Instead of doing a top ten list of my favorite bloggers or blogs, which would invariably leave someone out who would then hunt me down and scalp me, I decided that I would just finish the "100 Things About Me" list that I started back in May. Over the last several months, I've listed 99 things about me. Those are included here along with the final interesting tedious thing about me. I'll also move all of these over to the sidebar in the next few days, following the current trend of doing so.
Here's some music to go with this final countdown for 2007: Final Countdown
100 Things About Me
Me and My Family:
100. My father's family is Italian.
99. My mother's family is Irish and Nova Scotian.
98. I have four uncles, three who are my mother's brothers and one that is my father's brother.
97. I was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
96. My parents were both born in Massachusetts as well.
95. I am the eldest of three siblings. I have a younger sister and we have a younger brother.
94. I moved to Ormond Beach, Florida (right outside Daytona Beach) in 1980, when I was three years old.
93. I have three living grandparents. I had four until my Nana passed away a couple of months back.
92. My father's family came from Naples. The Avitable (and Avitabile) name is very big there. There is a statue of General Paolo di Avitabile, who was well-known in Italy and feared in Pakistan. In fact, his name (Abu Tabela) is used as a bogeyman to children in Pakistan even to this day.
91. I believe that my maternal grandmother has been able to trace her family back to the Mayflower, which is amusing, because the family drinks like Irishmen right off the boat.
90. I have never met any Avitables other than my uncle and cousins. I would like to, someday.
89. My mother's family is quite large, and, in fact, she is older than her youngest uncle. As a result, most of the family members who are my age are actually my second cousins.
88. My grandmother's brothers used to live in a very poor part of Massachusetts and were a bunch of thugs as kids. The Learys were a bit of a gang back in the 40s and 50s.
87. My mother liked my father because he was a bad boy who drove fast, was a bit older, and got into lots of fights, including throwing someone through a plate glass window. He was arrested many times as a teen and young adult, and it was only because of the good old boy network and my grandfather's connections that he doesn't have a record.
86. Before my parents married, my mother and father either broke up or almost broke up because she wasn't sure he was willing to settle down. My father hitchhiked cross-country, and when he got to California, he realized how much he needed my mother and came right home to her, smelly and dirty from over six months on the road without a shower or bath.
85. Three of my uncles don't have more than a high school diploma, yet they're all successful businessmen.
84. While I have never hit on any of my cousins, many of whom are objectively attractive, my brother tried some cheesy pick up lines on my cousin on Myspace.
83. This same brother also set up a Match profile when he got out of the military. After choosing the parameters of the girl he was looking for, only one result popped up: my sister.
82. Both of my siblings work for me currently were recently relieved of their jobs.
81. I'm not sure, but I may be the first person in my mother's side of the family with a doctorate.
80. I am Italian and Irish, but I hate Italian food and Irish food. This vexes my parents.
My Eccentricities:
79. I don't own a single pair of pants. All I will wear is shorts, and usually I just work in my boxer briefs. If there is a situation where I will have to wear pants, I won't go. I just don't find them comfortable, and I see no reason, now that I'm an adult, that I should have to wear them.
78. I've never smoked a cigarette – even one puff. It just never came up as a teen, and after that, I wasn't interested.
77. I love going to the dentist. The feeling of having your teeth really clean and just a bit sore is one of my favorites. I've only had a few cavities, and even getting those filled was fun. The only dark cloud in my dental history was in Los Angeles, when we had a butcher who made both of us hurt so much that we never went back. We moved over to a dentist in Pasadena who was open until 7:30 PM, had Jet Li as a client, and had his office down the hall from Dr. Drew from Loveline.
76. I won't eat certain finger foods. Anything that's going to get all over my fingers. This means chicken wings/buffalo wings and fried chicken, which are two things I've never actually eaten in my entire life. I eat corn on the cob by using a fork to hold the cob upright and then sawing off the corn with my knife. Anything with bread around it, like burgers and hot dogs, is fine, and I can eat french fries, although if they have ketchup all over them, I use my fork.
75. Staying on the subject of food, I am horrified by food with bones. I do not enjoy bone-in steak and will invariably leave most of the meat because trying to cut around it and hitting all of the fat just disgusts me. And when I'm at Disney World and I see those people walking around with those turkey legs that they're eating (and holding onto it with their bare hands!) it makes me apoplectic.
