Category: Friday Fives

1. Where’s the worst place you’ve thrown up?

Maybe not the worst place, but still a good story.  In Gunnison, in college – they have very, very wide streets to accommodate all the winter snow and facilitate its removal.   One night, driving from a “townie” bar, quite, quite drunk, heading up the 5 or 6 blocks back to my dorm I was so “in my cups” that the process of being in a moving car sent my stomach off.  While still driving, I moved towards the side of the road – still driving – and opened my door and hurled, holding the car door open with one hand and negotiating the snowy/icy street with the other hand on the steering wheel. Not my best moment. 

2. What’s your worst allergy?

I can usually get a sinus infection at the drop of pollen in the air.  I have been lucky over the last few years, but still  – I tend to skip the colds and move right to a sinus infection. 

3. What’s the worse cold/sickness you’ve experienced?

When I was 27 years old I caught the chicken pox while on drill with the army reserves and was subsequently bedridden for 3 weeks, including what the doctor described as chicken pox pneumonia which presented with pox on the inside of my lungs. 

4. When you’re sick, what’s your go to comfort food?

Cream of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich.

5. When it’s infected, do you hate the swelling or the itching?’

I don’t mind the swelling – who does. But I don’t care for the itching.

1. What is your job in the medieval world?

Roy Nallson – Medieval Accountant. 

“Get Yee Chickens Counted Here.” 

2. You start homesteading in Deadwood – how do you make your bones in the wild, wild west?

Celebrity gambling dice sharpener

3. In the near future, jobs have been eliminated and replaced by robots. How do you spend your time?

Flower arranging. I can do it better than robots. I’m talking to you, Vonnegut!

4. The aliens arrive and want some explanations of humankind that may be confusing. What do you explain to them?

Humans do no recreate by ejaculating on women’s faces, despite the pornographic “sex education training films.”

5. In an alternate timeline, what are you now doing for a career that you aren’t doing now?

Said this before – I am Rob Petrie and a television writer for Alan Brady. 

1. Of all movie opening scenes, what one sold the entire film the most?

The opening scene of M*A*S*H.  by Roger Altman. Most of the film doesn’t hold up in the #metoo world – it is a misogynistic and racist mess. But the opening scene all taken in one shot from the choppers landing to the triage and beginning of surgery really sets the tone.

2. What’s the one horror movie that genuinely terrified you while watching it?

I am not a big fan of the genre, but I did see the Blair Witch Project in a theater with knowing absolutely nothing about it and it scared me shitless!

3. What was your weirdest movie theatre experience?

In the army, on the base in Germany, we had a movie theater and this family almost always showed up with a picnic basket featuring full meals – brisket and potatoes and salad – the whole deal. It was always so odd to observe their obliviousness or, dare I say, genius at their approach to movie watching.

4. What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve brought into the movie theater?

Bourbon to put in the Cokes in order to enjoy sipping through a Red Vines® straw.

5. What used to be extra common in movie theaters that you just don’t see anymore?

The crying baby room (bring that back) and the smoking section (no need for a return).

1. What is a product/service that you can’t still believe exists in 2019?

Phone booths and prepaid long distance phone cards.

2. What was common in 1999 but is unusual in 2019?

Answering machines and caller ID boxes that you rented from the phone company.

3. What is debunked but people still belive in?

The moon landing(s).  Look people it happened.  From my neighbors front yard as a boy in the early 1970s, we could aim a telescope up to the moon and see them up there with our own eyes.  Science!

4. What instrument would you like to hear more of in modern music?

The French Horn.  Yes, an electric rock French Horn. That’s what the kids need nowadays.

5. Someone stops you and offers $1 million if you can talk 1 hour without stopping or stuttering about a topic of your choosing. What do you pick to speak about?

Keep it broad to enable you to fill time.  Classic American literature. I can blather on about that for hours. (Hell, Moby Dick can last hours.)

This was completely unrehearsed and ad libbed:

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1. What is something every day, yet on reflection you realize you really appreciate?

The simple beauty and functionality of the intersection stop light.   It works, universally across the globe.

2. What is the greatest invention ever?

Those people mover things in airports to traverse between long ass concourses.  (Seriously, it is probably the smartphone when history comes back and assess it all.)

3. What activity in P.E were you surprised that you were good at?

Running the half mile – I was actually pretty good.  And we had this very dangerous game played on these wooden scooter things that usually ended in someone getting a foot or a hand run over – but I was pretty good at the soccer game we played on those death traps.

4. What is so traumatic and disturbing that it ruined your month or year?

11/7/2016 – the dawn of the Trumpacalypse.  I still find myself sometimes just pausing with my jaw agape realizing that somehow this country made that man the most powerful man in the word.  Stunned.

