I am an alumni of The Transducer Players, a perform-in-front-of-the-screen-of-The-Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show group. For a fair while, I was just a guy who ehorted the audience. Then I was on the stage, most commonly as Dr. Scott, occassionally filling in with other roles, including one occassion Magenta (a female role, for those of you untrained in the ways of Rocky Horror.)
Today, I learned that the theater I performed in for most of my run, the Harwan, is about to be demolished to make way for a drug store. And part of me goes with it.
Who I am, part whichever
Truth in numbers
There is some ugly assumptions about numbers out there. Some folks consider many numbers to be “odd”, simply because they don’t believe that they are even.
Well they’re wrong. All numbers are even.
Sure, it’s easy to think of a number like eight as being even. If you have eight cookies, say, well, eight is certainly sufficiently even to consider it “even”. But if you have nine cookies, that’s even more than eight!
This message brought to you by the Comittee for Numeric Equality, making sure that some day, all numbers will be equal.
Who I am QUIZ
A friend of mine has a daughter who for years had trouble reading some signs. She was just diagnosed with some color sensing disability. The mother noted that after a couple of eye doctors found nothing years ago, she assumed that “it was all in her head”. Did I respond by:
- expressing my concern for her daughter’s condition;
- try to alleviate her guilt over having not taken her daughter’s complaints sufficiently seriously; or
- point out that as a rule, people’s eyes (and thus their eye problems) are all in their heads?
Score 1 point if you get the right answer, or 2 points if you think so nicely of me that you choose an answer that makes me look more compassionate than reality does.
Who I am, part 3
- When I joined the Star Wars Fan Club when it was launched, I was member 2103 (I think; I’m having trouble remembering the number for certain, but that’s close enough).
- When they changed their numbering scheme perhaps a year later, I was member G2694024200. And that number I remember precisely.
Who I am, part 2
More about the unfascinating topic which is me.
- I can’t swim, and while I’m no longer as afraid of dogs as I used to, I’m still not comfortable with them.
- I love watching an old film and discovering Thelma Ritter is in it.
- I don’t get to the movie theater much any more, but I used to see a fair number of films. I was far from seeing eerything, but I had a pretty good track record of seeing movies that weren’t noticed at the time but became hits after they left the theater. A Christmas Story, saw it, because I was a fan of the source material. Office Space — I remember seeing that then heading to work and telling folks “there weren’t many people there, but this is going to become big. It’ll spread by word of mouth.” I thought it would happen while the film was still in the theater, but at least I was proven right eventually.
- I also saw some of the more renowned flops on the big screen. Yes, I was part of the miniscule grosses for Howard the Duck and Ishtar… and found worthwhile moments in both.
- I believe that we should get rid of the penny. Seriously. It’s so small in value that the costs of dealing with it are far higher than any loss of a bargain caused by eliminating it. The last time we eliminated our smallest value coin was in 1857, when we got rid of the half cent. Allowing for inflation, that would be the same as eliminating the dime today. So maybe it’s time we stop dividing things down into chunks so small as to be valueless, kill the penny, and hey, maybe the nickel as well. Go down to single decimal-point pricing.
- Speaking of which: oil companies? Yes, we get it, you want your gas to look a penny cheaper than it is, because the other person’s gas looks a penny cheaper than it is. We’re smarter than that. We know that the price difference between $2.47-and-nine-tenths and $2.48 isn’t enough on a fill-up for us to drive the extra two blocks to the other gas station. But it’s hard being the first to raise that tenth of a penny? Promote it. I promise to get a righteous fill-up at the first gas station that has a big sign out front that says “AND NO TENTHS!”
- When I want to impress people with my smartness credentials, I tell them that I got my BA at age 18. When I want hide my light under a bushel, I say that I never actually graduated high school, but I have a GED dated about a year and a half after I left high school. Both are true. But don’t be impressed by the BA; really, at age 40, I am no longer a child prodigy.
- I exude something which leads people to believe that I am competent for whatever situation I’m facing. This would be handy if I wanted to get away with trying things that I’m not actually equipped to do. Instead, it’s just aggrevating; the best I can do is live up to expectations.
- Which is not to say that I don’t fall victim to misplaced belief in myself. I think I’m a capable actor… until I see myself filmed or mentally review some of the acting choices I’ve made.
