Shattered Wig Night Will Smash You - 11/20/09

Gaze into the furtive eyes of Michael Kimball pictured here introducing the film "I Will Smash You" at the November 20th Shattered Wig Night, rabidly active writer and promoter of Baltimore literary arts. What dark secrets cause him to be so healthy and productive, to be so supportive of other writers? Do we need to wait until the corpses are uncovered in his Charles Village house or do we apprehend him now knowing full well that nothing is as it appears.

If any other evidence is needed of his subterranean other self it was the nervous pace at which his wife unwrapped and chewed various taffies tumbled from the splattered pirate pinata at the end of Sweatpants' set - she was afraid of leaving her tongue idle for fear it would speak truth, some possible horrible truth of the crushing fear she is forced to live with on a daily basis.

But aside from these speculations it was a great night of strong performances. Newcomer to the Shattered Wig stage, Ingrid Burrington,, who is also a conceptual artist, read some short shorts that telegraphed well with the lively audience. Blaster Al put a meta spin on his usual cleanup position in the reading post by reading so called unpublished and unused pieces from his notebook. As someone said: "I don't see Blaster owning a notebook."

After the break and a tense two or three minutes of wondering if the dvd projector would work Michael Kimball and Luca DiPierro's "I Will Smash You" was shown. For this viewer the Adam Robinson segment where he confronts his grandfather's religion through singing a hymn he associated with him was a highlight that sat perhaps a bit alone in its level of transcendence until Kimball himself got in the picture and bashed the shit out of an office environment.

Sweatpants, a rock band that is squarely and furiously in the rock realm, yet in a genre there all by itself, brought its usual vigor and full on joy. The set included an unusual sparse cover of The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry", many shouted recitations of the word "Sweatpants" and an inspiring truncated version of "Love Hurts". The show was ended by the fore mentioned Adam Robinson, who also happens to be the lead singer of Sweatpants, cracking and splattering a pirate pinata which spit out vodka miniatures and taffy. Somehow Adam, the drummer and the drumkit then ended up splayed on the stage in woodpile fashion and a good time was had.