It wasn't the most typical place for a reading. The crowded atmosphere at Del Rios contrasted with the typically smaller crowds at Shaman Drum or even Border's. The standing room only crowd came to see author Neal Pollack, who has proclaimd himself "America's greatest writer." He opened by noting that the last time he was in Ann Arbor, he read at Zingerman's, calling the restaruant a step up.

After mingling with the crowd waiting outside, Pollack began to read from his first novel, "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature."

With Jim Roll and his band rocking behind him, Pollack read his story, "Memories of Times Square," a nod to a sex-toy juggliing dwarf, a prostitute named Tristan Isolde and a gay nightclub called the Neon Ass. Naturally he compares the newer Disney-fied version of New York to the age when the streets were full of strip clubs, hookers and bars.

He howled like a beat poet at times. In between occasionally witty banter with his guitarist and hawking T-shirts featuring him being driven in a 1975 Cadillac by the comic book character Ghostwriter, he asked for tips and for scotch, which he proceeded to down.

The few kids in the crowd may not have understood his ode to Jewish penises (rhyming about the "Cock Mitzvah" and "cock" tails, get it?), but the rest of the crowd was often left laughing, like during his commentary on certain authors, especially Jonathon Franzen.

His verses slammed Oprah's book club, writers whose novels he wipes his asses with (Franzen, Joyce Carol Oates, et al.) and many more.

The "McSweeny's" writer failed to mention fellow writer Dave Eggers, but was alternatingly shocking and humorous; not surprising since the book includes acknolwedgements to Allen Iverson, Joey Ramone and Bishop Tutu, and the work also contains AP English-style study questions (sample: Is Neal Pollack better looking than Norman Mailer? Is his prose sexier than Phillip Roth's? Could he kick John Updike's WASP ass at golf? What about putt-putt golf?)

Announcing that his next work would be a poetry collection titled "Poetry and other poems," he graciously signed copies of his book. As Roll noted, rarely does one hear a famous person call himself America's greatest poet and follow it by advertising for $15 shirts. Yet that is what the unpretentious Pollack continued to do.