Tom Lynch

A gathering of Converse All-Stars down Old-Style sixers and applaud as Mimi Smartypants, the celebrated web blogger, speaks about falling in the shower and breaking her arm while trying to have anal sex. She gets a huge laugh.

The Self-Publishers Event Council of Chicago hosts an evening of readings from various web bloggers, including Smartypants, Shasta MacNasty, and Sour Bob. The room, the small apartment above the vintage toy store Uncle Fun, is about the size of a mini-van. Twenty-five chairs are set up for the audience, but more than sixty people show up, and the leftovers are forced to sit in the aisles or stand in back. Everyone seems to know each other. "Did you go to New Trier?" blogger David Elfving asks an attendee. She smirks at the inquisition, as if the answer is obvious. "Have you ever been recognized from your blog?" one reader asks another. She receives a shrug in response.

"This was supposed to be a really small thing," says Brian Ritzel, of SPEC, to the crowd. "We never expected this turn out." A photographer from the Q section of the Trib snaps shots as the bloggers read. The seizure of light breaks their concentration and harms their momentum. Smartypants is back, and she has hand puppets. "Wouldn't it be funny if, after you went to the hospital and got your arm fixed, you ran into the man a couple of years later? He be like, `So... how's the arm?'"

(2004-02-25)

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(2003-12-10)

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