A Dirty (Half) Dozen Things You'll Wish You Didn't Know About Me

The blogosphere is a strange place. All kinds of attention-seeking "creative" people make nice with each other, pretend to like each other's blogs, and occasionally play silly games in the spirit of community. It's like an AA group, except there is no bad coffee, chain smoking, or silly steps.

This blog entry is one of those silly games. Last week I was "tagged" by J., another blogger/writer I met last year, and perhaps my most loyal reader. J writes the blog J-Two-O, in which she has forms (usually funny, always interesting, and often lightning quick) opinions about the day's news, sports, or whatever is on her mind. She also owns a Jets thong. Need I say more? Yes, she's hot.

Last week she "tagged" me (and not the way the married J surely wishes) -- in kind of a high school chain letter fashion, I need to tell six random things about me. I think I'm supposed to pass it on. At the risk of all of you NOT winning a million bucks from Disney, or at the expense of one of Sally Struthers children (Sally, that's a child, not a malomar), I will not be "tagging" anyone. (As usual)

I will limit it to things I have not yet written about in this blog. Okay, here goes:

1. I like to eat lemons. No, I don't mean squirt some juice in a piece of broiled scrod (why does that sound dirty?). I mean, when I get a lemon wedge in my drink, I like to eat it. The whole thing. Rind and all (Hey, lemon peel is sold as a seasoning so it must be okay). Whenever those above-acceptable-levels-of-fecal-matter-in-your-salad-bar news stories hit the papers and airwaves, I always get an e-mail from someone that reads something like this. "Dude, you gotta stop eating those lemons in the restaurants. It's like someone wiped their ass with them before they put them in your iced tea. But if you die, can I have your Pathfinder?"

2. I passed up an opportunity to meet Ray Charles. In the late 90s when I was a reporter, I interviewed him a couple of weeks before giving a concert in Stamford. It was the coolest 30 minutes of my life. In fact, I might have peed myself. It's not always you get to talk to your total true life idol (yes, I wish I was blind and black. It must have been soooo easy for him!). At the end of the interview he invited me backstage on the day of the show. Seeing as I attended the show with about 7 other people, I thought it would be rude to say "Excuse me, kids, I gotta go say hi to Ray." It might have been the only self-less moment of my life and I regret it. Thinking back, I could have gone backstage -- with all of them....Just walk really really quietly!

3. I pee in the shower. I'm not even sure why this is frowned upon. Urine is actually quite clean. It HAS to be cleaner than the crap I'm cleaning from my body and all that soapy discharge, right. I'm not a clean freak (okay, "slob" is the right word), but I am pretty fastidious about cleaning the shower. I think we all do this but for some reason we think we are not supposed to. (Note to friends: I do not employ this bodily habit when I shower in your showers. Even though I'd bet you guys pee in the shower, too, I think you'd find it gross to have my pee somewhere in your pipes.

4. My Porn Name is Snowflake Tuttle. Funny, I know, for a fair-haired, fair-skinned boy. If you don't know the game, it's the name of your first pet then the name of the street you grew up on. The family cat was Snowflake. We lived on Tuttle Road. Today, my name would be Fumbles Bedford, which sounds more like Jim Carrey character than an adult film star. My favorite porn names of all time using this method? Cornflakes Lorenzo and Vodka Cox.

5. I'm very competitive. Many of you know this, but I have something to admit that I've never told anyone. It's my express ticket to hell. My mother was my 5th grade English teacher and she had a reading contest in which the two students who read the most books and filed short book reports won some kind of nominal prize (a candy bar or some other thing I could nag her for after school anyway.)

So the geekiest girl in the class was the clear winner, with over 100 books. I'd hate to think where she is now, but I'm pretty sure she's not on the pole. So there was a fierce battle for second place. I was competing with Susan Molnar, my total fifth grade crush (and I think 6th and 7th grade too). I knew I had to pull out all the stops. I liked reading the Encyclopedia Brown series of books, so I did what any true competitor would do. I cheated. So I made one up. Yes, I wrote a book report about a book that was never written. By "one" I mean ten. Maybe 12.

I try not to think about defrauding my mom and sticking it to the girl I wanted to, well stick it to.
I'll save a seat in hell. But the Whatchamacallit was deee-lish!

6. The (state) attorney general, at a news conference, said he wanted to tailgate at a Jets game with me. When I was a reporter, I also wrote a humor column. The column this particular week aimed to explain the male ritual of tailgating before sporting events. Eating chili and quickly disposing of cases of beers in 20 degree weather before a football game. So Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General then, and now, started his press conference by saying "Before we get started, let me just say I wanna tailgate with That McFeeley Guy this Sunday. Sounds like more fun than what we do here everyday." I didn't know quite what to do, as I had to explain to the other reporters in the press corps that I also wrote a humor column. This of course, in their eyes, gave me the credibility of someone writing for Mad Magazine. But at least I found out how many Coronas it takes to get Dick Blumenthal to strip down and paint his torso Jets green. (Of course he didn't do it, we didn't even tailgate. Damn politicians and empty promises!)

So that's a dirty half dozen things you may not have known about me. If you'll excuse me, I have to pee before I run out of hot water.