25 random facts (interesting or not) about me

January 31, 2009 by J.C. Hewitt · 20 Comments

This was harder than it looked, but once I got started I had trouble stopping. What can I say, I’m a writer.

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I wrote more than 25 facts about myself.

I have not abandoned my blog. I have been sick for several weeks. It isn’t life threatening, just inconvenient.

My first and still favorite car was a 1978 Peugeot 504 Diesel. It had a moonroof (sunroof anywhere but Arizona) and the stereo cassette player had autoreverse, but instead of playing the other side, it played the tape backwards. I’ve had some good cars since then, but none of them have had the personality of the Peugeot.

In 1977 I took a coffee can full of quarters from my parents closet and used them to buy Kiss Alive II. I later found out that those were my father’s collection of silver quarters, and thus worth much more than I thought. Because of the guilt I felt, I had a hard time being alone with my father for quite a while. He has said one more than one occasion that I was the only kid he had who never followed him around or pestered him to go places.

In high school my friend David McHenry would call girls, pretending to be me. I knew nothing about this, and was often confused when girls would call me in the middle of the night wanting to talk. When I asked who they were they would get angry and hang up. It was over a year before I figured out what had happened.

I have had the following jobs: janitor, dishwasher, busboy, office assistant, college newspaper editor, reporter, paste-up artist, computer library assistant, coffee flavorer, art salesman, video/record store clerk, phone surveyor, lobbyist, web developer, help desk operator, technical writer.

I often tell phone solicitors that my name is Larry. I developed this habit while living with my nephew Bryon, who owed money to a lot of people.

The list of fiction books I have read more than twice includes: Less than Zero, The World According to Garp, Dune, The Accidental Tourist, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Post Office, Fight Club, Fletch, Breaking Away, The Moviegoer, If Morning Ever Comes, The Razor’s Edge, Bright Lights Big City, From Rockaway, The Great Gatsby.

I used to have a fear of public speaking. I got over it by taking drama classes (after I graduated from college) and then by singing karaoke. I have now gotten over it so effectively that I have developed “meeting tourettes” in which I tend to say things in big meetings that amuse, stun or upset the other people in the meeting. I believe I now get invited to meetings just because people want to see what I will say.

Despite being surrounded by animals most of my life, I have never had a pet that I considered my own. They have been the pets of family members or roommates, but I did not choose them or consider myself their owner. I have no real desire to ever own a pet even though I like animals and often they like me better than their owners.

I had so little interest in my high school classes that I graduated with a C average. By the time I graduated high school, however, I had already been going to community college part-time for two years and had almost straight As, which I maintained all the way through my Master’s degree.

I do believe in God or at bare minimum that there is an intelligent energy that guides the universe. I do not, however, believe that there are any books on Earth that were written by God. I believe that all of these types of books are merely human’s noble (and sometimes not so noble) attempts to understand God. I find most religions to be very limiting and can’t imagine myself ever being an active member of one. I try not to tell people they are wrong though, because I don’t have any more proof behind my beliefs than they have behind their beliefs. I don’t doubt the power of prayer though. When I was young I once prayed that something would happen to keep me from going to church and my uncle dropped dead in the next room.

At least one friend or family member has died every year for the past six years. There were two last year. This is getting to be a very depressing trend. I dramatically raised my life insurance coverage, just in case I’m next.

My wife Jeni and I never dated. I came over one night and never left. Marrying her was the best day of my life. She is the main reason why I haven’t just wandered off, never to be heard from again.

My top ten fears are:
1. That I’m never going to live up to my potential
2. That I’m never going to be able to give Jeni all the things that she wants
3. That I’m never going to get to spend enough time with the people I care about
4. That I actually am living up to my potential and this is the best that I can do
5. That I will have a stroke or otherwise damage my brain (my most valued resource)
6. That the advice I give people will make their lives worse
7. That I’m running out of opportunities to do really interesting things
8. That everything I care about will be taken away from me
9. That I’ll never live anywhere but Arizona
10. That I’m not as good a person as I think I am

I find corporate life both depressing and extremely amusing. I am constantly amazed that the companies I work for manage to operate at all, and I have worked for some very profitable companies, which makes me wonder how bad it can get. Almost every product I have documented has been a failure of some sort. The only ones that weren’t were legacy products that had been around for years.

