Frankenstein girls will seem strangely sexy (Corpgent's 20-questions Writeoff)Apr 09 '03 (Updated Jul 18 '06) Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line This was a bad idea. But at least it was Corpgent's.
I don't know why anyone would ask me to write about me. I have already proven that I can write about a creepy stalker movie and still write about me; I have already proven that I write about the terrorist murder of 3600 people I've never met and still write about me; this should be entirely adequate for anyone's purposes. But I will write 20 facts about me, because 1. I am a follower. At least as long as no ethical questions are involved; at least as long as I don't really mind following; at least as long as it involves no effort. For example: Vormancian recently asked me to write a bunch of not-really-favorable movie reviews. He told me that he couldn't tell me the reason; that even if I did the reviews, he still wouldn't tell me the reason; that if I did the reviews, he would probably pile more tasks on me; that whatever I accomplished would have essentially nothing to do with Epinions. And yet, I was still willing to do it; still _am_ willing. The problem being that 2. I'm much better at advocating something than criticizing something. My wife Cindy, a brilliant puzzle-solver who generally figures out complicated movie twists in advance (whereas I may not figure them out even after the fact), will often explain to me after the movie why six elements were completely improbable. My first instinct will be to say "Yes, but..." and find a rationale (the character has this motive you're not thinking of, or the scene could easily have been shot this different plausible way but would've tried the audience's patience). This doesn't mean Runaway Bride wasn't awful, or that the Waterboy wasn't a complete insult to the intelligence of everyone in America except the eleven million people who loved it, or that I don't despise Rodney Dangerfield or Michelle Pfeiffer or talk-show hosts or advertisements of all kinds. It's just that 3. I avoid things I have a good chance of despising. The price of this is that I often have no comment on important trends, that I haven't heard anything about the latest school shooting yet, and that I can't understand why people wouldn't rather sit around listening to Atom and His Package instead of kvetching about what's on commercial radio. But that's okay, because 4. I am not a follower, which is just as well because 5. I have a very short attention span and would quickly wander off the trail. This is why none of these facts are anything like the ones I thought I might spend this Writeoff discussing. So hrmmmm... *clears throat* What have we for practical, name-and-date autohagiography? 6. First, I was born. In Iowa City, Iowa, on 10/11/73, to Robert and Marylaine Block. A couple of Robert Block's musical compositions are still in print as sheet music (his timpani concerto, a recorder piece, and I think also a couple of etudes), but my main memories of Dad, through visits over the years (1977+) that I had to visit him during, involve - Diet. He mostly ate Raisin Bran, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches on bread from 39-cent loaves that he stored in bulk in the freezer. However, when I visited we would cook his one proud reciple, "glop" (made from potatoes, carrots, canned mushroom soup, and ground beef, quite yummy). We would also visit Chung's, a great Korean restaurant that played Shostakovich and Bartok all the time, where Dad was actually able to eat and enjoy kim-chee, a dish anyone who wishes to make 13-alarm chili is invited to study. This was, at any rate, a very cheap diet, and he left far more savings than any self-employed music editor should end up with. - Music. Dad taught flute lessons, including to the great novelist Jane Smiley (Moo, A Thousand Acres), but not including to me because kids with overbites should not learn woodwinds. He trained me to like Holst and Mahler when I was young, Surinach and Bartok and Strahan and Wesley-Smith and Sibelius when I was older. Later I taught him to like Jethro Tull, Talking Heads, Gruppo Sportivo, and the insane country band Jeffrey Fredericks and the Clamtones, authors of the best song ever sung from Jesus's perspective ("All your sins are forgiven, now let me down!"). - Frogs. Dad used to collect aardvark memorobilia, and even named his handmade-flute company Aardvark Fluteworks. But there is a lot more frog memorobilia out there -- wire bike-riding frogs, painted drummer frogs, little bicycle-light frogs -- so one day someone gave him a frog gift, and everyone said "Oooh! You like frogs! Now I know how to give you presents!". When he died in 2001 he had almost 300 of the things. They were given out, one per guest, at his memorial. Cindy and I have started a small but more diverse collection of frogs, iguanas, geckos, turtles, and dragons in his honor; contributions are welcome. - Strays. Dad did adopt stray cats, and I adore cats. But he also adopted interesting stray womenfolk, letting them rent out rooms in his house for almost nothing -- out of friendship, you dirty-minded reader you. Although his second wife, Marjorie, was a classic stray: a very strange, very shy woman in her mid-30's with a history of having almost no friends, whose intelligence and warmth he somehow sensed through layers of protectiveness. He did that with people. I've adopted stray homeless people, on the few occasions I've lived alone with extra space; it was not a conscious tribute to Dad, but genes play their role too. He was a good man. 7. Then I was raised. In Davenport, Iowa, by my Mom, in the company of up to four cats at a time. Random coincidence: neither my Mom nor my Dad nor his second wife Marjorie ever owned a car, until I gave Mom my $1500 clunker on moving to Boston. I personally am anti-automobile -- they're an environmental hazard and a breeder of social separation, and driving brings out people's most aggressive and unpleasant impulses -- but my Mom's concern was practical. As a librarian at a small college and a single mother, she could afford any two of the set (Books, Brian, Car) and Books and I won out. She is, as you can see, a wise woman. Also a gifted teacher (she lobbied for, and created, a required lesson in library use for every student at St. Ambrose); a fine writer (I link to her column from my Epinions page); and a talented reader-out-loud who gave all the characters separate voices. I have definitely learned the reading-aloud skill, maybe even better than she has. The teaching skills, however, will take awhile. 