Firstly, how in blazes did Molly Hatchet's 'Kingdom of XII' end up within my illustrious cd collection?
Riddle me that.
Next on the agenda is this: why do not all artists have the same cavorting vibe about them that Yours Truly does? Namely, why did the artist who created the handpainted toilet (yes, I wrote toilet just then) NOT have a sense of humour about me sitting on his creation during the Take a Seat/chair benefit for the Middling City's beloved Studio Arena Theatre this evening? (Sidebar: I had a framed black & white print of one of my twinny models seated next to a furious fire, flowers in hand, for my contrib.) I handed my camera to my sister and said thusly: It's all set... get me quick. I went over, sat down on it (the art privey) with a straining look upon my (artistic/interactive) face.
The artist ran over muttering something, something about his 'Chair.'
Yeah, that and a packa smokes at a party'll get you a bunch of new acquaintances.
So during the tent party portion of this theatre benefit someone had the genius idea of hiring a really minimally-talented ROCK band in leather trousers to entertain the illuminati where a jazz quartet would have done the trick. Not only was I developing scenarios of how a certain office girl, I dubbed her MaryJo, would get canned early tomorrow AM for hiring Dirty Murphy (Ummm, MaryJo, could you please see me in my office in five minutes), but this band had a wireless mic and much later in the evening than the beginning the coiffed lead singer strolled about the tent as if this was his private karaoke time. He came up to me. I didn't know the (I think) ACDC cover that they were "performing." I started singing Yeah, Yeah, yeah, YEAH to the beat of the music and the lead singer looked at me as horrified as the toilet artist had and scurried away from me.
Oh well, we all have our strengths/talents.
Onwards to what the fuck I believe I'm good at.
Blogging, drinking coffee, making sublime images, conversing, shoe shopping and the like.
Off I speed to remedial rock audience participation classes.
My love.

Last night shooting ended with former Hüsker Du drummer Grant Hart warbling away on a guitar, his post-junkied teeth somehow still hanging on for dear life. His theme was scars (misunderstood by a Middling City listener as SARS) and at intervals he invited audience members to come up and share a scar to request a song. I was excited to show off one of several, attached to interesting stories, and had decided upon the deep right shin scar I got while shooting KMFDM and falling on a broken bottle and, standing on a barstool for a better angle, glanced down at the same time the sound guy stage right did and discovered I had bled all over my beloved soft doc marten boots acquired in Portland ME. A pool of blood, a piece of glass in my leg. I finished shooting (of freakin' course) and went to the front door where they took a shitty old tshirt and made a tourniquet of sorts. Well, I was going to share this story but by the time it could have been my turn I decided that I found Grant Hart supremely tedious. Enough, I said, and strolled back to discuss matters with others who had drifted away. The Neighbors, palsamine, sounded really great last night. Grant Hart might learn a thing or two about peppiness and delivery (and oral hygiene!) from these four.
Philip Glass's night in the spotlight actually rocked and I'm thinking of acquiring the piece performed last night, Symphony No. 3. Followed by a Q&A with PG seated front and center inviting any type of questions but that he'd probably do best answering music questions. Hardy Har, guess the comic twinge is in the Glass genes. For those of you not in the cognosenti, PG is Ira Glass's (swoooooon) uncle.
I am floating in writerly hell. Is my story too late? Will my editrix pal ever contact me? Will writing ever be an easy feat? Am I dyslexic? Am I a prognosticator? Am I a protagonist? A procrastinator? A pro-choicer?
Don't know (4x), Yes (4x).

So much Perfect News:
Just assigned seconds ago (ah! the life of a freeform freelancer) a shoot of the Philip Glass extravaganza at Middling City U tonight. They're banking on him standing up and making some sort of remarks at some point and that's not very definite so a-wingin-it I will be. If he's not onstage by, oh, 9PM, I'll hunt him down and get him backstage, lying on a divan surrounded by groupies and whatever.
Speaking of groupies spent most of Friday with The Nephew at Edgefest X at the local baseball venue, a somewhat sunny mediocre rock event. Highlight: Powerman 5000. The Nephew became Chief Little Autograph Hound backstage, politely asking playas for their autographs on his brand new SoCo bandanna. He kept wearing the bandanna high up to a point on his head, frighteningly resembling a much younger and healthier Pope. I showed him how to bestow a Papal Blessing and he gave such to several rockstars which they found charming. I had to give him Backstage Pointer #1: Don't Point and Backstage Pointer #2: Act always like you belong.
Yesterday shot an art party at an inner-city pro bono art school and there was, in a second floor art classroom, a girl holding an infant and two boys. The baby was crying. I glanced at it and thought Yikes, birth defecto... don't stare. The cry was odd. I looked more closely to discover it was a doll, one of those Baby, Don't Get Yourself Knocked and Cracked Up dolls that kids check out for a weekend and have to haul about for a weekend and a narc-like computer chip tells if this doll was left crying for long, shaken, etc.
I tried holding it and fed it its bottle. Then I looked at the kid: Do I have to burp her (its name was Jada, she said) now? I did. A few minutes of whoomping later there was sort of a breathing sound. She's done, the kid said.
Dixie Chicks management is being so obnoxious that I'm tempted to write back to their contact bitch and say You know what? I don't give a flying fuck about this show and these ladies need good publicity like mad so buzz off (or something to that effect). Four photogs only can shoot, one song only (#3), must shoot from soundboard (half a mile away), and the license and clearance agreement read like a messy pre-nup.
All in a few day's work and it's onwards for me... to caffeine, to deadlines, to images, to it all.
Love.

Suddenly readdicted to Amnesiac, Radiohead v2001 and nearly, now that I remember (this resurfacing and churned like the crockpot of chunky memory in me) it, peeing my pants thinking how there's a new Radiohead - a NEW RADIOHEAD - on the horizon.
As I write this I wonder if my editrix, my old dear friend Liz, might be reading this. Might she be gnashing her teeth with seether hate for me as I've been posessed by deadline anti-demons and have wondered where my story is much like she might be. It was derailed by her, actually, it was to be handed in two months ago. And then. And then. Tapes and notes move on their own. They shall be found, tamed, is it too late? There really is a writer down inside me, one that hates Photo Nancy for having too much the say. Then poor poet Nancy.
OK, here's a story: (omitting some details as it's not too on the import)
I am meeting some new people at a swankadelic joint when suddenly a broker of some sort introduces me proudly to a femme who's a matchmaker. She is not apparently married and I thought she resembled a psychic or aerobics instructor more than a matchmaker. But wait, I've never met a matchmaker.
Onwards. So we three now are talking when suddenly she blurts OHMYGOD she's perfect (that would be Yours Truly) for Jordan, turning to get Jordan's attention to meet me. (my cue to turn opposite direction and walk like my life depended upon the speed at which I propelled myself)
As I'm walking away the matchmaker I can hear is describing me to Jordan thusly:
Wide-eyed, virginal and WASPy.
If any of you smart, savvy, ironic and quip-filled epinw readers fucking know I'm just so not any of the above.
All.
Adjectives of unrequited Love.

