angelheaded hipsters peep show

I walked up out of the subway at Columbia last night, where I was attending the Howl: 50th Anniversary shindig. I thought, nice, I'll get to reflect on one of the better rabble rousing literary moments in recent times. Now, I have an attachment to "Howl" and felt the need to name my cat after his author Allen Ginsberg in honor of [intellectual rambling blah blah coolpoemcakes].

What ensued was probably the most rowdy literary event I've ever been to. (I tended to show up sober to these things in college, being a dreamy-eyed overachiever. Plus, SmithKleinBeecham kept me legally stoned enough at the time to nod meaningfully and sniff sarcastically as needed).

Anyways, last night I show up at the theatre, and there are a group of people protesting something, yelling into a microphone about America this, America that, evil corporations, yadda yadda yadda. Plus some other pals of theirs, I presume, videotaping this. I assumed it was an antiwar protest, until I caught wind of them heckling people like me who were headed into the theatre. Like me. "POSERS! YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!" yelled one guy in a clown face makeup job, wearing big gorilla hands.

I shook off my confusion ("Why are they ripping off the Guerrilla Girls?") and headed inside, Evil Trenchcoat flapping in tow.

A little while into the evening, someone from the front row starts heckling the panel. And I mean, real heckling. (Apparently they talked crap about panelist Rick Moody's dad, but not, so far as I know, about his momma.) Which means that maybe the protestors don't so much maybe get the real Beats, who so far as I know were all about momma issues.

Finally a bunch of others in the audience fussed enough that the protestor sat down. Which I really loved as a moment: "No, no, please stay, just sit quietly".

My past experiences as both a nanny of screaming toddlers and nonviolent protestor immediately thought, "they're going to keep fussing, wait and see." The upset protestors' point had not been made. They wanted to get dragged out by the cops in the name of poetry, dammit.

Things escalated until one of them finally said, and this doesn't do it justice: this underground literary group was claiming that the real Allen Ginsberg would not have approved of the evening, that all of these posers were wrecking true literature, art, and they, the underground artists, were more true to the Beat spirit.

For the rest of the presentations, there were disruptions that culminated, immediately after intermission, with ClownFace GuerrillaWriter going up on stage, reciting the first lines of "Howl", and springing a mousetrap on his tongue, claiming he and his group were being "silenced".

Yes, just another sedate evening devoted to Literature. I came home and am now naturally continuing my quest to contribute to poser media, by sharing this tale of mousetrap performance art.

What to do with all of this literary angst? I couldn't very well just go to my poser job or cook my poser food.

Then my cat, channeling his namesake (that's me co-opting there), showed me the way, doing something cute I've been trying to capture on film for a week:

Breathe!

I wonder if economists start yelling at gatherings if the name of Sir John Richard Hicks is evilly co-0pted. And that, dear readers, is the tale of Howl's 50th birthday here.

-KD