Imagine Garrison Keillor waking in a hotel on Saturday morning. His eyes barely open, he flips to the Weather Channel, fingers crossed.
Another below-zero day, just like he anticipated. He smiles. The dozens of "How cold is Duluth" jokes prepared for Saturday night's performance of "A Prairie Home Companion" have been spared from any uncharacteristic late-January thaw.
If Inuits have a lot of words for snow, Keillor had three times as many ways to describe our frigid temps to the 4 million listeners of his public radio program, which he performed to a sold-out crowd at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center Auditorium.
* Keillor earned laughs for his music guests, honky tonker Joe Ely and squeeze box player Joel Guzman -- from Texas.
* Before the show went live, Keillor said of the lean Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Heather Masse: "She's way too skinny. You can tell she's not from here. It would be dangerous to be that thin and from Duluth."
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* Pat Donohue from The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band plucked out a bluesy piece called "Cold Frozen Blues" -- which included a line about having not felt his toes since last November.
* Fictional cowboys Dusty and Lefty stood on the brink of a Polar Bear Plunge into Lake Superior, as told by Keillor and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors. (Seeing trumps listening when it comes to the sound effects of Tom Keith simulating broken glass, popped corks, chewing and the high-pitched squeals of other polar bear plungers. Sounds funny, looks even funnier.)
As a special nod to locals, Keillor changed the lyrics in the show's opening theme "Tishomingo Blues" to include the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. Early in the program, the 66-year-old star brought out local mushers Blake and Jen Freking and three of their Huskies: Scotty, Muskie and Tooey. As to be expected of dogs, one of them went straight to Keillor's -- well, it's radio. Use your imagination.
Keillor, not surprisingly, celebrated Tuesday's inauguration, offering both a self-penned sonnet and a song in which he likened Pres. Barack Obama to Harry Potter, Honest Abe and the Rolling Stones. And one skit included Keillor's fictitious detective, Guy Noir, commissioned by Norm Coleman to investigate the Minnesota Senate race -- with a "cameo" from George W. Bush. (Tim Russell's voice hops dexterously from Al Franken to Coleman to Bush). And, of course, all was well in Lake Wobegon, with Keillor wandering the stage without a script, eyes seemingly closed.
The audience, of course, ate it up like so many Powdermilk Biscuits.
"Cold keeps people in line," he said near the end. "Warm weather encourages bad behavior."
