Seven Random Things

I could wait to write today's entry until I've finished the dishcloth, but Karen tagged me for the latest meme making the rounds and thus gave me reason to ramble about something else. Following in the tradition of six weird things about me, here are seven random things about yours truly:

1. I was an extra in the film A Reason To Believe. In summer 1993 some friends from high school and I went to visit another friend who had opened a record store near Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. While walking around the campus we were asked if we wanted to be extras in a movie. Who wouldn't? My thing was to stand in a circle of people talking, walk over with another guy to look at a poster on a wall, and then cross the street. I tracked down a videotape a couple years after it was released and don't remember it being very good, a memory supported by the Los Angeles Times review. I did make the cut, although I seem to recall being visible only from a distance and therefore unrecognizable.

2. I've driven in a Vice-Presidential motorcade twice. Both times it was when Al Gore made visits during the 1996 campaign, once to Columbus and once to Detroit. For the Detroit visit I also helped out with the advance team, which was a pretty interesting experience. I had no idea that I wouldn't be sleeping that night, so I ended up being awake for something like forty hours straight. That included a few hours' drive back home after all of this. Try having been up for more than 24 hours in a row, tearing down the highway at approximately 70 mph with policemen on motorcycles close on both sides of the vehicle, and the Secret Service agent cranking the radio. I was carting around media members, but I did get to go up on the top floor of the Renaissance Center and slide itineraries or something under the doors while the important people were there. It was pretty surreal.

3. In college I had two majors: Speech Communication and Psychology. The Psychology major was added "for fun" since I had completed most of the Speech Comm degree by the end of my sophomore year.

4. I took piano lessons from second grade through my senior year of college. If I were to guess, I was probably at an advanced intermediate level in my prime. I think I was better at being a technical player than an interpreter, something that would be different now if I weren't so badly out of practice. I still remember most of Bach's Invention No. 13.

5. Going by the IMDB's All-Time USA box office list, I have seen 336 of the 366 films to gross more than $100 million in domestic theatrical release. The exceptions: Ghost, The Sting, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Pocahontas, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Platoon, The Flintstones, An Officer and a Gentleman, The Nutty Professor (1996), Coming to America, Rocky IV, Smokey and the Bandit, The Birdcage, Rocky III, The Bodyguard, On Golden Pond, Rocky, The Towering Inferno, American Graffiti, Terms of Endearment, A League of Their Own, Love Story, Kramer vs. Kramer, Every Which Way But Loose, Porky's, The First Wives Club, Stir Crazy, Airport, Casper, and Jumanji.

6. Although I work in television and have been on radio and TV hundreds of times, at heart I am still a shy person or, to put it another way, someone not looking to be the center of attention. I suspect my parents are surprised at what I do for a living considering that I was not the most outgoing kid growing up. (This isn't to say that I was a social outcast or anything, just that I was more introverted.)

7. I enjoy baking, especially pies. It's something I picked up from my grandmother. I haven't had the time to do it lately.

Rather than tag the usual people to participate, I'll leave it open to anyone who wishes to do so. If you're a lurking reader out there, play along and let me know who you are.