I don’t like chain letters, but this one that I just got tagged with has me thinking… I’m supposed to tell you five things about myself that you don’t already know, and the question interests me because I’m not sure that there are five interesting things about me that I haven’t already told you here. So, I’ve decided to give it a shot, even though it’s highly unlikely that I’ll have anything nearly as interesting to share as Amanda (who was picked up and questioned the FBI at 15 years old), or Mike (whose mother and father both have identical twins), who came before me in this long, twisted chain of blog tag.
So, here are five things I think you may still not know about me, even after almost five years of obsessive blogging.
1. I once almost hit Andy Warhol with my parents’ car… It was in New York city, and I was relatively new to driving. It was raining out, and fairly late at night. Warhol stepped in front of the car, and I hit my brakes. I probably came within an inch or two of him. He turned his head sharply and stared this really nasty stare at me through the windshield (like I’d just asked him to sign a copy of the Scum Manifesto, or something). He was wearing all black and his pale face and white wig really stood out against the black sky. It would have made a striking photograph.
2. I am a descendant of ornery tobacco farmers. I remember that both my great grandmother and great grandfather slept with loaded pistols under their pillows… I have only smoked one cigarette in my life. My dad gave it to me when I was about 10.
3. I thought, when I was a young man, that women’s vaginas were lined with hair, like furry pouches.
4. I saved every fingernail and toenail clipping for most of my youth.
5. When I was very young, I went through the windshield of a car. My mom was driving. I was standing in the passenger seat. She thought she saw her dog — I think his name was Chi Chi – and slammed on the brakes. I lived… As for my mom – I’ve written about this in comic form but I’ve never mentioned it here – she was unconscious when I was extracted from her furry pouch with forceps. I think that’s why my head comes to a sharp point on top. When I was later handed to her, she rejected me, saying that she hadn’t had her baby yet… My mom turned 60 yesterday, and I love her.
Now, I guess I’m supposed to tag five more bloggers… Hmmmm… Let’s say Brett, Jeff, Collin, Dave, and Srah… “OK, you’re it!”
Oh, and Amanda never told me what would happen to me if I didn’t post something and tag five more people, so I guess I’ll just make something up… If any of the people I tagged don’t post their list of 5 things within 24 hours, they will be sent back in time, where they will be forced to make love to Willard Scott in full Ronald McDonald makeup. If, however, they do exactly as they’re told, and then tag five more people, well, then there will be peace on earth for all eternity, and all the evidence that Willard Scott ever lived here among us will magically disappear.
bonus revelation: Unlike everyone else I know, I have never paid for sex.
26 Comments
Bizarre.
For the last few days, I’ve had this thought — and I am not lying: what are five things my fellow writers at the American Society of Journalists and Authors don’t know about me? And what are five things I don’t know about any of them? (The orgnization offers e-forums where we talk about all kinds of things.)
I’m not a blogger and didn’t receive any kind of email to this effect.
BTW, Mark, those are very interesting.
I did a similar meme (with SIX answers!) earlier this year. Can I be excused from the meme and from the horrible torture you’ve threatened us with? The only thing I can think of that’s worse than clowns is clowns + McDonalds. Willard Scott doesn’t help things, either.
You still owe us one, mark:
the night that i almost killed warhol
…and, regardless, I think it was actually just Crispin Glover in a silver wig.
You dick. 24 hours? Man. Well, as far as I’m concerned, the timer starts from when I read your email.
Good answers by the way. I probably can’t top them.
One thing you may not know about me: back in the ’80s, I came close to being cast as Willard Scott’s pianist/bandleader for a proposed talk show. I don’t think the project ever made it into development.
I’ve never paid for sex. I have paid for food, however.
“Unlike everyone else I know, I have never paid for sex.”
From what I hear, that’s true. Last time I was being serviced by one of our local ladies of the night, I asked if she’d read Mark’s post on local prostitution. And she was like, “Mark Maynard, you know him? You know where I can find him? He owes me money, he owes all the other girls around here money, too. He never pays. He just zips up and runs off giggling yelling, ‘Catch me if you can.'”
But, has he accepted payment for sex? That’s the question.
And, for the record, I did once rent a furry pouch. Go ahead and mock me if you will, but it was very cold outside and I was trying to avoid hypothermia. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going out like Mr. Kim.
‘Unlike everyone else I know, I have never paid for sex’
Most pimps don’t.
Mr. Skinner, if I might be so bold, I would like to ask you a question in the spirit of the one presented here. What are five things that you have hidden during the course of your life?
