100 Things About Me

(for burial deep in the archives)

I’ve seen other people do this on their blogs, so here goes…

1) I’m a Cancer. Not that I think that makes any sort of cosmic difference.
2) With few exceptions, I won’t eat a food containing or featuring white creamy substances (paging Dr. Freud…).
3) I’ve met the Grand Rapids, MI version of Bozo the Clown. Bob has met both the GR and the Chicago Bozos.
4) I was a Nickelodeon contest winner when I was thirteen, and was featured in one of their commercials. No, I did not “get slimed.”
5) I’m a tolerant atheist, but really dig Catholic art and symbolism.
6) The vast majority of the cars I have owned are huge four door sedans (as seen in your grandfather’s garage)
7) PBS filmed a jazz concert being put on at Michigan State, and I was sitting over the left shoulder of the artist performing via one camera angle. You can see me nodding off through the whole first act. It was tremendously boring.
8) I get horribly motion sick, but rarely throw up. Anything that spins or rocks, especially boats, is bad news for me.
9) I spent close to eight years straight shaving my own head instead of paying for haircuts.
10) I learned to cook while working for steakhouses.
11) For someone who has a pretty decent vocabulary, I’m a terrible Scrabble player.
12) I own over 70% of all the studio/major label recordings Miles Davis ever made as a leader. If you only count through his 1974 retirement, that percentage jumps to nearly 90%.
13) I have never broken a bone in my body.
14) I have broken my nose three times, never badly enough to require major attention.
15) I have strange freckling on my feet that the doctors assure me is benign.
16) From first through fourth grade I was bussed into a special school for “Open Classroom” education. My bus ride was an hour each way daily.
17) My favorite pizza topping is Pepperoni
18) In the cold fall and winter seasons, I wear sweaters over collared shirts to work so I don’t have to iron my shirts as completely or frequently.
19) I believe “soul food” is the most underrated and neglected of America’s contributions to cuisine.
20) I don’t believe anyone makes better clam chowder than I can make (but it’s been a long time).
21) I won’t touch a food that’s been prepared with mushrooms. And no, portabella mushrooms DO NOT taste “just like beef.”
22) I’ve owned three dogs in my life, only one of which (Frye) I’ve even liked. The other two were named “Baboo” and “Loly.” I wasn’t responsible for either of those names.
23) I’ve also owned a rat and fish as pets. I let the rat loose in the country after he became too much to handle. His name (pre-Eminem, by the way) was “Elemeno.”
24) Deep down, I don’t believe I’m interesting enough to come up with 76 more things for this list.
25) My favorite classes in college were my Economics classes.
26) My least favorite classes in college were the Accounting courses.
27) The only “Letter to the Editors” I’ve ever had published were a letter about prayer in school (Detroit News, circa 2000), and a letter lamenting the fact that our culture lionized Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur after their deaths despite the fact that they both lived less than exemplary lives (State News, MSU, circa 1995).
28) When responsible for hiring waitresses for the student run restaurant at MSU, I gravitated towards the hot ones. Well, mostly.
29) When married, I used to seriously fantasize about two of my ex-wife’s friends (that Gretchen chick and KW), as well as the wife of her best male high school friend, who would have been a better match for me than my wife (I even felt that at the time).
30) I’m easily intimidated by a staggeringly beautiful woman.
31) I’ve got hair on my back, but far, far less than one of my two brothers does.
32) I don’t like spending my money with companies like Marriott and Franklin Covey, as they are Mormon-owned companies, and 15% of the pre-tax profits they make off of you goes directly to the Mormon church.
33) I blame the Mormon dominated culture in Salt Lake City for depriving me of a “normal” high school life, and for stunting my emotional growth.
34) I used to eat the whole apple, core and all, just to gross people out.
35) The thing I was best at in Jr. High and High School was being a prick before people had a chance to be a prick to me first.
36) I find racial jokes told by the right people tremendously funny, but not because I’m a racist or think there’s an element of truth to them. I just think there’s something patently absurd about someone who isn’t a racist at heart telling a really bad Polack joke.
37) There’s not a coffee on the planet too strong for my tastes.
38) Aside from the infrequent Red Bull, one Frozen Coke from Burger King this summer, and one Strawberry Crush about three weeks ago, I haven’t been a pop drinker for almost a full year.
39) Aside from the trench coats and firearm fixations, those kids that shot up Columbine were a lot like me in High School.
40) My biggest single paycheck I’ve ever received was over $22,000 net.
41) I got my first job out of college by impressing a group of bankers while waiting on their large party at a steak house.
42) I used to be a daily pot smoker for nearly five years.
43) I’ve only been out of the country on an overnight or longer trip once, and that was my honeymoon to Jamaica.
44) I used to date a stripper who had been paid money for sex in her past.
45) I’ve only been to a strip club once.
46) My friend J (Big J from Utah) and I had a little contest to see who would lose their virginity first. He beat me by less than two weeks.
47) I like my mashed potatoes and gravy lumpy.
