I've seen a few other people posting 100 things about themselves. I figure since I'll be gone for a week, I might as well come up with something interesting to keep y'all occupied for a while... Actually, now that I think about it, I recall doing a "25 Things About Keith" entry for my 25th birthday a while back. Oh well, I'll do this anyways. 1. I've never broken any bones.
2. I've never needed any major surgery or hospitalization either.
3. My dad -- a doctor -- sent me to school one year a day before my birthday by dismissing my laryngitis and complaints of not feeling well by saying "you're fine, get to school." I came home later that day with a 103 degree fever. I still remind him of it.
4. My hair grows incredibly quickly. I need a haircut every 3-4 weeks.
5. I can't sleep on my back for some reason. I almost always fall asleep on my stomach with my arm under my head with the pillow in between them.
6. In high school, there were a good number of people who knew me only by my nickname but didn't actually know what my real name was.
7. I have made more mix tapes and CDs for both me and other people than anyone I know. People I don't know ask me for mixes because they've heard mixes I've made for others and think they kick ass. I've been told I should start a mix-making company.
8. Every mix I make is custom-tailored for its recipient. I've never copied someone's mix to give to a second person.
9. Despite the fact that Jewish law says one should be bar mitzvahed at 13, I had mine when I was 12. We moved my ceremony up a month and a half because we were afraid that if we waited until late December when I actually turned 13, there would be snow and people wouldn't be able to make it. Plus it would be too close to Christmas and some of my non-Jewish friends wouldn't have been able to come.
10. A professor once thought I was cheating on a left-brain/right-brain dominance test because I kept scoring so close to dead even -- even hit dead even on the third test I took. I finally convinced her I wasn't cheating by taking a fourth test in front of her and going with her to get the results.
11. Both of my index fingers are curved. Noticeably.
12. My typing averages around 80 words per minute.
13. When I get tired, my brain shuts down. It's not that I'm giving in to the fatigue, I just literally can't focus or think and I have to sleep.
14. I always keep things at my desk like rubber stress balls both to keep me sane but also to run my own small psychological experiments to see how many people will mindlessly pick something up and start playing with it when they come to talk to me.
15. At my last job, I used to order candy from Kozmo and put it in a big bowl on my desk in order to get people in the office to come talk to me because for the first three months of my tenure there, I was stuck at a desk in the back of the company library due to space constraints.
16. I own a rocking chair that's older than I am. My mom bought it when she was pregnant with me and finished it herself.
17. I pick up accents easily. When I was a freshman in college, I picked up my roommate's Long Island accent within a few months. It was so bad when I went home for winter break, the radio station I worked at refused to let me back on the air until I lost the accent. I spoke out loud for an entire day in order to retrain myself and get rid of it.
18. At present, my accent sounds like a mix of Southern Californian and Canadian. I've had numerous people ask me in the past few months if I'm from either place. If I concentrate (like when I use my "radio voice"), I can speak completely without an accent.
19. I consider Howard Stern to be the Antichrist of Radio. Opie & Anthony are his demon minions.
20. I once met Christopher Reeve at an alpine slide in Massachusetts. This was many many years ago when he could still walk.
21. Despite my tendency to procrastinate, I always get things done by their due date/time. I've never had to ask for an extension on a project or assignment.
22. I was once fired from a Subway franchise. The boss was looking for a way to get her family to work there, so she told me people were complaining about me and let me go.
23. I played the trombone for 9 years. I stopped when I got to college and started singing instead.
24. I can't draw to save my life. I've tried. I can do geometric shapes pretty well, but nothing artistic whatsoever.
25. I'm quite infatuated with Nikka Costa.
26. I don't think I can smell or taste garlic that well, though I put it in a lot of things I cook.
27. One of the easiest and most delicious dishes I can make just involves mixing crumbled feta cheese, cooked ground meat and rotini pasta in a pot with a dash of olive oil. Soooooo good, so easy to make.
28. My chocolate and peanut butter squares are always well-received. Friends have specifically requested that I bring them to parties.
