Steve Martin to the New Pornographers in twelve hours. Hold on, Roz Chast to Jim Surowiecki in twelve hours. Or both? I’m delirious. The pull between form and freedom and Classicism and Romanticism kept coming up with everyone today—Milos Forman, Tom Stoppard, Justice Breyer, Chast, the jokey Pornographers, the Rejection Collection cartoonists, even Tim the genial, Jovian (Jon Bon, I mean) actor diligently impersonating a tech-support maven in a transparent box in Barnes & Noble for roughly those same twelve hours. (They had to boot the handsome guy to reboot the computer when it broke down.)

It’s either in the air in the bottles of water they were handing out at the techno party Friday night. Techno, structure and improvisation. It’s probably just as well that Stoppard wasn’t available to sway meditatively under the smoke machines; it might have caused an inner-earth molten-core disruption, though I have a hunch the man can dance. (See expressive photo after the jump.)

Tonight’s post, unlike last night’s, sponsored neither by Grey Goose vodka nor Amstel Light, though not for lack of available beverages. Note to youth: Sleeplessness is an inexpensive alternate substance, and Breyer would be the first to tell you it’s unimpeachably legal.