les premiers choses premier

October 24th, 2006

I just arrived in Paris, so what do I do first? Get online.

Okay. NOW I’m gonna go out and walk around.

Institute for Contemporary Arts, London

October 24th, 2006

My event last night at the ICA went really well. It was part of a series called Comica. The room was sold out, and had a great tech setup so everyone could see the drawings clearly. The brilliant and effervescent-to-the-point-of-exploding Lea Delaria interviewed me onstage after I read. This blurry picture captures a bit of her kinetic energy.

Talking with Lea was really fun. I’d been somewhat nervous, not knowing quite what to expect from the woman famous for saying about Hillary Clinton, “Finally, a first lady we can fuck.” She did grill me rather minutely about my masturbation habits, but other than that I think our conversation was very seemly and apropos. One topic she was interested in discussing was my obsessive tendency to record my own life, which reminded me to take a picture of the audience for the blog. So here they are. I think this made them a little nervous. Or maybe they were just appalled at such obstreperously American behavior. That guy in the front row is Paul Gravett, the Comica organizer

I signed books for a long time afterward—the museum bookshop sold out.

Then I hung out in the bar with some friends. Then we all walked back to Bloomsbury where they got on the Tube and I returned to my hotel.

That’s Jane Hoy on the left, and her girlfriend Helen Sandler—Helen’s directing the York Lesbian Arts Festival which is happening this weekend and which I’m very sorry to be missing. To my right is Lenna Cumberbatch, drag king extraordinare and my erstwhile webmeister.

word freak

October 23rd, 2006

Dateline London.
I did a brief booksigning this afternoon at Gay’s the Word. Then made a pilgrimage to Dr. Johnson’s house, the guy who wrote the first major English dictionary. Here’s the famous garret where he did most of the work, with a crew of amanuenses. (look it up.)

They had a closet of Georgian costumes for kids to put on, and there was no one around, so…

Here’s a passage from the dictionary.

And here’s a monument outside to Dr. J’s cat, Hodge, “a very fine cat indeed.” He’s sitting on a dictionary, with oyster shells at his feet. Apparently Dr. J. would personally go out to the fish market and fetch oysters for him, rather than having his servants do it, so that the servants wouldn’t feel resentment toward the cat.