I went back to Columbia University today to see a faculty creative nonfiction reading. All of the readings were good, naturally. One man had a detective story based somewhat on reality in which he described his protagonist as "Tony Soprano meets Jack Black." His second reading was a first-hand account of witnessing an execution by lethal injection as a member of the press. He didn't go for any sort of cheap drama, but instead let the story stand on its own merits. The last reader was an older fellow with a story about a Vietnam war protest a block from where we were during the 1968 Democratic convention. He recounted how the crowd had transistor radios, and upon hearing that a plan for peace had been voted down, tried to lower a flag to half-mast. The police moved in with tear gas and clubs, and people watching couldn't believe that it was happening. He made a point at the end that the millions of people watching the chaos on TV marked a new sort of political participation, no matter how they felt about what they saw. I'd never thought of it like that.


After the show I took the red line to a transfer stop and decided to take a quick look at things on street level between trains. I came upon the studio for the ABC affiliate here, set up fishbowl style like Good Morning America. The giant glowing thing was a huge LED screen display. Somebody paid a lot of money for that thing. It was kind of like a jumbo-tron, but with a warped surface.

Tonight I went to the Green Mill to see Mortified, a sort of confessional show where locals read their most embarrassing adolescent diaries with special emphasis placed on the melodrama that comes with the age. One girl, after smoking marijuana, declared (circa 1990) that she thinks she's the only person in the world who really "gets" Pink Floyd, and ends every entry with a comment about wanting "coke." Another recounted her dreams of traveling to England with nothing but her art supplies and a list of things she could do, like eventually be a tour guide when she knows the area. One man read his diary from his freshman year at a Lutheran college where he considered entering the seminary, if not for his guilt over meeting a slew of passionate young women and "reaching new lows" every time. A footnote at the end of the show said that he is married with one daughter now. The whole thing was really funny, taking really bad writing and presenting it as the perverse gold that it is.