I like a challenge, but I have nothing against easy victories either. I always look for the cheat codes when I get a new computer game and I’ll often play a game I have already mastered, just to feel good about my ability to beat it. In most of my daydreams I have superpowers.

At least once every six months I go on IMDB to find out what the cast of My So Called Life is up to. I got very excited last week when I saw Tom Irwin (who played Graham Chase, Angela Chase’s father) show up as the scary lawyer on Lost.

I am the youngest child in my family. My brother and my sisters range from five to eighteen years older than me. Because of this, I have always felt closer to my nieces and nephews than I do to my brother and my sisters. These days I feel closer to my wife’s family than I do my own. With the exception of the friends I went to high school with, all of my close friends are younger than I am. My wife Jeni is ten years younger than I am.

When I was seven years old I would get up at 6:30 in the morning and watch the news about the Watergate scandal as I ate my cereal.

For a period of about a month in 1993 I was amazingly happy almost every day, even though nothing particularly great was going on. I have no idea why I was so happy then and why I have never had that same sort of experience since despite many attempts to replicate it.

I want to live by the ocean. I would love to live on an island, though I do worry about hurricanes and tidal waves, I have always felt at peace when I’ve been near the ocean.

My old Tai Chi instructor once allowed me to pin his arm against a wall with all of my strength and then sent me flying across the room about twenty feet with just a tiny movement of his arm. I don’t really expect anyone to believe me, but that is why I know there is such a thing as chi and it kicks ass.

My best friend in elementary school and junior high school was Allen Carpenter. He was the coolest kid I ever knew. He was the only kid I knew who could hang out with the jocks, the freaks and the nerds without missing a beat. He moved the summer between eighth grade and high school, and I haven’t seen him since. I’ve tried to track him down several times over the years, but I have had no luck. My nephew Jesse reminds me of him in so many ways it is a little scary.

I believe that Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 World Series is the most inspirational moment in all of sports history. The only other moment that comes close was Kerri Strugg’s vault in the 1996 Olympics, but Bela Karolyi’s theatrics always knock that one down to number two.

If I could have a fictional character’s life, I believe I would want to be Chili Palmer in the movie version of Get Shorty. Nobody could turn lemons into lemonade better than that guy (terrible sequel aside). My closest second would be Agent Dale Cooper from the Twin Peaks series, but he eventually was possessed by an evil demon, which drops him down the list.

Fictional women I have a crush on: Daria (Daria), Enid (Ghost World), Jovie (Elf), Penny Lane (Almost Famous), Sally (When Harry Met Sally), Muriel (The Accidental Tourist), Matty Walker (Body Heat), Audrey/Lulu (Something Wild), Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Dangerous Liaisons)

I believe that groups of people have a definite point of diminishing returns. After you top about five to eight people, groups become collectively stupider and make increasingly bad choices. By the time you have 30 people together, no matter how smart they are individually, their decisions are almost always worse than what any five reasonably intelligent people could come up with. There are exceptions, but not many.

My favorite poet is Charles Bukowski, and I believe that if we had ever met, he would dislike me intensely. I’m not sure I would enjoy his company either. Such is life.

Steak has always been my favorite food, but yellowtail sushi is rapidly gaining and I never get tired of Pho.

Things I miss from the early nineties: my body, my first apartment at Quail Ridge, Melody, the hill I used to park on top of that is now a subdivision, Steve and Andrew’s crappy house, driving just to drive, Susie Dunn on the old KFMA and the new Music Test Department, Backdoor Pizza, Keith Vlastos, The Granfalloon Saloon, My Mac II, Chuck Palm, The Courseware Library for Instructional Computing, Starport Video Arcade (every game a dime), Joey, 12 hour paste-up sessions at the Tucson Shopper (why the hell do I miss that?), Jack, The 20s/30s group on AOL (I ruled that group), wild feeds on the satellite dish, MST3K, Troy’s Billiards, Writers at Risk, Loveline with Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla, Ted Stryker playing Bitchin’ Camaro every Saturday on KFMA

The best classes I have ever taken: Peter Wild’s Poetry Writing Class, Terri McMillian’s Fiction Writing Class, Rita Garitano’s writing class, Mr. Stan’s History Class, Mr. Tweedy’s American Government class

I have owned over fifty computers. I also own 1000 copies of How to Get Started in Self Publishing (and no, I did not write it).

I love my blog, poewar.com.