DAVY ROTHBART
7:30 p.m. Lyon College’s Nucor Auditorium. Free.
You have got to hand it to Davy Rothbart. The Michigan native has elevated a longtime habit of picking stuff up off the ground into a successful career in publishing, writing, filmmaking, This American Life-contributing and seemingly every other creative endeavor imaginable.
Found Magazine, his brainchild, is exactly what it sounds like: a magazine of stuff people found. Of course, the stuff he (and the multitude of contributors who’ve made Found possible) happened upon is nearly always quite a bit more funny, heartbreaking and/or bafflingly awesome than your typical sidewalk ephemera and grocery store lists.
One evening, many years ago, my best buddy and I were living in an East Coast hellhole and were walking to the bar like we did every night. He found a folded-up piece of paper covered in drawings of what I’ll cautiously describe as suggestive and anatomically unlikely depictions of muscular nude men rendered in psychotically heavy pencil strokes. It was obvious from the get-go that he would have to send it to Found.
Imagine my delight when, a couple years later, those works of amorous outsider art showed up in a volume called Dirty Found (take a wild guess about its nature).
Rothbart tours often and came through Fayetteville several years ago. From what I remember of the evening, it was a pretty loosey-goosey affair, with Rothbart reading from Found and talking about finding cool stuff. I don’t know, it was at a bar. This one’s at a private college. I bet the vibe won’t be all that different, though. Rothbart is a true raconteur.