The Biggest Robot Event EVER

With apologies to Zach Steele, I've gotta say it one more time: last night at Wordsmiths, Night One of the Save our Bookstore weekend at Wordsmiths, was AWESOME.

As Zach points out on the Wordsmiths blog, everybody who was there is a bit beyond the word, which we beat to death (including the infamous Pee-Wee's Playhouse wave that Alice instigated every time Jack Pendarvis read the word). But in typical Wordsmiths style, everything about the event was just fantastic! Jack Pendarvis gave the best reading I can recall attending, ever, period. It transcended *reading*. It was more like "performance art with books". Unforgettable and hilarious, which does not explain why both Tim Frederick from Baby Got Books and I look so bizarrely quizzical as we listen in this photo.

There was a way cool silent auction of Robot Items, some of which I tried and failed to win, as I generally do at silent auctions. (If one of you knows some secret of Silent Auction Winning, please tell me. Uh, privately. If you put it as a comment on the blog, well, then it won't be a secret anymore, will it?) But I still got the Big Score of the night: one of the infamous Robot Sketches which Chris Hamer, Ted Murphy and Andrew Bellury so graciously drew at their crowd-pleasing table at the back of the room. I asked for (and received!) a -- Say it with me, now -- AWESOME sketch of Zach & Russ as robots, which Chris drew and titled:

Russ VS Zack
Wordsmiths 4 EVER!!!

I am in the process of (I hope!) getting permission from Chris to publish the sketch here and in my other usual web haunts. I'll share it here ASAP--or else you'll have to come to my house to see it.

Wordsmiths 4 EVER!!!