100 Things About Me

1. In the 4th grade, I was put in a special class for gifted children.
2. Although I’m unaware of any academic benefit to the class, it pretty much killed my friendships with the other children in my neighborhood, while not making friends in the new class. I’m pretty sure it had a lot to do with why I am such an introvert (on most introvert/extrovert scales, I’m usually 85–95% to the left).
3. Later, I was a National Merit scholarship finalist. My senior year in high school, colleges recruited me like I was an athlete.
4. I tried to shuck it off and act like it was no big deal, but it was a certain amount of sweet revenge for a kid who was always last when they were choosing up teams.
5. I have a master’s degree from a highly regarded program in what is now called communication studies.
6. A master’s degree in this field is pretty much useless—it’s just a signpost on the road to a PhD.
7. I dropped out of graduate school to play cover songs (what was then called Top 40) in low-end clubs, hotel lounges, and military bases. In a word, shit gigs.
8. Despite the fact I was a full-time musician for 16 years, I have virtually no formal musical training, none on my principal instrument (drums).
9. For many years, my mother urged me to give up the music business, to use my master’s degree to make some money.
10. Once our band was mentioned in Newsweek magazine (1986), my mom stopped bringing up the master’s degree. I don’t think she realized the money wasn’t any better.
11. After five years of insanely hard work (I averaged 180 nights a year away from home), the band broke up, without quite having broken out nationwide. We got back together a few years later on a part-time basis.
12. I had to get a job, and I wound up as a word processor in an educational non-profit.
13. That job—an entry-level position, at a non-profit—paid better than being in a touring rock band with singles on the radio, traveling to Europe, TV appearances, etc., etc.
14. I feel I have valid reasons for my opinion that the music industry is highly dysfunctional.
15. The best thing about graduate school is that it teaches you how to learn whatever you need to get something done.
16. In the late ’80s, I taught myself how to set up my own project recording studio. It was a 4-track cassette portastudio, with one track running time code to trigger MIDI sequencing in my Amiga computer. Learning how to do computer-based music production was way harder than anything I did in graduate school. Then again, I had teachers in grad school.
17. A couple years later, I taught myself how to do word processing, which was pretty easy. After all, word processing is a lot like music sequencing, only with words instead of music. Of course I had to work on an IBM-compatible machine instead of my beloved Amiga.
18. Once I was working, I learned how to do page layout on a Mac, using state of the art software: Aldus PageMaker 3.
19. At the time, the early ’90s, when the computer platform wars were perhaps at their most vitriolic, I was using an Amiga at home and PCs and Macs at work.
20. I thought the Amiga was an amazing box. It could do more with less than anything out there. But I got mightily sick of having to custom configure every program I wanted to run. Sometimes I just wanted to get some work done, not mess with the computer.
21. I quickly grew to like the Macintosh interface; it really seemed to be thought out, and I loved the consistency and logic of the whole system. It seemed to be designed, while the PC seemed very arbitrary.
22. PCs just seemed crude by comparison to the other computers. In many ways they still do, though they do win the award for Most Improved in my book.
23. I gravitated to the Mac, partly because it was the most fun to use, partly because it was, and is, the platform of choice for the things I wanted to do—graphics, video, and audio.
24. I interned at a video post production house for a couple years. I wanted to be a video editor.
25. I eventually realized I would have to give up everything else for several years to concentrate on becoming an editor.
26. I wasn’t willing to do that, especially since I had just started recording and mixing albums and demos for songwriters in my home studio.
27. I did start to learn Photoshop as part of my internship. 10 years later, I still can’t say I know more than a fraction of the program.
28. A couple years later (’95 or ’96) I got intrigued by the idea of creating web pages.
29. The hyperlink is one of the coolest things ever invented.
30. I talked some of my print clients into letting me build websites for them, and soon I was doing mostly web design in my “day” job.
