[sic]

So my baby was catching up on my blog and found a comment to my Dodger game post from Shannon and when she clicked over to read her blog called “Sha in L.A.” she found a cat interview meme and took it upon herself to put the following questions to Bink, which you can read here. Susan left it to me to interview the other three cats in the house:

Top to bottom: Pepper, Jiggy, Pumpkin

1. Your ages?

Pepper: 8 last week.
Jiggy: 3 1/2 — but don’t bother asking Pumpkin… he’s a bit “challenged” shall we say?
Pumpkin: I’m the Pumpkin!
Jiggy: Pumpkin’s about 4-1/2.

2. Your ages when came to live with your people?

Pepper: 1
Jiggy: 12 weeks or so.
Pumpkin: I’m the Pumpkin!
Jiggy (sighing): I’d guess Pumpkin was about 1-1/2.

3.What color are the collars you’re wearing right now?

Pepper: Collars? I don’t wear no stinking collars.
Jiggy: Likewise.
Pumpkin: What’s a collar? I’m the Pumpkin!

(more…)

Ahhh yes, I found I have been tagged to provide “Eight Things You Don’t Know About Me” by my favorite red-headed Pittsburghian grad student Carolyn who over at her Pinky’s Paperhaus blog has seen fit to include me in her chain. Other than qualifying the title with “Probably” between the “You” and the “Don’t” let’s get on with it shall we?

1. I was born with shortened achilles tendons and walked in a modified tiptoe for most of my childhood. To correct this I had to wear a variety of clunky orthopedic shoes as a child that worked to stretch the tendons. The absolute coolest part (and by that I mean entirely not cool) was that the shoes were outfitted with complete with those metallic taps on the heel whose *click* sound or lack thereof was respectively designed to remind me that I was either walking correctly or not. You can just bet I loved tapping down echoing elementary school hallways.

Fortunately by the mid-1970s, the famous Earth Shoe with its negative heel came into being and by 5th grade from then I was shod in a slightly more stylish (at least for the time) and decidedly less noisy shoe. And they worked. My tendons were declared officially elongated by the following year.

2. At 12 years old I wanted to be a decathlete after Bruce Jenner won the Olympic decathlon in Montreal in 1976. I even went to see my favorite phys-ed instructor, Coach Hills, at Le Conte Junior High during summer school and told him of my goal. He very realistically asked me where the hell was I going to find the athleticism required, much less a pole to vault over anything with. That was the end of that dream.

3. I knew instantaneously that a relationship in its early stages with an otherwise wonderul gal during the summer of 1984 was over when during a hot tub party the subject turned to favorite writers and after I earnestly said Hemingway was one of mine, she sounded off in all her learned San Diego State freshmen-year glory about her abject hatred for him, adamantly insisting he was too verbose, with the others present pretty much in agreement. Excusing myself I calmly got out of water, dried off, dressed, left and never spoke to her nor saw her again.

4. I wore a t-shirt with the famous Farrah Fawcett poster on it for my eighth grade school picture. In ninth grade I wore overalls, which were all the rage that year.

5. When I was in third grade down the driveway alongside the apartment building I lived in I’d onyourmarksgetsetgo race airplanes passing high overhead and think I beat them.

6. I’m self-taught in the art of shoelace tying. The method I figured out on my own as a kid is clumsy and slow and wrong but it works for me still to this day.

7. At around the same time I was racing planes I accidentally discovered how to roll my tongue when I said the word “checkers.”

8. I secretly heart memes (but I do not tag anyone directly).

Fellow blogger Julia who I met alongside the LAX runway when we both went there to see the humonstrous new Airbus A380 historically come to town back in March (who knew my YouTube clip of the landing would garner more than 11,000 views!) has tagged me with a meme that she in turn was tagged with last month, the rules of which are as follows:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own eight random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag eight people and include their names
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Meme party pooper though I may be, I’m going to ignore the last two rules as I never move a meme beyond me to anyone specific, instead choosing the much safer route of inviting any readers to pick up the ball and run with it if they so desire and then link post a comment linking me to it. So with that here’s my eight random/facts, habits, and anything else that comes to mind:

1. When I sit working at a computer I have to have a sharpened pencil behind my left ear. Rarely do I actually write with it. Most often whenever I take a break from typing I’ll grab it and drum it on the desk or twirl it in my fingers for a few seconds or gently poke the pencil point against my fingers before re-docking it on my ear.

