Can't Out-Slow a Snail

Perish the thought, but if I were the sort to make sports analogies, I'd say tonight was a triple play.

It's rare to go only one place for the evening and be served up a reading, live music and film, too; I usually have to move around for that kind of variety.

Ward at Chop Suey is probably the one I should be thanking. As the local distributor of Carson Mell's new book "The Blue Bourbon Orchestra," he'd been entertaining the author this weekend.

He introduced Mell while seated on a chair onstage because that was the author's preferred  position for the reading.

With the three passages he read, we were teased with the epic story of a fading alt-country band and its lead singer.

Even serious subjects had humor to them; the band was "feeling bad about the '90s" (I know some people who would agree with that) and they were described as living dangerously "everything they did, even the soup."

The Q & A afterwards showed the audience for who they really were: readers of Mell's first book "Saguaro" and fans of his short-form animated videos.

Questions were very specific ("Do you do drugs? Do you have a lot of friends who do because you wrote about it so well?") and showed the crowd's affinity for Mell's work.

He cited Townes van Zandt as the music he was listening to while he wrote the book, but acknowledged that his life would have been very different if he and Townes had hung out together.

Not that everyone couldn't use a bad influence at some point.

Literature behind us, we moved on to music.

I'd already heard Canary Oh Canary and knew I liked them, but I'd have guessed as much after the sound check even if I hadn't.

"Lots of reverb," they instructed the sound guy. "Wet. As wet as you can get it without drowning. Wetter."

That's my kind of music from a cave.

And their reverb-drenched dreamgaze was as satisfying as I remember. Beforehand I'd raved about them to a girl who'd never seen them and afterwards she came over to tell me how right I was.

Music segued into film and Carson Mell was back in the spotlight.

Back in 2003 he'd begun making short films which had given way to making animated films once his friends got too busy to help him.

"I needed something I could do by myself," he explained, as if taking up animation was the most natural thing in the world.

Again there was a lot of humor in the short films and it was clear from the audience reactions that many people knew them well, anticipating certain hysterical moments.

"You can't untell a tale...you can't outslow a snail," read one aging classic rock star's jean pockets.

Offered a chance to do another Q & A about the films afterwards, Mell declined.

"Will you go for wings with us?" a girl called from the audience.

Maybe that was the kind of question he was afraid of.

My last question of the evening came from the guy who had this apartment before I moved in almost three years ago. A writer, he's at practically every literary event I go to.

"How's the apartment?" he asked on my way out.

"You wouldn't recognize it," I told him, without going into specifics. "It's very different now."

"Tell the old girl I said hello," he grinned.

I think I'd rather get on with telling a tale that can't be untold.