All Night Long

I've had a slew of recent city experiences that I could write about here: tasty lox at a Jewish deli on the Upper East Side, the off-Broadway play Channeling Kevin Spacey at St. Luke's, mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, a hilarious improv show at the Upright Citizens Brigade, oh, and the Literary Death Match tomorrow night in which MY PROFESSOR is competing!!! And that's not even including the on-campus stuff like the production of Next to Normal, a relaxing retreat with my dorm, or that time I met David Gibson.

This sucker kept us entertained until the wee hours of the morning.
Photo c/o googleimages 

But instead I'm going to write about my all-nighter with a fine English man. He goes by the name John Milton. (Perhaps you've read his poetry? He has quite a way with words, that Milton.) Indeed, last Monday, my Milton class, including Professor Frank Boyle, stayed up until 3:30 am reading Paradise Lost from beginning to end. We started at 6 pm....... and only took ONE break as a group.

Pictured in the middle: the man who said, "Thou shalt read Milton!"
And we did, for a long time. But it's cool, because he gave us tons of free
sandwiches, coffee, and brownies, and now he's our favorite professor.
Photo by Michael Dames

The truth is, any average Joe can eat lox and see shows and do fun NYC stuff anytime. But how many college students read Paradise Lost straight through and are actually excited about it? Nine students plus twelve books of poetry in ten hours equals one awesome class.

We are determined. We are steadfast. We are literary moguls. We are Fordham.

Literary Death Match

Literary Death Match, a performance that "marries the literary and performative aspects of Def Poetry Jam, rapier-witted quips of American Idol’s judging (without any meanness), and the ridiculousness and hilarity of Double Dare," turned 40 episodes old tonight, and I, along with my creative writing classmates, was there to celebrate.

The all-stars of the evening included New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, Moth StorySlam champ Angela Lovell, along with Rick Meyerowitz, co-illustrator of the New Yorkistan New Yorker cover, Sean Kelly, former National Lampoon editor and Heavy Metal magazine founder, Danny Abelson, author of The Muppets Take Manhattan, comedian Jena Friedman, who writes for Late Show with David Letterman, Teddy Wayne, author of the novel Kapitoil — a 2011 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize runner-up, and Jillian Lauren, author of New York Times best-selling Some Girls.  Said participants read their work, recited lists, described encounters with Jesus, and ultimately competed in a Cyrillic-Off,  in which they fought to de-code the names of Pulitzer Prize-winning authors that had been phonetically "cyrillic-ized."

For a detailed account of the energetic match, visit the Literary Death Match Website.

Photo c/o Literarydeathmatch.com

Stay classy in Orlando, LDM. Until then, we'll be keeping Drom warm for you here in NYC.