I Have Answers.

1. Is it true you are a current nailbiter and at one time bit your toenails too?

No and yes. I mean, I used to, but now my ground-down teeth barely meet, so I can't even snip off the errant hangnail any more.

2. What musician would you have consensual sex with, but never-ever marry or fall in love?

Stuart from Belle & Sebastian.

3. What is the one thing you really like about your body?

Heh. Do you really want to know that?

Seriously: I'm pretty down with all of it. Except for the hemorrhoids.

4. Which is better, Simpsons or Family Guy.

Seasons 3-9ish Simpsons. Family Guy could easily beat out the past three years of Simpsons, though.

5. In a fight to the death, who would win, a team of astronauts or a tribe of cavemen and why?

Cavemen, totally. Astronauts don't have any cool weapons, unless you count that powdery ice cream, with which they would try to distract the cavemen, but the cavemen wouldn't identify it as food, and would continue bashing the astronauts with hand adzes. (Is that the plural of "adze?"

6. And have you seen that episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast with Michael Stipe?!(Freaky!)

You know I have it but I haven't watched it yet.

7. As a kid, was there an adult in your life you wanted to be just like when you grew up? If so, describe that person.

Gosh, I just always thought my mom was pretty cool. Maybe that's a lame-o answer, but I still want to be a lot like my mom. She's brilliant, hilarious, an amazing writer and storyteller, warm and loving, and good at creating beauty wherever she goes. Oh, and she got to stay home with us for years, and claims to have had a blast doing so.

8. Tell me a funny story I haven't already heard.

Okay: This happened to my friend Nick's acquaintance. I'll call him Jeff, because I have an ex-boyfriend named Jeff, and this will make the story even funnier to me.

So Jeff, after a long night of heavy drinking in Manhattan, staggers toward the subway to make his way home to Brooklyn. In his alcohol stupor, he gets on the wrong train and passes out. He comes to when the train hits its last stop way the hell up in the Bronx; he is discharged and left on the platform at four in the morning. Still blind-drunk, he realizes, at first dimly and then with urgency, that he has to take a dump. Now. A foul, beery, loose dump. But where? He's on a platform in the Bronx! Desperate, Jeff drops trou and relieves himself in what he hopes to be an out-of-the-way corner of the platform.

Finally, the first trains of the morning start up, and Jeff gets on the first one, passing out once again in his seat. He regains consciousness periodically, as early-morning commuters fill the train, and is foggily aware that despite the increasing number of people on the train, no one is sitting near him. Eventually Jeff ends up back in Brooklyn as the sun is rising; he drags himself home and collapses into bed.

Later that afternoon he awakens to find himself spattered with his own feces. Evidently his sly pit-stop in the Bronx was not the slick operation he'd imagined it to be, and he'd spent the past several hours in public, utterly befouled.

9. As a former church youth group attendee, what was the best thing about it? The worst?

Best: meeting Mamarama. Close second: hot guitar-playing good-music-loving boys.
Worst: that whole intolerance and stupidity thing. They actually had a guy in, once, to talk to our Sunday school class about how evolution was bunko because human footprints were found next to dinosaur bones. At that age (14) I was a junior paleontologist, and not buying a word of it. Oh, and the mind-blowing hypocrisy of hard-drinking swearing promiscuous leaders.

10. What should I wear to the Einsturzende Neubauten show on Friday? (I know, that's more about me than you, but I'm asking you because you're cool and you like glitter.)

Something black. This reminds me: a college friend whose ultraBaptist parents accidentally caught a glimpse of her Einsturzende Neubauten sticker had to make up some cockamamie story about how it was a historical representation of Jesus, and therefore okay. Six months later, they pulled her out of college because they said she was doing drugs. Girl didn't even smoke fucking cigarettes.

11. If you had to buy a snack at a gas station and you only had $0.69, what would you buy?

Krispy Kreme donut. Glazed with chocolate frosting and sprinkles = more bang for your buck.

12. What color are your toenails right now?

Toenail colored. I'm all freaked out about phthalates, and can never remember, once in-store, which brands have 'em and which don't, so I give up and stomp out of the Eckerd.

13. Eat lunch in a room reeking with cheap perfume, or 30 minute bus ride squashed next to a guy with a hygiene problem?

Bus ride. But you knew I would say that, didn't you?

14. New tattoo or new shoes?

Today: shoes.

15. Most embarrassing elementary school incident?

Technically this did not take place in the school, but it was during second grade.

A girl in my class, Elizabeth, had a slumber party for her birthday. I attended, even though I was feeling a little iffy; I figured I'd be okay. I happily consumed grocery-store sheet cake, red Kool-Aid, and hot dogs, then bedded down in my sleeping bag in a basement filled with all the girls in second grade.

I awakened in the wee hours of the morning and found myself covered in puke -- it was in my hair, on my pajamas, in my sleeping bag. I made a dash for the bathroom to heave another batch, then, in an astonishing act of denial, went back to my sleeping bag and went to sleep. Without cleaning up.

The next morning, it was obvious that I was wearing an awful lot of foul-smelling vomit; I tried to blame it on Elizabeth's younger brother, hypothesizing that he'd come downstairs in the night to barf on me. Nobody bought it. I didn't want to take a shower, so Elizabeth sprayed me with Lysol while I waited for my mom to come get me.

I can still smell that puke, man. And I still get all tingly with humiliation, even thinking about that story.

Comments

[Julia]

I'm keeled over from the puke and shit stories! Ah, I needed that.

[Karen]

Ah, I love potty humor. I love that you were sprayed with Lysol. That is too funny.

[runnerwoman]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you - I think that the "Evita" episode from this year's season of The Simpsons is an enduring classic.

I also once barfed in my sleep (thankfully, in my own bed). I'd been carsick after my parents had taken us to the Ozarks. I like to think that puking was a little act of revenge against my parents, who made us go to Branson.

[Jo]

Yeah, this season has been a lot better than past stinkers, I'll grant you that.

I once got horribly carsick in the Ozarks as well, though we were in Eureka Springs. The time we went to Branson, I fell in a lake, though.

Incidentally, I loved the episode in which the Simpsons went to Branson.

I realized, after posting this, the striking parallels between my funny story and my tale of humiliation -- both involve some luckless protagonist ending up coated with unsavory products of digestion IN PUBLIC. You'd think I'd have a little more compassion for Jeff.

Then again, he done it to himself. That's what makes it funny.

[Mamarama]

Indeed, you, above everyone else, made my youth group experience worthwhile. However, the guiitar playing Hotties for Jesus were well worth it too.

I can't believe you tried to blame the puke on the little brother...

[Jo]

Well, it was an act of desperation. I still cringe, even twenty years later, remembering that whole awful ordeal. It's embarrassing in itself, how sensitive about it I still am. My friends were forbidden to speak of it, ever again.

As are all of you, now.

[Tracy]

Yes, The Simpsons aren't quite as good as they used to be, but they are still better than most everything else on TV. Give those voice actors a raise!