The possibility of Papal infusion, of being engulfed by Pilgrims, was great enough to keep me out of Toronto and merrily in rural Orangeville yesterday after having a series of acupuncutre needles needling my shoulder. The pints of Sleeman's are just as sweet. The Canadian sun just as bright. In Orangeville by the River Hockley. When I read Hockley I think drunk Canadians mis-spelling Hockey, their national pasttime.
Off on another loaded weekend adventure of loaded behaviour.
Love.

(Written whilst listening to the best remnant of the most recent ex - Jesus and Mary Chain... one of the universe's most challenging bands to shoot - up there with Dinosaur Jr., Flaming Lips and Neil Young)

Everyone got boned tonight, said head of Metropolitan security, Chip, with an extreme sunburn all over his face except where his aviator framed sunglasses had been on his head. I snapped into OHNOMYDEARFUCKINGGODIDON'TTHINKSO Nancy. One of the creepiest Boy Colleagues was slumped into a corner, resigned and accepting that he would probably not be shooting Dave Matthews Band while I was on a supersweet pushy bitch tear. So, after half an hour of dangling over fate and waiting in our little chain-linked pen outside of the side willcall window watching a few drunks get arrested (one dramatically thrown against our chain-linked pen) and some girls stumble and stagger inwards we were walked in by Chip, following behind him like hungry little ducklings through the DMB throng. My teammates? Have a little difficulty alligning myself with the fratboys and fratgirlies who follow Dave. Although I have liked talking to a few tapers I've met at his shows.
So he starts and he looks down and sees me in the pit a magma blob of love looking up at him, hands clasped together with camera & 80-200 a-danglin' and I startled him... he looked at Perfect Me and did a little jolt and during the first 3 he periodically looked at me and by then I was shooting, hands unclasped and working.
The weekend's shooting ended with me in the celebratory roped-off area of Greased Pole Competition guys covered in axle grease, me shooting the exuberance and trying not to get slathered by the 15 or so guys hootin' and hollerin.'
Love.

Oversized greasy arm prints are all over the passenger side windows of my car - the unfortunate product of having a bumbling AAA person come to my rescue. And I will be suing Brooks Brothers for making women's shorts with shallow pocket which ensues in keys floating out of pockets, onto car seat - necessitating calls to big and bumbling AAA men who fail after 40 minutes of fishing around with a T-19 and keep joking about with their little buddy in the truck blocking one of two lanes of traffic and you're holding the guy's greasy flashlight shouting You've almost got it as you watch the orange-colored latch nearly pop open but then the bumbling man stops and then he and his little buddy roll up the tool kit, heading back to their truck as you ask/shout NOW What? A locksmith's coming, they announce, and wheel off into the night. So then you call AAA and say This is unacceptable, ridiculous even as the AAA men call you back and say Oh, we found a NEW tool and we're on our way back and all I can think is the dispatcher might tell them about my tirade but nope, they show up, retrieve the wedges that they left in my windows from before, fish around with the NEW tool and 8 seconds later I am absolutely free, a former LOCK-OUT.

A weekend, just as I prefer:
Concerts each and every night, including an all-day 2-day music festival and an appearance by thee Dave - as in Matthews, bien sur.
I'm shooting for a third... DAVE I LOVE YOU YOU ROCK with the Iloveyou sign language gesture backstage to surprise him. Maybe he'll recall his mad photojournalist stalker.
There's grayness hanging over the Middling City which throws little shiny and tiny wrenches into the imaging works for
(P)recipitation + D1H/camera + (E)xuberance = shorted-out camera and sadness.
Nothing goes worse with cameras than water, sand and car crashes.
Made appointment with printing guru yesterday to learn, one-on-one, the secrets of making digital files into screenprinting screens for upcoming NYSCA-funded revelry of exhibitionistic variety. Told printing guru that I'm going to print on steel, that they're monochromatic and that they will abso-fuckin-lutely rock.
I can't divulge what the images are as Team A gives up no secrets.
Our opening happens on Friday the 13th of September - come and play and see.
More details later. On to rock. On to roll. On to turbo-powered COFFEE at my favored joint where the girls are forgetful, the patio is art-strewn and the food is better than anything I'd ever muster from the dusty kitchen hellhole.
Love.

