Going to Extremes

[susanstinson]

Wowsa. charliegrrrl surely does go all out when promoting an event. I just ran across the following on the internet (on The Laughing Squid, for those West Coast folks who might be familiar with it), and, I've got to admit, I've never seen anyone go -- or even publicly or privately claim to go -- to quite such extremes to get people to a reading. Makes me all the more eager to read Choir Boy by Charlie Anders, charliegrrrl's new book.

You bet I'm rising to the occasion on Saturday!

Writers With Drinks
Sat, Mar 12
7:30 pm-9:30 pm, door s open at 7:00
$3 to $5 sliding scale


So we admit, we may have gone too far in promoting Writers With Drinks.
For many people, the blurb spelled out in still-warm ox entrails
across Union Square was the final straw. Either that or the drag queen
we decapitated, and rigged up with a taperecorder so her head would
appear to float in mid-air and repeat "Writers With Drinks" over and
over again. But we're just getting started -- next on our agenda is an
additive to the city's water supply that makes everybody cough up blood
clots that just happen to spell the name of our long-running show.

See, ya gotta be ruthless to promote a show nowadays. And you gotta be
even more ruthless to produce a show ! If you haven't been to Writers
With Drinks lately, you'll have missed some of our recent innovations.
For example, these days we implant electro-shock devices into our
readers and give the remote controls to select audience members to use
if the entertainment level drops below 68 percent. Also, audience
members who talk loudly during the reading now can expect to receive
the scorpion-needle touch. (Don't ask, just pray you never feel it.)
And we're very proud that our hallucinogenic fog machine is now a
standard feature at most bay area literary events.

So please join us this Saturday for a thrilling line-up at the only
spoken word show that cares enough to kill for literature. This time
we feature:

- Susan Stinson, Lambda Award-nominated author of Venus of Chalk, plus
Martha Moody, Fat Girl Dances With Rocks, and Belly Songs. Also, she
has telepathically controlled killer robots.

- Gregory Dicum, author of two books, Window Seat and
The Coffee Book, and writer for Harper's, Mother Jones, the New York
Times Magazine and other magazine. He also writes a biweekly column for
SFGate called Green. And he builds cities beneath the magma.

- Ray Ferrer, comedian and drag queen, staple of the local comedy
scene. That last time your mother called, it was really him using his
uncanny voice powers.

- Jess Arndt, erotica writer and literary maven. She's written for On
Our Backs and Girlfriends, as well as the anthology Bottoms Up: Writing
About Sex. Jess emits a pleasant but ultimately deadly radioactivity

- Lisa Ortiz, whose poetry has appeared in Poesy, Tryst, Tattoo
Highway, Literary Mama, the Wolf Head Quarterly, the Princton Review,
and the anthology Split Verse. She ages backwards, but remembers
sideways.

And as always it's hosted by Charlie Anders, who died a thousand years
before you were born.



Venue:

The Make Out Room
3225 22nd. St. btw. Mission and Valencia
San Francisco

http://www.makeoutroom.com



Additional Info:

http://www.writerswithdrinks.com

Comments

[thewindrose.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful - if I was anywhere in the area, I'd go! If only to see your telepathically controlled killer robots!!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks, hon. I just took a bath and came back to check the lj, thinking, if nobody's commented about *that,* I'll know that they're either not reading or have fainted. You saved me from wondering which!

[charliegrrrl.livejournal.com]

I merely report the truth. Seriously, I write different promos for Laughing Squid than for other lists, because I want people to notice them. I also write a different, but equally weird and sick, spiel about the show for the roughly 700 people on the announce list.

See you Saturday!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

It's highly impressive. And funny, especially to anyone who's ever done promotion for a literary event ...