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Sept. 30, 2001—Hey, this izza Arny Heywood's cousin, frumma Italy. Ahma write this column fora Arny thissa week, eh?

Anyway, Arny worka atta bookastore. And they gotta sum fiction anna sum non-fiction. Fiction izza the made-up stuff. Non-fiction, thatsa the real stuff. You buy a book onna the Pope-ah, thatsa non-fiction.

I like-a the bookstore. Arny, he's-a good, you know? I like-a the Oprah books. She's a beautiful woman, that-a Oprah. Like a Madonna.

I wisha the Vikings would do better. They're a gooda football team, at leasta I thought. I gotta the season tickets, you know. I take-a Arny sometimes, but he's a too quiet. He sitsa there anda reads a comic book. Then he smoke-a big cigar. He'd rather be atta the gentlemen's club.

Arny be-a back next week. After that, I dunno, eh?

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Oct. 6, 2001—Welcome to BooksellerBlues.com!  Click here to shop our store.  Click here to contact us.  Click here if you'd like to enter our chatroom.  Click here to subscribe to our members-only site.  Thanks for visiting us.  Webmasters: Make $$$ in our affiliate program.

(Well, we can dream, can't we?)  What a world, though, this Internet.  I remember the premiere of StickYourNeckOut.com, a small one, but look at its growth!  Full-fledged stories and articles by more than capable, experienced—sometimes serious—authors; and an art gallery of paintings, illustrations, and photographs by talented craftsmen and craftswomen.  As profitable as Amazon.com, it is (recall, Amazon.com has never turned a profit).

Imagine the Bookseller Blues website ... I can see it now: annoying banner ads, blinking lights, celebrities ... More: credit card transactions!

What have I become?  (Tunnel vision, they call it.)  Money, money, money.  Here's a thought: send me a dollar.

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Oct. 13, 2001—Time for my annual pro basketball forecast.

Western, or Bestern conference (probable year-end standings):

1. L. A. Lakers (Pacific Division Champs)
2. Spurs (Midwest Division Champs)
3. Kings
4. Mavericks
5. Jazz
6. Timberwolves
7. Blazers
8. Nuggets

Eastern, or Leastern Conference (probable year-end standings):

1. Raptors (Atlantic Division Champs)
2. Bucks (Central Division Champs)
3. 76ers
4. Hornets
5. Knicks
6. Heat
7. Wizards
8. Magic

League Champs: L. A. Lakers.

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Oct. 18, 2001—I met Garrison Keillor at the Lake Wobegon Barnes and Noble yesterday. Actually, it was the Edina, Minnesota Barnes and Noble—but close enough, right? (I wasn't working, my bookseller jurisdiction is only at the Burnsville, Minnesota store.)

It was an event: meet Keillor and he'll read from his book, Lake Wobegon, Summer 1956—which I have already read. It's the dirtiest, horniest Lake Wobegon novel yet. The book is about a youngster named Gary (probably Keillor in another light) discovering literature and a magazine called High School Orgies, which he hides from his parents—"sanctified brethren," of course. Would it make A Prairie Home Companion? I don't know, does Standards and Practices monitor public radio?

I like G. K., he's very entertaining. What I like most, however, is how approachable he is. How normal. His suit, frankly, didn't look like he splurged his advance at the Nicollet Mall. His hair was mussed.

He was very funny. And he told us that he never wrote for himself. Always for an audience, from teachers, to school bullies, to The New Yorker magazine editors, to his listeners—an audience of which I am a part.

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Oct. 24, 2001—"I'm going to finish your painting, Tom."

"Touch it and die," he says.

It's a watercolor. A dog on a big rock overlooking the lake near his place. Taken from a photograph, the painting is coming very nicely. At least it's readable. His last painting was confounding. After I spent five minutes trying to figure it all out, Tom stared at me and said, "It's two wasps mating."

"Oh," I said, still blank.

Tom lives in a cabin in northern Minnesota and loves it there, loves the cold. He's a great cook and a voracious reader: poetry, novels, anything literary. I once asked him not if he read any junk, but what junk did he read. "I don't read junk," he told me.

"Oh," I said again.

This love of words makes Tom a natural writer, who has cranked out a couple novels, some poetry, and a "famous"—as it was noted on a Web site—quote: "Suicide would be my way of telling God 'I quit!'"

Tom has been published here and there. Self-published books, one of his novels, a collection of recipes, some poetry. From the painting standpoint he has been published as many times in magazines and on book covers, and has even sold a couple paintings.

Being in the north woods and all, Tom hunts and fishes, another made-for pastime. (Made for him!) He even cooks and eats his kill. He always improvised in the kitchen, and when I first met him, I asked if he ever watched Emeril or anything else on the Food Network, cable. And just the way he looked at me when I could not figure out his mating-wasp watercolor, he stared at me and said, "Arny, I don't have a TV." This in light of only seeing the kitchen during the early part of one of my first visits.

Then I said, "Oh," again.

He's not an easy mark, I can tell you. Match wits with him, maybe. On a good day and very early in the morning. Match muscles? He gets such a workout, from what I'll never know. He lives in an all right-sized cabin with no gym and spends his hours either reading, writing, cooking, or painting. I will grant you, he's an ex-boxer, but as an ex-boxer, he hasn't boxed in 11 years!

Why am I here today? Because I haven't seen him in a long time, and he wants to read aloud and cook me fish. "Come over, I'll cook dinner." It's a three-hour drive, I know, but that salmon!

I know why Tom makes good with the ladies: The cooking. It has to be. I asked him only in small talk what his weekend plans were, and of course, just as in Tom's fashion, he removed his tobacco pipe, spat (we were outside) and do you know what he told me? This: "Cook dinner and have lots of sex." It must have worked. Monday, I asked him if all that was planned went well and in the good kind of way he pretended not to know what I was talking about.

Tom has had so many girlfriends, I wonder whether it's the kitchen or the bedroom he prefers. He never seems to know and of course neither do I. He likes the Taiwanese film Eat Drink Man Woman, of which one critic said it's hard to tell where "food stops and sex begins." I keep them separate myself. I don't know about you, but I cramp.

Copyright © Arny Heywood 2003