I posted this more than a year ago and haven’t written most of them up. The Perry one I have, so a post is linked below. I shall proceed to document them, or at least the ones I can turn into an interesting story.
Ten Things I Have Done That You Probably Haven’t
- Seen a supersonic airliner crash
- Been sued by my psychotherapy clinic
- Got a get-well card from the French absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco
- Been a passenger in a WWII-era Grumman Goose flying boat and landed on water
- Crashed America Online. All of it.
- Been the subject of a months-long campaign of hate by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell ( the post )
- Lived ten years in Los Angeles without a car
- Had a warrant out for my arrest for jaywalking
- Fought rats in the dark basement of a Venetian palazzo
- Seen Charlie Chaplin in person
You knew Ionesco?! Oh wow.
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You crashed AOL?
You are AWSOME!
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Westwood cops were dicks in the 80’s….
#8: Yes. And it came back to bite me in the ass, too. Weekend in the pokey. But that’s a story for another time.
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….that was not intended as a competitive response to your list. More of a “Hoo-boy! I know that feeling” kind of thing.
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Please write a book please write a book please write a book please please, Conrad!
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Um. _dude_
Konrad, I’m impressed. I’m realizing as I composed this, it’s a few items on your list make me think of the whole list–this is the greatest list of ten things I’ve done which you haven’t, ever.
The only supersonic airliner is the Concorde. Circumstances, please?
Get well card from Ionesco. Circumstances, please?
I’m impressed by other items, such as seeing Charlie Chaplin, or fighting the Italian rats, but I’m am not filled with a thirst to know the circumstances, as I am with these two.
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Re: Um. _dude_
…or so you THOUGHT!
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Excellent, excellent.
Blessings upon you, that is indeed what I thought.
Really? Hmm, some Soviet monstrosity, maybe? I can’t bring myself to Google it.
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Crashed America Online. All of it.
You win at the internets. And I mean that far more literally than ever before.
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i think you told the aol story before, but man you should tell it again. you should tell all of them, man. well, except for the jane’s addiction thing which you’ve linked to.
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excuse me are you yanking my chain? what was the lawsuit about?
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I owed them $2000 for unpaid therapy bills. They didn’t want $100/month, they wanted it all now. Took me to small claims court. The judge told them to take the $100/month, which I paid.
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it surprises me they’d put so much effort into it when you’re paying.
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It surprised me too, and surprised the judge. Anyway they were quite pleasant and polite to me after that dealing with the payments. I wonder if they just had a financial person there for a while who should have been a client.
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1. and 5. are pretty awesome.
Re: 10., I have been to parties at Charlie Chaplin’s daughter’s (jane) house! She used to live with the alcoholic producer of Supermans I-III.
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You forgot “dissed by name by Henry Rollins in recording of a live reading one of your reviews”
mojo sends
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Yeah, and even funnier “interviewed him twice after that and had a good laugh about all that shit”
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Awesome! That is outstanding!
mojo sends
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i would like to hear whole story behind that!
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I never got a card from Eugene Ionesco, but I did have a schizophrenic roommate who had fantasies based on one of his plays.
http://wholesomedick.livejournal.com/84960.html
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HAHAHAHA !!!
That Farrell story is quite funny. You should be very proud.
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When I think of Perry, the two things that come to mind instantly are: a.) your story, obviously. b.) the article where Perry offered the journalist some drugs, checked his pockets, and said “oops, I must have done them all”. haha
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That is a truly awesome list. I wish I could dream up a life in which I could think of ten such neat-0 things.
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You are rad.
Dave Grohl once bitched me out. That’s my brush with rock n roll fame. He’s a douche, in case you are wondering.
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Ionesco?!! Gaaaaaaaah, fainting, melting. You must have been absurdly sick.
[hiding]
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I didn’t know an arrest warrant could be filed for jaywalking. Did you not show up to court or something?
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I saw the Concorde that crashed take off on its penultimate flight from JFK to Paris. I got on a 747 to London shortly thereafter, and found out about the crash from tearful airport staff at Heathrow as I was on the way to my connecting flight later that day.
I was also in a (very) near miss myself in the early 1980s. I was in a DC9 that had just taken off from Teesside on the way to Heathrow, when a Tornado fighter jet almost hit us head on. I saw the other aircraft flash past below the starboard wing, no more than about 10 feet below us. No announcement was made, though the pilot did make a bit of an arse of the landing at Heathrow. It was on the national TV news the same day.
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I look forward to hearing about all of these. Especially — because I’m a pretentious ass — number 3.
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Did you ever come to like any of JA’s music?
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I have done #5 as well! 😀
Almost as spectacular, I’ve managed to crash specific parts of AOL so that it went unnoticed by TPTB for many hours.
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Number 10 is my favorite.
I grew up watching him on old film reels with my uncle.
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