Last night was the grand hoopla of The Church, the Limelightlike former congregation centre turned into a concert/revelling venue. Ani was there and had her tresses dyed darker than I've ever seen them before and we exchanged a nice embrace and a few words before Scot whisked her away, so she could stand at attention whilst some requisite speeches were proffered up. People paid attention until they did the B.S. (that'd be the Bored Shuffle, the weight-shift from left to right). Saw a myriad of good people and had a pleasant social onslaught.
Courtney Grimm and I walked arm-in-arm to the snack table (some sooth - poor aesthetics and an unappetizing mound of wraps... we sampled greasy crab cakes and moved along) until I became much more interested in introducing myself and her to the most interesting-looking man in the room. His name - Junior. He, as all Juniors and Tinies are, is huge, maybe 6'something" and he weighed in at about 300lbs. There was a woman hovering nearby and I asked if she was in Junior's entourage. That's my wife, Junior said.
Deb said she was there and I did not, sadly, see her. Dr. John, for whatever reason was there, I did see him and his spindly date.
The space: what was the big-assed church is now painted well in greens and gold (as in color, not leafing), is lit better, has no more pigeons, and is going to be the big-assed rock & roll venue.
That is impressive. The Hallwalls spaces I found less so - the gallery has a nice basswood floor and much has been made of its malleable wall formations. I thought their basement screening/rumpus room was disappointingly small. I imagined the org having to turn away scads of would-be viewers as the room's capacity is a mere 65. Think big. Think bigger.
Glad to see Hallwalls finally in their new home and it is impressive what's transpired under the renovated spires. Good for the Middling City.
Today it is a smattering of snow, a day to work and work and work before play and play and play.

Love to play.

Well. Well well well.
Very well, indeed.
Yours Truly has been, off and on and mostly on, imbued in the oeuvre and it has been a Pleasure, wallowing in this huge collection of art, publication samples, words, even old posters from the feted and fated Writers Cramp Series that Paul Hogan and I ran for aeons.
Found some surprises, like old coins from dead Uncle Richard, personal and historical photographs, a stash of forgotten ca$h. But not even what I am searching for - yet. When and if this objet is found I will then say what it is.
Delivered some super-fine images I shot for a campaign for a Middling City org to an MC ad agency and while going up I nearly lost my foot in the steel doors for one who came a-runnin'. The proverbial voice of Holdit. And what a one he was, a visual surprise, a Shiney Apple-like man that one does not usually see on this edge of things. As we noted that YT nearly lost a foot he got off on 8, wishing me a fine weekend. Manners to boot.
Tonight Kennedy and I are attending the righteous Hallwalls/Righteous Babe Records grand hoopla, the one that shows off what is nearly done. Tomorrow night is the Hallwalls-only opening of a show of work by unimpressive Suzy Lake. This event is to trumpet a grand addition to the MC art scene. I discussed this with Bruce who asked What art scene.
My pal Pam is catering tomorrow's affair and she told me she's donated all the food, roughly to the tune of $1K. Absolutely one of the most generous people ever.
Amongst stops and sojourns last evening stopped into Charlie Quill's b-day fiesta at Nietzsche's and was happy to see Kelly et al and then on to the usual spot to see Shana and Jeremy and the music was surprisingly quite compelling.

Love is compelling.

