Six Degrees of Me

Everyone's gotta have a parlour trick, something that impresses guests at cocktail parties. For me that talent is that I can connect myself to nearly any celebrity in six degrees or less. My favourite connection is to John Lennon. Now, I personally feel that I am one degree from John Lennon because I knew someone who met him directly. Others would believe it to be two degrees, but this is my game, so essentially, it's my rules. Okay, so when I was nineteen, my therapist was musician/artist John Palumbo. In the late 70s and early 80s John and his wife lived in NYC not far from The Dakota on 72nd and Central Park West. If memory serves, Palumbo was at a local shop (and for some reason I feel like there were oranges involved?? So I'm assuming that John was snagging some produce), anyway...Palumbo was at the store when he looks up to see John Lennon. Palumbo managed a hello and Lennon smiled and said hello back. Over the course of time from that day until Lennon's death, John would see him periodically and nod hello as they passed eachother. How cool is that??

so there's me...
to John...
...to John Lennon!One degree of separation, baby!

Mother was wrong!

Back in college, Ray, Winnie, and I all took ceramics. I had made this as a gift for John Palumbo and after I dug out these fotos I got to wondering what's become of John, does he still have this ashtray in his office and mostly I wonder if he remembers me at all.
This ashtray was built at a time when I was obsessed with Anne Sexton and Laugh-In so I scrawled a quote from each into the ceramic ashtray and placed it in the kiln. Please forgive the shoddy photography - it was my first month working with a manual camera and the lighting at my parents is less than ideal at 2am.

80s Gal

Halloween 2004 I went to Pax and Bishop's as a typical 1980s Jersey girl, taking from my personal collection, vintage pink lace hair tie, neon orange earrings, jelly bracelets, purple Converse All Star high-top sneaks, my CCCP jeans from John Palumbo (my old shrink who also gave me the giant red button I'm sporting), hideous fake leather purse, puke green nail polish, sweatshirt turned inside out with the neck cut off à la Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, windshield wiper style eye makeup, Wet 'n' Wild number 527 lipstick, brushed up Brooke Shields eye brows and curly teased hair (that's my natural colour, btw) and my old denim acid washed jean jacked with a handful of 80s buttons I still had laying around my place. Note the french cuff roll on those jeans that left my feet numb from lack of circulation. Vanity at its oddest...  

(photos by Pax!)

John Palumbo

August 1998

The Laze

The first James Bond film I saw from start to finish was On Her Majesty's Secret Service back in the mid-1990s. John Palumbo had told me that his major crush during his teen years was Diana Rigg. Never having heard of her at age nineteen, I went to B&C Video in my hometown and asked for something that starred Ms Rigg. Chris handed me the VHS copy they had and On Her Majesty's Secret Service instantly became one of my faves, mainly because of George Lazenby's performance as Bond. I've seen nearly all of the Bond movies but this one is the best (Casino Royale comes in a tight second place, though). I recently got a chance to watch the Hulu documentary Becoming Bond, which provided excellent insight into Lazenby's life before and after Bond. He's still a total dreamboat and seems like a genuinely good guy. Isn't that nice? When celebs you like turn out to be really nice? I love that.