The interpretation of memes
I have been tagged separately by Uriah Robinson at Crime Scraps and by Julia Buckley for a meme that asks participants to share six random facts about themselves, then invite six more bloggers to do the same. Even though I've been invited twice, you'll get six facts, not twelve. No two-for-one specials here.
The facts:
1) When I was a young jackass in the 1970s, my friend Jeff and I leapt from the left-field bleachers at Jarry Park and onto the field during the ninth inning of a Montreal Expos baseball game. I zigged close to Expos centerfielder Willie Davis and zagged enough to leave several overweight security guards sprawled on the grass in my wake, to the cheers of thousands. My entire life since then has been an appendix to that moment.
2) When playing God in a summer-camp play, swathed in white bed sheets, my head covered in a white pillow case to lend an aura of purity and majesty, I fell off the stage and landed flat on my back. But I bounced right back on stage, doffed my pillow case, and resumed the play, to the cheers of hundreds. My entire life since then has been an appendix to that moment.
3) I have, at separate times, made Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz laugh.
4) At 18 months old, I fell off a lawn chair and knocked out my two front teeth. At 15 years old, I fell off a bicycle and knocked out my two front teeth. I hope not to repeat the experience.
5) Since beginning Detectives Beyond Borders in September 2006, I have blogged from six countries.
6) Through no fault of my own, I once flooded six floors of a hotel in Guilin, China.
And now, the lucky six, with apologies to those who may have been tagged already as well as to those who have not.
Australians say g'day; I say D. Gay and tag Damien Gay of Crime Down Under. Still in Australia, Karen Chisholm of the Aust Crime family of fine Web sites, Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise and Matilda's Perry Middlemiss are my next three victims. Closer to home, the unsuspecting Frank Wilson, the much beloved former books editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the keeper of the Books Inq. blog, gets meme-whacked, as does Simona of the delicious briciole blog.
And thanks!
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
The facts:
1) When I was a young jackass in the 1970s, my friend Jeff and I leapt from the left-field bleachers at Jarry Park and onto the field during the ninth inning of a Montreal Expos baseball game. I zigged close to Expos centerfielder Willie Davis and zagged enough to leave several overweight security guards sprawled on the grass in my wake, to the cheers of thousands. My entire life since then has been an appendix to that moment.
2) When playing God in a summer-camp play, swathed in white bed sheets, my head covered in a white pillow case to lend an aura of purity and majesty, I fell off the stage and landed flat on my back. But I bounced right back on stage, doffed my pillow case, and resumed the play, to the cheers of hundreds. My entire life since then has been an appendix to that moment.
3) I have, at separate times, made Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz laugh.
4) At 18 months old, I fell off a lawn chair and knocked out my two front teeth. At 15 years old, I fell off a bicycle and knocked out my two front teeth. I hope not to repeat the experience.
5) Since beginning Detectives Beyond Borders in September 2006, I have blogged from six countries.
6) Through no fault of my own, I once flooded six floors of a hotel in Guilin, China.
And now, the lucky six, with apologies to those who may have been tagged already as well as to those who have not.
Australians say g'day; I say D. Gay and tag Damien Gay of Crime Down Under. Still in Australia, Karen Chisholm of the Aust Crime family of fine Web sites, Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise and Matilda's Perry Middlemiss are my next three victims. Closer to home, the unsuspecting Frank Wilson, the much beloved former books editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the keeper of the Books Inq. blog, gets meme-whacked, as does Simona of the delicious briciole blog.
And thanks!
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
Labels: memes
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:20 AM
18 Comments:
My goodness. I'd forgotten that Willie Davis was traded to the Expos (in 1973) for Mike Marshall, who promptly appeared in 106 games and won the Cy Young award in 1974. Davis hit .295 with 89 RBI for the Expos. The trade was good for both teams.
You aren't really Morganna, are you, Peter?
It seems you were involved in a lot of falling over Peter.
Were your exploits at Jarry Park the reason they built Olympic Stadium?
