Live from Wordstock: LiveWire Radio's Wordstock Extravaganza

Saturday, Oct. 10 at the Aladdin Theater:

Instead of trying to sum up the awesome insanity that was the LiveWire Wordstock Extravaganza in a couple short paragraphs, I'd like to instead gift you with a few choice excerpts from the show.

Derrik Brown (above), gifted dirty camp song singer, read some extraordinarily bizarre love poetry, challenging the audience to woo their sweethearts by shouting out, "My love burns for you like Halloween in Detroit," "Boosh!" and "Drift your boobies into my mouth!" His delivery was over the top and loud, yet somehow sincere, especially during the second poem, which tackled God, eternal love and ramen eaten off of Frisbees ("because it was either plates or beer"). While I am not a fan of poetry, even I was moved by his performance. Oh, and he also gave us the best excuse for screwing up. He says to ignore his behavior when he's been drinking because "then it is opposite day." Exactly.

Thriller experts James Ellroy and Chelsea Cain (above) sat on the shiny, red Wordstock chairs to banter about Ellroy's past tragedies and their role in his literature. The ultimate goal of his writing? To use language to explain "how women get dead." Why does he like to write about corrupt cops? Because even cops today want to go "coercive on Roman Polanski." Once again, we were all reminded how much of a badass he is.

Sherman Alexie (above), "first generation indigenous immigrant" and author of some pretty frank young adult novels, explained why Republicans are "so pissed off all the time"—they don't masturbate. "Someone should say, 'hey Cheney, you can can tug it all little bit.'" The host of the show, Courtney Hameister, responded with due tact–"Ugh. If you were Cheney, would you ever want to touch yourself?" Right.

Finally, in an interview more nerdy than the advertised (and actually pretty dull) "nerd-off" that took place earlier in the show, Candy Tan (above), expert on romance novels, fought to defend her genre of study. Most memorably, she distilled male domination down into one simple motive–"She has the secret love sauce! I must have the secret love sauce!"