Passed from Jon from the LAtimes. This is true of my past, and--meta!--of my present (of this diary):

The high comedy of teen diary dramas
Writing that seemed profound at the time is fodder for cringing, knowing laughter at increasingly popular public recitals.
THE diary is a 70-sheet spiral notebook with candy wrappers and a used pair of chopsticks taped inside. A picture of Donna Summer is glued to its cover next to a scratch-and-sniff pizza sticker that — after 27 years — still smells like pepperoni.

Its cursive-scrawled pages hold Becky Ciletti's most intimate pubescent thoughts and secrets. The 39-year-old freelance writer came to this bar on a rainy April night to read the mostly embarrassing excerpts — food-fighting, French-kissing, babe-loving and all — to nearly 100 strangers. She wrote the first entry in 1980, when she was 12.

Feb. 7:

We didn't have school because of the snow today. I miss Kelly. I don't know why, because I've seen him all week except for today. P.S. Please help me to be more mature and help me to fill out my bra.

The audience howled with laughter.

Feb. 11:

Lunch was a riot and a blast and sort of gross. We had a food fight. I threw some beef jerky and some bread. Chris … hit me with a potato.

Call it comedy. Call it therapy. The crowd that gathers over beers at Freddy's Bar & Backroom in Brooklyn calls it "Cringe Night." Once a month, people mostly in their 20s and 30s read their teenage writings, which have included a long-forgotten unrequited love letter to New Kids on the Block and a song composed in a fit of adulation for Richard Marx. And then there are the real-life diary entries, such as one read by 26-year-old Maggie Jacobstein:

I hate my mother more than I've ever hated someone. She makes me feel so bad when I see her fat ugly face!

and continue