100 THINGS ABOUT ME

I know I've done this before and I doubt there's much here that I haven't covered in the past, but here it is once again, this time in a neat and concise form ... one hundred things you should know about me if you didn't already.

1) The best year of my life was 1982.

2) I am a recovering packrat.

3) When I was in the fourth grade, my cousin was the town�s bicycle thief, stealing dozens of bikes from kids, taking them apart and selling the pieces back to them. He was a black eye on the family name for many years.

4) My biggest pet peeve is bad drivers followed by waiting in line for anything.

5) I was beat up on a playground when I was five years old and several older boys stood around, cheering on the beating. The beating was administered by one of my best friends who was only doing it because the older boys told him to.

6) At one point in my life, I seriously considered being an air traffic controller.

7) The movie that has made me cry the most was �Sleepless in Seattle�.

8) I subscribe to the following magazines: �TV Guide�, �Entertainment Weekly�, �Rolling Stone�, �Blender�, �Details� and most recently �Playboy� because they offered me a year�s sub for $12.

9) Growing up, I always had those red flushed cheeks that baby-faced boys have and wished they�d go away. They�ve now gone away.

10) I have never cared for Madonna.

11) My mother grew up in a volatile environment and has never been as loving as most mothers. This has led to me being an asshole myself.

12) I have an unbearably hard time in a classroom setting and never retain any information that is issued.

13) I will not argue a point.

14) I�m a gifted procrastinator. I put everything off until the last minute, but then always do a bang-up job when it�s done.

15) The best feeling in the world for me is when my yard work is complete.

16) My favorite temperature outside is 75 degrees.

17) I�ve never seen a single episode of �CSI� or �Spongebob Squarepants�.

18) In real life, I only curse around 2-3 friends.

19) I have no problem watching �Teletubbies�.

20) I type 62 words per minute.

21) I love Chinese food but rarely get a chance to eat it because my wife hates it.

22) At the age of 13, I masturbated to an instruction sheet for tampons. You took what you could get before the Internet.

23) Both my wife and I are addicted to Speed Marbles.

24) I used to love making lists when I was younger. I don�t make them that much anymore.

25) While I don�t really have a favorite ice cream flavor, I�ll always gravitate to something with peanut butter in it.

26) I don�t mind when people take advantage of me.

27) I always sleep on my side and usually sleep better on my left side facing the middle of the bed.

28) I�m not sure that I have a �best feature� anymore.

29) While I used to be an extremely hard party animal, when it came time to walk away from it, I walked away from it with ease. I never crave alcohol or drugs anymore.

30) My wife has always paid the bills since we were married. While I used to say that I could never balance a checkbook, I opened my own account in April and have done a perfect job of keeping the checkbook balanced.

31) The most surprising movie that I�ve ever cried during was �Kill Bill Vol. II�.

32) I always said that I wanted to try sushi but I�d have to be drunk first. The one time I ate sushi I was sober. It was no big deal.

33) While I worked in bars for several years, I cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke on my clothes.

34) The bar I work at now is a non-smoking bar.

35) I get a secret thrill out of littering. I know. It�s a sickness.

36) If I had my way, I�d pee outside for the rest of my life.

37) I have a phobia about dust and invisible particles getting on my food, so I tend to eat faster than I should.

38) I cannot stand to have a fly in the house.

39) I prefer small independent films over big blockbuster movies.

40) My five all-time favorite TV shows are �Twin Peaks�, �Strangers With Candy�, �Survivor� and I can�t think of two others that could legitimately be included in that list.

41) I would rather be alone than in a roomful of people.

42) I have written lyrics to over 1,000 songs but haven�t written a song in about 20 years.

43) I am terrified of ferris wheels.

44) I have never spent the night in a hospital. Wait ... I did when I was about a month old. But I don�t remember it.

45) I took some mushrooms before a KISS concert once and thought I was Gene Simmons and fought my way through the crowd to get onstage.

46) As it turned out, I wasn�t Gene Simmons.

47) I�ve had roughly 25 jobs in my life and have only been fired from three of them. Which technically isn�t anything to brag about.

