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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. Everyone’s got crazy relatives. Tell us about some of yours.
I come from a family of Kooks. The entire Vernal, Utah contingent of belligerent, hard livin’, hard drinkin’ Mormon’s mostly come to mind. Cousin “D” is the most prominent – a gun nut, right wing, misogynistic wack job who glares at women if they even think of speaking up in the company of men and is always asking “where you keep your guns?”
Seriously.
He is concerned that our family didn’t keep a gun or two out in the plain view and handy in case of an uprising. If there is a Utah Militia of Separatists, I am sure he is one of them.

2. Which television shows, recent or old, were you most disappointed
to see cancelled?
Micheal Moore’s the Awful Truth. And Match Game. I loved that game show as a kid.

3. Which deaths of famous people have made you the saddest?
Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon.

4.Make up your own church.
The church of Guinness. We shall worship at the alter of the dark stout ale. Rejoice in the darkness.

5.What have you killed with a spade or other blunt instrument? Extra
points awarded at my discretion for style, elan and sheer absurdity.
In my youthful lawn care and gardening days, back when I had the patience and ability to tend to living things I killed a lot of bugs with the back of a spade. I have no real serial killing “gonk” tales to regale you with, alas.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. Tell us a good bar story!
This involves Reverend Ed. (don’t they all – I am leaving him two of three of the best ones). We were at Guv’s Park on a hot Saturday afternoon in the fall, as I remember it. We had been on a bit of binge already and hunkered down into another bar that day and ordered a round of beers and some scotch. We were on a real scotch kick back then and all totalled we had about six glasses of scotch and about four beers. The good waitress was getting concerned because we hadn’t had any food (she didn’t know we had eaten earlier) and she decided to cut us off. She said she would go call us cab to get us home (it was 4 o’ clock in the afternoon. We were just getting started!) As she left, we threw a bunch of money on the table and snuck out of the place and back to our car and headed to Ed’s place to keep up some epic drinking. We are both still proud of the day we were kicked out of Guv’s Park.

2. What are your favorite album covers of all time?
The iconic pose of Travolta on the cover of the Saturday Night Fever Album. The Police Syncronicity album (There were three different covers with alternating stripes, very ahead of its time, I suppose), The Beatles “White Album” – genius. The original album cover to The Beatles Revolver – the one with the bloody dolls. The Who – Who’s Next.

3. List your favorite insult!
Fuck you!
Are you done?
Wow, you thought of that yourself?
It’s important when telling a story to have a point (thanks to Ed!)

4. You’ve got to “go away” for a while and you’re only allowed to
bring 5 movies on DVD. What would they be?
I think this ground has been covered in the Friday Fives, but they would be
1. Casablanca – A great story of hope and friendship.
2. Creator – A great debate on the meaning of life.
3. Say Anything – A Lloyd meets girl story.
4. The Blues Brothers – You can use your time away to learn the songs and dances.
5. Apocoplyse Now! Redux – If you are going away for a while, why not a movie that takes a while to watch.

5. What are some of the worst lyrics (lines or entire songs) in music
history? Please cite examples.
1. Hungry Heart – Springsteen (Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.) ps, I love this song.
2. I think I’m Turning Japanese – The Vapors (’nuff said)
3. I Gave Her a Ring (She gave me the finger) – – Steven Fromholz (Oh, do listen and sing along.)
4. Baby I’m-A Want You – Bread (It makes no kind of sense)
5. All The Young Dudes – Mott The Hoople (I have no earthly idea what this song is really about.)

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. What were you like in high school? How have you changed?
I was the class clown. Really. Hard to believe, I know. I was the official master of ceremonies for most school events (pep assemblies, band concerts and stuff). I was really busy, with some school activity or an other almost every day of the week. Now, I go home and sit in front of the television and wonder where it all went so terribly wrong.

2. What are some of the worst meals you’ve had in your life?
I like telling this story. While stationed in Germany, we found this pizza place off base in Stuttgart that delivered pizza to the barracks. It was owned by a nice Czechoslovakian family. We noticed that the menu included a burrito smothered in green chili. Living in Germany it is really, really, really difficult to get Mexican food, so we ordered it. Now let’s review. Mexican food from an Italian pizza restaurant, made by a Czech family in southern Germany. Needless to say it lost a lot in the translation. It wasn’t bad, in fact it was quite edible after a few flagons of good German beer. But it wasn’t anything you would classify as a Green Chile Smothered Burrito.