5. What is something you will only buy name brand?

Toothpaste – Crest. Always Crest.

1. What’s a huge waste of money that people are still paying for in 2019?

Probably paying for a full cable package.  But it is so convenient. I am certain though that paying ala carte for each package/service channel you want is probably about the same or more.  Someone run the numbers on this, would ya?

2. What’s something only assholes buy?

Really, really huge pickups for daily, commuter urban driving.   Jeez.  If you don’t live out in the sticks, if you are not out on the back 40 poking dogies, if you aren’t hauling big trailers or transporting big pieces of equipment then you don’t need that F350 club cab with dually wheels.

3. What’s something someone could do or say in the US that scream “I’m from Europe”?

You prefer hot tea to coffee.  What is wrong with you? Wait, better yet – you don’t like iced tea and think it is kinda gross.  Europeans, I have discovered, don’t understand the sheer refreshment of iced tea.

4. Who was the dumbest person you ever met? How did you know?

Well, this will be difficult to pin down.  I graduated fro Fetal Alcohol High School there were a number of challenged folks there.  Probably one of the Voloshins.

5. What’s a dumb rule or law in your city or at your work?

Maybe not a dumb law but poor use of technology – stoplight traffic control cameras.  Heads up folk, Greenwood Village, Colo uses them to significantly contribute to their village coffers through aggressive fines. My bitter rants is now over.

What are the five oldest songs on you music player/app/playlist?

1. Beethoven’s Third Symphony
2. You Drink Too Much (Really old blues from the 1930s on “Booze & The Blues.)
3. So What (Miles Davis/Kind of Blue)
4. God Bless The Child (Billie Holiday.)
5. Mannish Boy (Muddy Waters)

1. What’s the funniest thing that a random stranger said to you that made you die laughing inside?
   • Hmm. So many possibilities. This is actually a difficult question. At a grocery store once, in a fit of snarkiness, the checker totalled up the bill and said “If live to scan the things and take the coupons.” It was a funny moment.
2. What is the funniest movie of all time
   • Blues Brothers. (Also fond of anything with comic genius Myrna Loy)
3. What’s the funniest book you’ve ever read
   • Confederacy of Dunces. It’s a riot.
4. What sport would be the funniest to add a mandatory amount of alcohol to?
   • Well golfers drink while playing (maybe not the pros.) Babe Ruth played baseball half in the bag. Football is dangerous enough. I go with ice hockey. That third period could be some fun viewing.
5. Who is your favorite stand up comic?
   • Right now, Kathleen Madigan. Seriously, go see her live.

April is nearly over and we are tumbling toward May and soon it will be the season of graduating. It seems like every class has graduations going on now, so how about you

1. Did you enjoy your senior year of high school?

Yeah. It was pretty great. We had a brand spanking new shiny high school. I was rocking it in speech and debate. I had an unofficial role as the official school MC for most assemblies and two independent studies with no real classwork expectations. Pretty fun.

2. Did you have a senior trip (high school) and were you able to go on it.

No. But in a rural area high school, all of our competitions were miles and miles away so lots of bus trips to Grand Junction, Gunnison, Aspen, Denver, Utah and beyond. In my freshman year, our band took a huge trip to the Portland Rose Festival via a convoy of school buses.

3. Was graduating (from either high school or college/university) a big thing with your family or just another day?

I was the first member of my family to graduate from college. It was a big deal for grandparents and parents.

4. What were you looking forward to the most after graduating from either high school or college/university?

I was fortunate to have a job at a newspaper right out of college and I was looking forward to that opportunity.

5. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your graduating self?

Pay more attention in high school to writing and English classes.  The math was not too important after all.

1. What normal thing can’t you do?

I am pretty dyslexic about many things and tend to come at things from the wrong direction. As a result, I am not able to play modern video games with any kind of competence.  (I am also told I cut things with knives incorrectly.)

2. What do you personally hate the smell of?

The combination of stale cigarettes and coffee in the morning.

3. People who make their bed in the morning every day, what are the rest of us missing out on?

After being forced to make my bed each morning in the morning while in the army and also as a child – in my college dorm I made it each day so there was somewhere to sit.  As a grown up I don’t really make a bed, per se. I pull up the comforter and toss a ton of pillows bake onto the bed.

4. What is the most pointless thing that actually exists?

This:

5. What is your best use of an item or object that clearly was not made for such use?

I do all sorts of repurposing, but I think my favorite is a kitchen hack – using a hot air corn popper to roast green coffee beans.