This Wednesday, I arrived at the Stag’s Head a bit out of breath. I was told to come early so I did my very best to show up at 8.00 p.m.

There was a congregation of people waiting in the street at the front entrance so I got in the side entrance.

I had a vague idea that the forming circle inside the pub were not waiting to go to the toilets but I resolutely walked up to the counter and asked the waitress where the Brownbreadmixtape event was occurring.

The waitress said it was taking place upstairs but the doors were not opened yet.

At that moment, I thought: “Oh goodie, I am on time.” And immediately I also thought “God this venue is as popular as a Domino’s two for one deal.”

Just when I ordered a drink, I saw people disappearing behind a wall and decided that the doors must be opening. I followed them and as I waited for my turn to go up the stairs, I  felt vaguely like being in the doctor’s waiting room, about to get called in. You feel nervous and relieved that the tension is over, yet you can’t help wondering what the diagnosis is going to be.

Now I was supposed to meet with Kalle Ryan who I knew organizes the event but I didn’t know if he also presented the show. For some reasons I thought Kalle would be a woman with Danish origins. I walked in the landing area and eyed at the mass of young people up ahead and thought: “Boy, I am never going to find her in this crowd.”

Well as it turned out, I could have been looking all evening for her, for I found out that the bald young man with fancy square glasses who had been talking in the mike for the last ten minutes was in fact Kalle himself.

And of course, there was no way I could approach him unless I’d brought my stilts with me which of course, I hadn’t.

Kalle kicked off the show by asking us to scream as loud as we could so that anyone in the street could hear it. As Kalle called out for North and South Dubliners alike everybody dutifully roared. Then he explained that tonight’s theme would be “Fake” and presented a list of fabulous gifts you could win in the raffle: fake eyelashes, fake squeaky steak and so on.

As envious as I felt for the lucky winner, I decided to sip my drink and focus my attention on Kalle’s first guest.

Now we were told that Niall James Holohan was the Readers Wives frontman musician but I definitely think there was more of a comedian in him than a musician. I swear I have never seen a singer forgetting his lyrics with such nonchalance while Stephen James Smith twenty feet across the lounge shouted the next line to him.

I must say it was funny to watch the exchange. I found Niall’s greatest quality was definitely his ability to make his audience laugh at themselves and at him, especially when he started crooning one of the group’s song called “I am sexually attracted to myself”.

Then we moved on the lighter part of the evening. Three Brownbread players performed three sketches for us, one of which was about three contestants appearing on America’s Next Top Model. Despite one of the female contestant having no arms, no legs, no nose and no eyes, ‘Tyra Banks was still impressed by her rolling around the floor.

After all this serious inspiration, it was difficult for Megan Fox (not the ‘real’, famous one — she did apologize to the disappointed) to introduce her poems.

But she did a wonderful job of it. Two of her poems caught my attention, one called “Cool” about her promise to always be there for her little sister who is thirteen and the other about her hometown Bray which she hates. And what a declaration of hate! It made me want to live in Bray so I could hate it with as much passion as she did. At the end of her fifth poem, she had won her audience and it seemed to me that the crowd was more enthused about her pieces than for the sketches, but maybe that’s just me.

She thanked the crowd and then Kalle announced an intermission. Miraculously I managed to speak to him for half a second before finding my way out of the crowd to catch — yet again! –  my bus.

For more details, here are some links you can check out:

http://brownbreadmixtape.wordpress.com/

http://www.myspace.com/readerswives