On a brisk, wintry summer Saturday night in San Francisco, Out There celebrated the warmth and vitality of the local arts scene at both a popular, sceney private-gallery party and the opening of a major triennial offering by a local arts institution.
The gallery event was the opening of SF gay artist Timothy Cummings' show "Last Call" at gallerist Catharine Clark's Minna St. quarters. Cummings' painted and varnished panels, large and miniature, looked great, as did project installations of selections from Sandow Birk's "Ten Leading Causes of Death in America", and Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth's "Blood, Money, and Tears". Spotted or fist-bumped in the overflow crowd: Rodney O'Neal Austin, Rex Ray, Victor Krummenacher and Troy Gaspard.
From there, OT plunged into the burgeoning crowd at the opening-night party for "Bay Area Now 5", the fifth every-third-year installment of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' signature survey of Bay Area artists. The ambitious program includes exhibitions at YBCA through Nov. 16, performances, film/video and public programs - and the whole shebang will be reviewed in these pages soon.
In keeping with the survey's themes of inclusiveness and inside/outside, YBCA opened all of its public spaces to the party, including the outdoor Terrace Floor, where the music was rocking and the Campari was flowing, and the oft-closed Bamboo Courtyard, with its subtle reflecting pool. We made it to the Forum just in time to attend "Aria", the ethereal visual-musical collaboration between cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and Italian designer Alessandro Moruzzi. That's where we finally had our art moment before bundling ourselves off into the summertime chill.
Leather fantasia
Perhaps she's not the first person you or Out There thinks of when we think of leather, but Folsom Street Events Board President Andy Copper assured us "we are absolutely thrilled to welcome Joan Rivers as our entertainment for the upcoming 25th Folsom Street Fair formal gala. We are both ecstatic and just a little frightened to witness Joan in the same room with 350 members of the leather community."
The formal gala on Sat., Sept. 20, will help kick off San Francisco Leather Week. Formal attire is required to attend the event, but that can mean formal-dress leather or high-fashion kink-wear. The big bash will take place in the Regency Center's Sutter Room, which will be decorated with a display of selected pieces from the GLBT Historical Society's exhibit, "25 Years of Folsom Street Fair". It's likely to sell out, as the space can only accommodate 350 people. Tickets and info are at www.folsomstreetevents.org/shop.
Mad Donna
By now you've no doubt heard all about the memoir "Life with My Sister Madonna" written by her gay brother Christopher Ciccone (Simon & Schuster), and most of the dishiest material, like evidence of Madge hubby Guy Ritchie's glaring homophobia, has already been publicly chewed over and spat out.
But the "money-shot" passage in the book is surely the letter Ciccone wrote to his sis when he'd just had it up to here with her diva behavior. It's reprinted in full, but here's a typical paragraph: "It has become very clear to me these days that it's your preference to have someone's nose up your ass rather than hearing the truth. That, I suppose, is the prerogative of an aging pop star. But it is not a path I will walk. Nor will I be spoken to or treated as you treat the sycophants around you. I am not Ingrid."
Most amusingly, after an inglorious gig in Manchester, England, early in her career during which the audience threw wet and rotten things at the stage, Madonna and her backup dancers (including, at this stage in her career, Christopher) beat a hasty retreat.
"'Let's get the fuck out of here,' Madonna yells, and with cash in hand, we bolt. On the train back to London, we bitch about England and the English. If I had told Madonna then that 20 years later she'd be married to an Englishman, and giving a passable imitation of Lady Marchmain from "Brideshead Revisited", she would never have believed me and would probably have pissed herself laughing. She hated England that much."
The memoirist is fairly unsparing on his famous sibling, but as for honest self-appraisal, not so much. When he writes that his rampant cocaine usage was limited to weekends only, we find that as believable as passages when Courtney Love pretends she's doing lines for the first time, or Jack Nicholson says he's never done a key bump before. File under celebrities who think we were born yesterday.
Zing a zong
Strange de Jim caught us some zing from late-night TV:
Conan O'Brien: "Michael Jackson canceled his tour with New Kids on the Block when he learned they aren't really kids." "Many Olympic athletes are testing positive for Viagra. Which explains why some runners are winning really close races, and not by a nose."
Jay Leno: "After the stimulus checks came out, porn sales shot up 30%. Guys used their stimulus packages to stimulate their packages." "They say wine is good for your colon, but I prefer drinking it the regular way."