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Next up: Barbara Walters makes me cry
By briantologist | September 15, 2003
Mr. Barrett Chase managed to spur my self-interest enough to follow through with this process, which I’m going to say he invented, whether it’s true or not.
How it Works
1. Send me an e-mail, saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You’ll update your website with my five questions and your five answers.
4. You’ll include this explanation.
5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
The interview.
1. If you could have one superpower from one superhero, which one would you choose and why?
I think it speaks to my level of dorkitude that this is perhaps the most difficult question I’ve ever been confronted with. Marriage? Not so hard; somebody hands you a gold nugget, you say thank you and move on. College? Six or seven major changes later, English lit was clearly the right decision. Superpowers? Damn.
After much consideration, I think I’d just like to be able to fly. I heard a piece on “This American Life” about how if you ask people if they’d rather be able to fly or become invisible, the honest people will all tell you they want to be invisible, and that by doing so they’re indulging their ids, or some such. I certainly see their point, and I can’t deny the amazing utility of invisibility, but at the end of the day, I’d just really like to be able to fly.
Getting to and from work would be a breeze. Ditto trips to the mall, or the coffee shop, or other solo journeys. Perhaps best of all would be the removal of the looming spectre of DUI arrests — I’m pretty sure they haven’t come up with a ticket for flying intoxicated under your own power. (It’d be tantamount to ticketing somebody for walking while drunk. Think about it.)
Plus, if worst came to worst, you could fly backwards around the world until you turned back time.
2. Have you ever had food poisoning? If so, describe your experience. If not, describe your sparkling clean kitchen.
1993. My freshman year at Phillips University, in scenic Enid, Oklahoma. Meat loaf night at Earl Butts Dormitory cafeteria straight up done me in. It’s mostly a blur now, but I vaguely remember a few concerned callers, a distinct lack of help from my semiretarded roommate, and wondering if the skinny guy who shared our bathroom minded that the sound of me blasting my dinner through my nose drowned out “Use Your Illusion II.”
3. In your opinion, what is the best role Burt Reynolds ever played?
Though part of me wants to endorse old-school Burt, the Burt that all us ironic kids “loved” in “Cannonball Run” and “Smokey & the Bandit” when we were “overusing quotation marks” to “seem sly and dryly funny,” I can’t quite. I think I liked Burt best in “Boogie Nights,” ’cause he was way past his prime and he had something to prove. He was weathered, he was hungry, and he was gold. His distinct creepiness, present throughout his career, found a perfect home in Jack Horner.
4. It is my opinion that everyone is addicted to at least three things. What three things are you addicted to?
Coffee, booze, and fatty foods. With occasional nicotine relapses.
5. Tell me about a time when your attitude toward life fundamentally changed.
This is the kind of question that can make you feel real damn shallow if you let it.
I don’t know what inspired it, or quite the moment it took place, but at some point I realized that if you want to go around having high standards for the world to live up to, that’s fine, but first you’d better be willing to live up to them yourself. That was when I decided to start recycling. Retarded though it may sound, it’s totally true. I don’t always smile and act generally friendly to people I don’t know. I don’t always refrain from giving the finger in traffic. I don’t always control my urge to scream and kick things when utterly inconsequential happenings don’t happen to my liking. I don’t always keep my house in order.
But sometimes I do. And when I do, I feel okay about it. And even when I don’t do all those things, I still take my recyclables out to the bins. Because — and again, I’m being totally serious here — it makes a tremendous difference in how much trash you produce overall.
Especially if you drink between 24 and 77 Rolling Rocks per week.
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