Category: Friday Fives

1. When is the last time you lost your keys?
About 8 or 9 years ago wile playing late at night with Shelly, Loren and Eddie at the playground at Washington Park. “The Park is closed!”

2. Are you likely to ask for directions when lost or to continue to wander?
I will wander for a bit at first. I usually am not completely lost – know where I am at and I know where I need to be. But I have an inconvenient knack for taking a tragic wrong turn and then having to wind myself back to where I need to be. We are taking about driving, right? Oh well, for life it is generally the same answer.

3. Numerology: reliable or just a load of bunk
Bunk.

4. Marilyn Monroe. Conspiracy or tragic accident?
Tragic accident. The Kennedy’s didn’t have the bimbo killed. The bimbo was a sad, tragic figure hopped up on booze and pills.

5. Favorite childhood sweets/candy?
Red vines and Coca Cola. mmmmmmmmmm. Followed by some angel food cake.

Please place your caption in the comments section below.

1. What is the most fun things you have done this summer?
It is a toss up between the weekend I spent at Mom’s ranch and going to Redrocks for Van Morrison – both were great events in completely different ways for completely different reasons.

2. What are you listening to now?
The new Bob Dylan compilation “No Direction Home” and “Jerry Garcia Band Live at Keen College.” I must have slipped into my hippy phase.

3. In what state do you live?
Near chaos, just off the depression off ramp, take a left turn at curious and swing past boredom. There is no mandatory evacuation ordered for this state.

4. Last book/s you read?
The latest Harry Potter – plodding but decent. “Oblivion” by David Foster Wallace – I just cracked it but wow. He is a master of the post modern metafiction short story. No doubt.

5.Are you ready for fall?
I [heart] fall. It is my favorite time of the year. The leaves turning, seasonal changes, cooler weather. All the ingredients for my bliss.

1. Name one thing you’ve quit:
I guess in a way I quit the army – I took an early out and left 60 days early. I also quit a job at a teleconference center once upon a time, starting a course of jobs that I still hold today as a dweeb supervising a call center.

2. Name something you’ve won:
I don’t join a lot of contests. However, as a dweeb, supervising a call center, I won a coveted Inner Circle of Excellence award for service, then was told the next day, we would be laid off. No trip to the Bahamas for me, baby.

3. Describe a subject in school you do poorly in:
Math. Mathy, mathy, mathy, math. I have some dyslexia and the rules of the mathmatica still puzzle me at times. Thank goodness for Texas Instruments.

4. Have you ever purposely not done your best?
Well, as said before, our call center was set to be closed. During that six or seven months, I barely showed up to work.

5. Do you lead, follow, or get out of the way?
At work, I lead. Weekends, I tend to be a follower, drifting with no real plan. In traffic, I get the hell out of the way.

1. What was the first song you remember hearing and enjoying on the radio?
“Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round The Old Oak Tree.” I was 10 and this song for some unfathomable reason, captivated me.

2. If you could only listen to five CDs for a year, which five would they be? (Boxed sets can count as one CD. Sigh.)
Bruce Springsteen, “Live 1975 – 1985”; Springsteen’s “The Rising; John Prine, “Good Days”; Miles Davis, “Almost Blue”; Van Morrison, “Greatest Hits.”

3. What was your favorite year, music-wise?
1989 – 1990. I was out of the Army, back in college, working at a college radio station and really started to pay attention to music during that period.

4. If you could witness one historical music event through all time, what would you pick, and why?
The Beatles playing at Shea Stadium.

5. Do you have a song that never fails to cheer you up? What is it and why does it do that for you?
No one song specifically. However Randy Newman can usually make me happy as can Bob Dylan. If I had to name one song it would be “All I Really Want To Do” from the album “Another Side Of Bob Dylan” a very happy and generally upbeat album.

1. Link to your local news source: The Denver Channel.com

2. Link to your favorite dessert:Raspberry Cheesecake

3. Link to a band that you despise: The Doors

4. Link us to a good book: Lolita My current read.

5. Link to your favorite Muppet frog: Kermit

Although I’ve never been to New Orleans, watching the news has effected me greatly. This week’s FridayFiver has been hijacked in an effort to ask you all to think about what you have and what you may be able to give. The following list comes from CNN:

Network for Good

Red Cross

Feed the Children

Salvation Army

Florida Hurricane Relief Fund

America’s Second Harvest

Catholic Charities USA

Next week? Return of the funny. I promise.

Via Friday Fiver.

1. What if any instrument do you play?
I can play the saxophone and took organ lessons as a child, but I haven’t played an instrument for years. I am trying to learn the guitar, but I am not very focused at it.

