The "historical present" is the tendency to use the present tense to describe past (and literary) events, as in this example from a radio interview about Lawrence Wright's book on Scientology:
At some point L. Ron Hubbard takes to the sea and he moves the main people in Scientology to the sea with him. ... So at some point he decides to come back to land. He needs a safe place to be and a place where Scientology can flourish and he chooses Clearwater, Florida.
Another, more well-known, usage of this form of the present tense is in the telling of jokes in the form of a funny story.
A guy walks into a bar and sits at a table. Tells the waitress, "I'll have a Bloody Mary and a menu." When she returns with his drink, he asks "Still servin' breakfast?" When she says Yes, he replies, "Then I'll have two eggs-runny on top and burnt on the bottom, five strips of bacon ON END-well done on one end and still raw on the other, two pieces of burnt toast and a cold cup of coffee." Indignantly the waitress says, "We don't serve that kinda stuff in here!" Guy says, "Funny... that's what I had in here yesterday..."
Any more “guy walks into a bar” jokes out there?