Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Eight Things You May Or May Not Know Or Care To Know About Me

Ben Varkentine, proprietor of the blog Dictionopolis in Digitopolis, has tagged me with a meme -- which I believe is cyberspeak for "virus" -- that is going around the internets. Here are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged and that they should read your blog.
5. 8 is a magic number. Not three.

I'm an iconoclast and a rule-breaker from way back, so I'm choosing to ignore rule #4. If any of you folks out there reading this want to participate, consider yourselves tagged.

Here goes:

1. I moved to San Francisco in 1981 with less than $200 in my pocket, and spent the first three nights here sleeping in my car in the Safeway parking lot on Market Street.
2. For reasons that had more to do with tagging than with procurement or pandering, I was known to a select group of people in high school as "Willie the Pimp" (after the Frank Zappa/Captain Beefheart song).
3. My great-aunt Elinor Donahue was a regular on the old TV show Father Knows Best (she played Betty, the older daughter), and has appeared in many other shows and movies before and since. My favorite of these is Girls Town, with Mamie Van Doren, Mel Torme and Paul Anka.
4. I got kicked out of a private Lutheran school in the fifth grade for arguing with the principal (who was also the pastor of the church). I asked him why the school had a dress code (because my hair was getting long, and they objected to that). He said, "All the other schools have dress codes." I said, "If all the other schools jumped off a bridge, would you?" It was a shining moment for a 10-year-old.
5. When I was 16, I was in a band with some older guys who worked with my mother at the local state hospital. I played guitar, very badly. The band was called Chuck Wagon and the Rolling Wheels.
6. I've been an extra and had a bit part in two porno movies, back when they were still shot on film. I did not have sex with that woman... or that man, or that dog or that gerbil or anyone or anything else on either set. In fact, I kept my clothes on the entire time.
7. I was also an extra in a Sony handycam commercial a number of years ago, and saw myself on TV quite a few times afterward. I got paid a flat fee, no residuals.
8. I worked for Culligan Soft Water for a few years in Southern California (yes, I was the Culligan Man). During that time, I grew a big, bushy beard. I had many regular customers that I would talk to on my deliveries. One day I shaved off the beard. The next day, I went to the home of one of my regular customers, and he asked, "What happened to that Mexican boy that used to deliver the water?" "You mean the one with the beard?" I asked. "Yeah," he said. "He was a nice kid." "Oh, he's on another route now," I told him.

That's it, and it's more than enough, don't you think?
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