1. My undergrad degree is in broadcast communications, and I spent several years after college working professionally in radio before I retired from the field due to egregious poverty. Do you envision your recreational forays into disc jockeydom becoming serious (as in remunerative) at some future point?

Egregious poverty? No thanks! That field is so competitive and so beholden to advertising that even if it paid well I wouldn't want to enter it.

2. I used to club DJ as well, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 120 BPM? Defend your answer.

Just a bit too slow to work a locked groove at minus 8%. 125 is the minimum I can dance to with the upper bound being around 160.

3. Describe your thirteenth year of life. Tell me about: Who you were, where you lived, the school(s) you attended, your best friend(s), your girlfriend(s), your enemies. Summarize the singlemost defining moment of age 13 for you.

I turned 13 in 1993, while I was in 7th grade at Mt. St. Charles Academy, where I would attend the next 5 years. My homeroom teacher in 7th grade was the school band director and actually a friend of my dad's, so I tried to stay honest. One of the other students in my homeroom was a former student of my dad as well, and she apparently wanted to go out with me. I somehow managed to totally fuck that up, and never dated anyone seriously until age 20. That summer was unremarkable as most were before I had my driver's license. The following year, I hung around with some members of who would become the stoner/grunge clique throughout high school. Surprisingly, I was still really into new age music and classical at the time. This fails to make sense, even though my dad was also friends with another of my friend's dad. (The music teacher community in Rhode Island is very small, and my father is somewhat well known within it)

The most interesting thing about 8th grade was my English class with Mr. Jordan (who smoked like a chimney and died of lung cancer a couple years ago). I would continuously try to concoct a story that would disturb everybody with its grisly details. I only managed to get bad grades. :( At the end of the year, in this same class, we filmed our predictions for our senior year. Another classmate and I were fans of Tom Clancy at the time, and we decided that North Korea would start a nuclear war with the US, and the world would be destroyed, cancelling our senior year. Obviously, I was wrong, so it was good for the other guy that I was the only one to get up on camera.

4. Orange juice or grapefruit juice?

Orange juice, not from concentrate, preferably Tropicana or 365 brand.

5. I just purchased the entire series of Homicide: Life on the Street on DVD. I have been a major fan ever since it was first-run on NBC back in 1993, and consider it to be probably the finest serialized crime drama ever created for commercial television.

I feel like the show waned in ratings in the latter years because it was too difficult for most people to watch, given the extremely dark and troubling personal story lines of its main characters. Few cop dramas have had such tortured souls playing the "good guys", with all the ugly details of their painful pasts laid bare for the world to see. And fewer still have featured such gripping, intensely emotive performances from the principal actors. Seven incredible seasons is a good run, but Homicide: Life on the Street was just too good for free TV to live longer than that.

Which character on H:LotS is your favorite, and why? Do you have a favorite episode? If you could have lunch with Tom Fontana, what would you want to talk about?

On jumptheshark.com's entry for Homicide, there are a number of votes for "when it became the Frank Pembleton show" but really, when was is it NOT the Frank Pembleton show? He's the only character with a specific background (at least by the third season) and it's extremely unusual. How often are characters in media in general portrayed as religious with issues? How many people lose their faith only to pick it up again? When are religious people portrayed as anything but sheep?

I don't think I can pick a single favorite. The whole series is structured so that the best episodes are never really resolved.

As for lunch with Tom Fontana, there is a particular criticism of the series that I would like to discuss. There was an article published while the series was on the air complaining about television being too centered on New York. This was the time when Seinfeld, Friends, NYPD Blue, and Mad About You were all still around, and Law and Order was at the top of its game. Shows such as Frasier and Homicide were cast aside as being New York shows that happened to be in a different city.

I happen to think that's ridiculous (well, maybe not in Frasier's case) and I would love to dig up a bunch of dirt on that columnist and make fun of him. Once we got on the same page, I would ask him more about what gives Baltimore its identity. What do they think about New York? The Yankees? Are they like Boston: a former Big City (tm) still trying to assert its continuing importance? What about DC?

From oh_chris: ( Read more... )

From waltermonkey:( Read more... )

Egomaniacs reply below for questions.

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From cowofdoom:( Read more... )

If you would like to continue this interview meme:
1.) Reply to this post with the phrase "I too am an egomaniac."
2.) I will respond with 5 questions.
3.) You will post the 5 questions with responses in your LiveJournal (or other blog), including this offer.

from _gatecrasher_:

1.) How did you propose to your fiancee; was she surprised and were you nervous?

After 5 years of dating and 6 months of living together, I had decided at my aunt's wedding that I was going to ask m0xiee to marry me. This feeling survived a Brooklyn car crash and a solo expedition to Montreal. The moment came two weeks later on her birthday. She had just gotten off the phone with her grandmother who advised her to get married already. I, having just emerged form the shower, was dressed in a towel. I said "Well, about that, let's get married already," in some mumbling fashion.

I wasn't nervous, but I screwed it up entirely! It pays to be nervous!

2.) What are your thoughts on Capoeira, are you going to try and stick with it and why?

I think Capoeira is tons of fun and I greatly enjoy both the art and the workout. The only thing I worry about is its impact on my joints! I first read about it in a Japanese comic book, and it's held my imagination since then. I'd been scared of doing things like cartwheels forever and getting better at doing scary shit makes me happy.

It's too bad that capoeira is not as effective in combat as some other arts, there's obviously nothing stopping me from checking out karate again or playing with big knives and sticks for a while.

