Variations on a Meme
So coming back from vacation in San Diego/Tijuana, I see that I was memed by Spencer with the "5 things you don't know about me" meme. I have to say, Spencer's are hard to beat, but I'll do my best.
1. I grew up in exurban Missouri in an area where very close to 100% of the folks were of Polish or Germanic descent. Almost all of the kids were towheaded and/or pale-skinned, except for me and one Chinese kid who lived up the block. Despite my Irish (and some English and Scottish) background, I'm a bit on the darker side. And when I was little--I can't remember what age--the neighborhood kids took to calling me "nigger" when they were angry. I guess I was old enough to know that there were several problems there. I remember finding it particularly curious that they started calling the Chinese kid "nigger," too. I recall telling my parents and seeing a sort of lamenting eye roll in response, and then getting the sort of pat explanation that I needed. It wasn't so traumatic, really, as it was illustrative.
2. I'm a big time fan of mixed martial arts.
3. I didn't own a cell phone until late 2004.
4. I came to Cato in February 2003 to run the intern program, but I was within a hair's breadth of opening a record store instead. (Given what's happened in the music industry since then, I can thank my lucky stars several times over for the ultimate decision I made.) I had been taking classes at the Small Business Administration for a while, and doing the leg work of getting prepared to do it. (I hadn't even seen High Fidelity at the point I realized I wanted to open a record store, but let's just say seeing it didn't do anything to diminish the desire I had.) In any case, at some point my dad, in his infinite wisdom, gently suggested, "you know, you were really happy when you were interning at Cato. Maybe you could call them and see if there's anything available there." And so I did, and I got the job here. I owe you one, Dad.
5. I'm a big Gogol Bordello fan. I've seen them three times, twice at the Black Cat, and then once recently at the 930 club. The second time I went, I went with my friend Jessica, and at the encore (which was an exhausting, rip-roaring performance of their sublime "Baro Foro") she caught the bass player's eye and he wanted her to come backstage. Good friend that she is, she insisted I come too. With a skeptical eye, he said okay.
So we went backstage, and there was the usual backstageiness, and I remember the look of stupefaction on their faces when we had to lower the boom on them that there was nowhere in DC that was open after hours where we could drink and hang out. "But," the lead singer protested, "we're from Ukraine, Russia, Israel, New York. Everywhere there's somewhere to party late at night!" I can't remember whether it was Jessica's idea or mine, but a sizeable chunk of the band and we made our way back to my place, which at the time was in a building in Columbia Heights where I was close to the only non-Salvadorean person. I still wonder what those folks thought of me.
I hate typing, so I'll keep it (relatively) short, but suffice it to say that the band liked to, umm, party, hard, and kept asking for juices to mix the vodka with, but all I had was liquor and wine. Fortunately, I had a lot of wine glasses lying around, so we all had something to drink out of. We were playing a lot of different music, and at some point, I had a bizarre impulse to play the theme song from "Zorba the Greek." It must have stimulated some brain circuit of the accordion player, because he leapt up from the couch and we started doing the Zorba dance. And, thinking of the common Orthodox tradition of breaking glasses at celebrations, I took my wine glass over my head and smashed it into a powder on the hardwood floor. Eyebrows went up, and, well, one thing lead to another. I woke up the next morning with a fine sheen of broken glass covering my floor from corner to corner. It was a pain in the ass to clean up, and I was picking broken glass out of my feet for several months afterward, but it was one of the most enjoyable nights of my life, and it came right when I needed it.
(Yeah, #2 and #3 were sort of half-assed, but I'm not writing my memoirs here.)
In any case, if this thing isn't past its expiration date, I tag Henley, Healy, and Plumer. That's if, of course, anybody still checks out my occasional posting here.
