7 Weird Things

I have been "TAGGED" by NoSurfGirl, which apparently means I must post 7 weird things about myself. I don't know how this got started or what it's all about, but the fiesty lass has challenged me so I must respond...

7. In 1969 I was with my family visiting relatives in San Antonio, and one night as we drove back from dinner at a pizzeria we sighted a large glowing football-shaped object moving in and out of the scattered clouds in the sky. We were able to keep it in sight all the way back to my grandmother's house; as we drove into her neighborhood we saw that dozens of people had come out into the street from their houses to watch the strange object, which remained in view for about half an hour. Cue "X-Files" music...

6. My first girlfriend in high school was named Sunday Palmer; she is the first and only person I've ever met to be named after a day of the week (ok, it would have been weirder if she'd been named Wednesday Adams, but I don't have a lot to work with here).

5. I put hot sauce (preferably Louisiana Hot Sauce) on nearly everything I eat, be it prime rib, Ahi tuna, Chicken Kiev, or pineapple pizza. I do refrain from adding it to ice cream and cold cereal, however, so again it's not *totally* weird.

4. I met former teen heart-throb Shaun Cassidy while working as an extra on a terrible TV-series spawned by the great movie "Breaking Away". The series (which only lasted 5 or 6 episodes) was set in Bloomington, Indiana, but at the time of filming Bloomington was an Arctic tundra so the show came here to Athens, GA. I could be seen for about 1.6 seconds when the episode that I worked on aired on ABC in late 1980; perhaps they will have more of me when somebody gets around to putting the director's cut of the series on DVD...

3. Speaking of TV, for most of my adult life - especially when I was younger and thinner - many people said I looked like Mr. Bean (Rowland Atkinson). On a trip to Jamaica around 1990, some people I met during a party at our resort was certain beyond a doubt that I was Mr. Bean traveling incognito; no matter how much I tried I couldn't convince them otherwise - I don't even have an English accent, for crying out loud. About seven years ago I was shopping in downtown Vienna, Austria, when a couple walking behind me on the street started talking loudly and gesturing towards me...I had no idea what they were saying since my knowledge of German is pretty much limited to the word "bier", but in about every other sentence I heard the words "Mr. Bean". Of all the famous actors I could have looked like....well, it beats being called "Danny DeVito", I guess.

2. Around 1994 I "led" a protest march in downtown London. The protest was in favor of - you'll never guess it - acid-tripping rave parties. What happened was that my friends and I were walking from our hotel to see the Houses of Parliament, and since I'd been to London before I was leading the way. As we neared Parliament, we saw hundreds of young people assembled in a small park near the street, holding some kind of rally. We didn't pay much attention to it and continued on our way. But a few minutes later as we neared Parliament, I noticed that the crowd of protestors had left the park and were walking directly behind us on the sidewalk. From their signs and chants I could see that they were protesting against recent police crackdowns on illegal rave parties, where all manner of illicit substances were apparently available ("Fight for your right to party" was on some of the placards). A moment later van-loads of police swooped in from all directions and swarms of baton-wielding Bobbies poured out to meet the protestors head-on - and there I was at the very front of the marchers, looking like I was a freaking Leader of these acid-heads. Luckily we were able to run down a side alley at the last second and avoided getting a "wood shampoo", as a friend in the Ga State Patrol likes to put it.

1. Last night I had a dream that I was one of NoSurfGirl's polygamous husbands - it was weird indeed: she was wearing a hot red jumper (which thankfully covered up her hairy legs), and she spent the whole dream cleaning the floors of my house. Can't imagine where that came from....