When David Met David

David Keeps, host of World of Wonder's Ovation series Art & The City, writes:

Famous for his roles on NYPD Blue and CSI: Miami, David Caruso is also a fan of a certain World of Wonder series. Oh, the hell with modesty, he's a fan of ME. Yesterday, when I was on the set of a TV Guide photo shoot (as a journalist, not a subject) the red-headed thesp walked into the dressing room of the Quixote Smashbox Studios and said a cheery hello. "Well, we haven't actually met," I replied, because you know, I have that kind of face (the one that's made for radio). "Oh, you're on Ovation, man," he shot back. "I love your show." (Cue: giant feather knocking me over.) With that, he turned to his manager, my old chum Jason Weinberg, and announced, "This guy has the greatest job on TV." Turns out Mr Caruso is a mad lover of paint on canvas. I told him about my plans for a "B" season of Art & The CIty: Brazil, Berlin, Beijing. "Oh, wouldn't it be weird if you kept running into me in Beijing?" asked the actor, who collects contemporary Chinese art. Well, weirder things have happened. Like, for instance, the foregoing, which is 100% for realz.

– David A. Keeps

[Ed note: Art & the City is currently in reruns Wednesdays at 8PM)

Snap!

Sundance darling, actress Melonie Diaz (Assassination of a High School President), and World of Wonder darling, David Keeps (Art & the City), met and hung out at the film festival and sloughed off remarks about how much like father and daughter they seem.

Art & the City: Los Angeles

On tonight's last original Art & the City of the season, wacky host David Keeps and his little dog too seek out the art and architecture in Los Angeles, both big and not so much, from the staid Getty and the shiny Disney Hall to colorful, surprisingly not-so-Asian-as-you-might-think Chinatown. Tour begins at 8PM on Ovation tv. Yes, we said wacky.

Art & the City & a Nice Cuppa Tea

Tonight, your Art & the City host David Keeps takes you on a unique art crawl through London, and helps keep, so to speak, England both jolly and old. Thrill with him on stops at the V & A Museum; the S & M Cafe; the Tate Modern; The Haunch of Venison Gallery in Soho; and the Dark Horse gastropub in Camberwell, where the service is surly with a smile. And join him on a bus ride to the East End galleries with the adorable Pfund Pfamily from Baltimore. Meanwhile, enjoy, if you can, this Wobbly Bridge outtake from the show. Art & the City, tonight at 8PM on Ovation TV.

Art & the City

David Keeps, host of the WOW series Art & the City, takes the crew to New Orleans this week and makes the French Quarter seem like a Dollar. He does the legwork so you don't have to, though you'll want to when he's done with you. He makes art-hopping seem like a cool breeze in August, but it can be tiring behind the scenes as you'll see in this outtake shot at the end of a grueling day. An apparent out-of-it Keeps freestyles some thoughts. Tonight, New Orleans, Art & the City, Ovation TV, 8PM.

Art & the City: Ode to Obelisco

Have your musical friends leave the room before clicking on the clip. Tonight on the third episode of WOW's Ovation TV original series Art & the City, host David Keeps pokes around the masterpieces in New York City, arguably the creative capital of the States. But speaking of states, we're not sure what state of mind Keeps could have been in when he went all impromtu-poetic and "sang" this ode to Damián Ortega's Obelisco Transportable with the camera running. Keeps is a man of many talents, but he cannot count perfect pitch among them. With this priceless bit of footage left on the cutting room floor, tonight's episode is pretty near a perfect work of art itself. Ovation TV, 8PM. (Watch the clip here)

