In Which I Denigrate The Best Writer On The Internet For No Other Reason Than To Have A Hook For Writing More Of The Same Silly Shit I Always Do

As is my wont from time to time, I was perusing the archives of Magazine Man. The son of a bitch makes me sick (I mean that in the nicest way) because there isn't anything he can't do. He writes magnificent prose, of course, but he also can be counted upon to toss off a verse or two, speak in foreign languages (please read the story by Art Lad [his son] first, then scroll down in the comments), have a best-selling book in China, win a spelling bee and appear on national TV with Soledad O'Brien.

Part of my actual friggin' job is doing commercials and I haven't even gotten my voice onto national TV, let alone my entire body and the most famous person I ever actually met was Phyllis Diller, who is a very nice lady but certainly no match in the looks department with Soledad Freakin' O'Brien. The best I can come up with as a counter is the fact that I'm heard in some 17 or 18 states on a daily basis, but that's on the telephone, which hardly even registers on the cachet scale in comparison and Blogger has eaten what I wrote about it so even that sucks. Grrrrrr.

Anyway, while diving head first into his back issues - and getting more jealous by the second - I came upon something that I could actually do just as well. I can make lists, too, damn it, so without further agony over my relative unworthiness as a human being, here goes:

5 songs I know all the words to:

Highway Star
School's Out
Smoke On The Water
Paranoid
War Pigs

(I could make up a new category, of course, and probably give the same answers: 5 songs nobody in their right mind has wanted to hear all the words to since 1978.)

5 snacks:

1 - Saltines and Peanut Butter with a glass of chocolate milk
2 - Tapioca pudding and pretzels
3 - Turnip sandwiches
4 - Cookies, any variety
5 - Froot Loops

(And MY WIFE wonders why I haven't had a physical since forever. I'm just scared that the doctor will tell me I died two years ago and didn't have brains enough to realize it yet.)

5 things I'd do if I had $100 million:

1 - Choose 50 relatives and friends and give them $1 million each.
2 - Buy the most kick-ass uniforms available for my softball teams and pay all of the league fees every year into perpetuity.
3 - Have all of my teeth completely done over by the dentists who originally did my uppers. Those guys rock, but they're wicked expensive.
4 - Give $1 million dollars to the Ellen M. Gifford Sheltering Home.
5 - Probably die long before I got to spend the other $48 million or so because if you give me the wherewithal to kill myself, I'm a good bet to probably do it as soon as possible - and maybe that's why God refuses to make me rich, because it's for my own good.

5 places I would run away to:

I'm going to invoke the "anything is possible if you're fantasizing" rule and consider time travel a viable option. I'll take any of the years from 1946 to 1950 in New York, as long as I can return to the present whenever I wish. The styles, the music, the general ambiance, the baseball, the subways and elevated, the boxing, any number of interesting cultural anomalies that will never occur again - I'd love to be able to experience them in person rather than through reading or viewing film.

5 things I would never wear:

1 - Shorts while playing softball - do the people who do so never expect to slide?
2 - Ear rings
3 - Corduroy pants
4 - A piercing of any sort
5 - A leisure suit

(If you were born after 1980, you probably have no idea what a leisure suit was. Go here, but know that they were even worse than pictured, if you can imagine that.)

5 favorite TV shows:

1 - House
2 - Everybody Hates Chris
3 - The Office
4 - My Name Is Earl
5 - Futurama

(Yes, I realize that Futurama hasn't been in first-run since about four years ago, but Cartoon Network shows an episode almost every night and I watch it, so I'm counting it.)

5 greatest joys:

1 - The day I married MY WIFE.
2 - The Red Sox coming from 0-3 down and beating the Yankees in 2004.
3 - The first time I was on stage with an actual group playing music in front of an actual crowd.
4 - Seeing my name on a ballot and actually getting to pull the lever for someone I knew I agreed with almost all the time.
5 - Smoking marijuana for the first time and discovering that there was a whole world of magnificent sound out there that I had hitherto been ignorant about.

(I'm serious. Prior to smoking dope, I had no particular love for music. I liked it as much as the next guy, and I heard it, but I didn't really listen to it. Grass opened my ears and gave me countless hours of listening pleasure. It was, on a much smaller scale, not unlike a deaf person being able to suddenly hear. Of course, some folks become less cognizant of the world around them, so your mileage may vary.)

5 favorite toys:

1 - My bass guitar
2 - My softball bat
3 - My cooking utensils
4 - This blog
5 - MY WIFE

The original (longer and containing more categories) is here if you feel that you really must visit the multi-talented bastard.

I mean that in the nicest way, of course.

(I do have one thing over the guy. I have a better wife. Yes, Her Lovely Self would appear to be a fine woman, but come on. She's married to him. MY WIFE has to put up with me. Case closed.)

(And, really, this whole thing was inspired by this and my little recurring joke was stolen from the comment at the very end by Sharfa, who is a fine person in her own write.)

(Yes, write.)