25 things about me:

1. In junior high I sent a fan letter to Missy Gold, the child star of the sit-com Benson. It was heartfelt and sincere. In return, I received an 8x10 glossy from her publicist.  I considered this a pretty good deal.

2. I like the word “apoplexy,” but I am not very fond of “uvula.”

3. I have a really good beginning and ending for a novel, and I wish someone would write the middle for me.

4. I feel very at peace with the fact that Tony Danza has finally fallen off the pop culture radar.

5. I am terrible dancer for someone who loves music so much.

6. I think that garbanzo beans are criminally underrated in terms of their overall contribution to salad excellence.

7. I sealed my record at age 18.  It contained two crimes.  The first: a speeding ticket.  The second: being arrested at age 16 for getting drunk in public with two friends.

8. It wasn’t really in public; it was behind a supermarket. But the cops apparently patrolled there.  It was a small town and they had nothing better to do.  Ingrates.

9. I am almost guaranteed to like any song in a minor key.  It’s not that I’m a sad person; I just think minor key music sounds more beautiful.

10. I type around 120 words a minute, mostly because I learned on a computer when I was around 11.

11. If I had to choose, I’d rather be a zombie than a vampire, because vampires are all with the faux aura of sophistication and lame accents, whereas zombies are more straightforward and direct about their needs.

12. I don’t care whether the medium is a novel, a movie, a comic book, or a company brochure--I love great stories in any form.

13. I like spending time with my niece, although when she crawls on top of me for several hours, I end up with “niecehead"--a condition that resembles hathead.

14. My friend Meredith told me to say in this list that I furrow my eyebrows a lot.

15. I probably wouldn’t do this if the world would wise up and agree with me a lot more than it does.

16. I picked up my love of science-fiction from my father, my appreciation of a good bowl of oatmeal topped with raisins and nuts from my mother, and my fondness for The Doors from my brother. They are all great people.

17. However, I also picked up their habit of going to bed relatively early, which has annoyed various friends of mine for years.

18. I average three cups of coffee a day.  Any fewer makes me sluggish; any more makes me as a hair-trigger as an rookie cop in Oakland.

19. I usually listen to Talking Heads’s “Stop Making Sense” CD on or around my birthday every year.

20. If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing for a living, I’d like to be the guy who names all those paint colors, like “Crimson Millennium” and “Custard Magnificence.”

21. I have a real weakness for hot dogs.

22. In fact, I’ve eaten so many that they won’t need to embalm me when I die.  My loved ones will peer into my open casket and say “Yeah, that’s pretty much what he looked like.”

23. I am prepared to watch an episode or two of Buffy with you so you can understand why it is the apex of quality television.

24. I’m trying to be a better listener.

25. What did you say again?