LISTMANIA: 100 Lame Things About Me


  1. I have a tattoo of a Siamese cat on my shoulder as an homage to Bob Dylan.
  2. I have a scar on my inner thigh from trying to open a coconut with a wood chisel when I was 10. Dad told me not to touch his machete.
  3. I have cats. I have always had cats.
  4. I spent the summer I was eleven traveling in Europe.
  5. I've lived in Florida, New York and New Mexico.
  6. I hated living in New Mexico.
  7. I once smoked pot under Cinderella's Castle in Disney World. In a corncob pipe I bought in the Mercantile on Main Street. It made the park a lot more fun.
  8. I had three accredited minors in college.
  9. One of them was film making.
  10. I worked on the titles for a film (Harlan County USA) that won an Oscar, and I got to hold the Oscar when the filmmaker brought it to the shop.
  11. I've won national awards for my work.
  12. I was a red head for 15 years, but I'm really a blonde.
  13. I had an asymmetrical haircut in the 1980s.
  14. I wore safety pins as earrings.
  15. I had purple hair.
  16. I have some pretty impressive X-Acto knife scars from my years as a graphic designer.
  17. I was late and running full tilt down the sidewalk at JFK. A limo door opened and I slammed into the guy getting out. It was like bouncing off a wall and I just kept running. Five steps later I realized that the brick wall was Kirk Douglas. He was still laughing when I turned around.
  18. More than a dozen of my friends have died of AIDS.
  19. I sat on the board for an AIDS service organization for seven years.
  20. I've made panels for the AIDS quilt.
  21. I hate to fly.
  22. I often dream about being able to fly.
  23. I practice lucid dreaming.
  24. I can still quote huge chunks of Monty Python and/or Firesign Theater.
  25. My childhood dream career was Mermaid at Weeki-Wachee Springs.
  26. I always thought John was the coolest Beatle.
  27. I've met Bruce Springsteen.
  28. I want desperately to meet Bob Dylan.
  29. I made the Atlantic crossing by ship.
  30. I can drive a stick shift. Actually, I can drive anything.
  31. I used to be on a radio comedy show on Public Radio.
  32. I flunked phys. ed. in high school.
  33. Some years ago I had to have surgery on my shoulder for a sports injury.
  34. I want to visit every major league baseball park.
  35. Strangers talk to me.
  36. I still want a horse.
  37. I'm married to someone who was my friend for 16 years before we ever dated.
  38. I still am friends with the woman I've known since the day I was born (literally: our parents were friends, our mothers were pregnant at the same time, and we were born a month apart).
  39. I've been in two serious car wrecks.
  40. I drink scotch. I drink vodka. I drink ouzo. In fact, except for gin there's little I don't drink.
  41. I can insult clients, swear and order from a menu in Spanish, but little else.
  42. Lime green actually looks good on me.
  43. I've never been pregnant.
  44. I started smoking cigarettes when I was 34 and divorcing the first husband. I still like one cigarette a day, after work. With a drink.
  45. I'm a native Floridian.
  46. I didn't have a tan from the time I was 17 until I turned 46, at which point I figured any skin damage would no longer be premature aging.
  47. P.J. O'Roarke once told me to get the hell away from him when I tried to talk to him at a bar. Asshole. Ask me to tell the whole story sometime: I have all the best lines.
  48. I L-U-V roller coasters.
  49. I learned to knit when my mother's Alzheimer's disease made her forget how.
  50. I've written a book, but fear of rejection keeps me from submitting the manuscript.
  51. I haven't missed a Dylan tour since 1973, despite the ridicule I suffer from my friends.
  52. I've refused to say the pledge of allegiance since I was 15, as I do not believe that there is liberty and justice for all in America. And now, with the Emperor and the Puppet Master in power, I believe that less than ever. IMPEACHMENT NOW!
  53. More than once I've had a total stranger call me an old soul.
  54. I can read tarot cards.
  55. I used to scale up the outside of the art department building to get to class on the second floor.
  56. Even as a child, I could make political conservatives develop a tic when I debated them.
  57. I always vote, even when the candidates are worthless.
  58. Other people throw parties, I am a party (apologies to David Lee Roth, from whom I stole that line).
  59. My girlfriend and I were mistaken for drag queens at White Party. We think it was the highest compliment we could ever receive.
  60. I can touch type.
  61. I don't consider myself a birder, but I keep a life list.
  62. I collect miniatures, but not doll house miniatures.
  63. I like Paulie Shore movies.
  64. I despise David Lynch movies.
  65. I'm right about that. I'm right about everything.
  66. As I walked down the aisle at my first wedding, my maid of honor turned and said: Run away. It's not too late.
  67. O.K., so I was wrong about that.
  68. I've milked goats.
  69. I once had food poisoning on the LIRR, and was called a junkie as I lay on the platform, puking onto the rails.
  70. I was thrown out of graduate school.
  71. I do the New York Times Sunday crossword in ink.
  72. During the first half of my career, I had a 2-year attention span.
  73. I can read and write upside down and backwards: it comes from years of working in a darkroom.
  74. Yellow makes me look dead.
  75. I've woken up in a hospital with no idea how I got there or when.
  76. I still have nightmares about wearing braces on my teeth.
  77. I think being an ex-patriate is a good thing.
  78. In addition to Europe, I've travelled in the US, Canada, Caribbean and Israel.
  79. I dislike loud people and children, especially when they are near me.
  80. I can weave on a four-harness loom.
  81. I used to play the recorder and flute.
  82. I can still read music, but barely.
  83. I've made sandals from scratch.
  84. I'm an excellent cook and baker.
  85. I eat veal and I'm not sorry about it.
  86. One of my ambitions is to eat my way across China.
  87. I eat chicken feet at dim sum restaurants for the street cred it gives me with the wait staff.
  88. I won't eat tripe, brains or any other organ meat.
  89. My favorite bar trick is tying cherry stems in a knot with my tongue.
  90. I was held up at gun point.
  91. I never learned to roller skate.
  92. A T-shirt I designed for the hospital's Y2K team is in the Smithsonian Collection.
  93. I went to a meeting of the New York Radical Feminists in the 70s.
  94. I've owned more sewing machines than cars and they are still accruing to me.
  95. I own way more than 150 cookbooks.
  96. My first kiss was underwater at a marine science summer camp. His name was Bobby and he was from New York.
  97. I love New York. No, I mean I REALLY love New York.
  98. I harbor a deep loathing for Paul McCartney.
  99. I once spent an evening talking about art with Larry Rivers, because I was too shy to talk to Claes Oldenburg.
  100. I've had unexplained paranormal experiences.