Beth Lisick's In the Pool
Everyone seems to describe spoken word artist and writer/poet Beth Lisick as "fizzy" -- but she really is! City Lights was packed to the gills with Missionistas who walked up Columbus from the Montgomery BART/MUNI stop, eager to send Ms. Lisick off in style for the first stop on her book tour. City Lights generously sprung for champagne, wine, and focaccia, but we were too worried about losing our seat (which we'd cleverly selected in the exact center of the room) to actually get any.
Beth Lisick's new book, Everyone into the Pool, is a collection of personal essays from childhood to 16th and Mission and onto motherhood, about "turning out too weird to fit into the mainstream world... but being too normal for the fringe." So, you know, essays about diligently attempting to be bisexual, the humiliation of SuperShuttle dropping you off on a crack block, dressing up like a banana for the Fruit Guys -- you know, living in San Francisco. It got an A from Entertainment Weekly!
What it was like writing The Buzz Life SFGate column, after the jump.
So Beth read from her chapter about writing the much-missed Buzz Life entertainment/gossip column for SFGate.com, saying she didn't think she'd be able to get away with reading it in any other city on the tour. Funny because it's true -- entertainment columnists do end up just recycling the same stuff over and over again! Gentle readers, we're sure you're even more painfully aware of this fact than we are! (Please, if someone can come up with superlative adjectives other than "genius" and "hilar," for this correspondent, the SFist editorial staff will deed you their firstborn child.)
The delivery was dry, the adjectives were well-chosen, her friends laughed hysterically at the mere mention of certain anecdotes (Beth: "...office manager." Three people in the audience: "HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!"), people enthusiastically participated in the Mad Libs portion of the reading (quick, post the name of a drummer in a glitchcore band in the comments!) -- they don't call Beth Lisick the best spoken-word artist in San Francisco for nothing. We're totally going to check out Porchlight next.
Beth's got some more readings coming up:
tonight (Thursday), Cody's on Telegraph, 7 p.m.
Monday the 11th, Clean Well Lighted, 7 p.m.
Tuesday the 12th, Mrs. Dalloway's in Berkeley, 7 p.m.