It feels strange for it to actually be okay to talk about ourselves like this. Let’s see here…
I am related to Samuel Clemens
I have three scars from puncture wounds on my right thigh that make a 90 degree triangle. These scars were all acquired at different times in my life. Strange but true.
At 9 yrs old I was considered to be a prodigy on the guitar.
I was on stage with Michael Bolton for two of his concerts. (he’s not my fav either, it was a paying job.)
I’ve been to almost every US state and most of Canada…but I’ve never been to Europe…yet!
Tests have said I have a very high IQ…but I’ve never really viewed myself as very smart.
My great grandmother was a Christian Science Healer (I am neither)
And then there’s the coolest:
My grandfather worked for the Lockheed Aeronautics Company and was actually on the original skunkworks team. He helped design the tail section for the p38 lightning. I’m so proud of him MHRIP.
My Dad helped design the rocket recovery system that is used by the helicopters to get the capsules out of the ocean when they return to earth.
Apparently, as the story goes, the Navy stole it from him (the group) and that was that.
My grandfather on my mother’s side use to have Johnny Weismuller as his office boy. ( That would be the most famous Tarzan until the french guy who’s name escapes me.)
The same grandfather had a letter to the editor in Life or Time or Something published when Kennedy was running:
*I am Irish. I am a Catholic. I am a Kennedy. I am not voting for JFK. *
I’ve had letters to the editor published in People (twice, but I’ll be damned if I can remember when or for what), In Style and Movieline. (Yes, I am vaccuous.)
I bought Buzz Aldrin a Diet Pepsi after he had done an interview with us (and autographed my 20th anniversary moon-landing poster!!)
I can drive forklifts, operate a bucket truck and can also drive really big trucks - short distances (I’m not commercially licensed) - but I do none of those full time for a living. Anymore.
I’ve actually SOLD one of my drawings!!! (<MODERATOR WARNING: EROTIC DRAWING, NOT SUITABLE FOR THE WORKPLACE!>this one actually) This actually suprised and awed me, since I really only draw for myself as a hobby.
My great-gandfather invented an improved machine for stitching baseballs. In Natick, Mass. Back in 1880 or 1890-something. Then he and his son operated a baseball factory for the next 70 years.
Warning!!!TVGuy’s drawing contains nudity and might not be suitable to open in the workplace.
Nice work though, TVGuy.
My cool stuff:
I have a guitar pick of Adrian Smith’s of Iron Maiden.
Just today, I got my hair cut like Pierce Brosnan, the newest James Bond. He looks a lot like me, you know. Except I’m a good bit younger.
I collect amplifiers. Mostly car audio amplifiers. Most of them sit under my bed waiting for the perfect project. I had a real talent about 12 years ago for buying really good amps and selling them off to friends as I needed cash. Now I’m buying them back from friends for pennies on the dollar.
TVGuy, I’m not going to remove the link (it’s art, therefore we’ll cut it some slack), but please advise people beforehand if a link is on the risqué side, all right?
I just remembered some things I forgot to mention earlier:
When I was in college I wrote a letter to Dave Barry - my personal hero and the one person on Earth besides my actual father who I wish was my father - and I got a response. A real live handwritten letter, which is now lost somewhere in my parents’ garage.
Also, my parents paid for about half of my sister’s Princeton education by selling some of my father’s baseball card collection (the Von Hayes cards are all still safe, though).
My dad was quoted in Newsweek and the Washington Post in about 1987 about the presidential primary candidates.
My brother, the World’s Biggest Metallica fan, ran into James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich by chance at King’s Island in the early 90’s. He and his friends hung out with them all day, and Metallica bought them beer. I think it was one of the happiest days of his life.
Abraham Lincoln is my second cousin four times removed. Or something like that. Somewhere we have a newspaper article that talks about it. It’s also rumoured that I’m related to Daniel Boone.
My little sister walked up to the members of Slaughter in a record store once at about age nine, wearing a New Kids on the Block t-shirt.
I’ve been to 45 concerts since 2000. Probably about 70 total.
Today is my birthday (that’s really only cool for one day, though.)
I won Best in Show at the 1998 Student Addys in Lexington, Kentucky for this ad. (It was just an ad for a class assignment, as were all of the entries.)
My cousin’s cousin’s cousin is Lionel Richie. My roommate’s cousin is Rider Strong.
I guess not too much of that is stuff that’s cool about myself, but I’m touched by much indirect coolness.
