Remy Charlip Needs You

OK, pictures and pie chat once today's cherry pie comes out of the oven...but more importantly, put this on your calender if you live in the Bay Area:

Every Little Movement: A Benefit for Remy Charlip: 7:30 p.m. Sat. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida St. between 17th and Mariposa), San Francisco. Minimum donation: $20. Tickets at the door only. Information: www.artaud.org/theater.

Remy Charlip is a living treasure--a dancer, choreographer, artist, and children's book author--who recently suffered a debilitating stroke. He's slowly recovering and beginning to work again, but as he's in his late 70s, it's no easy road. His amazingly witty and playful children's book Arm and Arm was one of my all-time favorites as a kid (happily, it was reissued in 1997, 30 years after its first publication); it wasn't until I moved to SF, where he has lived since 1989, that I learned he was also one of the founding members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe, as well as an original member of the Living Theater and the Paper Bag Players. He is, by all accounts, an incredibly generous and warm-hearted artist and mentor. The benefit will feature new works by dozens of Bay Area dance groups, possibly including work by Charlip himself. Go, bask, help out.

And speaking of SF, oh, how I miss it! Especially this time of year, when everything's drenched in gay pride. Yes, it can get a little silly, all the beer ads and triangle-shaped, rainbow everything, but still...I miss all the movies, the crowds of men and women outside the Castro and Victoria theaters, all the dykes on bikes, the masses of art shows and performances and things going on every minute for the whole month. Last night, at the "Poet-Luck" (a potluck dinner/reading series held monthly at the Colony), I ended up reading this story "Getting Out of Dodge," a bitterly funny break-up revenge story, I guess you could call it, and you know, even with it cleaned up ("Fuck Donna Reed" turned into "Forget Donna Reed"--not half as satisfying to say), I don't ever want to say "red leather g-string" in front of nice white-haired ladies old enough to be my mother again. They all laughed in the right places, but I was embarassed, even if they weren't. I just read it really, really fast and hoped no one would notice.