3. What hand puppet is most, or least, likely to enhance masturbation?
Least likely? Kukla, and Ollie. (although Fran might do the trick, but she wasn’t a puppet, was she?) Any of the sock puppet family might do the trick, but more from a mechanical problem solving aspect rather than an erotic love aid.

4. What famous people did you have crushes on when you were growing up?
I have always had a little crush on Julie Andrews. She was a hotty in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. And let us never forget my absolute undying devotion to Mary Tyler Moore in her fine roles as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards (growllllllll.)

5. How did you quit (insert addiction here, NOT restricted to drugs!)?
I finally quit chewing my finger nails after many years of simply nubs on my paws by using an old fashioned trick. Tobasco and nail polish. A clear bit of nail polish to strengthen them and occasional bit of red sauce on the finger tips to quit chewing them. I quit smoking by no longer buying cigarettes and reading all the no smoking/quit smoking literature and statistics I could find. Once I began to grasp how terribly, terribly bad smoking is and how there are absolutely no redeeming qualities that come from smoking, I quit. But it was hard. Lots of cheating, lots of excuses to enjoys a bummed ciggie during a break at work. But now, four or five years later I am tobacco free and no turning back.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. What’s your favorite TV theme song and why?
The original Bill Cosby show (not the one with Huxtables but the one in 1970s). It was by Quincy Jones and it is a great mix of Jazz, Blues and Funk.

2. What’s your worst roommate story?
I had the most anal retentive boring and mean-spirited roommate my freshman year of college. Dan W. was an ROTC student, a proud Target employee and the stingiest bastard in the world. He had rented a refrigerator from the campus but kept it locked and in his closet. Inside his locked refrigerator was a case of some sort of Target brand soda. Each can was marked with his name. He used to take a lot of extra food from the cafeteria and keep it in the refrigerator as well. I was just a small town boy living the life of adventure in the big city and never had come across such an untrusting and mean spririted guy before. (He was wrapped real tight. He used to try to get into fights with all the guys on the floor and would physically shake with anger over the littlest thing (usually loud music, in a college dorm, in the 1980s, in Boulder – not a good sign)). And the fights went nowhere. It was a floor of midwest and California stoner dudes that were into the Grateful Dead and Rasta and didn’t want to fight, but that didn’t stop Dan. He once pulled a knife, or should I say a butter knife on a neighbor because of music. The neighbor laughed. I laughed. We all laughed. And Dan sauntered back to his room – locking me out as he pouted at the injustice of life. The next semester he moved to different dorm and our bong-centric floor went on with life. I have scarely thought of him until this moment.

3. What are you superstitious about?
Not much, really. I trust machines and processes and don’t generally life in a world where machines are personified with any kind of luck. I don’t worry about spilling salt or breaking mirrors and I don’t believe in ghosts.

4. The dumbest thing my boss has ever said is…
Hmmmm. I can remember some dumb bosses and dumb things they have done – but I don’t remember any good, juicy actual dumb boss quotes. I think the best dumb thing I recall was a publisher of small weekly I was working for in Gunnison. The paper came out on Friday mornings and John thought it was taking to long to put it together on Thursday night. He proposed having the whole thing done on Wednesday so it could go in the mail by Thursday put still keep the Friday publishing date and essentially missing two to three days of news and events each week. It was kind of stupid – all the sports news and city government coverage would have been two weeks old. This guy is so easy to pick on. There was also this huge breaking story of three lost cross country skiiers. They left from Aspen and then were lost and hadn’t returned in time. And their search eventually became a national news story, with Denver and National news media all over town chasing down the story. I had the orginal news story when they were found because I heard it on the radio scanner. I scrapped most of the weeks news and focused our coverage of this event. John thought this was a waste of time. People, he thought, didn’t want to read about this. I was stupified. A national news story breaks – the leading event with Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and CNN and John, the publisher of the local paper, wanted to be the only paper that wasn’t covering it because it seemed like an awful lot of work.

