25 Things About Me… Ugh

If you have an account on Facebook, the chances are good that you’ve been tagged on this “25 Things About Me” meme thingamabob. I know I’ve been tagged a good half-million times already. I was fully hell-bent on ignoring the thing until it went away. But then it got to the point where it was ridiculous. Everyone tagged me. The Slackmistress tagged me. Your Mom tagged me. So did Discotrash. I’m even eyeballing Lizet on this one.

So, it is with some mild annoyance that I trudge up 25 things about me that you didn’t know and probably didn’t care to know. I’ll receive the proper credit for it because my blog feeds to Facebook. A special hello to you if you’re reading my blog from Facebook. Come look at my blog for realsies. It’s much more colorful than looking at it on Facebook.

Also, I’m ignoring the rules by not tagging anyone. I simply refuse to let this vile plague get past my doorstep. Lord Bob probably wouldn’t let me past my doorstep without paying a toll anyway.

So, without any further ado:

1. One of my cats loves you and the other one hates you. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is which.

2. I’ve never eaten at Red Lobster in my life. I have no desire to wear a bib again until I’m 85 years-old. Plus, I’d rather eat fish and fish products at place slightly less vapid-looking.

3. I have a tendency to entirely miss out on certain pop stars. I turn off my brain and walk away when such “artists” are present. In fact, looking at the Billboard Hot 100 right now, I can confirm for you that I’ve never in my life heard a song by a band called “The All-American Rejects.” I don’t know who Taylor Swift is. The Fray? T.I.? Saving Abel? No fucking clue. I can hear the sound of soulless mainstream “product” (and I do mean “product,” not music) from a mile away and I just have to run in the opposite direction when it‘s present. Sorry. If that makes me a “music snob,” too fucking bad. My taste in music is better than yours anyway.

4. On the complete opposite end of the musical spectrum, I’m one of those freaks who says he likes Can and actually means it. I’m not just a Radiohead fan trying to make himself look smart.

5. I was in Little League as a kid. I was a pitcher. I was a terrible pitcher. I quit playing because I was bored and I wanted to spend more time being bad.

6. I was a DM. I won’t translate that for those in the audience who don’t what that means. If it makes you feel any better, I wasn’t a DM in high school. I was just very, very bored in college. The upside is that I made some really great friends during that time.

7. For those of you who have never met me in real life, I don’t talk much. Bet you wouldn’t have ever guessed that!

8. I did a summer journalism internship thingie at a local community college back in high school. That summer, rumors of Lollapalooza coming to Kern County were rampant. I was sent to cover the story in Buttonwillow, where the event organizers were scouting a speed track as a location. Instead of writing a proper story about the festival, I chose to write a humorous piece about how Buttonwillow is a town of one “historic” tree and three houses. No one complained.

9. I’m listening to Dan Auerbach’s solo album as I write this.

10. Growing up, my bedroom walls were covered in posters of NHL goaltenders. I used to buy the pinup magazines full of posters (back when stores sold such things) and plaster my walls with Darren Eliot and Andy Moog and Grant Fuhr.

11. When I was a little kid, I used to have a recurring nightmare about the guy who turns to jelly in Airplane!. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it was because I was too young to get the joke.

12. It drives me nuts when people who have a low tolerance for alcohol feel the need to match me drink for drink. Not only am I usually much larger than they are, but I’m also a more regular drinker than most. I’d much rather they pace themselves, instead of getting piss-drunk in 30 minutes.

13. I’ve read Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad three times and have been bored every single time…

14. …but I love Apocalypse Now. Go figure.

15. My sister is nine years older than me. As a result, we don’t really have a brother-sister relationship. It’s more like “good friends” who see each other occasionally.

16. When I wrote for The Bakersfield Californian back in the late 90s, I used to get weekly hate mail. It was rather funny, actually.

17. Speaking of The Bakersfield Californian, I once wrote something about using all the ink in a Bic ballpoint pen without losing the pen first. The Bic corporation got their hands on the story and sent me a manila envelope full of pens as a “thank you.”

18. The only things I miss about college are the children’s theatre classes I used to take. Those classes were both freeing and thrilling.

19. The last theatrical, non-children’s, production I appeared in was absolutely terrible. I’ll spare you the details, but it was a college production of a Shakespearean play. It was awful. Just brutally awful. And the experience of putting it on was even worse. It soured me on the theatre for a lot longer than I would have thought at the time.

20. I have a plan for the day David Bowie dies. First, I’m probably going to cry for two and a half hours while listening to The Berlin Trilogy. Then, I’ll need three other people to get in a car with me and drive all over town with the windows down, screaming the lyrics to the Scary Monsters album at anyone we pass. This really is important to me.

21. I honestly prefer the taste of diet colas to regular ones. High Fructose Corn Syrup leaves my mouth with an obnoxiously sticky feeling, so I avoid drinking regular sodas as much as possible. If I can find sodas made with cane sugar, I'll drink those. But generally, I drink diet colas because the chemical aftertaste doesn't offend me as much as having a mouth full of sticky.

22. I lost my virginity at the age of 14. It wasn’t that exciting, frankly.

23. My mother was not born in this country. She is, in fact, very German. But what makes it interesting is that, upon moving to this country, she stopped speaking German and worked to eliminate her accent because kids made fun of her. As a result, I learned next to nothing about my heritage as a kid.

24. I was in a band in high school and I actually thought we were good enough to make it. Regardless of whether we were good enough, I should have known better.

25. I’m constantly torn between agonizing over the life I no longer have and chomping at the bit to enjoy the new life I could be having right now. Neither feeling is especially winning at the moment.

Oh, Ceiling Cat, that was exhausting. I blame everyone who tagged me. You guys are cruel. Oh, so cruel.