Listen, both of you

There is no defeating me in this challenge. I forgot all about it until just right now and look, here I am, typing into my email. The "to" line says "Attic Apartment." It's like I'm writing directly to the blog instead of into the blog. At least I have the decency not to climb inside her.

I'd like to address Nick first.

Those fish sound good. Fish on a plank sound good. Beer sounds good. Please make this happen again if and when Sarah and I live again in the Midwest. Even if we're in Minneapolis. Is that too far to drive for patriotic hijinx? I don't think so. And what cop is going to arrest Uncle Sam, even if his face is greasy with fish and his breath is sour with discount alcohol and he's trailing six feet of barbed wire and a morse code of blood?

Now I'll address Dave.

Dave, I hope your movie turns out well. I think it will. I hope mine turns out well as well. I hope all ours turns out well. What lesson do you think you'll learn? I think my lesson is this:

Well, nothing came to mind, so I guess I haven't learned it yet. It may have something to do with palm trees or with literature. I'm not sure which. One lesson that I've learned that surely is not The Lesson is that I should have started running earlier in life, because I feel pretty good. Really I'm unlearning that lesson though because now that the race I participated in is over my trips to the gym have become less regular and now with my sister's family in town it seems certain that they will be forsaken altogether for a period of time.

Another lesson that probably isn't The Lesson is that it's fun to cook. It is! You can get all creative and impress your girlfriend, at least a little.

Now, to close out, some book recommendations:

CHRONIC CITY, by Jonathan Lethem. Pretty good. A retired and grown-up child actor gets involved with a reclusive culture critic and tries not to think about a giant tiger terrorizing the city. So much pot that you'll start to think, there's a lot of pot in this book.

LIKE LIFE, by Lorrie Moore. Some of these stories are just okay, but a few are so good it's hard to believe anyone put them together. The first ones are the best, so you could even just get through half the book. There's a particularly disgusting description of the behavior of a woman who works in a cheese spread shop.

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK: Some hits, some misses.

SAVAGE NIGHT, by Jim Thompson. Pretty great! Have you seen the trailers for The Killer Inside Me? I'm not sure about the movie, but that book too (by this author) was great great. Maybe I wrote about it on here before.