When Canfield took the stage for the prerequisite reading portion of the evening, everyone piped down to listen.The author, however, had planned something a bit different.“I’m not gonna do a reading tonight,” he said, after thanking everyone who’d helped him live, write and publish his life story.“I’m gonna do a reenactment of a scene...if you have the book it’s on page 149. In this scene I’m about 12 years old and I’m wearing black sweatpants, leg warmers and a red muscle shirt with suspenders.” He then proceeded to juggle three oblong pins, eliciting cheers and dumbfounded looks of delight.“I haven’t juggled since I was 16,” he told me afterwards.“It was a little like riding a bike.”
Next, Oran introduced his childhood friend Jibz, a.k.a. Dynasty Handbag, who came out in lace panties over stirrup-pants, smeared makeup and teased hair.“Everybody’s ready for some art,” she deadpanned, then launched into a bizarrely funny act that skewered that very concept. In a particularly spot-on passage, she scribbled ideas in a Moleskine as her inner thoughts played over the sound system. “Sarcastic rainbows, dirty balls, sexual no-nos.
Heroin addicts, hippies, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Paris Hilton. Birthday cakes with shit on them.”
As she toweled off her makeup, I asked her about her long-standing friendship with Can field.“I’m really proud we both made it this far in our lives, i.e. we’re both still alive,” she said. What was she up to now? “I teach students performance art at N.Y.U., so they can learn to be successful performance artists like me.”
