Fifth Floor, Five questions, Lingerie

3rd go round from the QotSS, who has throughtfully provided five questions. ask and you shall receive five from me, whereupon you post your answers with these instructions and perpetuate ad infinitum.

1. is there a movie that you want to own but have been unable to add to your collection? which one, and why? (Serenity doesn’t count.)

In fact, there is. Earlier this year I chased down one of the fondest memories from my childhood on Laserdisc, a comedy titled Bugsy Malone. It’s a hilarious sendoff of the Godfatheresque movies of the 70’s, but the twist is that only child actors were used, and the guns shot pies or cream puffs. Two of the feature’s actors are Scott Baio and Jodie Foster, and at that time, I had not seen Taxi Driver. So when she utters her last line of the film (“So this is show business?”), I just thought it was funny, and didn’t know that it was a joke aimed at her more serious role in the DeNiro film.

So, I’d like to have a cool special edition of Taxi Driver, hopefully with actor’s Commentary. Maybe she’ll talk about Bugsy Malone. But really, I just want her to talk to me with the lights turned down.

And Serenity.

2. why Lombardi’s?

Good food, reasonably priced, and as you know, it’s within walking distance of both some pretty cool night life and home. I like family owned restaurants (I grew up in one), and their menu rotates often.

3. have you ever been in a car accident? if so, what happened? if not, are you lucky or careful?

Depending on how you count, I’ve been in 3, 4, or 8. I’m not counting slides and spins with no damage or lasting effects. This is the Northwest, after all.

For three, I was a passenger. Two were fender bumps in traffic that had no lasting damage, although one gave me a stiff neck and caused me to black out momentarily. One happened when I was a child, and a cross traffic vehicle ran a red and clipped our front fender, sending us into a spin.

One winter day, I was driving my brother back to the bar to pick up his truck (we had taxi’d home the night before), and some moron came charging up in our blind spot. I was turning slow into my lane on an icy side street, and he had to have been doing around 60. Since I wasn’t giving power to the engine or transmission, my car was sluggish and did not respond as fast as I would have liked. He tapped his brakes, slid, and clipped my front end. I was driving a 77 Oldsmobile, he was driving a 93 Ford Explorer, fresh from the factory and out without his parents’ permission. We settled it out of court, but the punk tried to blame it all on me (there was about 2 grand of damage to their shiny new POS, my $500 car needed a new headlight for $15)

I used to drive long distances across Washington State late at night as part of my job. I was the manager of a frozen foods warehouse, and frequently would earn “extra” money by picking up products from nearby depots for my drivers to sell. Gas was cheaper than mileage, and I had a good car, no wife, and plenty of time. This is Washington, so winter at night is hazardous conditions. I totalled my brand new car after a icy spin out, and received a ticket for “failing to maintain control of a vehicle on a public thoroughfare (Negligent Driving II, $550).

In my next car, I had two accidents, one of which was nearly fatal. While driving that same route home, I noted that I was fast approaching the tail lights of the vehicle in front of me. I checked my speed (70 something), and then looked up to realize that the lights were not slow, they were in fact stopped. An 18 wheeler had come to a halt becuase of a motorcycle accident further up the road, and had neglected to turn on his hazard lights. I slammed on the brakes, and was able to get my car off to the right of the trailer. Barely. The side of the long box scraped me on the driver’s side, and impacted my left side mirror, shattering it.

Immediately after the impact, the driver turned on his hazards. Coward never came to see if I was okay. Once my heartrate subsided, I backed up and waited for him to come back. There was no way I was getting out of my car that night. He never did, and we drove our seperate ways. I thought about hailing one of the police nearby, but my experience with the otehr wreck told me that I would end up the worse for it, so I drove on to the next town, and had a bunch of coffee and cigarettes.

Later that summer, I hit a deer on a backroad. I had seen it’s friends off to the side, and had slowed down to about 10 mph to avoid them. Focusing on those glowing eyes to my left, I didn’t see the NINJA DEER flanking me from the right, which jumped in front of my car as I was accelerating. Blew out my front light assembly, and dented the frame a bit so that opening the driver’s side door sounded like a gunshot forever after. Pretty cool, really.

And finally, the year I quit driving, I got clipped by an oncoming car as I was exiting a hotel parking lot. She(the driver) was driving her sister’s car, with her kid in the front seat. She hit the back of my truck doing 50 on a 25 curve, with no insurance and no driver’s license. Totalled her car, made a small dent in my bumper. She was okay, and so was the kid. But I had to do some fancy driving to avoid a major accident, and the power of the V8 came to my aid that day, and I was not t-boned.

I wouldn’t call myself unlucky. Far from it, since all of the above could have been really, really bad, especially the semi and the last one. I’ve also fallen asleep at the wheel a few times, since I frequently do not sleep well, or at sometimes not at all. This condition sometimes lasts for days, although it hasn’t been that bad in a decade or so. Usually it meant ditching off the side of the road, but once I almost went under a trailer truck between Portland and the Tri Cities

Same car that I totalled, go figure.

4. what’s the best food at Safeco Field?

Hard to say. There are so many menu options, exalting one above the others is not really fair. If the question is which food do I enjoy the most at Safeco Field, I’d say the chili bread bowl or the salmon teriyaki sandwich. I always feel I’ve received value for my dollars with those, and they are very tasty.

But I must admit, I usually grab a hot dog or keilbasa from my favorite outside vendor, Joe’s Gourmet Hot Dogs. For 5 dollars, you can get a 1/2 pound, all beef footlong dog superior to anything offered inside. For 4, you can get a keilbasa so tasty you want to spend 8. And he’s got condiments galore available, including freshly chopped onions, three kinds of mustard, peppers, etc.

5. if you had the power to destroy/remove from the world the complete works of a particular musical artist, who and why?

Marshal Mathers. I despise his pretentious offerings, and don’t think much of him as a man either. He cheapens himself and others with his inane, puerile antics, and his “lyrics” are an insult to those artists expressing themselves honestly and without prejudice.

A close second would be Justin Timberlake. But as a compromise, he can keep the crap music and all the money. I’d really just like to rough him up some.

Boy needs a beating, he does.