Wordstock

Portland will look a little less pasty and pigeon-toed next weekend as all the dorks will all be at Wordstock, the big-ass book/literary festival at the Convention Center.

If you've gone through the list of authors on tap for this year, you might be asking yourself "Who the hell are these people?" Last year there was Dave Eggers and Joyce Carol Oates (JCO ). This year, however, any one of us might be able to bump many of these speakers if we're getting double-digit hits on our online journals.

The speakers are overrated, though. It's crowded when the popular authors are speaking and hard to find a seat. Also, you get to see what freaks some of these authors are in real life and it can ruin your taste for their work. Last year I spent about five minutes listening to JCO chortle on about how loud and irritating the speaker two stages over was, until I got sick of it and wandered over to listen to that speaker, mostly out of spite for her prima donna manner. Honestly, I have more fun at the booths - chatting with the publishers and the self-published authors, teasing the people from BookTV who are too nerdy to function.

So, I've scanned the list of speakers and I think one may be able to make an afternoon of it on the scant literati and a couple of the gems that are lurking just below literary celebrity-dom.

Harry Shearer is probably this year's JCO. I'm not sure what he's hawking or what he has to talk about, but it's always interesting to listen to Shearer. In order to see or hear him, though, you'll probably have to sit through the Rudolph Chelminski talk just prior in order to secure a seat. Shearer is on the Powell's stage at 3pm on Saturday.

Matthew Diffee is a cartoonist for The New Yorker, and published a book last year called The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw and Never Will See in The New Yorker. I have this book, and let me tell you, it's hilarious. There are about a dozen cartoonists featured in it. It's interesting to see some of the stuff the New Yorker rejects. Unfortunately, Diffee didn't make prime-time at the fest. He has a Sunday afternoon speaking spot on the Powell's stage at 1 pm.

Nigel Jaquiss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning, investigative reporter for Willamette Week, is part of a panel discussing investigative journalism at 2 pm on Saturday. Don't stand too close to Jaquiss, though. He's pissed off enough of the Portland powerful that there's probably a contract out on him. You wouldn't want to be getting an autograph and be hit by a stray bullet.

Peter Sagal is the host of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on NPR and the author of The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How To Do Them. I've heard him interviewed on public radio about this book where he talks about attending swinger parties and going to private sex clubs. He comes off as being rather prudish, though, which is annoying. I won't be buying the book, but the talk should be interesting. Sagal is on the Powell's stage Saturday at 11am.

If you go to Wordstockfestival.com you can find a list of speakers and a schedule. I noticed that Dave Eggers is on the list of writers, but he isn't on the speakers schedule. I intend to write McSweeney's this week to ask if they're coming up and if perhaps Eggers is part of that contingent.

If any of you want to chime in on your picks for speakers and other events at Wordstock, please do so by commenting below.