- I have the ability to tell which longshot horse will be in the lead of the race at the halfway point, as I was reminded yesterday when I visited the racetrack for the first time in five years or so. Unfortunately, they do not let you bet on the halfway point. (I swear, it was as though one horse I bet on suddenly realized he’d left his wallet at the starting gate and went back to get it.)
- I don’t really believe that pie will save the world, but hey, it couldn’t hurt to try.
Who I am, part 1
If you’ve been reading this blog, you have a sense of what I like in TV, but if I’m expanding this blog, I guess I’d better set a base line of info to give context.
- 40 years old
- male
- raised in reformed Judaism, but not a religious believer
- married five years, to the regret of women eveywhere (prob’ly including my wife)
- Been a dad for a mere 14 months, of the generally chipper Allison. That’s my main job these days.
- have a far-out-of-date personal web page I won’t even bother linking to
- For the past fifteen years, my main gig has been as a writer. I’m happiest doing comics (you can see a sample of my humorous work at the Licensable Bearâ„¢ website, although it was the more serious work on the alternative superhero book The Factor that got me my Eisner Award nomination a few years back) but have made much more money doing how-to books, with about two dozen books to my credit. Most of it is computer books – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paint Shop Pro, stuff of that nature.
- Politically, I’m fairly libertarian on social issues, less so on financial issues. I have little respect for the current U.S. president; while I haven’t thought that all the presidents during my lifetime were good presidents, that was largely a matter of values rather than competency. Doublya is the first one that I think wouldn’t even make a good corporate president (well, with Reagan I limit it to his first term). I suppose he’d be a good guy to go to a baseball game with, though.
- nerd by nature. Was a bit of a math prodigy as a kid, did a little professional programming even before I graduated college at age 18. Worked in tech until I left the day job to take a break and forgot to ever end the break. Been self-employed ever since.
- I own a lot of Peanuts books. I mean, a lot. I excuse it all as the “reference library” for the collector’s guide to Peanuts book at AAUGH.com.
- not into recreational drugs, but Lipitor does let me panic a little less over what I eat.
- Best book I read last year was Sock by Penn Jillette of Penn And Teller. It’s a very stylized novel, but then, any novel narrated by a sock monkey should be. It reads well out loud, which is key when I have the time to do so. I’ve read every one of the Harry Potter books out loud to the lovely Mrs. Nat’s TV.
- Mrs. Nat’s TV is really Dr. Mrs. Nat’s TV, currently using her CalTech doctorate in Environmental Engineering to help corporations understand what government air pollution regs apply to them and how they can meet ‘em.
- I don’t know the solution to all of the world’s problems; I’m better at recognizing “solutions” that won’t work than coming up with ones that do. Unfortunately, those in power are often either not recognizing the ones that won’t work or figure doing something that won’t work is better than not doing anything at all.
- I like good pizza. Even bad pizza is better than most things, but since I’m watching my health, I avoid bad pizza and save my indulgences for the better stuff.
- I like Las Vegas. It’s a guilty pleasure, but not for the reasons you think. I don’t see anything guilty about responsible gambling (the odds of leaving a casino with more money than you went in with are better than the same odds for a movie theater, rock concert, or other entertainment venue). And I’m awestruck by the strip, by what humankind can achieve if it focuses on what it can do rather than on what it should do. The guilt comes from knowing how the Vegas establishment works to undercut casinos elsewhere, funding morality campaigns against American Indian casinos.
- I spend much of my online time correcting misstatements of fact in discussions. I think it’s because someone fed me a number of bad facts a couple decades back, and it’s taken me time to remember which things I learned from him so that I could clear it from my system. Generally, I dislike looking stupid. I find the trick to looking smart is to speak when you know what you’re talking about, keep silent or ask questions when you don’t.
- I love outdated slang an terms, like “fellow traveler” and “nancy boy” or the old spelling “esquimaux”. At the moment, I’m groovin’ on the term “co-ed”, which was only meaningful back in the days when there was a movement to integrate women into formerly all-male educational institution. The way it survives only in porn contexts is amusing to me.
- I cook up some egg-substitute, wrap it in a lavash with some canned refried beans and half a slice of cheese, and throw the whole thing on a George Foreman grill. Good eating.
It’s beginning to look like I’m a more complex person than I thought, so I added “part 1″ to the title. This will be revisited, with more vital facts about me.
