatre benefit whereby community members paste do-dads and découpage chairs. I'm of the découpage and hand-painted school of chair charity. Which means this: it's 9PM and frantically I'm slapping paint on a Moroccan sort of stool before I burn the edges of a Conflagration black & white photo and then paint flames up the six or eight legs. When it's done it'll be a real looker, a true keeper. Oh, did I mention that they want it there at noon tomorrow? With time travel backwards and forwards the poison polyurethane will have PLENTY of time to dry over the photo.
Taking a break from underside coat of paint number one. If I crank the forced air heating up to 90 it should be dry in a few moments.
Over and chair out.

Met up with Reese and his lady friend after a couple of freelance gigs and asked them if I smelled like coconut. Reese leaned over, Nope, why.
I explained that after I got extremely chilled while making two student athletes run past again and again a craggly coach for a college mag cover shoot that I popped into a tanning parlor on a whim, for a truly suburban experience I've never had before.
!
When I saw lobster man come in and then the Marlboro man I nearly ran screaming.
The girl at the counter could not believe that a tanning virgin was on the premises and everyone had to take a look at my untanned hide.
It was free.
It was eight minutes of roasting on a hard plastic bed slathered in Afro-Sheen.
As I left I saw a tanning phone booth and read the warnings on the wall.
UV rays. Holy shit, what did I think I was doing, my northern arse microwaved after all these years of avoiding anything resembling the sun.
So I have that to report.
Rays of love.

Tonight is a glorioso hipsteroso event, the rescheduled Jayhawks gig, and Reese Campbell, according to an answering machine message from earlier, is en route with a gal pal. Many people are pumped up about this show. I will be there, with camera on neck and a bell or two on.
Baldie Billy Corgan and new bandmates - Zwan - were good but I preferred Queens of the Stone Age who had six times the charisma. Arrived a bit late for their permitted songs 3, 4 & 5 due to ultra-icy driving and meeting up with a Boy Colleague on the way in. Mulville was on his way out, grumbling about the contract that Zwan wanted us press photogs to sign.
I don't sign those any more, he said, and went back to the Middling City News' downtown orifices.
What he didn't notice, I don't think, was that my dashboard was festooned with a Middling City News Let Me Park Here Motherfucker sign, swiped from Lead Boy Colleague on one ballsy occasion.
So I'm tardy for QSA set and chugged up to the barricade during song #6.
One of the student/security guys told me so so I shuffled off to the bleachers and shot them from there, actually a great angle. Waited until a wash of yellow and white lights hit the stage and shot away, slunked down next to some pot-gulping students so nobody would see me.
During QSA there was (no lie!) a 500-pound person/woman seated before me about four rows completely rocking out, whipping her head all over the place and sort of flapping her arms. Her enthusiasm was contagious and the scrappy guy seated to her right began to do the same.
While watching her gyrations two big guys carried a limp male student's body from the crowd.
Now here's the part where I thought Wow, Nancy, you are one vet/pro/jaded/hardened person. I watched the proceedings, the guys laying the body on the ground a few feet from the feet of the gyrating lady, saw them working on him and I looked up and away back to the band.
Turns out the guy had just passed out and after he was conscious again some cops took him away.
All for now and one for all.
Misguided love and all.

Incomparable Portale saw my name on the rez list and when I said Hey, can you tell... the front deskers said He knows you're here Nancy. To my great delight he fetched me away from my table to see him in the expansive subterranean kitchen where a photo shoot for his next cookbook was in progress. Hugged, kissed and watched this photog at work, a Japanese man who spoke notta worda English. They had the setup at the ready and were winging which dishes were to have their souls stolen. They were using fine papers from Kate's Paperie as little backdrops and he shot everything on a 4x5 camera. I was not blown away by the Polaroids. The upcoming book is to be called Simple Pleasures. His magificent food (especially what he does to ducks) is Pleasure by far from Simple.
Stood in front of Chelsea Hotel where a video shoot and DKNY commercial were being shot. Sucked in my cheekbones (the top set) and did my best to look like a star!! to be discovered. Was not. Dejected, I came to Dorota World HQ where I blog.
Love.
Starry-eyed Love.

Writing from Dorota's World HQ as the wispy Sarah Jessica Parker jogs around 5th Avenue amongst a faux traffic jam, filming Sex in the City. Talked to a NYPD member and he told me who she is. I said Oh, I've never seen that show and he said I thought it was a big girlie hit?
I mean really.
A homeless guy asked me for money on Lafayette and I, sans thinking, said No, thanks.
He wandered away muttering all the while No Thank You! No Thank You! That's not even the right answer. No Thank You.
Oh, in NYC.
For a few more delicious days.
A city that matches the perfect freneticism of my mind.
Over and out.
Tonight, a visit to Portale's joint, the most favored Gotham.
Love.

My day is half over (half full) and have worked, I speculate, more today and yesterday than some work in a week. In the midst of deliveries have been thinking of a new New York City slogan.
A sampling:
New York City, City of Escape!
Fine tune your senses in Manhattan.
Binge looking - New York!
Come to New York and drink your ass off... we'll do the driving.

Tomorrow. Plane.
Tonight. Deadlines.
Yesterday, a smarmy song by the Beatles.
Did John write that one?
For the love of John.

