by Bruce Grimes

Weird Al had a concert for Bruce to celebrate Bruce’s birthday. It was awesome! The concert was at Treasure Island Resort & Casino, where Weird Al played a regular concert earlier in the year. 

Weird Al also made Bruce a big birthday cake, and served it with Chinese food. Bruce’s favorite dish is Sweet & Sour Chicken. Weird Al made a batch from scratch, in his tour bus. 

He travels in his tour bus from one city to the next. It’s made from a train car that Weird Al put on an old bus chassis so he could take it on the road. Inside, there are three bathrooms and a big oven for baking and cooking. There’s also a record player to spin tunes, and a sound booth for recording and listening to music. He uses the booth to write some of his best parody songs, like “Trapped in the Drive Through.”

On the night of Bruce’s birthday, August 11, Weird Al invited Bruce onto the bus for a special dinner celebration! There was a lift for Bruce’s wheelchair. 

Weird Al served the delicious Chinese food to Bruce and his friends. For dessert, he served chocolate & strawberry shortcake, and banana split smoothies. 

Then at showtime, Weird Al invited Bruce and his guests Andrew and Rafi to sing “Trapped in the Drive Through” with him on-stage. They also sang a bunch of his old songs together, including Bruce’s favorites “Like a Surgeon” and “I Want a New Duck.” 

Bruce was nervous to be singing on-stage with his favorite performer. After a couple of songs, Weird Al asked the audience to sing “Happy Birthday” to Bruce. It was so loud! It was outside the amphitheater, and the wildly happy sounds of the song traveled up, up, up into the air above the town. People could hear it from as far away as Missouri and Canada. They started singing too! Pretty soon it wasn’t just the audience singing – it was people across the U.S. and Canada singing together to wish Bruce a happy birthday. 

It was so much fun that Weird Al and Bruce celebrated the same way every year after that.

by Bruce Grimes

Bruce had artwork at the Rice County Fair. It won a blue ribbon!

Bruce had painted a flag with stars and stripes. He invited all his friends to go see it at the Fair. It’s on exhibit in the Arts Building. Bruce got to see it right on the first day when the Fair opened. 

It felt pretty awesome to see his artwork at the Fair! This is the third time Bruce has had art on exhibit at the Rice County Fair. It feels very special. Last year Bruce got a green ribbon for his picture.

The blue ribbon he got this year is the first-place ribbon. He also got another ribbon, a colorful one with many different shades. It’s a mystery in itself about what that ribbon stands for.

There are different ways to use colorful ribbons in competitions. In some competitions, the blue ribbon marks the first-place winner. Red ribbon marks the second-place winner. 

In some competitions, the winners also get an additional prize, such as money or a coupon or gift card for a special treat.

Bruce plans to show off his blue ribbon to his friends near and far. He’ll take his picture with his ribbon, and post it on Facebook. He can also share the photo with friends via email, and show people the ribbon itself on Zoom.

The ribbon stays on display with Bruce’s picture during the whole county fair, which is five days long. When the fair closes, Bruce will get the ribbon – and the painting – to take home. But first, the painting and the ribbon will be on display at Epic for a few days. Some of Bruce’s friends also had paintings on display at the fair. Their paintings will be part of the display at Epic, too. Some of the paintings earned Grand Champion ribbons, big beautiful pink ribbons. 

Bruce used puff paint to make the stars on his painting. He used regular tempera paint for the stripes. It’s a lucky thing that he didn’t use tempura for the stripes! That would have been a soggy mess. 

Bruce painted it on canvas. An assistant held the canvas up to Bruce’s arm. Bruce held a paintbrush in his hand and swished it back and forth across the canvas to make the wide, wind-swept stripes. 
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Then it was time to paint the stars! The staff at Epic painted the stars onto Bruce’s painting for him. Bruce was very happy for their help. It felt great to see those stars go onto his painting!

by Bruce Grimes

Two pasta makers, Amelia and Zachary, loved baking rainbow bread. Their friends Fred and Hannah liked to bake too. Hannah’s favorite treat was marshmallow cinnamon rolls. 

Together, the crew baked a giant batch of bread and cinnamon rolls, plus marshmallow Peeps, marshmallow eggs and robin’s eggs candies – enough for a crowd of people.

Then Amelia and Zachary started working on their favorite recipe: rainbow bread with raisins. They used food dye to add bright rainbow colors to the dough.

They used a big bread machine to knead the dough. It took 12 hours to knead it! The machine, which they bought at a thrift store, had a timer on it that they could set and let the machine do the kneading automatically.

Meanwhile, Fred and Hannah were trying to fix two antique tractors that they found at the antiques farm outside of town. 