29. Although I love to dance, I've always felt more comfortable behind the turntables than in front of them. But I'll still go dancing with friends.
30. When I go dancing with female friends, I'm usually the one who they ask to act as a crotchblocker for other guys when they don't want to be hit on. Another benefit of being the Platonic Male Friend.
31. I can't stand candlepin bowling. I much prefer regular 10-pin, even though I'm really out of practice.
32. I kick ass at mini-golf. I love playing mini-golf.
33. I can beat box really well. Those of us in the a cappella world call it "vocal percussion." I was taught by a guy who's won awards for it.
34. My first self-bought record was Prince's Purple Rain soundtrack.
35. I aspire to be a mix of Lewis Black, Denis Leary and Jon Stewart.
36. I sometimes refer to myself in the third person. But not often.
37. I think British or Australian accents are great. It's an instant attraction for me if a woman has one.
38. I still have the license plate of the first car I ever drove.
39. I love calamari. My dad used to use it as a test to see whether he'd continue dating someone -- if she was open-minded enough to try it, she got the second date.
40. My parents met via a computer dating service. In 1970. I shudder to think what kind of computers they had then.
41. In a performance evaluation at one of my previous jobs, I received the conflicting comments "excellent team player" and "does not play well with others" from the same person.
42. I've got kind of a lead foot when driving on highways.
43. My hair is jet black. Any attempts at coloration have led to failure. I'd need to bleach my hair out first, and I just don't want to do that.
44. I have to see the end of any movie I start watching or finish any book I start reading, no matter how bad it is. It's not a matter of some form of obsessive-compulsive behavior to finish things, I just have to find out what happens at the end.
45. My longest relationship lasted 22 months.
46. I took ancient pot handles from a dig in Israel. They're probably a thousand or so years old. I still have them.
47. I also have a piece of the red carpet from the Cannes Film Festival as well as a rock from Pompeii.
48. I have a Curious George stuffed animal that I've had since I was 1 year old. He's old enough to drink.
49. I usually need some kind of background noise on when I'm by myself -- either the TV or some music.
50. I know all the lyrics to R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." I had to learn them because it was my first solo with my college a cappella group.
51. I've never cried at a funeral. I've wanted to, but somehow the tears just never came.
52. I can drive stickshift.
53. I learned to drive stick because I was the only underage employee at the radio station and they wanted someone to be the designated driver to take the station vehicles back and drive their drunk asses home after they got wasted at remote broadcasts.
54. My college GPA was rather destroyed after I got a D- in a computer science class. After that, I decided maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be a computer science major.
55. I've been up in a hot air balloon.
56. I've also been skydiving.
57. When I was a sophomore in college, I had all four of my wisdom teeth taken out. Having holes in my jaws was one of the strangest feelings I've ever had. It was even stranger when I got food caught in them, and you should've seen the faces I was making to try to make my jaw muscles force the food out.
58. I've unlearned how to sit Indian-style. Whenever I sit with my legs folded, I do some strange kind of yoga position thing where I put one leg on top of the other but they're not intertwined. It's hard to describe, it's like how swamis sit when they chant "ommmm."
59. When I was 10, I was big into astronomy. It was mostly due to the fact that Halley's Comet was returning. It was an intense but short-lived period in my life. But I still remember a lot of it and can identify a bunch of constellations and planets.
60. I've never dated someone the same age as me. All the women I've dated have either been a few years older or a few years younger than me.
61. I once dated a woman nine years older than me.
62. I fidget.
63. I can't stand up for long periods of time without moving around. I need to either sit or walk. I can't just stand in line or something without moving or shifting around a lot.
64. I take my watch off when I'm using the computer. I don't know why I started doing it, but it became a habit to type watch-less.
65. I've lived through two hurricanes.
66. I've never experienced a tornado. Thankfully.
67. Even though I played in my high school's jazz band for a few years, I never really got into jazz that much.
68. I've seen Back to the Future more than any other film. I could probably quote you the entire script. I don't know what they're waiting for to release it on DVD, but my tape's worn out.
