As we say in the biz, Gee Willikers, whomever happened to be epinw reader numero 20000 please speak up as I'm sure there's a prize around here somewhere for you. And a friendly reminder that Yours Truly never put a counter on epinw until well into the second year so really the count and amount (a wry ref to Dialing for Dollars - a slice of Middling City television arcania) would be higher.
Second off the amazing and stellar and tear-wrangling news is that Neil Diamond, epicenter of the universe, is working with Rick "pleez breath relevance into my career bro" Rubin. And RR knows, understands the austere beauty of Neil's early work.
A quote from today's NYT article:

In fact, the two men have much in common. Both are transplanted New Yorkers, dropouts from New York University. Both have played with the ethnic and racial makeup of American music, Mr. Diamond as the star of the 1980 "Jazz Singer" remake, Mr. Rubin as producer of the Beastie Boys. Mr. Diamond grew up wanting to be a doctor; Mr. Rubin, a lawyer. When they eventually met in 2003, in Mr. Rubin's house in the Hollywood Hills, Mr. Diamond was impressed by the living room. "It's only got a Steinway piano and a huge Buddha that goes up to the ceiling and out about half the wall," he said. "And a rug in the middle of the floor, and that's it. I've been thorough a few of these, uh, transcendental situations before, and I understood where he's coming from, what can I say?"

Neil, a transcendentalist.

Allright, let us all collectively forget the surreal memory of Neil in blackface in Jazz Singer but otherwise it is a fine article. Rubin, a wise wise man.

So, being a Diamond Girl and all, I do know that Neil is coming to the Middling City late August and I really must get some tix soon as assuredly it'll be packed. Part(y)ing thought: Cherry Cherry. Only one of the world's most perfect songs.

Cherry Cherry Love.

Special combo blogpost - begun Thursday, finished Friday.

Finally, I found a cop. In Canada, the fair land to the north of the Middling City, that's an OPP officer. And there he was, in a well-equipped ride (probably inside and out like that of the Niagara Co's Coroner), idling outside - of all freakin' things - a donut shop. In Canada, the fair land to the north, that is donut shoppe.
I was lost. And, if You truly and perfectly know Me, You know that this could be an eventuality when faced with an unknown highway. And Canada wasn't helping, having created a highway system so faceless and so intertwined with the same and recurrent artifacts to make the NYS thruway look like a charming two-lane country road.
So I was on the 407 ETR (that's Electronic Toll Road to the newbies) heading back to the Middling City for a gig and a vino engagement and was heading west/ouest. For miles and smiles and miles until I thought that the next roadway should have been making itself known and, sans helpful distance markers or signage, it was all one stinkin' guess. So west/ouest then thoughts of No, it's east/est. Then more miles/kilometres. Then the cop.
So I pull up snugly next to his car and am waving around my MapQuested print-out like I was contemplating tossing it into his vehicle. He snatched the paper out of my hand with a smile and draws me directions. One straight line. One line and the number 407 underneath. You'll be on the 407 in one minute, straight ahead. Then stay on it for 45 minutes.
45 minutes mine arse, I had a gig to get to and vino afterwards to engage in. So with the keeping up with the Canadian drivers at high speeds it was more like half that. Then onwards to photograph over-the-top and tipsified law students glowingly celebrating the demise of their educations and such. Read: commencement.
Shot one of the season's final commencement this afternoon. No senator. No repeated speech. No beach balls flying overhead for this was the dignified pomp and circumstantial and velvet cap-wearing of med students.
Best quote: medicine is art and science.
Art: science and zen. No medicine.
Well, the recreational sorts.

Sorted Love.

So, here's a visual treat for Your perusal, a fine image from Middling City U, parked outside the commencement ceremonies. Why, I ask, was the coroner on site.
Why does the coroner drive such a bitchin' ride.
Why, look at how squat Yours Truly appears in the hi-gloss surface.

Surface of Love.