5. What does your favorite mug look like?
It is a big yellow and black mug with a built in rubber coaster and emblazoned with the words Nexel. Done. It has a perfect handle asnd holds just the right amount of coffee for a weekend morning.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from?
Mostly English, with Welsh, Irish and some German thrown in. And mostly American. My family has lived in this country since at least 1703 and if you track the matriarchal side, since about 1653 or so.

2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit?
I got to live in Europe while in the Army, stationed in Germany and had the chance to visit England. Both are very cool places. I really want to go to Wales and to Ireland, however.

3. Which would you least like to visit? Why?
Well, Kentucky is the Nall homeland, as is Tennessee, with the Nall Valley. However we landed in Virginia and I really have no desire to visit there, except maybe to see the the beach and the ocean.

4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognizeyour heritage?
Saint Patrick’s day and Thanksgiving are both big holidays for me and I tend to overdue it on both days.

5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country(parents, grandparents, etc)?
Martin Nalle came to Virginia via England in 1703 (as a presumed indentured servant). He married Mary Aldin, whose family arrived in Virginia, I believe, to at least prior to 1649, also from England.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. Favorite cereal and why?
Traditionally? It is either Super Sugar Puffs or Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch. Currently it is a creamy fruity oatmeal concoction of my own devising. The recipe follows:
2/3 cup quick oats
1/3 cup quick oats
1 cup of mixed dried fruity (I use a combination of craisins and mixed fruit.
1 1/4 cup dried non fat milk.
In a blender or food processor, toss in 1/3 cup quick oats and pulverize. Add it to the remaining oatmeal.
Now toss the dried fruit into the blender or food processor and chop it into little pieces.
Combine it all and store in a resealable container (Rubbermaid tubs or Zip-Loc bags work great.)
To serve, take about 2/3 cup of the mix, add about 3/4 cup of boiling water and some artificial sweetener (I like the blue stuff)
Yummy, low cal, no fat, high fiber breakfast goodness. I usually make a big ol’ double batch and keep it at my desk at work.
Enjoy.

2. What is the best thing about summer?
Long days, decent traffic. Not driving to work in the snow.

3. Would you rather have a Slurpee or a milkshake?
Slurpee. Or if you have Sonic nearby, a Sonic Cream Slushee. A great combination of a Slurpee/milkshake. mmmm, mmmm, good.

4. Are you an early bird or a night owl?
Early bird. I could easily get up at 4 am to start my day, but roommate and most of the rest of the world will have none of it. I generally am in bed by 9 a.m.

5. Remember the scene with Molly Ringwald putting lipstick on by holding it in her cleavage?
“Name one really bizarre thing you know how to do. No matter how small.”
Making homemade instant oatmeal? I roast my own coffee from green coffee beans. I am the only person I know who does this, but coffee made at my house is so much better than anywhere else. I also have this odd ability to crack my knuckles by just taking my fingers outstretched and quickly making a fist. It is kind of cool and makes a fun snappy noise.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. What movie does everyone seem to love, but you just can’t bring yourself to see
The Stepford Wives. An all star cast and a new script that makes the movie classic a comedy. That is an equation that spells out disaster.

2. Which cartoon or comic book character is your least favorite?
It is perhaps, heresy, but I never really liked Superman. Sure, he has his achilles heel with the green kryptonite and all, but otherwise he is completely invincible. No challenge there. I like the more human superheroes, like Batman and Spider-Man, who must overcome their humanity at times in order to save the world.
Oh, yeah, I hate the Smurfs.

3. Which pop culture phenomenons do you think will officially “jump the shark” this year?
William Hung. In fact, I dare say, he already has already made the jump.

4. What are some popular things that you just don’t get?
Tatoos. I just don’t understand them. Don’t want one, don’t need one and try as I might, I have a hard time finding a lot of beauty in them. Oh well. To each their own.

5. And now — what’s your favorite line from a movie?
“I want more life . . . Fucker!” Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner.
“I got that going for me. Which is nice.” Bill Murray in Caddyshack, on reflecting his tip from the Dali Lama.
And I love most of the classic lines in Casablanca. I love Casablanca. What a great noir film that exceeded all expectations and set so many standards. It is the very definition of the movie cliche’.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. How do you spend your lunch hour?
I try to avoind eating in the cafeteria, as it is too crowded. I need to make my lunch hour more productive by exercising with a run or walk, but I haven’t organized my life yet to do that. Right now, I generally eat at one of the many food establishments in the Park Meadows area.