This is not a life-long habit. It developed after I quit smoking 10 years ago I think as something of a substitute tactile stimulation that replaced the cigarettes.

2. Speaking of aural issues, I’m not sure if it’s a structural issue with my lobes or I’m just going deaf, but when riding a bike generally at anything greater than 10 miles per hour that movement is enough to generate a windsound across my ears that blocks out most conversation delivered at normal speaking levels. As most people I ride with don’t yell when they ride I have to ask them to repeat themselves.

And no, I don’t have to have a sharpened pencil behind my left ear when I ride.

3. On the bike tip, for a lot of the shorter or local rides a lot of people I cruise with can just hop on their bikes and go. Not me. Whether I’m riding five miles or 50, before I saddle up I make sure I’m packing with the following (in no real order): first-aid kit, innertube patch kit, two spare innertubes, tire irons, spare chain, flashlight, knife, pepper spray, writing pen, notepad, camera, spare camera battery, lip balm, jacket, bandana, gloves, helmet, pump, multi-tool, chain tool, socket wrench, full water bottle, energy bar(s), hand wipes, MTA fare tokens, lock, cell phone, wallet, whistle, necklace with dogtag and lucky travel mojo. Optionals: flask of Drambuie and a Motorola walkabout radio.

4. Following in the footsteps of Julia’s literary-related answers, the first book I ever read was Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” I was in third grade. Like Julia I too was 13 when I read Stephen King’s “The Shining.” I no longer read much by him but “The Shining” will always be on my all-time favorites list.

5. When I was a really young kid I thought I was related to Dodgers pitching legend Sandy Koufax because we were both left-handed.

6. I was glad Earl won in the recently concluded season of “Survivor” but I never forgave him for killing a snake in one of the early episodes who was bisected for the crimes of being venomous and within striking distance to unnerved Earl’s machete.

7. I remember all too fondly and forelornly when television was filled with shows crafted by things called “writers” who used their “imaginations” to “create” interesting “plots” filled with “characters” that were given life by “actors” who moved them through a series of humorous and/or dramatic events. Now I sadly and more often find crack television like the above-mentioned “Survivor” and “American Idol” and “The Next Big Thing” and “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Hell’s Kitchen” and “The Next Top Model,” some of which I find myself increasingly and shamefully addicted.

8. When I do any type of extended manual labor such as yard work (today) or moving my fingernails are always sore and tender to the touch afterward. Am I alone in this affliction?

As I finish up my third consecutive week working here in El Segundo, I’m pretty pleased with my cumulative commute score of 6-6-2, which translates to six days driving, six days mass-transitting, and two days bike commuting. Certainly the less I’m crawling the freeways in my truck, the better. But still… I could’ve been a lot lazier and the tally could’ve been a lot worse. And, hey eight non-vehicular days are nothing sneer-worthy.

Still, it could’ve been better, especially these last two drag-ass mornings that left me running late and with little choice but to drive. Today I was just no-excuse stupid slow, as opposed to yesterday where I could blame the rain if I really wanted to, but I won’t. I was on track to bus-train-train it on-time, but wussed out. Though I must admit that the super-slow surface street drive* home last night and my wonderful encounter with the window punching self-entitled urchin (see yesterday’s post below) notwithstanding, it was nice not to be out in the inclementia.

* The eastbound 105 was so hellishly clogged the
four-mile trip to the 110 Freeway was optimistically
estimated to take 25 minutes, so I just stayed away.

