While I’ve read at Cringe in the past, next week I’m returning for a special quasi-Cringe roadshow, being held here in Manhattan (rather than out in Brooklyn, Manhattan’s waiting room), in conjunction with the WYSIWYG reading series.

From the producer:

The WYSIWYG Talent Show, NYC’s first and only all-blogger reading and performance series, teams up with the diary-readin’, poetry-spoutin’, full-on adolescent angst of Brooklyn’s Cringe reading series for the first time ever at 8 p.m. on October 18, 2006 with CringeyWYG!

Every month The WYSIWYG TALENT SHOW brings you readings and performances from some of the blogosphere’s best and funniest writers, musicians, comedians and performance artists. And every month Cringe brings readings of teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence. Together, they fight crime! Okay, not really, but it WILL be funny.

The WYSIWYG Talent Show’s “CringeyWYG” performs Wednesday, October 18 at Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery between Bleecker and Houston). Doors open at 7:30 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Tickets are $7 at the door. For more information visit wysiwygtalentshow.org, queserasera.org/cringe.html, www.bowerypoetry.com, or call (212) 614-0505.

With performances by:

* Sarah Brown
* Lindsay Robertson
* Marc Balgavy
* Joshua Newman
* Jason Boog
* Chris Hampton
About the performers:

Sarah Brown is the host of the Cringe Reading Series, the editor of the upcoming Cringe book, the executive co-producer of the upcoming Cringe television show, and the 1933 Oklahoma State Ladies’ Trickshoot Champion. She is equal parts eight-year-old girl, 16-year-old boy, and 70-year-old man, so in the movie of her life she will be played by Liza Minelli. You can find her online at queserasera.org.

Lindsay Robertson writes a blog called lindsayism.com. She’s written for GQ, MTV, ComedyCentral.com and Jane, among others. Until she discovered comedy in her late teens, she was planning to be the next Sylvia Plath.

During his final year of college, Marc Balgavy (http://balgavy.com/blog) created business cards for himself. Beyond listing his likes (Hal Hartley and graham crackers) and dislikes (dirty dishes and word searches), they listed his parents’ phone number. The cards also featured a black and white photo of him wearing a bleached blonde goatee. In the intervening years he’s realized those cards were the turning point where “filled with potential” met “easily distracted by go-nowhere projects.”

Though it was for other, equally dorky, reasons that Forbes called him “a veritable Doogie Howser,” Joshua Newman has been keeping a computer diary since the age of ten. He currently posts his entries online at www.self-aggrandizement.com, and spends the rest of his day running indie film studio Cyan Pictures and drinking heavily.

After spending two years on top of a mountain in Peace Corps Guatemala, Jason Boog chased the dream of every skinny Midwestern writer boy with glasses: to starve to death in New York City. He completed the graduate journalism program at NYU in 2004, and now works as a staff writer at the Institute for Judicial Studies (judicialreports.com). He writes the blog The Publishing Spot (thepublishingspot.com).

WYSIWYG creator and curator Chris Hampton has been blogging at Uffish Thoughts (uffish.com) since blogging wasn’t cool. By day, she works at a Big Gay Nonprofit and in her spare time she knits, pimps WYSIWYG at every possible opportunity, and obsesses over Project Runway and punctuation. She grew up in Arkansas but has since fully recovered.

About WYSIWYG:
“Urban Storytelling for the Internet Age” ‚Äì Now in its third year, the WYSIWYG Talent Show is a monthly series of readings and performances by bloggers living in or visiting NYC. Every month WYSIWYG showcases a variety of themed evenings featuring topics on everything from bad bosses and drugs to extreme gayness and summer camp. Each installment is an evening of funny and touching stories, songs, and performances from some of the best writers and most interesting personalities on the Web. More information can be found at wysiwygtalentshow.org.

About Cringe:
Cringe is a monthly reading series hosted by Sarah Brown at Freddy’s Bar & Backroom in Brooklyn. On the first Wednesday of each month, brave souls come forward and read aloud from their teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence. It’s better and cheaper than therapy. More information can be found at
queserasera.org/cringe.html.