(Said Laura, I want to check out that other bar, Aluminum. She screamed.)
Dig: when I write Said Laura it means I/Perfect Nancy am saying "Laura..." but without the corny quotation marks. So Laura calls today and says I did NOT say that I wanted to check out Aluminum and I was most confused. People, work with me. Quotes begin with caps and sometimes you have to read between the proverbial lines. And another thing, if I hang with you on Saturday and have raucous good fun must I always report so? The mission of epinw is not to give away all my perfect secrets or to report all.
Oh, tonight Eminem is performing at the hockey concert complex and he said a big NO to me/my newspaper and said YES only to AP and to the musty daily. His photo documentation loss.
Onwards. Love.

430: alarm sounds
515: arrive at new Krispy Kreme in Cheektowaga, New York - built over the ghosts of the K-Mart automotive shop.
530: officially punch in after schmoozing about. Shoot two guys, one in pj's, who arrived at 4AM to be the first through the KK side doors!
545: shoot other mayhem
615: mayhem subsides
630: KK officials are visibly disappointed. Your Perfect Nancy eats a doughnut, hot off the presses.
635: some nice guy fetches your Fav and Perfect Nancy a cuppa joe and it does not suck as the last cup of KK koffee did.
640: abandon cuppa joe and schmooze about more.
700: stand with a few other media types, of the radio variety, and one of them muses This is a great country, when we can all stand around watching the sun come up, eating doughnuts and getting PAID. We all concur.
702: develop my theory that the guy sitting at the edge of the parking lot facing new KK, staring at new KK, is a stalker and his stalkee is a new KK employee inside. One of the radio types embellishes - the stalker has a rifle that will be whipped out at some point. I note that the "stalker" has only a tshirt and shorts on... impossible.
704: woman from KK, in shiny new KK tshirt, brings a dozen out to the guy in the lot = not a stalker after all.
705: I comment to Oldies radio types that I still think their station rocks as they play Neil. The most aged radio "personality" says Neil does not test well amongst their listeners. I run into KK, grab hot doughnut grease and toss it at that silly geezer. KIDDING!
707: get into conversation with another media type about piercings, etc.
715: really getting to be time to split and finish up the film, say goodbyes and at 745: hit the ol' highway for points beyond.

What did I learn from 530-730?
People love doughnuts, love freebies from radio stations, that they look sort of rumpled at 530AM, that KK tosses out the rumpled doughnuts and that all people who appear to be stalkers are not.
Love.

My big ol' corporate gig for tomorrow AM - for Krispy Kreme - has been changed from an 830 start time to... dig this... 530. I haven't seen the other side of 530 in ages. The last time I had a gig shooting another KK opening I was hired at 7+ and there CROWDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD DRIVEN FROM FAR AND WIDE TO BE THERE WHEN THE DOORS OPENED, AND SOME EVEN SLEPT OVERNIGHT IN THE P-LOT, concert style. People trouble me. Some.
So your dear sweet tarpit-hearted perfect Nancy will begin tomorrow with a spring in her step, joy in her eyes and glistening blobs of fat and sugar in her imaging system/body.
Onwards to deadlines, more deadlines, chaos and tapas.
Love.

Yesterday night Laura and I were trapped in a parallel universe of oddities, bars closed on a Friday night and other sundry head-scratchers.
I had/HAVE an AOL list of places to regard, to review and a quick glance revealed that they were not only A-list joints but ones I've hardly ever... visited. So onwards we sped on what I promised would be Loser Tour 2002. And was it. First joint, closed. Said Laura, I want to check out that other bar, Aluminum. She screamed. We walked up to the yellow-shirted buzz of borderlinely functioning guys/Aluminum bouncers and the lead guy jumped off a stool and met us halfway down their walkway. Hi, I said, wearing a summer outfit best described as Brooks Brothers meets the Gap, waving my official reporter pad, we'd like to come in and review this place. The guy nearly shouted WE DON'T LET IN OUTSIDERS. I tried hard not to burst out laughing, we turned and left and then burst out laughing a few feet away. Then the next joint was closed, tumbleweeds practically flying through the parking lot. There were a few cars also parked, I went up to the doors - locked - but all sorts of lights on inside, an LCD moving display telling me that their Buds are only $2 per bottle. But no action. We sat in the lot, planning the next Loser Tour 2002 stop when a car pulled up, sort of near us. I think the two guys in the car were going to get busy smoking pot, crack or each other's you-know-whats. Is this place still open, I asked. One of the guys, said Well, it looks pretty closed to me. Onwards. Said Laura, I won't be satisfied until we sit and have a drink in a hellhole that you and I would never be caught dead in. So we stopped at an unnamed place and had a drink after I cracked a failed joke with the bartender.
Overweight bartender lady: you need a glass for the beer?
Me: (picking up my scotch and the bottle of beer, laughingly) What do we look like?, of course we don't need a glass.
OBL: whuh?
Me: No, we don't need a glass, what do we look like? aha-ha-ha.
OBL: whuh?, sort of glancing over my shoulder.
Me: NO, we don't need a glass.
OBL: Oh, you're with someone, I thought you were saying that I was supposed to see someone standing next to you and there's nobody there...
(yikes)
Loser Tour 2002 ended on an appropriate note and then we high-fuckin-tailed it to a bar where there may be a few losers, but they're OUR losers.
Love.