3.) What is one thing that we should all be extremely concerned about as Americans and what could we collectively do to erradicate this concern?

The overwhelming debt of this government. I think it would be a pretty good idea to start investing in currencies other than dollars because it's not entirely unlikely that it will start a long downward slide towards the Turkish lira. (IANAEconomist, btw)

4.) What is your favorite song and what makes it your favorite?



5.) What is your review of your folding bike?

Overall: good. It rides just as fine now as when I got it, so that's a good thing. I am a bit concerned that I have been breaking off parts, though. The first day, I broke off the front reflector while folding the bike up after my trains ride home. The magnets that keep the thing folded up have become unscrewed, and the safety that backs up the hinge for the handlebar post has also broken off.

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from trunkbutt:

1.) Do you appreciate the warmth of vinyl or just think it's crackly and icky? Why?

I love the way vinyl sounds, smells, looks, feels. But not the way it tastes. I don't think vinyl is warm though. It feels like there's an aesthetically pleasing haze

2.) If you had been born a woman, do you think your interests would be vastly different than they are now? Why or why not?

No, because I like this whole "lesbian in a man's body" idea. That makes sense in my head, at least.

3.) Did you ever smoke cigarettes? If so, do you miss them?

I started smoking a pipe shortly after my 18th birthday. By the end of the summer between high school and college, I was smoking the occasional clove. The following summer, I went to France for 3 weeks and started smoking regular cigarettes. This continued on and off depending on whether I was living with my parents and whether I was trying to impress a girl. I quit when m0xiee and I moved in, because she had been sick of my smoking for a few years already at that point, and told that she could not live with me if I was a smoker. Occasionally I miss it but when I go to a smoking zone I am rapidly reminded that I don't.

4.) If circumstances forced you to be an Olympic athlete, in which sport would you choose to compete and why?

Skiing as it is the only Olympic sport in which I ever participate.

5.) Which of the birthday parties you have had in your lifetime was your favorite?

The best birthday so far has been my 23rd birthday. This occurred when I was in living ina rented house in Narragansett with my crazy French roommate.
I had:
- copious amounts of alcohol
- meat and a grill
- no forced invitations of enemies as in the days of my youth
- two schools of friends interacting without incident
- a ton of happy people
- techno
- no police!

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kungfupolarbear your answers are coming.

If you want me to ask you five of these questions, reply here with "I too am an egomaniac." You must post the answers in your journal and repeat the offer!

1. How they HELL am I supposed to ask you five (5) intelligent questions when all you ever talk about is music I've never heard?

Hey, you managed. I talk about computers too, and I guess I have a pile of noads you could read...about music you've never heard. Hah.

2. You wake up one morning in an alternate reality where you've been appointed Chairman of the FCC and legislative aides are pounding down your door to pick your brains on how to remake the radio industry from scratch. (Heh) What do you tell them?

1.) Allow unlicensed low-power FM and AM transmitters in all bands.
2.) Remove all fines for indecent and obscene content.
3.) Extend the non-commercial band up to 93.3, thus wiping out all the southern New England stations I HATE.

3. Are you nervous about getting married at the end of the month? If not, what drugs are you on?

The nightmares I keep having about (a) screwing up royally and getting bitched out by my wife and my family and (b) being naked in public with no clothes anywhere in sight seem to supersede by supposed calm.

4. Let's say, and why not, that you visit my house and I dig out my old vinyl and propose to play Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" from start to finish. Do you a) flee in terror, b) writhe in ecstasy, or c) wait to see if I really *can* listen to it in its entirety?

c. I have almost certainly heard and may in fact own much worse.

5. Um, what's the deal with your left big toe? (this question courtesy of IRC #everything)

I had surgery on it to two years ago correct an ingrown toenail that kept getting infected. This involved cutting the width of the nail down so that it no longer grew under the skin, then applying medication to the MATRIX CELLS (heh) at the root of the nail to prevent regrowth of that section. After I had this done, I decided to wear sandals to work for the week of healing with huge piles of gauze taped to my foot.

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IF YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR KNOWLEDGE TO BE PROBED BY MATT KANE'S BRAIN, PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS ENTRY WITH "I too am an egomaniac."

There is is this weird-o meme going around. Here is how to participate.

1.) Respond to this entry with "I too am an egomaniac."
2.) I will ask you five questions.
3.) You will update your LJ with the answers to these questions.
4.) You will include these instructions and repeat the offer.

My answers, to timemachinego:
1. If you were born before the advent of what we think of as electronic music, what do you think your favorite genre would be and why?

I'd like to think that I would have paid attention to techno's influences (disco, funk, minimalist classical music) going back in time, but instead I'm going to go back ten years to when I was forming my taste.

What originally led me to electronic music was an article in Omni magazine on the subject of "CYBERPUNK COUNTERCULTURISTS" who would hack the planet and take over everything! In a sidebar was a brief overview of so-called "cyberpunk" music. The authors profiled three bands: Front 242, Can, and ... somebody else. I was about 12 or 13 at the time.

If I back up ten years to 1982, that still allows for the existence of Front 242 and Kraftwerk. Probably the same conclusion.

1972? What music produced around then was at the forefront of a new wave of music that started taking advantage of new recording technology?

Maybe Frippertronics-type music and other experimental rock. Either that or way-out jazz. It's the only stuff from that era that appeals to me now.

2. Rhode Island or Rhodes Scholar?

Why would I to live in England? Yuck.

2.5. How?

Half-questions only receive h.