Interview Subject
Oct. 18th, 2004 03:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetHere's how this works:
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
Interviewed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schmoomom
1. Would you ever cut your hair short, like above your shoulders?
I might. I had Mom cut sixteen inches off in May of 2003--that took it up to right at my shoulders. About half of that has grown back and I'm much happier now that it's long enough to braid again. I'm starting to really go grey and I'm kind of excited about having a waist-length grey braid. I can imagine deciding I don't like it or that it's inconvenient, but it's unlikely...I can't be bothered to do maintenance cuts, and my hair has no body, so when I get it cut short it tends to end up hanging in my eyes all the time.
2. Why did you get a Mini?
Because I wanted to have mini-adventures! Seriously, because I fell in love with them when they rolled out in England and then Jason got to pick our first car for various reasons, so when it became clear that we needed a second car I got to pick!
3. What did you learn from living in London?
That I don't really want to run a b&b. That I really need to live in a place where I have a community. Those are the big ones. I also learned a lot about the culture there and a great deal of English history and vast amounts about art and theatre.
4. How did you interest in theater start?
Well, I had to perform at church as a child, so that's probably where I learned that I enjoyed it. My first directorial effort was organizing my third-grade class to do an updated version of The Night Before Christmas that I wrote. That was a huge amount of work and I swore then that I wouldn't direct again until I was twenty, which was forever away at age eight. I actually failed to keep my vow--I got dragged into directing A Little Night Music at MIT the summer that I was nineteen.
5. Where did you have the best meal of your life, and what was it?
Guy Savoy in Paris. We ordered five courses, each of which was punctuated by an amuse bouche, so our meal included all of the following:
- crostini with duck liver pate
- watermelon and radish salad
- grilled tuna skewers
- tomato & squid skewers
- carrot soup with star anise
- grilled mussels with morel mushrooms in butter sauce
- cream of artichoke soup with shaved black truffles and parmesan cheese accompanied by a mushroom-stuffed brioche with truffle butter
- roast lamb over greens with bacon, accompanied by a cheesy spinach and mushroom side
- pigeon, poached and then grilled, drizzled with a sherry vinaigrette, accompanied by pureed peas and spinach and a napoleon of pigeon gizzards and beet chips
- petit fours
- caramel crisp encrusted with macadamia nuts and pink praline
- millefeuille (layers of puff pastry filled with vanilla cream) with berries on the side
- a sliver of apple tart
- a tiny taste of Earl Gray sorbet
...all washed down with Champagne, Meursault, and Bordeaux.
I've had a number of other excellent meals, some of which I've even cooked, but that has to be the best...so far.
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
Interviewed by
schmoomom1. Would you ever cut your hair short, like above your shoulders?
I might. I had Mom cut sixteen inches off in May of 2003--that took it up to right at my shoulders. About half of that has grown back and I'm much happier now that it's long enough to braid again. I'm starting to really go grey and I'm kind of excited about having a waist-length grey braid. I can imagine deciding I don't like it or that it's inconvenient, but it's unlikely...I can't be bothered to do maintenance cuts, and my hair has no body, so when I get it cut short it tends to end up hanging in my eyes all the time.
2. Why did you get a Mini?
Because I wanted to have mini-adventures! Seriously, because I fell in love with them when they rolled out in England and then Jason got to pick our first car for various reasons, so when it became clear that we needed a second car I got to pick!
3. What did you learn from living in London?
That I don't really want to run a b&b. That I really need to live in a place where I have a community. Those are the big ones. I also learned a lot about the culture there and a great deal of English history and vast amounts about art and theatre.
4. How did you interest in theater start?
Well, I had to perform at church as a child, so that's probably where I learned that I enjoyed it. My first directorial effort was organizing my third-grade class to do an updated version of The Night Before Christmas that I wrote. That was a huge amount of work and I swore then that I wouldn't direct again until I was twenty, which was forever away at age eight. I actually failed to keep my vow--I got dragged into directing A Little Night Music at MIT the summer that I was nineteen.
5. Where did you have the best meal of your life, and what was it?
Guy Savoy in Paris. We ordered five courses, each of which was punctuated by an amuse bouche, so our meal included all of the following:
- crostini with duck liver pate
- watermelon and radish salad
- grilled tuna skewers
- tomato & squid skewers
- carrot soup with star anise
- grilled mussels with morel mushrooms in butter sauce
- cream of artichoke soup with shaved black truffles and parmesan cheese accompanied by a mushroom-stuffed brioche with truffle butter
- roast lamb over greens with bacon, accompanied by a cheesy spinach and mushroom side
- pigeon, poached and then grilled, drizzled with a sherry vinaigrette, accompanied by pureed peas and spinach and a napoleon of pigeon gizzards and beet chips
- petit fours
- caramel crisp encrusted with macadamia nuts and pink praline
- millefeuille (layers of puff pastry filled with vanilla cream) with berries on the side
- a sliver of apple tart
- a tiny taste of Earl Gray sorbet
...all washed down with Champagne, Meursault, and Bordeaux.
I've had a number of other excellent meals, some of which I've even cooked, but that has to be the best...so far.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 03:39 am (UTC)I love how you can remember great restaurant meals so perfectly and describe them so clearly.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:07 am (UTC)Here are your questions:
1) What never fails to cheer you up?
