[media-credit name=’KATE BRENNER’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]

It is not too often a mime opens up a show by doing nothing
but open a bottle of water, yet coming from five men associated with ?The Daily
Show,? ?The Colbert Report,? ?Futurama? andThe Onion, irrelevance is to be expected. Last night, Ben
Karlin, a University of Wisconsin alumnus, entertained a large crowd at the
Union Theater with a ?live? version of the book he edited, ?Things I’ve Learned
from Women Who’ve Dumped Me.?

A comedic anthology, or as Karlin calls it, ?a book you
don’t even write,? the book focuses on the embarrassing, often humiliating
highlights of the writers’ romantic history. Boasting a wide variety of
writers, from Will Forte (?Saturday Night Live?), whose chapter is entitled
?Beware of Math Tutors Who Ride Motorcycles? to Andy Richter (?Semi-Pro?), who
wrote a chapter called ?Girls Don’t Make Passes at Boys with Fat Asses,? there
is a wide variety of relationship nightmares.

In addition to Karlin, other speakers included Todd Hanson and
Andy Selsberg of The Onion, Dan Vebber of TV?s ?Futurama? and ?American Dad,?
and arguably the most anticipated speaker, Dan Savage of ?Savage Love? infamy.
Each speaker vividly retold his chapter of a relationship gone haywire,
including Savage, whose story about a woman named Wendy was perhaps the most
entertaining of the night. Unfortunately, the tale rapidly went to places not
fit for print, but what I can tell you is that he described certain female
anatomy as being ?well-concealed.? Getting the book for that story alone would
be a worthwhile move.

Other gems in the collection of lessons included the
following: A grudge is always an option, there are in fact things that don’t
kill you and also don’t make you stronger (multiple sclerosis was a noted
example), the average Midwestern campus has at least one ?budding, young,
radical feminist who is mind-blowingly sexy,? according to Hanson, the small
change from ?tattooed? to ?two? can have major consequences, having no personal
dignity helps contend with massive embarrassment and finally, in what could be
the unifying lesson of the night, ?sex is the most stressful thing in the
universe,? according to Vebber.

A large part of the night?s entertainment came not just from
the readings but from the knowledge that all of the speakers have ties to
Madison. Four are UW alumni and one, Savage, resided in Madison and is well-known
for having been a manager at local Four Star Video Heaven. Those four UW alumni
were even cartoonists for The Daily Cardinal during their time at UW.

Coming back to Madison clearly represented a homecoming of
sorts and resulted in a tighter bond with the audience. Selsberg attempted to
?audition? for a commencement speech by epically telling the audience to ?seize
life by the tomatoes and make them into a delicious, sustainable salad of life.?

Or maybe it was the cake passed out by Todd Hanson and,
later, his brief rendition of Beyonc?’s ?Irreplaceable? that made the evening
more intimate.

By the end of the night, there was no doubt that
everyone left a little more self-confident of the relationship predicaments
they have found themselves in. I also presume some females in the audience
recognized a few mistakes they were guilty of, an example being one of Selsberg?s
major complaints: ?Unless you want someone to hate you, don?t ever say you love
someone as a person.? I left more aware of the future, as I really do not want
to be the girl who opens up a book like ?Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve
Dumped Me,? and find myself in it.