74. I'm fanatical about fresh breath. I buy cases of gum in bulk and will chew it constantly from morning to night. I think this stems from the principal of the small private Christian school I went to. He always had coffee breath and my eyes would water as I would stare him in the eye when he was lecturing me. I only want people to cry when I'm berating them because of what I say, not because my breath is rank.
73. I'm also fanatical about deodorant. I buy 2-3 new sticks of deodorant every time we go to the store, and last time I cleaned out the medicine cabinet, I had 46 empty deodorant sticks. I'll only use Speed Stick Regular Scent, and I can't stand to use anything else or I don't feel clean.
72. I cannot understand lyrics. At all. For the last 20 years, I thought that in the theme song to Caddyshack, by Kenny Loggins, he was singing "Ad-mir-al", not "I'm all right." I also thought that the INXS song lyrics said "Every single woman has the devil inside."
71. There are so few situations in my adult life where I was not (a) in control, (b) situationally comfortable, and/or (c) completely confident in myself, that these few situations truly embarrass me and if my wife brings them up it is the only time that I'll truly get mad at her.
70. I thrive on being recognized. In Los Angeles, there was this little sports pub called Duke's that was a part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, to which I belonged. Walking in there, having the waiter recognize me and bring me a pitcher of Diet Coke with Lime, and being able to order "the usual", is a cherished memory. Currently, in Orlando, I want to eventually be able to walk into my favorite steak restaurant and have someone other than the manager recognize me and know what I'm drinking and what I like to eat. It is one of my aspirations.
69. One thing that I've gotten as a gift from my dad is the genetic condition of night terrors. Usually occurring in periods of high stress, I will wake up and even though I'm consciously awake, I will see things. These things are usually huge spiders, like 4 feet across, skittering down the wall or over the blankets and pillows. I've reached the point, though, that now I can think to myself, "If a huge spider really was walking across Amy's face, she'd be screaming, so it must be fake." But when I see them, I can see them in explicit detail, with no doubt that they are right there in front of me.
68. I can talk on the phone like a girl. Ever since I was 12/13, I would literally spend hours on the phone at once. Even if I had to go to bed at 8, I'd sneak down later, get the phone, and talk until 4 AM with my friends, who were all female. My dad still doesn't understand it, and even today I can easily be on the phone for 8 hours a day without any problems.
67. I've always been a fast reader. When I was in college, I took a speed reading course. At the beginning of the course, I was already at the goal of X words per minute that the instructor had set for the class's goal to reach by the end. By the time I learned the techniques of reading faster, I was reading faster than anyone the instructor had ever seen. In optimal conditions, I can finish a 300 page book in 25 minutes and retain 90% of it in my short-term memory. However, I learned in law school that in order to better retain it in my long-term memory, I could only study with a distraction. By putting the TV on or watching a movie while I studied, it forced my brain to slow down so that I would read at a normal level and have 100% retention.
66. I really want a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed. They just seem fun – you can sit up, recline, raise your legs – why don't all beds do that?
65. Since my goal is to make people laugh, if someone isn't laughing, I need to know why. By understanding what they didn't find funny, I can improve what I do and make sure that next time, that type of person will find it funny, too. I believe that you can actually make everyone happy at once.
64. I've mentioned this before, but I am prejudiced against ugly people. There are actresses like Meryl Streep, Kyra Sedgewick, and Glenn Close, that I cannot stand, and people that I've known in my personal life who were so ugly that I hated them on the spot. And I always will hate them – I can't help it.
63. There are very few people to which I aspire to be. If I do see qualities, quirks, abilities, or other elements in a person that I find to be useful in either impressing, manipulating, or appeasing others, I appropriate them for myself. The same goes in the online world – I try to assimilate the styles and techniques that bloggers use to create my own style that has all of those positive elements.
62. In high school, I used to try to show how impervious I was to pain by rolling up my sleeves and stapling them to my shoulder. Girls would dig their nails into my skin while I smiled, and I could cut my arm without feeling it. While I'm clearly not like that anymore, I still only show that I'm hurt when the pain level is very high.
61. I believe in superheroes, aliens, and ghosts.
My Wife:
60. Not only does she tolerate my sense of humor, she encourages it and finds it hilarious.
59. She has a Master's in Accounting and a Juris Doctorate. And she'll probably have a Master's in Anthropology in the next few years that she'll get for fun.
