Note: This is a meme from FaceBook, thus the instructions are Facebooky.
Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.
At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.
(To do this, go to Notes under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people [in the right-hand corner of the app], then click Publish.)
1. I have a teddy bear named Elver, which I thought was a perfectly normal name when I gave it to him, at my cousin Louise’s bat mitzvah. This bear is somewhere in my parents’ house back in California.
2. Throughout much of my childhood, I was deeply concerned with war. Specifically, the war between the good people of Planet Salvania and the bad people of Planet Alto Deto over the resource-rich jungle planet of Reorilia. I made this all up in my head, of course.
3. The highest place I’ve ever been (outside of an airplane) is Muktinath, a Buddhist and Hindu shrine in the Himalayas of Nepal.
4. In middle school I stayed back a year, repeating sixth grade by taking a year off from Hebrew school and going to the local middle school. That year, I discovered that I was a nerd and made the transition to wannabe, buying Bugle Boy jeans and T&C surf shirts and totally failing to fit in.
5. The first time I heard “Loser” by Beck, it was on my car stereo, and I actually pulled off the highway to make sure I wouldn’t lose the signal before I found out who the singer was. I felt like I had been waiting for exactly that song for years.
6. The first time I heard “Hand on the Pump” by Cypress Hill was at the Berkeley Square, a fantastically hip little club on University in Berkeley back in the day. It blew my mind so completely that I asked the DJ what it was. “Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of/Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of…”
7. The first tape I ever bought was Quiet Riot’s Metal Health. The first time I heard Quiet Riot was in the car with some friends, and there was heated debate over whether the singer was a boy or a girl.
8. I’m a big fan of a local Brooklyn artist by the name of Elyse Taylor.
9. I love the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one of my absolute favorite works of art there is a miniature sculpture of the goddess Durga killing the buffalo demon, Mahisha (Mahishasuramardini).
10. When I decided to go to Korea, I had never even tried Korean food.
11. The first time I was given a seriously grownup book to read in English class, it was with Mr. Poirier in seventh grade. We read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. It was breathtakingly magisterial. I just reread it, and it wasn’t as brilliant as I remembered.
12. I like that breakfast cereal that’s made of oats and is super high fiber, and it’s kind of like square Cheerios made out of granola dust.
13. I keep my old heavy metal T-shirts in a trunk because they simply can’t be thrown away.
14. I’m an inconsistent meditator at best.
15. When I was little, I assumed that everyone wanted to write books when they grew up, and the only reason not everyone was a writer is that we need people to do other things sometimes. It was a shock to discover that there were people with no interest whatsoever in becoming writers.
16. I’ve always had a legalistic, argumentative streak, and for a while I thought I might want to be a lawyer.
17. My very first time on the Internet, I went fishing in Gopherspace and discovered instructions for seducing a horse.
18. I’m not sure I believe in God, but I pray a lot anyway.
19. I’ve always been fascinated by the exotic. When I was very little, I would imagine that my bed was a lifeboat drifting off to some undiscovered country. When I got older, I thought Ozymandias and Kubla Khan and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner were totally cool. I also really liked The Horse and His Boy, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite Narnia book.
20. I will contemplate the other desserts with due seriousness. Then I will choose the chocolate one.
21. My favorite pair of boots ever was the biker boots I got at Daljeets on Haight Street.
22. My first car was my dad’s old Toyota Corona, which burst into flames early in the morning of New Year’s Day, just after I’d dropped off my friend Teresa, having gone to a concert together that night.
23. I know that the battle sequence at the end of Star Wars takes longer than the time that’s stated in the movie. I know because I’ve timed it.
24. At various times, the Beastie Boys, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, the Beatles, Metallica, Guns’n’Roses, Bang Tango, the Cult and Soundgarden have been my favorite band.
25. Briefs.