“Let’s fix up these tractors and then sell them at the fair,” Fred and Hannah said.
“Hey, we can sell our rainbow bread at the fair too!” Amelia and Zachary replied.
“Your bread will sell even better if you put actual rainbow in it,” Fred suggested.
“That’s a wild idea!” Zachary cried. “But how can we get some actual rainbow out of the sky?”
Fred smiled. “I can help you with that.”

Fred’s friends didn’t know he had a talent for walking on ceilings and walls, and elevator walls. They were shocked when he walked up the side of the barn at the antiques farm all the way up into the sky! 

“Hey Hannah, throw me a dumpster!” Fred called. And she did! Hannah was super-strong – that’s her special talent. Fred caught the dumpster and filled it with a big slice of the rainbow, will all its colors. 

He set it down next to Amelia and Zachary. They quickly added the fresh rainbow into the dough in the kneading machine. The dough came to life with sparkling bright colors! It brightened up the whole room, like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. 
The rainbow bread was a big hit at the fair. They sold all the loaves – plus the ingredients, and even the bread machine – at the Minnesota State Fair. They got a really big trophy for their special recipe. 

They got a Blue Ribbon too, and the Minnesota State Fair’s first-ever Rainbow Ribbon. Delicious!
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Want to make your own rainbow bread? Check out this recipe!

by Bruce Grimes

Two robots went to work at a hospital to help doctors with a heart transplant. 
Their patient was a newborn baby . . . two newborn babies, in fact. The babies were joined together at birth, and the robots helped doctors surgically separate the babies from each other. One of the robots worked to care for the first baby, and the second robot cared for the second baby.

Once the babies were separated, the doctors could tell that one of the babies had a bad heart. 

Meanwhile, their mother was doing poorly; she was on a ventilator to help her breathe. She had been in a car accident: Her car was sideswiped by a school bus as she was driving to the Weird Al concert in California. An ambulance brought her from the site of the car accident to the hospital. The doctors in the Emergency Room said, “We need to deliver this baby.” They rushed into the operating room and performed a c-section. The doctors were surprised to discover that it was twins! They were even more surprised when they realized the babies were joined together.
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“We need more hands in the surgery,” they said. “Let’s call around the city and see if we can get robot help.” It took two hours for the robots to arrive. The doctors had to program the robots to help with surgery. The surgery was big! It took 12 hours. The babies’ father was watching on-camera the whole time. He was nervous! 

Once this surgery was complete, the doctors began a heart transplant for the baby with a bad heart. The robots were good at doing heart transplants because they had done that surgery before. In the past, their patients were adults. This was a new experience for the robots, to perform a heart transplant on a brand new baby.

Their mother was showing some improvement, and fortunately she recovered completely from the accident. But she had to stay in the hospital for 12 months. 

The babies were transferred to Children’s Hospital. They stayed in ICU there for four months before they went home with their dad.  

The robots received gold medals for their heroic work. 

Both babies both grew up to be very strong people. One became a football player! The other became a doctor, and now he takes care of babies when they’re born. Sometimes, with robots.

by Bruce Grimes

One day Bruce and Andrew were searching the internet and found a very scary Cookie Monster emoji. That prompted them to make their own scary Cookie Monster cookie: A combination St. Patrick’s Day and Easter cookie. 

“We’re scared now!” they hollered. Bruce and Andrew baked a big batch and then transported to Egypt through a teleporting portal to sell their cookies on the street there.

Egypt used to have sand dunes and scary mummies. That’s why Bruce and Andrew thought their scary cookies might be popular there.

But when the arrived in Egypt, people asked them for lemon cookies instead.

“We want lemon cookies!” they shouted. They picketed for lemon cookies. They held up paper signs that said “We want lemon cookies.” The crowd chanted over and over: “We want lemon cookies! We want lemon cookies!” They also chanted: “We want soft bread! We want soft bread!”

The chanting must have whetted their appetites because then they started saying, “We want pasta, too!”

Bruce and Andrew were in a pickle. They thought, “Where can we build a bar and restaurant to give people what they want to eat? It would be a great to have a bakery there too.”

They built a sand castle as big as Bruce’s bedroom back home. They built a kitchen over a fire pit they could use to bake cookies and fresh bread, and also boil pasta.

Next, they needed all the ingredients for their delicious foods. But Bruce and Andrew were poor, and couldn’t afford to buy ingredients.

“Hey,” Bruce said, “let’s make our stuff out of sand. There’s plenty of sand here for the taking.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Andrew replied. 

The people became an angry mob. “We want real food, not sand food!” they cried. 

Bruce and Andrew said, “We don’t know what to do. We’re so poor, but we want to give people the foods they like to eat.”

They asked the crowd to bring ingredients to them. “We need lemons, flour, baking soda, eggs, butter, and sugar,” they called out. “And yeast! If you bring those to us, we will bake delicious lemon cookies and fresh bread for you!”

