Last night Duane Swierczynski kicked off his "FUN & GAMES" summer tour in Ocean City, NJ. I've a tiny beach house in O.C. and I have been looking forward to this event since I heard about it. I even convinced a couple of my crime-fiction-reading neighbors to attend the show. As you can well imagine the Swierczynski-lites were out en masse, tailgating in the library parking lot before the appearance...grilling the kielbasa and imbibing heavily in substances legal and semi-illegal. Alas, no arrests were made. Cops assigned to the event even rolled their eyes at that "Molly" impersonator streaking through the parking lot in her blood splattered bra and panties. Pretty wild stuff all in all, the likes of which I've not seen since, well...Goodis-palooza. Duane handled the crowd like a champ. Later when leaving I saw the "Molly" impersonator panting like a sprinter in the bushes near the library's disabled-patron ramp. She had a thick, illegible Sharpie scrawl tattooed across her chest. I asked her if she was okay and all she could gasp was, "He signed my breasts, he signed my breasts, Duane Swierczynski signed my breasts...."Ah. Good times, good times.
(NOTE: This is a re-post after a deletion. See, I finally saw Duane's mention of this post on his blog last night and, well, when someone says "slander and lies"...I hop to. I deleted the original post and sent a Tweet to Duane apologizing for being such an ass. Of course, he then sent a tweet back saying that he liked it, that there was a misconnect. [*SIGH*] Anyway the whole affair is kind of stupid...but just remember nothing disappears on the Internet. And buy this book, all right?)