La Vida Blue Print

Once, when I was 19 and working as a ticket seller in a suburban Minneapolis movie theater, a beady eyed local kid looked at me and said "Dude it's Al Franken." He turned to his friends and said "Look - it's Al Franken!" I was seeking any kind of recognition then so I accepted this assessment that I looked like the politically astute but not as funny as he used to be before he got all politically astute Franken.


Yesterday I saw a person I recognized as being physically similar to someone I used to work with. When I realized that she was indeed this person, I chalked it up to coincidence or fate or both. But it wasn't accidental. There was an intention driving the fate. There was a purpose informing the coincidence.

I slept on the floor because the bed is creaky and the couch just isn't for sleeping anymore. I love sleeping on the floor. Is that weird?

The Timberwolves have won 2 in a row. Another 10 in the row equals a playoff push.


I just wrote my second best short story ever. It's called Julianne and the Porch Leaf. It makes perfect sense. I set the story in Atlanta. I like Atlanta.

Once when I was 34, I was walking in Minneapolis, from my Holmes Ave. apartment to the uptown theater to meet my friend John to catch the late show of American Beauty. A little girl playing on the sidewalk between 33rd and 32nd Streets looked at me and said "You look like Ricky Martin." "What the fuck?" I responded. She screamed, retreating to her mother, doing some evening gardening by the porch. No of course I didn't say that. I smiled and felt an odd exuberant joy at being compared to the then-idolized not-yet-gay heartthrob.

Later that night, as I passed that same house on the way back to my apartment above the creepy landlord and his bug-collecting wife, I saw a plastic bag blowing in the southside wind. It was the most fateful thing I've ever seen.