I’ve been writer for as long as I could grip a marker. Some day, I’d love to scan in some of my earliest work (if my mom still has any of it). In particular, I’d like to read again and post my 2nd Grade Young Authors book, The Revenge of Hera, which had the Greek goddess of marriage, in a particularly bloodthirsty mood.Here are the 25 Random Facts About Me I posted on Facebook:
1. I read Andrew Sullivan just about every day.
2. Henry Miller is my favorite writer and not because of the erotic content (though that doesn’t hurt).
3. My favorite first line of any book is from Tropic of Capricorn: “Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.”
4. I’ve never finished my favorite novel, Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time). There are a number of reasons for this.
5. My dad died in 2001, 5 days after the Timequake in the Kurt Vonnegut novel.
6. I love Twitter. ( Follow me @i4n ) My favorite websites are Twitter, Flickr, and Last.fm Oh and Facebook
7. I’ve lived in three Chicago neighborhoods: Bucktown, Roscoe Village, and now Jefferson Park. Roscoe Village was my favorite.
8. My brother and I used to go to the same bar at least once a week, sometimes more, for years, and no one who worked there ever showed the slightest sign they recognized us. I miss it.
9. My favorite cities are Paris, New York, and (Sweet Home) Chicago.
10. I think the song “Sweet Home Chicago” is inane and wish they’d stop playing it. I also wish Jim Belushi would stop being a “representative” of our city.
11. I used to watch Meet the Press every Sunday but I don’t really like it without Tim Russert.
12. I have a beautiful home and a beautiful wife.
13. If songs had bodies and I wasn’t married, I’d do crazy things to the Deftones’ “Feiticeira”
14. I don’t celebrate any group or artist’s entire catalog, but I probably come closest with Rage Against the Machine.
15. I once wore a speedo bathing suit on a Caribbean Cruise.
16. In school, I did a double major in History and Rhetoric/English.
17. I drive a Passat, which you can recognize by the dents in both front doors
18. I quite like the like the board game “Star Wars Epic Duels.” I play it weekly.
19. My favorite scene in Star Wars is the end of the worst of the films where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fight Darth Maul, specifically, when Qui-Gon and Darth Maul are separated by some sort of force field and Qui-Gon meditates, trying to calm himself and prepare for the fight and whatever else…
20. When it comes to coding languages, I know VB.Net, C#, PHP, and Ruby on Rails–in that order.
21. I love the Jerky Boys but I don’t listen to them the way most people do. “Jerky”, “Rubberneck” = not so funny. “The people love it” = hilarious.
22. Brett Favre is my favorite football player of all time; Dennis Rodman, my favorite basketball player.
23. I’ve lost interest in the Cubs after this past year. Sorry. I’m sick of them and their whole organization. And you can’t change my mind because it’s not a conscious decision. It’s like a body rejecting an organ.
24. Every Christmas Eve, until my grandmother got too old to prepare it, we had lutefisk, rutamoose mashed potatoes, lefsa bread and Swedish meatballs
25. I like to write late at night when everyone else is asleep.