Foul mood coursing through my veins can only mean one thing... back to Middling City tomorrow after NYC respite of culture and high ideas around every corner, nearly.
Spent much of today wandering and into at one point The Whitney where I looked at images from their collection including a wondrous Joel-Peter Witkin, 'Man Without a Head.' Surveyed nearly every square inch of it and there were funny tiny creases in the print.
Last night was all about the mixing of cocktails and later and late into the wee hours of AM was sitting in a silly Bowery bar, Remote, with 12 or so people of the art market world and talked with a girl Christine of interestingly tight tendrils of hair about JPW. We both remembered the print in the Whitney (I had not yet been to W show but remembered the image from a book ) and both thought the man without a head had a head in his hands. This man without a head had no head. Absolutely no head on the premises.
I thought I could nearly smell his dead skin. I want to one day meet JPW to ask him about not only the acquisition of his bodies but the touching, the arranging.
Into the wee hours were cocktails and this afternoon my kidneys rebelled and Dorota's liver cried out for mercy.
To that we both said HA, we are the bosses of you thoughtless organs.
Love.

New York Ci-tay.
Love to be here.
Was here all of perhaps 20 minutes when I found myself deep inside B&H playing with all sorts of gear... and buying some gear to boot.
The same guy was there who aided me with picking out my backpack and I bought yet another strap as the d1H comes with a neckstrap I'm convinced is modeled on sandpaper - when I wore it for the all-day music festival I thought I'd have to go in for neck skin grafting.
So I'm writing this from Dorota's swanky ACd 5th Avenue office near the FlatIron Building and I was just wandering around trying to remember the word grafting and was peering into offices all the while until I thought of the word and said 'GRAFTING' aloud.
I'm guessing I won't be allowed to squat here no mo.
Since me and boy teammates decided that we're working on theme of conflagration I see fire and flames virtually everywhere and it happily freaks me out.
Off shuttle bus (where I gained another hour+ of sleep) I saw immediately a woman with large calves and large motorcycle-worthy flames licking up her left ankle. I thought of asking her why. But I would rather imagine the why.
Love.

Perfect Nancy's Escape to New York.

Need to sit in my corner counter spot of Café Habana and read the Post and eat those odd triangles of whatever that breakfast thing I order is, slurping down a large Cuban coffee all the while. Oh, and drifting in my visual video bank to the images of Lenny in here flirting with that girl behind the counter before leaving, going to perform his rock show, flighting with his equally-luscious girlfriend, then returning to the joint and the girl's not there. Heart Break!
Need to cavort with beloved Dorota in the style that can best be described as at a rockstar level unattainable by most mortals.
Will be sitting and writing in that cyber café joint where I can write more clearly than in this Middling City for some reason.
Will be sucking in visuals for inspiration and buying more art supplies in real life simply not available in Middling City "art" stores and, dig, when you buy art supplies you want to fondle them a while. Same goes for the camera store visit, also on list.
And more pleasure. And more edification.

What I learnt this weekend?
1. Certain Rabbis hate usage of flash during wedding ceremonies but simply won't tell you so that they can openly hate you for millennia, telling many others that there's a Rabbinical thought to ban you from his temple for forever.
2. That somehow wedding cake seems to be attracted to my being and Sunday AM realized it was smeared on my suit's pants, two of my gear bags. A shoe. Why?
3. The Fixx, 80s band I barely remember, still sucks. But if you have to shoot them for your column along with two local bands, hunkering down in a nearby bar where you know Todd the barkeep, and intermittently trotting down the street to the stage and back to bar again makes the whole thing much more favorable.

On that note I race off to more more more.
How do you like it? How do you like it?

Love.

