FIVE BORING FACTS ABOUT ME
Ugh. Not only have I been tagged, which sucks enough, but it's one of those dreaded "open-ended" memes. Nightshift66 tagged me with the hellish "Five Things About Yourself" meme.
Apart from the obvious fact that there are no more than 1.6 interesting things about me there's also the other (semi-) obvious fact that this requires thinking. And I don't wanna have to think.
Anyhow, I did one of these a few months ago, and the response was underwhelming, to say the least. So you've been forewarned: not only will these 5 things be uninteresting, but I'm half-assing the whole process. And no, there will be no further tagging. I'm doing my part to kill the meme where it stands.
1. I was terrible at grammar in high school. By this I mean "grammar,"as a discrete topic for study in high school English classes. You know, "literature" or "essay writing" or "vocabulary." Or "grammar." Whatever your teachers had, I'm sure there was some sort of variation on the theme: Fix a fucked-up paragraph. Or identify the errors in a paragraph and explain what the mistakes were.
Anyhow, although my essay writing was as good (or bad) grammatically as you'd expect from a 14 year-old, I literally couldn't pass these quizzes. I'd get A- or whatever on essays, and 95 or 100 on vocabulary quizzes, but 36 or 54 or 49 on grammar quizzes. After a while I just gave up trying to figure out what was missing in my brain, and failed these quizzes without worrying. My teachers didn't seem too concerned either since it wasn't affecting my actual writing.
2. In the fall and winter of 1991 I worked for an organization called "Dump D'Amato in '92." Our mission was, as you'd expect from the title, to do our part to ensure Al D'Amato's defeat in the 1992 Senate election. At first our leader (who shall go unnamed to protect his rep) actually planned to run against Pothole Al in the GOP primary, to force him to spend money, answer charges of corruption, etc.
But our guy decided against it late in the game and many of us -- including your humble blogger -- decided we didn't wanna work for an over-glorified smear campaign and moved on. And of course D'Amato defeated Abrams in the 1992 general election.
3. In 1996 I worked on an execrable film called Puppet. My name is (unmercifully) not among the shortened list of crew members on IMDB, don't try looking for me. Anyhow, the film gets 2 stars out of 10, and I think that's about 1 1/2 too many.
I worked with the director from pre-production right through the whole thing. I like to say that my greatest contribution was working with him from the start to help bring the screenplay up from "utterly awful" to "really bad." Check out the cast though. Amazing how many decent actors manage to find their way into nonsense like this.
4. In 1995, when I first visited Amsterdam, I saw a live sex show. Which is just what the name suggests: people have sex on stage, right in front of the audience.
Anyhow, it definitely fell more under the "curiousity" categorization rather than "turn-on." One of the oddest things was that the "theater" was actually pretty well-maintained. The show was presented much in the way you'd expect a dinner theater production: glossy, slick, professional. And the crowd was primarily composed of middle-aged European couples and groups of Asian businessmen.
I guess one of those is surprising.
5. I think Gladiator is a terrible movie. Terrible, terrible, terrible. The plot is filled with enormous holes, the characters do stupid things that make no sense based on their ostensible motivations, and the acting isn't good.
I won't say it's the "worst movie I've seen." Not when I've seen Puppet. But in comparison to its reputation, its stature, its reception when it came out, Gladiator must be the most-overrated movie in history. What a suckfest.
So there you have it folks. Five utterly unremarkable facts about me. None of which really tell you anything about me you didn't already know.
Apart from the obvious fact that there are no more than 1.6 interesting things about me there's also the other (semi-) obvious fact that this requires thinking. And I don't wanna have to think.
Anyhow, I did one of these a few months ago, and the response was underwhelming, to say the least. So you've been forewarned: not only will these 5 things be uninteresting, but I'm half-assing the whole process. And no, there will be no further tagging. I'm doing my part to kill the meme where it stands.
1. I was terrible at grammar in high school. By this I mean "grammar,"as a discrete topic for study in high school English classes. You know, "literature" or "essay writing" or "vocabulary." Or "grammar." Whatever your teachers had, I'm sure there was some sort of variation on the theme: Fix a fucked-up paragraph. Or identify the errors in a paragraph and explain what the mistakes were.
Anyhow, although my essay writing was as good (or bad) grammatically as you'd expect from a 14 year-old, I literally couldn't pass these quizzes. I'd get A- or whatever on essays, and 95 or 100 on vocabulary quizzes, but 36 or 54 or 49 on grammar quizzes. After a while I just gave up trying to figure out what was missing in my brain, and failed these quizzes without worrying. My teachers didn't seem too concerned either since it wasn't affecting my actual writing.
2. In the fall and winter of 1991 I worked for an organization called "Dump D'Amato in '92." Our mission was, as you'd expect from the title, to do our part to ensure Al D'Amato's defeat in the 1992 Senate election. At first our leader (who shall go unnamed to protect his rep) actually planned to run against Pothole Al in the GOP primary, to force him to spend money, answer charges of corruption, etc.
But our guy decided against it late in the game and many of us -- including your humble blogger -- decided we didn't wanna work for an over-glorified smear campaign and moved on. And of course D'Amato defeated Abrams in the 1992 general election.
3. In 1996 I worked on an execrable film called Puppet. My name is (unmercifully) not among the shortened list of crew members on IMDB, don't try looking for me. Anyhow, the film gets 2 stars out of 10, and I think that's about 1 1/2 too many.
I worked with the director from pre-production right through the whole thing. I like to say that my greatest contribution was working with him from the start to help bring the screenplay up from "utterly awful" to "really bad." Check out the cast though. Amazing how many decent actors manage to find their way into nonsense like this.
4. In 1995, when I first visited Amsterdam, I saw a live sex show. Which is just what the name suggests: people have sex on stage, right in front of the audience.
Anyhow, it definitely fell more under the "curiousity" categorization rather than "turn-on." One of the oddest things was that the "theater" was actually pretty well-maintained. The show was presented much in the way you'd expect a dinner theater production: glossy, slick, professional. And the crowd was primarily composed of middle-aged European couples and groups of Asian businessmen.
I guess one of those is surprising.
5. I think Gladiator is a terrible movie. Terrible, terrible, terrible. The plot is filled with enormous holes, the characters do stupid things that make no sense based on their ostensible motivations, and the acting isn't good.
I won't say it's the "worst movie I've seen." Not when I've seen Puppet. But in comparison to its reputation, its stature, its reception when it came out, Gladiator must be the most-overrated movie in history. What a suckfest.
So there you have it folks. Five utterly unremarkable facts about me. None of which really tell you anything about me you didn't already know.
Labels: No Meme Passing, No Tagging, No Way
posted by Mike at 12:00 PM
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