Pitchfork

[Posted Friday, October 24th, 2003 04:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the little pale man with the symbol name who I think goes by Prince again has taken to door-to-door evangelism. A Jehovah's Witness since at least 2001, when he declared his new faith to the world in a magazine interview, the silly little musical genius apparently yapped his way into a Jewish household on October 5th during the Falcons-Vikings game. Having never actually been to the Twin Cities, I imagine people in Minneapolis probably spend their autumn Sundays either (a) debating how to say "I love you" to Paul Westerberg's answering machine or (b) peering across bratwursts at the Vikings game. The woman, who refused to give the newspaper a name beyond "Rochelle," seems to have been of the latter persuasion.

I'll let Rochelle tell it: "This is Sunday about 2 o'clock. And it's the night of Yom Kippur. My first thought is 'Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house for a set. I'm glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over!' Then they start in on this Jehovah's Witnesses stuff."

Rochelle told the reporter that she remembered thinking about the Vikings having possession of the football, but remained polite. Prince and his companion, who identified himself as Larry Graham (formerly of Sly and the Family Stone and his own Graham Central Station), stuck around the house blabbering for what Rochelle approximated to be 25 minutes, then cut his losses and left a pamphlet. The pair then reportedly got into a large black truck and drove away from the house.

Bizarrely, His Purpleness did not appear to be interested in any other homes in Rochelle's Eden Prairie neighborhood. "They go door-to-door," Prince's intended candidate for salvation told the paper. "Walking. He wasn't walking. He was driving."