The Twin Cities Noir launch party is tonight. Once there, I plan to ogle over all the self-actualized crime writers, including my cubicle-neighbor Brad Zellar. Also in the TC Noir ranks: City Pages theater critic Quinton Skinner, although I haven’t been sure what to make of that guy ever since he liked Caryl Churchill’s “A Number”–which was probably the biggest disappointment of the past theater season, as far as I’m concerned. It wasn’t that the Illusion’s production lacked luster; it was that the script sucked! Churchill, who I’ve long regarded as one of my favorite living playwrights (and I was therefore quite excited to see this new play), seemed to have judged one of the main characters, a dad who had put his dead son’s DNA out to pasture, before she ever got started with him. Why go on a moral journey (about cloning) with a guy whose guts you black-and-white abhore, even from the get-go? When it was all said and done with this play, which was thankfully very short, my best friend Andrea, mocking one of the worst lines, turned to me and said: “Well, I figure I’ve got to share at least fifteen percent of my genetic makeup with vodka. So let’s go have a drink!”
In any case, other well-knowns expected at tonight’s Twin Cities Noir reading: David Housewright, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, Bruce Rubenstein, William Kent Krueger, Pete Hautman, and even more. This is a pretty exciting book they’ve put out. I would link to a website where you can buy the thing if I didn’t so want ya’all to patronize the indies at Once Upon A Crime, who’re so kind as to be hosting tonight’s affair.
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