The theme du jour is rubbernecking.
Good, old-fashioned swivel-heading, as Yours Truly prefers to call this phenom that swims deep within our human genome, to witness with our own eyes, via reality or other, handy media, the turmoil of others.
En route to a gig this fine and magical AM with the Middling City air teeming with the vibes of spring, I nearly landed in the midst of a parking lot freeway situ but exited promptly on one of those handy north-south streets that one discovers only from having a freelance career involving deadlines, and loads of driving to the sub and ex urbs.
When I arrived at my gig I was informed that this traffic miasma was due to a truck lying on its side, an accident that happened yesterday.
En route back from the gig I could see the truck, still ominously occupying the left shoulder and the backed-up traffic behind it so everyone could get a good gander and a half.
While at the gig YT photographed various people who use the facilities in which I had set up my temp studio and then made secondary images of said facilities. While wending through the sweat-infused gymnasium and weight room and rooms full of those silly machines, there in front of us was one MC newscaster femme fatale. Attempting to avoid rubbernecking, she had outfitted herself with very dark sunglasses. The sporty portion of this joint is not bright. The newscaster f.f. was just looking to not be noticed. I was fantasizing about rushing her with a Sharpie, asking that she sign... something, anything.
And I culled from the Memory Centre how once, perhaps a decade and a half ago how YT was in a fashion show at a television studio, produced by a couture collector. If you can imagine some such thing in the MC. While readying ourselves for our face time, I'll use that phrase as it's so... now, so industry-savvy, we were bombarded by the very same femme newscaster who burst into the dressing room where about five of us were getting made up. She blustered in, bitching fiercely about her blow dryer. Now, not ever having been much of a television afficianado, I asked one of my fellow models, as the blustery newscaster f.f. was, I thought, just out of earshot Who the HELL was that bitch.
As You may have guessed. Yes.
We have necks, we use them. We have insights, we use them.

Rubbernecked Love.

As is my wont, I was minding my own business and found myself looking at a large display of seeds, following a business meeting. I first looked at the oversized packages of vegetable seeds and then moved around to the flowers, thinking all the while just what and where and how.
Then I followed along the quite remarkably gigantic half-aisle of bird feeders (oh, did I tell You that I recently bought the absolute Cadillac Escalade of squirrel-proof bird feeders) to the shelves of confused houseplants and found myself then shoving three of these sad little orphans into the cart. And then moved on to the nearly-free racks of narcissi, buying two. It is not too late in the season to force bulbs as, in this Perfect world, bulbs can be forced until it's the season of deep-fried skin and popsicles. I rest my flower-luvvin' case.
Speaking of case(s), what needs to happen to keep that forgetful racist Alito out of the Supreme Court, short of driving down to Warshington to protest. NPR did a wacky thing today, calling one Al Ito to ask him some trivial questions.
Blogs do rule and they may just become the sole way to keep up up and away with the news.
Lest you have missed this grand blog, go here now.

Memory of shooting FBI-issued firearms love.

This just in, from a loyal epinw peruser.
Yours Truly awaiting rock & roll action. I look very unpsyched, must've been Bon Jovi or some such nonsense.
Misty water-coloured memories...

Misty Love.

The Shiney Happy Mag piece is done. The jubilation which follows the hand-in/the email-in is incomparable. Really. I mean, really, would Yours Truly lie to You.
A scintillating piece of hard-hittingness about where in Blazes to purchase excellent crap and the like for your joint. To make it, shall we say, sophisticated.
Here is a shining example of my flavour:

Décor, like a wardrobe, is a personal collection ever in a state of flux – assuming, of course, that one is not clinging stubbornly (or ironically) to tired, decades-old articles. In both matters home and sartorial, pieces illustrating personality are amassed in the same ways, on jaunts of all sorts, and as gifts. And both may suddenly fall out of favor and be taken out of circulation in a jiffy.

Now that's writing. A dash of irony, some handfuls of fact, some Perfect personality all melded together in one informative, cohesive stream.
I began the finishing across the table from Laura (who was knee-deep in homework) and now I am across the table (kittie-korner) from a stranger named Gina. A teacher. A person who sings to herself. If she had kept that little habit up I would have dashed the rest of my venti coffee du jour at her. She stopped. I sipped. I split.

Love's split.

