Lake Wobegon daze

I headed over to the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza at lunchtime today - Garrison Keillor was in town!  I tell you, it's a celebrity circus round here these days.

I suspect it's not very cool to admire Garrison Keillor, but as the Man reminds me, appearing cool has never really been my guiding principle in life.  All I know is that I saw him on stage in London thirty years ago and laughed 'til I cried, and he's been a hero to me ever since.

I'd hoped he'd be doing a little presentation or the like, but it turned out it was exclusively a book-signing event.  He seemed to be taking the job seriously and was chatting at length to each fan as he inscribed their fresh copies of his latest book, The Keillor Reader.  I sized up the line of NPR listeners (they were all NPR listeners, definitely) snaking through the store and out into the street, and decided I'd have to forgo a chat with Mr. Keillor this time.

But if we had've chatted, I expect I'd have told him about seeing him in that London theatre all those years ago, and how much he'd made me laugh, and he'd have responded with some self-deprecating  witticism.  And I might have mentioned, in my nervous excitement, that the paint on my hands (from touching up some bedroom paintwork) was a colour that used to be called Prairie Smoke - which conjures up rather nice images doesn't it? - but it's now been relaunched as Green Froth, and even the woman in Lowes who mixed the paint for me thought that was an oddly unattractive name for something you were going to spread on your walls.  And Mr.Keillor ("No really, call me Garrison.  Even Gary, if you like") might have squirreled that little story away and one evening incorporated it into a Lake Wobegon tale, not recalling how he'd come by it, of course - but when I heard it on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion I'd have smiled a secret smile to myself...

However, I think it's more likely that after queuing for an hour, and him having been signing books for about two hours by then, we'd both have been feeling quite jaded and taciturn and not up for much of a chat at all.