20 Or So Things About Me (Corpgent's W/O): Pulling the Unheimlich Maneuver
Apr 07 '03
The Bottom Line I once penned these 20 self-portraits as a personal ad. It cost $2,507.33 and won solicitations from convicts, prostitutes, shoe fetishists, and a married couple from Jersey City.
Having just discovered that mfunk75 a.k.a Mike Stone is probably my younger brother and not my father, I am still in a small state of shock. Reading his entry to host corpgent’s 20 Or So Facts About Me Write Off, I find some of the parallels just uncanny (unheimlich for all my German readers out there).
The delightful injunction to speak about oneself is one I can never pass up. (When people take street surveys, I conspicuously lurk near the interlocutors until they turn my direction, and then feign bemused interest when they finally ask me their questions.) 20 or so things about me; well, there are 24 to know in all, but I will limit myself to the understated, fall tones of 20. (The final four collectibles about me will be available on an E-Bay auction under the heading, “Oh, and another thing…”. )
1. I once wrote a book called Honorable Discharges: Memorable Events In The History Of My Body’s Detritus And Emissions. It was subtitled An Autobiology and was, to my knowledge, a one of a kind autobiography. I recounted significant internal bodily events in chronological order, with details about earwax, sperm, feces, urine, and so on. One of the points of the book was to lambaste the notion of celebrity icons (whose every bodily iota is worshipped as a relic by fans). I wrote it in a procrastinating fit while living for a year in Paris on a grant (supposedly for writing a book comparing modern day and Medieval artistic responses to epidemic.) Honorable Discharges was rejected by the sole publisher I sent it to; pretty soon, the book became just another of my own literary discharges. (Still, I think Lobstergirl and the Germans would have loved it.)
2. My first film in a theater was Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which my housekeeper Ruby took my brother (David) and me to see. I was six. I remember the triangular stand off scene near the end and the music, but not much else. Now when I watch the film, I get a Pavlovian urge for milk and cookies.
3. Like Mike, I was Bar Mitzvahed, but I had already long since been an atheist. Intermittent total immersion in the music of J.S. Bach has caused me occasionally to change my affiliation one notch over to Agnosticism, but most days I am almost incensed at the very notion of a loving God (no less an existent one).
4. If you really wanted to know my favorite artists and thinkers, you couldn’t really do better than read the Pantheon of my favorite 500: Part One (1-250) and Part Two (251-500) . Among the 500, those currently swimming overtime in my head are: Glenn Gould, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bessie Smith, Fess Williams, John Lennon, Randy Newman, Harry Partch, Mark Morris, Ariane Anthony, Mary Pickford, Roz Chast, Jorge Luis Borges, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Samuel Beckett, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Cintra Wilson (not on the list, but a current phase), Frida, Christian Schad (not on list), Egon Schiele, Guy Maddin, Hayao Miyazaki, Rene Laloux, and Chris Marker.
5. Phobias: Cars, cockroaches, the dentist chair, second-hand smoke, Paris.
6. Vices: I would impress no frat boys with the facts that I have never tried more than a single sip of any beer, wine, or coffee, nor have ever sampled any drug (hard or soft), cigarettes (to which I’m allergic), or glue. My main vice then is sugar. (Collective yawn.)
7. The one time I got remotely drunk, at age 16, and on a White Russian, I ruined New Year’s Eve for my then girlfriend and myself by becoming obsessed with the infinitesimal smallness of man in the universe. No, this pseudo-philosophizing about the multitude of stars, followed by my falling fast asleep before midnight, was not what my beloved was counting on when she said, “Come on, let’s finally get you drunk!”
8. I began playing the piano at age 3 and never stopped, despite the usual reason most adolescents give when asked why they gave it up (nagging mother). Instead, during the pivotal period (for me, age 15) when children need to be contrary to their elders, I rebelled by playing only and all the music of Erik Satie rather than my Mozart, Chopin, or Grieg. Ha! That showed them…
9. I once wore a night brace that wrapped around my entire head on two axes. The contraption, a modern day torture device, caused my mouth to drool buckets on my pillow; I would wake up with the side of my face wet. I generally divulge this fact on a strictly Need To Know basis, but for you, I’ve made an exception.
10. I hate my handle (trust12345) as much as Chad lemon_lime reportedly hates his, if not more so. When I joined this site, I did so in a hurry. I had searched on line for reviews of The Joy Luck Club, a movie I thought was dismally bad; I discovered Epinions and a whole slew of raves for the film. Shocked, I hastened to add my voice of dissent, not knowing I would stick around these parts, nor that there was such a crucial element to the site called a Web of Trust. I didn’t even realize my user name would be public. So, this goes to show that when you are angry, you should never rush; wait a while, investigate your feelings and the situation, then act. Had I done so, I might have called myself Soaring_Chicken, or something— anything more humble than, ugh, trust12345.
