Secrets and Satire

Comments (0) By Evan James Wednesday, Oct 10 2007

Two of the nation's favorite pastimes — listening to other people's secrets and ridiculing everything — find a temporary home tonight as Frank Warren and Harry Shearer give back-to-back readings. Warren's A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book began as an invitation to people of all backgrounds (but especially people in love with their in-laws) to send creatively decorated postcards bearing secrets they had never before revealed. The result, aside from an award-winning blog, is a book filled with the kind of personal information that transfixes audiences with its insights into our collective, confessional unconscious. It can also ruin dates. Afterward, Shearer reads and signs Not Enough Indians, a "scathing, bitingly funny" satire, according to press materials, about a down-and-out town that tempts fate by having themselves declared a sovereign Indian nation and opening a casino. Once Shearer starts talking, you might realize that he's also worked for nineteen years as the voices of Mr. Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, and Rev. Lovejoy on The Simpsons. Shearer also appeared in This Is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind — he's clearly no stranger to scathing, bitingly funny satires.