Spitball Army

– Three places I’ve lived in have been burgled, and I was not home during any of the events.

– Ever since learning the principle of torque in high school physics, I have used the “right-hand rule” to figure out which way to unscrew the lid of a jar or the direction to turn on an outdoor water faucet. I’ll just stick my right thumb straight up and turn my hand to the left. This has elicited hearty ridicule from time to time, most prominently from my dear old Dad.

– Caroline Kennedy once asked me to help her find a book in the stacks of Harvard’s Widener Library.

– I can recite almost all of the dialogue from the Marx Brothers’ film “Duck Soup.”

– I am a California native.

– My maternal grandmother was born in Alabama, at a location that is now submerged under Lake Guntersville. I now live in Alabama only coincidentally to this fact.

– My favorite song is “Alfie.” I have it as a ringtone on my cell phone.[audio:Dionne_Warwick___Alfie.mp3]
The classic Dionne Warwick version (1966).

– My second favorite song is “The Hucklebuck.”
[audio:Chubby_Checker___The_Hucklebuck.mp3]
Chubby Checker (1960)

– I have driven from Ensenada, Mexico, up the Baja coast, and across the border into the United States while stone drunk on tequila.

– I am most happy while swimming or in the water, but have the damnedest time getting myself to a pool.

– One year, I was voted Most Valuable Player on my high school swim team.

– My favorite writing instrument is an L.C. Smith manual typewriter with glass keys that is in perfect working order, sits atop a desk in my office, and rarely gets used.

– I have never been to Europe.

– While in college, I burped all the way to the letter “R” in the age-old game of “Burp the Alphabet.” I had a roommate who regularly made it all the way to “Z.”

– Beatles trump Stones.

– I won’t eat cauliflower or okra.

– I once stood between Chris Isaak and Donny Osmond while watching a live Vanilla Ice performance.

The gig was just like this one, complete with all that bouncing.

– I have at least three books and a screenplay in me, but doubt that they’ll ever get written.

– Sometimes my eyes are blue.

– I painted a picture that was presented to the city of Pago Pago, American Samoa, at a Sister City convocation in Oceanside, California. It now sits in a box or on a wall somewhere in Oceanside or, perhaps, in Pago Pago.

– My cousin and I were named Little Miss & Mister South Oceanside. She still has the certificate we were given.

– I do not play a musical instrument, nor have I ever wanted to be in a band.

– Two of the funniest words in the English language are “muffin” and “pickle.” They just sound really, really funny to me, and not for the reasons that you are thinking.

– I have a scar across the knuckle of my right hand, where an inch-long piece of glass from a playhouse window inserted itself when I was a kid.

– Last night, I cut a mango open for the first time.

If you have a Facebook account, you have undoubtedly read a few of your friends’ notes entitled something like “25 Things About Me” or “25 Random Facts You May Not Know About Me.”  According to this article in yesterday’s New York Times, the “25 Things” list is all the rage, a craze:

Sarah Morgan will defend New Jersey passionately to anyone who will listen (No. 3). Max Evjen belonged to the high school band Little Blue Fuzzy Things (No. 18). Jim Beaver has lived through two typhoons (No. 22).

Do these oddball facts look familiar? If not, you clearly haven’t been spending much time online lately, where the latest digital fad — a chain-letter-cum-literary exercise called “25 Random Things About Me” — is threatening to consume what little remaining free time and privacy we have.

Here’s how it works: friends send you an e-mail message (or, on Facebook, “tag” you in a note posted to their profile) with 25 heartfelt observations about themselves — like “I named my son after a man I’ve never met” or “I once paid good money to see Whitesnake in concert” — along with instructions for you to follow suit. You are then expected to gin up your own clever list and foist it upon 25 people, including the friend who asked for it in the first place.

Unlike the chain letters of yesteryear, no money changes hands and no one is threatened with apocalyptic bad luck for refusing to comply. Yet the practice has spread so far and so fast that a Google search for “25 Random Things About Me” yields 35,700 pages of results, almost all of which seem to have been created in the last two weeks.

“It’s really interesting to sit there and try to think of 25 things that you’re willing to tell other people but that they don’t already know about you,” said Ms. Morgan, a health care industry publicist who has kissed 6 1/2 boys (No. 16), is legally blind (No. 19) and didn’t go to school until the fourth grade (No. 7).

Making a list such as this is a really simple activity, really.  In fact, if one is able to separate the really personal and intimate details about oneself from the mix, there are hundreds or thousands of fascinating bits of minutiae that can populate a “25 Things” list many times over.  Thing is, the little details of lives are the most fascinating, especially when tossed together in small bundles randomly.  This, to me, is what makes this Facebook exercise so intriguing: who we are isn’t best described by a 25-line credo, but by a hastily-constructed collage of snapshots.

At least, that’s what I was thinking when I wrote my list.

The title of this post is “Breakfast Remnants,” even though there are no true remnants aside from the plates and utensils.  It was so, so good that I couldn’t leave a crumb on the plate!

(BlackBerry photo: spitballarmy.com)

What once sat on this plate, in the comfortable and sunny dining room of the 101 Cafe in Oceanside, California, was something I wish I’d thought of creating: an Ortega Green Chile omelet, served with flour tortillas and a dish of salsa.  You will notice that the entire contents of the salsa dish are gone – it is completely empty!  Man, was that good!

This photo was taken on 17 December 2008.  I visited the 101 Cafe three times during my week-long visit.  It is just a few blocks from the beach, where I stayed, and sits on the old Highway 101 (which functioned as the north-south California coastal route before the interstate system was built).  It is also half a block away from my grade school, St. Mary, Star of the Sea school.

I had the good fortune to see Ron open for Nick Lowe twice within the last two years.  At both shows, in Somerville, Mass., and in Atlanta, they closed the show by singing this duet.  I was really pleased to find that it made its way onto YouTube.  Wonderful harmonies.  Could these two be the nicest fellows in the music business?  Ron’s attempt at a crazy acoustic guitar break is funny – he is the complete antithesis of a show-boater.

I hadn’t seen this video until today.  Looks like I’m way behind the curve, as it already has over ten million views on YouTube.  No matter, I still had to watch it three times in a row, and laughed heartily and at full volume.  Particularly hilarious are the girl’s take on the “shiny guy,” and the Darth Vader take-home lesson.  Enjoy!