I heard a comic once says. “If you bought dinner or a movie, you paid for sex.” – Steve
Steve:
Whether the guy was a comic is debatable.
Collin has now responded as well. It
And I meant to say “over” paid.
And Brett’s right. I guess I had already told the Warhol thing… So, here’s my replacement entry.
1. My dad once handed me a loaded pistol while eating breakfast at Waffle House.
(Collin’s post reminded me of it.)
Speaking of Brett, his response is now online as well.
We’re still waiting on Jeff and Dave… As Jeff is supposed to be out getting shit-faced with his coworkers tonight, I don’t expect we’ll see anything from him… Actually, if I was more adept with technology, I’d call him on his cell phone and get a recording of him confessing five things to me while he’s plastered.
thanks for doing this, mark. i don’t think anything would happen or not happen if you did or didn’t do this (i hate those chains that tell you you’ll have bad luck for seven years.. blah blah… how could that even be possible?) i guess with this one you just have to feel good that people are interested in learning more about you and have fun with it. that’t it :) and i didn’t know any of this stuff so it was all very interesting. imagine if you had hit warhol.. wow
So, want to tell us what the FBI thing was about?
I know! I kinda’ wish you had hit Warhol… I mean, not so badly that he would have died… but just enough to make the papers. Awesome.
Dave’s been busy – watch this airplane land….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=119RxxTXYlI
I don’t think this was his flight, but he was on an Alaska airplane that did the same thing yesterday. This was after the plane was hit by lightning.
All right, Mr. Glass. I’m not a blogger, but am always ready to entertain the public.
1. My father was an obsessive alcoholic; after his retirement, he started drinking at 10 in the morning. He kept the house “hermetically sealed” (his words) to keep out all natural air and light. This meant I had to hold a flashlight for him so he could see to change a record on a day that was sunny outside. I once saw him cook breakfast with a stopwatch; so that the coffee, eggs, and toast would be ready at exactly the same time.
2. David Mamet came to a show I did, and told me that if he had continued acting, he would have liked to be like me. Steve Martin, on the other hand, said my stage persona reminded him of Hitler. I didn’t tell either of them that I’d never seen any of their work.
3. My parents kept about a dozen feral cats in their yard. My mother refused to have them fixed, because she insisted thay wouldn’t hunt then, and she wanted them to kill the birds, turtles and rabbits that ate her garden. They were sick, underfed, and wormy. Sometimes she ran them over with her car. “I’m surprised I don’t run over more of them,” she told me.
3. I once had dinner with Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary. I told him I owned the soundtrack of “You Are What You Eat,” a movie he wrote music for in the ’60s; he was touched. I didn’t tell him I got it because Tiny Tim is on it.
4. I performed in a couple of those awful murder mystery shows, where the audience has to guess the culprit. I needed the money; I don’t think I did it very well.
5. I have a couple of boxes of old MAD paperbacks; sometimes I reread them on rainy days.
Voila, Mr. Glass.
Well, I’m gonna have to ask for an extension here. I didn’t hear about this until last night and I had just gotten back from a hellish flight in from Dallas. I think I may have discovered what happens if you don’t respond within 24 hours, and it ain’t pretty.
My power is out and I’m typing this in on Jule’s and Tim’s computa.
I think I may be exempt now after all the suffering, but I’ll throw out a few for now.
1- When I was 5 years old, I fell off my bike and bonked my head a good one. I was unconscious and supposedly had no pulse. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital.
2- When I was 7 years old, I fell off one of my rickety forts after a snowstorm, landed funny, and stood up to discover that I had a 2 x 4 stuck to my head. There was a framing nail stuck in it that went about 2 1/2″ into my brain. My buddy Robby pulled the board off and I debated telling my mom because I didn’t want to go to the hospital again. Fortunately, I did and I went in for a one month stint that time. They had to go in and remove broken bone, rust, hair, etc.
3- I have two middle names. Edward, after my dad’s dad, and Remi after my mom’s gradpa. Ed worked at Finestra Steel products in Hamtrammick back in the 30’s to the late 50’s, used to take the trolley to work, lived somewhere around 14th and Bagely by the Ambassador bridge ( and later off Southfield Freeway and 5 mile). He later moved to Saginaw and worked for Dafoe Shipbuilding. My Great Grandfather Remi LaBreque was born in 1888, had 6 sisters that all were nuns in a convent in Nova Scotia, met my Great Grandmother at the convent ( she was an orphan that was raised by the nuns ), worked at a paper mill his whole life, and lived in Westbrook Maine ( right down the street from the mill) his whole adult life. I met him once when I was 11. He was sitting in a small room in a house that was built in the 1850’s and can be best described as “rough hewn”, watching Benny Hill and laughing his ass off. He was drinking a beer. The whole time we stayed with them he was laughing and telling jokes.He died at the age of 96.
