Went, and came back. New Orleans was perfect and all is swell in Nancy's World. Photographed a jazz funeral yesterday for Ernie K. Doe and it was abso-fuckin-lutely grand with umbrellas in the air, bands marching, people dancing, oversized bills with K.Doe's face in them, and the grand marshal who I talked with as his cigar hung at the corner of his lip. Shot the whole thing in black & white. The conference was informative and it was rather surreal to have a load of people of the same genre in one space except we were, physically and mentally (as usual), divided into three very distinct groups: editorial, advertising, and design. And never the twainish trio shall meet. In the midst of photographing a Hindu/Western wedding day and I'm still pulling red rice out of my hair from the Hindu portion. One more thing about New Orleans: I love the insanity there and the city was not much changed from my last time there about fifteen or so years. ago. Didn't eat enough seafood. Did drink enough cocktails. Off to hydrate before round two of the wedding. French guests are off tomorrow...I brought them back jambalaya mix and hot sauce and my money's on them never using either product but politely displaying them in their home in case I ever darken their Lille doorstep again.

I'm filled with kid dread to tell my French guests that for three days I'm heading off to the Big Easy Bake Oven that is summertime New Orleans. Newspaper conference. This will be quite a trip as last time I was there I was chem-addled all the while during what they call Party Gras.
And all the while photographed the beauty of chaos.
And saw the universe's grandest palmetto bug.
This is my most secret astounding feature: I can be in a city one time and the feel of its streets is completely imprinted in my specialized Nancy memory. I've revisited cities and have been able to maneuver about deftly, maybe not knowing street names, but moving unlost by visual cues. And that, pal, is a true photographic memory.

Had to run back to home plate to deposit my scary Dahmeresque item into my freezer. I'm in the midst of working on my next mag story on specialty food items with which to jazz up one's culination and popped into a Muslim store I've been in before. The son of the owner developed some kind of kooky instant crush on (yikes) me and he was all gangly goonie and I inquired about the meats - are they only frozen - ? - and next thing I know I'm in this walk-in cooler that was a regular Joel Peter Witkin fantasy with animal body parts all over the place hanging from nice big silver hooks. And...on a metal table was ... the head. A lamb's head. All flayed. They eyes intact watching me, my cinematic concentration zoomed in on them with a small trumpet blast ushering forth from an unseen yet Japan-worthy micro-speaker. An eye of a lamb, watching me and this horny teenager. And the brown rotting teeth still in its dead mouth. So, thinking of my art career, I asked - how much? The answer? Free. So off I wandered back into the street, plastic shopping bag over my arm, the weight of the head making the plastic welt up my forearm skin. My legal pad filling up with notes, my mind filling up with future art images, and further strange tales to tell.

Everyone in Nancy's World: We miss you, Nancy.
Me (responding to everyone): I miss myself.

Well, it's summer apparently and the work is piled up to my eyebrows and there are more looming deadlines which would crush the average person like a coconut falling from an airplane over a huge asphalt driveway. A pal at a supersonic photo lab whipped off a major order as my other lab has a piece of crap new machine which is making all of us already-stressed pros look like a bunch of slackers. Had to disappoint a colleague today with this horrid news: Black Sabbath here is CANCELLED. Sad, but true.

The day after. Lawn littered with beer bottles, cigarette butts. The driveway marked with an occasional burn streak, and pyrotechnic wrapper. The next door neighbor, the cardinal nestlings, and the stray cat pet a bit deaf today. The tip of my right thumb is charred and scarred from a bit of a firecrack mishap but it's all in a holiday's work. Today off to rock and roll photography of the local persuasion and found out today that I'll be in New Orleans for an extra day for the conference which I will be whisked off to next week as my house guests will have to do without me and my sarcastic quippicisms for three, not two, days. Life, a happy miasmic whirlwind and it's far too early to hit the Oban.

