8 Things (and a bit more).

Mike Everleth at Bad Lit and Sujewa Ekanayake, who's just wrapped what sounded like a fun week of screenings of his Date Number One, have both tagged me with that 8 Things meme running around. I decided to hold off on it until my holiday, which begins today (as you read this, I am gone), so after the 8 Things, a few words about what'll be going on around here this coming week. Also, if I offend anyone, you'll have 8 or 9 days or so to get over it, and if I say anything deathly embarrassing, I'll have 8 or 9 days or so to get over it.

On several occasions, I've met people, virtually or in person, who say they like the Daily and all, but they'd like to know a little more about the person who writes it. If you're not one of those, for heaven's sake, stop reading now.

First, though, a cut-n-paste of the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged and that they should read your blog.

Ok, go:

1. My parents will be visiting us in Berlin next month, and this seems like a good way into this list: I am extraordinarily lucky. 20 years ago, probably 25 (I turned 48 this summer, by the way), someone was asking about my father, and I was going through the usual kid-profiling-his-father rigmarole, when suddenly, out came, "He's a good man." And that "good" just came welling up from deep, deep gut, a shocking physical sensation. I remembered that a few weeks ago when it happened again. Same sentence, same feeling, though probably even more pervasive now that I'm a father myself and can appreciate him all the more. My mother's someone people open up to immediately. She gets on a plane and, whether she wants it or not, she'll be carrying the full emotional history of the person sitting next to her when she gets off. That kind of ear - and heart - when you're growing up... just invaluable. Together, these two, my father and mother, they're a dynamic combo.

2. I used to think my resume was spotty. On paper, I thought, you'd be looking at a guy who starts things, gets distracted, drifts on over, then again and so on. At some point in the 90s, I realized that this is simply the way things are now. We live in an age of episodic lives. Creatively (rather than, say, job-wise, love-life-wise or otherwise), my first episode was probably my longest. As a kid, I had a poem published in a children's magazine. Years later, must have been junior high, some teacher told me that my poems reminded her of TS Eliot. I took that very, very seriously, believe it or not, and began reading the man. Through two years of theater (Baylor), a degree in film and a masters in English (both UT Austin), and years afterwards, I kept it up. Until I didn't anymore. In forgotten literary journals lost in stacks across America, faint traces of me sink further into deepest obscurity. I don't mind. Still love reading poetry.

3. I guess I should devote one of the 8 to moviegoing. Let's think back to the 70s. I was a teenager in Arlington, Texas, a suburban town that sprawls between Dallas and Ft Worth. As soon as I had my driver's license, that is, at 16, I'd drive to repertory theaters in one of those two cities to watch movies. These were the days before home video, kids. That monster Janus Films box set? Give or take a few titles, that was more or less my self-administered cinematic education. Plus the occasional cultish thing. Great times, but my two favorite moviegoing experiences have nothing to do with all that. And they couldn't be more different. First, with two friends, I saw Jaws the week it opened. The theater was packed and every last one of us screamed and jumped and yelped and held onto each other or batted each other away or laughed or hid... I'd never gone through anything like that. Fantastic ride. Second, I drove to Ft Worth one afternoon and paid one dollar to see a double feature: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. This time, the theater was nearly empty. The Godfather was old, old news. There may have five or six other people in there, but I soon forgot that I was in a theater at all. About six hours later, I walked out into the dark absolutely bedazzled, still smelling that sauce with meatballs, and thinking now in the rhythms of threat and anxiety and power.

4. Before my voice changed, I sang in the Texas Boys Choir. Years later, I'd drive to jazz clubs in Dallas and blues joints in Ft Worth. Musically, I've gone through the zillion phases we all tend to go through. But if pressed, I'd guess that the album I've played most often in my life is Joni Mitchell's Hejira.

5. When I was very young, pre-kindergarten age, our family lived in France for a couple of years. I remember only snippets. I stuck a bobby pin in an electric socket, for example. Blew me across the room and knocked out half the town's electricity. I wouldn't see Europe again until we spent a long weekend in Amsterdam when I was 14. We took a bus from the airport to the hotel, and I remember that first step off that bus very, very well. I was looking down, literally watching my step. The street was black with rain pasting broad yellow autumn leaves against the asphalt. I looked up, the canal, the bridge, the stone steps, the sky, which no kidding, really was a Rembrandt sky. You may be expecting, "And from that moment on, I knew I'd have to live in Europe some day," but no, that's silly. What took over me wasn't anywhere that concrete.

6. I've lived nearly half my life in Germany.

7. I still have a "John Anderson for President" T-shirt. Sheesh.

8. I'd love to collect art but have no money.

So. I still haven't decided which Democrat to back in the 2008 presidential campaign, and so, I tag, in alphabetical order, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.

Meantime, this year I thought I'd do something like I did last year when I went away, only with a twist. Summertime questions, only instead of asking film bloggers, writers and editors, I'd go in search of widening the circle a bit and get in touch with people who might add another angle or two to the fragmented portrait of this 8 Things thing. I should have started a whole lot earlier. At least weeks before leaving, in other words, rather than days. In its conception, the project's not half-bad, I think, but much more time for explanation and coaxing is evidently required for this sort of thing than for, well, film bloggers contacted by another film blog.

In short, the roster of respondents this year is far shorter. Like, three. I'm grateful to each of them for coming through.

In between those days, the Daily will be in the capable hands of Craig Phillips; there's a dandy primer coming up, and of course, more.

Posted by dwhudson at July 21, 2007 11:29 AM