California Adventures!

So excited about the upcoming San Francisco screening of What Is Life Without The Living at Artists' Television Access in the Mission. The first screening was smashing and people really took to the films. I'm sure San Francisco will be no exception! I've teamed up with local legend Kevin Killian who has written this great piece to coincide with the screening of David Scheid's 'Margot Kidder.' You can see the vid below:

I have a nice ghostly image from the LA screening with more sumptuous images to come (once I find that damn cable in my post-travel lull). In other news, the X-TRA launch that preceded 'What Is Life Without The Living?' went beyond my wildest dreams. It was a wonderful family affair with D's friend Zoe Crosher presenting source material for the artist project contained within the current issue - footage that was edited by my dear friend Jason Underhill. Also in attendance were Mandrake co-owner and feted artist Vishal Jugdeo (on whom I have a more than mild crush) tending bar and, oh, a good 60-or-so others.

We missed out on much of the gallery scene in LA as everyone was on install for the upcoming (now past) weekend. In San Francisco, we were able to check in with Kevin K and Dodie Bellamy at the indefatigable Margaret Tedesco's local institution [2nd Floor Projects], where Kevin was presenting an edition he wrote for the artist Bruno Fazzolari. We met some lovely folks. Then I drank a few too many g&ts and tried to impress some friends at the Phone Booth with my own, unique take on Left Eye's rap from 'No Scrubs.' Oh dear. A slightly more debilitated self was toured through the San Francisco Art and Design mall the following day by Lauren Marsden for her piece in a rotating exhibition curated by Chris Fitzpatrick and the Post Brothers. Marsden's piece "With Love from Mabel (ongoing tours of the SFADM)" was performative, and led D to lean over and expound in a whisper "I feel like we're being led through Last Year At Marienbad," (i.e. not the worst place to be trapped). I bought a postcard of Dolores Del Rio, but really coveted this way overprice original poster for Curt McDowell's Thundercrack!

Last night Kevin whisked me off to the swanky book-launch/fete for the release of Secret Historian a biography of Samuel Steward where I met Christopher A Trout who just penned a nice article on Steward for Butt. After waxing lyrically about Steward (a subject of whom I sadly knew very little), narcissism and the Wachowski brother/sister's new gay Iraqi love story, Cobalt Neural 9, I begged off to go shoot the above video.