My friend had dinner with Neko Case at a less-than-stellar Mexican restaurant here. He didn't know who she was, but his roommate's brother (who was 'dating' her at the time) said casually that she was involved with music.

The friend asks: So are you in a band?

My dad pitched a no hitter with a near bursting appendix. No shit! American Leagion baseball, aged 17 years. Rushed to the hospital in his baseball uniform right from the field.

Yep. That's it.

Ike

Most women I have dated have had nice breasts.

A girl I know is a master of combat-ki.
She can kill you in about 3 seconds.
She can take punches that would kill me, without a hint of injury.
I fingered her once, but nothing came of it.

1. Last month a friend of mine who lives in Vietnam had a role in a Vietnamese movie "about 'Uncle' Ho Chi Minh" called "Sleepless Nights." He played the French Col. Charles Piroth.

His dialogue was supposed to be in French but since he wasn't given enough time to memorize the lines and the movie was going to be dubbed anyway, he was told say anything, just to speak.

According to my friend if you were to see the movie and lip-read the character of French Col. Charles Piroth, you would see the colonel address the French ambassador and commander of French forces and say, "Look at my fucking white suit. I'm the Man from Delmonte, and I say 'yes!' You can't fuck with me. D'accord? Citroen, crayon, blanche, bleu. Une deux trois."

2. When my friend/quasi-brother Sarath was escaping the Khmer Rouge army and running for his life through the jungles of Cambodia at the age of 15, he once used a hand grenade to 'catch' fish in a pond.


3. Steve Earle tipped my girlfriend $300 on an omelet and coffee. This wasn't a mistake, he did it on purpose.

4. My brother is best friends with Barry Blanchard and presented him with the Bill March Summit of Excellence Award at the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

5. My grandfather drove cattle and worked on a threshing crew with Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame inductee, Wilf Carter, aka Montana Slim.

He also built a Model T out of scrap parts when he was teenager and roared around the prairies on an Indian motorcycle like a bad-ass.

6. A friend of mine interviewed Jacques Derrida for a college newspaper in the mid-nineties. He had never read anything by Derrida at the time of the interview.

7. My friend's sister was legally married to another woman this summer right here in Alberta. She is also on the Canadian Olympic wheelchair basketball team.

8. The same friend of mine who used to wear a Rocket From the Crypt ring all the time and was banned from the university campus for graffiting the Business building, is in his second year of study with Prince Charles' National Gallery Trust painting program in London. According to this friend, Prince Charles "seems like an alright guy and is good at looking interested."

He is a great painter.







9. I know a competitive scrabble player who was busted for possession in Nevada and can't compete in the States anymore.

10. A prominent member of Giant Sand fell in love with my ex-roommate and sent her a tape of songs about her, many of which later morphed into tracks on Chore of Enchantment.




. . . if procrastination were a profession.

My grandfather was a professional softball pitcher in the 50s-60s and won the MVP in 1953. Was was described as having "the best changeup in the game" and was famous for hitting his keys as wound up. He is in some sort of hall of fame somewhere.

My parents have been in the middle a shootout in a restaurant in Los Angeles. They ducked under their table. They also took a lamaze class with actor Jack Riley, best known as a therapy patient on The Bob Newhart Show.

My father-in-law has met Colonel Sanders. He was managing a KFC in Southern California in the 70s and the Colonel came to do an inspection. He said that the Col. was nice but "all business", that he was very serious about the quality of his stores back then. He has a picture of himself with all the employees and the Col.

He met Neil Young in 1969. He looked down at the table and saw the lyrics for "Everybody Knows this is Nowhere" on a sheet of paper. He also looked exactly like Young and still looks somewhat like him. He has a tapestry of Young and used to get asked why he had a tapesty of himself.

He once ran into the Manson compound and was chased away by some dude with a gun.

The only reason I joined this website and started posting was because I saw a clip of Senor Albini playing a pilot.

my stepmother's brother married a woman who was born on the same day as him. they had two children, 4 years apart, who were also born on that very same day. and which day was that you ask? april first (aka april fools day). crazy! i know!

my best friend from high school was on the u.s. olypic ski jumping team from the ages of 18-20. he did all his summer training in the arctic circle of finland with world famous ski jumper kari ylianttila. he met the country's prime minister and they had dinner a few times. apparently they had a nice rapport.

my grandfather grew pot crops in the 1950s.

Allow me to plug a book (anthology) that a friend's graphic novel is in. It's Alphabet City's Suspect 10 (MIT Press).

It's a really electic mix of essays, photo essays, and fiction related to the politics of suspicion after 9/11. My friend Warren's graphic novel tells the story of the artist Steven Kurtz, who was arrested under the USA PATRIOT Act after an EMS worker attending the death of his wife called the FBI about his petri dish artworks.

My friend Warren, in the same anthology as Slajov Zizek. This is cool.

My Grandfather survived 7 days at sea in a life raft, his boat was destroyed by the japanize in WW2, 7 days off the coast of Alaska. out of the 12 people in the raft only 4 made it, they would call each other every christmas.