11. For a while, I was a Pink Floyd junkie, particularly for the group’s earlier records. The music perfectly fanned my adolescent malaise. Now I have no stomach for the stuff, save for Syd Barrett’s contributions, though admittedly I haven’t listened to him for half my life.
12. I will turn 33 on May 9th. Hmmm, that’s pretty soon. I haven’t had a palindromic birthday for 11 years… Fancy that.
13. I began unicycle riding because as a youngster, I did pretty much everything my brother David did. He started having been inspired by the guy who rides a unicycle during the credits of Welcome Back Kotter. So by age 10 or 11, I was seldom seen anywhere without a wheel between my legs. Much remains the same, though the wheel (a 29 incher) has grown. My 36 inch wheel is useful for very long rides, like the one I will do in June, crossing Norway.
14. My parents, both renowned psychiatrists, divorced when I was nine, and one of them remarried another psychiatrist. Contrary to the assumptions of acquaintances and new friends— that my folks must be “analyzing” my brother and me— my Mom and Dad never stooped so low as to reveal their diagnoses, if they were indeed determining names for our behaviors. If I were to analyze myself, I’d say I was mildly melancholic (though not depressive), with fairly high aggressivity held in check by a strong moral code, an obsessive personality with countervailing scatteredness, sleep disorders aplenty (insomnia), grandiosity checked by humility, Peter Pan Complex held in check by constant awareness (not morbid) of death, healthy libido, attachment issues, and some somatic interplay between mind and stomach (mostly resolved).
15. My excellent friend Mark just called and reported a winner of a story. He was in Chicago, shopping for books when a sudden and dire need to go to the bathroom hit him. He ran into the restroom of a mall and quickly was overcome by a foul smell, unlike the ordinary. In the midst of his crisis, he heard a very nearby voice call out from the adjacent stall, “Excuse me, could you help out with a little change?” Suddenly, a beckoning hand was reaching under the partition. Amazingly, Mark’s condition improved and he evacuated (the stall) in a hurry, feeling right as rain for more shopping. OK, that wasn’t really about me, but as soon I heard it, I felt I was there myself.
16. I have a general intolerance for unnecessary noise (my main pet peeve). Though I’d like to think I have nothing at all in common with the character Lenny Shackleton whom I invented a little while back on Epinions, I’m afraid that a good number of his pet peeves are also mine own.
17. My dream job would be to compose music for films. Also acceptable would be earning enough as a composer or writer to be able to do the things I most love doing: traveling, buying books and CDs, going to concerts, treating my ladylove right. Fortunately, said ladylove does not have lavish tastes; we’re both in heaven renting a movie, cooking at home, listening to music, trading piggy back rides, etc. The simple pleasures in life.
18. For a blessedly brief period lasting the first year in high school, I succumbed to the pressure to conform in my dress habits. I wore the 80s trappings (puff clothes, penny loafers) and put Mousse in my hair. I went to the popular kids' parties, and was miserable amidst smoke, loud music, alcohol, and lame small talk. My individuality was irrepressible; I would contort my upper body in ways that would simultaneously endear and freak out the girls, while making bird calls and animal noises with my voice. I was rescued from this heinous, soul-killing behavior by a girl named Diane who wore bowling fashion before it was fashionable and listened to The Cure without feeling the need to die her hair or dress in all black clothing. She reminded me what it meant to “be oneself,” for which I am eternally grateful.
19. Projects: These days, I’m learning to play the first ricercare (similar to a fugue) from Bach’s A Musical Offering. I’m also learning to play Go, which is an endlessly fascinating game, simple yet extraordinarily complex. I’m trying to learn Chinese, but really suck at it. I’m writing music for a number of dance companies and am in training for the Norway ride.
20. I was a philosophy and English lit double major at Vassar College. The title of my philosophy thesis was “The Effect of the Inevitability of Death on the Meaning of Life.” Yes, a fairly ambitious, subjective and pretentious enterprise. The thesis kind of went back and forth, arguing for and against everything I myself proposed. Having gotten my obsession with death out of my system, I haven’t really thought much about that thesis, nor the things that used to bother me. Still, I continue to believe some of the core tenets: 1) Life is not necessarily meaningful. 2) Life can only have meaning insofar as we value it with meaning; it is not meaningful on its own rights. 3) A formerly meaningful existence (as perceived by someone) can lose meaning for that person, and just as easily be regained. 4) A blissful (or any other kind of) afterlife is not required for life to be meaningful; on the contrary, life is (potentially) meaningful by virtue of its limitedness. 5) There is no guarantee for meaningfulness of a life; the perception is subjective.
I hate to leave things on such a chin-stroking note. Sounds like I got a little drunk again on the other half of that White Russian, and will soon be slipping off to uneasy, nose-twitching sleep. I’m devaluing the Ebay “Oh, and another thing” item by giving more of myself away, but I just have to end on a lighter note: I’m not just a member of the Epinions Hair Club For Men… I’m also the president.
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Epinions.com ID:
trust12345
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: John Stone
Location: $24, N.Y.
Reviews written: 301
Trusted by: 189 members
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