Yet still I’m the kind that’s irked at easy ways out and so next week I’ll be back at it, looking to go 0-4-1 or even 0-3-2… or at the worst 1-3-1. If I’m a real bad ass I might set out at like 4:30 a.m. and get one more pre-marathon training trek in and walk the 15.5 miles to work. Hell, that’ll require a whole new scoring column… something like 0-3.5-0.5-1. I know, I know: get the net.

In the interim I’m sure Susan and I will log a four-mile walk around the neighborhood this weekend, and Sunday’s shaping up to be a bright bright sunshiny day for my planned group bike ride from the Cornfield at noon down to Watts Towers for a tour and back. Despite the short notice it looks like it’s generated some interest, and though I’m always retiscent to predict turnout it wouldn’t surprise me if I roll up on Simon Rodia’s awe-inspiring creation with 20 - 30 of my fellow cycling citizens.

I wasn’t invited to this meme party but I saw Cybele was and so was Sean too so without explanation or my usually extrapolation I’m chronologically crashing this “Five Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Me” thing:

1) My nickname as a baby pretty much up until I hit double digits was “twig.”

2) Dad? At 5 years old I thought I was related to famed L.A. Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax because we were both left-handed.

3) Weapon of mass distraction. At 7 years old I peed on someone in self defense.

4) Not worthy! The scariest thing I’ve ever done was when I was 24 and mounted the gentleman caller scene from Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” on three-days rehearsal with the wonderful actress Beverly Leech for Stella Adler in one of her legendary master classes.

5) Permission to come aboard! I joined the United States Navy. Twice, at age 18 and again at 28. Passed the physical, took the oath and everything. Never served. Discharged both times. Loooooooong stories.

Bonus) Cross my heart and hope to die. At 30 I had a needle stuck in my eye. While wide awake. No anesthetic Had to watch it and everything.

Never let it be said I’m quick on the draw. As if any further proof is needed for how glacially I can move around the internest, 30 days ago — as in One Score & Ten More; as in a full lunar cycle; as in a month! — my favorite Pittsburgh-based grad student Carolyn Kellogg who L.A. and I miss very much tag-your-it’d me over at her blog Pinky’s Paperhaus on a literary-type meme and because I’m lame I only found out about it this morning.

Am I too late? Nevah!

1. One book that changed your life?

One? One’s tough. But had I but one single solitary story to pick I’d have to go with Allan Eckert’s The Silent Sky: The Incredible Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. It widened my very narrow highschool-aged worldview to unblinkingly understand how careless and destructive man is as a species. It made me ashamed to be human. It made me the animal champion I am today.

But I can’t leave this question without mentioning the effects John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Richard Adams’ Watership Down had on me as a writer. The third chapter of the former was pivotal in my education as a reader and writer. The latter was the assigned book for my seventh grade English class at Le Conte Junior High and I had no idea what it was about nor had I ever attempted so big a book. I remember looking at the cover after buying my copy at the much-missed Pickwick Books on Hollywood Boulevard and I was puzzled by the illustration of the rabbit on the cover. From the title I’d thought it was about the sinking of a boat. But I was hooked at Page One of the expansive and epic allegory. Not only did I become a life-long lover of books from that, but it totally made me want to write.

2. One book that you have read more than once?

Agh, all this “one” stuff: Stephen King’s The Shining (and Pat Conroy’s Lords of Discipline and Stuart Woods’ Chiefs).

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

One’s enough in this case. I’d go with the Bible. I’ve never read all of it and to be in a predicament such as that seems a prime opportunity to immerse myself, so to speak.

4. One book that made you cry?

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell (but that’s more of a long short story, really). It goes without saying that the above-mentioned The Silent Sky, and anyone who reads Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and A.M. Rosenthal’s Thirty-Eight Witnesses and doesn’t physically mourn the respective murders of Nancy Clutter and Kitty Genovese is way too hard-hearted.