58. Purely on the merits of her writing ability, she has had her work in tax published on at least three separate occasions. Purely on chance, I've been published the same number of times. We are in constant competition to see who will get published next.
57. She is a very fashionable dresser and has sweatpants that cost more than my entire wardrobe. How she can bear to be seen with me is beyond my ability to comprehend.
56. She absolutely loves animals of all types. Cats, dogs, ferrets, fish, dolphins, birds, rabbits, horses, elephants, zebras – doesn't matter. She loves them more than people.
55. Consequently, she's a vegetarian. No beef, no chicken, no fish. And not a crazy unhealthy vegetarian like some people – she's very conscientious of the food that she eats. This means that we eat dinner together maybe once a month, when we don't go out to dinner.
54. Before she became a vegetarian, though, she could put a steak away like the best of them. It was very impressive.
53. She is a total Trekkie, but only the original series.
52. She used to drive like her mother, which meant slow and painful. Now she drives like me, which means I can usually handle it on the rare occasions that she drives and I'm in the car.
51. If the lawyer thing doesn't work out, she could be an interior decorator. She has an excellent sense of colors and style when it comes to a house.
50. If she and I taught at the same school, she'd be the Dr. Avitable that everyone would hate but respect for the education they received. I'd be the one that the stoners would want because I'd be funny and easy, but not strict enough.
49. She has a sister who is 8 years her junior but they look and act almost identically. It's incredible.
48. I don't travel with her to somewhere that she's never been. She creates itineraries that start at 6 AM and go to 7 PM, nonstop. She goes to almost every museum that she can, and takes literally hundreds of photos. Her three week trip to Italy ended up with 400 photos, and only about four of them had any of her girlfriends in them.
47. She loves to be a hostess, and we typically have great parties.
46. She makes old men blush with her language. She has a mouth that would make the saltiest sailor proud.
45. Even though she's trendy and fashionable and attractive, she is still a nerd at heart, whether it's the History Channel, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, Dr. Who, or ancient civilizations.
44. She is one of the few people who can genuinely make me laugh.
43. The fact that she hasn't killed me in a blind rage in the last eight years speaks volume about her ability to put up with infantile men with the mind of a little boy and the taste in music of a 12-year old girl.
42. If I wake up in the middle of the night when I'm experiencing night terrors, she always calms me down.
41. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
Weird or Cool Things I've Seen and Done:
40. When I was 14, my family had a foreign exchange student from Spain named Pablo staying with us. We had a great time and went on plenty of adventures. One night, while running around the neighborhood, we saw a giant glowing UFO hovering over a neighbor's house. We ran to the house and saw this giant hovering shape the size of a small house floating and humming, and then it lowered into the trees. We ran into the trees, and it disappeared.
39. I've stood at someone's head and stared into their open chest cavity as a surgeon performed open heart surgery. The cauterizing tool makes the searing flesh smell like pork.
38. In 2006, I hung out with and treated to dinner one of the new gods of the comic industry, who is slowly taking over the rest of the world.
37. As a teen working for my uncle, who hung window tint in people's homes, I worked in the homes of John Travolta, Madonna, and the parents of Jack Davis, one of MAD's artists. The last one was the coolest, because his art was hanging all over the house.
36. I took my 1984 Chrysler Fifth Avenue off-roading, and managed to drive over a dirt hill that caused my car to catch about 5 feet of air.
35. One Fourth of July when I was 7 or 8, we were all laying on the side of the river in Ormond Beach watching the professional fireworks over the river. Laying on my back, looking up, we watched the explosion and the subsequent arcs as the embers floated down. I pointed to one and said, "Boy, that one looks like it's actually coming down to us." Well, it was. Pretty soon, the entire area where we were was engulfed in flames. A man standing next to my baby brother, who had a huge 'fro at that point, had his hair catch fire. Everyone was screaming and running around. It was utter chaos.
34. Driving up to college one year, I watched as a car going in the opposite direction turned, spun, and then flipped end over end across all the lanes of oncoming traffic, the median, and then all of our lanes of traffic and landed on the passenger side in the breakdown lane. Then I watched some people run up to the smoking, sparking car and yank out a small Asian woman from the shattered window of the upended car, carrying her to a safe distance. She was completely unharmed. And then the car exploded.
