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La Scène SF: Canteen Issue 3 Launch Party

This coming Tuesday Canteen launches their eagerly anticipated third issue, featuring Benjamin Kunkel, Lee Klein, Porochista Khakpour, and Canteen founder Sean Finney. A $10 donation at the door gets you the latest issue, cocktails, snacks, and music by DJ Duke of Windsor. That's bang for your buck and it supports a fantastic venture. We need more great lit mags. Unfortunately I won't be in San Francisco for the party, but please tell me all about it. I hate to miss a thing!

WHEN:
Tuesday, September 9
7-10 p.m.

WHERE:
Root Division gallery
3175 17th Street (at South Van Ness Ave.)

RSVP

PS: Don't be too fashionably late--the Canteen events tend to draw quite a crowd of writers, readers, and other bright young things.

Literary Death Match at Harlot

I've been curious about the new club Harlot (will it be seductive or just plain tacky?) and there couldn't be a better opportunity to scope it out than the upcoming Opium Literary Death Match with four authors, each representing a local lit mag, going head to head.

Image: The Prodigal Son with the Courtesans Or, Interior Scene

Tonight at The Castro Theatre: Fall in Love with The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve is playing tonight at the Castro Theatre and it is highly recommended by yours truly. There is one scene between Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda that is so particularly swoon worthy and romantic, I remember replaying it several times.

A San Francisco Wedding

Congratulations to my gorgeous sister who tied the knot this weekend! Wednesday was girls' night at the Palace's historical Pied Piper Bar (the truffle fries are delish!) and North Beach staple, Vesuvio. Thursday was spa day with luscious almond pedicures at the Nob Hill Spa for me, my sis, and her new sister-in-law. On Friday, the bride-to-be and I spent some quality time having breakfast and putting together her bouquet at the Flower Market. That evening, following a sweet ceremony in The Rotunda at City Hall, we headed to Bix Supper Club for a spectacular dinner for ten. The champagne reception at The Fairmont Hotel's kitschy Tonga Room the following night featured a charming and incredibly tasty Scharffenberger cake by the sublime Sara Lime and much dancing and general merrymaking.

I had a metallic moment as far as my dresses were concerned. For the ceremony and dinner at Bix, I wore this Fei gold empire waist dress from Anthropologie over a slightly longer vintage, ruffled slip. My dress for the reception was greyish-blue metallic from Belle Cose on Polk. My color of choice for both mani and pedi was OPI's Quarter of a Cent-Cherry.

Thirsty for a New Lit Mag?

San Francisco-based poet Sean Finney of the Canteen Reading Series is launching Canteen, "the literary magazine that comes with instructions." Andrew Sean Greer, Julie Orringer, Po Bronson, Dennis Leary, and Ryan Harty have all contributed to the first issue. I'll be attending the launch party this week, so watch this space for event coverage and further details on the new magazine.

La Scène SF: A To Do List

1) Attend a lecture on the Crusades at The Mechanics' Institute, which boasts "the oldest library on the West Coast and one of the oldest chess clubs in the United States."

2) Hear Gayle Brandeis, author of the new novel Self Storage, talk at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Friday night. (I don't know if I will be able to make it over to Corte Madera, but this book is at the top of my must-read pile!)

3) Buy tickets to see the lovely Jonas and his band Mew play at the Fillmore on Friday, April 6th. Tickets go on sale this Sunday.

4) Brave the Juicy Couture crowd and the Bristol Farms picketers at the Westfield Centre to stock up on my favorite notebooks from Tokyo by way of MaiDo Stationery (4th floor next to Bloomies).

5)  Take an early "lunch" on Thursday and learn how to do three turns and spins at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating Rinks morning Coffee Club session.

La Scène SF: A Separate Reality

Robert Marshall will be reading from his novel, A Separate Reality, at Books, Inc. in the Castro tonight at 7:30pm.

"A Separate Reality beautifully depicts the poignant and bizarre condition
called adolescence. It's a wonderful, imaginative work." – Lynne Tillman

Reminder: May Queens at Madrone Party Tonight!

Just a reminder that tonight Nicki, Michelle Richmond, and I will be reading from The May Queen along with contributors from the anthology Before the Mortgage: Real Stories of Brazen Loves, Broken Leases, and the Perplexing Pursuit of Adulthood. You can read Nicki's interview with Michelle, whose latest novel The Year of Fog will be published by Random House in March, on The Happy Booker. More details here.

I'm Still Here

Here's just a bit of what I have been up to lately:

My friend Beej has the details of our catch up lunch yesterday at Samovar where we feasted on honeycomb and sipped chai.

I modeled for Sebastien's new line of FrenchPodClass tees--check them out, they're tres cute!

Tuesday night I caught the Word for Word performance of Andrew Sean Greer's short story "The Islanders." Afterward, ASG (one of my favorite local authors) answered questions from the audience and, to everyone's surprise, revealed that The New Yorker heavily fact checked his fictional story and subsequently had him make several changes.

This afternoon I attended a lecture at The Mechanic's Institute by essayist and scholar Alain de Botton on architecture. His book The Architecture of Happiness "starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be - and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential."

Save the Date: Reading at Madrone Lounge

I had been hoping for another excuse to stop by Madrone Lounge, a bar/gallery/living room in Lower Haight. The decor is a sort of wickedly charming cross between Carnivale and Masterpiece Theatre. Anyway, Nicki has arranged for some of my fellow May Queen contributors and I to join up with some contributors from the anthology Before the Mortgage: Real Stories of Brazen Loves, Broken Leases, and the Perplexing Pursuit of Adulthood for a reading and party at Madrone on Monday, November 6th. Details here.