Let's Take it Back One Time

to the First Ever Show&Tell...photos thanks to Linda Franklin/barkinglips.

Adam Good

I can't remember meeting Adam Good, but I remember eating fried food across from him at a bar in DC after a reading probably five or six years ago. People were abuzz about his creativity even then. He was a poet, but that wasn't all. Now he's all over the place, radically recombining discourse and culture and art in ways that make evident his eternal, endearing, childlike curiosity and sincerity. He got married on a prairie in the mountains of North Carolina, and instead of a ring bearer they had a ring bear--a friend's toddler dressed as a cub, emerging from tall grasses. We all slept in a cabin and I was afraid to go out in the middle of the night to pee because of mountain lions.

Anyway I'm bad at keeping touch, but Adam has always been present in my thinking of things--a reminder to stay engaged and stay a child. His Show&Tell was still conceptual, but with a veneer of laid-back-itude overtop. He shared a Viewmaster with A-Team reels inside, and had people come up and look through and describe what they were seeing. It demanded audience participation in the most non-pretentious possible way, because as we know demanding such a thing can get icky and strangely self-indulgent for the artist (and can at least attempt to remove obligation/responsibility, yadda...), and do the opposite of what it wants by cultivating resentment between the two parties. But anyway it was wonderful to envy wonder and to imagine Mr. T. There was a lot riding on the participants, and of course I was critical of them and uncomfortable relying on their descriptions, but I am a jerk.




Joe Young

I can't remember meeting Joe Young either, but he's ubiquitous. I don't not remember meeting people because they're unimportant (and in fact they are all very important). I blame it on my frenetic emotionality because I hope it's not a horrible quality kind of thing. Anyway Joe is such a great writer and all-around interesting guy, who I only got to know Outside of The Group pretty recently--I think that's how I introduced him at Show&Tell. He's so tall, and not just to me. His hair is great because it is thick and between so many colors. He likes to wear a white undershirt with a sap stain on it. He helped me get a jellyfish sting out by rubbing sand on it, and spotted a little rubber whale toy in the sand with me which I gave to someone else, and I wonder if he wanted me to give it to him. You should see him dance. It's the happiest pogo stick ever.

Joe presented this mystery bone object that he found in the woods. When he passed it around, people fell into two camps: the it's-a-deer-penis-bone camp, and the it's-a-petrified-piece-of-white-asparagus camp. There were resident experts; the doctor informed us that (of course!) there are no bones in deer penises, and the hippie expert informed us that maybe it wasn't a bone, and luckily for us Joe had performed many experiments including a water displacement test...but had come to no conclusion. It was like a half-assed science investigation that finally never exposed the object's true nature: alien dinosaur vampires. Or something like that.



Jamie Gaughran-Perez

Guess what? I don't remember meeting JGP. But now we're 2/3 of Narrow House, with Justin Sirois. I always say that if I'm ever on Cash Cab, Jamie will be my phone-a-friend option because he knows a lot about a lot, not just a little about a lot. But do you know what? Don't call him for a Bible question. Jamie wears a cloak of intellectualism over his softie-hood. He would do anything for me, and vice versa. For instance, he pretty much made me go to Texas.

Jamie did oh man it was so good and a perfect ending to open Show&Tell. He made scallops ceviche tacos. Red cabbage slaw. Chipotle dressing. Fresh salsa/pico. Soft warm tortillas. I can't even tell you; there's nothing else to tell.



These Three Men

They are genuine and uphold things that should be upheld, like comparison and thought and relaxation.