2. If you could choose to play an instrument what would it be?
Acoustic steel blues guitar. I wanna be a bluesman.

3. If you were in a band, what would your band’s name be?
I was never good at this sort of thing. The master fo fun band names was Dave Berry. However, running through this I came up with Eric Cartman’s Sagittarius – a great band name.

4. What type of music would your band play?
Blues renditions and covers of 1980s new wave songs. I can hear them in my head and they rock. Now, to just figure out how to get them out of my head and on to disc.

5. Would you continue to be good for years to come, or would you and your band end up in Branson playing for bus loads of elderly?
The act described above is pure Branson material.

1. Flu season is around the corner. How do you handle the seasonal head cold?
Zicam usually. And I supplement with a preemptive Tylenol and a saline nasal spray. I generally don’t too run down with a cold, but I have had a few multi-day bed rests in the past. Hopefully this year will be better. I am a firm believer in the flu shot and will take one again this year.

2. Apirin? Tylenol? Motrin? Which side of the line are you on?
Tylenol Liquid Gel Caps work great for me – like a little pain relieving manna from health care heaven.

3. What was your favorite meal served at your elementary school?
Homemade hamburgers featured homemade buns. There was something about their taste – real home cooking, like grandma made. Wait a minute, grandma did make them. Ahhh, the sweet joy of a small town.

4. One preseason game is out of the way. Do the Broncos stand a chance this year?
I honestly don’t pay any attention to preseason. One of my employees lent me a football season preview magazine, but it sits on my desk unread. I have no idea what the team’s chances are. But the sports writers all seem united on the prospect that Tatum Bell is going to have a great season at running back, which is good news.

5. What does your mom do to make you cry?
When she talks lovingly and honestly about my father and he life since his passing. (Go ahead kids, try and top that.)

1. Do you exercise on a regular basis?
I am trying. My new goal is not so much to exericise but to no longer practice my “Epic” sedentary life. It is about small little steps and ensuring every day I get out and move. In the process I am exercising and getting in shape, I suppose. My problem with exercise is that I hate sweating and getting hot and muggy. I haven’t found a decent gym located in the dairy cooler of a grocery store yet, so the short answer is get over youself and just get outside and do it. Damn, I hate Nike.

2. Name one person that raises your blood pressure:
I can get very angry and fired up, red in the face and sweat pouring from brow when I talk about Bush or other supreme practitioners of injustice. His distant gaze and smile and “Chauncey Gardner” patina makes me mad.

3. You need to go up two floors in a building: do you use the stairs or the elevator?
I very nearly always take the stairs. I don’t want to be “that guy.” At work, we have two floors and an elevator to connect them along with two sets of stairs. I can count the times I have used the elevator on one hand in the six years I have been in that building.

4. Have you ever participated in an “Extreme” sport?
I jumped out of an airplane once in the Army. And I went bungy jumping for a new story in Crested Butte. Neither are extreme, per se, as there were many, many, many safety features involved. But for me, that is extreme enough.

5. Imagine that you have the opportunity to become a foreign correspondent for a week. Where would you want to report from, and what types of stories would you be interested in doing? (In honor of Peter Jennings.)

Darfur – and I want to bring some attention to the death, killing and slaughter in Northern Africa.

1. Given the circumstance that you would need to – how would you go about getting rid of the body?
I think some creative use of a chipper shredder would be in order. Put the parts into a good sized plastic bag or two and then, under the dark of night, take the bag of parts to the country and liberally feed to some pigs.

2. Have any turn on? (not necessarily sexual) In other words, to answer the question, what do you dig?
Loud music while driving – it is one of my very favorite things and I plan and plot to insure my car has the proper tunes for any given time. It is indeed my happy place.

3. Are you related to anyone famous somewhere in your family tree?
They say there is some family blood related to Butch Cassidy in our family tree, traced through my great grandmother on the Larson side. On my grandmother’s side, we have a distant relation to Brigham Young, through one of his many wives.

4. Real world filter: I drove upon a really bad auto accident last night and it got me thinking. What is the grossest thing you have ever seen?
I once watched a hunter gut a deer and it nearly made me vomit. I was standing too close and it was cold out. The steam from the dead animal sent a waft of guts and blood into the air and the sucking sound as the guts were cut out with a Buck knife, and eventually bloodied hands – that image has stayed with me for many, many years.

5. What is your favorite cover song and by what group?
Springteen’s Mustang Sally medley, performed on the No Nukes album. A fine rendition of some great 1960s rock.