Roll, Dark[A behind-the-scenes peek at the Rolling Darkness Revue]

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At the very first performance of the Rolling Darkness Revue — Dark Delicacies bookshop, Burbank, California, October of 2004 —a thoroughly competent former student of mine showed up with a digital camera and a cinematography-minded companion from USC film school. A year later, at the kick-off event for the 2005 tour-Mystery and Imagination Bookshop, Glendale, Ca. — a correspondent for National Public Radio arrived with microphone gear and snazzy digital deck. In between and afterward, at more than half of our shows, there've been other cameras, cassette recorders, even one guy with a mini-disc.

And yet.

Two years into its existence, barely a frame of film or thread of tape or byte of digital whatever exists to prove that the Rolling Darkness Revue was ever there. In 2004, my former student called me a week after our debut, baffled and embarrassed, to say that all she'd shot were shadows. Our radio correspondent (the dedicated and extraordinarily helpful Rick Kleffel, about whom more later) realized only after the 2005 launch event that he'd somehow arrived with the wrong mic, and gotten only murmurs that couldn't quite be clarified enough for NPR.

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