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The fabulous Kristy, of She Just Walks Around With It, has tagged me to participate in the 8 Random Things game. I rarely post anything beyond updates of where I am with SHE, and that gets old pretty quickly. While I do have a few other topics I’d like to pursue–more Angry Grammarian posts, for example, and tips on making Microsoft Word more useful–I never get to them. So when Kristy asked people to volunteer to be tagged for the 8 Random Things meme, I volunteered. Sure, this blog is supposed to be about writing, but… you know what? I don’t have to justify myself to anyone. It’s my damned blog.

Here are the rules of the 8 Random Things game:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

And Kristy added her own wrinkle to the game:

Oh, and while I encourage you to follow the basic rules of this game, I am also asking that, if possible, you please include at least one tidbit about some form of livestock.

That makes the task a little harder, but I’ll give it a shot.

1. I once tried to reason with a goat.

On the last day of our honeymoon, Carolyn and I visited Parrot Jungle. It had, in addition to its plethora of parrots and other birds, a petting zoo. Carolyn is a sucker for petting zoos. So am I. In we went. There were ducks, goats, and … probably some other critters. I only remember the ducks and the goats.

I bought some duck feed for a quarter and bent down to feed a cute little mallard, who attempted to peck my hand off. His bill was like a blunt little jackhammer. I now know that the phrase “nibbled to death by ducks” refers to a real horror. Trust me, that’s not the way you want to go.

Anyway, while this was going on, a goat seized the opportunity to get behind me. As I stood up in surprise from the duck’s rabid attack, the goat jumped up, planted his little hooves on my butt, and swiped the park map from my back pocket.

He ran off with the map, chewing furiously. I chased after him. “Give that back!” I shouted. He looked back and said, “Meh-eh-eh,” around a mouthful of paper. I grabbed him and said, “That’s not good for you.” By now I had the attention of everyone in the petting zoo, including the staff, who were trying very hard not to laugh. I tried to snatch the map from his mouth while explaining that it wasn’t food, but he only chewed faster, said, “Meh-eh-eh” again, and swallowed what remained.

Will that do, Kristy?

2. I have been mistaken for Harold Ramis on more than one occasion.

In the late 1980s and on into the 1990s, I was a dead ringer for the actor. I even wore glasses of a similar style for a while, though I hadn’t picked them out with that in mind.

One day shortly after Ghostbusters II hit theaters, I was walking to the bank to deposit my paycheck. As I neared the bank, an eight year-old child pointed at me and yelled, “Hey, Dad! Look, there’s Egon!” He was really disappointed when I turned out to be, well, me. (The kid was the son of an acquaintance of mine, Pat Broderick. Pat thought it was much funnier than I did).

I was also mistaken for Mr. Ramis–and asked for an autograph–in The Strand bookstore in New York City when I visited there in 1999. Like Pat’s son, the woman who spotted me was terribly disappointed that it was just me.

3. I was once responsible for an issue of Batman being late to the printer.

Did I mention that I used to know comic book artist Pat Broderick? When I was at USF the first time, I spent a lot of time at a comic book store–the Comic Cafe. I often did homework at one of the tables in the back when I wasn’t playing a board or roleplaying games or arguing the merits of the latest mega-crossover events in the Marvel and DC universes. In other words, I was a big dork.

Anyway, Pat Broderick used to rent studio space in the back of the Cafe when he was the regular artist on Batman. Out front, there was a stand-up Star Wars video game–not the one you can find in arcades now, where you battle through dozens of scenarios from the movie. This was the 1980s, baby, and we made do with a simple wire-frame trench-run scenario. Pat was really good at it.

I was better.

One day, I came in and discovered that Pat had beaten my high score. I put a quarter in the machine and re-established my superiority. Then I waited for him to emerge from his studio to take a break and I gloated about it. Pat spent the next two hours and four or five bucks trying to beat my score. Eventually, I went home. The next day when I came in, he had managed to beat me by about a thousand points. It took me three quarters to top him again, and of course the next time he took a break, I rubbed it in, and he had to try to beat my score again.

This went on for about a week and a half, and Pat was late with his pencils for the issue of Batman that he was working on as a result.

