25 Things (About The Real Me)
I got hit by that latest Facebook tag meme, in this case the "25 Things" thing doing the rounds where you have to list 25 things about yourself that your long-suffering Facebook friends might find illuminating (or more likely not). Since people do actually sometimes ask about my real-life me (usually in email), here's the rather hurriedly-put-together Facebook list of 25 things you may or may not already know about my real-life self (slightly edited):1. My real name is J. Orbison Legrande III.
2. I once piloted Air Force One.
3. I can speak eleven languages fluently; five more with some difficulty.
4. Most of my photos are fakes — I spend literally months drawing each one in excruciating photo-realistic detail by hand, then use Photoshop to make them look like photos.
5. I was born in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, up near Shreveport.
6. I swim to work most days.
7. I write for the New Yorker under a pseudonym.
8. When I was a teenager I made a living composing heroic poetry to order in a traveling sideshow. Two bucks a poem. It was an OK living, but that sort of thing really takes its toll after a while.
9. My Australian accent is totally fake; I've never even been there, let alone lived there long enough to get an accent.
10. My father knew Lloyd George.
11. I never eat pasta; it's a religious thing.
12. A friend of mine is afraid of butterflies.
13. I made up the whole "Woy Woy" thing (with the help of Spike and some other co-conspirators who I'll name in my memoirs) — it's all fake. There's no such place (the name's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?).
14. I feel really bad for making up the Woy Woy thing. It's sort of exploded out of my control and taken on a life of its own; I wish I could take it back.
15. When I lived in northern Minnesota I used to pretend to like ice fishing just to get on with my colleagues.
16. My first kinetic sculpture exhibition was raided by the Carabinieri because a jealous ex-lover had told them it defamed the Pope.
17. When I taught classical philology at Oxford I was known as "The Hammer".
18. I have twelve siblings. Two of them are currently in Antarctica.
19. For the first few months I feared that I would never get used to living in Ittoqqortoormiit, but after a few years it started to feel like home.
20. There's a prime number named after me.
21. I now deeply regret inventing the amphibious car. It's been the bane of my life, in ways too numerous to mention.
22. I once weighed more than 300 Kg.
23. I'm mortally afraid of aspergilla. Well, only the metal ones.
24. The Angry Penguins were my idea.
25. I have never told a lie.
So now you know.
Labels: life
6 Comments:
So all that we shared in the time we spent together in pursuit of the noble walleye, all the fishing lore and the deep piscatorial insights, all that was a PRETENSE??
I can't breathe...
How swiftly and cruelly the frozen wastes of my past catch up with me; I thought a hidden life of art in this vast city of commerce would inoculate me from remorse, but I was wrong. The memories are still fresh; the pain intense; the regrets too stifling. I'll be back on the floes next year; this time the interest and pleasure will be real, I assure you.
Remember that one time we visited your sister Keb and her husband Gerard in Antarctica, and they took us snow fishing, and a mammoth trunk slid out of the water and swallowed you whole?
And then I had to melt the ice with my laser pointer -- which you know I hate doing because it wastes batteries -- and save you?
And then you promised to buy me a new laser but never did?
Yeah. Still waiting, Jimmy.
Yeah, and I'm still waiting for a replacement for the mini submarine you wrecked when we were circumnavigating Greenland, toots. You give me the submarine, I give you the laser. Fair swap?! You didn't have to run away to Paris just to get out of this, you know.
I thought you were over that?
Over it?! One never gets over something like that, you know. Next time we do the circumpolar thing we do it on my terms, OK?!
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