Yours Truly began this fine, sunny Middling City day at the gravesite of a dead president of the United States of America. Today, lest you don't have this inked into your Day-Timer, is the birthday of one Millard Fillmore, also a founder of the MCClub and MCU medical school. What happens at the event is the laying of wreaths, some speeching, some singing and/or bugle reditions of tunes, all under the ever-watchful gazes of two members of the Knights of Columbus, in capes and feathered hats. As is custom, it was a freezing cold morn and after the last notes are still hanging over the tombstones, all in attendance split to their cars lining the cemetery roadway.
Onwards then to search out a few more joints to include in the Shiney Happy Mag piece.
As I motored back to the home office hovel I spotted a woman maniacally talking in her automobile and wondered a very modern thought:
In this day and age does one suspect another of insanity when said other is speaking to apparently no one in the auto - or, more tech-centrically, does one assume one is speaking to another, distant other via a cellphone set to speaker mode.
I ask you.

Asking Love.

As a guilty pleasure, namely Norah Jones (that track #5) warbles in the background and every record store geekboy I know and have ever known I hear cackling & moaning & groaning now suddenly so heartily I can barely hear her singing about that yellow or whatever grass all high and shit any more. Thanks, guys.
Because I can I am deciding I must paint my nails Red, Red Rhine. You know, I must have selected this colour as I do all of them, by name, and as We all do know Yours Truly loves Neil Diamond more than most people, etc. and Neil did pen that song Red Red Wine. See, all things in sooth can be Perfect if We just freakin' look hard enough.
Yours Truly has just been tweaking, if I can deign to call it that, a hand-crafted website using some allegedly simple software, Freeway. I have been communicating today with websitegeekboys, none of whom were able to offer up any super-helpful hints and there were no offers of an onsite rescue effort.
So Imagine:
YT sipping a coffee, nervously following along with the pamphlet that came with Freeway, all stressed out as I am having flashbacks to art school and that godawful and binge drink-inspiring weekly seminar called god only knows what... the one in which YT struggled not only with the diabolical DreamWeaver (amusing myself, and classmates, as you loyal epinw'ers know, by singing, fingers up in my rock gesture, the song DreamWeaver) but to hear the instructress's pianissima voce over the whirr of the Parsons School of Diabolical Seminars's a/c system, set to Arctic.
DreamWeaver, Freeway, Passports to Hell.
Well, I did follow along paranoically and did build myself a slammin' 1-pager and finished and thought Cheesh, I wanted a mega-page site. Now I'm trying to retrofit some more intermediate info onto the rickety and rinky-dink 1-page wonder to not-quite great effect. So I just randomly began toggling about like I knew what I was doing. I did and still do not.
As an artist I do resent having to follow directions and I think directions sometimes are for followers, the weak-minded. But it appears I'll have to follow a bit closer to get pages 2, 3 and beyond flowing like a DreamWeaver towards the morning light.

Always. DreamWeaver. Love.

Richard Wicka has been kindly sending me along commentary about my Five Minute Video Series contribution and, surprisingly, there have been a smattering from far and wide - not just emanating from the Middling City. One person from MC, however, did review my tale and ended by referring to me as a Snuggle bunny. Yipes. I gave a hard-hitting account of an event, presented it in a gripping style veering into comedic interludes. I would hardly classify this narrative style or presentation as being that of a . . . Snuggle bunny.
So another holiday slew of mayhemic events has passed and it's back to beeswax, so to speak, getting the last of the wrapping paper jetsom into la poubelle.
Wrapping up a little piece for the Shiney Happy Mag, a Pulitzer-worthy assessing of joints to get home accessories and the like. I walked into one place in the midst of an MC storm looking quite like a girl version of the Unibomber before I defrocked and let the proprietess know I meant her no harm, just free publicity, some glorious ink.
Time to sort through matters, snip off loose ends, correspond and more.

Corresponding Love.