8. I went to inner-city schools. This has very little relevance, to be honest. I was in accelerated classes all the way, and while the schools I attended were 30% black, the classes I attended never had more than one nonwhite student in them. Literally never, unless I'm missing something. Not until college did it occur to me that there was anything racist about this; since then I have been a firm supporter of affirmative action, to start at elementary school and continue from there. It's entirely possible that none of the blacks in my grade were as freakin' brilliant as the lovely Jennifer Otteson, or as fiercely devoted to A-plus mastery as Jenny Harvey or Becky DenHoed. But it is _not_ possible that there weren't black students as marginally-above average, as worthy of advanced studies, as Paul or Steve or Tim or John, who were white and connected. So given the class composition, 9. My rap-star credibility is vague. You can judge this for yourself. Our one and only bar-mitzvah boy Mike Stone wrote an attempted rap in what was, admittedly, the single best piece of writing about 8 Mile that I've seen. On April 05 '03 in the comments section, I wrote my own rap to prove that, as a white Jewboy who wouldn't even be from Toronto's mean streets if Toronto _had_ mean streets, he just wasn't qualified to stand in the ring with a white Jew who would indeed have been from Davenport Iowa's mean streets, if Iowa had them. You will notice that I am awesome, or maybe you won't. You will notice that I got distracted again. Where was I? 10. I have twice abandoned elite private colleges for cheap public ones, giving up Carleton College for the U. of Iowa as an undergrad, and Boston College for UMass-Boston as an overgrad. I honestly see no difference in the quality of teaching, although whether teaching is what you want from a college is your business. For that matter, my two best friends from high school didn't go to college at all until a couple years ago, and they did fine. I think students _should_ take time between high school and college, time to work and futz. They'll appreciate college more, and be more competent at living there. 11. My crazy-roommate stories probably aren't as good as your crazy-roommate stories. Indeed, my college roomie was sane, lacrosse-obsessed, and rarely around, although he did introduce me to Nine Inch Nails, King Missile, the Pogues, and (many many many times) Achtung Baby!. I should, however, give props (or poison) to Sugarloaf Estates, in Sunderland, Massachusetts, where I once signed up to pay $360/month to live in half of a 2-bedroom apartment with a nice gay guy named Charlton who understood that, no offense, I didn't want his body but merely his chess-playing talents and his money. He is the second gay roommate I almost had (my second-year Carleton roommate would've been gay, if my financial aid hadn't been cut back and I'd had a second year). Only, it turned out he had some bad debts he was clearing up. Now see, his parents had perfect credit ratings and a six-figure combined income, and they were happy to cosign, but Sugarloaf wouldn't accept that. So I was stuck paying $720/month for two bedrooms until I found a roommate. Over the course of the year I found four roommates, all of whom Sugarloaf rejected for having "inadequate incomes", as if I ever would've been approved to pay $720/month myself. Then I found a well-off, reliable young woman to sublet my apartment for the summer. She was rejected because her name was on another lease, even though the other landlord was happy to let her move. I ended up paying $8640 for nine months' residence. Not stunningly, I moved back home to live free for bit. Luckily, 12. I turn out to be one awesome customer service rep, so I made good surplus money that year for the first time in my adult life. You'd think 14 months working the complaints line at a magazine company with almost-unfailing sweetness would be adequate preparation to handle a classroom of urban students. Or maybe you'd know better, but I actually liked the job. People would call, ready to be angry; I would astonish them by listening with sympathy and knowing enough to help them; sometimes they wouldn't cancel their subscriptions after all, which is just as well, or I'd've never gotten away with not pressuring them. Thus fortified with job skills, confidence, and money, I could return to Massachusetts, land of dreams and easily-mocked accents. 