2. What’s the most extravagant thing you’ve ever done for a pet or animal?
Extravagant? Don’t know. Expensive? I had to take the cat to the vet hospital to get a long string removed from his intestines. $2,400.00 later we learned that cats like to eat string and that overnight visits with x rays, surgery and blood work is very expensive, even for tiny little cats.
I used to take my old dog Whiskey to the dog groomer to have his hair cut in a traditional Scottish Terrier hair cut. That’s pretty extravagant, I suppose.

3. What could Barbra Walters make you cry about?
Questions about my dad and missing him. Or maybe just anything. I can be pretty weepy.

4. What is your weirdest, or most comical, dead pet story that you can bare sharing?
So many pets, past and present. I still have bad dreams of the death of Whiskey, the wonder dog. Whiskey was my Scottish Terrier and the smartest, wisest and best dog in the whole world. Some will argue with that. His propensity to run away all the time coupled with his tremendous production of urine which he was prone to distribute throughout the house may make you wonder if he was such a great dog. Well shut up. He was a great dog. I came home from work around midnight three years ago and he was dead. I found him curled up as if asleep under a coffee table, as if he wanted make sure that when he died he wasn’t in the way and didn’t leave a mess. Now, mind you, this is a dog that was prone to leaving a mess, a veritable hurricane just about anywhere he went, so I kind of grin when I think about his quiet, peaceful passing in the corner of the apartment. It was so not like him to do things in a quiet way.

5. Have you recently rediscovered your appreciation of an album that
you grew tired of long ago?
I bought a John Prine compiliation album a few years ago but never really gave it a good listen. I knew I liked a few of his songs, so I figured hey, I’ll by the two cd set. And it mostly just sat on the shelf. But recently, I began to give it a serious good listen. That man is a great song writer and folk/country singer. He isn’t about dancing around and shaking his ass and he doesn’t have any great electric guitar licks, but his debut album in 1972, Kris Kristofferson compared him to Dylan and his music and milleau is on par with some of Dylan’s best. I defintely have have rediscovered my appreciation of country music great John Prine.

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1. Describe your handwriting in one word.
Sloppy. It has a shelf life of about 18 hours and then even I struggle trying to read it. I am pretty dyslexic and spent a lot of time in elementary and middle school taking special education classes for my handwriting. I actually had teachers tell my mother I had a learning disability and was counseled in high school not to go to college and to go to diesel mechanics college instead. Which is odd because I am an evil super genius, although I have decided to use my super intelligence as a force for good.

2. What would you never, ever wear?
A tattoo, probably. But I think this question is more about clothing. I have virtually no real keen fashion sense and will generally wear anything close to acceptable. That said, I have never worn and will probably never wear a grass skirt or a dress.

3. What are you going to drink this weekend? Try to find a picture of it so we can all salivate at work.
Probably a Harvey Wallbanger.

4. Which bands or artists do you absolutely loathe?
Air Supply. I always turn off the radio when they come on. Mariah Carey is also on that list along with most of the manufactured pop acts of recent history: Brittany Spears,
N Sync and that whole genre.

5. What words always creep you out or bug you?
Irregardless (an unnecessary word!) Orientate (same thing) Medical slang, like “‘scripts” and “meds” for prescriptions and medicines. How hard is it to use the real word? Aren’t we lessening medicine’s importance by referring to them with nonchalant slang?

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Friday Fives

Friday Fives

1.If you were forced to eat only one thing for an entire week, what would it be?
A roast beef sammich prepared with swiss or muentster cheese on sour dough with mayo, horseradish, a dill pickle, lettuce, tomato and a slice of red onion. I could indeed eat that every day of my life.

2. What did you sing in the shower this morning?
“I can’t stop loving you.” by Ray Charles.

3. Describe your favorite T-shirt?
Either my T-Shirt from Remo with a quote from Zorba the Greek: “Life is trouble; only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.” Or my T-shirt funshelley gave me with a great quote from Ben Franklin: “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

4. In the spirit of Spinal Tap what should the Eleventh Commandment be?
Though shalt use thy blinker and be a considerate driver.

5. What book would you like to see turned into a movie?
“Cat’s Cradle” by Vonnegut or Robert Harris “The Enigma Code.”