one man's ceiling
Sunday, February 04, 2007
6 weird things about me (although 5 would be better)
lyco tagged me on this one. gotta list six weird things about myself. how weird is that?
1. kindergarten. this is where i established my true weirdness. when we were all asked what we wanted to be when we grew up all the boys either said firemen or policemen. i was the only boy who said something different and i said swimming pool builder. can you tell i grew up in LA? what the hell? i think i took that natural boy idea of digging and projected it to its most natural conclusion. another piece of personal weird for me in kindergarten was when i waited outside the bathrooms and when elaine k. came out i kissed her. why? because i liked her. oh, but what a firestorm i created! conferences were had and i was asked repeatedly if someone had put me up to it or if i meant to hurt elaine. hurt her? i kissed her! why was that so hard to understand? but, oh, the trauma, the drama. after that i had kids calling me weird and my response was uniformly "yeah, so i'm weird." i knew it then, i was proud of it, and embracing it early on prevented my enemies from using it against me.
as a side note, i ran into elaine k. at my 20 year high school reunion. she introduced me to her hubby as "that guy i was telling you about." for years, all the way through high school and up until that night in the convention center i had assumed elaine hated me. and she had assumed i hated her because she had spurned me at the tender age of 6. truth was, i never hated elaine, and just assumed her distancing from me was a sort of smugness. but there we were, 32 years after the fact, still talking about that kiss outside the bathroom. that's pretty weird when you think about it.
2. a buffalo once snotted all over my hand. true. i was driving through golden gate park in SF when i noticed they had an enclosed field with a small herd of buffalo in it. i pulled over to an area that had a sort of feeding paddock where there were a couple of buffalo next to the fence. one in particular seemed to have it's eye on me and defying all logic and safety i stuffed my hand through the chain link fence to pet it. the friendly buffalo moved forward and made contact with my hand, rubbing the flat of it's face against my palm, the part right between the eyes. a couple of strokes later it backed up and sneezed, covering my entire hand in buffalo snot. apparently the buffalo had a need for an irritant to make it sneeze and clear out it's nasal passages. extracting my hand through the fence essentially acted as a squeegee, leaving a long ribbon of buffalo snot hanging there for all to see. extract the lesson and moral you see fit, few can say they've pet a buffalo much less had one deliberately sneeze on their hand.
3. in fourth grade i won third place in the state-wide dental health association dental health awareness contest. i don't know if this qualifies as "weird" but it was a total rip-off in the end. everyone in our class made posters for the contest and the teacher mailed them off. i took third place with a poster of a crazy looking monster (it represented tooth decay and bacteria) with the slogan "don't let me get in your mouth." to this day i can't believe that was a third place winner for my division. my friend pat got an honorable mention for his version of uncle sam in the classic montogomery pose saying "i want you to brush your teeth." we were the only winners in our school district in any age group. we were taken to a special awards luncheon at royce hall at UCLA by the school nurse. the american dental health association had just rolled out their new slogan "operation: apple brush" with the idea that eating an apple after a meal was as good as brushing your teeth, if you couldn't brush your teeth. ha ha, how silly we were back in the 1970s. anyway at the luncheon the first place winners got a certificate and a plaque and a t-shirt with the new logo on it. second and third place got nothing but lunch. nothing. how is that any different than honorable mention getting nothing but a lunch? why did i even go to that stupid luncheon. i hated that experience, hated it. don't ever enter a contest where only first place gets something. it's a rip off. it was boring and they served us school cafeteria style salsbury steak and it sucked. no, i'm not still bitter.
4. i have supersonic hearing. a few years back i began having a problem in my ears. basically i could hear things i never used to before, like my sinuses dripping. and if i focused on it the sound of swallowing was like the roar of the ocean in my ears. i went to a dr, then had some x-rays of my perfectly round head, then went to an ears-nose-throat specialist. the ent cleaned out my ears and then did some tests, those kind where you have to indicated when you hear a tone. i'm sitting in a soundproof booth with bone crushing headphones on and poking my finger in the air when i hear the tones. it feel like forever and i'm worried i'm losing my hearing. the dr shows me my results. it looks like a bell curve with the highs and lows sitting on the "normal" baseline. but the mid-range, the top of the bell curve, had been sliced off. "your mid-rage hearing is off the charts. you probably have some problems with sounds in that frequency causing interference with other sounds." yeah, like a television studio's worth of electronic can trigger a migraine and i can walk into an en empty office suite and tell you if there is a single computer on in a cubicle somewhere. or i know when a fluorescent light is starting to die, long before it starts to flicker and hum. because i can hear all these things.