Filed under Strange Things I've Seen Lately:
As credits rolled for the mediocre Laurel Canyon (yet Frances was luminous as the rock impressario/mom) and I sat to see who sang a certain song on the soundtrack a bottle clattered. The unmistakable sound of a bottle of booze hitting a hard cinematic floor. Looking behindways there was a man with what could only be called an impish grin reaching down to retrieve his bottle. As I was leaving the theatre with a pal there was the impish grinner, in the men's room, posing and making muscles for himself in the mirror. We caught glances. He was not embarassed.
My friend V made me a copy of his dark techno cd. This is what he does farting around in his Toronto suburb basement, his subterranean sonic world. And this cd rocks, would be a hit in the clubs.
Yesterday shot the all-day Kiss My Ass Hello Concert... Kiss the Summer Hello Concert to all others.
The day's highpoint by far was the crotch-grabby, swaggering and sexy set by LL Cool J, which I watched with The Nephew. This is the only act the child wanted to watch and I give him mad props for that... he eschewed all the nouveau R&B dance crap for this old school wonderment. Rock on Jake.
Now it's back to deadline hell.
Yet in hell I am ever full of imagistic Love.

Well, as the hotsauce bottle says, slap my ass and call me Sally.
It's finally time to go and see the band Anal Pudding, an event I've been putting off and putting off for some time, ever since that boy asked me to see them and I won an Academy Award for maintaining unresponsiveness when I wanted to spit laughter into his face.
Shot Robbie Goo Friday in the midst of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery show that he narrated with Johnny (audiotour). The pr nerds promised his appearance and I saw shitloads of Monets (actually there are several 19th Century surprises and I Perfectly Nancy rec the show), roast beef sandwiches... and no Robbie. Lo and behold and finally spotted him at the back of the sculpture court and went up to him and exchanged rock-worthy hugs and kisses. Posed him on a bench with feet up looking very comfy indeed and later emailed a few jpegs of same to People Online to see if they're interested.
Tomorrow is all-day fest, the first of season, at Darien Lake, and I'll be there with bells and nephew on. Planning on a spin on a few rides until time to shoot bands or I feel like barfing - whichever comes first.
But understanding that my inner ears have never been that stable, and I've been known to nearly fall over from standing still from time to time, I am betting my own hard-earned cash on the latter.
My perfect, undying, unsettled and unsettling love.

O Mighty Rock & Roll Power in the Universe/god please let my head soon feel it's part of my body and I'll never ask for another favour as long as I live.
(Yesterday's prayer after two meetings, a brunch date and six somewhat accidental gallons of coffee)

Met up later yesterday with a former lover and his wife of several years, also a friend. This would be the wealty technocrat who once said We can't get married, we're too much alike. To which I concurred and said Could you imagine the two of us trying to hang our art collection in the house - YIKES.
So we had dinner, some laughs and I sped off to shoot that twerpy Avril Lavigne and me and the Boy Collegues had to wait a good near hour and in the interim was much jostling about.
Dave puffing on his soggy cigar, wee baby shooter Marc (a mere 16! I said to him at Fleetwood Mac Jeeez, I thought you were from Rochester... and 21!), Lead Boy Colleague (in sandals. ?), Gary (who we now all refer to as PhotoGar (as in his AOL address), Charlie (ever-smiley), Ryan (who Lead Boy Colleague called to say Ummmm, you have a photo pass here and then he made it in 20 minutes flat... sans film so a-borrowin' he had to go), Pete and a few other occasionals. Two songs and we were out. Jesse from the venue offered us (as well as the tv guys) wristbands to stay and watch the show on the floor. His wristband offer was met with a deafening silence. Then one tv guy said Well, can I take it and use it for another show? Our collective thoughts exactly.
Inside the gig I turned to Charlie and said Look at this sea of little white faces. He added Little white girl faces. I dig looking at the signs that the girlies make spouting from their hearts their burgeoning rock and roll love.
These signs always feature bubble letters and sparkles.
Question: Can their be girlhoods without sparkles?
Answer: Was it a shock to you that the ol' Poopie Pope had Parkinson's, the affliction of my beloved Janet Reno?
Signs of love, sprinkled with sparkly farty effusions.

One word springs to mind when I think of last evening's Fleetwood Mac show:
t - h - o - r - a - z - i - n - e,
or whatever the hell it was that one of my former neighbors on Putnam Street (my special name for him = Hosey for the pantyhose he wore on his head, rather, a part of the hose on his head, sometimes - no lie! - with the cotton crotch floating on the back of his head as he made his way to and fro to and fro from his halfway home two doors down to the small mom and pop bodega where he walked back walked back walked back with a few candy bars balanced atop a can of Pepsi.) took every day.
Stevie Nicks displayed such anti-Stevie Nicks edgy freaky earth bitch energy and I noted, through Lead Boy Colleague's big ol' lens, that she was not even making the connection between her manicured hand and the tambourine. A ruse.
The others were doing their jobs. The crowd glass was half-full.
I had more fun and witnessed more stagely enthusiasm later at Mohawk Place watching banjo masters and folk soloists with Doug.
And, unlike Fleetwood Mac, those musicians did not make the press stand about half a mile away to shoot their likenesses, to steal their souls.
Off for more more more.

Thee only bad thing about last evening's Steve Earle gig was his lame-o attempt at a combover. Shouldn't such a perfectionist with off-stage guitar tech with a Kentucky Waterfall to beat the band (a mullet to those of you in the Middling City), exemplary songwriting and just the proper mix of balladry and intersong political banter be able to swoop the last remnant of headtop hair in a better way? Just a thought. Trying to lure one of my boy colleagues, Marky, into the Earle fold, as he's missing something I know he'll be digging.
Approached stage from the left side and, as I made proper media ok's previously, attempted to take my spot in the mini-pit, next to the other guitarist's guitar tech (and I've never seen one work this hard, in addition to non-stop tuning of about 10 he slargled a Rolling Rock, smoked, jumped onstage to play guitar and for one song, a synthesizer), when I was stopped by a ball of security flesh.
Badass: Where do you think YOU are going?
Me: Over there (pointing at Steve Earle's beat-to-crap cowboy boots)
Badass: No, YOU are NOT.
Me: Well, the promoter said it was ok.
Badass: Well, he's right over here and I'll ask him.
Me: (internally) you do that, fattie.
Badass: Go right ahead.
So about half an hour into the show I ask him
Me: So what should I call you besides Badass?
Badass: Excuse me?
Me: WHAT SHOULD I CALL YOU BESIDES BADASS?
Badass: I'm a Dynamic Bouncing Technician. Nick.
(joy! at ever discovering hidden comic talent)
So it turns out this Nick/Badass is not only a security guy but a Harley tech, a body tech (masseur) as well as a former Teamster and pipe-fitter. I find him fascinating.
On the other side of me was a goofball Canadian (no Kentucky Waterfall/Hockey Hair) who holds blues concerts in his living room in Barrie, Ontario.
For someone who claims the role of promoter he didn't know a thang about shows.
He had that wide-eyed Canadian charm, that interesing sonic attack of all things vowel (and, as always, apologies to dear Canadian pal Georgie-san) but he didn't understand via my body language that at some point I was no longer interested in explaining the Middling City music scene to him when Steve Earle was in the room - and that, given a choice, I'd rather speak to a squat polymath who could fix my body, sweat my pipes and repair my Harley, should I ever acquire one in a foolish midlife purchasing frenzy.
Love.

