Friday nights he performs his Money for the Band routine, improvising poetry for a ten minute set between acts, before passing a hat for the musicians who play at the Barking Spider Tavern in the campus of Case Western Reserve University. He was short listed as the Best Performing Poet in the Network of Schemers and Dreamers three times between the years 1987-1993. He once climbed out his window and scaled a tall tree to get at a branch and shake off a catbird who wouldn’t let him sleep.