We didn't get to go to Charles Salzberg's reading at Mama D's Arts Bordello at the Parkside Lounge last week because of a scheduling conflict with Yom Kippur, but it turns out Salzberg couldn't make it, either—the author had been rushed to the hospital earlier in the week for surgery. "Not wanting to leave a gaping hole in the show that Saara Dutton had planned around me," he emailed us afterwards, "I enlisted a good friend of mine and fellow novelist, Mark Goldblatt, in my place."

"The hostess for the evening greeted me in a sparkling silver gown, her torso wound in a tangle of thick rope, and told me I would be the first reader of the evening," Goldblatt reports. "The program would begin, she explained, with a guy climbing onto the stage, announcing that he’d kidnapped the hostess... and then getting shot by a member of the audience. Then there would be loud James Bond music, and a go-go dancer would perform. The go-go dancer would be followed to the stage by the hostess, who would still be bound and gagged (having, presumably, just escaped from where she'd been stashed by her fatally-wounded kidnapper). She would peel off the silver duct tape from her mouth and welcome the crowd. After that, it would be my turn."

Goldblatt says he "stammered and stumbled and mutilated Charles's words in every way words can be mutilated" after all those theatrics, but the crowd still seemed to dig it. What's next for authors: the return of vaudeville? (Note: We in no way intend to imply that this would be a bad thing.)