4- Once when I was a kid and sleeping on the top bunk ( my brother and I shared a room), I woke up in the middle of the night and the whole room was lit up. the curtains were open and my feet were by the window. I looked up to see a ball of fire right outside the window. It took up most of the window. I felt like it was watching me and was pretty scared. I tried to yell but nothing would come out. I tried to move but couldn’t. I eventually fell back to sleep. Years later, I had a similar incident where I woke up in the living room and saw the ceiling on fire. I couldn’t move again and fell back to sleep. When I was in college I had read an article in Psychology Today about hypnagogic hallucinations. It seems like a good explanation.
5- When I was in my sophmore year at Detroit Catholic Central, I punched a football player in the face. I was trying to study during homeroom and he kept trying to get my attention. He kept throwing pieces of chalk at me and I warned him. He threw another, so I got up and punched him. I got about 3 good punches in before he clocked me. I went down like a sack of potatoes. I think I was out for about 30 seconds or so. Mr. Devitch, the homeroom teacher, just kept on playing euchere like nothing happened, which in hind site was a pretty nice thing considering I would probably been expelled for that. After the bell, I went to the bathroom and rinsed the blood off my mouth and then went to spanish class to take the test I had been trying to study for. I had left large sections blank because there were huge blind spots in my field of vision. I was apparently writing the answers to questions 3 or 4 lines away from the questions. The teacher asked if I was all right and I asked if I could go down to the counselors office. I went down there and told the priest that I had a headache. I don’t think I was fooling anyone, but no one challenged me.
6- When I was 16 and had just gotten my driver’s license, I had managed to convince my parents to loan me their car for the evening to go watch a movie with some buddies. Mitch, Marc, Tim and I went to Quo Vadis in Westland in my parents brown 1979 toyota corolla hatch back and watched some Johnn Hughes movie. After, we went out and started giving friends lawn jobs. The car was perfect for lawn jobs. It had rear wheel drive and was a stick. After laying a few patches on lawns, we were on to bigger and better things. I think by this point I was already late by about 2 hours. We drove over to our old middle school and drove out into the field full blast. Now it was spring time and the ground was starting to thaw. I noticed when we were about 30 or 40 yards out that the car was slowing down and that I had down shifted a few times. Soon I was at a dead stop. We barely got the doors open it was sinking sol fast. We tried to move it, but ended up covered in mud. After about half an hour I called it off. I started the trudge home to Sunflower Sub with Mitch, who lived down the street from me, while Marc and Tim walked back to Colony Farms. By the time I got home it was about 1 am. My dad was waiting for me. He didn’t even ask where the car was. I just got a couple of nice whatfors.
The next day, my dad and I went to figure out how to get the car. When we got there, there was a second set of tracks that went halfway out to the toyota. We tried digging out the car and it was going nowhere fast. The car was about 80 yards out from the blacktop and was essentially floating on mud. We went home and I had to find a tow truck. I started calling around and call after call I was told that they were told not to tow me, that I had to keep calling. Most of them were laughing. I finally got a hold of the tow truck company that was “approved” to tow me. Apparently, a cop car had gone out into the field to see what the toyota was doing out there and had gotten stuck too. I had to use the same tow truck company because I was to pay for the cops tow also. They went through the trouble of calling all the other companies to make sure that I got the right one. The guy towing the car had a smile on his face the whole time. He made me run the line out to the car and told me where to latch it. After the toyota was back on blacktop and I was trying to settle up with him, he told me to put my money away, that it was on him.
Alright, that is 6.
I’ve never paid for sex either, unless you include Playboy.
At least you didn’t thrun Anee Heche into a lesbian, Doug.
Great sories, guys. Brilliant stuff.
Hey, DM — #4 was obviously an alien abduction experiene….
I think it can all be explained by the nail in the brain.
Yeah. The nail in the head. Probably should have left that one off the list. I had some friends in high school that would say “Hi Dave” while waving their hand as if it were stuck to the side of their head. Funny guys….
I’m pretty sure that the light was a hypnagogic hallucination, but what the hell do I know.
It’s true, Mark; I didn’t turn Anne Heche into a lesbian. I’m sorry you had to go through that heartache; I wish you better times in 2007.