2) If you had to leave the US for a year, what country would you live in (gotta choose just one) and why?
3) Name three of your all-time favorite movies.
4) If you were offered free plastic surgery would you take the offer and what would you change about your body?
5) What do you do when you can't sleep?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 05:52 am (UTC)Gimme five. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:12 am (UTC)1) Tell us one silly in-joke that you and your partner share.
2) If you visited the Land of the Dead, what three people would you most hope to talk with?
3) What's the best book you've read this year?
4) Is there something you'd like to change your parents' mind about?
5) Would you rather go for a walk on the beach, in the forest, or down city streets?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:17 am (UTC)2) What do you remember as your proudest moment?
3) What animals would you never raise?
4) What's your favorite junk food and how often do you eat it?
5) What is (one of) your favorite quote(s) and why do you like it?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-22 07:52 pm (UTC)2. Various. most having to do with standing up to someone who said I was unable to do something
3. Most, actually.
4. Mostly sweet things, and several times a week
5. I am not sure I have one.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 07:57 am (UTC)Some cool memes are showing up these days.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:22 am (UTC)1) What current movie star would you like to have the chance to direct?
2) Name one thing you learned from your last relationship.
3) What's your favorite flower? Your least favorite?
4) When you were eight, what did you want to be when you grew up?
5) Do you play a musical instrument?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 08:22 am (UTC)Me, please!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:31 am (UTC)2) What about your personality would you change if you could?
3) Who's the strangest person you know (yourself excluded)?
4) What's it like to do theatre again after more than a decade off-stage?
5) What's your favorite emotional state?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:00 pm (UTC)1) If you went to grad school, what would you study?
2) What's your all-time favorite TV show?
3) If you could swap lives with anyone else in the world, would you do it?
4) What other US cities would you be interested in living in?
5) If you had to pick one fabric to wear exclusively for one year, what would it be?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 11:12 pm (UTC)1) Do you have any kind of spiritual practice?
2) Are your feet in good condition?
3) Who was your favorite teacher, why, and what did that person teach you?
4) Have you ever enjoyed playing a sport?
5) Do you enjoy making conversation with strangers in person?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-19 10:35 pm (UTC)Anyways, to the answers:
1) Do you have any kind of spiritual practice?
No, not really. In theory I'm South Baptist, at least by rearing. But after a while, we never really went to church all that much. And I never really liked the Christian religions and how ... persecuting and exclusitory they are. I don't think that most christians actually practice the entirety of the creed they preach, only the pieces that give comfort to their own particular neurosis. Obviously, not all are like that, but enough are, and enough societal problems exist and are actively being exacerbated by those of christian faiths that it's hard to see the gems from the schist. But, even personally, I've been told in all seriousness by my very own sister that I'm going to go to Hell because I lived with a woman in an unmarried state. That's just rude in this day and age.
My parents were both raised Baptist, or South Baptist, with my mother being raised in a particularly strict household. No playing cards on Sundays, even. In the 40's. Heavens. I'm glad that degree of observance of her religion did not pass over onto her own family. We did go to church when we were young, and my folks did a reasonable job at exposing us to religion, but they also nicely left how we dealt with it completely to us after a while. My brother and I aren't religious, my sister is very much so.
2) Are your feet in good condition?
Good condition? Well, I think so. They're somewhat but not seriously flat, and they don't generally hurt much. I have pretty nice feet, aesthetically speaking. A good size for my height and build, and my toes are in good proportion to the rest of my foot. And I don't have sharp-edged callouses on my toes like my mother does. She can likely cut paper with the sides of her little toes. It's weird. I've got a bit of callous building on my heels, but that's about the worst of it. Unless you count cramps. Sometimes I get very serious cramps in my feet. But also in my legs.
3) Who was your favorite teacher, why, and what did that person teach you?
I'm not really sure that I can answer this. I don't remember much of my grade school teachers, or much of my childhood at all, really. Which is a bit disconcerting. It doesn't help that I wasn't a particularly good student at any period in my life. I know I had good teachers, and even inspiring teachers, but I never really got inspired to learn. Comments were always of the, "He's such a bright lad, but never avails himself of opportunities to excel," variety. And I am a very smart and intelligent person, but even during the several times I've tried college, I just can't get up the gumption to do what needs to be done to get good grades.
4) Have you ever enjoyed playing a sport?
No, not really. I've always had a small build, and so most sports when I was growing up were really for me. I enjoy activity, though I don't get out and do it much. And of the few times I've tried fencing, I've enjoyed that. But not enough to motivate myself to take classes and join bouts. I'm also curious about various forms or martial arts, but there's that motivation monster rearing its ugly head again...
5) Do you enjoy making conversation with strangers in person?
Yes, I do. I don't go out of my way to initiate conversations, but I'm very amiable and easy to talk with when I am talking to people I don't know. I meet new people on a fairly regular basis, with my computer consulting work. And while I'm dealing with people's problems they usually like to chat about various things, and I'm always able and happy to keep up my end of the conversation. I do have the handy ability to be able to relate to people on a level that they're comfortable with, and tailor how I say things, and what I say to how they think. This is especially helpful when doing various forms of instruction.
I'll post these in my journal too, of course, and see what queries I get. I hope I can come up with interesting questions like you have!