Had a great time on New Jersey Transit/SEPTA to Philadelphia with Brandon, Nada & Sharon yesterday. Philly unbelievably cold, even colder than NYC, probably because it's inland. We went right to the hotel (Club Quarters, downtown), where we ran into Rod and Mel. For some reason ("convenience"?) we thought it would be smart to all pile into R&M's car and drive over to Kelly Writers House. The car probably fits five comfortably--there were six of us. Nada sat on my lap.

Traffic was unbelievable. Nada slowly scooching down until she was sort of piled onto both me and Sharon. It felt very "fifties." When we finally got to the Writers House, we all piled out like college kids unprying ourselves from each other after having been crammed into a phone booth, swallowing live goldfish.

There was precisely one person in the audience when we got there at, like, 5:45 for the 6:00 p.m. reading. Awesome. I assumed there would be no one from the Philly poetry community, given that Frank had just gotten out of the hospital, but I assumed there'd be some college kids there.

Mike was supposed to call in and read a poem at precisely 6:00. By that time there were maybe five people there, so we asked him to call back at 6:10, hoping, praying, for a few more bodies. It was 15 degrees out, but felt more like -2. It was the closest I've felt to living in Minneapolis in the 90s.

By 6:10 we finally had an audience, though only two people I recognized--Hassen and Bob Perelman. Mike called in and, once they hooked the phone up to the mic, read a very funny and fairly upsetting poem created from searching for something horrifying, like "pedophile," but with that word replaced with "frat boys." It went over great.

Brandon then showed about 5 or 6 short films, including two I hadn't yet seen, both of them involving Bollywood song & dance scenes mostly unedited, but with incredible subtitles that he'd made up, twisting the Hindi into vaguely homophonic English. The first one, "When the Nazi kids came to swim with us" (or something like that) pretty much brought down the house. He also showed his slowed down Purina Cat Chow commercial, which I've seen three or four times now, and still laugh out loud at.

I went up next, reading mostly things I'd written in the last month or two, except for the North Ireland March news item I wrote several years ago. I seem to do much better in smaller venues (Kelly Writers House is very small)--I did infinitely better here than at Dickinson. I need to be able to see people's faces, I think.

Rod went next, reading his great Strawberry Surprise poem, a hilarious mash-up of Heidegger and hamster porn he wrote with Marianne Shaneen, and--my favorite of the bunch--a poem written entirely in baby talk about a "widdow biddee boid." I need that poem in book form.

Sharon then got up and read a number of very recent poems, the clear winner being a play she'd written about the Olsen Twins, where the dialog revolves around how they're going to rape each other (and others). Of all the pieces read last night, this one seemed to push things the furthest in terms of where anyone was comfortable about going content-wise. You could hear people squirming. Laughing, squirming, then laughing again.

Mel then read a number of delightfully playful poems she'd written with--well, I can't remember now the other author's name. (I have no short-term memory, apparently.) She also read a long piece called something like "My Poo," which I asked her about later, and which I think she said came at least in part from a Web site devoted to BM discussions. It was hilarious and, like Sharon's poem, squirm-inducing in places.

Nada went last, inviting all of us up to stand around her and sing along with the song we'd written together for the PP Marathon. She read the most torqued poems of the night, ending with the longish "I Love Men," which she nailed. Like me, she also fared better in Kelly's smaller room than at Dickinson, although she was infinitely better than me at Dickinson.

After the reading, for reasons that are completely unclear to me now, we walked what felt like eleven thousand miles in the blisteringly cold air to a Thai restaurant in, I guess, like, Thailand. Well, okay, no, it was only maybe four or five blocks away, but--did I mention how cold it was? A filmmaker and poet that Brandon knew, named Ish, joined us, along with Hassen and her son, Jerrod.

Later, after we made our way back to the hotel, we walked another eleven thousand miles through the bone-chilling five hundred and seventy thousand mile an hour winds to a bar where, a bit later, Ish joined us. Rod & Mel turned me on to a great super-hopped-up beer, the name of which I can't remember. We gossiped, told jokes, drank, worried about Frank, complained about the weather, and talked about the possibility of another flarf festival in NYC later this year. We all missed those on the list who couldn't make it to Philly. Though we had a great time, it's even more fun when there are "too many" people.

Next weekend, Baltimore and DC. The same crew, minus Brandon, but adding Ben, Mitch, Katie, Drew, and--flying all the way from Portland, Oregon--Rodney. I can't wait.