69. I firmly believe that the world will one day be run by either Disney, Microsoft, Clear Channel, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Ted Turner or a conglomeration of them. This entry was brought to you by the people at Microsoft, so if you're using Netscape or Opera or iCab to read this, your monitor will now blow up and your computer will crash.
70. I was one of a small amount of people who noticed that near the end of Soul Coughing's song "The Bug," you can hear the lead singer softly saying "George Clooney is Satan" over and over.
71. I once piled friends in my car and drove two hours each way to a restaurant simply because I had a craving for their burritos and I knew it was half-price Mexican night there.
72. I took six years of French. I could speak it fairly well. But I'm rusty now.
73. I want to learn Spanish. And now that I'm going to be living in Los Angeles, I probably should learn it as a matter of need.
74. The three words I hate saying the most are "I don't know."
75. I need to read the paper every morning, otherwise I feel disconnected from the world.
76. I can read backwards, upside-down, and upside-down and backwards.
77. I've been accused of having handwriting that's sometimes too small to be legible. Unfortunately, writing bigger makes my hand and wrist hurt.
78. I write pretty neatly, except when I'm in a big hurry.
79. My writing implement of choice is a Sanford Uniball Micro 0.2mm black ink pen.
80. I prefer typing to writing. Probably because I type faster than I write and I also self-edit as I write, and it's easier and neater to do that on a computer.
81. I've owned the same pair of Timberland hiking boots for 7 years. These things are indestructible. They should figure out a way to build cars out of these things, they'd never break down.
82. I've never fired a gun. I'm curious to know what it feels like.
83. I don't heal well, for some odd reason. It takes a while for my scabs to heal and I usually scar slightly instead of healing seamlessly.
84. If I don't like someone, I just won't acknowledge their presence and I'll try very hard to ignore them.
85. I've gotten two speeding tickets. One was in Ohio, where I was clocked at 90 but paced at 84 in a 65 zone, the other was a few days later in Wyoming, where I was clocked at 84 in a 75 zone. The Wyoming ticket was almost $50 more than the Ohio ticket, even though I was only going 9 miles over the speed limit there.
86. Because my dad is a doctor and worked very strange hours when I was younger, I had to be quiet around the house because whenever he was home, he was probably sleeping. I wasn't allowed to have friends over too often, so I learned to entertain myself and I've also learned how to move around extremely quietly.
87. I look my best when I'm wearing black or blue. One of my favorite outfits is a black long-sleeved shirt with blue jeans. Even though I look like a giant bruise, it goes best with my coloring.
88. When I was younger, I was a big Beach Boys fan.
89. I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate, and I hate white chocolate.
90. I do really good Kermit the Frog, Fat Albert, Yoda and Chewbacca voice imitations.
91. I lost my college diploma for the better part of 3 1/2 years. I just found it two weeks ago.
92. The longest I've ever been awake in one stretch is 27 hours.
93. I don't drink coffee or tea. I just never acquired the taste. Maybe that's why I'm not a morning person.
94. I have a great sense of direction. It's almost impossible for me to get lost. I've tried driving without looking at a map and just making random turns down unfamiliar streets, but I always unintentionally end up somewhere that I'm familiar with.
95. I prefer stiff mattresses to soft ones. I like having support in my bed. I can't sleep in waterbeds.
96. I've never gotten seasick. I can also read in cars and buses without getting motion sickness.
97. A good portion of my nightmares involve acting out scenes from movies I've seen but replacing the actors with people I know from my life.
98. My eyes have become kind of light-sensitive. I usually like to wear sunglasses when I'm outside during the day.
99. I don't like getting wet unless it's intentional. Like if I'm in the shower or I planned on going swimming so I'm wearing a bathing suit, that's okay. But I hate getting caught in the rain unprepared or being thrown into a pool with my clothes on.
100. It's all about the music. Just keep the beat, sing like you mean it and you'll do fine. It's gotten me this far.