31. I met my ex-wife, Elise, over the web.
32. We were both web designers, and it turned out that was only one of many things we had in common.
33. Sharing a dark and twisted sense of humor has done far more for our relationship than sharing an occupation.
34. I have no tattoos nor piercings.
35. I never wear jewelry, though I used to wear a wedding ring.
36. Elise was frustrated living in Kansas City, and eventually moved to Albuquerque, NM.
37. I had planned to move there to be with her again, but while my network of performance and recording contacts here has bloomed, the music scene in New Mexico appears to be in serious trouble and getting worse.
38. Though New Mexico is one of my favorite places, it wouldn’t do our marriage any good for me to move there and take a day job, something I have avoided for decades.
39. After three years of living in different cities, Elise and I decided to divorce. We’re still very good friends, though.
40. I am not flirtatious, though I can be friendly if it appears we have something interesting to talk about (the latter applies equally to men, by the way).
41. The list of interesting topics does not include how well I play my instrument or how good the band is. This will result in a polite but sincere thank you, followed by my exit.
42. Requests for Skynrd songs will be met with a polite, “Sorry, we don’t know anything by them,” followed by an even swifter exit. If I am playing with an original music project that night, the politeness will be somewhat forced.
43. I am almost pathologically polite, even for a Midwesterner. My mother must have been a demon for teaching us “Please” and “Thank you.”
44. I barely remember my childhood, except that I was not very happy.
45. I have consistently become happier as I’ve aged. I guess I’ll be ecstatic by the time I’m 80.
46. My preferred drink is vodka. Usually straight out of the freezer, in a frozen glass. I don’t really have a favorite brand, probably because if I did it would be something I can’t afford.
47. I’ve only had Vox, Ketil One, or Chopin a few times. I can say that I really like good vodka.
48. I’ve become fond of a Dutch vodka called Oliphant, whose taste belies its price. Every once in a while, Ketil is on sale and I can splurge.
49. I hate being drunk. I just don’t like the feeling, and I’ve probably only really been drunk a dozen or so times in my life. Remember, as a musician I do virtually all my work in bars. There’s no lack of opportunity.
50. I have a single vodka or beer or brandy nearly every night. On a wild night, I might have two. More than that and I have a headache that lasts for days.
51. Drinking alcohol makes me want to sit on the sofa and watch TV. Therefore, I never drink when I am playing drums.
52. I’ve never learned to swim. I can sort of dog-paddle, but that’s about it.
53. That’s okay, because I am too embarassed to go anywhere in a bathing suit.
54. There’s nothing wrong with my body, though I wouldn’t mind losing about 10 pounds.
55. I don’t know where this shyness about my body comes from; I didn’t mind going to the pool as a child.
56. The only incident I can remember is from high school, when we had to play shirts & skins basketball and there were people watching. As I took my shirt off, one girl I knew suddenly sucked in her breath—I think she was shocked at how thin I was.
57. The fact that I remember the incident now suggests that it must have been important somehow.
58. I’m certainly not too thin now, though I’m not fat.
59. I’ve worn glasses since I was seven.
60. Without glasses, I can’t focus even a foot in front of my face. The world is one big blur.
61. I couldn’t afford contact lenses until I was in my 30s.
62. Unfortunately, fatigue, smoky bars, and allergies meant I couldn’t wear my contacts most of the time. Finally I gave up.
63. I average about six-and-a-half hours sleep a night. There’s just too much to do.
64. I love coffee—but only good coffee. I am amazed at the swill most people will put up with. The good stuff is not that expensive. Have some Sumatra, or a Tanzania Peaberry.
65. Still, as a caffeine addict, I will drink whatever is available if I have to.
66. I was in my early 20s when a friend discovered gourmet coffees. We all quickly became hooked.
67. Prior to that, I rarely drank coffee. I didn’t think it tasted that good.
68. I was right. It wasn’t that I didn’t like coffee—I didn’t like bad coffee.
69. Not long after that, I went on the road full-time with a band, and coffee became a necessity. Unfortunately, it was rarely good.
70. I remember in college, to wake up in the morning sometimes I would drink grapefruit juice. Hardly anybody drank it, and it tended to sit in a metal can in the refrigerator for weeks. The acidity would shock me awake.