Sort of an Ani swagger parade is how I'd describe the Ani cd just left in my possession by Lead Boy Colleague. Guess I paid scarce attention to the release of Evolve and I'm digging the moth illustration on the cover. Jazzy. Onwards.
Best music news of late is the appearance tomorrow night of Steve Earle. His sister Stacey has hunkered down on Middling City stages here and there and now it's time for the best Earle of all. A blow your head off and switchblade yer heart extravaganza to be sure.
Next night, that'd be Thursday to yous not always working within linear timetables, is Fleetwood Mac and I'm feeling fairly sure that that'll not be as adrenalizing as Earle, or their last MC gig when that whole hoopla surrounded them when they drug their collective asses out of near-obscurity to hit the highway. All, really, thanks to past prez Bill Clinton and his inaugural Don't Stop...
My new school, New School U's Parsons School O'Design, is so discombobulated as they've lost and resent a few forms which is a real head-scratcher.
I tell you what:
yesterday had to break into my residence not once but freakin' TWICE. Doorknob lock went all kaflooey and dragged a ladder to the back of the house, broke a second floor window, set off home alarm (never thinking to unalarm) and then jimmyed (when the hell do you get to use this excellent verb?) the door off its hinges while bleeding up and down the wall out of a finger. Very evenly spaced and I've already pointed this out to four, I think unimpressed, others. So also while I'm bleeding and jimmying I'm on the phone with a man from Total Safety:
Me: what do you mean you can't find me in your computers? I pay my bills to you every month.
Him: I'm sorry but I don't see you... can you get to your keypad? It's rather difficult to hear you.
Me: BECAUSE MY ALARM IS GOING OFF. I guess you can't help me, GOODBYE.
About an hour later, after the cops came and went, I realized that I have Brinks, not Total Safety.
So same thing happened - unbelievably! - three hours later after I thought I fixed the prob. Turned alarm off, no cops, no jimmying. New doorknob.
All's swell that ends swell.

Yesterday, whilst reading a cookbook as I sat in my car and figuring out my paella strategy for today, I inadvertently, upon the passenger side, let loose my car keys. After shooting a wedding in a small town, and then trying to get into the car, I realized the tragic turn of luck. Hitched a ride with wedding people to a country club, hobnobbing with their bitchy limo driver the entire way. He was driving a near-classic limo like a yacht.
Him: This family never tips me, I drive the aunts around, the mother of the groom around, and they are all loaded. No tips, I'm like a waitress, I work for minimum wage. GRRRR, etc.
Me: (thinking) get a-no-th-er j.o.b.
So I'm grabbing his big subliminal hint that for helping me I should grease his craggly palm. I did - for the rides to & fro and for hanging onto my cell phone as I shot more wedding moments, alerting my photographic self when AAA was en route. More kvetching from Mr. Limo. We arrived at my car and the guy in the towtruck said Your car doors are already open. Handed tip to Mr. Cranky. Had a stress smoke on way back to club. Accidentally melted a grand and gaping hole into an article of clothing in the back seat - glad the little ember didn't hit the old newspapers archived vehicularly. Imagine someone making an announcement during the wedding reception thusly:
Would the asshole who parked right next to the building please rush out to your vehicle, it's engulfed in flames!
Conflagration follows me.
As do high rockstar times and minor misdemeanors.

They found one! They found one!
Listening to NPR learnt that those wily rascals in Iraq located one of those trucks-cum-chem-labs that Colin Powell lectured about a while back to the UN, who didn't buy his tale for one second.
Haven't heard back yet from my French family, who I assured that I (and all my friends and acquaintances, as far as I know) completely agree with their princely prez.
Countdown to studenthood and this is your mission: please send me some cash (what you can muster), some pink pearl erasers, some ear plugs, some cd's of your choosing and other sundry office supplies. As well as giftcards to Starbucks. As Jason so wisely observed, NYC (believe this or not) is short on mom-n-pop coffee joints so it's Starbucks... not a bad thing. It was whilst sitting in a lower Man. *BX (a stone's toss from Ground Z) that I am, I think, addicted to the bean. Could be worse. I was waiting for Jason and Dorota to unsubmerge from Century 21 with bargoons galore as I sipped and sipped.
On the hi-fi is Flaming Lips' excellent cover of Shakira's Can't Get You Out of My Head = sublime.
Your homework assignment: purchase the Lips' ep Fight Test.
Over and out and over and over.
Love of springtime flailing prehistoric millipedes who offer up domestic *surprise*.

Pearl Jam Friday night so captured my imagination (post-soul stealing of them by Yours Truly) that I was inspired to purchase their hi-end 100% polyester soccer jersey-style concert t with large embroidered P and J on either side of a lightning bolt = BOSS.
They dedicated Given to Fly to Vinnie Gallo.
Last night's Dave Davies (puffy, badly dressed) gig left me feeling Am I missing something here? Approached the exit and saw two cronies who had the similar feeling - one of them felt like she was seeing a former superstar on a county fair stage.

My aunts are an endangered species, another went the way of the Great Plumed Spotted Heron, indigenous to the Middling City's Historic Old First Ward, this morn. My mother sat with the body of Vivian until the deathly authorities arrived. My mother asked if I'd read something and I said Nothing biblical, I'll read something I find or write, but, really, nothing biblical.
Tonight is Pearl Jam and a lovely named Tom of Epic sent me two tix for the pc extravaganza. Beforehand an appearance at an opening of my work et al and afterwards (here comes the best best part) an absinthe party.
Behold! The green fairy has arrived! I should be muttering uttering at about 11PM.
Green winged love.