What Independence Day means to ME: as all the imported hockey giants and expat photographers living in the castle section of Scotland denounce America as a slaughterhouse and a whakteen sludge of animation gone awry and t&a and those television shows where seemingly everyone is fat and ugly and dumb and sans shame, I say the US of A is still better than lots of other places. Exhaustion sets in when thinking of the social inequality here and elsewhere but it's still a lot better here for most people than not. And you can drift around much further. This country is like twenty of the average country combined, and it acts it, too. Maine is a different country from Ohio which is a universe away from New Orleans. And Texas is unto itself: don't mess with Texas. We have choices, most of us, some of us, geographically. The money is ugly, the coffee is getting better, women's rights are faltering, the flag could be snappier, the voting process needs desperate rehabbing, but overall, commercially & cinematically speaking, we kick ass. And in the rock & roll realm no other country can touch us/US. And, in that amplified state of mind, I think of buying up in Canada at the loonie store a Canadian flag and a US flag and how my beau thinks me so utterly corny for having a patriotic streak but it makes me nearly welled up in tears holding a $1 plastic flag. Wars, and horror, and history, and earnestness, and that I can drive to Canada and buy a facsimile from a wire bucket for only one dollar. And I wondered today, as I hung the flag up on my backyard fence, if the VietNam Vet, Frank, across the street, was watching me doing this, if he would be enpained if I dropped it, if his chain smoking impulse would be triggered, or if his encapsulated decompressing debriefing would fly again from his mind, his lips, his quivering eyebrow. God Bless Your Underwear. I'd rather be living here than loads of other places. Amen and Sayonara.

How should I know an eight-foot white pine weighs 500 pounds? I'm a city girl gardener and, besides, all those fluffy needles, those thin branches, roots, what's that, fifty pounds? So I barge on into a local nursery and pronounce that I'd like a white pine tree and will be taking it away atop my sturdy car. The lady's eyes bulged nicely. She asked and what kind of car do you have? I said a Subaru. She then told me the weight and that two men and a truck and some machine she named by brand name would be able to come to my pad and install the thing to the tune of $500. I failed to connect with her telepathically to give me what I wanted, to give it all to me for perhaps $200. So instead I bought a rusty obelisk for far far less and it'll have to suffice at the moment. It's only five feet tall. It's not a white pine tree. I want a white pine tree. Everything cannot be perfect in Nancy's World if, when her world incorporates her backyard, she doesn't have a fucking white pine tree and she wants one. Thank you.

Did the big drive this fine evening to the exurban concert venue out in the sticks cow pasture and photographed Travis and then Dido, white folk rock. As good fortune would have it one of my colleagues had his rv out there stocked with Pepsis and so we sat in there and chatted while his wife watched some tv show I've never heard of and his other guests and kids came and went. Dido's band was actually great and the long instrumental intro for her was fab, I looked at the crowd and they were all on their feet, anticipatory smiles on their faces - it was actually electric. Afterwards I went to a grocery store (perhaps number three on my list of top ten things that I hate in the domestic arts category) in Pastureville and selected the world's LOUDEST GROCERY CART with wheels a -squeakin', me still in Dido sticker. I took solid pleasure in creating a major sonic disturbance with this rolling construction zone. A dazed-out employee of the store said "I know where you ARE" - heh heh heh heh.

Hell's bells, I just wrote this moments ago and lost it in a flashpan of disaster. A few hours ago, through a gin & tonic haze, I bought a fuckload of pyros for my demi-arsed Independence Day fete. Found a joint called The Boom Boom Room or some such thing and it was a low-budge enterprise and seemed like it was in a trailer. If it wasn't, it should have been, for perfection's sake. Upon entering one is treated to a spread of pre-packaged goodies and, behind chicken wire, yet more choices. I wondered if the nice man at the helm might say, excuse me, madam, under Canadian law I cannot lawfully sell you fireworks whilst your breath reeks so of gin. Afterwards, I went to purchase more Canadian goods: Canadian tampons, and a Canadian cup of joe. A ruse, you see: tampons would flabbergast the man at the border, something I'd mention if I thought his laser eyes might be drifting over to my trunkal area where the cache lay quietly, and coffee to seem o-so relaxed. Mr. Innocent asked if there was anything to declare. Just coffee *giggle* I said, eyes wide. Onwards I sped. I was in Canada shooting a 50th wedding anniversary gig and afterwards (after punching out so to speak) was practically duct taped down and force-drunk the gin and tonics by my friends Jamie and Paul.

