One of Al & Tom's first collaborations was a stage version of a short story of mine titled "The Movie-maker". It can be found in the Blake School literary mag for 1968, I think (Talisman). It was a kind of Shirley Jackson imitation, about a film-maker coming to a small midwestern town to do a documentary about "real small-town America". He is opposed and finally defeated by three ancient men who never move from their park bench: "still and silent as stone, and old as the trees around them."

it's all coming back to me...

Jeff & Tom (Davis) were deeply involved in Mpls version/spin-off of Merrie-Prankster acidhead scene. We're talking late 1960s, pre-draftage adolescent hippie-dream grungeworld angst paranoia nightmare, depicted/invented so faithfully in R. Crumb & Zap Comics. They staged a variety of anarchic "events" around town for their own delectation. Of course I admired them, but was too old-fashioned & cautious, too inhibited, to follow completely. I was captain of the soccer team, for crying out loud. At one of Jimi Hendrix's final concerts (in St. Paul) I came down with a bad case of pneumonia.

Am I doin' better than Bob Dylan here? see p. 784...

The Times really watered down my letter to the editor about Al Franken. Took out most of the funny stuff, I thought. Al was not a great wrestler. He was a great all-around theater guy. He and Tom Davis took one of my short stories & produced it as a one-act play, which was a high point for me in high school.