Hmm, I’ve only been able to think of things after hearing similar things from other Dopers…nothing spectacular, but here it is:
I’ve never broken a bone or had a cavity.
I had five wisdom teeth (before they were cut out)
Singer Sheryl Crow is my third cousin - our great-grandfathers are brothers. No, I’ve never met her, because I never cared that I had some cousin named Sheryl until she was famous. I’ve met her dad, though.
I also have a cousin who I am related to on both my mother’s and father’s side - not through inbreeding, we’re related by blood on my mother’s side and she married someone on my father’s.
My vision is so bad in my right eye, it’s just a couple years away from being designated as legally blind. My left eye is something like 20/40.
I had perfect attendance until I was in the third grade
I’m so prone to mosquito/chigger bites, I once came home from a one-night camping trip with 455 bites. Really. I counted as I put a dot of calamine lotion on each one. I looked like I was in the early stages of smallpox and had to stay home from school for a week.
I have no allergies to food, or medicine, or pets…anything, really, except grass. Walking/sitting in the grass gives me hives.
My father and I went out to dinner with Francis McBeth! (Only music geeks will care about that one.)
My girlfriend may be related to Davey Crockett. She has also been hit on by Val Kilmer - and if he comes back, I’ll kick his ass - and apparently, the editorial staff at our school paper carries a torch for her: about a week before we met, her picture was on the front cover (from a protest). I’m told there’s a copy on the wall in the office. Of course, the Daily was too slow, and I got her first.
I have interviewed Les Paul, Bruce Cockburn and Dar Williams, among many others.
I engineered broadcast recordings of the latter two, as well as the band Feel, Shannon McNally, Ben Taylor and Carrie Newcomer.
I have met Edwin McCain, John Eddie, David Crosby, Jen Trynin, John Mayer and the members of Son Volt, Queensryche, Cracker, Counting Crows and Big Head Todd and the Monsters, among many others. The Crosby is distinctive because one of my cow-orkers nearly killed him with my lemonade. The Son Volt is distinctive because, lacking a percussion instrument, drummer Mike Heidorn played his brushes on the cover of my vinyl copy of Straightaways.
I appear in the audience on Garrison Keillor’s Mother Father Uncle Aunt, specifically on the monologue titled “Ball Jars.”
My hands are always warm. bodypoet will probably confirm this.
When filling out cassette liners or CD booklets for home recordings, I write in very tiny script. Apparently this is amazing.
My macaroni and cheese has made grown men weep in gratitude.
Anytime I wear out a pair of pants, the crotch always goes first.
I recieved a reply to a fan letter I sent to Piers Anthony. It was HAND written, and it answered all my quesstions, and he’s going to do a Xanth book on Canada, because I told him it would be cool to do something about polar bears and such. He said it was a good idea.
I live on an Island. Not like, Manhatten, ro whatever, but an island that is a quarter mile long and about 500 feet wide. There are only 2 other humans besides me thatlive there. I have to take a boat to school in the morning.
I read. ALOT. I’ve read over 500 books so far.
I’m an aspiring novelist, although my work is crap an dthe one novel that I did right that was actually good got deleted because of a stupid power outage.
I’ve never ever been stung by a bee even though I’ve had bees crawl on me or land on me.
I’ve never gotten poison ivy even though I’ve unknowingly walked through it many times. Once I even landed in a patch of poison sumac when chasing a volleyball into the woods. Never got so much as an itch.
Sometimes I can imitate people’s voices nearly perfectly without even practicing it. I just imagine what their voice would feel like in my throat, how my muscles would work and stuff like that and it just comes out.
I’ve met a few celebrities including:
John Stamos (unbelievably perfect and nice in person)
Todd Bridges of infamous Diff’rent Strokes fame
Fred Berry (Rerun from What’s Happening)
James Best (Roscoe P. Coltrane from Dukes of Hazzard) Was very nice to all the kids in the crowd at the time and thought I was “adorable”.
I’m indestructible. Well, only mostly. I’ve been hit by an 18-wheeler and my only injury was a chipped tooth (which happened when my jaw snapped shut).
My sister has also collided with an 18-wheeler, but this time it jacknifed in front of her while she was tailgating.
I was born with one wisdom tooth, and it’s staying put.
- and apparently, the editorial staff at our school paper carries a torch for her: about a week before we met, her picture was on the front cover (from a protest). I’m told there’s a copy on the wall in the office. Of course, the Daily was too slow, and I got her first. 
