My friend Michael Baker, who maintains one of my favorite New York blogs, The Lunar Gemini, recently gave me a nice compliment as well as getting tagged with another blog meme; 8 random facts. Since I have had personal experience with a few of those tidbits (especially the infamous Blue Bell freezer at the Baker family estate), I feel compelled to further his blogger kharma and participate. I have also had a few drinks tonight which causes me to be a little bit loose with personal information. Here we go:
1) Experiencing severe pains in my abdomin, I had to be rushed to the hospital from Boy Scout camp with suspicions that my appendix had ruptured. The brilliant medical staff realized that my appendix was just fine and I actually had a bad case of gas from the highly volitle mess hall food. Several years later, I would learn just what it means to experience severe abdominal pain.
2) I am claustrophobic and (legally) color blind. Ironic considering my love for live music and graphic design.
3) As a young child (4 years old), our family lived out in the country on a “ranch”. We owned a horse – Rocky – until said horse tried to kick me while feeding him. My father sold him the next day.
4) I spent a week with some great kids and residents of Smoketown in Louisville, Kentucky at a community center where, several years earlier, a young boxer by the name of Cassius Clay, Jr. first trained as a boxer.
5) In Midland, MI during high school, I worked for an upscale retirement home as a prep-cook and dishwasher where one evening, a resident took a shotgun to his head and killed himself. In order to spare the residents and the female managers the grief of dealing with the aftermath – another prep cook and I dealt with the cleanup.
6) I jumped off The Tridge in Midland, MI in a highly word-of-mouth publicized end-of-school stunt with a friend.
7) In what is the strangest celebrity encounter I have ever had, I met Tom Arnold at a Cowboy Mouth show at La Zona Rosa in Austin, following a Barenaked Ladies show at the Austin Music Hall. After he jammed with the band, he told me he was in town working on film called Just Sue Me. I would later figure out that Tom Arnold is a liar and that I am gullible.
8) I recently interviewed for – and was seriously considering – a job in Baghdad, Iraq as a web development liason to General Petraeus and his staff at the US Embassy. Had I been able to obtain the security clearance they needed, in the time frame they needed – this blog might have gone silent for at least a year.
Fin. Ward, I tag you because I know you will be annoyed. Heh.
I was just listening to Clint Mansell - Death Is a Disease