My friend met David Lynch

Maybe you're like me and wouldn't recognize David Lynch if he danced down a dark alley at you in an eerie pink glow surrounded by a troupe of dancing dwarves. If so, you are not like my friend Joan, who thinks he's one of the all-time geniuses, uses a photo of him for her computer wallpaper, and wishes her husband would grow old to look like him. Now that Joan has forced me to look at photos of David Lynch, I think he looks sort of like Eraserhead and don't really get the obsession. But then I have my own thing about Hendrik Hertzberg (the images come up side by side in my browser - you'll have to guess which is which), so I won't throw stones.

So Joan was going into the local natural foods hippie co-op and whom should she run into but Eraserhead himself. I shit you not. Joan, being Joan, screamed "YOU'RE DAVID LYNCH!!" and jumped up and down. I would have at least tried to play it cool. He could have had scary California bodyguards or an attack dog or something. But David Lynch was not at all intimidated. He gave her an autograph and posed for camera phone photos while other shoppers looked on, wondering who the hell he was. This preternatural calm is probably the result of Transcendental Meditation, which is what brings Lynch to Iowa. He goes to see the gurus at Maharishi International in Fairfield. If only Hendrik were into TM.