Here's the thing. I used to think there was some sort of unseen attraction between lefties and myself. I'm not talking politics here, I mean persons who are left-handed. One of my best friends from second until eighth grade was left handed. Then another best friend from ninth to present. My first girlfriend was left-handed -- so was my second. I don't remember all the examples anymore, but it drove me crazy at one point. So to top it all off, Rachael Leigh Cook is left handed. Now I don't know how many of you know this, but I was once in a band called star-p. Several years ago we recorded a CD, but the album actually never ended up being released. I wasn't satisfied, and moved to Germany anyway -- but it did end up in the hands of Billy Corgan. My friends and I stayed up all night to meet the Smashing Pumpkins at a sort of signing gig in Minneapolis. During the run to get in line when they first opened the doors to the mall, I kicked a dude in the face by accident. There was blood everywhere -- but I never acknowledged him or it. Anyway I didn't really want to go to this thing, but at the last minute decided that I'd better -- Corgan was my hero afterall. So since we were so close to the front of the line, the first lot of us got to spend a little bit of extra time in there. I decided I'd give him my CD -- which was pretty heavily influenced by the man. I wrapped it in a picture of Rachael that I'd ripped out of a magazine that day, and included a letter asking him to be in my band. The whole thing was supposed to be funny. When I shook his hand, I gave him his present and said, "Hey, I got this for you." He shook it next to his ear and said, "Thanks." A couple of hours later I was back in Rochester, about to take a shower, when I decided to give my CD a listen. So I was in the shower, listening to the first song, when it started skipping. It would play 2 seconds, then skip a second back -- over and over again. Remember and understand that CD burners weren't always what they are now, and shit like this used to to happen all the time on those 1x and 2x burners. It did this for the entire disc. Fuck. This was one from the batch that left-handed Marvin had burned for me -- so was the one I'd given Billy. How embarassing. Anyway for this album I had a plan to have Rachael model for the cover. This plan went further, by the way, as it also promised us to hook up and live happily ever after together. I thought this plan was foolproof, and guess what, there weren't really any more details to it than those I just described. So all that needed to happen was I had to somehow get us to meet. Since she was from Minneapolis, it couldn't be too hard. I wrote a letter asking her to give us a bit of her time for this little project. It was a nice letter, and I assumed that as soon as our eyes met -- my plan would be in the bag. Several weeks after writing this (I don't know if this was before or after the whole BC incident), I received a call from a random girl. It was super mysterious because there was no caller ID and it was so noisy on my end that she hung up before saying much at all. Later while at work (Toys R Us), everytime I heard footsteps behind me, I swore I just KNEW it was Rachael. So of course it was never her, seeing as all of this was beyond impossible by the way. I must have known all along that that girl who'd called me was just one trying to set star-p up to play some festival (had I forgotten that I'd been expecting that call?), and furthermore, I don't know if I was just conveniently ignoring this or what, but I'd never even sent the goddam letter. So anyway, last fall I got an interview with Rachael, then backed out of it -- just to get her back.