O, happy day.
Moments ago received a package from Bill down in the PA and much to my joy and amazement it is much-coveted venison jerky that I found a few times on non-aimless roadtrips and never could ever quite manage to find again, though I did look with racing eyes amongst the sad racks of mass-produced beef teriyaki product and such.
A whole pound of venison jerky is mine, mine, mine, mine.
I will share, however.
If You would care for a slice of deerly flesh cured and spiced up, just freakin' ask.
Resolution of new year: Meet Yoko Ono.
Off shortly to purchase some lobsters, dead.
With a gift cert from Perfect Mom & Dad I did purchase my first-ever Big Girl matchy-snatchy set of cookware (including 8-quart stock pot with fitting steamer ever-ready for lobsters and such but I'd rather buy them dead, maybe even beheaded). More about the pots: I do have a rag-tag assemblage of pots and pans that are excellent but needed more (some cast iron, some Le Creuset, some other heavy-enough-to-be-weapons items). These pots and such are not all related Le Creuset in that gorgeous sage green they have now - but they will do.
Oh, more than do, they will make, do, and be.
It has snowed out in the Middling City, one of those half-assed droppings just enough to make the wearing of suede boots or shoes not such a good idea but not enough to make some quality snow sculpture.
Parties as of late have been satisfying and far-reaching of cast of characters:
- Jamie and Paul Johnson held their final holiday party on Ashland in the Big House before they move to their improved row house around the corner. Paul has turned into quite a real estate mogul. At this party I was informed by one that he, in a cold meds haze, caught my Five Minute Video on cable access in the dead of night. I also saw Rockstar Tony there which was great, as was getting reunited with Hillary H, not to be confused with Hillary C.
- Loomis's parents - Ed & Joan - held that swingin' party up in Canada and the only bad spot was when she insisted on feeding the two fam dogs generous hunks of Stilton. As I informed her last night as we swung ourselves down to Hardware for yet more holiday action, Stilton is for Nancy, not for dogs.
- Was invited last night to Deb's for some of her supreme matzoh balls, and soup. What do I dig more than mballs+soup, fruitcake (for real), venison jerky. Well, alot, but hell, for literature's sake let Us say Not a dang-blamed thang.

Pyrotechnics of a New Year's Love.

I left the slippery to drive along the slippery to the even more slippery, steel bridge, to the party this strange winter night. I wended through woods and roads thinking I'd miss a sign but no and ended at the house somewhat familiar. There is nothing quite like the feeling of arriving at a party, of seeing faces through the windows smiling, thinking in a flash, in an entrance, in a scrape of boot, I will be joining, will be a guest, one of them.
I demanded a fireplace moment, Loomis made it happen as the logs had dimmed. I needed a full-on, full-view of a heap of logs afire. Maybe like others need gravlax, or a withering christmas tree, or cocoa. I needed the stinkin' fire this night and I got the fire.
I Got the Fire: The Nancy J. Parisi Story.
Amongst others tonight, as at last night's fete, I met a person who will catapult me into my new venture/adventures.
I am not delving into detail yet.
What I will say is that the nouveau Neil Diamond is Perfection.
What I will also say is that the new Mercury Rev is grand but track #7, In a Funny Way, is a song that gets Yours Truly SCREAMING with delight.
And that is always a delight, the delight of YT.
In a funny way I am ever your epinw correspondent.

Ever Love.

Sometimes precautions backfire.
Not only might this be attributable for perhaps, for the sake of epinw argument, 10% of the planet's human population - certainly not that of bombus fervidus - but of belongings gone missing, good intentions and plans gone haywire.
sidenote: Yours Truly thinks that this haywire business might be yet another example of agrarian holdover in our lingua that we no longer recognize as such. And, I imagine, that haywire was a farmly article that could, from time to time, snap back, break loose, causing some sort of bodily harm.
YT is in process of a refinancing/reevaluating kind of thing. Amongst trudging duties is paying a wack of dough to have a building rescoped/reappraised. This meant an appointment with a stranger and an agent de moi suggested that, being a femme and all, a femme surveyor of scenes be used. So I do not confirm a theoretical reappraising situ for today but get a message from the femme in question that she'll be present and accounted for and accounting all things good & bad in a few, as in hours.
So this appraising femme shows up and she scares me.
As I told Kennedy if she had said Oh, I am a bounty hunter in actuality and do this property-related shit on the side I would not have questioned her burly faux-blonde figure at all. She clucked her tongue in a most peculiar manner, made odd comments, asked even odder questions, and was ever curt and snide, matching the demeanour at hand - or afoot.
She did not bother to open doors to things (hey, who the hell is YT to tell a bounty hunting appraisor how to do their gig) but instead would inquire as to what lay beyond or behind things. She did note decrepitude and such and when she left I felt a need to burn sage but had none so a quick vacuum of her bounty hunter bad vibes had to suffice.
Moral: bounty hunter types walk amongst us in a cornucopia of forms, including the mall-esque lady version, but if one is not a scofflaw one must only dodge verbal barbs, not TASERS.