Well it's July 5th and I have all my digits.
Only mishap was when I set off a quadruple bottle rocket which slunk lower in its bottle as it was getting ready to blow up, sailing down my driveway and that of my neighbor (Frank, the affable Viet Nam vet), missing him by about 2 feet as he sat on his front porch with three others. I went over there and said Sorry Frank to which he said Good thing I changed the batteries in my pacemaker.
Then Chris's bottle rocket went awry, hitting a car passing by. They didn't stop, probably assuming that we were a bunch of drunk badasses. Oh, we were/are. Partially due to Laura's two trays of Jell-O shots. Turned my mom & dad onto Jell-O shots and I was rather surprised that my party worldly parents had never had them.
Patriotic Love.
ps: Deborah's baby didn't come out during my shift, dammit.

It's time for the annual putting on of the Budweiser sneakers as it's Independence Day. Time to have booze, snacks and blow shit up.
Slept at Deborah & Jamie's house and the baby did not come out. Today Deb took me out for breakfast and while we were sitting and talking she felt a twinge. I put my head under the table and said COME ON OUT, SARAH, WE'RE READY FOR YOU.
Deb said NO, I want to wait for Jamie.
Head back under table HOLD ON SARAH.
No baby, but Bud sneaks there are.
Flag Love.

I, Miss Oh-my-Buddah-if-I-see-blood-I-get-all-woozie, am now officially really oncall for taking Deborah to the emergency door of the Middling City's Children's Hospital. I'll be sleeping at her house every night as my publisher/editor/pal has jetted off to NYC and I have a nice roomy Forester and nerves of steel (apart from blood issue). Today I realized that she will not be able to look into my eyes and scream LOOK WHAT YOU FUCKING DID TO ME, AS SHE WOULD BE ABLE TO WITH HIM. So, I am hoping that this baby, Sarah, comes out while he's away so I can be there, of course camera in hand(s). Come on Sarah. Come out. Ready.
Just had a freelance gig at the Canadian Consulate photographing Canadian Members of Parliament and a lone US Congressman - my pal John LaFalce. In the midst of documenting the jovial wine pouring and thumping of backs John looked up at me and said Kerry! (a woman who works at the Consulate) get a photo of me with Nancy!!! This stopped most of the activity in the room. We threw our arms around each other and that'll be one for the ol' wall of face.
MP's prefer Canadian wine over any other swill from any other rotgut country. Canadian MP's know a whole lot more about our government than I do. And they say AY just like those other million or so Canadians up there, too.
Onwards to a crushing AOL deadline and then zooming out to photograph affable Mr. Tom Petty and a few Heartbreakers.
Love.

The perfect music festival day ended in a timeless floating of friends and walking and drinks and warmweather laughing until late. Talked to John Lombardo amongst others and he said on the new John & Mary release they're using backwards guitar parts by late great Robert Buck.
Oh, had to, amid revelry, call an ambulance for a man I spotted nestling into some dirt on the outer edge of a parking lot, his cane next to him. Went over to talk to him and he suggested the ambulance. One of my pals said that the calling was unnecessary but I didn't think so. It took a while but he finally got up and went away with the emt's, who, I thought, were rather rude to the guy.
There was a mild amount of behind-the-scenes chaos but nothing too serious... a band here and there late, garbage issues, promotional banner issues, beer truck volunteer issues. Oh, and interpersonal struggles including the appearance of one guy with a stack of the paper The Beast which goes to great lengths to slam the publisher of my newspaper, the man behind the street festival. I approached the guy and took his picture and asked his name. He said (I thought, via my concert-addled ears) Lucas Fosse. OHH! I said, the CHOREOGRAPHER? (It's Bob Fosse... see, part of my charm is my mislocutions and mishearings and such and all or most of the people at this nasty little rag The Beast use noms de plumes) He said NO, Luke Fox, I'm an intern. I then shouted Well I'm NANCY from ARTVOICE and off I wandered. Now I'm wondering if there'll be a special cover drawing of ME... my likeness with big question marks coming from both ears.
So I had my premier post-festival cocktail at 830PM on the dot when I invited one and all to meet me for margaritas. After a few of those there was a pileup of three of us (of course I was involved with this) on a plastic Adirondack chair which collapsed. A nearby tippler shouted Hey, my Adirondack chair... you owe me five dollars.
Best sets: Last Conservative (well on their way), Sheila Divine, Jackdaw, Turnstones (formerly Velour).
Over and out.
Way out.

Marathons.
That's this weekend theme.
Friday marathon was non-stop bluegrass at the exurban outside venue @ the Down from the Mountain tour stop... produced by the wacky Coen Brothers. It could have only been improved by a special visit by hottie George Clooney.
And wasn't that night's treatment of photographers night to the ol' day of the Britney Spears Extravaganza for we photogs (actually only me +1 boy colleague) were not even subjected to anal cavity searches!!!
Saturday marathon schmoozing, driving, darkroom production.
Sunday/today is marathon music shooting at my newspaper's Street Festival. I wish I had a pedometer to clock the amount I'll walk between stages from 1-8PM with intermittent stops at the beer truck where pourers will be pals and drafts will be gratis. And it's a 100% digital day to boot.
Tequila in the forecast?
Does your fav Nancy bring joy to your heart?
I rest my case.
Love.