Art & the Party

It was a shockingly different crowd who gathered last night in the World of Wonder storefront gallery to celebrate the launch of Ovation TV's Art & the City series. The space, which usually is host to wild rabbles of tattooed and tortured nightclubbers come to see naked Golden Girls and Britney's shaved pubes, last night was a rather fabulous ground zero for a mix of WOW people and well-heeled adults enjoying a proper cocktail party with hot hors d'oeuvres – as smoldering images of David Keeps and Britney's nether regions lurked from the walls. Genial, slightly manic host Keeps, whose art-induced antics in other cities were screened around the room, drew quite an impressive roster of guests: Hitch screenwriter Kevin Bisch, event planner Bryan Rabin, Bret Witke, voice of Bart Simpson Nancy Cartwright, Ann Magnuson, Dirty Sexy Money actress Michelle Krusiec and boyriend Matthew Pope, William Morris agent Andrew Atkin, reality and gameshow producer Michael Binkow, screenwriter Robert Rosenheck, Payless creative director Adamo de Gregorio, Redbook editor Lori Berger, Keeps' yoga instructor Maja Zimmerman, artists Dennis and Cheryl Ekstrom, KCRW's Frances Anterton, Danzig drummer London May, celebrity journo Brantley Bardin, architectural photographers John Ellis and Kenneth Johannson, and Delight.com's Lynda Keeler and boyfriend Bob Merlis, among others. Sending their regrets, lamented Keeps, were Timothy Olyphant, who was shooting in Paris, and Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller, who had his own premiere to attend.

Photos by Thairin Smothers, from top: Keeps plays monkey in the middle of an interior design manwich, featuring, from left, lighting and furniture designer Matt Locke, John Brady (second from left) and Willard Ford (Harrison's son) of the Chinatown furniture showroom Ford-Brady; Art & the City's production team: associate producer Graham McKay, producer Jane Fitzgerald, and editor Alejandro Gedeon; Bryan Rabin, Geri Logan, and Steven Corfe; WOW producer Mona Card and music composer David Steinberg; Kevin Bisch and Keeps; a bit of fashion; WOWers Chris McKim, Kristin Rasmussen, and Jen Walter; Keeps, bursting out of his John Bartlett mid-1990s sharkskin two-piece with pride, lines up with the suits of Ovation TV and Time-Warner Cable while, in the background, the bespectacled Kris Slava, who developed Art & The City for Ovation, stands in front of Britney Spears' bajina; Keeps, Randy Barbato, your elflike WOW Report editor, and Fenton Bailey, who don't need flash photography to be flash

Keeps to Himself

We've already said a lot on the Report about the traveling art show that is David Keeps and his Art & the City series for Ovation TV, and we think it's time Keeps himself said a few words (and he's not a man of a few words) about the show, so we've cribbed a graphful of quote from a recent story on the man and the show that ran in The Advocate. To wit:

"I'm not Sister Wendy, I'm not PBS," he says. "I like to think I have a sort of Huell Howser-Jack Benny kind of thing happening. The audience isn't interested in art-talk bullshit. Instead, we're looking at the cities we visit through the eyes of the cultural institutions and the galleries and the artists who live there and, to some extent, the places they stay and eat."

Advocate writer Jessica Hundley says, "Keeps leads these TV tours with a self-deferential, slightly bemused charm – Oscar Wilde without the snobbery." Of course, like Oscar Wilde, it isn't all art with Keeps; he has carnal interests as well, as you'll see from this outtake from the Paris episode. No sir, he's no Sister Wendy. (Previously)

(Oh, and be sure to come to the 6-to-8PM party in our storefront gallery this evening to meet David Keeps and get a preview of the series, which premieres Sunday, October 7, at 8PM on Ovation TV.)

Celebrities at Large, Sort Of

Tonight, I have a cameo on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I wish I could say I had a snapshot from the set but I don't. The backstory: My friend Katy and I were on a road trip from New York to Detroit. On our way out of town, we stopped by the SVU soundstage in beautiful North Bergen, New Jersey, where they film the squad room, courtroom, and interiors for the show. It's like a giant office building, half of which looks like the St Vincent de Paul in LA because it's crammed with clothing, props, and paintings to dress the people and the sets. Mariska is there, working, and we're hanging out. All of a sudden she says, "Hey, YOU!" in that way that she has. She summons Katy and me into the wardrobe room, "Get 'em dressed," she tells the wardrobe mistress. There is a brief discussion about whether I should be put in a dress and sent to the lock-up, but I end up in a pair of khakis, a Sta-Prest shirt, and a cheap tie. Katy, who is wearing a black T-shirt and jeans is merely given a black jacket. We are taken to the set, where there are around 50 extras who do this professionally. It's explained to us that the squad room has been transformed into a hotline center for people to phone in tips about a missing woman. The director wants a lot of controlled commotion. I'm supposed to hand Mariska a phone message. We rehearse and she gives me helpful pointers after each take. By the time they get one in the can, so to speak, she takes the message from my hand, reads it, and says, "Go check this out," or something like that. Although I had been on camera before, in a few indie movies, this was a completely new and quite frankly terrifying experience. Goddess that she is, Mariska later sent me a card calling me a TV star. Less than a month later, I landed the Art & the City gig. So, she's fabulous and psychic.