Sage Love.

Two somewhat horrific things Yours Truly includes for dramatic and narrative effect.
For f-b*mb's sake, YT is a writer and may a: let It all hang out; b: investigate the incomplete and the effusive and the uncomfortable (related to a.); and c. narrate and dramaticize.
So, there YT is, in the midst of the familial portion of this holiday, this mid-Hanukah and Kwanzaa Eve = Christmas. The one with Jesus is the reason for the season, key player.
sidebar: Rio informed me, non-truthfully, that a banner hangs above her familial KY home stating same so that Santa knows that we are not heathens. I move along.
I am at the home where I was raised, so to speak, from age 2-20, before I hit the awaiting adult world that has led me, convolutedly, to this place. I am in that home, Christmas night. The place where my parents live, where I am from time to time bumping up against the past of me that is awkward and I would like to say jam-packed with familiarities that are pleasant but I cannot.
The usual hodgepodge, collage of the good, bad, adolescent, etc.
At some point in the holiday proceedings two highly evocative/awkward things happen.
The first is that, in the midst of one of my tales, my father claims that he has heard the tale-in-progress before. I question him. A few times. I realize that the only place he ever - ever - could have heard this traipsing and difficult tale was here, on epinw. epinw. My dad is an abashed epinw reader. For once he was busted he could not admit to anyone, even Perfect me, that he reads this daughterly blog.
The other horrendous thing was this.
When I was a child I wrote poetry beyond the abilities of a child but nonetheless I was still a child. When I was a child I lived at the home of my parents and discarded a few hand-written books of poetry written by me as a child into the ol' trash, to learn, in complete shock and horror, that these books had been dredged from the trash by my mother and were being not only read by her but read aloud to gatherings of her lady pals.
I have told, here and there, others of this not only lapse of judgement but lack of homestead privacy and tonight sat diplomatically as one of these high school books of pomes was again extricated from the archive, cracked open (I was catapaulted down memory lane when I saw the little Asian, hand-bound volume) and in-part read aloud.
I had to step outside of myself and say to YT OK, this is your mother and obviously she derives some happiness out of this and your ever-thickening skin can survive this newest fiasco.
What made an entire weekend of ebbing & flowing, self-congratulatory holiday smarm tolerable were a few final hours spent with old friends - Erin and Justy - at the newer Middling City joint of gatherings and such. And what really was the proverbial whipped cream and jimmies (if you go for that sort of thing) on the whole tasty escapade was a meeting-up with a woman - Peggy - in a wolfhead. I made her pinkie swear we could be pals. We did. She is the assistant to the director of the Salvador Dali joint in Florida, so close to the land of Papa and cigars and home to alligators and whatever else. Oh, that team.
So Peggy Wolfhead when saying goodbye opened up her plastic jaws and spread them atop my head and I let out my patented MeatScream that was perfected oso long ago by YT and Elba in the midst of Summer Camp Chaos. It is a from-the-toes kind of scream and one was emitted by Perfect me as the faux wolf had my scalp, stopping all action in the room, a similar sensation was being hit by that car whilst riding my bike, the feeling of being in a vacuum.
The moral of the story is this.
Every counter-intuitive event which cramps the soul and psyche and style needs an antithetical faux-wolf moment, a delicious and spontaneous encounter with grace and art and kindred joie-de-vivre.

Faux Wolverine Love.