48) While I talk regularly to my neighbors, I have no idea what their last names are.

49) I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who wouldn�t hesitate to elect George W. Bush to a second term.

50) I have no idea what people see in this diary.

51) I am convinced that nobody experiences �true� love until they have a child.

52) I love making mix CDs for friends.

53) I love anything with Italian Sausage in it.

54) I hate DJing during Karaoke Night and do everything I can to discourage people from singing. But I love being a customer on Karaoke Night.

55) I will not fast dance on a dance floor and it takes a lot of begging to get me to slow dance.

56) I sold aluminum siding for 20 minutes in 1990. That was the shortest I have ever stayed at a job.

57) My favorite spice is oregano. Unless you consider garlic a spice. Then it�d be garlic, followed closely by oregano.

58) I love peanuts, but they make me sick to my stomach.

59) I�m fascinated by tornados.

60) I will not eat white sandwich bread.

61) I once owned about 1,500 vinyl albums. Now I own about 40.

62) I am painfully shy around strangers unless I�m behind a microphone.

63) I lost my virginity to a co-worker.

64) When I was young, I wished my parents had named me "Gordon".

65) I was bored to tears watching �Star Wars�.

66) When I was young, our family doctor told my mother to leave dirty magazines around the house for me to look at so that I would grow up well-adjusted. I was too nervous to pick them up in front of the family so I�d wait until I was alone. I must have read every issue of �From Sex To Sixty� published between 1968-1972.

67) I think I�m the only one who remembers the magazine �From Sex To Sixty�. Basically, it was just dirty comics like you�d find in �Playboy�.

68) I have threatened to leave my wife twice in 18 years. This morning was the second time.

69) I�m very entertaining at yard sales.

70) While I like pickles on my hamburger, I rarely go to the trouble of putting them on there.

71) I drank 6-8 Cokes a day for decades. Now I can�t drink one.

72) I never received an �F� in any subject until I got to college.

73) I left college when I was a junior and have no interest in ever going back.

74) I credit the majority of my personality today to growing up an American teen in Europe.

75) I broke both my ankles a week apart from each other.

76) I used to sell my plasma twice a week for beer money.

77) It took a lot of nerve for me to ask out Vicki Wikowsky for a homecoming date. When she said �yes�, I was ecstatic. When I went to kiss her goodnight, she turned her head so that my lips landed on her cheek. I was crushed for several months afterwards and never asked her out again.

78) After Vicki, if I had a crush on a girl, I would never act on it. But I would eventually become good friends with all of them. Looking back, they probably all thought I was gay.

79) I have never owned any article of clothing made in leather but have always wanted a leather jacket.

80) I sincerely believe that �Pulp Fiction� should have never been edited for television because the sanitized version makes zero sense.

81) I make annual donations to four different charities.

82) I hope I die before I get old.

83) I hate myself for loving you.

84) I�d like to teach the world to sing. But right now ... I just don�t have that kind of time on my hands.

85) I�ve been told by fertility doctors that I have �super sperm�.

86) I enjoy licking stamps. Not like it�s a hobby or anything ... but it doesn�t repulse me.

87) I played high school football when I was a sophomore. I was horrible and never played any other organized sport again.

88) I am always on time or early for everything.

89) I have never been able to climb a rope in gym class.

90) I used to pluck wild rhubarb stalks out of the ground and eat them as a child.

91) I also ate tree bark, toilet paper and cotton balls as an infant.

92) I opened the bottle and overdosed on Bayer Children�s Aspirin and had to have my stomach pumped at the age of 3.

93) If I go to a restaurant that offers steak on its menu, I will order steak 99 percent of the time.

94) I�m very poorly organized. When I see a job offer that requires you to be highly organized, I move on to the next job offer.

95) My latest favorite song is �Make Love Fuck War� by Public Enemy and Moby.

96) I collected Wacky Packages stickers as a kid.

97) I get melancholy once Christmas morning is over.

98) I like to vacuum.

99) This is my favorite recipe and dish to cook.

100) I�m terrified of the Amish.