I don’t often listen to MPR during the work o’clock hours. Mostly, I spend those hours torturing Trip Shakes and arguing with nerds. But today I left The Nerdery to go out to lunch with my friend Melanie. As I was rushing back to work hoping to make it to my desk before I slipped into a chicken vindaloo-induced coma I caught Christopher Moore on Talk of the Nation. He was yakking it up with the host about his new book, Fool which is based on some character from Shakespeare’s King Lear.
They were taking calls and they ended up with some woman from Duluth on the line. She was pissed. She couldn’t believe that Moore was fucking with Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy. She had seen Sir Ian McKellan in it at the Guthrie and she knew.
The host asked her if she had planned to read Moore’s book, and she was all, “hell, no.”
I chuckled and thought, “wow those Duluthians are wacky.”
I thought this because sometime last month, I was driving around during work o’clock hours and Kerri Miller had John Edgar Wideman on talking about his books and being an African American writer.
Again they took a call from someone in Duluth. This time it was a dude, and he asked Wideman if it was easier to be a writer knowing that his junk (he might have said Johnson or manhood) was bigger than like 50% of the population in Pittsburgh. Yeah, seriously, the Duluth guy asked about Wideman’s penis.
Holy cow! I just listened to the piece on MPR’s site, and if you tune in at about 20 minutes, you can hear the Duluth Dude ask about Wideman’s package.
Duluth, full of whack-job loonies.
i bet that was barrett who called in about john edgar wideman’s junk. it’s really all he talks about.
Nah, if it was me, I’d have called it his love-muscle.
Holy Fuckballs! She’s has a problem with Moore writing a story from King Lear’s jester’s point of view but a book by Biff, Jesus’ BFF doesn’t get mentioned? Not that I have a problem with either one. I’ve liked Moore’s writing since Bloodsucking Fiends. But yeah, clearly there is something in the water up there.