To be filed today under O for Oh, No! Not That Anecdotal Story... Again.
Today's gig, Middling City U's general commencement ceremony (read: multiple hours, multiple grads, multiple mortarboards), included a special message from NYS senator Chuck Shumer. Or is that Schumer. You look it up. Anyhoo. Moving along into the proceedings I tell one of my boy colleagues, Derek, You know, I bet he'll be telling the same anecdotal story I've heard three times to date. He needs a remindful booster shot. You know, I begin, the story about the scholarship. The trip around the world. The dusting yourself off. The not getting the girl. His face lights up. YES! I think I HAVE heard that story. I said Well if you've been on the commencement tour you sure as hell have. So the senator begins. I turn to Derek You see, the same story. He still didn't get the girl. One wizened audience member shouted out Take the scholarship, nearly derailing his narrative choo-choo.
Saw Elliott there, in cap and ballgown, looking quite beleagured under the ceremonial garb. I heard someone calling my name and there was his cinematic face.
It should be noted here that as the platform party made their way past Yours Truly many of them greeted me as if I were master of ceremonious hoopla or some such thing. Why, even the senator of repetitive anecdote shook my hand after quickly deciding, I could see, not to give YT a kiss on the cheek. His handshake had my very important hand, the one responsible for lifestyle, &c, nearly shaking. A grip to be sure.
Here I must end.
The online course is done and if I was sure that You would read my brilliance I would post it below. But You would only not read the whole fucking thing, you would not glow at me about it. And I do so deserve it for creating a new branch of aesthetics. Voilà thesis.
Onwards I must float.
JW,Esq it's your turn for correspondence and I do hope this publique shaming hastens such. Or perhaps your head is far too emburdened with things litigational, corporation takeoverish, or rockish.

I rest my case, my adrenalized self-employed and over-achieving case.

Cases of Love.

So, there I was. Minding my own business.
A postcard came to my newspaper office from Parsons School of Design, a Manhattan school. Suddenly I was applying to said institution. And then I was accepted, a call from Jim Ramer told me so and the night was Mardi Gras and I had been out shooting for hours. Glee. Panic.
Now, years later, about two, I find myself writing another research paper for an online course with a photographer instructor named Brian Moss who lives somewhere near Los Angeles. He's upbeat, savvy, very nurturing in his comments. As is JR, my art mentor and leader of the small and efficient Team Ramer.
I am tossing words about in this nearly-ultimate research paper like nobody's business, pulling out all the grad student stops, if you will.
Why, topology is even used. And scads of others that perhaps a few years ago would never have flown out of me. At that time I was still (sort of) living with a pro academic who was landslided into words and theory and I, throughout those ten or so years, tossed myself into the Real - the real world's images, the real world's happenings and descriptions of those. So now I am balanced between academia and realia which is, in my truly humble grad student opinion, the way to go.
Speaking of go, off I go to finish this burdensome task to proceed along to a small mountain of freelance deadlines and assignments and hell, where's the fun.

Hellacious Love.

Phones are all off. As are the bets.
Can Yours Truly finish the Pulitzer-worthy research paper of 3K tonight, or by tomorrow at 5PM. That is the question. Writing about Sam Taylor-Wood, Gary Hill, Bill Viola. And me. Aesthetics of Stillness.
So, comedic interlude during tonight's commencement gig was when PhD's were becoming such and as they were being conferred their thesis title was announced. One, Fiona Apple-worthy one had approximately thirty words in its title. Me and an usher glanced at one another in faux understanding of what this biomedical person had achieved behind such a hefty title.
My thesis has three words. Six syllables.
Scott is aiding me in the quest to locate the email address of cello boy, to tell him to tell his bandmate that he owes me $51 due to an international credit card fraud scare, or shitheel international practices of zappos.com - or both. Zappos, lest you wonder, is thee place to buy shoes online. They have the best, the obscure, the pedestrian. And one of the tentet ordered, with assistance from YT, some fine Chuck Taylors for his kid.
A rearch paper is afoot. I am ablaze with ideas.
I am off, as Brucey says, like a turd of hurdles.
At times like these the tough just get coffee chugging.
Or something to that chestnut effect.

Love's Hurdle.