Say what?
Ministry last night, as Security Paul pointed out, had turned on a row of Marshalls stacks - photog ear level. Got there with 20 minutes to go and Al (that would be Jourgenson) came onstage with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. Shooting around his goofball monstrosity of a mic stand was a challenge to be sure but got some excellent, unguarded moments.
Was on the sidewalk in front of the venue, on a stretch of desolate Niagara Falls, NY Main Street, when suddenly there was a commotion and the promoter said Ohhh, our first ejection of the evening.
The ejection was a younger guy, face half bloody, shirt all mangled who was in a mild state of shock. Apparently he was minding his own business (hmmm) and then a security guy grabbed him by the throat and klocked him in the eye. As more mayhem was approaching in the form of screams and the sound of shoving people I looked at the promoter and the head of security and said Well, it's time for Nancy to check out.
Afterwards went to see a Baby Rock Star pal, Roger, in his second acoustic and post-Last Conservative gig at Mohawk Place. His former leader, TJ, apparently on the fast track to becoming a supreme lush announced that he was drunk again and was obviously a bit injured at Roger's solo endeavour - a primo one. Roger ran out of his material so did a few Dylan covers. Talked a while with MZ, Favored Baby Rock Star, and Tyler and Tyler and I hashed over our favored Patti Smith concert vignettes.
After enduring the ineptitude of JetBlue Productions this post-flight/rockstar night was purrr-fect.
Onwards to business.

Blogging at an internet cafe on WB'way at Human Epicenter despite the fact that my skewel - PSD - offers me this at a greatly (read: FREE) reduced price. I was seduced by flowering bulbs, stretching ivy and this joint off all that.
Met for coffee one of my new schoolmates, Margaret, and had a grand time exchanging SoWhyAreYOUDoingThis tales and compared theoretical/practical notes on making art.
Met a few of the others before and after the Duane Michals chat-up at Parsons Monday night where I had Justy meet me for some erudition and then some macrobiotic fare and organic wine (Justin, looking up from dinner plate, sort of a punished look on face: Uhhh, Nance, why are we eating seaweed? Me: Because I was scouting out locations for food near Parsons. Justin: Oh).
Apparently insulted Michals, who I've seen before, in the Middling City, by asking him about (god fucking help me!) his EQUIPMENT, specifically, lighting.
This derailed his charming queenly self-musing and he said Oh... what do you want to know that for? Then I think he realized that not only was his talk underwritten by Canon (with reps in row #1) but that he was speaking to assembled students. My questions was Do you strive to shoot in available light and if not do you always try to light things to look like available light?
egads
So then after some verbal song and dance he said Four Toto (hot) lights with umbrellas.
Speaking of equipment went to Photo Mecca/B&H yesterday afternoon and wandered about in equipment reverie, stopping to talk to Mr. Lighting and I had this crashing realization:
If in NYC and looking for a beau all a person needs to do is wander into B&H with inquisition in one's mind and heart and voi-fuckin-la you'll have a steady. It's a theory anyway. I've been in there how many times and have had guys ask me out and not only that but to freelance for them, at them. I think there's a story in there, maybe even a haiku.
Well, back to my poetic enhanced NYC walking regimen before meeting up with Dorota.
Then back to Middling City via Hellways Airlines (Jet Blue).
Note to self: no matter how large the voucher USAir is always the way to go.
Love of travel,
Your favored and special Nancy.

Patti.
Smith.
Rocks.
And will forever be hipper than all of us.
Friday night was the Patti & Ralph Show with both of them doing their respective thing (her = activist music, him = marathon activism) in a gymnasium to a surprisingly not huge crowd. She was stupendous (and, thanks to Doug and I of Janet Reno Fan Club fame we got everyone sitting stupefied up and dancing, after I catapulted myself through a few people and misjudged the distance and leveled both Doug and I think a chair as well as Your Fav Nancy) although I realized at her gig last night she was totally saving her shamanistic powers for Saturday, last night, at Sphere, where, she said, she was to do her Legendary show.
Three hours of her and men in very great shoes/the band. Including Oliver, a young and handsome swain perhaps half her age, her Man.
Observations:
1. Stipe, as he's stated his own self, owes much of his art to Patti Smith.
2. PS spits like a champ with real punk rock verve.
3. PS has no fat cells within her body.
4. Backstage talking to her I was shocked/stunned that her eyes are Marty Feldman-esque.
5. Backstage talking to her I was realizing that she doesn't quite know what to do with herself offstage.
During her gig last night I shuttled myself down to the front, elevated side and was thankfully surrounded by rock star boys who said nothing to annoy me at this momentous affair but who I shared rock observations with. At the Friday gig I sat most of the time next to Baby Boy Colleague which was fun.
After last night Patti went and met others at The Butchies at Mohawk Place and they surprisingly rocked as lezbo couples danced about. I saw a girl I wanted to model for me at one point and realized that nope, she doesn't have enought X factor.
The Butchies' drummer directed the question What... do you have SARS at me when I had a sneezing fit after chomping down on some German blow-your-fuckin-head-off menthol/mint gum. I shouted NO, it's mint gum and she said Oh, I have that problem, let me see if it makes ME sneeze. So up to the stage I went and gave her a piece of this German stick of dynamite. She said I'm pretty keyed up so it might not work.
Chew.
Chew.
Chew.
Nothing. She asked her bandmates to confirm that she gets the mint sneezies and they said Yup. So back to rock. Eric dug them so much that Jen bought him a shirt, a wise rock apparel decision.
All for now and over and out.

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.

Whew, what a high-powered and eclectic weekend whirl that was.
Still trying to remember the title of the movie that features a driver crawling from an overturned car to utter
Well, that happened.
A Baldwin, playing a movie star in the movie, industry inside looker, his teenaged hookup told to go away...
At a benefit show last night just before Henry Rollins's rant/appearance I was talking to a Middling City rock star who had an interesting perspective on my life. He said When I heard about what happened at the club in Rhode Island I thought Shit, I know someone who's put themselves in that scenario a scillion times and I'm listening, not quite recognizing myself in the thought until the MC rock star says You've been at more shows than anyone I know.
I honestly never thought of that in quite that perspective, that I've seen more shows than anyone but I guess years times nights times several gigs a night does equal possibly in one month as many gigs that people see in a year.
Same as when a pedestrian shooter tells me that they've had the same roll in their point and shoot for about a year. That they don't even recognize some of the happenings that shat from their camera.
Interesting, contrasting fun fact:
Over a weekend, at the frenzied height of the season, I can shoot upwards of 100 rolls of film a week. And that's 36 ex rolls.
I talked someone out of buying a digital camera last night and another into it. The former wanted one to shoot products and I surmised that he should shoot film and have the lab burn the images onto a cd for him. The latter is a wannabe journalist and to him I said Spend, spend, spend, buddy boy.
Off to an interesting buffet of assignments and deadlines both written and image-based.
My caffeinated heart pumps on.

