At Last, The Meme

Last week, Miss Laura Axelrod tagged me with a meme. Since I have some downtime in writing about plays I’ve seen (having posted my reviews for This is the New American Theatre and Penetrator), let’s see how I bungle this thing.

Here are the rules: Bloggers must post these rules and provide eight random facts about themselves. In the post, the tagged blogger tags eight other bloggers and notify them that they have been tagged.

Some of you may already know these things about me. Some of you may not.

At any rate, here I go:

1. From when I was about 15 until I was about 20, I really wanted to write comic books. Since I couldn’t — and can’t — draw and couldn’t convince any of my artist friends to finish illustrating any of my scripts (to be fair, I never understood how much faster and easier it was to write a 20-page comic than it was to pencil, ink and letter one, so I’d scare my artist friends off by sending them the script to issue #2 when they were halfway through drawing the first page of issue #1, then sending them #3 when they were on page 3 of #1, then #4 when they were on page 5) but since I could convince a number of my actor friends to perform in my plays, I gave up writing comics and started writing plays.

2. I sometimes go days without interacting with people in person or over the phone and am totally fine with it. This may be why I have damn near no interest in dating.

3. For a very brief time, I used to be a reporter for CBS MarketWatch. Aside from having to get up at 5:30 in the morning (reporters had to be at work before the stock market opened), I kind of liked the job.

4. To me, theatre doesn’t have to be political, apolitical, educational, right-wing or left-wing. It’s far more important to me that theatre artists and theatre theorists don’t consider their audience “beneath them.” Once you think you’re smarter than your audience, that’s the beginning of the end.

5. I actually like having a regular day job on top of writing plays and co-managing Nosedive Productions. Maybe this is a trait that I share with American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar: I need the daily routine to keep me anchored and the distraction of work to keep me focused on finishing the plays. Plus, my day job does allow me free Internet access, free long distance phone service and photocopy access.

6. I’ve recently gotten back into listening to what was my absolute favorite band from when I was 12 until I was about 20: Faith No More. (I kind of stopped listening to them the past few years, due in no small part to them breaking up.) I can’t get enough of Billy Gould’s bass combined with Puffy’s drums (or Patton’s simultaneously melodic and ironic singing); it truly gets my heart racing. I’m listening to their cover of the Bee Gees’s “I Started a Joke” on a repeating loop as I write this. I guess I would still call them my absolute favorite band. They’re amazing to hear/see live.

7. My reasons for posting my picture, full name and email address on my blog aren’t based on vanity or any sort of exhibitionism. I do it to mitigate any potential trolling behavior I might be tempted to enact. Also, I don’t want anyone reading Jamespeak to get the idea that I’m being coy, evasive or duplicitous. I want to be fully accountable for what I write on this blog and on other people’s blogs. Having my identity out in the open forces me to stand by what I write (and consider more thoroughly as to what I’ll post).

8. I have yet to be 100% convinced that vampires and demons do not indeed walk the earth. This also goes for the idea of demonic possession.

So…how was that?

Too much information?

Most likely.

Okay, who to tag, who to tag…how about: Pete, Patrick, Cat, Becky, Steph, Zack, Dorothy and Isaac (Wait. Crap. Isaac already did it. Then how about...Claudia?)

Enjoy, guys.

An open book,

James “Tight-Lipped” Comtois