Tagged

Weirdness and movies, behind the cut.

The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits" and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says "You have been tagged" (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

Okay, so, this is really hard. Because I don’t know that I can fully recognize my own weirdness. But Christopher is at some bicycle club function and can’t be consulted.

1. As a child, I was so indoctronated by the whole Yuckmouth series of PSAs, particularly "Don’t Drown Your Food" (actually, I believe that one was singing yellow cowboy hat guy), that I still have never eaten ketchup (never even tried it) and generally avoid your generic condiments, though I can occasionally be persuaded to bend a little on this now. In fact, I didn’t have a cheeseburger complete with cheese and bun until I was 18 and the cook at the place where I waitressed made me one at the end of the night and I was starving so I ate it and fell in love.

2. I never write on the first page of a new notebook if it’s going to be used for any kind of writing project, even just research. Occasionally I will write at the very bottom in the middle "Do not write on this page" to amuse myself.

3. I hate saying goodbye on the telephone and will avoid it if possible. My grade school best friend (Satan) and I had a code where I could just say "Texas" then hang up. This hatred only applies to personal phone conversations. Oddly.

4. The reason I’m such crap at answering email in a timely manner is that I wait until I feel I can properly answer the message with the detail and attention it deserves. This, of course, is completely negated by answering 100 messages all in one go a month later when no one can even remember why they emailed you in the first place. I’m working on this one.

5. I always make a wish when I open a bottle of champagne (or hear one being opened). (I would have expressed my love for pajamas, but, as you know, almost a bajillion percent of women change into their pajamas within five minutes of arriving home — it’s just not that weird.)

I tag for weirdness Christopher, Barb, Mr. Moles, Mr. Barzak and Toni.

And now the Pooksio meme (which I do even though I am really not much of a screenwriter at all these days and so the answers will be accordingly off kilter):

1 early film-related memory

The movie theater in London, Kentucky, which possessed only one screen, but had this fabulous lobby with a mural of classic movie stars composed in some sort of proto-photoshop, Sergeant Pepper-style. The mural had a velvet rope in front of it and I’d always slip beneath it. I saw ET, Return of the Jedi, Rocky and about a hundred other movies in that theater.

2 favorite movie lines

"Every Cinderella has her midnight." (Midnight)

"Oh, are they?" (Rushmore)

Runner up: "Oh no, he’ll eat it!" (Also from Midnight)

3 jobs you’d do if you couldn’t work in the business

Hmmmm… pretty much any job I actually do since I’m not in the business as such. But if I weren’t a writer, I might be:

An astronomer or other sciencey type
A crusader for justice
A spy

4 jobs you have actually held outside the industry

Waitron
PR flack
Bartender
Copy Editor

3 (current) book authors I like:

Karen Joy Fowler
Jeff Ford
Sean Stewart

2 movies you’d like to remake or properties you’d like to adapt:

Sister Noon, Karen Joy Fowler
The Magician and the Cinema, Erik Barnouw

1 screenwriter you think is underrated:

Preston Sturges — because I think a lot of people only ever think of him as a director. I read all those great thick collections of his scripts that were coming out a few years ago and think he’s one of the funniest writers On The Page that I’ve ever read. His scripts are all amazing, fresh reads and incredibly quick as well. Heart.

(And I’m choosing not to tag, but consider yourself tagged if you wanna be.)

Now to collapse and read The Tourmaline.