The Salon is Wherever I Happen To Be

[It's not every week I see Salman Rushdie speak and get introduced to Po Bronson. Thanks, redroom.com!]

[At like 3:30 Wednesday afternoon, my officemate La Liaison started frantically calling people to accompany her, Violet, and Mr. Violet to see Rushdie at City Arts & Lectures at Herbst Theatre. There was an extra ticket, see, and when La Liaison's first two choices weren't able to go, she turned her head left and saw me waving my hand excitedly in the air, that look in my eye that says "What about meeeeeee?! I read The Moor's Last Sigh, I saw Bridget Jones's Diary, I would totally appreciate seeing Salman Rushdie, c'mon c'mon c'monnnnnn!!!!"]

[So we went. Local NPR station standby Michael Krasny interviewed Rushdie about playing pool with Scarlett Johansson; Afghanistan & Iraq; Rushdie's sons' input on his writing, Granta magazine, and...oh, yeah, the new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, a historical novel that sounds a bit like Gore Vidal's Creation: disparate cultures meet via connecting fictional character, this time during the era of Niccolo Machiavelli and the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great. Sounds right up my alley, and as soon as everyone in the office has duly examined the copy that Violet had Rushdie sign, you know I'm going to borrow it.]

[Before I go any further, the Angry Young Man, who really think's he's quit blogging (hah!), just barged into my room and insisted I mention that he took me to see Sea Wolf, The Jealous Girlfriends, and Patrick Park at the Independent on Tuesday. Done. (But were there cougars wearing bad American Apparel and swinging cheesy gold lame bags like there were at the Lovemakers show I took him to the week before? There were not; therefore, my show was better.)]

[Anyway, back to really interesting literary worlds I'm delving into. Alan Black is this charming bartender/author who feels like an especially close member of the extended Red Room family. His new book, Kick The Balls, is about all the ramifications of a Scottish expatriate who moves to the Bay Area, tends bar, creates a small literary community that includes the first American reading of Trainspotting, and then moves to the suburbs and tries to teach his kids and the other rugrats to play something resembling soccer. Sounds like a perfect Christmas present to some new parents I might or might not be related to.]

[In other words, it's a memoir, and it was good to drop into what looked like a hundred of Alan's closest friends last night for the release party at Edinburgh Castle. I met up with La Liaison and we were joined by the San Francisco rep for Opium magazine, and dished the literary gossip over pints. There was a band, but maybe the band blew out the sound system, because when it came time for Alan to read, we could barely hear him. Too bad, but the crowd seemed to love it.]

[After the reading, we spotted Violet and Mr. Violet, who'd come in with Po Bronson and his wife. Violet greeted us with, "Oh, this is Huntington who I was talking about earlier." Apparently the time I talked Violet out of picking up a very young, very thin hustler on Polk Street while she drove me home for the writers studio in her late-model Mercedes came up at dinner. As we whizzed down Bush Street, V. spotted him, immediately felt some sort of compassion, and I almost had to wrest the steering wheel from her hands. If I weren't such a ham, I think I might resent being a combination anecdote machine and teaching tool for my friend and CEO. But I am a ham, so I glowed.]

[It's not as though I haven't been in close proximity to famous people before, but I was struck again by how much like their images these people always look. I mean, there was no way Po could've been anyone but Po, and there I was, shaking the hand that shook Oprah's.]

[OK, so there's other stuff going on too, good and thought-provoking and ego-stroking and libido-inciting, but you can't hear about that yet. It's been quite a week, but now apparently I'm going to watch Art School Confidential in the other room now. Bye.]

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