Dancing Around Naked

Sometimes blogging seems like dancing around naked. (I guess that's why it wasn't so hard to post a link to a picture of me with a belly dancer.)

And in the spirit of dancing around naked, I thought I'd take a page from Richard Cohen (via Nappy 40), and begin a list of 100 things about me, in no particular order and certainly of no particular importance.

1. I have ugly toes (so says the One True Wife).
2. I also have a "unibrow." At least, I would. But back in my acting days, a director told me I'd only be cast as vampires, bank robbers and furry critters unless I got rid of the "uni" part. So, as part of my morning shave, I shave the bridge of my nose. In fact, I fear long hospital stays -- not because of the health crisis that would attend it, but because I would go through a Lon Chaney-as-the-Wolfman-like transformation from a relatively normal looking guy to a hirsute beast, with beard, unibrow and furiously sprouting ear hair.
3. (Footnote: My career was, nonetheless, a litany of vampires, bank robbers and furry critters. Hardest professional role was understudying Joe Spano of Hill Street Blues fame as the title character in a show called Dracula: A Musical Nightmare, while also being assistant stage manager of the show, in San Francisco, more than two decades ago.)
4. Anwar Sadat was assassinated on my 22nd birthday.
5. In my only little-league at bat, I was struck out by a kid twice my size (and probably twice my age). He threw a fastball that made a whirring noise and left a gray blur by my ankles. When the umpire called it strike three, I protested that the pitch was too low. The umpire said, "Son, your knees ain't but a couple inches off the ground."
6. I am going through a period of spiritual apathy.
7. First thing in the morning, with a cup of coffee and the Sports section: my favorite time of the day.
8. Bedtime, me, my son, my wife, reading in bed. Second favorite time of the day.
9. I have felt like a farce in every job I've ever had.
10. I have eye-hand coordination but no mechanical aptitude. On those rare occasions when I actually fix something (like my son's wobbly bicycle seat last week), I feel as though I've single-handedly built the Golden Gate Bridge.
11. I am utterly left-handed. (By contrast, my brother, as my father puts it, "bats right, throws right, eats left." My son bats left, throws left, eats right.)

Well, I don't know about you, but I've had enough of this for now.

--T.A.

Comments

[unca davey]

But enough about me . . . what do YOU think about me?

TEN THINGS ABOUT DAVID (urg . . . can I go through w/this?)

1.) He's built like Badger in The Sword in the Stone.
2.) He identifies with the Tasmanian Devil.
3.) Never mind the unibrow, he has hair on his shoulders.
4.) When he was little he was called Baby Big Head.
5.) He and I once ate a whole jar of mustard with a spoon, sitting on the beach. (I forget if it was Dijon or spicy brown.)
6.) He was a very good actor. He could project pure emotion and intensity. (But to survive as an actor, it has to be the ONLY thing you want and you have to want it bad enough to take all kinds of abuse and humiliation.)
7.) So he ended up his in-laws' real estate business, which involves all kinds of abuse and humiliation (and perhaps being a very good actor).
8.) He is one of the great male nurturers. Of his children (two of whom are not even 'his," but he has fathered them with love and without question), of the tenants in his nonprofit housing.
9.) He is angry, and justifiably so.
10.) He is a Libra, and sees both (or more) sides of everything, which can be paralyzing. His koan is, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it!"

[Ally]

One more thing about David: he knocked a girl over a desk in first grade because she made fun of his saddle shoes.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Great stuff, David. I don't see why it's too negative, but maybe that's because I'm too negative. (Or too positive?) (I also see both sides of everything, and I'm an Aries.)

I throw right, bat left. Can write with both.

I identify with #10.

How does a person get only one Little League at-bat?