Interview-o-rama

Many thanks once again to Velocibadgergirl for interviewing me as part of a meme that's going around. I saw it first on Amy's blog, but I didn't feel like I knew her well enough to ask her to interview me. Here's the deal:

To participate:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions of my choice, but probably not until early next week.

3. Then, you should update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You have to include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you get to ask them five questions.



1. Why did you start blogging and what do you like best about it?

I started blogging after I realized that I was checking my friends' blogs on a daily basis. When people first emailed me links to their blogs, I was a sporadic reader and then slowly it became a part of my daily life. I have an MFA in fiction, but what I always wanted was a "slice of life" column...some forum in which I could write short pithy pieces about my daily existence. It became clear to me that that was what my friends had, essentially, and I wanted in.
I like that, finally, when people ask if I'm writing, I can say yes. And I love the community of blogging. I've met so many awesome people and I love reading all the different writing styles and subjects. I feel more connected to myself as an artist, even though I'm not doing anything that most people would consider particularly artistic.

2. If you could see one band or singer in concert--living, dead, broken up, or still together--who would it be?

Dude, all these music questions, after I just did a huge post on music! I don't know quite how to answer this, but I guess the obvious answer is the truest one for me: the Beatles. I've been a Beatles fan since I was practically in utero; when I first listened to A Hard Day's Night at 11, I found I already knew all the words. My love for them intensified over the years and I became a big collector. I'm not so much anymore, but there is an entire room of my house dedicated to them.
I'd want to see them between the time of Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album, when they became more of a studio band and the songwriting partnership of Lennon-McCartney was fragmenting a bit. I'd love to see how that would be recreated live.

3. Name one book you think everyone should read and explain your choice.

This is tough. Because, of course, I think it's tempting to try to name my favorite book. But I think I'm going to say....oh, crap. I'm torn. I'm giving a top three. This question be damned! The Temple of Gold by William Goldman. This is the first book I ever read that made me want to be a writer. And it cemented my ability to live vicariously through a character, to totally commit to a person who doesn't exist and just...be...in his or her life. I feel like I turned out to be a better person, more accepting somehow, because I read this book so early in life. Ok, I'll stick with that. The Temple of Gold by William Goldman. Read it.

4. If money and time off work were not a problem, what vacation would you take?

I'm not a very big vacation person. Vacations in which travel is involved always feel to me like their own kind of work, like I need a vacation from them by the time I'm done! But I very much would like to leave this country, as I never have, not even to Canada. You know what I'd like? I'd like to have a couple of months to travel the world visiting the shooting sites of movies and tv shows I've loved. I'd take me back to Washington State, which I love, where I saw the shooting site of Twin Peaks (it ruled! My best vacation ever!) but this time I'd go to Roslyn, WA as well to see the Northern Exposure sites...then off to New Zealand to visit Middle Earth...New York (I've never been)....

5. If you could only listen to five albums for the rest of your life, what would you pick?

I suck, cause I kind of did this last week.
The Beatles: The White Album
Radiohead: OK Computer
Kent: Isola
They Might be Giants: Flood
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP

Ok, comment away if you'd like to play. And read Pardon the Eggsalad because she was nice enough to interview me and the Billy Collin's poem after which her blog is named gives me the shivers (as all good poems should).