5. when i was a boy, pre- school aged, i thought that if i sat in front of the TV when it was turned off it would swallow me up. this requires a couple of explanations. first, this would be back when we had an old black and white TV that used to take a while to warm up. and when you shut it off the old cathode tube would reduce down to a glowing dot that would fade away. it's not that strange a thought to imagine those people trapped in the big TV box being shrunk into oblivion, and being afraid that, like a bathtub drain, getting sucked into the whirling vortex of the cathode rays. second, anyone who thinks i got this impression from seeing poltergeist as a kid (as some have assumed when i've told this story) you need to understand: i'm old enough to have written the script for that movie.
6. zuska says that i have to write this one: every time i pee i have to go get a glass of water. i must protest this point because it really is only at the end of the night, just before i go to bed. but even if it were every time (as she insists) how can that be weird? you replace what you lost? you're going to sleep for 6 to 8 hours and you're not going to eat, your body's going to perspire, your mouth get's parched. and there's nothing worse than waking up dehydrated. do i occasionally overdo it and need to get up in the middle of the night to pee? yes, but i'm not like some old man with an enlarged prostate like those farts on those TV ads who let a problem get well out of hand before they even go to their doctors.
i forgot what i was supposed to do here. tag some people? virtula t, do you want to take a stab? i can see you all out there on my sitemeter traffic but you don't leave comments or link to me so i can't invite many of you personally. please, feel free to take the ball and run with it. let me know who you are and what you've posted so i can see, too.
lyco tagged me on this one. gotta list six weird things about myself. how weird is that?1. kindergarten. this is where i established my true weirdness. when we were all asked what we wanted to be when we grew up all the boys either said firemen or policemen. i was the only boy who said something different and i said swimming pool builder. can you tell i grew up in LA? what the hell? i think i took that natural boy idea of digging and projected it to its most natural conclusion. another piece of personal weird for me in kindergarten was when i waited outside the bathrooms and when elaine k. came out i kissed her. why? because i liked her. oh, but what a firestorm i created! conferences were had and i was asked repeatedly if someone had put me up to it or if i meant to hurt elaine. hurt her? i kissed her! why was that so hard to understand? but, oh, the trauma, the drama. after that i had kids calling me weird and my response was uniformly "yeah, so i'm weird." i knew it then, i was proud of it, and embracing it early on prevented my enemies from using it against me.
as a side note, i ran into elaine k. at my 20 year high school reunion. she introduced me to her hubby as "that guy i was telling you about." for years, all the way through high school and up until that night in the convention center i had assumed elaine hated me. and she had assumed i hated her because she had spurned me at the tender age of 6. truth was, i never hated elaine, and just assumed her distancing from me was a sort of smugness. but there we were, 32 years after the fact, still talking about that kiss outside the bathroom. that's pretty weird when you think about it.
2. a buffalo once snotted all over my hand. true. i was driving through golden gate park in SF when i noticed they had an enclosed field with a small herd of buffalo in it. i pulled over to an area that had a sort of feeding paddock where there were a couple of buffalo next to the fence. one in particular seemed to have it's eye on me and defying all logic and safety i stuffed my hand through the chain link fence to pet it. the friendly buffalo moved forward and made contact with my hand, rubbing the flat of it's face against my palm, the part right between the eyes. a couple of strokes later it backed up and sneezed, covering my entire hand in buffalo snot. apparently the buffalo had a need for an irritant to make it sneeze and clear out it's nasal passages. extracting my hand through the fence essentially acted as a squeegee, leaving a long ribbon of buffalo snot hanging there for all to see. extract the lesson and moral you see fit, few can say they've pet a buffalo much less had one deliberately sneeze on their hand.
