do I look flat in this?

Monday, oct. 16, 2006   |   0 comments

So now, awake and wine-headachy, here are a few more details about last night’s reading. It really was very fun, and I laughed a lot, and Lisa Brown was in top form, her reading was just hilarious and great (or as my godmother, Meg, said, “such a sketch!”), and I’m so glad I was there, and so glad I did it, but it also had its rough spots:

The audio situation for the Wolphin short-film screening part of the show was very, very sad, for which I am partly (or maybe even entirely, ooops?) to blame. I had lined up a projector (thank you, Adaptive Path, generous company where I rent out a desk!), but since neither Lisa nor I need audio for our presentations, I didn’t worry about getting that special wire that enables my computer to talk to the speaker system. So the nice people at Cody’s wound up propping a mic up to the lame built-in speakers on my Mac, which produced barely audible results. Also for some strange and really unexplainable reason the piece they showed super, super dark (way more so than I’ve seen it in any other venue), so you could barely see what was happening. The overall experience was a strain on the eyes and ears, so much so that it bordered on performance art. Maybe I’m supposed to be craning and squinting and not really knowing what’s going on?

Also missing from the reading was Chris Adrian, the third author who was supposed to speak, who I guess was in “New York”?

My dad volunteered that my performance started out “flat” but then picked up by the time we got to the Q and A. Which kind of bummed me out, because sometimes — for instance those first few moments right after a difficult reading, though really they’re all difficult for me, but still — you (or maybe just I) don’t really want to hear constructive criticism. Or, you know, honesty. All I want is mindless, uncritical parental gushing! And candy! And balloons! And confetti! And my own baby tiger! Ugh, I am an infant.

I took another look at my receipt from Harry Denton’s last night, and realized that I tipsily tipped 20% on top of the built-in 20% tip, which filled me with much self-sadness and the urge to self-punch. But I guess I learned a valuable lesson about not using my credit card while drinking. And it only cost $30! Take that, Learning Annex!