100 Things About Tankboy
(Why not?)

1. I am six feet two inches tall.
2. This makes it easy for me to watch bands from anywhere within a club.
3. This does not make me immune to some idiot dude screaming along his favorite lyrics to his favorite band’s favorite song.
4. I’m older than I look.
5. As a matter of fact, no one ever gets my age correct and when people meet me in the company of my two brothers they always think I’m the youngest when I am, in fact, the oldest.
6. My girlfriend keeps hoping that one day I will actually act my age.
7. I have a beagle named Betty.
8. I own a truly insane amount of music.
9. So much music that it is probably the manifestation of some deep-rooted psychological disorder.
10. I wore a trench coat with a stuffed Kermit the Frog perched on my shoulder all through the second half of high-school. The trench coat was worn at all times ever since my sophomore year when I had to stand outside in the freezing cold during a bomb threat. The frog was just a weird affectation.
11. Yes, I am aware that is pretty weird and that if I did that sort of thing today people would think I was some sort of shotgun toting psychopath.
12. The ‘80s were a different time, okay?
13. I was the first guy in my high school to get my ear pierced. Lots of people called me lots of names.
14. A few years later almost every guy in my high school had their ear pierced.
15. The first time I had sex Love and Rockets was playing in the background and a few days later I saw the midnight premiere of Batman. I considered myself a very lucky teenager that week!
16. I leaned how to kiss a girl from my best friend Lisa Arthur as she was trying to distract me since I upset over being recently dumped. I needed more friends like Lisa.
17. I learned how not to kiss by kissing a few guys in college and discovered that a smooch is not a sword battle to be fought to the death.
18. No, I’ve never slept with a guy, not that it’s any of your business. It was just a different time in college amongst a group of friends where very few things were taboo.
19. My first big concert was The Jets. I won a “Just Say No To Drugs” cartoon contest and got backstage passes.
20. No, I wasn’t a fan, but thought it was cool to get backstage.
21. No, the irony of my winning a “Just Say No To Drugs Contest” is not lost on me.
22. I once put my arm through a window and then convinced the doctors at the emergency room to let my friend videotape me getting stitched up.
23. I still get a little queasy watching that tape.
24. In college Billy Corgan and I got thrown out of a house because we were dancing and playing James Brown too loudly.
25. It was really late at night.
26. No, Billy Corgan probably couldn’t pick me out of a line-up.
27. While we’re on famous people, Eddie Vedder once came into a club I was DJing at and sent up a little drawing of a record player to me with “Vive la vinyl” written on it along with his autograph. I was playing CDs.
28. I decided not to correct his mistake and thanked him for the gift.
29. I hit on Liz Phair once and didn’t know it was Liz Phair.
30. I beat Kim Thayilin a dance-off and had an extended conversation with Chris Cornell wherein Chris Cornell denied he was Chris Cornell and feigned boredom until I started telling him how cool I thought it was that his wife was a woman in power in the music biz.
31. Kurt Vonnegut once made a special trip to the coffee shop I was hanging out at because my girlfriend told his personal assistant I was a fan. When he came in he said, “Who is this boyfriend that wants to meet me?!” I was speechless and couldn’t even ask for an autograph.
32. I am such an idiot. Okay, no more celebrity stories since they all make me look like a tool.
33. I used to book a club but got burned out and now I just promote shows I want to promote around Chicago and the surrounding region.
34. My favorite singer is David Bowie.
35. I don’t have a favorite band, though The Who, Jane’s Addiction, Blur and Pavement are way up there.
36. I don’t have a favorite local band either but I seem to set up lots of shows with Woolworthy and Light FM so I must like them a whole bunch.
37. I lived in South Texas as a kid and once got kicked a couple feet through the air by a cow.
38. We also used to go to Mexico once or twice a week to fill up our Buick with diesel, pick up cheap booze and buy the best soft ice cream I have ever had in my life.
39. It was in Texas that I learned how to swim. I am a really good swimmer though I never really competed.
40. In college I was originally going to be a double Major in Art and English with a Minor in Theater.
41. Once I realized how much I dislike both artists and actors as a general population I swiftly narrowed it down to just Majoring in English.
42. Really, both groups are just way too namby-pamby and can’t critique worth shit because everyone is so concerned with hurting everyone else’s feelings.
43. English majors aren’t much better in that respect, come to think of it.
44. As a kid my favorite comic strip was Bloom County.
45. Then along came Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side.
46. I originally wanted to be a cartoonist and made quite a name for myself with the Illinois State University paper in the early ‘90s for my pointed attacks on the Gulf War and the section of the school administration dealing with student housing.
47. It is a fact that any people working within any aspect of housing any students in a college town are absolutely opportunistic slime-balls.
48. Wow, I forgot just how angry that used to make me!
49. No, I’m not going to write anything else about sex, my mom might be reading this. Let's just say I've had my fair share of kink, okay? Also, I will never doubt another letter to Penthouse.