48) I can juggle three items, but they have to be no bigger than grapefruits.
49) I’ve impressed people before with my ability to play blues harmonica.
50) I pluck nose hairs (not that they’re plentiful) with my fingers. My own nose hairs, that is.
51) My online nickname comes from “Boy GZA,” which in the wake of my infatuation with the music of the Wu-Tang Clan (The GZA = The Genius) was the moniker I chose for record keeping in my NBA Live video games.
52) The biggest celebrity I ever met would be former Detroit Piston Bill Laimbeer.
53) I share a name (my real name, first and last) with a Canadian actor who apparently has done his fair share of mafia movies.
54) I survived a coma brought on by spinal meningitis.
55) I don’t look inept as an athlete until skis, skates, boards, pogo sticks, stilts, or anything else comes between my shoes and the ground.
56) I always have been able to throw a football well.
57) I broke Bob’s wrist dunking on him on our 7’ basketball hoop in our driveway in Utah.
58) There’s a small part of me that always would consider dropping everything I had in life at whatever point if my high school crush asked me to (for her, of course). Even when my marriage was good, I still would have at least considered it.
59) I find Hispanic women to be far and away the sexiest women on the planet.
60) I only wear one brand of baseball cap.
61) My current favorite caps are both green, one with a three-leaf clover, one with a four-leaf clover.
62) I didn’t know I had problems with my vision until I flunked the eye exam for my driver’s license when I was 16.
63) Until this summer, my card playing was limited to euchre, cribbage, and Uno.
64) I can be an evil, spiteful bastard. Especially when playing Monopoly.
65) I went through a phase in college where I drank almost nothing but Colt .45 malt liquor.
66) I have “fatty liver,” which has cut off my ability to drink hard alcohol completely.
67) I had a Swatch watch in fifth grade. Unfortunately, my petite wrists looked dumb with a man’s sized watch, so I had a small faced girly Swatch. Which I still wore.
68) I believe drugs should be legal and taxed through the roof.
69) When I was carrying a little less weight (I’m 5’10” and 205 now, I’m not THAT big) and had my shaved head, I looked somewhat like ER’s Anthony Edwards.
70) I don’t generally like dramas on TV.
71) Among many, many other celebrities, I find the chubby sister from “Yes, Dear” attractive.
72) The worst looking celebrity I would still sleep with (money/fame aside, just on looks alone) would be Caroline Rhea.
73) I loathe hearing the words “fabulous” and “hot” on TV, especially on the E! and VH1 networks.
74) I firmly believe the worst state in the union is Iowa.
75) I would never move to the Deep South.
76) I would love to have a non-casino job and be able to live and work in Las Vegas.
77) I’ve never taken an illegal drug that required snorting or injection.
78) I dream of winning the lottery.
79) I knew my parents were going to end up divorced five years or more before they actually went through with it.
80) I wasn’t a gambler before I discovered the horse track in 2001.
81) I chronically bite my fingernails.
82) I’m not afraid to go up my nose and move something physically if I have to.
83) I used to think Red Lobster was a great restaurant.
84) I believe that my cannolis are top notch.
85) I’m 29 and already resigned to the belief that I don’t think the Detroit Lions will win a Super Bowl in my lifetime.
86) I believe Barry Sanders was the greatest running back, bar NONE in NFL history.
87) I tried to talk a good friend in college with whom I used to periodically hook up into having sex so we could each at least lose our virginity to someone we cared about. She put me off for too long, had an extremely unpleasant circumstance surrounding her first time, and had the nerve to tell me she regretted not taking me up on my offer, but still wasn’t going to sleep with me anyway.
88) I can’t decide whether the singer Bjork is sexy, or even attractive.
89) If ESPN was doing a “SportsCentury” episode on me, they almost certainly would have to include the game of Sega Dreamcast NBA Basketball I played in the bar of the restaurant in which I worked, well after hours, half crocked, and against the bartender who owned the system and played the game constantly. My Milwaukee Bucks destroyed his Chicago Bulls by over 20 points. It was the first and last time I ever played that game.
90) I never thought in a million years I could get to 90 things about me.
91) Not even under penalty of dismemberment would I sit through that movie “The Story of Us” again.
92) I miss “Actor Troy McClure” from “The Simpsons” as much, if not more, than I miss Phil Hartman.
93) There are few things funnier than a fat assed Steven Seagal trying to look cool in a kimono.
94) Although a small part of me wishes I had cheated on my wife, I don’t think there is a circumstance I could think of where I would ever cheat on anyone I was in a relationship with.
95) My depression over the last few years has caused me lose touch with a number of my friends, in some cases completely, and that’s even more depressing.
96) Nothing makes me happier than big tits. Really.
97) There’s no better indicator in my home poker game of what someone is holding than the look on their face after I’ve just check raised them.
98) I stick to my brand of cigarettes (either Parliament Ultra Lights or American Spirit Organic Lights) and don’t bum smokes of people in bars to try to cut down on my smoking as best possible. I probably average two to three smokes a day at most.
99) I’ve never been hunting, and probably won’t ever go.
100) I’ve always been the most uptight, stressed out person I know.