1.  So who are you, and how the hell did you get to be the Mad Photographer, anyway?  The nickname started back in 1993, when I first got online and realized I was going to need some kind of net nickname, but I couldn't think of any clever alternate personas and didn't really want to pretend to be anyone but myself.  (I have this odd notion that any power or authority my words carry come from their being identifiably from me, not a pseudonym or, God forbid, a sock puppet...) I'd been taking concert photos since I first moved to the Boston area in 1985, starting out with a Pocket Instamatic and graduating a couple of years later to a secondhand Nikon FG, and it seemed reasonable, especially in light of most of the mailing lists/newsgroups I was posting on being music-related, that I would refer to my, ahem, hobby.  Photographers may not treat fur with mercury like mad hatters did  (and while I'm sure photographic chemicals don't do any of us any good, I've almost always sent all my film out to be developed), but anyone who's ever done this kind of live photography can tell you that it will both drive you crazy and piss you off, hence the appellation "mad".  (I had the privilege of meeting Annie Leibovitz, one of my photographic heroines, a few years back, and while making small talk as she was autographing my copy of her latest book, told her that I did live concert photography.  She looked up from the book, gave me a big conspiratorial grin, and said, sotto voce, "Doesn't the lighting SUCK?"  Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, yeahhhhhhhh...) 2.  But surely you're not making a living off this, right?  What do you do? You got that right--can you say "money pit", boys and girls?  The only photographic venture of mine to ever make any money was the Reznor heater shirt I did for alt.music.nin back in the mid-'90s, and even that mainly just paid for itself.  Suffice to say that various types of clerical work have paid the bills over the years...while my current employers are reasonably tolerant folks, I'd rather not involve them in my outside adventures (although my NINniehood, and the fact that much of my vacation time over the past year went to hitting NIN shows in the northeast, is a running joke around the office).  Putting up this website, however, is hopefully the beginning of a new chapter in my photographic efforts, and hopefully one that will occasionally result in some kind of compensation, so consider yourselves warned... 3.  So what else do you do with your life? Define "life"... OK, whatever...I'm originally from upstate New Hampshire (a very small town called Woodsville, about 40 miles north of Hanover and Dartmouth College), went to school at Plymouth State College (now University) in Plymouth, NH, moved to the Boston area for the first time in 1985, decided in 1988 that I was sick of Boston and wanted to move to Athens, Georgia instead (hey, I was a huge R.E.M. fan back then...) and did so at the very end of the year, arriving in Athens on Christmas Eve 1988.  Spent the next 8 1/2 years in Athens, vacillating between "I LOVE this place!" to "please, God, get me out of this hellhole NOW!" (a not uncommon feeling, from what I can tell), finally decided that I didn't want to be quite so far away from my family, and moved back to the Boston area on Labor Day weekend of 1997.  (When the blog is up and running, I'll tell the sordid tale of U-Hell, or "never try to do a cross-country move during Mercury retrograde--it's the main reason my friend Julia will never, ever, EVER help me move anywhere ever again.)  I'm currently living in scenic Somerville, Massachusetts (thank God I'm back in the bluest of blue states!), with a housemate and our 3 cats (hers is Lucy Fur; mine are Jezebel and Delenn) in a small apartment we call the Cathouse, or occasionally the Pussy Palace when we're feeling especially snarky.  I'm single, and, not counting the cats, childless; the latter state isn't likely to change at my age, and I'm not exactly holding my hand on my ass waiting for the former, either, although I'm leaving that possibility open. 4.   OK, any other hobbies? Reading way too much and almost constantly (if not actual paper, then online); sewing; knitting; listening to music and going to shows (gee, ya think?); vintage and historical clothing; and cooking, especially baking.  Yes, there are many stories involving me toting baked goods to shows, and yes, I will be telling a number of them in the blog...suffice to say that showing up at a venue with something freshly homebaked is an excellent way to incline people favorably towards you while still being something you can tell your mother about, even if her response is "When the hell are you going to quit hanging around with those damn musicians? More as I think of it... When you get to the bottom you go back to the top...