The NYTimes this AM has a stupendous array of war stories and photos and a backpage assortment of satellite photos of Iraq. The best map shows the oil fields (the crux of the matter no matter who denies that) as receding gray blobs. I would probably have selected another color than dove gray, perhaps a High Alert Orange or Scud Missile Yellow.
In the midst of a happy and lucrative Bat Mitzvah day although not as lucrative as it is for young Rachel who, I was told, might net upwards of $20K today. Her parents have designated $1K for charity and the rest is earmarked for education.
I sit blogging in the midst of a newly-cleaned, shockingly cleaned, alternapaper office, the cleaner just thanked me for hooking her up with this gig. Lucre is in the air. And America (the "Coalition" my arse) seems to be thus far kicking ass. I wondered if they're walking into catastrophe, if the Iraqis might be constructing some colossal boobie trap.
Tonight I've instructed Rachel the Bat Mitzvah girl that at the world's hoakiest Italian food joint (Salvatore's Italian Gardens to those of you who knoweth not the Middling City) that we are going to use the onsite crap/tchotchkes/antique cars/fiberglas buffalo for photo ops until the cord is yanked so to speak.
Saw Lawrence Brose out last night as I sipped wine with members of Janet Reno Fan Club. He's participating in a convocation, or was is a conference (some important C word) and was all nervous and prepping away. Being the vibrant gay artist that he is (creator of an Oscar Wilde De Profundis masterwork) I suggested that he let them think he's stiffing and then streak through as the panel is speaking, some key words Sharpied onto his body.
When in doubt, make a big splash.
Onwards to yet more coffee, and photo ops and mischief that is the spice of my life.
Love.

Shot the Bouncing Souls on one of last night's several stops a sold-out HOT-en-anny. As their name suggests, they bounce a lot. On the proverbial toes shooters must be. Speaking of shooters shared the pit with a small girl with small digital point & shoot and the Middling City's most annoying boy photog who does not rate as a Boy Colleague. He's Amateur Boy and he apes all that I do, perhaps watching me as much as the stage activity. I put on a different lens, he does same. I switch from TTL to some bounced light for a different look and he'll do that. I switch from one side of the stage to another and he's there. I back up five feet and he's in the spot I just occupied. I think next time I see him I'll charge him a tutorial fee. He's also the sort of photog who's all elbows and some of the BCs have noted this as well. It's a habit, a way of being a pain in the ass, a presence. I've actually moved Amateur Boy's elbow out of my view when he was in front of me and maintaining a wallish stance.
After Bouncing Souls shot a lezbo spoken word artiste, the final stop. She was really a bright spot, words flipping out of her effortlessly. Alix Olson. And she had some audience participation happening, always a gold star in my mind. It was a far far cry from the pre-Bouncing Souls reading I shot/attended that was a hushed and brightly-lit affair.
Events, they come in all shapes, sizes and darknesses.
Onwards.
Love and Friday-style anticipations.

Endured the world's longest awards luncheon which clocked in at a mind-numbing 2 hours and 20 minutes = speeches, presentations and video snippets. I was so on my game: this awardee from the left, next one from the right, ooooh, and this awardee head-on.
Needed/wanted to sit closer than the alternapaper table so sat with a rival pub's employees and when the emcee said Would every past awardee here please stand up I did my customary rise and bow... explaining that to the table's obvious unhumoured horror.
For some reason my 80-200 was on the ol' fritz and would seize and give me a horrifying EEE as in Error message. Switched then to the 28-70.
In 50 minutes there's a peace rally in a smallish Middling City Park. Seems to me a tad late for a peace rally as we're now in the throes.
Just told one of my more humour-loving colleages at the alternapaper (where I'm multi-tasking/making a few perkly long distance calls) that I'm fasting until we have peace.
Fasting for peace.
As the oil fields burn I sign off, soldiering on for accuracy in all things Blog.

Amongst other messages left on the Perfect answering machine is one from an attorney and I'm dreading calling this person back - I have a feeling it's the esq. of the batoned man who not only gave me his okay but purchased a few copies of his bruised likeness. I sent him a few lo-rez jpegs so he could have a sneak peek of what'll be in his mail and in the alternweekly.
For the record:
I have applied and been accepted to be part of the first group/class of 15 MFA students in Parsons School of Design's Photography and Applied Technologies. The mere mention of the word technologies makes my heart gleefully skip beats... me, data, experimentation, imaging more than ever, images, technology, calculations, more experimentation.
The program is designed to have us in NYC for short intensive bursts in the summer when no undergrads are around the labs. Then they prefer us to depart and resume our careers whilst keeping in touch with fellow PRT MFAs and faculty via... technology!
Finally received my packet of overwhelming amounts of information including my student freakin' number. That and $400 means it's for real.
Tuition, frighteningly, is higher than I realized.
I may have to start a part-time career in bank robbery to finance this experimentation in higher learning.
26 months from now you will all have to get on all fours and kiss my MFAd arse.
Thanks for your attention in this matter.
NJP, PSD student #NP28887.25

I'm sorry, I just don't care right now.
Turning off NPR and the pending death threats and reaching for brilliant Stephen Malkmus/Pavement's appropriate-for-now Terror Twilight from 1999 when the world was still sort of innocent and fresh.
Among the sights shot by Yours Truly this past weekend was a man of a Middling City suburb with a perfect baton mark across his face, getting shuffled into a waiting squad car by two Middling City cops. I'm going to phone him tonight (if he's out of the klink/hospital) to ask if he's okay with his likeness and name running in the alternative newsweekly that sort of pays me.
Full of himself Lead Boy Colleague said he sent the same man's likeness to AP and that it was seen all over the country. I think the bashee still has a right to a yes or no on being run in his hometown alternapaper and being named.
Yesterday shot the St. Patrick's Day parade, a flash of pomp, circumstance, drunks and green. Escaped the mean green streets to a friendly gay bar for an icy one, dabbing some beer foam onto the small lips of baby Sarah until her mom said No more.
Although Crispin Glover is one of the best freaks on celluloid (and what a fine fine nose) do not - DO NOT - waste money seeing his newest movie Willard.
I liked it for showing me some interesting camera angles. In a nutshell it's a fucked-up tribute to Michael Jackson and his movie Ben.
Onwards to more music, more work, no more news today and more images.
Love.

Prowling the darkened Middling City streets is next on the Perfect Agenda.
Last night Tori was a huge el grande NO. A certain Margo from Sony said Tori is saying no to media in all secondary markets.
So in case you didn't believe me that the MC is secondary, there's backup.
Or perhaps it's another case of ARSS (Aging Rock Star Syndrome).
Tonight is art then music then music then music before a visit to the Tequila Maiden.
As I had to deliver handiwork north of the city I made a very politically incorrect visit to the Seneca Casino as a plus one. At the entrance several security guards converged upon us at the sight of my camera bag... red-faced and hands a-grabbin.' I talked my way into keeping the bag with the warning that if the camera popped out they'd take it.
Hopped aboard machine but wasn't feeling It. I was fixated on a Tabasco-themed slot machine, $1 + a shot with meager results. Surrounded by the sunken-faced elders who spend way too much time in front of the mesmerizing music and flourescent lights of the machines.
We curiously took a look at the buffet - a half-mile of all the starches and fried items a body could hanker.
Off to points pointy and blunt.