– David A Keeps

[Ed note: David Keeps is the eccentric host and travel guide on WOW's Ovation TV series, Art & the City, which premieres Sunday, October 7, at 8PM. Meanwhile, try to spot him on SVU tonight and enjoy him in person at Ovation's Art & the City launch party tomorrow from 6 to 8PM at WOW's Hollywood storefront gallery. David and the dinosaur photo taken at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.]

City Boy

Suzan Colon's four possible captions for this photo: 1)The Life of Edgar Rice Furroughs by David Keeps, 2) David Keeps takes the New England Furroughfare, 3) Welcome to the Five Furroughs, David Keeps, 4) David Keeps is Furroughly Modern Millie! In actuality, it's Keeps in front of Van Gogh's starry-night scene at MOMA on the New York leg of his hosting and guiding duties for Ovation's first original series, Art & the City, produced by World of Wonder and premiering Sunday, October 7 at 8PM. (Party with Keeps and the WOW gang on October 3.)

Shameless Plug

Help World of Wonder and Ovation TV celebrate the launch of the new series Art & the City with its host, David Keeps, at a party in WOW's Hollywood Boulevard headquarters on Wednesday, October 3, from 6 to 8PM. So what favors can we expect Keeps to bring to the party? We asked. "Much like the character I play on Art & The City," he said with a pixilated grin, much like the one he has on TV, "I will be torturing, oh, sorry, that is to say, treating, my hosts and guests to an impromptu performance-art installation." Meaning? "There will be a display of my artwork that's featured in the groundbreaking television event, along with special new work that I am busily preparing. And, if there is a live microphone and some open floor space, I may be persuaded to re-enact some of the songs and interpretive dance sensations that are about to sweep the nation." We're very afraid, but we'll be there.

Getting to the Art of the Matter

Slightly more than a week from today is the exciting premiere of Art & the City, a series of half-hour visits to such cultural hubs as Chicago, Paris, New Orleans, Los Angeles, London, and New York. Actually, not "such as," but those actual cities. What makes the series extra appealing, apart from its travelogue aspect, is its host, the playful and irrepressible writer David Keeps, whose off-the-cuff comments on the museums, paintings, and artists in each city are more scandalous than scholarly, but always informed. The series starts next Sunday, October 7, with two episodes, Chicago and Paris, back-to-back at 8PM on Ovation TV. Click on the behind-the-scenes outtake from the Chicago episode and learn one of the perks of hosting a TV show.

It Ain't Just Paint

This is the face of WOW's upcoming Art & the City series on the new and improved Ovation network. In the six-part series, LA Times writer David A Keeps – like a delirious cross between your favorite college professor and a wired Sister Wendy – hops (sometimes literally) from LA to London, with four stops in between, seeking out each city's big and small artistic achievements in ways you've not seen on TV before. Seriously. The series premieres Wednesday, October 10, with two half-hour episodes beginning at 8PM. (Variety)

Street Scene

Come October, you'll be in for a real treat when we present Art & the City, a six-part series on the Ovation network, in which hilarious LA Times writer David Keeps schleps to six cities (Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, London, and Paris) to contemplate the art and architecture. In this outtake from his trip to London, Keeps is sitting on Whitechapel Street in the East End, enjoying a traditional English dish of chicken tikka biryani with his cameraman and sound guy when suddenly this Polish renaissance man cycles up.