Interesting times. Anna and I gave up our house to the floor sanders today and are undergoing a one-week exile at her dad's place as crappy grey business carpeting is being shed for nice new Douglas Fir floors. Getting your floors done is a hell of a lot of work, but I think it'll be worth it.

Even more interesting: It's not every day you ex-roomate gets captured by the Taliban. Ken and I first met when he was expelled from Columbia University for stealing some Uranium. He was spending the spring hanging out with Amy Carter and a bunch of Abbie-Hoffman-types and decided to take me up on a drunken invitation to move into my studio apartment with me. Total rent: $275/month. This proved to be quite manageable when split two ways. Our roomateship soured sometime around the time I pissed on his snakeskin pants after throwing them over the balcony. We drifted apart after that. Last I heard, he was selling fruit at the Montreal train station. According the the Globe & Mail story, he'd progressed somewhat since then:


Patrick Lejtenyi, news editor at the Mirror, said Tuesday that Mr.
Hechtman was on his first assignment as a war correspondent and was
actually a laid-off computer employee.


Anyhow, Kenny was definitely the ex-roomate-most-likely-to-be-captured-by-the-Taliban, and this makes for the third most mind-blowing experience of my life since Sept. 11. I hope he's OK. Kenny has a lot of busts left ahead of him.

As we approach American Thanksgiving, here's a reminder not to be too heavy handed in the spirit of giving.

By the way, Christmas plans are crystalizing: Toronto Dec 20-23; Barrie Dec 23-27; another day in Toronto, and then Montreal from the 28th 'till the 3rd.

This is great. I've been wasting my time over the last few months looking for a job. Apparently I already had one: Performance Artist. By the way, James, I took that photo of Mike Gregory. Perhaps you can explain to the rest of the world what the hell he's doing in this newsletter, though. The rest of this site is really great by the way. Nice work Jimmy!

A sunny winter's day. A frozen pond. The skate-skate-skate hissing. The wood-and-frozen-rubber clacking. Hockey. You never get that kind of hibernal purity in San Francisco, never know that frozen feeling of being alive. Wash your face with snow. Hot chocolate. Ice-caked socks dripping dry before the fire. Ahhh Hockey.

Is it me, or is "United We Run" perhaps not the most inspiring slogan for the New York Marathon? To me it doesn't quite project an air of strength and confidence. I guess it's better than the tagline for the military operation, "Operation Enduring Freedom."