Several days later, braincells misplaced and mis-spent evenings later, the band has split the Middling City. I have the paper topic: The Aesthetics of Stillness.
Was procrastinating productively when it wavered at me in a moment of clarity. Will be writing about the video work of Yours Truly, Sam Taylor Wood, Bill Viola and whomever else fits the goddamned bill.
Besides the gigs the most memorable moment of band stay was taking Peter Brøtzmann and Kennedy to the grain elevators. First the favoured street, Ganson, alongside tracks, Great Northern, several other elevators, mounds of sand, an inlet. Then the foot of Hamburg Street for The View. Then to foot of Smith Street to the odd park, across train bridge then to Concrete Central where we saw, amongst other things, a pack of splatball enthusiasts, a few galloping deer, some birds, some wreckage, some skulls. Picked up a deer skull for the collection. Which leads me to thoughts of the frozen sheep head in my freezer. Probably high time to liberate it. As I did with the pig heart. I can hear the voice of Baumann telling me that plastic outgases, imagine the plastic wrapping the head has maxed-out on outgasing and all the condiments and film in the frigerator are just biohazardic.
Weeks until school. Am I ready. A question, a statement. A ploy, a plan.
Have a place to live and will have to adjust to its new offerings of early morning coffee, hopefully French as in SoHo, its wi-fi molecular structures, its proximity to Parsons School of Degree of Difficulty.
Speaking of such, time to continue on this catching up of days.

Caught Love.

Here is my art statement story, and I'm sticking to it:

My digital video work is an exploration of narrative and non-narrative possibilities, of images made that are near-still creating a poetic rhythm of anticipation. Thematically and literally the work focuses on the organic, or green, presences around us in sometimes fabricated circumstances, merging them architecturally, metaphorically or texturally with non-organic forms. I am also inspired by the element of chance in everyday living, the visual stimulation surrounding us all.

Fired that off to JR yesterday, for the thesis show in the Shiney Apple in August. About to foray into my netherworld, the place where art goes from idea to acquisition then onwards to something edited and more tangible and finished. Off for looking, shooting, trignometric study of the landscape nearby.

Tentet last night magical, them in three formations each set. Arrived to discover a rapt and huge audience hung onto notes as if at a poetry happening. It was perfect. Tonight are all ten at once, and ten times the decibels. Peter Brøtzmann gave me and Kennedy cd's and a card game he invented - Images - whereby a deck of cards with appropriated and created images are shuffled and used to create actions. A list of directives help keep it flowing and these are halftimes for musical gestures. He is truly an amazing man, and he has an exhibition of his work in November.

Create, time to create. The flowers yell color and the wind is low and the odd surrounds are beckoning to me Use us, use us.

Used Love.

Been carting about jazz musicians for Kennedy's dual Hallwalls meets Middling City Hysterical Society gigs tonight and tomorrow. Guys from all over merging for some free jazz love.
Gigs actually - shockingly! - received great press today in Middling City News and the music critic Jeff Simon actually praised the collaborative efforts (thanks to Yours Truly's usual planning prowess) of both institutions for coming together for what will prove to be some historical musical moments.
Scanning as We speak, images from yesterday's dedication of a long project recreating in bronze some frieze work made by one way-past MC artist, Chaz Rumsey.
The scanner was not at all cooperating and after much wrenching of face, cords, search for installation software did the ol' restart. To fab results.
Just completed Beth Dearest's artist statement for our pending thesis show and it's high time to pen mine own. Memory. Duration. Time. Keywords.
Time for deadline turbo-powered burning, editing, delivering. Then perhaps more more more caffeinated beverage.
Things are falling into place for summer Shiney Apple dwell. JR says it's all about me, all about the art. What could be better. Now to create time to create.

Creative Love.

This AM phoned Dragon Boy to wish him one fine Cinquo de B-Day and we spoke for the first time in mos. and mos. - and loffed and loffed. But we are still in the NoGoZone and that is the way it is. He is 34. He is Solvent. To that I said Ummmm, yes, you told me that already and congrats for that. We then discussed our respective hangovers as that's the way of it, of us, was of us.
And to dangle what the story was:
(from The Tell by YT)
I imagine, beyond imagining, I know it as well as I know the spaces of what I lose on a night of binging like a conventioneer as he does in cycles, that he ruminates on where our steadiness faltered, how the dysfunction worked, and what I never told.