The crowd cheered. They lined up in a long parade and presented to Bruce and Andrew the ingredients one at a time. A tall man handed them a lemon. A smiling woman handed them an egg. A giggling child brought a bag of flour and yeast. A man in a wheelchair brought everything else: butter, baking soda and sugar. 

Bruce and Andrew got to work. They baked and baked! 

After a few days of non-stop baking, they were very tired. “Why don’t we hire some people to do the baking?” They hired Fred and Barney and taught them how to bake the popular lemon cookies and fragrant fresh bread. 

Fred and Barney were hard workers. They got good at baking dozens of cookies at a time.

​They sold the cookies for $2 a piece, and bread for $3 a loaf. It was dirt cheap. 

Just not, you know, sand cheap.

by Bruce Grimes

Two apes, Randy and Doug, escaped from Africa and stowed away on an airplane to California. There, they went  into a pizza restaurant, dressed up like humans, to apply for jobs. They wanted to earn $1,000 to $1,200 to donate to a homeless shelter and to Feed My Starving Children. 

Jill the restaurant owner took one look at their strong arms and said, “You can probably throw pizza crusts like pros! You’re hired!” Randy and Doug made extra-large pizzas so fast and so delicious that people crowded to the restaurant to taste them. They started to get inventive with their flavors: They made cheeseburger pizza and steak pizza. Delicious! Customers wanted more.

Then Doug and Randy invented fruit pizza with bananas, strawberries and grapes. The customers loved it! Jill tripled the prices of the fruit pizzas because the customers loved them so much. 

She gave Doug and Randy a bonus of $1,100. Jill said, “You guys have been great for business. Thank you so much for bringing in new customers.”

The restaurant had been on the TV show “Bar Rescue” and the host John Tapper tried to improve the business. It turns out that the apes, Doug and Randy, did a much better job!
“You’re welcome!” they told Jill. “We’re going to turn this into more money.” They bought a lottery ticket that won $1 million. Wow! They gave most of it to the homeless shelter and Feed My Starving Children, and then they used the rest to buy a car with airplane controls that could fly. 

They flew to Minnesota and went to another restaurant there, the Chinese Buffet. They asked for jobs there so they could earn even more money for the causes they wanted to support.
“We’ll work overnight and stay out of trouble,” Randy and Doug told the restaurant manager, Andrew. 

“Please clean and wash everything in the whole restaurant,” Andrew said. “And do snow removal.”

They did triple the work that Andrew asked for. With their long arms and strong muscles, they could reach all the way up to the ceiling and in all the corners. They cleaned the whole place until it sparkled.

Andrew was so happy that Doug and Randy did such a great job. “Now I don’t have to hire a cleaning crew for a whole month,” he said. Andrew donated all the money they earned to Feed My Starving Children. 

“Will you please come back again?” he asked. But Randy and Doug said no. “We’ve got to go to the Minnesota Zoo. We’ve always wanted to live there.”

Before they left, Doug and Randy threw Andrew a birthday party. He was turning 100 years old! They served beer and wine, ice cream and chocolate cake . . . and fruit pizza.
It was a delicious adventure.

by Bruce Grimes

Brad and Bruce were the captain and mechanic of the battleship U.S. Navy One. They just met for the first time on their first trip together on this ship. They both had come from across the sea. 

The ship was leaving for Antarctica. The plan was to sink the battleship to the bottom of the sea to create an artificial reef where fish can live, especially jellyfish.

The ship was being pulled by big tugboats. Brad and Bruce and the crew were taking pipes off the ship to get it ready to sink it. It was heavy work. They got tired, and thirsty.  

Brad and Bruce decided to take a break and have a cup of tea. They would snack on some MREs during their break.

They put the ship on autopilot and left the tugboats guiding the ship in charge. They left the bridge of the battleship and went to the dining room where it was cozy and warm. 

“We’re sleepy, but it’s not bedtime yet for us,” Brad and Bruce said. “Let’s have a cup of tea, or coffee.”

“Cold cinnamon tea is usually my favorite,” said Bruce, “but it’s too chilly for that today. I want a steaming hot cup of tea.” Brad fixed it for him while Bruce kept taking pipes off the ship. Brad put chives in the tea for a spicy flavor. 

Brad made himself a cup of coffee. He put Fireball in it – a hot cinnamon liquor. Yow! He screamed, “Ah! Why did I put that in there? That’s so strong.” He drank it down anyway.

They thought they were drinking caffeinated tea and coffee, but it turns out they were decaffeinated drinks. Brad and Bruce kept yawning and yawning. Before long, they were both asleep.

