Congratulate him now, before he's too famous to talk to us

I've been waiting on this news until I was 100% certain it was official, but I think when someone from the legal team at Houghton calls requesting line edits so a certain litigious major-leaguer won't sue (apparently some people have even less of a sense of humor than Barry Bonds about steroid use accusations) then it's pretty much a done deal: Our Good Friend and Fearless Leader Lee Klein is going to have an essay appear in the next edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

The essay is about Barry Bonds, and hormonally-enhanced produce, and Iowa, and SUVs as big as tanks, and terrorism, and Jimi Hendrix's preferred method of acid ingestion, among other things.

I have to take partial credit for Lee's triumph, as the essay first appeared in Barrelhouse, and I'd like to think part of tits eventual success was due to my stellar line-edits ("How about a, uh, semi-colon there. Is that what them things are called?").

Also, Tommy Mac gets credit for starting the argument about Bonds in the first place. While most people would be content to lob a few drunken missives back at Mr. McAllister in the Foxhead, Lee wasn't happy until his retort was published in a magazine and then a nationally-distribited anthology. So: in your face, Tom. In. Your. Face.