And to that a good night, a good 5/5.

5/5 Love.

Special Memo to All Musicians, Bands and the Like:
If Yours Truly requests a special tune, namely WipeOut, a drummer's paradise so to speak, and your respective band/combo/whatevertet features a drummer of merit then please comply. To not honour such request not only displeases me but spreads minor bad karma as this is one of the world's premier party songs and drummers, the underloved band member, need to let off a little showcasing steam.
Thanks for your attention in this matter.

Onwards to the business of dreams. Next item on agenda for this blogpost.
Champagne-fueled dreams featured an upper middleclass femme first shoving me in the kitchen of Kennedy and then lunging for and threatening YT with the knife. It turns out this hulking woman was a fan of crack and her friend, accompanying her and watching the domestic chaos was apologizing for her pal's behaviour. Be understanding. Be empathetic. Fuck no. I called the cops after I told Kennedy what had transpired. Cops searched the house and found Ms. Knife hiding in the basement. All you dream enthusiasts have fun with this.

On an errand today saw Nate en route to his joint, balancing snack and keys and forgot to tell him the new Tori has grown on me. And, as rock is now on the agenda. Has anyone noted that Liam Gallagher is morphing into Ringo Starr. Just received SPIN for now and it's clear as a good digital image that's that what's happening with his facial molecules.

Molecular Love.

Art. Nature.

Words cannot begin to describe how ecstatic I am at this moment - You are witnessing exciting history as I finally, finally!, post a jpeg to epinw.
This is Yours Truly in Central Park, documented pre-artwork make by Little Laura.
The night before was supping with steaks and scotch and this is a sunny day with what she refers to as Swamp Thing emanating from Frederick Law Olmsted-placed rocks. He was working out. It was 45º.
Today in the Middling City it is much the same.
Now, lest You think I am procrastinating very badly, or very well, this uploading of images is an exercise in work-relatedness and I am thinking the site that will host my images, BuzzNet, is how I am going to post my research project for the online miasma.

Historical Love.

So, in its entirety, is the Perfect pome, about YT, sent to epinw h.q. by its maker, Robert Nesbitt. Replete with odd spacings along the page opted out of.

The Photographer (to Nancy Parisi)

What has happened?

I always wonder if that's you
or someone who looks like you
with a camera

How do you maintain
anonymity
so perfectly
unobtrusive, invisible

of course it serves you
and you have cultivated . . .

a magic garden of skills
blossoms flash
dazzling the eye of the beholder

Capture moments more concisely
than the quantum physicist
not breaking
but stabilizing
bearing new dimension
by forgiving one


Um, what the f-bomb can I say but Hell YEAH, I sure do have a magic garden of skills and what gal doesn't want to be compared to a quantum physicist.
Shot a few events yesterday, including the famed Oozefest at Middling City U in a gentle downpour and, as is always tradition, several young male co-eds opened wide their arms as if to grab me in their teasing muddy embrace to which I always disappoint by not squealing and just giving them a much diluted version of the PaintMelt Stare. Then moved on hours later to a wedding day, capturing that second when the magic words are spoken and ka-poof a couple becomes married. Read between lines here, Yours Truly feels this is nonsense. A public and already-known pledge of ongoingness is a beautiful thing but a couple doing so has already done this between them. But a swell party usually does follow.
Magic words include moment of saying This is over, I quit, I love you, Yeah sign me up, etc.
It's an Interpol day and it's time time time to go make some digvid art happen.

Happening Love.

