Chris Koza and Rogue Valley asked Geoff Herbach and I to pick up our narrative where we left off last spring. Chris and Rogue Valley have been writing and recording four albums in one year, based on the cycle of seasons. We helped launch the first album at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul with love letters from a set of star-crossed lovers that wrapped into the music, and we helped them come full circle again with the winter album at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis.
Koza is a wonderfully true artist—and by that I mean that he has great personal and great creative integrity; you can believe in what he does because he believes in it. It is a joy to be around him and the band, doing what people like us love to do—make beautiful things.
It's also a joy when Pamela Diedrich from How Was the Show takes my photo while I am wearing a Muppet coat.
I did a reading a few weeks ago for Talking Image Connection—a reading series (run by wonder-woman Alison Morse) that pairs writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with visual art installations in galleries around the Twin Cities.
What Alison asks writers to do is visit a visual arts installation and then let it work its magic on any new work they're writing. I visited this amazing video installation by Rosemary Williams, and then wrote a short story called Eight Things Happy People Do, According to Martial Artist Today. I also brought along along singer/songwriter Lee Henke, who is also a Mankato State University student. He followed my story with an amazing performance of a new song he wrote for Tales from the Poor House (where I am also a short story contributor).
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I just got back from a four-hour bar fight. Not kidding.
My friend Phil Harder is shooting a movie about my friend Karl Raschke's dad. Karl's pop is none other than Baron Von Raschke, the professional wrestler villain whose signature move was "The Claw." The film is one-third documentary, one-third vintage footage, and one-third narrative. To my delight, Phil asked myself and my partner Geoff Herbach to participate in a scene in which a waiter at Mancini's (a well-known professional wrestler hangout) angers a wrestler named Mad Dog Vachon, inciting a massive bar fight.
Geoff was the obnoxious waiter. I came in at "bar fight." (Ha! Don't I always?) Actually, it was the perfect place for me. At six feet tall and an unmentionable weight we can graciously call "Rubenesque," I was big enough to hold my own against Minnesota Independent Wrestlers Mitch Paradise and DOS, and The Crusher (played by Mark Har of the Bill Patten Trio).
Judging by the tales the wrestlers both new and legendary told (the Mancini's bar fight is a legendary true story), and the bruises all over my body, I can say this to you with certainty: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING IS REAL.
Geoff—with Phil Harder, Mitch Paradise, and other bar fighters—as an obnoxious German waiter at a classy Italian restaurant in St. Paul. Photo by Patrick Pierson. Amazing ambience provided by Mancini's Char House and Lounge, at which we only broke one lone glass Christmas ornament, and which was also the venue for a party Molly Priesmeyer of Good Work Group once held in honor of Geoff and myself.
I've been teaching fiction workshop at St. Cloud State University this semester (as well as a section of Freshman Comp). Though I initially resisted it, the students talked me into a lesson on Science Fiction (which many of them love and write). We did this last week, toward the end of the semester, and we spent a fabulous two hours hashing out what Science Fiction is (thank you, Philip K. Dick, for your edifying words on the subject), and how it differs from literary fiction (it leads with an intellectual idea), and even fantasy (that one is very subtle, it depends on your faith that the story COULD happen).
Here's who they've loved the best throughout the semester: Stuart Dybek, Ursula LeGuin, and local writers John Jodzio and Ethan Rutherford. (I am committed to using locally produced art by living, breathing writers you just might see on the street in your neighborhood. Ethan ACTUALLY CAME TO CLASS and gave a guest talk to these eager, intelligent students.)
When we asked him why he prefers to write short stories over novels he leaned back in his chair, but his hands behind his head, and said, "Hey. It's the tenderloin."
Swoon.
Writer/photographer Ralph Pennel has a great blog up for writers/photographers. It's called A Picture's Worth, and here's the deal: Your own photograph + your own story of exactly 1000 words. It's harder than it sounds. But still, I contributed a piece of short fiction this week. I think it's a great idea for a highly readable big coffee table book.
Just delighted to be a part of such a wonderfully executed evening. Chris Koza and Rogue Valley were stellar, and (as this review points out) so was Larissa Anderson's production at the Fitzgerald Theater for 89.3 The Current.
Geoff Herbach and I wrote and performed a linked set of fictitious love letters detailing how our wanderlust has torn our charters' love apart. You can see us in the far corner, between the gorgeous Joanna James and the talented Sam Totten, keeping company with the hottest smarties in our city.
Photo by Ben Clark for the City Pages.
