Earlier in the evening we (James and I -- he has more photos) saw Kiki and Herb at the Knitting Factory with Glenn, Dan and a few of their friends. Oh my heavens! Why didn't someone drag me to see them earlier? I LOVE THEM.

As I told Glenn, I think our drag sisters have MUCH better politics than the gay community in general. They can't really buy into the "but if I act like a straight white middle class male I'll be OK" version of gay politics. (I thought about linking Andrew Sullivan in that sentence, but I couldn't bring myself to sully my web site with a link to that miserable excuse for a pundit.)

Where to begin? As Dan said, it's certainly not what comes to mind when one says "drag act" -- it's much more of a brilliant piece of theatre by two very talented people. Kiki's politics are great, and political theatre that works is my favorite thing in the world. She hit on 9/11, the idiocy of Bush, his illegitimacy, our obsessions with kidnapped children, and probably some things I didn't even catch in the whirling chaos that is Kiki and Herb.

Favorite excerpts included:

Shitty things happen sometimes, but that's not an excuse to do more shitty things.

After a song in which she says she's tired of crying for victims of this or that, she says: because crying doesn't change anything.

After she talked about the shitty things that happen in the world, and about the idiot that passes for our President, and received a lot of applause, she said she was glad to hear that she's not alone, and when they round all of us up, she's glad she will be with people like us at Guantanamo.

The opening act, of whom I had also heard, but never seen, was The Wau Wau Sisters. They ROCKED. I feel like such a scrawny wimp -- they both had bods of death. They gave us rockin' songs, hilarious repartee, and acrobatics! We bought the CD!

Heard on the way out of the Knitting Factory, from an Ani di Franco-type young woman: "I'm wearing my new sweatshop free panties!"

Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick!

It's bad enough that they have to close the middle of Manhattan for half a day, but do I have to be bombarded with the sound of police helicopters too for the damned NFL party? Is this what NYC is going to become? We'll be a whore of city like Venice, but not as pretty?

It was a bit warm, so rather than wear something fabulous as my hero would have done, I attended a few openings dressed in my art uniform of shorts and an MTA shirt.

Our first visit was to see Ann Craven [images] at Klemens Gasser, which apparently doesn't have a web site. She makes beautiful, not quite real, paintings of birds and flowers -- like greeting cards only better. We had to go check it out since we acquired a watercolor of hers at Bellwether's party. Oh -- here's a page that shows a photo that was in the back, and gives the gallery address.

The second opening was Andrew Guenther at Silverstein Gallery -- great show! There's a wall of beautiful-and-political-at-the-same-time drawings and watercolors, some of his paintings, some works by guest artists (indicated by big stars on the wall above), and most fun of all, a (moving) sculpture that "is made up of a custom made coffin, built by the artist to fit his individual proportions, mounted on top of a mechanical rodeo bull. " Not surprisingly, the crowd at this opening was much more cool. The gay boys were skinny and geeky, not the posey-muscley kind I saw at the other opening.

As we left, people were getting ice cream (to go with their beer) from the truck outside -- playing that damn "Turkey in the Straw" rendition.

I'm so glad the summer art lull is over!

Andy organized a get-together last night in honor of Keith visit from L.A. Also representing the left coast was the adorable Jessie. There were lots of attractive and smart boys there -- no girls at all even though some were invited.

I finally got a chance to talk with Dan. He's a charming and smart guy -- we talked about everything from ex-pat job opportunities in Europe to Benjamin Britten. Note to Dan: we should get together and listen to some CDs. I also listened to a discussion of font-geekitude between him and Chad.

The always squeezable Dan'l introduced me to a cool guy named John who runs the Streetwork project of Safe Horizon. The group was the beneficiary of Dan'l's recent blogathon. John just happened to be there to meet a friend, and isn't one of the blog-children, at least not yet. We talked for quite a while. He's sexy and reminds me of a classical musician I once met in South Beach at Warsaw. Top that boys! No circuit queens for me.

I also ran into Trick/Patrick of Morplay. I met him once before through Joe Ovelman, so we talked about Joe's art for a while. I'm a huge fan, and I think James and I are among Joe's most enthusiastic collectors. There is a Nerve gallery of Joe's work that's worth the hassle of registering.

Who else was there? I said hello to Sam and Scott, but we didn't really talk. I met Brian, who was wearing a t-shirt reminiscent of the playing-with-logo works of Daniel Pflumm.

James has a few photos on his site of the evening.

Schroeder Romero, one of my favorite Williamsburg Galleries, has launched its new web site. Check it out!