50. Jay-sus, I’m only half-way through? This is taking forever!
51. I smoke too much, but I smoke far less than I used to.
52. I also drink too much but, again,. It pales in comparison to what I used to consume.
53. I actually like both of my parents which seems pretty odd in this day in age.
54. I did get into a physical fight with my dad once and pinned him. I think that’s the first time I ever realized my dad was mortal and if that was true then I must be mortal too and would die one day.
55. I was a real handful as a teenager. Way too sensitive and smart for my own good. I used to wish I was stupid so I could glide through life as an average shmoe.
56. My entire high school football team wanted to kick my ass for writing a satirical article about sports. They were the state champions. The piece was not well received as teachers opened their classes with tirades about what a disrespectful idiot I was.
57. The funny thing is, in Junior High I was a pretty damn good football player.
58. I’ve played almost every sport there is to play yet I have never been able to get excited about any of them and feel left out of the cultural discourse as we cycle through football, basketball and baseball seasons.
59. Against all odds, I guess you could say I'm an optimist.
60. I get worn down but I never really seem to get depressed.
61. I can function on very little sleep.
62. However I can get pretty cranky.
63. My girlfriend knows things about me that no other human alive knows.
64. When people ask me what I do for a living it’s hard to answer them. Sometimes I say In write instruction manuals for hairdryers. Other times I tell them I design packaging for massage mats. Other times I tell them I invent toys. I do all those things and more.
65. I actually really like my job. I consider myself pretty lucky.
66. I also put together shows with bands I enjoy and make a little money off that.
67. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about making money off things I obviously enjoy. Then I realize how lucky I am to make money off things I obviously enjoy!
68. Again, in case we haven’t established it yet, I am an idiot.
69. I have a teddy bear that has been with me since birth. If my apartment were bu8rning he’s probably the first thing I would go after.
70. Um, the first inanimate thing I would go after.
71. Notice that by inanimate I’m not saying the teddy bear isn’t sentient. God only knows the emotional and psychic baggage that little guy is carrying around after years of being exposed to me!
72. Yeah, that last statement was a little weird. Let’s just forget I ever said numbers 69-71.
73. I always eat Popeye’s Fried Chicken on my birthday.
74. I’ve done a lot of drugs in my time but have always avoided heroin and PCP. Now I don’t do any drugs. Odd, actually.
75. My nipples are pierced.
76. So is my nose but I haven’t worn a ring in it in years.
77. I have two tattoos and I drew them both.
78. I want to have children one day and am determined that they will be the coolest kids ever. I also realize that they will probably rebel against me just as hard as I did against my parents and it will hurt me to see them go through the same growing pains I did knowing that when I say “I know what you’re going through and I can help” they will never believe me.
79. I wear size 12 or 13 boots and it is true what they say about guys with big feet…we do have big hands too. Ha, perv!
80. I sang in front of a punk/funk band in the early ‘90s and usually wore a hockey mask and a one piece dress during our shows. I still occasionally play our demos and realize that while we weren’t all that great we weren’t that bad either.
81. I was very anti-groupie which annoyed my band-mates to no end.
82. I really need to start another band sometime soon since, when I’m out with my friends, I’m getting sick of answering what instrument I play or what band I’m in.
83. Maybe I need to dress more nicely, like in polo shirts and Dockers so people stop mistaking me for a musician.
84. Naw, I don’t look that good in a polo shirt.
85. If you see me drinking whiskey that’s a good sign.
86. If you see me drinking gin that’s a bad sign. Run. No, really, right now…run!
87. I’m almost done but don’t really feel I’ve imparted much of who I am to you. This seems more like a list of who I’ve been. Whatever. You are who you were, right?
88. I have a tendency to toss of philosophical-sounding phrases that sound deep to me but probably resonate as either obvious or idiotic to anyone else.
89. I seem especially fond of the word “idiot” and its various forms today, don’t I?
90. I went to my high school ten-year reunion a few years ago and instead of feeling superior to my old classmates – as I thought I would – I felt sorry for them. This response really bummed me out.
91. My favorite item of clothing is an electric blue polyester suit I bought for five bucks at a Salvation Army.
92. Sometimes I feel as if everything I once loved and thought was totally cool has been co-opted by marketing firms and is now being used to make a buck. It is then that I realize I am to blame for this since it’s people like me that are working for marketing firms and trying to figure out how to make a buck off stuff we like.
93. I rarely pay to go to a concert but will gladly buy a band’s CD from them even though I can probably get that for free too.
94. I get a thrill out of being thanked in band’s liner notes. It’s dumb, yeah, but I still think it’s kind of cool.
95. I love The Philadelphia Story, Bladerunner and This Is Spinal Tap and believe that my feelings for these movies say a lot more about me than all this typing.
96. I tend to not think before I speak and that has gotten me in a lot of trouble. I’ve gotten much better about it though.
97. I was a twenty-something bar star. I’m better now.
98. I love seeing people dance when I DJ. I especially like seeing people dance to non-dance songs when I DJ. I just love turning people on through music.
99. I used to have really, really long thick, curly hair. Now I have short, thick, curly hair.
100. The idea of growing old scares me but I hope to live to be older than 100…