33. In Los Angeles, there was a motorcycle cop going down the 5, driving erratically. He was in the far left lane, and would not let anyone get close to him or pass him in any of the 6 lanes going the same way. Every time a car got close, he would wave them off viciously. Finally, he got off at an exit that was the same as our exit. On the curve of the exit, I accelerated and got right on his tail, and then pulled up next to him at the stop light. I rolled my window down and said, "What the fuck is your problem? Why were you driving like that?" The officer was sweating like a pig, shaking like a leaf, and looked like he was about to cry. I think possibly it was his first time on a motorcycle and he was scared. He yelled, "What are you doing? You need to read your driving manual! You're a bad driver!" At which point my wife started cracking up. I berated the officer for another minute before the light turned green and he roared off at top speed. That is the only time that I've ever pulled over a police officer.
32. I once fell about 15 feet straight down and ended up with nothing more than the wind knocked out of me.
31. I invented a household product, had plans drawn up, and had a prototype manufactured that is actually in my kitchen. Once I have the time, I'm going to fix the bugs and sell it on a mass scale.
Things I Hate:
30. Fantasy, especially LOTR. Even though I enjoy comic books, I love Star Wars, and I'm pretty much a big ol' hairy gorilla geek, I hate fantasy. Part of it is hard to explain, but when you watch something like Lord of the Rings, and you watch those fucking horrible Hobbits and they're dancing around singing and skipping and everything, I just absolutely hate it. It's so artificial and poorly structured and such a facade, but it permeates almost every work of fantasy out there. I wish Peter Jackson had died at birth. Tolkien should have had his hands chopped off so he couldn't write anything. (A few exceptions: I consider things like the Oz books and the Princess Bride to be the rare examples of fantasy that don't have this element.)
29. People who park on the curb directly across the street from another car parked on the curb. If I have to squeeze my car between yours and someone else's because you're too fucking stupid to know not to park right there, I'm going to let my side-view mirror scrape down the side of your car. I own my car and I don't give a shit if it gets a few nicks and scratches. Maybe you'll be more careful next time, fuckerton.
28. Television Network Executives. These are the people who are so out of touch with reality and so unaware of quality that they rely on flawed surveys and viewer response to determine what gets aired and what doesn't. This leads to gems like "War at Home" and "Deal or No Deal" getting multiple season orders while good shows like "The Job", "Veronica Mars", "Angel", etc., etc., etc. get canceled. The intelligent executive would realize that while Cleetus and his 6 worthless kids are sitting down to watch a show where someone is trying to play a glorified version of Memory, their advertising dollar is worth only a fraction of mine. What they spend on their weekly trip to Wal-mart is a tenth of what I spend on frivolous purchases. But until they get off their ass and realize this, network execs have a special place in hell.
27. Eggplant.
26. Beer commercials. Nobody goes out and decides to buy a brand of beer because of a commercial. There are two classes of beer drinkers – those who don't care what they drink, and will drink anything with alcohol in it, or those who are very picky, and they'll only drink what they've tasted. Nobody – NOBODY – watches one of those stupid fucking commercials and says "Hm. Maybe I'll drink Bud Light from now on." Disclaimer: If you know someone who makes their beer drinking decision based on the commercials, please let me know so I can come over and punch them in the crotch.
25. Spectator Sports. Yeah, living vicariously through a team as you watch someone who would otherwise be a drug dealer on the street if he wasn't able to run fast or jump high score points in an imaginary contest that pits random people against each other on a basis of geographic borders or schools while denying the blatant corruption that has rotted every single event from the inside out sounds like a great waste of time, doesn't it?
24. My left eye. I'll tell you what, my fucking eye is bothering me again, and I'm about a hair away from getting a melon baller and just scooping it out of my head. I can have it replaced with a cybernetic eye that has x-ray capability. And yes, I know, I could go to the doctor if it's really that much of a problem, but I try to avoid entrusting my health to an egotistical stranger with no sense of social skills or ability to look beyond a chart unless it's an emergency.
23. People who hide behind the veil of anonymity. I'm not talking about people who want to keep their information private but still have a way to reach them or talk to them. I'm talking about idiots who post things they'd never say in public or even in private if someone knew who they were and where they lived. That's one reason I have never tried to even hide who I am. Anything I post on this blog is something I'd say at a party, in public, or to my parents. Well, if they were drunk.