Today Yours Truly is photographing foster kids who are pre-teenish and looking for a permanent living gig. The two I'm photographing today are siblings and are in a temp situ. I was just talking to teahouse Jen telling her of my next stop and we discussed how foster girls at this age sometimes land in less-than-stellar places - sometimes to be the live-in babysitter, sometimes worse. I told her of my decade of working with the Summer Camp, how half the 8-12 year olds there were fosterized, how some of them had horrific tales. My assignment is to make these kids look so adorable that they get scooped up by good people. There is a slew more of occasions to bust out holiday tights and the like. Jamie and Paul are having their ultimate gathering at their supersonic house that they redid from shingles to front steps, before the relocate to a rowhouse somewhere nearby. Then there's another soirée in Loomis's honour in a week, at her parents's Canadian shorehouse. Jen, rushing YT, just slapped my check on the table stating Time's a-wastin'. So off I go there and points be-be-beyond.

Foster Love.

Dubithy:

Somewhere under the radar, way down low.
There's a land that I heard of once, where the oil still flows.
Somewhere under the radar, folks are screwed.
And the schemes that you dare to scheme really do come through.
One day I wrecked the family car, and daddy and my mummy Bar remind me,
Of my troubles taking acid drops, the night they had to call the cops,
And then they fined me.
Somewhere under the radar, I'll get high. Drink Rye under the radar,
Try, oh yes I'll still try
Why, why must I be dry?
(The above was forwarded to me by Paul Morgan of Avalon Scarves fame and the entire, brilliant adaptation can be seen here.)

This notion that El Presidente is in fact dry and ryeless seems rather at odds with his behaviour as of late, most notably his press conf yesterday about spying and wiretapping any available and questionable American up and out the wazoo as Papa/El P/Bush deems necessary. I did catch one quick visual soundbite with him answering a press corps question. To paraphrase: It's about your safety . . . it's about your civil liberties.
Hmmm, last I heard this genre of practice was completely opposite what good ol' civil liberties are about.
Onwards.
As there is a transit strike in the Shiney Apple, something threatened for about a week, I opted out of pre-miasmic - nay, make that Double Miasmic - conditions and am hanging in the Middling City until post-strike, post-holiday-travel-meltdown.
Over the weekend Yours Truly met up with a college pal, writer Harold Goldberg, firmly entrenched in the Shiney Apple and writing each and every day.
Besides the Perfection that is epinw, YT does a smattering of writing.
I have been back to drawing, not the drawing board, but grooving on my pencils and such and do still feel slightly bemused when others find great joy, etc. in this scrawling.
I now embark into the MC WW (white wasteland) to pick up Dorota and Jason at the MC "International" Airport and then points beyond.

Well-balanced Love.

With the help of Nick, my new record shoppe pal, I discovered that the Nouveau Neil is out when Yours Truly believed there must be weeks to go. But of course Neil released his new gems out into the world now, in time for the holiday hoopla and gift-giving sector of the calendar and such. What I've paid attention to so far has been wondrous - Neil (and fercrissakes I do hope that you know I write most lovingly and obviously about Neil as in Diamond, resonant voice of the 70s and beyond) and backup musicians, all new material written by Neil. At a soirée last night I revealed my Neil Luvv and an alternamusician claimed to love Neil, too. I suspected that this was a move to sound hip, now, etc. Other record shoppe purchases that sojourn were the new Sigur Ros (always a grand choice for winter), the digital v of Bright Eyes, and partyrific Gorillaz (featuring that inescapable iPod song so overplayed at the Geek/Mac Clubhouse).
Worked an hourly wedding last night that stretched and stretched away, so much so that it caused me to pass on party number one. I did my trademarked party drive-by, sussing out if it was in high or low gear, gleaning info from the shadowy heads or lack thereof and clues from nearby cars. My clues pointed to move on. And so I did.
When I did arrive at the second joint I informed my co-hostesses that I had been held hostage by a wedding. I attempted to eat snackdinner but was thrown off my nosh course by Mary who desperately wanted me to dance. So I said Cheesh, my friend May wants to freakin' dance, who cares any more about stinkin' bean dips and such.
At some point I decided it was necessary to get a running start and skid along the hardwood floor into the dance floor action. I made a few others do the same.
I busted out my new toy, the iZone digital camera and found it to be fraught with a few glitches but do love its size and design.
It is time to call this a wrap and do some holiday wrapping and wending through snow and sip and sup some holiday cheers.

