Jun 30, 2007

"CERTAIN PEOPLE I KNOW"

Alrighty, kids, you've patiently awaited the scoop from premier The Fixx Reading Series night, and scoop you shall have! For starters, we had a wonderful, lively, fun and rather big crowd, filled with smiling faces, some familiar some new. We got off to a bit of a late start with everything coming in and getting beverages and settling in, which is completely fine by me. Delayed because the audience kept increasing? yes, please!

So, once we got started, it was beyond fun. Ben Tanzer brought the funny right off the bat with the sections he read from Lucky Man (which I've just started reading and I really like. Run, do not walk, and go pick up a copy for yourself), and read in this funny, cool, pause-explain-read-pause-laugh-read way that I just loved to bits.


The fabulous and lovely and hilarious Megan Stielstra was next up, complete with perfect music cues and laughs and a bit of interaction with an audience member or two. in her very natural, un-fussy, earthy way, she spun for us this wonderful yarn about religion, sky, family, masturbation and Casey Kasem that I, for one, will not soon forget. (I know I will forever think of a particular Madonna song in an entirely new light.) Hit her website, folks, and get your butts out there the next time she performs. Do it. For reals.

Last, but never least, Eric Spitznagel, came and had the audience howling with his tales of the porn industry from his book, Fast Forward. Clown porn, Kurosawa's Rashomon porn, mantras of the porn industry...? Yes, please. He even was kind enough to share a very funny story from his other book, The Hardest (Working) Man in Show Business, a story, I should add, involving Ron Jeremy and Chanukah. Sweet.

After, the Q&A proved highly entertaining and the audience has so many great questions. I do wonder what became of the young man in the orange hoodie who claimed to have a special name for a certain kind of woman, but we can only hope he'll stumble across this blog and leave us an explanation in the comments section.

As for me, I think I brought my own brand of snark and funny, got a few laughs of my own, and, most importantly, got everyone to cheer for the lit-folks I'd brought together for them. Not that they needed my encouragement-- Ben, Megan and Eric were all wonderful on their own.

(Snark, snark, snark...)

And that, kids, is all she wrote. The next reading is July 26th and it's there or square, loves.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have decided I must travel to Chicago to experience "The Fixx Reading Series" for myself. It sounds like such a great evening.

I am lovin' these candid pics of you!

Anonymous said...

"...masturbation and Casey Kasem...."

Her too?

I am not alone!
American Top 40 and Onanism! Salt and pepper they are.

Amy Guth said...

SR- Right?!?!

Ma Guth- Come anytime! So fun! So fun!

Anonymous said...

"....Right?!?!..."

If that means 'good', you're right!

Joe said...

Sounds like a blast. I got my calendar marked for the 26th!

Katie Schwartz said...

ames, what a perfect night! love the howard cosell. everyone was a STAH!!!

Anonymous said...

During Eric's talk, he mentioned comics who had porn fetishes a comment which I found particularly funny because I have a friend who tells a joke about porn fetishes. It involves trains, which is about all I will say. This is what prompted my question to Eric during the Q&A and it just so happened that his answer matched up with a nickname that another friend of mine had given me for those girls a year or two back. And that's the true story of fixxcoffee.

-orange hoodie