Mementos of the past

So John Moe, author of the fine Monkeydisaster blog, is moving to Minnesota to pursue his lifelong dream of living near the Mall of America. As a result, John has sold his house and is now in the process of packing to move, which involves much purging of years and years of crap. As outlined in this post right here.

Well, as a genetic pack rat, and one who hasn't moved farther than 15 miles since coming home from college (which was a whopping 350 miles or so), I haven't done the purging thing, much to my wife's chagrin. So it is that, on a bookshelf in the basement, in addition to some weird drum stick with a rubber dohickey on it that I've had since I was like 17, I have two autographed baseballs.

The ball on the right is an authentic player ball, autographed by legendary Mariner's outfielder Greg "Pee Wee" Briley. This was a gift from Steve Chicken many years ago ('93 or '94, I think), signed at spring training and given to the wife because she was a huge Pee Wee fan (both Briley and Herman).



The ball on the right was signed by Darryl Tarbox, John's character in the play Tent Meeting. John and I (and fellow classmate Erika Rolfsrud) did Tent Meeting as our senior project back in the glory days of college. It was the closest I ever came to being an evangelical preacher, and I was told I was frighteningly realistic. Probably good that I didn't take it up as a profession, or I'd probably have turned out like Ted Haggard. Only with a female prostitute, because I prefer them with my meth.

Anyhow, um, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. I kept the ball. Mostly because it's a good conversation piece, but also because it's a reminder of a great time in my life, working with two actors who so vastly outclassed me that they pulled me up. Maybe not to their level, but definitely above where I would have been otherwise.

I didn't save any photos of the show, but fortunately someone else did. So now I've got more photographic evidence that I did indeed at one time have hair:



Me as Reverend Eddie, no doubt trying to drive the devil out of my son Darryl (John)



Erika as Beckie Ann, devoted daughter and mother of our savior the eggplant (eggplant not pictured)