Dan Savage Is Seattle's Margaret Cho

That's one thing we learned from The Moth Story Tour on Sunday night at Town Hall. Actually, we learned that from the brochure, which explained what local voices were going to appear in which cities. Cho in LA, Savage in SEA.

The premise of The Moth is simple: storytellers get ten minutes on stage to tell a true story. No notes. The benefit, as host and first storyteller Jonathan Ames put it, is that you don't end up at one of those readings where the author drones on and on and doesn't know when to quit. Moth storytellers don't have a choice -- they're done in less than 15 minutes, or they'll be trying to talk over fast-paced violin music.

In fact, the only disappointment of the evening was that the timekeeping violinist never had to play anyone offstage. She never even had to warn anyone, though Savage threw her some nervous glances during the last minute or two of his story (about how he ended up owning a toy poodle, though he swore as a young fag to avoid that stereotype).

Savage and David Guterson, our local blood, were both obviously nervous -- Guterson especially so, though he was a last minute substitution for Sherman Alexie (Seattle's Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, perhaps). Guterson's story was easily the least polished -- though we did have to admire the chutzpah required for him to confess, unashamed, that he's a cocky guy for good reason. We wanted to feel bad when he talked about getting his wrist crushed at age 10, but as he said, he deserved it. Guterson had a midlife crisis earlier this year, a two-month tour through major depression, that his old injury both indirectly caused and indirectly solved. He made up for heavyhanded use of metaphor -- he was the only storyteller to actually use the phrase "out on a limb" -- by bringing the guy who broke his wrist and became his best friend up on stage for a manly hug.

We found it ironic (in an Alanissy way) that the tour is being cosponsored by TNT (We Know Drama), given how funny most of the stories were. Savage closed the show with a story about growing up gay (shocker!) and wanting not to be one of those gays -- the swishy kinds with toy poodles who were easy targets for jokes on '70s TV. Flash forward three decades and he's got a kid who wants a dog -- specifically, a cute little chocolate poodle. We give Savage a lot of credit for using said dog's near-fatal automobile autodefenestration as both a punchline and a dramatic turning point, without veering into gross-out joke or sentimental claptrap.

The other storytellers, Moth regulars, were more polished -- which means they all knew how to tell a great story. Ames told of his Christmas smoking crack with a transvestite. Michaela Murphy spun a tale of Kennedys and eyeballs. Sherman "OT" Powell told how he became kickass pickpocket, and how he fucked it all up. And Steve Osborne, who just may be the platonic ideal of "former NY cop," gave a great cop story an extra twist with a frame tale about his girlfriend.

We bought a set of CDs that included a number of Moth audience favorites (including Powell and Murphy's stories). But there's something transcendent about hearing tales as part of an audience. We're looking forward to the CDs, but we're pretty sure the CDs won't include Ames' bizarre show-ending "hairy call." We wouldn't have missed that for the world.