Love, wrap it.

Completely, resolutely minding a business that was nobody's but mine own, tonight, the following transpired out in the Middling City suburbs, during a freelance gig.
I arrive during an ice storm, a real throw-down of crystals thick and hard, rendering the landscape a death trap, a suicide rap. Baby, you like were so not born to run during this shit.
I digress. Momentarily. As is my wont, and your pleasure.
I am at the gig. I am waiting for things to get proverbially rolling. You know, things like intros, helpful hints, a discreet waiting and drawing-out of time as if another few dozen may traipse on in during the death rain of icy terror. Death Rain of Icy Terror: Middling City Winter Rants.
I digress again.
So I am waiting, even leaning against a wall at one point when I note a rustling on the other side of the wall and this rustling is rather loud during the intros which have finally begun. There are blinds on the inside of the windows to this glass-walled office I am leaning on. I peer into the blinds and note a small old man on the other side of the glass/blinds.
The man keeps rustling about. Perhaps he's trapped, Perfect me thinks to my ever-helpful self.
More rustling.
Finally, I try the door and it opens.
I stick my head in and ask the codger Hey, do you need to get out of here. Thinking he's demented, stuck, lost, disoriented after hours.
The man says nothing and just stares at me rather oddly. He may have muttered something but it was so illegibile, as it were/was/is as to be ignored.
So the intros continue. There is even an intro video that the guest artist has provided, probably carried with him in his carry-on. And here it should be noted that the guest artist is a world-renowned vocal coach who has worked with the likes of Judy Garland's equally-doped-up kid, some other vocal luminaries. Et al. Et freakin' al. Testimonials are read. Famous names such as Tony Bennett praising the work of the featured guest artist.
So all is finally stinkin' over. It is time for the guest artist to hit the stage, actually just a few simple risers fronted by some super floral arrangements that would be suitable for any gravesite. So it's time. The guest artist is to appear. Is he sitting in the front row. Will the guest artist descend from the stairs like a cheeseball musical.
No.
The guest artist emerges from behind the blinds/glass office.
He muttered in shock, Yours Truly imagines, for YT not knowing who his vocal eminence is.
Hey, I see a senior in apparent need and I dive right in. You know, being ever-helpful.
From there it was on to Soup Night at Monique and Blair's joint.
I had dropped, pre-gig, my soon-to-be-famed Brazilian soup and by the time YT appeared in their spec kitchen it was nearly a distant evaporated memory. So I ate Blair's scorching soup instead. It was high times, subtle misdemeanours. I realized at one point a demi-room of people was hanging on to a story I was regaling at some familiars. Then the somewhat edited version emanated.
It is time to move along.
It is time to think more art thoughts.
And dream soupy dreams.
Beautiful soup, beautiful soup, soup of the evening, beautiful soup.
So said Mock Turtle during Alice's foray into the Fantastic.

Fantastic, soupy Love.

(Perfect me wished this what does this have to do with the prix of bananas image at the end of this post but here it rests front and center. It is a shot of the nouveau flagship pornorific A+F store in the Shiney Apple, outfitted with oversized photographic images of models with oversized ab muscles. Focus in on the ab muscles to the right of the image. Terrifying.)