Britney briefing included the following to me + 15 boy colleagues (some mysteriously never seen before): do not put hands or cameras on stage, don't turn back to stage, don't photograph audience members, give us credit card/driver license in exchange for one-time security Britney pass which you'll turn in at end of 3 songs... and sign agreement that states all images made tonight will not be sold but may be included in your portfolio (!). What fun! At one point had to see something on my camera and, as it was very dark, turned back - sans thinking - on stage. I thought Oops (I did it again) hope they didn't see that and then realized just how fucked the whole situation last night was.
She, as in BS, had Pepsi commercials playing, the Pepsi logo on a spot that swept the arena, didn't even try to pretend that she was trying to lip-synch, changed costumes after disappearing via a trap door/Dracula-style exit system that a devil man in cape "playing" guitar had appeared in earlier as loads of pyros went off (much to my colleague Mark's chagrin) and dancers looking like voodoo mall shoppers pranced about. Did I mention the million-dollar green strobe lights, how she barely came near us photogs clutched around "Stage B" and how she kept grabbing her right tit?
Who needs surrealism with Britney Spears around.
Onwards.

Evidence that I'm an everyday badass:

1. Physical therapist yestiddy said You need cortisone injection in your shoulder (what I now refer to as my rotary cuff) to help the swelling/crap and I said nope. Then they suggested I might need eventual surgery. I said Hell no and proceeded to trash the medical office with high karate kicks.

2. As I'm being photographed this evening at 7PM for my special Britney photo id I'm going to throw up some gansta-style hand gesture that I've been practicing in the car all the livelong day - an inverted/backwards ILOVEYOU rock gesture while looking real pouty and sexy like Pink. Except, unlike Pink, I won't be captured in the middle of ripping my own clothes off. Pink, if you're reading this - stop with the self-ripping.

3. I think 2 examples are plenty. And now I sign off with Love. Oozy-goozy Britney beyond Spandex and frosty eyeshadow Love. Love that can accept the need to lipsynch one's brains out as one is dancing too hard with an ensemble of boys and girls who've practiced their lives away to join you onstage for one fleeting moment in hot lights, hoping all the while you catch the eye of someone who can make you a star and hoping not to, on the other foot, catch any sparks from any onstage pyros because nothing says unsexy like 3rd-degree burns.

ps: Whomever logged in as epinw reader #1000 you win a special prize!!!... contact me at njparisi@netscape.net for a special email from me. For you. Prized you.

Wednesday at the ol' Arena me and boy colleagues must and will check in at 7PM for our photo id photo shoot to shoot Britney. Then we must report back at 8:30PM on the journalistic dot to be ushered in for 3. Wondering what backstage mayhem led to the needing of photo id's. If this becomes de rigeur I will have a neat new collection of credential stickers/geek passes bearing my likeness!
Saturday night drove up to Toronto with Reese, beau, pal to see the post-5-year hiatus of band The Pursuit of Happiness. They officially rocked and rocked out. Many attend events in Canada for the turbo-powered Canadian beer. But guess what? Single malt scotch tastes the same, trips across the tongue and other vital organs the same.
Love.

Digital. My photo life is now officially digital. Dig that.
Yesterday's stranger moment happened as I was breaking down a gig at the famed Roycroft Inn and one of the CEO's in attendance asked me to help him trim a gag brunette wig to 'look like a regular guy haircut.' I said Well, let's do this out on the veranda. He asked why. I said Because that's traditionally where one gives haircuts in the warmer weather - on the veranda. So I trimmed this cheapo wig to resemble a man's haircut, sort of. I asked why we were doing this.
He was going to put it on in about half an hour for a super visual joke about a famed, not toupee, wearer, but a wearer of a bad dye job.
Hardy-freakin-Har.
As I was cutting Mr. CEO's hair two other CEO's walked onto the porch/veranda and, as I looked up at them, scissors wavering over the millionaire's head, one of them said
I don't even want to know.
The haircut CEO turned around and the other guy said Oh... Paul, it's you. Wow, I still really don't wanna know.
The end.
Moral: even CEO's can be wacky. Put that in your funny little pipe and smoke the shit out of it.