The Gadfly has returned from drowning in their own drunken tears. Back to the scene of the crime—public literati readings.

Every once in a while, the G ventures out of the comfort of their standard watering hole and into the steady murk of the legacy media pond. Last year, Harper’s Magazine celebrated an anniversary. But the focus won’t be that train wreck. No. Today the slice of pie is more pedestrian. More bitch. More Jezebel.

The Gadfly was an early arrival in Brooklyn. Too early and therefore starved. Breakfast was a mug of black coffee, no sugar. Lunch was a full pot of the same and the pre dinner snack, a Turkish coffee with a single sugar cube and an espresso toffee bite on the side. The pretentious spot cloaked in the veneer of a dive offered lukewarm pho. G ordered Mexican instead and a negroni (the bartender was not a friend. Sorry to make you work) and waited for the arrival of the literary luminaries for a frigid MLK birthday bash presentation.

It was lite nite due to the cold snap. Very different from the previous Sunday at the same location where folks read from a morbid tome of murder “poems”. In honor of Dr. King, white guilt was on full display. First, a too long meditation on inappropriate campus age gap relationships (a topic beyond kicking a dead horse. Or is it beating? Whatever. You understand.) Next, a rousing call to action. Woot. Woot. Revolution. And finally, the star of the night, twitter darling Ashley Reese closing out the reading with a supposedly off the cuff memoir-ish essay/rambling mess on returning to dating despite apparent stunted development (stunted because why was it necessary to crowd source opinions on how to reject someone when there’s zero interest?)

Anyway, the bookish landscape of 2026 is looking very desert, very parched (also, someone do forensics on all the electronics owned by the writer of DOE.) But the Gadfly soldiers on (to the next bar.) Cheers!