8PM THIS SATURDAY…
Are you feeling lucky? For our second Coffee Buddha After-Hours event of the year, we are doing something a little different: READING ROULETTE & other assorted literary parlor games of chance. Think of this event as one part Victorian-era parlor games, one part Las Vegas coke-fuled bender, one part literary reading.
Our specially designed (i.e., homemade) roulette wheel determines who reads and for how long. Our pool of participants includes the following fine folks, but they will only read if their name comes up (and only one poem or short fiction/essay excerpt at a time! If someone ends up reading three times in a row, the wheel is rigged):
Bart Solarczyk got his knuckles slapped with a ruler many times after being caught cheating at bingo by the Catholic nuns who ran the church’s weekly games. Since then, he has completely abstained from any type of gambling, even innocuous scratch off tickets.
Bob Walicki: It’s difficult for some folks to leave casinos. Bob doesn’t have this problem, except for the Rivers Casino’s free beverage station.
Angele Ellis was once part of a gambling ring that ran numbers and took backroom bets out of a barbershop in Oakland. If you owed her enough money, she was known to cut off your pinkie finger and use it to stir her coffee.
Richard L. Gegick has had his thumbs broken by bookies on at least three occasions.
Meghan Tutolo spent most of her childhood playing Crazy 8’s with New Kensington mob veterans in the Donut Shop on 5th Avenue, while her parents played the “cherry machines” in the back.
Scott Silsbe is well versed in the Mega Touch machine found at the end of many a dive bar. His powers of observation are keen, and as such, he will beat you at the naked lady game.
Megan Bell plays Russian Roulette every day, “a man’s sport,” with a bullet called life (–yeah mama, called life).
Kris Collins’ grandfather was Amarillo Slim, one of a group of Texan gamblers known for inventing Texas Hold ‘Em style poker. As such, his poker face is all genetics and will make grown men weep.
Nikki Allen
If we are lucky, guest appearances by John Korn + more.
Plus, your hosts for the evening:
Jason Baldinger doesn’t know when to hold them or when to fold them. He has a really hard time distinguishing when he should walk away and when he should run.
Stephanie Brea once gambled with senior citizens on a boat in international waters (she lost $40 and got mild food poisoning) and her father helped build the pirate ship that sets itself on fire and sinks every hour at Treasure Island in Los Vegas. She would want to be married by black leather-era Elvis.
In addition to roulette, we will be competing in other literary parlor games including “fiction-ary” and other TBA. ALL ATTENDEES WILL BE ENCOURAGED TO PARTICIPATE.
Maybe we will even have prizes.
If the weather is nice, we will have a fire and some (spiked) cider and some s’mores.
Six Gallery Press 