The Rep has asked me to sit in a light booth tonight and live-Slog my reactions to their new play Thom Pain (based on nothing), a solo show by Will Eno about a pissy, broken-hearted smart aleck who hates his audience:

Now I think would be a good time for the raffle. I hope you held on to your tickets, on the back of which is a number. We have some very nice prizes.

Brief pause.

All right, are you ready? Okay. Here we go. Who has the luck with him tonight? This’ll be fun.

Pause.

There is no raffle. Who said there was going to be a raffle? Other than me? The good news is, you didn’t lose. You lost nothing except the time it took to find this out. Which is a pretty big chunk. Someday, some minute, you’ll have thirty seconds left to live. Think of me, my little comic bit about the raffle. Think of me, fucking around with your life, and try to smile.

This live-reviewing experiment seems like an embarrassment waiting to happen—simultaneously listening to a man talk, thinking of things worth writing, then writing them seems like a lot to ask—but I requested an ample supply of “journalist juice” in my contract rider. Which oughta help.

(Also: I like espresso. I like black coffee. But my meager mind had never considered having the two together until this morning, when I heard a young woman order a “shot in the dark.” She was wearing cowboy boots, black faux-velvet leggings and a baggy pink sweater. What a dame.)