To be filed under Like so totally stressed out and disarmingly distracted.
D, lest You are not up to par on your filing skills.
Wow, now doesn't that remind me of a tale of Yours Truly in her college/first-round salad days when I was a highly-paid non-internistic office worker at the on-campus corporation which I also worked for as Cultural and Performing Arts Chairman. So I was corporate double-dipping, if you will.
And working with a bunch of jaded grownups, all into their tasks at hand while I had to sometimes file requisition forms by Number. And then sometimes, in my daydreaming wanderlust and distraction (much like that previously mentioned) I'd be filing along and think Oh, SHIT, this one is not even close. And then I'd see there would be whole subsets of misfiled forms. And sometimes I'd go back and fix the situation or just think Really, who needs to see this crap again, and move on.
Then, years later (I am so on a filing memory roll here so go with it), this is where at the bottom of screen the words Five Years Later flash on screen, I am temping at some bigger, publicly-traded corporation and I'm sealed up in the bowels/tomb of this joint, filing for aeons. This was the trust department of a bank and I'd get lost in the tomb for hours as I had access to basically the back stories of scads of dead people and I'd look at their memorabilia, their passbooks, whatever. It was much like my stint as housekeeper/watcher/gardener at the North Buffalo home of a deceased lady and world traveler for a year.
So there I am, Wednesday night, campus of Niagara University, not too far from Toxicville.
Basically I live out of three bags - laptop, digital camera, film camera: I am a commuter in all aspects of my life.
So I grab one bag and shut car door, realizing in that nanosecond that keys to life are in bag #2.
Quick thinkathon.
Gig is starting in minutes so, in a nutshell, parents were called and they rescued me as AAA was called and the man on the phone had some confusion and had never heard of Niagara Falls ever. I imagined waiting on the campus, huddled against a closed 70's-era building for half the night. So Mr. & Mrs. Perfect, my mom and dad, rescued me. We were talking on our cell phones and they were saying We're in front of such and such. To which I replied But I'm in front of such and such. And, in the midst of a few bedraggled co-eds were they. Parents to the rescue. And, sadly, this is only the beginning. As the stress of cross-state travel, thesis thinking and writing, term paper r&d, freelance fulltimeness, basic life logistics chugs along I find myself in self-amazement at how things slip through the cracks of reason.
Many Did I just tell you thises. Lost keys, lost books, lost everything.
But then, mid-August, if all goes swimmingly, as JR thinks it might, I'll be a new Master. Of You. Of the Universe. Of all things interconnected, challenging and Olympiad in execution.
Salman Rushdie last night at Middling City U ended a lecture largely about the nature of writing and being a writer thinker with these words:
That's the job of it.

Love's Job.

JR wrote to me today to say he has all sorts of confidence in my ability not only to get my thesis done but to defend it brilliantly. Well, glad he thinks so.
There was a communique from Parsons School of Defense Mechanisms stating that the thesis and work and statement are to be completed quickfastinahurry and then defense of said thesis will happen in front of a panel of five people who each get ten minutes to rake us over the coals, so to speak.
And I have to make new digvid work, and make editing time. And write a paper for the online class. And continue to work to pay for all of the above.
Did a reading yesterday at roughly 745 PM as part of the poetry marathon Urban Epiphany. Read about five and finished with a story poem I wrote called The Tell. About using the poker notion of the tell, the giveaway signifier of aother's gestures, to know when they're bullshitting, lying, etc.
Was approached afterwards by amongst others RD Pohl who edits pomes for Middling City News who asked that I send him some words for publishing, especially one for Creeley = Believe.
Time to make the longass drive to my dentist for the pro cleaning by the woman whose name I can never remember and make small talk all the while, or most of the while, while she does her thing. She usually asks about school. Maybe I'll suggest beforehand we avoid this topic completely as I don't want to be responsible for the loss of any of her pro digits.
Driving with Kennedy tonight to see some jazz in Rochester. A road trip. Of jazz proportions.

Proportionate Love.