3. in fourth grade i won third place in the state-wide dental health association dental health awareness contest. i don't know if this qualifies as "weird" but it was a total rip-off in the end. everyone in our class made posters for the contest and the teacher mailed them off. i took third place with a poster of a crazy looking monster (it represented tooth decay and bacteria) with the slogan "don't let me get in your mouth." to this day i can't believe that was a third place winner for my division. my friend pat got an honorable mention for his version of uncle sam in the classic montogomery pose saying "i want you to brush your teeth." we were the only winners in our school district in any age group. we were taken to a special awards luncheon at royce hall at UCLA by the school nurse. the american dental health association had just rolled out their new slogan "operation: apple brush" with the idea that eating an apple after a meal was as good as brushing your teeth, if you couldn't brush your teeth. ha ha, how silly we were back in the 1970s. anyway at the luncheon the first place winners got a certificate and a plaque and a t-shirt with the new logo on it. second and third place got nothing but lunch. nothing. how is that any different than honorable mention getting nothing but a lunch? why did i even go to that stupid luncheon. i hated that experience, hated it. don't ever enter a contest where only first place gets something. it's a rip off. it was boring and they served us school cafeteria style salsbury steak and it sucked. no, i'm not still bitter.
4. i have supersonic hearing. a few years back i began having a problem in my ears. basically i could hear things i never used to before, like my sinuses dripping. and if i focused on it the sound of swallowing was like the roar of the ocean in my ears. i went to a dr, then had some x-rays of my perfectly round head, then went to an ears-nose-throat specialist. the ent cleaned out my ears and then did some tests, those kind where you have to indicated when you hear a tone. i'm sitting in a soundproof booth with bone crushing headphones on and poking my finger in the air when i hear the tones. it feel like forever and i'm worried i'm losing my hearing. the dr shows me my results. it looks like a bell curve with the highs and lows sitting on the "normal" baseline. but the mid-range, the top of the bell curve, had been sliced off. "your mid-rage hearing is off the charts. you probably have some problems with sounds in that frequency causing interference with other sounds." yeah, like a television studio's worth of electronic can trigger a migraine and i can walk into an en empty office suite and tell you if there is a single computer on in a cubicle somewhere. or i know when a fluorescent light is starting to die, long before it starts to flicker and hum. because i can hear all these things.
5. when i was a boy, pre- school aged, i thought that if i sat in front of the TV when it was turned off it would swallow me up. this requires a couple of explanations. first, this would be back when we had an old black and white TV that used to take a while to warm up. and when you shut it off the old cathode tube would reduce down to a glowing dot that would fade away. it's not that strange a thought to imagine those people trapped in the big TV box being shrunk into oblivion, and being afraid that, like a bathtub drain, getting sucked into the whirling vortex of the cathode rays. second, anyone who thinks i got this impression from seeing poltergeist as a kid (as some have assumed when i've told this story) you need to understand: i'm old enough to have written the script for that movie.
6. zuska says that i have to write this one: every time i pee i have to go get a glass of water. i must protest this point because it really is only at the end of the night, just before i go to bed. but even if it were every time (as she insists) how can that be weird? you replace what you lost? you're going to sleep for 6 to 8 hours and you're not going to eat, your body's going to perspire, your mouth get's parched. and there's nothing worse than waking up dehydrated. do i occasionally overdo it and need to get up in the middle of the night to pee? yes, but i'm not like some old man with an enlarged prostate like those farts on those TV ads who let a problem get well out of hand before they even go to their doctors.
i forgot what i was supposed to do here. tag some people? virtula t, do you want to take a stab? i can see you all out there on my sitemeter traffic but you don't leave comments or link to me so i can't invite many of you personally. please, feel free to take the ball and run with it. let me know who you are and what you've posted so i can see, too.
Labels: buffalo, meme, non-food, personal, tagged, weird
¶ Sunday, February 04, 2007 0 comments
Monday, January 15, 2007
10 questions
my zuska tagged me on this. anyone who feels moved to propel this forward please let me know so i can see. i wouldn't mind a link back as well and would do likewise.
