1. I was in the first fresh blood draft ever for the Long Island Roller Rebels, and have been with the league ever since.
2. I have 2 younger siblings, a brother and a sister, both of whom are derby fans. My sister briefly reffed for LIRR and my brother, a Chicago resident, is a fan and supporter of Windy City.
3. I have shark dived, where you get in the cage and go in the water. It's an amazing experience I highly recommend.
4. Everyone thinks I'm missing a tooth. I am, in fact, missing two. Neither were lost to derby; both are casualties of my pending orthodontia. I lie about this. People assume it's derby and I don't want to explain my snaggly teeth constantly, so I just agree with whatever they think.
5. My first word was "owl". My mother had this owl teapot, and one day I pointed at it and dropped some knowledge on my parents. Owls have been my spirit animal and personal totem since.
6. I used to DJ, and opened for Moby when he played the Vanderbilt in the late 90s.
7. My day job? I'm a therapist.
8. I haven't eaten a hamburger in 20 years. I clearly remember eating the last one, because I thought it was gross (I ate meat otherwise until 3 years ago). My hamburgerversary is coming up; 21 years in February.
9. I can speak, read, and write conversational French and Spanish - read magazines, watch telenovelas, get around places - but I'm a bit rusty.
10. I don't really like movies in general. I'll watch horror, Hitchcock, science fiction, and anything with my favorite actor, but everything else I kind of dread and avoid.
11. My favorite actor is Fred Astaire. This fact, I feel, sheds some light on why I dislike a lot of movies. They don't make 'em like they used to.
12. My 2011 New Year's resolution was to open my eyes and close my mouth more in photographs. As of this writing, my success with this is mixed.
13. I am a big reader, and finish 50+ books a year. Email me and we can be friends on goodreads.
14. I have had some unusual jobs: seller of smoking apparatuses and porn, constructor of knockout mouse models for cancer research, paralegal to the head partner at a bodily injury law firm, and program director of a noncommercial radio station among some of the more noteworthy.
15. I hate the sound of whistling; it's like nails on a chalkboard to me.
16. My record player used to belong to Lou Reed. I know this because his parents gave it to me.
17. I learned to drive when I was almost 21.
18. I used photographs I took of the Bouncing Souls, drawings I made of my friends, and sets I built for the Ghouligans to get into School of Visual Arts for my Master's. It worked.
19. My right foot is half a size bigger than my left. I never noticed until I started skating.
20. I can play guitar, bass, and piano, but none of them very well.
21. I am a big fan of science fiction, especially old television and movies from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And I prefer The Next Generation to the original.
22. Martha Stewart is one of my personal heroes, based on her success, work ethic, and abiding love and respect for Halloween. I liked earnest, young Martha when she was just starting out and making piles of elaborate hors d'oeuvres, and I liked queen of domesticity Martha, when she was riding high on her success and stenciling everything in her Maine and Connecticut homes, but my favorite Martha is her current, post-jail incarnation. She's just amazing, and if I could have come up with a derby name based around her, I would have used it just so I could frame the cease-and-desist letter I'm sure I'd receive.
23. I had all kinds of pets growing up: dogs, parrots that talk, a sugar glider, chinchilla, and hedgehog, as well as snakes, iguanas, and frogs. Seldom all at the same time, though.
24. I lived in a derby house, the Darkside, with Roxie Heartless, Dave Heartless, and Ruby Redrum for three years. It was truly epic, and I recommend living in a derby house at some point in your career maybe even more strongly than I recommend shark diving.
25. My parents picked my real first name because it was unusual. They were right: I was one of two with this name in my entire high school. Now, it has been consistently in the top ten for at least the past five years, maybe even a little longer.
