Last night highlights:
1. Gig at university, documenting 'Fun Fest.' Manipulating co-eds at this boozeless soirée to do some really really Nancyesque poses exuding plethoras of fun, including a bunch of guys doing fun hand gestures while holding a woman track star aloft horizontally. Does this make sense? Absolutely not. But does it scream fun? Fuck yeah.
2. Zoomed down to mediocre Canadian pop rocker engagement at Sphere, revamped 50s nightclub. First real concert there and the promoters did not have their shit together which meant that Laura and I were kept waiting waiting and waiting at the back door. After more waiting was told that we had to walk all the way around the building to the front door, which meant then shimmying through 1K drunk psychotic 54-40 fans. No treat there. At one of their outdoor gigs I walked in front of the stage, passing a bunch of fat old lady fans who completely freaked out that I might land in the spot in front of them (band is about 20 minutes away from performing) and so they shoved me in a fit of panic. That's what I was dealing with once I was in the room, after expressing my dismay at the promoters - pals of mine. One of them handed me a ticket which I tantrumly frisbeed at his feet on my way in to shoot. What a bitch! So I'm standing finally near the stage and a fan behind me lightly punched me on the back 3x until finally I spun around and said Look, I'm going to be here for five minutes so fuck off. Five minutes later I was back in the front of the venue (perhaps a concert shooting speed record), talking to the promoters (who admitted they were having multitudes of first-timer problems and apologized for the hassle) and having a very weak cocktail.
3. While having said cocktail Laura and I were invited down into the club's expansive basement kitchen by the owner, Joey, to sample his new Brazilian chef's wares. She whipped us up a few dishes. Yumbadelic.
4. Onwards to further stops including charity 'masquerade ball' at internationally-renowned Albright-Knox Art Gallery where me and my entourage of now 2 got yet more feisty after turbo-powered drinks poured by artists doubling as 'bartenders.' Left that scene after first dropping a strand of my el cheapo Mardi Gras (note to Middling City folks: You don't understand MG... go to New Orleans one time for a real Mardi Gras to understand what it really is, fercrissakes) beads upon a surveillance camera mounted in the stairwell near Die Milchstrausse by Anselm Kiefer - about the size of a house.
One sub-highlight was seeing a lawyerly pal and his very drunken silly date who was wearing a water bra, inviting us all to feel its squishiness. Note to self: never wear a water bra.
This lawyer also thanked me profusely for not publishing the photo of him stage riding at an outdoor music festival this past summer. What's the big deal, I asked, this, if anything, will open up a whole new market to you such as personal injury cases at concerts.
5. Ended the evening with now an entourage of 3 in a bar I would normally hardly ever be caught dead or partially dead in but the judgement was slightly impaired (see above). One of those annoying bars that's a shithole yet has pretensions exhibited in the layers of memorabilia tooting their own horn all over the walls.

Up with feistiness.

Declaring this weekend (declared my Rumsfeld to be Code Orange) to be a news-free one, really maxed out on all events au courant and it's time to escape into rock and roll and mayhem.
Amen to mayhem.
Stepped off the Friday merry-shoot-round to blog out for a moment.
Popped into an opening for a small photo show and chatted politely with the artist who then wanted to touch my camera, Mind if I take a look? I nearly screamed and karate chopped her little head.
I said No, I am really in a hurry.
I mean, really. That's comparable to someone saying (sort of) Oh, I really like that bra you're wearing, mind if I try it on.
I mean, any boy colleague can hold a camera and v.v. but some kooky Middling City artist stranger? I think not.
To be added to list of pet peeves that includes being touched whilst eating, people eating with mouths gaping wide open in movies, pretend badasses and men in lousy shoes.
Onwards.
All my curmudgeonly love, seething forth from my irony-clad heart.

Just in case you were on the fence about being a Francophile consider that their president didn't (yet) cave in to US warcry bedazzlement. Chirac was not convinced by Tony Blair, nor will he probably be by Colin Powell, that we have extra-oil field reasons to do more bombing in Iraq.
And then there's guitar playing American Tom Morello.
Formerly of the awe-inducing Rage Against the Machine, now in super-group Audioslave, he's soundbitten reasons why no is a fine choice in the new RS, RS916 to be exact.
I cancelled out on RS because of their soft-porn covers (and told them/JSW that that was my reason, as if they care about the micro-voice of anti-boobular sentiment versus the millions who grab such a cover... actually this oddly echoes the peace vs. oil procurement diatribe above) and yet still receive it.
Tom Morello:
This is the first time in American history where an anti-war movement has been growing and strengthening prior to a war. In Vietnam, you know, it took five years of a blood-drenched war orgy before the first anti-war movements got off the ground.
Rock on.

Minding my own business, sinking into filthy coffee shop cushions permeated with the curious scent of men's cheap cologne, I was visited by a singer-songwriter from Boston who, I believe, sensed a like-minded shoe soul.
Rose Polenzani, of pal Blair's rock & roll management stable, was in the Middling City after several ragingly successful college gigs in other places. She was in the coffeeshop, as was Blair, other caffeine tipplers and a warbling Dylan knockoff. The warbler was really trying my patience but, believing he was another of Blair's 'artists' I stayed and suffered, helplessly breathing in the Hai Karate, Ol' Stinker or Old Spice or whatever the fuck it was.
So Rose P. tells me a happy shoe story and it went something like this.
Note: this after we mutually admired one another's shoes.
One day, out on the road, Rose Polenzani, folk artist, decided that she needed hiking boots.
She does not hike.
Note: when you love shoes you need all types of them. I have vintage black little boy cowboy boots. Have I ever roped a calf? I rest my case. Oh and - I own vintage Budweiser sneakers that leave BUD impressions in the dirt. Have I ever had a Bud without severe prompting or peer pressure? I rest my case yet again.
So she selects three pairs to try on. The shoeman returns with four boxes, three pairs of hiking boots and one pair of slammin' black leather boots, the pair she's wearing.
The shoeguy said You didn't ask for these but I thought you'd like them.
The end.
Moral: when one walks about with a rockstar energy, that of vivacious je ne sais quoi, the sky and great shoes are the limit.

How I began my day today/Groundhog Day by Your Perfect & Favored Nancy.
Wake up to alarm. Grab apple and camera gear, not in that order. Get in car. Drive out to suburban Middling City university campus. Go up to university's geology department h.q. where I met up with two boxers (dog sort), various students and a staffer. All but the dogs are wearing construction paper top hats. Fifteen minutes later we head outdoors to a berm where one of the geologists has determined the cleanest snow is still clinging to berm. Out from a conversion van a geology department staffer (not a professor) takes a taxidermied groundhog wearing a party hat, visor and a sash emblazoned with 2003. The taxidermied groundhog is then placed next to a faux groundhog-dug hole, the base upon which his back feet are bolted covered with snow. Potting soil is strewn.
Assignment. The End. I came, I saw, I shot.
The eccentric and traditional end.
As the Middling City skies are rarely sun-fueled the taxidermied beast saw no shadow whereas down south, in PA, that un-taxidermied rodent saw his lively shadow and was startled.
Who to believe?
Quick or stuffed beast? You decide.
Rodent shooting love.