I've been trying to turn it into a verb ever since

Highlights of last night's Rumpus event at the Highline Ballroom:

• Michael Showalter has a book coming out! It's called MR. FUNNY PANTS and the excerpt he read consisted of absurdist word games.
• After Showalter biffed the URL of the site, which was not that funny, Sam Lipsyte did a callback to it before he read, which was.
• This is the second time in four months I have seen Lipsyte and Colson Whitehead on the same bill. Are they in cahoots?? Nah, it was probably just a coincidence. (Whitehead was really funny, but funnier last time.)
• Speaking of Lipsyte, The Rumpus held a short fiction contest where contestants had to use one line from his novel THE ASK. Four winners read, but one was clearly better than all the others, and that was Maureen Miller with her unforgettable riff on punctuation. Miller also performs an important public service in running a site for parsing rap lyrics ETA and has some other funny stuff you can read here.
  

Fun times. My friend A and I were so close to the action that the women we were sharing a table with turned out to be connected to the Rumpus founder and he came and sat with us during some sets. Were you there? Who was your favorite performer?