Just downloaded a plethora of musique, via the full-on wi-fi molecules emanating from the Airport of the tea joint, and for some oddball reason FireFox was unable to hack it and had to use boring ol' Explorer. I mean really.
Jen just lit my little tea candle and, before setting it down, asked that I not set anything afire. I asked if I had before. I do seem to recall something nearly blazing at this tea joint but think it may have been Allen's fault. I did set a menu afire at another nearby restaurant whilst resting it upon a candle. Perhaps Jen is clairvoyant. Perhaps I emanate pyromaniacism.
Perhaps I should depart this tea joint as I've been sitting and working here so long on their hardassed wood chair that I am certain that the arse of Yours Truly is as flat as they once believed the Earth was centuries ago.
I have slightly committed to an art exhibit and have work shuttling off to the bi-annual CEPA auction next month. There's creative fire for You. Some good-natured fuel for the artful adrenaline boosters. Technical shit.
More tech shit:
satellite radio, not nearly as expensive as You might think. And shortly the sole way to hear beloved Howard.
Trudy of the tea joint just gave me a graduation present after explaining that I completed my Master of the Universe degree late August and now am ruling my own aesthetic universe.
Tonight I make soup. Tomorrow night I make soup for a party. Saturday I make yet more soup for yet another party.
Soup, like photography and other genres of creative expression, is art.
Like a good bowl of chawan mushi - each bite/spoon a tiny universe, a whorl of opposing textures and colours.

Love's textures, colours.

Last night I was out with Liz and JimB and at some point they mentioned that HOOats is under attack by the Natives as this, it turns out, is the future site for the dreaded Middling City casino. Not the waterfront, really, as described by Middling City News, but a distance away on an industrial block with a few businesses, some open space. I drove a short way to this wreckage and felt like my parents's generation may have as they watched Olmsted's Delaware Park get sliced in half for an expressway. Progress and change and history slips away, bit by bit, in this Middling City. I watched as the cast iron bridges were torn down in my neighborhood/The Historic Old First Ward, told my engineers and planners and politicians that these were hazards and were too costly to fix. So I shot them, preserved their images, and down they crashed. Now HO Oats, immortalized by several photographically (YT, the Bechers, et al), is being wrecked by the Sovereign Senecas. They are saying that the brick portion of the grain elevator is getting yanked down (JimB pointed out his buddy's company name - Empire Dismantling) but not the elevators themselves. We shall see. The head of the Sovereigns stated that the Senecas were once chased from Buffalo Creek and now they are back, Forever.
About to embark on a sleuthy gig for a woman, documenting someone, unbeknownst to them, for a holiday gift.
Parting mantra: Industry is beauty.

Beautiful, industrial Love.

The year before the shit hit the NJP fan, the year when Dark Side of the Moon landed in my ten-year-old hands and changed my mind about all I thought I knew about understanding and poetry and such until that point, there was John and Yoko on Mike Douglas. Somehow I watched Mike Douglas, a grownup talk show in the late afternoon. (Somehow, also, I watched the inappropriate-for-kids Love American Style at lunchtime, munching on my pbj as I watched comedy about blow-up dolls, oral, and the like). These two took it over, so to speak, in '72 and I watched it all. The militancy, the guest artists, the staccato explanations of the way things were. And Mike, earnest Mike, watery-eyed, took it all in, as did I. The only way I heard the Beatles music and Lennon was via my older cousins as I was a freakin' kid with no money but an AM radio, cousins, a cast-off manual typewriter from my father in the basement on my grandfather's cast-off carved desk, and daydreams. I loved John before most men I have known (or sort of known) because of his earnest artist demeanour - that what he made is serious so, therefore, what you made is and could be, too. His music went beyond entertainment, became the music of dreams, of psyche, of inspiration, of pain, of all the everyday welts of life. His nose, in my opining, surpasses those of all others and remains the greatest nose that ever breathed upon the earth. His eyes were those that are a surprise, the type that no matter how many times you glance into surprise with their colour and depth. He wrote, drew, protested, loved, and still wanted to, despite the CPW situ and such, remain a pedestrian, someone who could walk in the park and breathe and be. John Lennon's legacy is to remind all artists that it's not only important to make work and be true to the muse, but to use the muse to push social change, what is good for the world, a goal that surpasses those flimsy goals of most politicos and so-called spirituals.
All we are saying is give peace a chance, he wrote as an artist, he said, to update the message of peace beyond We Shall Overcome.
Imagine.

Imagined Love.