They dreamed about the ship. They were almost halfway around the world by now. By the time they woke up, the tugboats had taken the battleship all the way to Antarctica. 

When they arrived, the people there said, “Hey, we don’t want that ship in our sea!” So Brad and Bruce took the ship to the Bahamas instead.
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And this time, they made sure the coffee and tea was caffeinated. ​

by Bruce Grimes

Two women talked to donkeys. And the donkeys could talk back. 

Wilma and Becky had a herd of 1,000 donkeys. They took the whole herd to California on a big cruise ship. 

On the way, the cruise ship ran into a big bunch of smoke coming from a fire. The fire was coming from another cruise ship nearby! 

The second ship was radioing “SOS!” when Wilma and Becky’s ship was nearby. Their ship hurried to the rescue. They picked up elephants and zebras – an entire zoo of animals that was on the burning ship. Just in time!

The animals said, “Thank you for saving us!”

Wilma and Becky replied, “You’re welcome! There’s just one problem. We don’t have enough food for all of you.” 

So they radioed to a tugboat to bring some food from the nearest zoo. When the tugboat arrived, Wilma and Becky asked the tugboat captain, “Where can we bring all these animals to be safe? They’re from so many different places around the world, and need different habitats – including the penguins.”

“I can radio another tugboat with a zookeeper on board,” the captain said. “The zookeeper can help guide you around the world to return the animals all to their natural homes.”

Wilma and Becky thought, “Great! What a trip! Let’s get started!”

Suddenly, the cruise ship ran out of gas. The tugboat captain asked the second tugboat with the zookeeper onboard to also bring fuel for the ship, and help pull the ship into the deep ocean to start the journey around the world. 

Their first destination: Africa! 

They traveled six days to the coast of Africa, where the elephants and the zebras belonged, to live on the wide open plains and fields.

But the elephants were so big and heavy they damaged the ship, and water started leaking out all over the boat. Wilma and Becky laid down some steel beams for the elephants to walk across. That made the ship sturdy enough to finish the journey. The monkeys kept climbing on top of the penguins, because their space in the ship was so small. 

Wilma and Becky docked the ship along the coast of Africa, and the animals walked down the ramp onto the dock. It looked like a parade! People nearby were startled to see them. 

The donkeys wanted to stay in Africa, too. After all, that’s where donkeys first came from over 6,000 years ago. One of the donkeys, Finnegan, told Wilma and Becky, “Let’s leave all the animals here so you guys can transport back to Minnesota through a TV.” They said, “That’s a brilliant idea! We didn’t know you were a science fiction donkey.”

The monkeys wanted to go to the space center to learn how to fly spaceships, and bring the penguins with them into space. The penguins didn’t like that idea. “We want to go to the Minnesota Zoo!” they shouted. “We can transport through the TV, too.”

Wilma and Becky replied, “We’ll have to go to the Minnesota Zoo and donate the penguins.”
So they did.

by Bruce Grimes

But Tony and Alex were in trouble. They were wearing shorts and tank tops, which are good for the Bahamas but not for Antarctica. Man, were they cold! They needed some winter attire right away so they wouldn’t catch pneumonia.
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They met a group of scientists who were studying the coldest killer whales on Earth. The scientists were surprised to see Tony and Alex. “What are you two doing here?” they asked. “We don’t know how we got here! We ended up in a portal,” they said. The scientists took them in and gave them warm clothes and heavy parkas to wear. They gave them hot cocoa in Vikings Yeti cups.

That night, they watched the Southern Lights with the scientists through binoculars and telescopes. 

Free Willie had gone to find his family. He found them nearby, and they were so happy to see each other again!

Tony and Alex spent the night with the scientists at their research station. The next morning, they said goodbye and thank you to the scientists. They went back to the portal and stepped through . . . right back onto the beach in the Bahamas, still wearing their Antarctica parkas. 
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“What an adventure!” they laughed.

by Bruce Grimes
(to the tune of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”)

Bruce and Andrew woke to a fresh snow, ready for adventures winter-style!
Put on their boots, bundled outside, laughed and kicked the snow all around.
We will, we will frost you
We will, we will frost you

Bruce and Andrew took a big sled to Buck Hill, tobogganing together for a winter thrill!
Singing we will, we will frost you
We will, we will frost you

Bruce and Andrew rolled snow into big piles, planning to make two snowmen alike
Smiles on their face, standing in place, it was Frosty and his snowy wife!
We will, we will frost you
We will, we will frost you

Bruce and Andrew planned a ride to the famous Joe’s Bar
To have a near beer and listen to guitar
They took a snowmobile across the slopes, got to the bar and told some jokes!
Then they sang: “Frosty the snowman was a grumpy stumpy soul”
No! They sang we will, we will frost you
We will, we will frost you!