Sheila Divine's sold out gig last night was perfect. More so since my images from then are arresting, to be blunt and surefooted. Will be shuttling some over to their manager, pal Rich. Went up to their dressing room with Rich prior to their set and Rich said Hey guys, look who's here. They all turned and I queried Do you guys remember me from the art gallery? They all started laughing, recalling my photo demands to look enthralled and bend their bodies around artwork.
Some doofus proposed to his gal during the show and in retrospect that was the show's lowpoint. To date I've witnessed four such ultra publick proposals and there's a collective awkward gawking happening, waiting to see if She says yes, or no, or fuck off.
Half the Sheila Divine crowd booed the guy on his knees. Half were hootin' and hollerin'.
I was above the stage, shooting down from stage left and was vomiting onto the stage from 20 feet up.
She said Yes.
Dino, the head of security, led them off the stage.
I found the couple huddled oddly in a corner a little while later to id them. I asked Him So Why here? He said, very profoundly, very seriously, very ominously,
To create a moment that she'd never forget.
I can think of armloads of wondrous unforgettable manmade moments and oddly enough a mid-rock moment marriage proposal just isn't one of them.
Call me a coal-hearted poo-pooooher, just don't call me late for sushi snaxx.
On a similar note there are cats mating outside of my house as I write this. My sweet little neutered angel is not partaking - but his hooligan acquaintances are.
80s cheeseball alternative music is on the hi-fi and off I go to edit digital images into the sweet Sunday night into the gray Monday morn.
Erroneously,
Love.

Today got to use, in a photographic way, the phrase Look Alive Out There, at a bunch of students nabbed for an impromptu installation photo shoot at Middling City U. They were, I wished, to be wistfully interacting with some architecture and design projects and were doing their best impressions of statuary.
My Marvin story has his the streets, for a look at it online go here.
Last glance the site was not updated but should be soon, in theory.
The Goos/Bon Jovi show was sold out, the Goos were typically wondrous and JBJ was really really rather cheesy... tight paints, coiffed hair and faux XL extra-white teeth.
Sambora was dressed in Renaissance Rock Star Wear - looking sizzling.
During the Goos' set I was smiling up at the guys and Robbie gave me a smile and Johnny gave me a little wave with a Hey, how are you over the pa. His new girlie pal was sitting in the pit with us and the video guys, on the barricade. Also in the pit was his former spouse.
Today.
Tonight.
More, more, more.
Showing a highly specialized portfolio to the people at a mag in NYC on Tuesday.
What specialized portfolio?
Yikes, hello Weekend Project.
Love.

Tomorrow's major gig is to make a portrait of one of the lead producers of The Sopranos in the middle of a reception held for him at the rez of the Middling City University president. I'm to show up during a luncheon through the garage and not ring the front doorbell. Then quietly set up, I'll probably do so in the library as I know the lay of the presidential land over there, have a maid stand in and shoot away. It's to be the cover of a magazine so omigosh the ol' pressure's ratcheted up a notch or so. Then I'll drag his television arse outdoors, time allowing, for some en plain air shots.
Finished the Hamlisch piece and was most pleased at its 1200 words of quip and wit and erudition. Listening to the tape I thought Well, gee, Marvin and I sure did laugh a lot during our 10 minutes on the phone.
Tomorrow night's perhaps second-last stop is at the Goo Goo Dolls/Bon Jovi gig.
Which I keep nearly forgetting about.
After tonight's workout saw Tony Blair on CSPAN and although it's not probably hip and cool I feel I'm his biggest fan and decided that when I structure my cabinet he and Bill Clinton are key players.
As are Dorota (Jason can come, too), Laura, Johnny Depp and a few others as yet unconfirmed.
Off to shoot the annual Holy Fuck I Sound and Act Like Craggly-Assed Bob Dylan event at a nearby watering hole/shitbox.
And a sweet Helllo to the Tequila Maiden.

Announcing myself first place winner of the Who Began Their Day in the Oddest Manner Today Award.
Drove to what my Middling City University editor called Seneca Bluffs, at the crossroads of three sad city streets. A housing complex? A natural area? A brownfield?
Arrive and drive about and see a parking lot before what is the Buffalo River. A crusty old sailor, in vet cap underneath a naval flag on a stoop shouts out to me They're way back there.
There was a natural setting beyond the parking lot and paved area. I followed a path for what seemed over a mile. I began to get worried. I called out to the group of people I was looking for who were chem testing the soil in the area. HELLO.... and on.
No people but on some trees were new pink plastic ties.
I called my university editor, not at her desk, and left a message saying that I couldn't find the group, my contact guy and that I believed I was in a sort of Blair Witch remake.
Left the Bluffs.
No pun inserted here.
Went on to next gig.
At that gig I shot portraits of four well-known musicians.
(speaking of such... I did a phone interview with ol' Liver Lips/Marvin Hamlisch who bristled at Favored Nancy Question #3: Oh, so you worked with Michael Bennett? MH: UHHH, YEA-AHHH, I only wrote it. I mean really, fuckhead... so you fucking wrote it, that doesn't necessarily, I'd think, mean that the writer is going to be onstage palin' about with the choreographer.)
After the four ports had to do interiors of two concert halls. Requested that I get up into the pipe organ to shoot outwards. Drank a bottle of Diet Coke in the pipe organ. Thought, Wow, I bet there are shitloads of music types who'd completely freak out if they knew a photographer was swilling down soda up in this contraption.
Next gig was deeeeeep in the bowels of the Middling City Medical School where I became LOST AGAIN. This is a recurring theme, do you not get it?
You also should know that the medschool is a labrynth of old buildings connected either via basements or second floor walkways and many times when you think you're heading towards a stairway you end up face to face with a scientist in a circa 1942 lab with bunsen-freakin' burners and WARNING radioactive materials flyers taped to the door.
Now I must make a column.
Now I must write about Ol' Liver Lips Hamlisch.
Love, lost and found.