1. If you were stuck on an island and could only eat one cuisine (e.g., French, Italian, etc.) for the rest of your life, what would it be? Why?
i'm presuming, of course, that there's a full kitchen, endless supplies and perhaps a nice kitchen staff stuck there with me. and it would be... italian. sure, i'd miss burgers and fries but in the end i think there's a whole world of pasta and sauces and gellato and all kinds of meats and cheeses that wins me.
i flitted with the idea of german cuisine but only for the beer and bochwurst. that would get tired after a while. and there are plenty of chinese dishes that also gave some pull, but no, it's italian. ask me tomorrow and i might say mexican.
2. What is the most unusual food you've eaten?
i've eaten bugs. deliberately. and not in a foreign country. the first time i was going through some boy scout wilderness training and was offered crickets, sauteed in butter and included in pancakes. not exactly roughing it, but i did eat them. crunchy, like sweet nuts. but don't eat the heads. they're very bitter.
the second time was in college. i was living in a student co-op in berkeley and we had an entomologist phd living in the house. one night he prepared a snack feast that included all sorts of insect goodies, all lab-raised and clean. applesauce surprise cake (the surprise was earthworms), chocolate chip chirpie cookies (crickets again), royal mash on biscuits (bee honey and larvae), and a couple other things i've since forgotten.
3. What is the most unusual food you've eaten and liked?
ah, liked. that's the tricky part. for most people nopales (cactus) might sound unusual, but growing up in california you get used to seeing those flat green succulents in the produce section.
sounds kinda wimpy to say, after the bugs and all, but i do like a good bison burger when i can find it. last time was up in portland, maine, where zuska and i stumbled onto allagash.
4. What foods will you avoid eating (either because of a dietary choice or allergies or just plain don't like)?
liver. brussels sprouts (though i did prepare them recently and they weren't bad, but i really don't like them). okra. rubbery ocean foods like calamari and squid and octopus. it's gonna be a long time before i try paella again. sangria always sits wrong with me.
5. Do you cook (and by that, I mean prepare a meal that you'd serve to friends)?
i cook on average five nights a week. i serve that food to my family. i'd serve it to friends but i'd be anxious about it because i always want for people to have good culinary experiences. i hate the thought that people will walk away from my table thinking something was lacking or that they just choked down what i prepared to be nice.
i have made complete thanksgiving dinners from scratch -- both traditional and vegan, side by side -- to feed my staff when i was a theatre manager.
6. If yes, what is your favorite dish to prepare to impress someone?
i have a basic tomato-based pasta sauce that i think rocks, and another that incorporates chicken and butternut squash. zuska reminds me that i once impressed her on valentine's day with fillet mignon with a cherry sauce. i've got a pasta-free spinach-mushroom lasagna i'm fond of.
7. When you go to a restaurant, what's your ordering strategy/preference?
first, i like to sit facing the door, away from the kitchen, where i can peoplewatch. i try not to look at the prices of main courses until i've narrowed down what interests me, and then rule out anything that looks overpriced -- it usually means it's all about presentation.
for specific items i like to look at things i know i would never try at home, or things i am familiar with if i think the restaurant can show me something amazing. i like traditional fare that's made simply but upscale, or just simply done. i have discovered that a local pub that serves food is more likely to both surprise and delight me than a fancier place because i hate the pretentiousness of most upscale dining experiences. boston is full of people and places that highly prize their upscale eateries but wouldn't last a new york minute in most other metro areas around the world.
8. Have you ever returned a dish or wine to the kitchen at a restaurant? Why?
only when the order was wrong, and even then i've not always returned the plate. returning a wine that hasn't actually spoiled, molded or corked is plain asinine.
9. How many cookbooks do you own?
between a half dozen and a dozen. some aren't practical (i should feature some of the appetizers from a 1950's bar guide) and some are a little dated (the 1930's louisianna rotary woman's cookbook uses odd ingredients and terms) and it really comes down to the bh&g, the whole foods cookbook, occasionally the joy of cooking for reference and a bunch of loose recipes culled from the food network and various web sites like slashfood.
10. What is one food that you wouldn't want to live without?
chocolate. or garlic. i suppose i could live without chocolate, but to have to cook without the option of garlic is unfathomable. could i live without pasta? perhaps, but it'd be a slow death.