5. One book that made you laugh?

John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces — and I cried at the end of it too because when I finished it I knew I’d read all there is from him.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Howsabout two: The Impeachment of George W. Bush and Bloodless Coup: Darrell Issa, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Theft of California

7. One book you wish had never been written?

Pretty much any celebrity “memoir” from an entertainer or sports figure under 30 years of age.

8. One book you are reading currently?

I’m not very successful in the present endeavor but I’m attempting to read Rosamunde Pilcher’s Winter Solstice in large part because my wife read it and looooooooved it.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Cervantes’ Don Quixote. In the past 10 years I can’t say how many times I’ve picked it up, read the first couple pages of the prologue and put it back down. One of these years.

10. Pass it on.

I’m gonna ping my wife Susan and her mom Jeannie and then leave it up to anyone else reading this who wants to add their perspective either in the comments or on their own blog.

Mi hermano de los diarios electronicos, Rodger Jacobs, not content to just take the question “What do you covet?” posed by blogging birthday gal Adrienne Crew and run with it solo has instead seen fit to turn it into a meme and tag me with it. Helpless to resist, I can do nothing but answer his call to come clean about five things I blatantly and unashamedly materialistically wantwantwantwantwant (in no real order):

1. A cherry 1972 Chevy Impala convertible or a 1972 Pontiac Catalina both convertibles, both with the 400-cubie engine. Either preferably in black with white interior. Why? When my relatives visited from Tennessee back in the summer of that year my mother rented one for us to all go to Disneyland in. That’s three adults and four kids. And we sailed down to the Happiest Place on Earth with the top down in this dreamboat. It was my first automotive love and I’ve wanted one ever since.

2. A free-standing hammock, like this one.

3. A Segway. Top of the line and decked out with all the bells and whistles.
4. A Canon EOS 20Da Digital Camera — and every available lens for it.
5. A summer in Italy. No, a year.

I confess I’m a sucker for Q&A memes that waft around out there in the ether. Most of the time I find them on someone else’s blog and just join in. Rare is it that I’m actually and personally tapped to participate — until just now when I found an email from Rodger Jacobs of 8763 Wonderland who wrote: “Tag! You’re It!” and provided a link back to his blog where I find he’d been tagged to answer the “Four L.A. Things Meme” by Kim Cooper of the awesome 1947Project and editor of Scram magazine.

OK, enough with who zoomed who, here are the questions and my answers:

Four Jobs I’ve Had In My Life in LA:

Paper Boy, Herald Examiner
Stockroom worker, Hunters Books, Rodeo Drive branch
Sparkletts Man, Sparkletts Drinking Water
Managing Editor, Pasadena Weekly

Four Movies About LA I Could Watch Over And Over:

Blade Runner
Chinatown
Double Indemnity
Sunset Boulevard

Can’t resist a few mentions, perhaps some more honorable than others: LA Confidential, Darkman, LA Stories, Miracle Mile

Four Places I’ve Lived All Over L.A. (With Food Memories From Each):

Beverly Hills; Dolores Drive-In (long gone)
Los Angeles; El Coyote
Hollywood; The Tick Tock Restaurant (long gone)
Burbank; Chili Johns

Four LA-Themed Shows I Love(d) To Watch:

24
S.W.A.T.
Emergency
L.A. Law

Four Places I Would Vacation At In LA:

Malibu
Downtown
Venice
Palos Verdes

Four LA-Based Websites I Visit Daily:

Blogging.la
LA Observed
LAist
LA Voice

Four Of My Favorite Foods Found In LA:

Double cheeseburger extra pickles, Tommy’s
Tom Kah Gai soup, Sompun in Silver Lake
Double-dipped lamb sandwich with bleu cheese, Philippe’s
Long Island Dog, Pink’s

Four Places In LA I Would Rather Be Right Now:

Griffith Park
UCLA Mildred Mathias Botanical Gardens
Mugu Peak, Pt. Mugu State Park
Lunada Bay (just to hike and hang… not to surf — even if I knew how)

Tagged:

Susan Campbell
Sean Bonner
Mack Reed
Cybele May