Danny's Tavern in Wicker Park is a house that's been converted into a bar. It still has the comfortable feel of hanging out at a house party (though evidently back in the day you could hang out in the "kitchen" or on the back balcony). It's also the the site of a monthly reading series. A couple weeks ago, my old Kids Around the World teammate John Beer emailed me and asked if Bare would be interested in doing a special comedy version of their reading series. "Sounds great."

Shaun and I (and Erica) showed up last night promptly at 6:45 to discover that place was still locked, so we had some chicken (a little dry, but tasty. excellent mashed potatoes) at Nick's Pit Stop around the corner.

Back at Danny's, we met John's co-host (whose name I unfortunately can't remember). "Here," he said, pointing to a small area beside the DJ booth, "is where we usually put the readers. Will it be enough space?"

I looked around. It was enough space -- one of our first shows was on a stand-up club stage that was about 5x10' -- but I was a little concerned about how dark it was -- candles and two lamps with yellow bulbs and a single yellow-bulbed track-light were all the light in the room. It was hard to make out his face. "Can it get any brighter in here?" I asked.

"Actually," he said, "it gets dimmer. But people's eyes adjust."

Sigh.

And, actually, the show went fine. John and his co-host managed to swing one more track light at the "stage". We kept the jumping around to a minimum and concentrated on verbal humor. And the audience was very attentive to our mangling of the life of James Joyce. And we got to say hello to Jessa.

But still. "It gets dimmer." Lordy.