Had an interesting meet-up with a Mad Scientist yesterday. For a shoot for Middling City U.
The Mad Scientist (heretofore dubbed MS) revealed to me nearly immediately
(here I would like to interject that as I'm trying to blog, a brief respite from concurrently going blind and reading online articles for class, being a really good grad student, I am being distracted by a fat lezbo drumming a nearby table with her fucking chopsticks and I am listening to Interpol on iTunes yet I can still hear the clinkclinkclink and I'm about to go over and grab the chopsticks out of her chubby hands and throw them across the tea house. Then I'd like to ask her overly-mascara'd date this How in blazes can you put up with this crap.) that he had Cyber-stalked me, Googled me. He said You've done a lot of weird things. Now, as You can probably imagine, a plethora of images from the past of Yours Truly popped up, Google-style, in my mind. As we discussed what he'd seen (she's still chop-drum-sticking...) online about YT I then told him that he was going to be blogged, that a blogpost was happening as we spoke.
So the MS is being posed by YT, pressing his back against a whiteboard of a gigantic formula of numbers and icons and at some point I look at it, stopping shooting, and query So what IS that. He then goes on to explain how it's basically (basically) a formula for how the brain works, how it uses visual information in front of the eyes, processes information. The MS works with machine intelligence and this formula is how the brain works as the formula for how a computer does the processing of visual information would take, he says, a bajillion years as it would process each item, moment separately. So he's talking about Bayes, Bayes this, Bayesian that. So WHO is Bayes, my ever-queryful self wanted to know as the way things are being discussed are curiously a whole lot like the manner in which Roland Barthes describes postmodernly objects, sight, experience of same. So Bayes was a nineteenth century man of the cloth who wanted to prove if god existed or not by a happening formula. Did he. Who knows. But the fab thing is I have another little tool for my grad school toolbelt which, as a premonition I had shitloads of years ago, which I told Academie Guru/The X, was leading me into science, of all conflated things.
Regaled the mad scientist with a moment I could not blog a few weeks back, involving a photo shoot with a bevy of cops (femme, men) and the incessant sexual haranguing on the set - of each other, of me. It was quite an unforgettable experience and it was the premier time YT had e-ver been called Tootsie.
So I regale him with that and then, conspiratorially, he asks if I'd encountered any crazies at Middling City U. One person jumped to the forefront and I dumped some details on MS. We then revealed to each other that we are both somewhat (and here I hear the cackling of Beth who will immediately, as I know her well, think HA! She's 1000% crazy, and April Fools' Day proved it) crazy and therein ended the happy shoot.
Back to school, virtually.
Whereas I was in a snit earlier I am free-wheelin' Perfectly Myself, diggin' on Interpol, Learning, Reading, green tea, art ideas that are swirling around me like good, protective ghosts.

Love Protects.

Perfect word to You, the wise.
Rediscovered Rickie Lee Jones's (for real) Ghostyhead from way back when, 1997.
Scaring up all sorts of items pome-deep for Sunday, certainly not the day of rest of Yours Truly, homework day and annual Urban Epiphany, megamarathonreading.
Thinking how I am being handed all sorts of discreet respites to do all the following, in no particular order of descending or ascending import, deport or ex.
1. Write research paper for the ultimate online course - primo op to get MFA thesis move on.
2. Plant garden(s).
3. Get ready for Middling City, end-of-May exhibition at Brad's joint which will include screen captures and neato digprints of same.
4. Hammering out, whacking to bits, summertime details and logistics and time and stress management.
5. Make sure Good Vibes Team of Yours Truly is really understanding what I'm asking of them, although they assure me that they are.
6. Pet Extra.
7. Scare up the aforementioned and then some fine words stored here and there.
8. Shoot, make, do and burn new digvid pieces for me, for JR's viewing pleasure, for skewel, for fame.
9. Complete application for NJPPhD Plan.
10. Think more deep and complex grad student thoughts as time is quickly running out to do so.

Lists of Love.

