Monday, December 18, 2006 | by nathan

The Interview

I saw this on my friend David Broyles’ MySpace page, and I don’t know - immediately something hit me about it. I’d usually never go for something as "MySpace survey" or meme-ish as this, but it just seemed like fun. So here you go; I hope someone does it, or I’ll feel really dumb. Basically the thing is that you ask someone to ask you five questions, which you answer in a blog entry. These are the ones David came up with for me. (Rules are posted below).

1. What are your top 5 favorite albums of all time?

Oh, God, that’s a tough one. Do you know how incredibly tough that is? Can I say "Gardening In A Tornado?" No, that wouldn’t be fair - I only just recently downloaded it from iTunes. Though I gotta say - awesome.

I can’t say that the following five albums are definitive. All I know is that the following five albums - in no particular order - are five records that, for me, never get old, never get dated. I never feel ironic when I’m listening to them (as opposed to, say, this), the lyrics never lose their power, the riffs don’t stop sending goose bumps up my arms. Not to say that these are the only five albums that do this. They just come readily to mind. And you may notice that this is an incredibly long preface to a list of five albums, but that’s because furiously typing helps me to come up with what they are. So without further ado; five albums:

        i) Bruce Hornsby and the Range, The Way It Is

        ii) Mary Chapin Carpenter, Stones In The Road

        iii) Tina Turner, Private Dancer (people love to laugh at me about this one, but until you’ve heard her voice tear up David Bowie’s "1984" you haven’t lived)

        iv) Carole King, Tapestry

        v) Vertical Horizon, Running on Ice

2. What are your top 5 favorite movies of all time?

See above re: really, really hard questions. I’m going to take a stab at this after stating publicly that I have seen literally thousands of movies, that I almost got a film minor in college except that the film minor program was cancelled, and that the amount of money I have spent going to the movies in my lifetime could probably fund the world’s first fusion reactor, or a small country, like Lichtenstein. So here are five movies that never, ever get old for me (I’m uncomfortable with phrases like "favorite" that are all committal).

        i) Noises Off

        ii) Mommie Dearest

        iii) I Heart Huckabees

        iv) Saved!

        v) Real Genius

3. If you could live anywhere, where would you live and why?

In a lot of ways I feel I have already made this decision, because I live in Oklahoma City, and I would not, at this stage in my life, choose to live anywhere else. If I did have to move - for whatever reason - it is likely I would choose to be somewhere where I was closer to my good friends from college, because they, like my friends here, make me a better person by their mere presence.

But I sense the question is meant to gauge my preference for certain locations. I will say that, having recently spent some time in Atlanta, that I think it is a kickass city, and if I got the chance to move to Decatur or Atlanta proper, it would be really hard to turn down. I have always felt, since my first trip there, that New York City is a place I could live for a very long time; ditto Boston, London, and Paris. I have lived in Dublin, Ireland, and would relish the chance to live there, as well as almost anywhere in northern Italy, the Greek Peloponnesus or the south of France.

But Oklahoma is a great place for me emotionally and - whoa! - career-wise right now, so staying here is pretty great.

4. If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be and why?

Totally vain, I’d change the way my body works. Not the way it looks necessarily, though it would impact that greatly - I’d change the way it works. I have a slow metabolism and a body that truly, completely revolts at the very notion of exercise, and I kind of hate that because I think it foreshadows badness in my future if I don’t change something. I mean, who wouldn’t like to look differently? But I have some serious anxiety about my future health, given that my dad has had a heart attack and now struggles with diabetes. I’d change that.

Oh, and I’d give myself super powers. Like, loads of ‘em. Just - just loads.

5. Top 5 songs you HATE the most? 

Ooohhhh, good question. Again, I’m not sure I can narrow this down to five. But I can tell you five songs that make my skin crawl to such a degree that if they come on the radio, I have to turn it off, no matter who else in the car, the house, or the club is grooving to them.

           i) "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. Actually, anything by Celine Dion.

           ii) "Hero" by Mariah Carey (thanks. Now it’s stuck in my head).

           iii) "Friends Are Friends Forever" by Michael W. Smith.

           iv) "The Angry American" by Toby Keith

           v) "Baby It’s Cold Outside." (This song is skeezy. It’s basically about a date rape. She’s all, "Okay, I have to leave," and he’s like, "You’re not going anywhere.")

OKAY, now that that’s over with, let us have the rules, if you choose to participate:

THE GUIDELINES:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me," but only if you really mean it and will follow-through.

2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

If this doesn’t cause people to de-lurk, I’m not sure what will. Come on, people!

Interweb