22. The Macarena.
21. Randy Newman. I can't explain it, but I absolutely hate him. He ruined Toy Story and Monsters, Inc., I have to fast forward past the Monk theme song if I don't want to retch. Those pieces of shit Focker movies with Ben Stiller were made even worse with his horrible tunesmithing and ridiculous lyrics. He's a blight on the face of society and someone should travel back in time and kill his mother just to prevent his birth.
Things I Love:
20. A huge rolling thunderstorm that shakes the windows each time the thunder roars and pours down sheet after sheet of water.
19. Driving 110 mph through four lanes of traffic like it's a chessboard.
18. Walking in the door and taking off my pants.
17. Watching someone open a gift.
16. Swimming bare-ass naked.
15. Taking an entitled, pretentious fuckstick down a notch.
14. When the icing on generic grocery store birthday cake has been in the fridge and is solid enough to pull off the cake.
13. Getting to the movie theater early with Amy and sitting in the middle seats in the row that has the bar in front so you get more leg room, then sitting there and talking while the trivia replays over and over again.
12. Eating a huge holiday meal, then going right to bed and sleeping until the next morning.
11. Curling up somewhere warm and reading an entire book while the entire house is completely quiet and still.
My Favorite Movies of All Time: (As a huge movie fan, I have lots and lots of favorites, so I had to set some limitations. If there were movies with the same actor, I chose my favorite out of the group (for example, my favorites of Punch Drunk Love, Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and The Wedding Singer are all Adam Sandler vehicles). I followed this same rule with directors, which meant I had to choose between Luc Besson films. Finally, I didn't choose anything that came out this year because it's still too hard to tell if it's actually a favorite or just a flavor of the month. Oh, and sequels and trilogies count as one movie.)
10. Happy Gilmore – some of the most quotable lines in all of moviedom. Carl Weathers as a one-handed golfer, Ben Stiller as a mustachioed evil nurse, and Bob Barker as an ass-kicker extraordinaire. What could be better?
9. Superman – even with the cheese, this movie is worth it for that one scene when Superman stares up into the sky with a dead Lois Lane in his arms and screams. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
8. Leon (aka The Professional) – the European version is more sordid and twisted, but both versions tell an amazing story of love and revenge.
7. Caddyshack – While Bill Murray's character is funny, it's Chevy Chase's Ty Webb that makes this movie a favorite for me. That, and Lacie's boobs.
6. The Back to the Future trilogy – I have a heterosexual man crush on Michael J. Fox. And while "For Love or Money" almost beats the BTTF trilogy, it just doesn't quite make it.
5. Grosse Pointe Blank – John Cusack at his best. '80s music, a hitman, and a class reunion. The dark humor and sardonic tone means this is a movie that I can watch over and over again.
4. Airplane! – There are many parodies that I love – Spaceballs, Top Secret!, Naked Gun, etc., but I think Airplane! manages to have the most consistent sense of humor and best sense of absurdity. Spaceballs is a close, close second, though.
3. The Addams Family and Addams Family Values – Gomez and Morticia Addams are played to perfection by Raul Julia and Angelica Huston, and Christina Ricci's Wednesday is truly outstanding. These movies are darkly humorous and showcase Barry Sonnenfeld at his best.
2. Clerks I and II – Kevin Smith's bookend movies show his roots, his sensitivity and his growth as a creator. And Clerks II is one of the only movies that makes me get a tiny, wee, little bit misty-eyed at the end.
And, finally . . .
1. Some people find the way I am on my blog to be incongruous with how I am in person. They are not contradictory, they are complementary. Generally speaking, I have a very low regard for people. I think that too few people think for themselves and it becomes such a sheep mentality that I tend to hate most of the world. When it comes to friends and family, though, I lean more towards loving and trusting unconditionally. I will excuse bad behavior or stupidity, make allowances, and avoid from judging those who are closest to me. It's not a matter of finding someone "worthy" of being my friend – it's an issue of finding someone whom I connect with on any level. So, while my general attitude is indeed one of cynicism and qualified hatred towards people, that doesn't stop me from loving those who I do.
Happy New Year, everyone!