9580.
Every person reading epinw remember this 4-digit number and use the hell out of it.
It comes to me at a very steep price, compliments of Verizon and Verizon DSL so please use it and pass the number along.
9580.
Pick up a phone and dial it and nothing else and wait until the recording comes on and tells you what phone number belongs to the phone that you are holding in your listening and holding hand.
Use it at payphones, someone's mysterious phone.
Why am I passing this along after Verizon made me promise I'd never remember the number, let along pass it along?
Well, hang on to your hats as your Favored Nancy is currently a Steaming Nancy.
Friday I was in NYC and called my residence to find a stranger at the other end of the line.
Are you in my house?
No, I'm in my house.
So my land line now shows up as if I'm calling from her house, she has been getting my phone calls and I have no internet access. According to my neighbor, who I called yesterday on my cell phone, she's been receiving most of my calls since Friday and she took a call from someone who wanted to hire me as a freelancer.
Thinking of making Sprint PCS my sole phone and cable my new internet provider.
Goodbye Verizon. Well, unless they comp me about $1K.
Onwards.
My undying and communicational woeful love.

At the Old Fart Concert me and my boy colleagues were made to participate in a biathalon of sorts. We were shown the diagram of the stage with our photo positions near center stage back about 5 rows and then either side back about the same distance. For the intro (cheeseball music, pianos rising from below stage, Billy Joel then Elton John waddling to stage, meeting at center and raising their joined hands in a victorious geture underneath huge circles of snippets of the American and British flag conjuring up thoughts of the pending Bush/Blair war) we were at center and for song 1 my half-group was escorted to Joel's side of the stage. For song 2 we were ushered over to John's side of the stage. This meant running from one position to the other, dodging folding chairs, ushers, people carrying snacks on trays. Realized back about 40' was a better angle for Elton John (who looked like hell in shaggy red-head wig and sunglasses, puffy jowls jiggling about) and then tried to escape my group to return to Billy Joel's side to make more images of him from reverse, better angle. That's when our usher, Jesse, caught sight of me jogging away and I was busted. Nancy, come back to your group, he shouted. I obliged.
Then onwards to Flogging Molly show and shot the opener before standing in pit with security men. I was next to one guy and I glanced up and commented that if the oversized disco ball let go from up at the celing we'd be kaput. He said his secret passion is disco so it would be appropriate. We discussed the panic and horrors of the Rhode Island club disaster and I said that people will grab for those they know in time of pandemonium and that one slip and fall means crushing and piling. This conversation took place a few minutes before Flogging Molly (Guinness-guzzling lovelies) hit the stage and the barricades were nearly collapsing from the crush of punk rock and Celtic music-loving fans. It was time for Your Favored Nancy to evacuate and shoot from the wings.
Thanks to Joey Marcella I now know the club's many secret passageways and navigated through a secret door to walk behind the bar and leave unscathed.
Onwards.

En route to a really really really really fabulous show pairing one decent guy and one complete jerk. Of course I mean the Elton John and Billy Joel Face-Off in mere moments. Have to show up at security for check-in in about half an hour. Happened to catch something on cable tooting Billy Joel's sad horn - how he granted some misguided young girl backstage access to Him and he was Mr. Finesse, basically saying Yeah, we do a lot of good here and if it makes somebody's day...
Yeah, whatever.
It's two pictures in my column, and I believe it's sold out.
Afterwards a quick stop into the Flogging Molly show downtown and then that should be sufficient for today's wheelings and dealings.
Off to see two puffy pop stars.
The joy of the night will be, of course, seeing the boy colleagues en masse - it's been a while and it's usually a time of laughs and usual equipment banter.
Pop rock shooting star Love.

Believe this or not I was going to blog from Parsons School of Design - Parsons School of De-zign - and their network did not support Mozilla, how all this magic happens. Oh velcro and moved along, after checking numerous emails from there.
•
Tonight is Dorota's el grande gallery night, Joseph Helman Gallery from 6-8 she'll be in the white hot spotlight and I'm to help her, allegedly, shop for the ensemble today. Yesterday we found some smart earrings. My outfit is ready, as if that's any surprise. Many Middling City people (imported and relocated) will be there tonight so it promises to be an excellent schmoozathon.
•
It is time to rush out the door as NYC is calling my name and I'm indoors. Despite the breathtakingly cold air it's still NYC calling, NYC walking to do out there.
Sadly, it's back to M.C. tomorrow - when I literally run from plane, to car, to a gig.
I'll be educating little eager children on how to write about music, as part of the Symphony Scholar event at Kleinhans Music Hall.
Note to self: if in a very post-art opening/soiree condition, bring the mints•
A pickled role model is still a role model albeit an aromatic one.

Well happy freakin' Mardi Gras to you, too.
It's impossible for me to think the words Mardi and Gras without thinking of my roadtrip ending in a one-week stay in New Orleans for the visual orgy that is MG NO, LA.
Days and nights of parades, spectacles that are unforgettable (one: a man in a boxing match with a USA Today box until the cops hauled him away, bloody), the booze, the music, the stay-up-all-night Monday until Tuesday events, dancing on the levee at dawn at a free shroom-enhanced punch soirée. Ahh, Mardi Gras.
Leaving on a jet plane tomorrow to, amongst other things, celebrate the wondrous landscape images that have sprung forth from the brain of Dorota.
My pal Tom Calderone at MTV sent me some MTV2 swag, a gigantic and hip jacket with a typically jocular note from him stating that he's been promoted and therefore is sending all sorts of presents to his Middling City cohorts.
And, on a final note, I appear again on the cable access show/fiasco this upcoming Friday - taped last Friday. I arrived after a dinner date with a bunch of people, slightly tipsy and very feisty. I thought the taping was a chaotic disaster but the host and producer thought it was my best appearance ever, that I've really developed my television persona. Yeah, that and four cocktails will get you on the path to high times. The producer created a monologue about Yours Truly and I find it completely horrifying. There's a still of my face with a voice-over... Here's Nancy, mild-mannered. (laughter) Cut to live shots of me later in the show, and a moment where I did an impromptu interpretive dance to the music they were playing in the background.
I'll absolutely never be able to run for public office.
Oh well.
Mardi Gras love and such.

More Middling City rock & roll anti-incendiary madness.
Doug, Allen, Craig and Tyler's gig (The Neighbors and, yes, there was a fitting and subtle tribute to Mr. Fred Rogers) was moved from Mohawk Place to Sphere as the fire marshall(s) deemed the former to have a legal capacity of only 42 in their rear stage area. Calculations were made, protractors were consulted. Legally each imbiber/listener is allotted 7 square feet... so do the math for your favored hotspots.
Ironically, I saw Robbie Fulks (a genius! a semi-country genius!) playing a joint called the Sportsmen's, in what's an area of the Middling City called Black Rock, and there were 200+ crammed into the tiny bar.
∞
Now there's no more fucking around and it's nose to the creative grindstone to complete my fab art bra for the boobie health benefit on Friday night, 3/7. Have to tell the head of the charity that I won't be there... I'll be freewheeling way east, just before the ocean.
Actually had to invest in a tiny grommet setter because I'm using red grommets about the size of the size of the inner regions of a nipple. Or so.
Onwards to breastly matters at hand.
Grommetted love, red.

