I Rebuke You!

We were down on Charing Cross Road tonight, and passed several buildings with these enormous temporary murals of boys hovering over the various bookshops:

After some Monmouth coffee in the renovated (roomier and with more seating) Foyles café, we settled in for tonight's event, which started with 18-year-old sword-swallower Brett Loudermilk--whose antics I mostly watched between nervous fingertips.

The main act consisted of brothers Davy and Peter Rothbart, the creators of Found, who shared some of the magazine's finds with the crowd. Found magazine has a simple, but brilliant, central premise: it publishes images of accidentally or intentionally discarded notes, cards, letters, and other written items that magazine staff and readers find in a variety of places and in a variety of locations around the world. Tonight's stop on their By the Time I Get to Europe Tour 2008 consisted of Davy (at left) sharing quite a few of the gems that have been sent in, while Peter performed songs he's written that are based on some of those finds.

It's difficult to describe how funny, charming, sad, and downright strange some of the finds are, but if you have a look at their website's "Find of the Day" feature, you'll start to get a sense of the odd and sometimes amazingly revealing things that people find. The audience laughed through most of the explanations, and one of our favourites was a letter written by "Roger," who was very angry about finding out that "Alicia" had cheated on him (in the next room, and while he had mono, no less). Kudos to Roger for coming up with some very original ways to express his anger ("I rebuke you!") and using the full-of-rage-but-still-retaining-his-manners closing words, "Please die. Sincerely, Roger." Some of the finds were rather confusing, including this sheet of paper,

which had the name Steve written in large letters with a series of tear-off stubs below with a phone number on them. There was no explanation of what Steve did, had, or wanted; there was just a number to call, and the note that was sent in with the paper mentioned that some of the tabs had been removed when the item had been found . . . I wonder if anyone called Steve and, if so, what they talked about?