How does one know when one needs to take one's car in for a tune-up? When one cannot get the mph's up to 85 by the end of "All Along the Watch Tower." Add auto tune-up to the big list of things to think about doing. My newspaper editor was haranguing me and we had an exchange of sludgy emails until he paged me and I called him thinking that perhaps this was finally it, my career with the now non-fledling paper was kaputskis, that this last bit was enough at that very moment to throw me into the no U-turn abyss of finality - but instead he offered a sincere apology. I dropped the phone on the floor. Not really but metaphorically I did. Yesterday I set a world record for espresso consumption during a single day and even I was amazed. It took several cocktails later to get me off of the ceiling. Off to a weekend full of bands and the usual mayhem. Luvv and kisses, your favorite person named Nancy!
BTW whomever left the robotic message on my cell phone rocks. The message said (think robot voice) hello my friend Nancy and with her help I can take over the world.Keep thinking positive thoughts, Mister Robot.

The all-day music marathon festival was loads of fun, and film. People absolutely go kookie for cocoa puffs for the Canadian bands and it was a sunny happy day unlike some other venues of late where security rules with iron fists and t-shirts. At one point in the afternoon I was talking to Eddie, my cop pal, and his boss - a real live cop boss like in the movies. They were both off-duty and I learnt that that's why both of them weren't wearing their badges and their other signifiers. But then Eddie showed me his badge in a smart leather flip-open deal. And he said that his boss had an even nicer one. So then he showed me his, it said Sargeant along the bottom. And I boldly asked if I could fulfill one of my fantasies. He said sure. I snatched his leather badge holding device out of his hand, flipping it shut. I went over to one of my girlie friends and said "FREEZE, YER UNDER ARREST" while I deftly flipped open the holder. It was great. After the festival came to a non-screeching halt I hung out with my newspaper teammates for quite a while on a patio, slushing down cocktails merrily and generally screaming and being mayhemious. I can't say that any of the bands hitting the stages really blew my head off, national or regional, but the happy vibes all day sure did.

Yesterday (friday) I shot all sorts of people on varying levels of fabulousness and realized one interesting fact, mid-day, which both shocked & stunned my avant-garde self: twice this week people whom I don't find to be complete dolts or assholes referred to me as a geek, both in the context of my unwavering rock & roll dedication and passion so it's not totally a horrifying thing. I'm so not the sort of geek who's in a hobby shop checking out the new Lionel train extender metal tracks or anything. How, you might wonder, do I know about such collectible ramifications? Well, let me tell YOU: today I spent a godd chunk of my life motoring about writing up my famed quippicisms about hobbies, arts, kids outfitters, toy purveyors, and the like, for AOL. Ask me any fucking thing you want about the sale of board games, bubbles, hello kitty goods, and the like in this region. I'm on it all like a summer tongue on a drippy popsicle. I'm debating the import of wandering downtown to photograph Gene Loves Jezebel at a club. Do I? Don't I? Tomorrow I've got a marathon music fest sponsored by my newspaper which means I'll be walking walking walking from stage to stage for about nine hours. And at some point, after nightfall, will slip down a few requisite shots of tequila. Pleeez, if you drink tequila and want to be my special pal, don't do so with condiments in my presence. That's so frat, so unnecessary, and so pussy-ish. Tequila must attack one's tongue full throttle. One time a friend brought back a scarily-labeled bottle from Mexico (pronounced right there Mehh-hee-ko) and nobody but me could drink it without barfing right away or nearly doing so. It had the nose of wet dog and the aftertaste of asphalt.