Being my lovable, rebellious self I had to smoke, en route to shooting the Wellness Extravaganza at Middling City University, a big delicious American Spirit cigarette, a light.
And then I shot people getting fat content tested, bombarded with information on soy, bone densitometerized and the like.
The angry midget brat Avril Lavigne comes to the Middling City in a few months and when I shot her a few months back I was overcome with a gigantic sense of totally not digging her, her hair-in-face stance, her faux petite Canadian bad-ass ways. And lame lyrics. And pussy-whipt backband boys.
Last night ended at the joint named for the nihilist, Nietzsche's, with buddy boy Doug singing Tax Man with the band in attendance doing their best work on the oeuvre of George Harrison. They were done. The crowd clamored for Tax Man. The band didn't know it so Doug, ever helpful, hit the stage. Usually a bass player who harmonizes as second fiddle voice, he was obviously relishing his impromptu front man gig.
Hailed the Tequila Maiden and said Would you run and fetch us some of that golden goodness? Have a tab in that nihilistic joint but handed her a tip with instructions to Stuff it into your g-string.
As I was watching Doug/Tax Man I noted, as I went onto the pa riser for a better shooting angle, that the floor near stage right is very very spongey. One day Nietzsche's may be in the red hot spotlight of club disasters. And you flagrant epinw followers will say I knew all about that spongey saggy floor.
Architectural love.

A short & sweet shoe story:
Work, work, file column, return to home office hovel and discover in daily mail delivery a frequent shoe flyer award so after some social and anti-social obligs head to shoe Valhalla where *** a dream sequence is happening, accompanied by meaningful pop music by shorty-pants John Cougar M*** in the clearance area and there's suddenly also an additional 30% chance-of-a-shoe-lifetime markdown and the perfect mules for the upcoming event in NYC are discovered as well as another more leisurely pair for Middling City high times and dear fucking god the final prices are circa 1950 or so and leaving shoe joint is one person and four great shoes - after witnessing a highly-pampered suburban lady with french manicure have a meltdown when the Valhalla employee misunderstands her directives about shoe boxes in shopping bags and then another when asked for another form of picture id. The End.

It's now about 55º F in my workspace/home as the furnace hasn't been going on and there have been numerous trips up and down stairs to flick on and off various switches. Now it's time to call Mr. Heating&Cooling as my fingers must keep working and they're getting red, before blue.
Minding my own business I was meandering for food supplies following work deliveries this AM and freezing/working at home. There before me was a pink Barbie Easter Magic display. Barbie is dressed in a short pink Easter frock and comes with a chicken-sized egg. I thought perhaps the Magic in Barbie Easter Magic might be that girls can stuff the egg up into Barbie and then her reticulated ankles, knees and hips allow her to squat down and lay the pink plastic egg.
The egg is a bonus gift for the girl who receives Barbie.
And on back the lucky lucky girl can complete a small and facile bunny maze.
I was looking for pink fuzzy bunny ears to replace those sadly broken during my last soirée.
Onwards.

A bit of steaming words, hot off the fingertips and probably more than any of you epinw readers ever needed to know about one of your Fav Nancy's modes of old-school dough:

Insult a man's Mardi Gras parade and you cut him to the core.
In an email to another newspaper employee (who later forwarded the email to the aforementioned man/SuperEgo/Middling City Mardi Gras parade founder) I dubbed his parade dismal.
Six vehicles do not a parade make.
Watchers are key, as are perhaps a marching band and a plethora of paraders.
Onwards.
So the man fired off a snappy/sappy email reaching far and wide, calling me a "photo editor," questioning the way that photo/digital images are filed at the newspaper that he founded (and at which I've been dismally compensated & employed nearly-full-time since 1990), and on... and on.
I'd paste it in here but it was deleted long ago.
Mentioned he might want to invest in photo filing software that he did mention and tried to suggest be used, that I (as well as the occasional intern snap-shooters) would be happy to use it but that my filing system works fine as long as the "managing editor" manages to tell me in a timely fashion what it is that she needs.
Also, why is it that a hundred clients local and national have no problems with the way my digital files are named - but Fabio does. Color me Middling City Gray and Confused.
Usual Nancy/Managing Editor scenario: (Friday afternoon) Oh, Nancy, it's really late, I know, I'm really sorry, but could you shoot... and always it's Yes Yes Yes and pestilence upon my head if I say You know, it's really late, this really sucks,
your parade sucks.
At the newspaper I am a columnist who creates her own assignments, builds her own weekly column, shoots (last-minute) requests for food shots at restaurants the county over as well as feature photography.
Oh, and did I mention, the m.e. handed over a freelance gig to one of the paper's interns last week when the guy had called me before, I returned his call, his cell was off and he called the office looking for me.

Here's an idea, O Parade Creator:
You want a true photo editor?
Pay. Double (or nearly) the salary and you'll have a Photo Editor and great karma will wash over you for doing the right thing.
You finally broke down and acquired my digital camera but this doesn't quite balance out years of mileage, the other equipment I've purchased, the time, the time and the time.
Behind me is a room full of seething and angst-ridden employees who witness disparities of wealth and know there's not many Middling City alternatives to the alternative.
Enough laundering for now.
My undying, unbleached love.

Yesterday included a multitude of eclectic photo ops and photo situations and at one I was able to utter a key, three-word phrase that, unlike ILOVEYOU, is just not appropriate for every day usage:
Stop, DON'T SHOOT.
Men emerged holding muskets at the ol' Fort Niagara alongside the Canadian border and, knowing these were re-enactors probably a little on the zealous side, I said those three words.
And in response the first musket-holder said You don't look French so we won't.
Being a Francophile I immediately thought I'd like to throw some steaming Brie at his red, near-frostbitten face but did not.
I was there with Lead Boy Colleague to document this re-enacted winter garrison and - JOYOFJOYS - asked if they'd blow off their operational cannon in addition to the five-gun salute over the lake. They obliged, rolled out the cannon, went through the lengthly process of packing and checking and lighting perhaps six times before
KA-BLAMMMMMM
off it went. They did this twice for our enlightenment. A third hack-type shooter was on the other side of the cannon action and you knew he was Serious by the khaki vest he was wearing.
My only other previous cannon-type experience was when my pal's highly eccentric attorney father shot off his pipe bomb and miniature cannon one summer evening up in Canada at their lakeside summer residence.
Speaking of pyros and the issue of control, the bar fire in Rhode Island, I hope, will create awareness about club safety. That night I was out shooting and one stop included a joint that had quickly posted an emergency escape plan around the walls and even as a slide on their continual a-v display.
It's also made me realize that many of the places I pop in are fairly certain death pits with minimal attention paid to safety.

