James Kennedy is Near

James Kennedy, world-class entertainer, all around groovy guy, and author of The Order of Odd-Fish (see all four Order of Odd-Fish Week posts here, here, here, and here) will be in Lansing tomorrow. Lansing, as some of you already know, is very close to where I live. And Mr. James Kennedy mentioned a long time ago that we should meet up while he was in town. This sounded like a splendid idea, but one I was pretty sure he'd forget about by the time November 5 rolled around.

And then two days ago I get an email from Mr. Kennedy and even though I am not a librarian he offers to get me in to his talk at the annual MLA conference. And based on past performances, I know it will be oodles of awesome.

Alas, I'm attending a training on teaching kids with autism tomorrow and will not be able to attend. Even more alas, James has to run following his presentation and I won't be able to give him my manuscript.

I mean, have him autograph my lucky sock.

Or tell him how much I'm looking forward to The Magnificent Moots.

Or ask him how he likes the whole fatherhood thing.

Or ask him just what sort of stuff he was inhaling back in the day.

Or quote lines from his book to him that relate to some situation we may find ourselves in. For example, say we were enjoying some adult beverages at The Nut House and the waitress kept screwing up our food order. I might say, "The Inconvenience must be working at peak performance, James." He would chuckle. Then after the waitress screwed everything up she would overcharge us and James would say, "Murphy, you didn't turn the silver crank, did you?" And we would both laugh uproariously.

So it's too bad none of that is going to happen. But this is not too bad: James assures me there will be shenanigans involving him wearing feathers and that he's planning to have it YouTubed. So make sure you check in on him at his new fancy home on the Web.

And buy his book if you haven't already. I mean, jeez, what are you waiting for exactly?