A Night with Garrison Keillor

For a while now I have been a fan of Garrison Keillor. I first discovered him on National Public Radio, which airs his show "A Prairie Home Companion". You can reference a blog posting from last year where my buddy Mark and I went up to St. Paul, MN to be in the audience for one of his live recordings. He is also a bestselling author and satirist, so I have been reading his books for a while as well and he is one of my favorite authors. His latest book, Liberty, just came out (the same Mark and his wife Tricia got me the book for my birthday) and he was at the Unity Church in Dallas last night to give a little talk and sign copies of his book. It's part of a series about Lake Wobegon (where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average).

I went with my ladyfriend Kirsten, and we had a great time listening to him recite "sonnets" and talk about growing up in a small Minnesota town (his inspiration for the Lake Wobegon books) and he fielded questions from the audience at the end of the evening. He is a HUGE liberal which is why I think I like him so much (he managed to piss off the Methodists a few years back when visiting Dubya's home church in Dallas, Highland Park United Methodist, where he referred to the congregation as Nazi sympathizers). He talked about the upcoming election, and how it will come down to a toss up between the "Skinny Guy" and the "Bitter Old Man", and managed to bring down the house when he said that the selection of a certain Alaska governor as a running mate was a serious mis-step, but that she will fare well in the end and probably land a book deal, which would be good because after November she will have a lot of free time on her hands!

We waited afterwards to get my book signed and I told him how much I love his writing and his radio show. Now I just have to be very careful with the book, taking care not to lose a signed copy!