Hair band safety endnote:
One night, in the suburb of Lackawanna (where the Al-Qaeda cell of seven was discovered) I was at a KISS tribute gig by a band called SSIK. They had homemade pyros that at the time I found amusing - coffee cans filled with black powder and the like. Several months later, driving down Ridge Road, the club was gone. Burnt to a krispt. Know when to say Hell no to pyros. Sometimes at concerts photogs in the pit are inches from boxes that are sometimes labeled pyros. Usually a stage tech comes out to tell us to steer clear of such boxes during song 1 or whatever and tell us not to touch the boxes, like we're really dying to pry open their lids and fuck with Britney's (or whomever's) super-special bells & whistles.
Onwards to further photo matters.

Special excerpts from my artist slide talk given earlier this evening to the Middling City Museum of Science Camera Club:
Me blah blah me then image me etc. black & white blah blah me me me... and so on and so forth. I managed to fill a slide tray with 80 and the talk ran the gamut of images although I did manage to omit (oops) any images I've made of the nearby grain elevators. Though I did mention them, and my trusty/faulty Holga cameras, later during a spirited Q&A. The lady that booked me, as I wandered away from the mic, handed me a white envelope with my honorarium moments before the man (who later put on a gigantic full-length raccoon coat and black fur hat the size of a microwave oven) collected dollar bills and raffle ticket stubs for their traditional 50-50 split.
Now onwards to column deadline. Now onwards to excerpt events far and wide in my special excerpting mind.
&
Recent past excerpts from the fab Red Dinner held Chez Moi a few nights ago:
1. handing out contraband sparklers and ordering everyone out into the tundra for en masse lighting of them and chanting of HappyPresidents'Day into the smoky smoky night. (Earlier in the day spotted a near neighbor with a large open bonfire in the backyard and thought I LOVE my lawless corner of the Middling City!)
2. my mother appearing with a large tray of red Jello shots.
3. passing along my love of Varry Barry White, a man of love.
4. pal Blair coming in red vinyl jacket and red leather shoes that once belonged to late great 10,000 Maniacs guitarist Rob Buck - appropriated at a post-life, money-making auction.

Tequila Maiden visited me as I was watching an unironic band of hippies playing Dead-fueled idioms. As she was working, and bored, the offerings came on the generous side. Robert Creeley filled in for an allegedly ailing Andrei Codrescu at Hallwalls last night and Bob was his usual engaging and tangential self. He ended the reading tearfully and you could see every slightly-shifting person stop suddenly as they noted Creeley's tears. At one point last night I spotted two teenage couples walking arm and arm down a street and as I drove past them I honked for young love.
Valentine's Day, to the relief of many, has passed like a busy Forester in the night.
Next on the public agenda: St. Patrick's Day. Time to shop for the perfect shade of green silly string. Memory flings me back to last year's Middling City SPD Sunday parade when some little kid, without any drunken adult prompting, silly-stringed a passing cop. That's chutzpah. Flinging myself out to the ye olde Winter Fest in the blazing sun amongst thousands of sniffling families and the curious.

**Famed Nancy heraldic harmonica blast**

O Mighty Valentine,
of indeterminate origin and shadowy historical past, patron saint of beekeepers, the affianced and epileptic, shine your celestial wisdom on the pumping biological, chest cavity hearts of everyone teeming with various blood types, to dig life and all its amenities. O Lupercalian wise man, millions of shopkeeps of flowers, candies and small gift items bow down to your libido-enhancing, pre-Spring hopes for love and motives of a more lubricious nature transmogrified from impulse hormonal to impulse purchase. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Amen.

Tempted to hunt down Dave Harrod, last know whereabout = Philly, to inquire thusly:
JUST WHAT IN BLAZES WERE YOU THINKING PAINTING A PERFECTLY GOOD CEILING DARK BLUE AND, ON TOP OF THAT FIASCO, CREATING ONE-INCH GROOVES INTO JOINT COMPOUND TO BOOT?
Still putting on the pro-block and then it's going to be 2, count 'em 2, coats of white to eradicate.
And how does one know that one is living the rock & roll high life?
When one is moving sofa and hears a bottle clinking across the wood floor and, bending down, discovers that there's an empty and dusty bottle of designer malt beverage under there.
When this little home improvement is complete there will be a crashing of full bottle of aforementioned on the bow of this repainted party ship.
Onwards.

So I walk into the home of a client to deliver some of my photo work this evening.
Her and her husband have the t.v. on CNN/The Paranoid Channel and so begins this scenario.

Her: Did YOU hear about the duct tape thing?
Me: Yes, I did... can you believe...
Her: SEE, I TOLD you that was real. He didn't believe me (dramatic over-gesturing at Him).
Him: (sends me over a little wink and head nudge as if to say Yup, I KNEW that whole duct tape thing was real but was funnin' with her)
Her: I went to a convenience store today to buy water and they were ALL OUT.

(And on this goes for a long while, her explaining the evacuation plan of her kids school and how there are bomb shelters in her neighborhood and how the terrorists could look just like anyone walking into any building - she repeats this 3x - until I steer her to the photo matters at hand)

Next stop for me was a board meeting for Buffalo Society of Artists.
Because of aforementioned I'm running a bit late and am surprised that half the board is not there.
Me: So where is everyone?
President: I guess the weather kept them away...
Me: Or maybe they're home taping up their windows.
Treasurer: GUH-HUH, someone with a sense of humour.

Moral: Gallows humour, laughing in the face of absolute crap, is better than pale-faced tomfoolery. Under the overarching orange-red of Code Freak-Out stay close to who and what matters. Know when to step off the news media trail.

Subtly bossy love.

Surreals.
1. Rewinding a video and then chancing upon Janeane (sp?) Gareafolo in I'mSmart! glasses being all sanctimonious and labeled Peace Activist on FoxNews rather than comedian and, eschewing her usual label, she played the serious gal whilst looking stern. As I stated moments afterwards, she looked like a comedian schooled at the Stipe, Merchant & Bono School for Causes. I feel differently about her. Yes, war sucks. But her delivery was too... too... out of character.

2. Minding my own business I attended a girlie dinner soirée which ended in a Joe Millionaire debacle as we sat around a television set at the behest of a Girl Scout Leader who was so enamored that we enabled. So after 60 minutes of poofery nothing happened. I counted down, à la New Year's Eve 10 more minutes to resolution, 5 more minutes to resolution, 4 more minutes to resolution. And. Nothing. No resolution. As one of us pointed out, ohso wisely, we watched because we thought it was theee last. The apish man had two bimbos to select from, both non-prizes. All further tossing gasoline onto Osama's Anti-American fire, if you ask me. Where was Garofolo to stop this pithy nonsense? Probably busying herself spraypainting No Bush League Presidents for Oil Wars placards or the like.

My opined and obvious LOVE.

ps: in the spirit of love go here to make someone something really really lovely and nice.

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.