Date: Circa 1992
Location: My room, St. Paul, MN
Notes: That’s the fifth-place medal I won in a speech competition with seven contestants, for my one-man performance of a scene from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. I am not making that up.

Date: Circa 1995
Location: St. Paul Tennis Club
Notes: I used to be a manny.

Date: Circa 2000
Location: Science Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Notes: This was the Teaching Practicum Olympics, where teams of college-teachers-in-training competed in board-writing, board-erasing, and explaining difficult concepts. (One presentation on the sociology of prostitution explored the reasons why pimps are always up and hos are always down.) Yes, I had a bearded phase. The posing-awkwardly-while-eating phase continues.

Date: March 2007
Location: Just outside Harvard Yard in Cambridge, MA
Notes: Here I’m pictured arriving at Memorial Hall for Housing Day, when Harvard freshmen learn what dorms they’ll be living in for the next three years; it’s like going under the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts. The upperclassmen make great shows of enthusiasm to welcome the new members of their houses. I forgot that I used to rock the fleece-vest-and-hoodie look, and that I was pregnant.

Date: December 2008
Location: Aunt Muffie’s house, St. Paul, MN
Notes: With my brother and our mother. Yes, I had a faux-hawk phase. I was not stoned in this picture, but I should have been.

Date: November 2009
Location: First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
Notes: At a Replacements tribute concert with Ben Clark, Pat O’Brien, and Andrea Swensson. This photo was taken by Daniel Corrigan, who took the original photo that became the cover for Let It Be. Note how completely I miscalculated the direction of Bob Stinson’s head.

Date: April 2010
Location: Alternate universe
Notes: Photoshopping by an unknown party; somehow this ended up on Facebook. Truly disturbing.

Date: May 2010
Location: Aunt Muffie’s house, St. Paul, MN
Notes: I don’t know what we were looking at, but whatever it was, it was something no man should see in the company of his aunt.

Date: June 2010
Location: Rossport, Ontario, Canada (photo by Mandy Dwyer)
Notes: If I tell you that this was an empty church, does that make it more or less creepy?

Date: September 2010
Location: Bedlam Theatre, Minneapolis, MN
Notes: Last night at Bedlam’s West Bank location. Now, that was a party.

Date: October 2010
Location: Ben and Andrea’s Haunted Carriage House, Minneapolis, MN (photos by Erik Hess)
Notes: For Halloween I was Phil Spector. Lesson learned: I should never try to apply makeup to myself. Those are supposed to be wrinkles.

Date: November 2010
Location: Lutsen Sea [?!] Villas, MN (photo by Eric Bass)
Notes: I swear that’s not a wig.

Date: December 2010
Location: Aunt Judy’s house, Lino Lakes, MN.
Notes: With my sister. My dad really knows how to capture a moment. It might have been better if he’d stuck to taking photos of the back of my head.

Date: January 2011
Location: MTN Studios, Minneapolis, MN
Notes: On the set of Freaky Deeky. For obvious reasons, Becky chose this shot to illustrate a blog entry about my nomination in the Vita.mn Hotness Contest. Too sexy! Too sexy!

– Jay Gabler