INTERLUDE

Great googly-moogly! I’m not even half way through this thing yet? This is harder than I thought it would be.

4. My best acting roles were always crotchety old men.

I was bitten by the acting bug during my senior year in high school. The production was Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take it With You, and I only auditioned because… I think I missed my bus that day and needed to kill some time after school until I could get a ride home. I was cast as Mr. Kirby, the father of the male lead.

I was very good as the snobby Mr. Kirby, and got such a high from acting that I kept at it when I went to college. I played Batista in a production of The Taming of the Shrew at Mercer University in the fall–another old man–and later in my freshman year, was cast in the Macon Little Theater production of The Dining Room. I received a positive review in the Macon Telegraph and News for my portrayal of “ramrod straight patriarchs” even though my favorite part in that play was an eight year old boy.

Apparently, my inner cantankerous old goat is strong.

5. I had two letters to the editor published in a comic book.

We now return to “big time dork” stories. The owner of the Comic Cafe recommended Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series to me when it came out, and it quickly became my favorite comic. Eventually, I wrote a letter to the editor, and then forgot I had written it. Six months later, I was reading the letter column and found a letter that was … brilliant! Exactly what I thought! I skimmed to the bottom of the letter to find out who this genius was and discovered it was me. Two years later, my second letter also appeared in Sandman. This time, I only got two sentences into it before realizing that it was my own work.

6. Once I willingly ate something that I thought was a chocolate-covered bumblebee.

It was in an Intro to Anthropology course I took at community college. We were discussing how different cultures consider different things food. The professor held up a jar and said, “These are chocolate covered bumblebees. They’re considered a delicacy in Japan.” Then he opened the jar and popped on into his mouth. “They’re quite delicious, but most American would never even try them.” He extended the jar toward the class. “Anyone?”

Hell, no, not me. But then Marilib, the woman who sat next to me, raised her hand and took one. I had an enormous crush on her, so I volunteered as well. I was just biting down on it when she said, “It’s kind of chewy.” My stomach roiled but I managed not to puke. It was chewy and ridiculously sweet. Somehow, I managed to choke it down. Damn it, if she could eat this thing, so could I.

At the end of the lecture, the professor said, “By the way, those bumblebees? Those were actually chocolate covered raisins. I was raised in this culture and I don’t eat bugs. You two are sick.”

I never got a date with Marilib.

7. I would rather eat a bumblebee, chocolate covered or not, than a lima bean.

My mother loved lima beans. So she would serve them two or three times a month, either by themselves or as part of a revolting concoction called succotash. I don’t know which is worse–lima beans by themselves, or ruining perfectly good corn by pairing them with the vilest of all vegetables.

But either way, if she served it, we had to eat it. Every time lima beans were on the table, it meant a night of misery. Because I don’t just dislike lima beans. They make me gag and always have. Eventually, I learned to swallow them whole, like big pills, which did awful things to my intestines later on, but at least I didn’t have to taste the damned things. Before I figured that out, I tried mixing them with mashed potatoes to mask the taste (doesn’t work all that well, and there weren’t always enough mashed potatoes, and mashed potatoes weren’t always on the menu).

Even the smell of them makes me want to call Ralph on the big white phone.

8. “Calling Ralph on the big white phone” is my favorite euphemism for vomiting.

“Technicolor yawn” is a close second, and “driving the porcelain bus is a good one, but “Calling Ralph on the big white phone” is so evocative that it slays me every time.

Thanks to Kristy for the tag, and now it’s my turn to tag others. Except I’m not going to tag eight people, because I only read six blogs besides Kristy’s. So, if you’re willing, I’d like to hear from:

• My lovely wife, even though she hates to write.
• Heather, because she will, she will ROCK YOU.
• Adrienne, whom I look forward to seeing next month.
• My Favorite Anthropologist, because she’s so helpful when I have anthro questions for my writing.
• Melinda, of whom I am STILL jealous because she got to attend Clarion.
• Chris, who probably doesn’t have time for this nonsense.

Have fun, gang! There’s no need to include livestock in your answers if you don’t want to.