Mr. Magnetism Himself

The sciatic pain is all but gone, a miracle performed after the third time. Now, if I could just get rid of this nagging stomach problem. I AM NOT A HYPOCHONDRIAC, but I have a great doctor (shitty insurance, just like everyone else, but a great GP) who’s specialty is gastro. So he asked me point blank what I wanted to do about this feeling I've had for THREE MONTHS that something is just "not right" in my stomach. I told him that unlike Frank Zappa, I was here and I just wanted to be sure that everything was OK. He had "carte blanche" to do whatever he deemed necessary.

And he said, without even hesitation: I'll do a gastroscopy and a CT scan of your abdomen.

That's why I love him. Just get 'er done! Be sure, be careful, and don’t lose me like Zappa's non-existent doctor lost him as a patient. He even offered to get it all "pre-approved" with the assholes, my insurance company, but I'm not mentioning names.

HIP.

The gastroscopy was yesterday and was pretty intense. General anesthesia for 5 minutes. Then they stick a camera down your throat through this little ball gag with a hole through it and check you out all stomach-wise.

I asked for pictures. Watch the skies.

CT scan on Monday. I'll get those shots too!

And there’s your photography tie-in.

Actually, I’ve just been scanning and retouching and not shooting at all. We’ll see when the urge overtakes me to shoot again…

Title is an old Bill Nelson b-side that I just got on CD. Bill was first described to me by Jack, the not-surly-at-all clerk at Schoolkid's Records on Hillsborough Street across from NCSU in 1983 as "a thinking man's Thomas Dolby." I'm sure Tom Dolby thinks, but this appealed to me and my buddies. Bill, late of Be Bop Deluxe (check them out!) was trying to negotiate the whole early '80s post New Wave/New Romantic thing and turns out he was a musician of all trades, recording all instruments himself, alone in his little Yorkshire room at night. Clearly he didn’t care for people much, which appealed to me even then, and he used the E-Bow, which I'd never heard before but became mesmerized by - imagine infinite sustain on an electric guitar. Imagine my other guitar hero at the time, Robert Fripp, picking one up too.

I was lucky enough to see the non-US touring Mr. Nelson at the 9:30 Club in DC back in 1984 with my buddy Carl. He couldn't believe that anyone had driven 5 hours to see him. He said something like, "In England, that would put you squarely in the sea." I saw him again in - shit when was it? 1999? on the Upper East Side at a now defunct HMV store in the basement. With a bunch of "thinking man's Thomas Dolby" types.

Yikes! Jack would have bolted!

Shot #2 of 4 of "Dead Girl" Natsuko. She's the best. I said "Lie there like you're dead." And she did. Until I started shooting, and then she laughed. I said "What?" and she giggled "Dead girl..."