Nature. Nature. Nature.
Turns the Middling City into a big reheated miasma of flora.
The started seedlings are totally sprouting, the baby nasturtia reaching like mad with their tiny, hand-shaped leaves and I worried this AM that they might get leggy before it's their time to hit the soil. So therefore I'm holding back on starting the tobacco plants, this year's big garden theme.
Have to get a new metal trellis for the second of the honeysuckle as it's pulled down the former and have to also get a new jolly roger as the one from Liz has finally been shredded to bits, only its skull remaining with bits of black fabric around it. I'm sure the Holy Eucharistic Rock Band as well as those at Bleak Bakery are thrilled to see that I've changed my ways and have removed what they viewed as a harbinger of death flag. Jack of Bleak Bakery told me so once, in his Yogi Bear voice... how much he loathed the jolly roger as, you know, in this world flags are to be either ol' glory or something really barfy suburban like a whimsy-rich drapeau showing something really really fluffy.
Editrix Sue just asked me to shoot a bunch of things, amongst them a doctor (of bodies, not of the high-falutin' mind sort) who engages in limb-risking drag racing. Neato. As well as annual Oozefest, the event where volleyball merges with a field of mud.
So it's the tenth anniversary of the OK City bombing of Murrow Building and watched part of the ceremoniousness with Kennedy today as we worked out... Clinton the highlight for me, speaking poetically of the American Oak that made it through the trauma. Thoughts meandered over to this week's school readings about murder and just shot off a post about trees, hanging trees, the remaining hanging tree at Washington Square Park in the Shiney Apple in the NW quadrant, an elm that stands still.
Tree of Life. Tree of Wisdom.
Me and Ro's golden tree about my neck.

Tree Love.

Minding my own business and about to embark on homework, headed over to Allen's for a rockstar koffee klatsch. Sat on his/Lisa's front porch for a turbo-powered cup of tardark roasted goodness. Now I'm at the tea house. Now I'm really embarking onto readings about dead bodies, le topic du semaine. Passed on all things art opening last night. There are some tonight and tomorrow Kennedy has John Butcher playing a gig at SoundLab - Allen might be recording that for the artistes.
Got a good email from JR stating that he wishes I'm ready for a free PhD ride at the next school as he wrote me a blazingly stellar letter.
I replied with a grand Merci and told him not to fret, the spring has emerged as have the muses.
Nearly wept for JW,Esq who nearly but did not meet Bono at a swishy house party out in Cali and will not (*sniff, *sniff) be going to Coachella as, he says, how could it compare with last year's lineup that surpassed understanding. I told him to go read some law tomes.
So the pope is way dead and the new one is emerging from the conclave. I imagine it's like the Miss America pageant with scads of backstage underminings and well-placed back stabs. Emergence of cliques, factions, coteries. Them all lashed together until the big pronouncement, when the black smoke warbling out of the vaticani smokestack goes from black (working still) to white (annnnnouncement!). All so medieval, all so media-covered. I am lobbying now for the sainthood of Yours Truly. But, to expedite, I'll perform miracles (three, maybe more) avant my timely passing. We will not call these favours. We will call them miracles. Dig.

Miraculous, saintly love.

My new fav person named Valerie just did my taxes as we talked about a lot of things and the office nuisance shambled about annoying the ladies of the office and then Yours Truly. You know, the kind of office person that thinks aloud, dials phone with it off the hook so the sound of dialing and tones and such fill the soundwaves, asking annoying questions. I was just there two hours and I wanted to throttle him. Valerie and I, amongst other things, discussed life, travel, development of urban and suburban places, higher ed, people getting their GED's, etc. She was delightful. She is my tax lady and she rocks.
So no shooting officially until Sunday for Middling City U so it's time to catch up and do homework at a frenetic pace.
A new cat is back on the scene and I can't tell if it's my former lapcat and now feral Bootsie, mending his ways. For this cat talks to me, rushes up to me and would come into the house if I left him. I reassured Extra that he'll always be my favorite, always the toppermost of the poppermost. All this as Faux Extra suns himself nearby as whatever is happening to his kittie head transmogrifies into something more horrifying - think cat injuries, fights - yet he still wobbles around slowly on his own four feet, still hanging on for another season. Sometimes he's sleeping so soundly that I think Oh, NO, Faux Extra is d.e.d.
Had a swingin' time last night with Cheryl and Liz at the wine joint. No major fisticuffs or dramas or fiascoes to report.
Onwards to work, less worry.

Don't Worry Love.