FAQs

i thought i could take some time to allow you, the reader, the opportunity to ask me some questions. since i don't have the time, patience or desire to request that you submit questions that i could answer in this space, i figured that i would just post some FAQs that i typically hear in a given week from family, friends, co-workers and strangers. so without further hesitation, here is the first (and probably only) installment of FAQs:

"how tall are you?"

i'm somwhere between 6'4" and 6'5". i honestly haven't had myself measured since i was 16 and i lost track. yeah, i'm tall. get over it. i have.

"what's the best sport?"

i'm going to assume you mean which sport is the best to watch, since i find myself watching much more than playing these days, so i will say that the answer is baseball. football is the most dramatic and exciting, and for those fall and winter months it is just great. basketball has some merits, and is pretty smooth (which i relate to) but overall it leaves much to be desired.

but baseball is perfect. the start of baseball season means the start of spring, which is the end of snow and cold, the start of long nights on porches and decks, and the release of bell's oberon beer for the duration of the summer. while football is like a big-budget, action feature film that blows you away, baseball is like that soap opera that you have been watching for 17 years. you know the characters and you follow the slow-moving drama. baseball games are the best to attend, and having a game on television in the background is always a good idea.

and yes, i did not mention hockey on purpose.

"what is your dream job?"

in all seriousness, i want to be an actor in a soap opera or a fourth-rate lifetime movie. in fact, i think i could do both. i know that i'm not attractive enough, and that i couldn't act to save my life, but something about being a part of one of these ridiculously contrived plots just makes me happy. i think i could play a dark and mysterious drifter who comes into a small town and seems to be a hero, but behind it all, is the "thought-to-be-deceased" brother of a man who stole my first love and i have come back to get her back... at any cost. little known fact, i was named after a soap opera character. some dream-boat doctor must have been stealing the heart of my mother as she carried my 10-lb frame around in her womb for an extra month.

"what's the worst thing you have ever done?"

i didn't go to my uncle's funeral when he died. i'm serious about this one. it kills me that i did not go to this. two things were happening that caused me not to go: 1) i was in denial. my uncle doug was the quintessential uncle that everyone refers to "my crazy uncle..." and he was the first person that i was close to that died. i didn't know how to handle it. and 2) i was selfish. if memory serves me correctly, i had a great weekend planned and was extremely inconvenienced to go out of town to this funeral. i know - i'm a jerk.

"what's the best thing you have ever done?"

i moved to kentucky for a girl.

"what was it like to predict the rise of the tampa bay rays in the 2008 baseball season?"

it was awesome. i've never been so proud. if only i were a gambling man...

"who is your darkhorse for the 2009 season?"

the oakland A's, and i'm feeling a bit nauseous about that pick. it;s a good thing i'm not a gambling man.

"is it true that you once ate 23 tacos in one sitting?"

this is true. i was in mexico during my senior year in high school with my church youth group on a mission trip. long stood the record of 22 tacos, and on one magical evening i was blessed with an incredible gift of consumption and the walls of my stomach and intestines stretched to the point that i thought i might com bust spontaneously. i could feel the food stacked up in my esophagus, all the way to the base of my mouth. it was terrible. i felt like rocky at the end of every rocky movie except the first - bloodied and bruised, but not broken. and some advice to the reader: poor mexican villages don't have the most sanitary of restrooms, so consider that before you decide to eat 47 lbs of greasy meet, cheese and tortillas.

i will add that i am incredible when it comes to eating and drinking large quantities of material. it's a gift and a curse.

"what is the best meal of the day?"

breakfast. going to a diner and eating some grease-soaked egg/potato/bread/pork product meal while drinking bitter instant coffee is an experience that i wish i could enjoy every day. fortunately for me, i live with a woman who attempts to recreate this for me every single morning. i'm not kidding. heidi wants to make me an omelet and hash browns or biscuits and gravy every single morning. it's like we're on the farm and she needs to fill me up with a big "farmer's" feast before i set out to tend the cattle and harvest the crop. except drive in a car instead of a tractor, and i play uno with underprivileged kids instead of herding sheep.

while breakfast is the best meal of the day, mexican food is the best genre of food.

"why don't you twitter?"

i don't know what twitter is. i mean, i understand the concept, but i fail to see the function or purpose. i have no desire to know that kevin is "editing some copy and listening to dan patrick," or that brian or ethan are "calling it a day after 5 hours!" i don't need to know from nate or brandon that, "it's raining so i'm reading another book." i love all these guys, but i don't need to keep tabs on them all day.

*twitter update: "justin is typing a blog on his computer after a nice meal of leftover beef and a conversation with my father-in-law about the evolution of the wild boar and the decline of trout in rock creek."

is that what twitter is? i don't even know.

"when are you going to have kids?"

as soon as i trick heidi into letting me impregnate her. (is that wrong? it feels wrong to say that. i shouldn't have said that. i take it back).

"have you ever killed an animal?"

yes. several. the largest animal i ever killed was a buck (that's a male deer). i shot it with a rifle. i felt like a man, but then never did it again.

"what is your view on the economic crisis that faces this country?"

in this economy... i don't care about the economy. i didn't have money before everything went to hell, and guess what, i don't have any now.

"what's the worst job you have ever had?"

i worked at this terrible office job for one month. to this day i have no idea what i was supposed to be doing. i know that i had clients in southern texas that i had to talk to via email and phone, and was attempting to gather some information for these clients, but i couldn't tell you what information i was trying to gather or what function it served for said clients. one morning, when my alarm clock started beeping, i pulled an "office space" and turned it off and went back to sleep. when i woke up several hours later, my phone was full of missed calls and voicemails from my worried and angry employer. several days later i called them back and told them where to send my final paycheck.

"can you 'slam dunk'?"

i can. i did it today. i just like the fact that i can do this. and take every opportunity i can to share this information. it feels as good as you think it would. i can only do it about 1 out of every 8 attempts, but when it works, it's just so good. and the crowd goes wild!

"who will win the nba championship?"

i want it to be the cavs, i really do, but it's the lakers year. i thought it was their year last year, but obviously, the celtics had destiny on their side. but this year, it's all about kobe going all "serial killer" and tearing apart helpless animals with his bare hands and biting the heads off of innocent bunnies (i have a low opinion of kobe as a person, but a very high opinion of him as an athlete).

"do you support the death penalty?"

sure. why not. in the words of jerry seinfeld, "just let me finish my coffee... then we'll go watch them slice this fat bastard up" (it applies... somehow).

yeah, i'm watching seinfeld right now.

"is seinfeld the greatest show ever?"

that's a stupid question. of course it is. and anybody who says differently is obviously an idiot.

do you remember when you were in elementary school and teachers would always say, "there's no such thing as a stupid question..." that's the stupidist thing i have ever heard. i ask heidi at least three stupid questions every day.

"what's the funniest joke you have ever heard?"

here's a good one: what do you call a cold hot dog?

a chili dog.

for some reason this is the only joke that i have ever remembered. you could tell me the world's funniest joke and i will think to myself, "that's the funniest joke i have ever heard, i can't wait to tell it to someone else," and five minutes later i have no recollection of the joke. why do i remember that terrible hot dog joke that i read on a "fruit stripes" wrapper when i was 9?

"how long can you keep this up?"

i assume you mean, "how long can i keep thinking of ridiculous questions and fictitiously answer them in clever and witty ways..." and the answer is i can't. i'm all out.

eeey-o-uhh (sound it out).