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Writers with Drinks This Saturday

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Oh, yeah. Definitely a writer.

I feel like it was fated, like I was meant to post about Saturday’s Writers With Drinks at The Make-Out Room.  Why?  Because a few weeks ago, after deciding I was too bored at the gym to work out for more than five minutes without stimulation that did not involve SportsCenter or The Real Housewives of Orange County, I spent $2.99 on the new This American Life app for my phone, which allows me to access every broadcast since the show’s inception.  Yay, Ira!  So today, as I climbed approximately 78 flights of stairs without getting anywhere, I listened to an episode from 2004, and one of the hilarious stories — one that I wish hadn’t been so hilarious because it’s really creepy to laugh out loud while utilizing a Stairmaster — was contributed by Beth Lisick, who just so happens to be the guest host of Writers With Drinks tomorrow.  No way that’s a coincidence.  Just no way.

If you haven’t been to Writers With Drinks, it’s time.  It’s described online in a lot of places as a “spoken word variety show,” but that’s a shitty description because it doesn’t tell you anything.  Basically, each monthly edition of Writers With Drinks is a like a normal reading featuring a handful of writers, except fun and with beer involved.  Many times the performers are writers from different genres, which means in one night, you could be horrified (0r aroused?) by some weird-ass sci-fi erotica, then laughing so hard at a non-fiction account of time spent as Danny DeVito’s personal assistant that $2 PBR comes spraying out of your nose, then desperately holding back tears because FINE, maybe that poem DID make you feel something.  Oh, and the writers they get are legit, like Mary Gaitskill and Jerry Stahl, who are performing this weekend.

Doors open at 7pm, but if you really plan to get inside, come around 6-ish.  There WILL be a line.  Just know that this thing is so popular that if you do get in, you won’t be able to move for the next two hours.  Which is cool because 1. It’s worth it, and 2. You will be at a place called “The Make-Out Room.”  Just take a peek at the wedding ring finger of your target before you sneak attack them on the mouth.  If it’s bare, you’re good to go.

The best part about Writers With Drinks, besides the writers, I guess, or the cheap booze at the Make-Out Room, is that the cost is on a sliding scale.  I love the words “sliding scale,” because they make three crumpled one-dollar bills, strategically placed to look like a much larger wad of cash (or at least the $5 minimum), an acceptable form of payment.  Yeah, I’m THAT cheap.


Writers With Drinks
Saturday  3/13
7:30pm-9:30pm
The Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St.
[Mission]
$5-$10 sliding scale


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Christy Jovanelly - Cheapskate Commentator

Christy Jovanelly - Cheapskate Commentator

When Christy announced she was leaving her family's Southern California home and moving to San Francisco, her mom said, "Have fun in that den of sin." This is the only (however sarcastic) advice Christy has ever taken from her mom, who also told her to join eharmony.com and cover her eyes during sex scenes in movies. Christy puts her creative writing degree to good use by locating the typos on Chinese food menus and spends most of her time challenging friends to all-you-can-eat contests and trying to get that one bartender at Zeitgeist to smile.