He looks younger than I expected. He didn't look familiar even though we lived in Berkeley during the same years in the early 90's. He was also much less of an asshole than I'd expected (that's an understatement, in fact, he seems exceedingly nice and unassuming), which leads me to believe that: a) people are jealous and will do/say anything to denigrate people they used to know once they attain a modicum of success, b) he's a convincing actor and should play himself in the movie of his life, or c) my worldview is cynically warped enough that it expects all people to be assholes and I should stop being so negative.

By far the only drawbacks to the night were the overcrowding (the City Lights employee overenthusiastically let 100 people in, which is pushing the capacity for the main floor), and the always somewhat cringe-inducing fannishess of some of the audience who, perhaps out of nervousness, didn't seem to know when to stop giving information when Dave would ask them questions (which he did--a lot).

The reading consisted of the "I'm a dog named Stephen" stories from the last issue of McSweeney's (which I hadn't realized were written by Eggers), a showing of Chris Ware's rejected sketches for the Spiegelman Little Lit book of children's fairy tales (evidentally also included in the new McSweeney's) which were much funnier than the story as Little Lit published it; haikus about Condaleeza Rice (this was a group activity and since I don't work well in groups I didn't participate), the whale story from appendix to the paperback edition of AHWOSG, and lots of fiddling with a CD player to preview the They Might Be Giants soundtrack to McSweeney's #6.

If anyone knows if the bus eventually showed up, and where it went, let me know.

I saw someone I went to high school with across the room. It's nice to see one of them them outside of the mall.