Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

“You can only talk to Sprinkles through the fan!”

This modification of the theater sign matches exactly how things went last night. Linda Barry was incredible and Matt Groaning phoned it in from Malibu. It was billed as a double lecture. Barry went on first and made it known that she was super nervous and sweaty and that’s why she wore a white blouse and for those fortunate enough to be sitting close to the stage, yes, she knew she was sweating a lot. She said she was going to overcome this stagefright by singing an autobiographical song and proceeded to sing an adaptation of ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ (example: ‘I was born a meat-cutters daughter’ and further along ‘daddy was in the basement drinking vodka/mama yelled at him from upstairs’). She also managed to dance a couple of times (she dances just like Marlys), sing another song (’You Are My Sunshine’ by Jimmie Rodgers, but without opening her mouth) and get in all these amazing Lynda Barryisms. Like she was talking about when she was a kid how her friends had imaginary friends and she had to fake it. But you could tell because the friend’s imaginary friends all had these special things going on, like (above) you could only talk to Sprinkles through the electric fan. Her lecture was about how not to be miserable as an adult, a pretty usefull subject. Her idea was you had to embrace amateurishness and not self censor. And she had all these ideas about how to remember details from your childhood. It sounds very hippy dippy now that I’m writing about it. But it was just such a cool surprise to see one of my favorite writers and for it not to be a dud experience. That’s the thing I’ve noticed, whenever you go to a reading or see an author you like interviewed on TV, they always come across as being so socially retarded and you’re like, well you should still read their stuff. But Barry was like that in person, which made it a lot of fun. I’m kicking myself now for not using my mp3 player to make a bootleg recording of the show. I could have done it so easily too! Argh! The only downside was knowing Groening was on next. He started off by literally playing the audience best-of clips of the Simpsons (which he obviously has had very minimal involvement with for the last ten years). Then some jokes about Portland, some random memories of growing up here and then even more unrelated tidbits, like complaining that nobody can pronounce his name correctly. I thought he came across really unprepared and arrogant. Jeremy liked his Portland stories of what it was like downtown in the early 70s. I guess I don’t hate him. He seemed more like the archetypal Ben & Jerry millionaire than a real fatcat. Still it would have been so much better if it was just Lynda Barry. There was no signing or meet and greet afterwards. Questions could be submitted. Jeremy turned in a good one asking if an animated version of Cruddy was in the works, but it couldn’t survive in an arena where lame questions like, ‘Matt, who’s your favorite Simpsons character?’ needed to be asked.

Before the lecture, Jeremy and I went to the Jasmine Tree in the SouthWest. It was old fashioned chinese food with Regal Begal atmosphere.

Learning to Love You More, one of the best sites I’ve seen in a while.

Ooh! Ghost Towns!