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.