71. I lived in a scholarship hall when I was in college.
72. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
73. There were around 50 people living in each hall (eight halls in the system). The hall residents do the cooking, cleaning, and routine maintenance themselves, which keeps the cost of living down. In addition, everybody has to work together to keep the place running.
74. I’m still closer to some of my friends from the schol halls than nearly anyone else, even though we’re scattered all over the country now.
75. I do very well in communal living situations. Probably because I’m so damn polite.
76. I am a compulsive rearranger of furniture. Every few months I get fed up with the limitations of the way things are arranged and have to move them around.
77. Since I have a small recording studio in my office, rearranging furniture can take a couple full days. There are a lot of cables to run and boxes to hook up.
78. I love cats. They are constantly fascinating, though sometimes they drive me crazy.
79. One of my favorite things to do is to imagine I am a cat, to try to see the world through their eyes.
80. Cats are not like us in many ways: for instance, they find small, high-frequency rustling sounds irresistible, while extreme low-frequency sounds are frightening.
81. Someday I’ll write a science fiction story about a society of intelligent cats, victims of their feline background in the same way we are prey to the foibles of our primate ancestry. That is, unless you write it first. I would read it.
82. After college, when I was still living in Lawrence, KS (still one of the best small towns in the country, btw) one of my roommates was president of the university science fiction club. His room was lined floor-to-ceiling with science fiction paperbacks.
83. As a voracious reader, I would go into his room and look for something to borrow. With so many to choose from, I just picked the ones which had won Nebula or Hugo awards.
84. Not surprisingly, I soon decided I liked science fiction. A lot.
85. I don’t read much science fiction any more, though. Too many things that were science fiction when I was in my 20s are commonplace now.
86. I actually don’t read many books or magazines now, apparently because I have a computer. I do read a lot, but it mostly seems to be onscreen.
87. One of my favorite things to do now is to read a book or magazine in the sun room. Because of my work load, though, it’s a guilty pleasure.
88. When packing to go out on tours with the band, the biggest problem was figuring out how many books and magazines I could carry while running through an airport (in addition to clothes, toiletries, etc.). We generally went out for a month at a time, but I couldn’t physically carry a month’s worth of reading.
89. I got into Scientific American around then, because it takes a long time to read one of those and they’re pretty small.
90. Actually it takes a long time to admit that I’m never going to understand past the first page of a particular article and it’s time to tackle another.
91. I found out that nuclear physics is fascinating. All those quarks and gluons and muons—totally cool! And string theory? Don’t get me started.
92. I love art, too. Paul Klee may be my favorite artist, though I’m pretty much attracted to everything from cave painting onwards.
93. Although I do a lot of graphic design and art work to make a living, I haven’t had any formal training since 8th or 9th grade art class.
94. Sigh. Some things never change.
95. It still freaks me out when I’m referred to as “the artist” on a team project. I feel like I’m pulling a fast one.
96. Just the same, my life began to make a lot more sense when I realized, in my mid-30s or so, that in terms of personality and overall outlook on life, fundamentally I am an artist.
97. I didn’t say I’m a good artist, just that’s how I approach life.
98. I use different media—a drum kit, a recording studio, still graphics or animation, interactive media—but it’s all art.
99. I think my biggest problem is I’m pretty good at a lot of things, but not a badass killer mofo at any one of them.
100. Actually, my biggest problem is that, faced with a choice that will make a project 10% cooler but cut its commercial prospects by 50%, I’ll always want to do the cool thing.
101. Three recently-deceased souls approach St. Peter at the gates of heaven. Peter asks the first one what he did in life.
     “I was a wealthy doctor, but I used my money to found a hospital and treat poor children.” Peter tells him to come on in, then turns to the second soul.
     “I struck oil, but I used my money to create a foundation promoting education and helping those less fortunate.” Peter smiles and sends him on in as well. Then he turns to the third soul.
     “I’m afraid I only made $5,000 in my whole life,” the trembling soul says.
     “Heavens!” exclaims Peter. “What instrument did you play?”

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