SF Up and Running

I went out last night for the first time (it seems) in ages. It was a poetry event and though I've been out and about a lot this summer, there is something about not going to poetry readings that gives me cabin fever, makes me feel cut off from the world. Alan Gilbert read at New Langton. It was a lecture. That was his "performance." He read an essay about the contemporary "grotesque." I enjoy the lecture as a format and I like the examples he cited. He used some indie hip-hop and lots of contemporary visual art, but something was missing from the lecture for me. It's hard to put my finger on it, or maybe that was the problem. I wasn't sure exactly why the label of the "grotesque" was most apt for the work he was talking about. I don't think I was convinced of that.