Franken wows crowd, with no dissenters
The promotional schedule around here last week for “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate” was brutal, from talk show to bookstore to community center and back again. His Thursday appearance at Book Passage in Corte Madera was standing room only, the parking lot so crammed that bold drivers found vehicular refuge at the DMV next door.
Arriving a few minutes before the scheduled start, I got to talk with Franken for a minute, while he was doing the job at the heart of book promotion: signing. In the bowels of the store, Franken sat at a table with bold marker in hand, one person placing a book in front of him, another whisking it away. I approached, apologized for intruding on the task, and asked if he was up to multitasking by answering a question. Yes, he said.
After a month on the road like this, talking to so many people, hearing their questions and concerns, had his perception of the concerns of the American public changed? He looked startled for a moment, and then blurted, “Not really.” Pausing for a little, hemming and hawing, he added, “People who come to my book signings generally agree with me.” He doesn’t hear many of their opinions, mostly “because we don’t do questions and answers . ... I hate to say I haven’t learned anything . ... But there are a lot of people who like what I’m saying ...” — at this point, one could feel him going into the book spiel — “They want a Wellstone-ian vision,” he said, referring to the late Minnesota senator. He hadn’t heard any commentary from people opposing his views, and he wasn’t expecting any. “I think Marin is a pretty friendly place for me.”
Then Franken went out there in front of the crowd, and, in showbiz lingo, he killed, telling a few inside tales with foolproof laugh lines (referring to the Koch Brothers as Siegfried and Roy Koch, and likening Ted Cruz to the “toxic co-worker who puts a fish in the microwave”). He ended with a feel-good pro-immigration story about a Somali teen who became a Senate page and then high school graduation speaker. “I’m still optimistic” about America, he said.
And before he went off to Berkeley for another appearance, there was some time for questions from the audience, the last of which was whether he would run for president. That got hearty applause and a no from him.
He’s a pro who knows how to keep an audience, he’d been touring with the book for a month, and I think he’d probably answered most every question before. But I’d say the highlight of his talk was his response to one about the possibility of abolishing the Electoral College. It’s “not a perfect way,” he said. “But if we did change it, things would change. You’d have a lot more politicians in California.” Right now, he said, “California is pretty much taken for granted. Except we do need your money.”
The latest memoir by man-about-theCastro Mark Abramson, who’s written a Beach Reading series of gay romance books, as well as previous memoirs focusing on gay life and the devastating spread of AIDS, is about coming of age — and coming out — in his native Midwest. In “Minnesota Boy,” Abramson describes his student years at the University of Minnesota and making the decision to move to San Francisco in the early ’70s.
The richly written book even includes a kind of recipe for “the most famous, or most common ... gay food.” Tuna-noodle casserole, made by Abramson’s mom and described by him as “a standard of nearly every gay boy’s mother,” was known as “fairy pudding,” he writes, “because it was the only thing so many gay guys knew how to make. A can of tuna fish, in oil or water, well-drained, a package of cooked elbow macaroni and can of cream of mushroom soup.”
Abramson acknowledges that he probably didn’t hear the term “fairy pudding” before arriving here, “but I think it was as universal a gay term as ...” — oh, you don’t need to know, in a family newspaper. Abramson will read and sign on Sunday, July 16, at 4 p.m., at Dog Eared Books on Castro. (Caveat for eager chefs: I Googled “fairy pudding” and came up with some recipes for a sweet lemony dessert; Abramson’s version is a treat native to the gay kitchen.)