For the second year in a row at the very same venue Dave Matthews left Buffalo after seeing a female press photographer raise both her arms in rock & roll salute (ie: the deaf person's I LOVE YOU, I & L & Y all rolled into one) while hollering "Dave...YOU ROCK, I LOVE YOU" in great earnestness to the great amusement of her male colleagues standing all around her.
One of the group, of blackest/evilest wit, pronounced that our recently-departed fellow photog who was on the DMB press credential list for Reuters would not be there. We tittered, the press lady looked horrified, and later we each drank two expensive beers hoisted up in the departed's honor, to lubricate his way, I suppose, wherever he might be headed.
Tonight I photoraphed moe., national jam band superstars as the pungent scent of patchouli wafted over the 20K in attendance. The first time I shot the four/now five including a deft m.c. they were at a small bar playing in the front window.
I was annoyed at my lack of angle tonight and persevered and fought my way through the crowd to get what I wanted - the front line at a good moment. Like sex, it's all about angles and moments (and scents, and appearances, and feeling "it").
Opening for DMB was Angelique (great and I will be buying her cd) and lovely Macy Gray. I met the official DMB tour photog, Rudy, who bore an uncanny (albeit puffier) resemblance to Dave. He got snuffly when I asked which band he was with. I think the elastic waistband of his sweatpants was too tight.

Late, I work late. But tonight I finished at an earlier hour than usual, deciding to email a writing assignment before DMB. So I'm off to a few errands before filing at the newspaper office and one of the errands leads me to one block away from the home of the aforementioned busted (alleged) pedophile. I see camera crews. It's two in the morning and I'm thinking hostage? Legal announcement? Circled around the block and stopped across the street from the home and got out of the car and saw two people I know who told me that the accused killed himself in his bathtub. I said that I wasn't surprised that that's how it turned out and they looked at me in an odd way, but they had both been drinking around the corner. They left to go back to the bar and I stood and talked with one of the t.v. guys and all three affiliates were waiting out on the sidewalk and across the street neighbors quietly talked. Very windy night and I wondered if I was cold from the weather or the news. We all watched the police come and go and another photographer ran into the home and then left quickly and then returned a while later holding a bottle of Lipton Iced Tea which I thought was bizarre. What an odd time to get thirsty, or reach for a beverage, I thought. There was an oversized SUV sedan type of black vehicle in the driveway and after a while two people took a gurney from it, like the one I garbage picked a few days ago, but on it was a dark plastic bag. An old man left with a clipboard and wearing one latex glove and he went to his car and went back into the house. I wondered if I wished that I had my camera. I wondered what would happen to the archives of this photographer and to his possessions, and if he left a note. Maybe apologizing to all the boys and now men he did bad things to all this time. I thought, still standing there and between the fragments of conversation with the stranger from the t.v. station on the sidewalk, about how all of this pointed to guilt and how for a long time nobody came forward with a definite story or accusation before. And how because of the respect a lot of people had for him as a well-known photojournalist etc. how nobody ever said anything until that one strong fifteen year old had nothing to lose and spoke. I wondered if this man's ghost hovered over the scene, if he might try to be a presence one more time. There was a short and violent thunder and lightning storm a while ago and it seemed very fitting.

Afterthought: 2 second-hand stories about yours truly reported via two very different sorts of men.
1. An Argentinian male import, who moved here to stalk his ex, who I knew from way before their ill-fated relationship, reported to man #1 that one night out and about many years ago he told me as I passed him in a crowded bar that he was miserable. And I said 'good' and moved along my merry way.
2. Man #2 reports that people who sort of know us both witnessed me running/wallking up behind him and grabbing with ferocious strength and venom the back of his coat as he zoomed away, him being at that moment a maxed-out jerk leaving dramatically and impatiently the gig we were both shooting. When he wouldn't stop walking I said 'you're a fucking asshole' and let go of his jacket which, come to think of it, was very inappropriate for the warm evening. Oh, the ongoing fascination with pure emotion in this age of vagueness and confusion between emotion and vicariousness.