Marshall arguably deserved the Cy Young one of his years with Montreal, if I recall correctly. And one could argue that Steve Rogers deserved one of Steve Carlton's Cy Youngs and Tim Raines one of Mike Schmidt's MVP awards. That's my legacy as a Montreal baseball fan: miss out on awards, and, once I moved to the U.S., suffer the agony of constantly reading sportswriters who thought they were being clever because they injected at least one "Eh?" or "voila" into every story about the Expos.
No, Uriah, I was not responsible for the Expos' moves east to the Olympic Stadium and, eventually, out of town entirely. But had I grown up as a patient of yours, I might have driven you to regret your decision not to study history.
And no, I'm not Morganna. I'd have been unable to pull of that disguise. If I had been her, though, I might not have landed on my teeth so often.
I am glad I set aside this post for my early afternoon read: it made me laugh and now I feel ready to tackle the next set of tasks in my to-do list. I will gladly answer the meme (my first ever!), though I have one post that I need to publish soon, so it will be after that. I am impressed by the six-floor flood feat.
Gee ta muchly mate - well for what it's worth - I've bored for Australia / if not the world:
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4514
Simona, meet Karen. Karen, meet Simona.
Karen, if you're looking for kitchen gadgets to buy, visit Simona's blog, briciole, where you will learn about food, the gadgets with which they are prepared, and how to pronounce the Italian names of food and gadgets impeccably. And any blog post that contains the word chooks is not boring.
Simona, I hope you have not brought a flood of memes down upon your head by announcing that this was your first. The things can be like viruses, with all the good and bad that implies. But I hope you have fun with this one.
The thing about the flood story is the pounding that jarred me from sleep at 7 in the morning, and the half-dreamed (I thought) feeling of my feet sloshing into ankle-deep water when I got out of bed to answer the door. I feared when I heard the first splash that I would be thrown into prison and tortured. Instead it was the manager and two assistants apologizing profusely and offering to move me to a new room, which I did not need, since I was checking out that morning.
It was the two Japanese bankers with whom I was travelling who pointed out to me the bucket that had been placed in the lobby to catch the overflow from my flooding toilet five floors above.
Here, by the way, is a glossary of Australasian terms from Karen's blog. I suggest strongly that she not use the words bore, bored or boring in connection with her work.
Peter - thank you for the introduction to Simona - I'm lurking around there already, Food is one of my favourite favourite things :)
Although at the moment - with Eurovision about to burst on our screens in all it's car crash fascinatingly awful glory, we're working our way through a series of Serbian recipes in preparation for the annual party. The things that you start when you're young and have time on your hands!
Those are great, Peter! But I'm guessing the flooding was at least partially your fault.
Serbian recipes and Eurovision. The connection is natural. How could I not have thought of it before?
Julia, a good lawyer could have got me off on grounds of defective plumbing.
You know how when you flush a toilet and block it, the water will rise almost to the top, then stop? Well, the water stopped, only it apparently resumed after I went to bed.
My lawyer would have argued:
1) Where was the plunger?
2) That the toilet clearly acted in a deliberately deceptive manner.
Case closed.
The Serbia / Eurovision connection is only relevant for this year because Serbia won last year - last year we had Finnish food because Lodi won. So next year's party will all depend on who wins this year :)
I assumed the Serbian connection was some zany piece of surrealistically irrelevant whimsy. But a party built around the winning country's food is a good idea and a creative way to build interest in the party, not to mention a possible culinary education. I've had some Croatian dishes, including ćevapčići and palačinke, and I assume Serbian cuisine is pretty similar. But Finnish food is a mystery as dark as a winter's night in the Arctic Circle.
I believe that if I had made Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz laugh, my entire life would have been an appendix to that moment. Congratulations!
You were tagged by Julia, who also tagged Cindy Fey, who tagged me. I've been having fun following the threads. Here's how to get to my meme.
Thanks for your note. I am ambivalent about memes, but this one offered the potential for fun, so I embraced it. I was still leery about sending it off to six others, though. So I'm unsure if I'm the kind of person who sends chain letters or the kind who doesn't.
Thanks, too, for your congratulations. I certainly did enjoy my brief meetings with Susan Sontag and Fran Lebowitz. Sontag in particular showed a certain grace as well as a sense of humor in our little exchange.
Karen: It looks like Russian food for next year's party.
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