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Like quite a few Americans, I tuned in the other night to the new Jay Leno Show, curious to see what Kanye West would say about interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for winning best Female Video for "You Belong With Me" at the MTV Video Music Awards.  According to Rolling Stone, Swift was seen "hysterically crying" backstage and West was bounced from the show.  Now a day later, there was Kanye slumped in an oversize chair sitting opposite Leno ready to discuss the incident.

Watching the interview made me think back to the recent interviewI shot with Leno for his website promoting my memoir Big Sid's Vincati.. Because of my own experience, I could recognize some of Leno's characteristic moves as interviewer. Perhaps because critics were already calling the Kanye West interview another "Hugh Grant moment," Jay begins graciously, thanking the rap star for not backing out.

Then Leno asks his first question: "Tell us about your day, have you had a tough day, today?"  Leno chuckles through the line and the audience amplifies the laughter.

But Kanye's response is totally absent of humor.  Characteristically, Leno persists, feeding Kanye another opportunity to lighten up.  Jay says, "When did it strike you-uh oh...!"

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In the mid 90's, I had an agent, Stewart Richardson. He's dead now so all the big important facts are easy to verify: as editor in chief of Doubleday, he worked with James Dickey, John Updike and Robert F. Kennedy. Later he started his own press, got on a plane and signed Mikhail Gorbachev while in Russia. But back when he was my agent, way before the internet, verifying the facts about Stewart was tougher. Still, after a few Lexus/Nexus searches I knew he was telling the truth. As I spotted each news item, I grew more certain success was mine, or would be any day now.

Feeling that I needed to meet this man, I flew to New York where he graciously offered to take me for lunch at the Century Club. I didn't know what the Century Club was then but I found it at the appointed time and date. I knocked on the imposing door and was informed it was closed. Befuddled, I persuaded them to allow me to wait inside for Mr. Richardson. At the end of the day, he still had not come.

That night I learned that he had assumed that I would know that when the Century Club is closed you go next door to the Yale Club. There he had waited all afternoon, just as I had. We rescheduled for the next day, met at the appointed time and had lunch.

I remember admiring his broad Windsor knot and savoir faire. We talked about writing. When it comes to doing research, I am thorough. So I had tracked down Richardson's lone novel and read it. Stewart told me he thought nothing of that book, just an exercise to improve his skills as an editor.

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I walked across the University of Louisville campus, reviewing what I would say about John Milton when I noticed that it was raining just a few drops. I looked up and the sky seemed only slightly moist. The overcast clouds were a billowy slate gray and though I had clearly bet wrong to ride to work on my Honda Hawk GT, I wasn't alarmed. I thought I was looking at a slight drizzle, one perhaps short enough to wait out.

An hour later, when I emerged from class, it was pouring. I stood under the building's overhang, recommending titles to a student interested in Milton's politics and his jail time. Then I ran from building to building to get back to my office to avoid the rain, with the intention of checking my email and consulting the local weather radar.

The note from my editor at Hudson Street Press was short and stated--almost as if in passing---that she had printed out my memoir and shipped it off to copy editing. Then I checked the weather and saw that it looked like if I left soon, I might be able to ride in between two waves of the front and avoid the rain.

I exited the building in a slight mist. Walking to my bike, I began to look forward to the ride. Slick streets are dangerous but better than riding through a real down pour. Worse yet, I had no rain gear with me.

When I pulled away, I felt soothed by the distinct sound a bike makes with wet wheels. Somehow in the rain, everything seems sharper. Then before I knew it, I was riding into heavy rain.

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It popped up in my email inbox:

"I don't think you need to be a motorcycle enthusiast to lose yourself in this book.  It is an open-handed classic about living and love, with a heart as big as a Vincent V-twin engine."-Mark Knopfler.

For a moment I was stunned. It was another Saturday night with nowhere to go. Later, when I was outside in the cold putting trash away, the word "classic" hit home.  I had longed my whole life to hear that word used about my work.

Decades ago, when I wasn't old enough to drive but old enough to want to, I wasted so many Saturday nights falling asleep in front of the TV.  Most often it was the USA network's late night programming.  In heavy rotation then was a short film called Making Movies.  It was comprised of a soundtrack of three or four Dire Straits songs, all off the Making Movies album, paired with short silent movies.

These were the first music videos I remember. I loved them all-"Tunnel of Love," "Skateaway," but especially "Romeo and Juliet."  

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Matthew Biberman is our guest blogger during the week of May 4th. If you have any questions for Matthew Biberman, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information about Big Sid's Vincanti: The Story of a Father, a Son, and the Motorcycle of a Lifetime:

Read an excerpt.

A father and son build a legendary motorcycle and, along the way, reconstruct their relationship in this moving memoir

When his father had a near-fatal heart attack and gave up the will to live, Matthew Biberman panicked. Impulsively, Matthew promised his father, an expert motorcycle mechanic, that they would build a Vincati motorcycle together. The Loch Ness monster of motorcycles, a Vincati-half Vincent, half Ducati- had never been completed in North America. Building a Vincati was considered, at best, a fool's errand; at worst, an expensive waste of motorcycle parts.