Confirming my suspicions about Aging Rockstars Eric Clapton kept still photographers at bay, a safe distance of half a mile from the stage. At the mixing board we stood and about midway through song #2 of 3 one of the colleagues was practically assaulted by an enraged fan who thought he'd be looking at our collective asses all evening.
Not only an Aging Rockstar, Clapton had quickly earned the rep at the venue of being a complete pain in the ass, a primo donno.
I shot a guitar fest gig en plain air at the waterfront and after two blues acts thought I was going to abso-freakin-lutely scream. I was 12-barred out! Thankfully Slash's Snakepit came out and realligned the day. One of my backstage hand acquaintances, upon hearing me gush about the band, handed me a SSP guitar pick which I will forever cherish. Slash was, of course, hot, musically & physically.
Oh, one of my new possessions? A coffin gurney. Garbage picked up in a northern suburb of this middling city. The HOUSE where it was pikt was tossing not one, not two, not three, but FOUR coffin gurneys. I was with Jen and she surprisingly and deftly folded the thing and operated all the knobs and things. We wrestled it into my car and it wasn't until it was just about in the vehicle that I realized it was a transporter for deceased bodies, not living ones. We believe(d) it would (with some minor adjustments and embellishments) make a swell snack table.
Tonight I write like the winds of hell are at my ass - translation: big deadlines. Thousands of words must now stream out of my brain like chlorinated city water out of a non-cinched hose.
Tomorrow night, Dave Matthews rolls into town. Love is in the air.

Writing writing writing. I've ingested too much caffeine and now I'm on that slippery slope and must head in the other direction and bust open the new bottle of Oban that I've been resisting until this very moment. If you have not heeded my advice and sped off to your nearest outlet of recorded music to glean the new Radiohead I must ask why. Do not be difficult.
The next scheduled Spanking Party - all-girl fiesta of dinner and drinks at a residence culminating in a band of us fired up and administering spankings to random men on the streets - is scheduled for late July. Batten down the hatches, beaten down the britches, here come the bitches, hark here are some bruises.
Yes, Oban, I'm coming. Love, your favorite person named Nancy. XO

I've realized that it's redundant to say boy colleagues as I have no girl colleagues. So...one of my colleagues paged me in a 911 fashion to answer the cell phone (what people with all these contraptions do to signal each other in a timely manner) which I did and he out of breath told me that another of our colleagues who always fancied himself, I believe, on a higher plane, was busted for child pornography, and other very bad things. He said to be sure to watch the 11 o'clock news which I never do but did and lo & behold there was the evil in-jail-now colleague's home on television with that plastic yellow police tape all around it and reporters in dour faces talking away. Then there was footage of him earlier in the day being led out of the house by some mysterious blonde woman (he doesn't go for girls, if you catch my reporterly drift) and he had a black jacket not just over his head but wrapping it. Like he was some sort of terrorist or religious fanatic of some sort. For ten years I worked at a camp in Maine for half inner-city and half rural girls, ages 8-12. Half of the campers were black and half were white, there were many racial tensions, and lots of the girls were sexually abused, unwanted, and yet at times could still be happy and carefree as kids should be. Sometimes you could see a dark cloud come over them. Some would tell you horrible facts from their short pasts as they held your hand walking to the dining hall for "food." The only thing sadder than an unwanted child is one who's sexually abused. I think the uncontrollable anger that washes over me when I see clinic protesters - when I slow down and honk and roll down my window and scream at them things like why don't you help the homeless or why don't you adopt unwanted babies - might be directed at this collegue the next time I see him. Maybe one of my high-falutin' karate kicks to his fat gut.

As REM once sang about I just came in from some quality Gardening at Night as I have these days only fleeting moments for such diversions. And some people never learn their lessons: the editor of the magazine just assigned me another story which I'm happy about, a subject matter I can wax poetically and prolifically about - the gleaning of exotic foodstuffs around town.
Only about one week until Dave Matthews Band and today I emailed my photo credentials request to his people who will email back to my people/me.
Slash of Slash's Snakepit fame (and G-n-R fame) is playing this mid-sized city soon, as are Clapton, Macy Gray, and BadCo. I'm photographing all of the above.
Haven't heard yet from Phish about the photos which I FedEx'd to them for the super secret project.

Just walked through the Allentown "Art" Festival where I saw scads of people that I know and now I'm writing from my newspaper office where my one editor is on a rampage to throw out everything, but only after he reads it first. So every few moments he'll say, hey, Nance, listen to this...
The festival yielded the usual panoply of craft, adorable dogs on leashes, an abundance of asphalt-soaked pedestrians, and the horrid wafting scent of fried dough and fried hotdogs and fried burgers, and fried onion rings, and fried tofu
So now I'm off to sushi with editor and my pal/his girlie friend and life couldn't be happier.
Tonight, more photo making, more rambunctious behavior.