13. My other crazy-roommate story might be slightly less lame. Understand that I do like Orson, the freelance computer engineer who rented a room in Boston to me based entirely on a phone conversation. He clearly liked me too; he easily could've rented to someone he'd met, and he was breaking tradition by renting to me: the first non-computer-engineer to inhabit one of the house's four bedrooms in years. He's a nice man. He's not nearly as much a nerd as his brother: Orson looks for compatible women in church, while his brother looks for compatible women in mail-order Russian bride catalogs (yes, seriously). And hey, my Dad didn't like to turn the heat on either. My Dad, though, didn't turn off the oven's connection to any power lines, to prevent the expense of cooking. My Dad kept the heat at 59; Orson kept the heat at 55, which I later found out was illegal. Orson kept the hot-water off, so you had to turn it on and wait 15 minutes to shower, and his definition of "hot" might not be your definition of "hot", especially while naked during a Boston winter. Orson had lots of signs everywhere instructing you on micromanaged life details from a chores list (fair) to a map of which dishes he felt belonged in which section of the drainer (borderline insane). And eventually I figured out that my room, advertised as 9x9 feet, was 7.5x6.5 feet, meaning that all of my possessions were randomly jumbled on top of each other in potentially fatal piles. (On the small upside, when a girl's over, there _are_ advantages to having no other heat sources than body heat. And visiting girls rightly found Orson's innocent elvish smile as endearing as his signs were annoying; one even asked him to make her a sign to take home as a souvenir, and he complied.) 14. The two serious girlfriends I've met via the Internet have worked out better than the two serious girlfriends I've met in real life, though I still like all my exes. This isn't an endorsement of Internet personal ads. I did try a personals service for a few months after moving to Boston in September 2000, and got several pleasant-but-unexceptional coffee dates out of it. I think, frankly, that the personals are _designed_ for pleasant-but-unexceptional, and coffee dates certainly are. Both are about setting specific standards for what you want to meet ("These are 21 things I want in a lover"), and taking closely circumscribed opportunities to run a real person by your checklist. Whereas I met my first girlfriend at the appetizers table at a party that I'd been dragged to by a friend and didn't want to be at. I met my second girlfriend at a bus stop. I met my third and fourth girlfriends (fourth being now-wife Cindy) by randomly clicking on their AIM profiles, liking them, and saying hi. And I met all but the first girlfriend in periods where I wasn't looking for love. If I'd had a 21-things checklist in the beginning, it might very well have included "not a wealthy snob who wants to host cocktail parties when she grows up". Or "not even more socially inept than I was at her age". Or "not a devout Mormon, no really, I mean so devout that she hopes I convert, and so devout that I don't get to have sex with her". Or "never, ever talks about cars or computers as if they were interesting". Thus ruling out four of the coolest girls I could've hoped to have loved. Cindy, for the record, is not only an awesome puzzle-solver. She's also a gifted flirt; a well-paid designer of computer chips; a sweet girl who became a vegetarian as her wedding present; the impulse behind our getting married at a They Might Be Giants concert, though I adored the idea (and the actuality); the impulse behind our getting a blessing ceremony at a Scottish castle; a willing audience for my read-aloud attempts who has excellent taste in romantic comedy but also loves Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Richard Russo; a person who abuses semicolons even more than I do; a friendly non-psychopath despite having shared home and DNA with her eldest sister; and a skilled amateur at clay sculpture who also showed ambition and skill (but, unfortunately, more of the ambition) as a stained-glass artist. These are facts about her. They do not count towards my limit. 15. I seem to want lists of trivia to have some deeper lessons about life, love, and personal ads. Bad Brian. What else is there? 16. My favorite album titles include the Light at the End of the Tunnel is on the Other Foot Now, by Tiny Monsters; Young Bodies Heal Quickly, You Know, by the Paper Chase; Togetherness: Control Songs Vol. 2, by David Garland; and Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, by the Dead Kennedys. I also knew instantly that I would love Alanis Morissette's second album when I learned it would be called Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, though mainly because she had to have chosen it over her label bosses' dead bodies. Sometimes I even borrow album titles as my own essay titles. Check for yourself! 17. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Also, the squaw on the hippopotamus is worth the sons of the squaws on the other two hides. I forget the joke that's the punchline for. 18. I'm apparently "straightedge". As in, I once read a personal-ad profile advertising straightedge lifestyle, and I didn't immediately respect this. But then I realized that I don't smoke, drink liquor, drink coffee even, do drugs, or eat meat, which is about what the ad meant. Though I was raised Iowan, and have been _very_ happy at the recent proliferation of quality fake-meats. Morningstar Farms products are excellent, and Boca does a terrific mock Italian sausage. I cook a modest variety of vegetarian meals that I refuse to follow the recipes for, and guests have consistently not died despite taking second and third helpings. 19. I have a physical embodiment, for better or worse. For two hours I even had a non-Geocities-based picture of me on this site; then I remembered people might be eating, even at their computer. If you _want_ to gaze into my soulful eyes, you may do so at http://www.geocities.com/voxpoptart/blockhead2.jpg . If you hope pictures of me improve when you pay more attention to my wife and a cockatiel, you're right: http://www.geocities.com/voxpoptart/parrot.jpg . If you wonder if wearing a top hat and a vest is enough to make me look like a young Abraham Lincoln, you can even check http://miller.didisaythat.com/cindy/boston/bgraphics/brian1.jpg . But as a history teacher, I must inform you that Abraham Lincoln was _not_ young. He was old. And I look really wise when I'm invisible. 20. Counting to twenty is much easier for me than counting to ten. Thank Christ, and go visit all the other lovely writeoff participants. And good night. love, -Brian  |
| Read all comments (56)|Write your own comment |
- Top 1000
