The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I had trouble getting into John Updike's writing. As an undergrad, I did the thing where I tried to search out my identity through literature, and this led me (scarily) first to Bukowski, then (understandably) to Jonathan Safran Foer, then (scarily, again, in terms of personality, even though he's indisputably a fantastic writer) to Philip Roth. Right now, for the record, I'm hovering around Saul Bellow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Kafka.

Skol, baby.

The Twins' Justin Morneau fairly dominated all-star weekend, first winning the Home Run Derby (even if Josh Hamilton broke the record for most dingers in a single round), and then, in the bottom of the 15th inning of the All-Star Game, he tagged up on a sacrifice fly to right and hustled his buns to score the winning run, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief because they could finally go to bed.

Skol.

Here's what happened. Mitch Omer -- one of my dearest friends in this world -- showed up at my house on Thanksgiving with a red-lined version of Andrew Zimmern's December column, livid about some of the things it contained. Mitch railed. I defended Andrew on many points. We got into a bit of a tiff, which we worked out in about 30 seconds over a nice Cabernet. Then we moved on.