What Kind of Asshole?
At the Donald Barthelme tribute last night, reads the LAST CHAPTER of The Dead Father, a book I’ve been wanting to read for a really long time (and not reading, but that’s a separate issue of self-denial and has nothing to do with this)???
This man: [redacted]. Thanks for ruining the book, you pompous moron!
On the plus side, The Smartest Man in the Room was there, and we saw him afterwards and said, “This was fun!” and he was like, “Now it is.” Heh heh.
4 Responses to “What Kind of Asshole?”
1 Pistol Whip 21 January 2008 @ 7:38 pm
And then he called me Katie. Twice.
2 Pistol Whip 22 January 2008 @ 4:11 pm
And this “Katie,” despite her reputation for “fun,” was not on top of her game that night, and hence failed, together with Left Hook, to work the room–and for once, it was a room worth working!
I loved Ben Greenman’s reading of “Some of Us Have Been Threatening Our Friend Colby”… so funny and also completely brutal, and left me with a lump in my throat. (Probs cancer.) And I loved that Ed Hirsch chose “The School.” I’m pretty sure that thing is perfect. I wanted to eat it.
What I actually ate was some of the pink cheeseball and crackers that the National Arts Club graciously set out for us, and a couple of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies (have I wandered into a church function, wondered I, or perhaps a school board meeting?), and I sipped the refreshing grapefruity punch, and spoke only to Left Hook and to a lovely gay-dude couple she knew forever ago and they just happened to be there. So that was nice.
But it is sad that we didn’t get to slap Donald Antrim on the back for totally pwning the story “How I Write My Songs.” Oh. My. God.
Later on, at our next engagement, Left Hook was called “Lindsey” by a different gentleman who also happens to perceive himself to be the smartest man in the room (not trying to be catty, but, ahem, in this dude’s case, this is only true in sparsely populated rooms).
Or was it “Lisa”? “Lorraine”? Oh, who knows.
If we are so damn fascinating, why do they forget our names?
Don’t answer that.
3 Pistol Whip 22 January 2008 @ 4:21 pm
Nicole. It was Nicole.
4 Firecracker 23 January 2008 @ 10:44 pm
Are you saying Lefty’s real name isn’t Nicole? Gah, I’m so embarassed. All this time.
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