1. If you were stuck on an island and could only eat one cuisine (e.g., French, Italian, etc.) for the rest of your life, what would it be? Why?
i'm presuming, of course, that there's a full kitchen, endless supplies and perhaps a nice kitchen staff stuck there with me. and it would be... italian. sure, i'd miss burgers and fries but in the end i think there's a whole world of pasta and sauces and gellato and all kinds of meats and cheeses that wins me.
i flitted with the idea of german cuisine but only for the beer and bochwurst. that would get tired after a while. and there are plenty of chinese dishes that also gave some pull, but no, it's italian. ask me tomorrow and i might say mexican.
2. What is the most unusual food you've eaten?
i've eaten bugs. deliberately. and not in a foreign country. the first time i was going through some boy scout wilderness training and was offered crickets, sauteed in butter and included in pancakes. not exactly roughing it, but i did eat them. crunchy, like sweet nuts. but don't eat the heads. they're very bitter.
the second time was in college. i was living in a student co-op in berkeley and we had an entomologist phd living in the house. one night he prepared a snack feast that included all sorts of insect goodies, all lab-raised and clean. applesauce surprise cake (the surprise was earthworms), chocolate chip chirpie cookies (crickets again), royal mash on biscuits (bee honey and larvae), and a couple other things i've since forgotten.
3. What is the most unusual food you've eaten and liked?
ah, liked. that's the tricky part. for most people nopales (cactus) might sound unusual, but growing up in california you get used to seeing those flat green succulents in the produce section.
sounds kinda wimpy to say, after the bugs and all, but i do like a good bison burger when i can find it. last time was up in portland, maine, where zuska and i stumbled onto allagash.
4. What foods will you avoid eating (either because of a dietary choice or allergies or just plain don't like)?
liver. brussels sprouts (though i did prepare them recently and they weren't bad, but i really don't like them). okra. rubbery ocean foods like calamari and squid and octopus. it's gonna be a long time before i try paella again. sangria always sits wrong with me.
5. Do you cook (and by that, I mean prepare a meal that you'd serve to friends)?
i cook on average five nights a week. i serve that food to my family. i'd serve it to friends but i'd be anxious about it because i always want for people to have good culinary experiences. i hate the thought that people will walk away from my table thinking something was lacking or that they just choked down what i prepared to be nice.
i have made complete thanksgiving dinners from scratch -- both traditional and vegan, side by side -- to feed my staff when i was a theatre manager.
6. If yes, what is your favorite dish to prepare to impress someone?
i have a basic tomato-based pasta sauce that i think rocks, and another that incorporates chicken and butternut squash. zuska reminds me that i once impressed her on valentine's day with fillet mignon with a cherry sauce. i've got a pasta-free spinach-mushroom lasagna i'm fond of.
7. When you go to a restaurant, what's your ordering strategy/preference?
first, i like to sit facing the door, away from the kitchen, where i can peoplewatch. i try not to look at the prices of main courses until i've narrowed down what interests me, and then rule out anything that looks overpriced -- it usually means it's all about presentation.
for specific items i like to look at things i know i would never try at home, or things i am familiar with if i think the restaurant can show me something amazing. i like traditional fare that's made simply but upscale, or just simply done. i have discovered that a local pub that serves food is more likely to both surprise and delight me than a fancier place because i hate the pretentiousness of most upscale dining experiences. boston is full of people and places that highly prize their upscale eateries but wouldn't last a new york minute in most other metro areas around the world.
8. Have you ever returned a dish or wine to the kitchen at a restaurant? Why?
only when the order was wrong, and even then i've not always returned the plate. returning a wine that hasn't actually spoiled, molded or corked is plain asinine.
9. How many cookbooks do you own?
between a half dozen and a dozen. some aren't practical (i should feature some of the appetizers from a 1950's bar guide) and some are a little dated (the 1930's louisianna rotary woman's cookbook uses odd ingredients and terms) and it really comes down to the bh&g, the whole foods cookbook, occasionally the joy of cooking for reference and a bunch of loose recipes culled from the food network and various web sites like slashfood.
10. What is one food that you wouldn't want to live without?
chocolate. or garlic. i suppose i could live without chocolate, but to have to cook without the option of garlic is unfathomable. could i live without pasta? perhaps, but it'd be a slow death.
Labels: favorite foods, least favorite foods, meme
¶ Monday, January 15, 2007 1 comments
