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| Location: Washington, DC |
| Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee (Nashvegas, Music City, USA, The Athens of the South) |
| Describe Yourself: Born
and raised and schooled in the South, colleged in the Midwest. Reasonably
well-rounded (I'm more tall than wide)--I love my friends, live music,
playing sports, reading, gadgets, a stiff drink and a tasty dinner.
I play football on an informal pick-up league. I even played a little football in middle school - tight end, actually. I was a big baseball fan until the lockouts and strikes broke my naive heart. |
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Music: I
like most everything that plays, really, including Paul McCartney, Pet Shop Boys,
Doves, Joe
Jackson, The Flaming Lips, The Strokes, Josh Rouse, Lambchop, The B-52's,
Fantastic Plastic Machines, Steely Dan, Cibo
Matto, Johnny Cash, Guided By Voices, Outhud, Le Tigre, !!!, Red Hot Chili
Peppers, Kylie Minogue, Spoon, Supergrass, Outkast, Coldplay, Rachels, Herb
Alpert, Basement Jaxx, Sufjan Stevens, Postal Service, Boz Scaggs, Ben Folds Five,
Franz Ferdinand, Brian Eno, Marshall Crenshaw,
Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, Stephen Sondhiem, Patsy Cline, disco, old Motown
records, old-school rap, |
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Favorite Books: Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, Neal Pollack's The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and Never Mind the Pollacks, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius from Dave Eggers, Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell, Paper Lion by George Plimpton, Dan Savage's The Kid, High Fidelity from Nick Hornby, The Picture of Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde, anything from Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams, The Mayor of Castro Street and And the Band Played On both from Randy Shilts. |
| Work Experience: I used to work at Media Play in 100 Oaks and Hickory Hollow
in Nashville. I worked in the Hardlines department, which consisted of
software, video games, apparel, posters, and various junk. I loved my job,
and it paid the bills for my McCartney fetish. I've had some other jobs too. Used to work as a Downtown Ambassador, I thought it meant that I would help tourists in need, direct lost souls to attractions or bathrooms, be a friendly greeter to all that is NASHVILLE. But instead it meant that I kept downtown Nashville free of cigarette butts like a juvenile con on work detail with a better uniform. |
| High School: I attended
"Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Magnet High School for the Health
Sciences and Engineering at Pearl High" in Nashville. Long title for such
a good school. I was witness to something no public school should ever undergo--a total meltdown. Of my 7 teachers my junior year, 5 of them left before my senior year. |
| College: I
graduated from Butler
University in Indianapolis, Indiana. I enjoyed some of it. There's also plenty that I
didn't enjoy too. I liked Butler for its tiny class sizes, phenomenal faculty, a non-teaching staff that wants the university to excel at the things it does well and improve on its shortcomings and the many, many great students that make the university whole. I disliked it because the remainder of the students are often children of wealthy parents who have lived sheltered lives or are from Indiana--not the most open-minded state. But that's changing. For a while, I wrote a weekly column for The Butler Collegian (click on "Archive" at the bottom and there's an article of mine each week in the "Opinion" section. Some weeks were better than others, but I was usually able to stir up enough controversy to get people to write letters. According to one such letter, readers that disagree with me should write and tell me that I am "either an ignorant liar or an ignorant, incompetent writer." My, such choices. I didn't write to start controversy, I just wrote about topics that often fly under the radar. I worked on campus as a peer tutor in Butler's Speaker's Lab, probably the most recognized Speakers Lab in the nation, for what it's worth. I designed their website and tutor students on their speaking skills. |
