I'm not usually one for memes, but having been tagged by both Dr. Pion and Lesboprof, here goes.

• I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• 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 to read your blog.

1. I've long held a strange fascination for the later/lesser works of otherwise great artists. What happens when the Great Ones miss? I've never seen a systematic examination of this question, and I don't have the tools to do it myself, but if there's one out there, I'd love to see it. (This may be at the root of my love of baseball, since even the best hitters make 'outs' more often than hits.)
2. Although I love tomato-heavy Italian food, I don't like tomatoes. I have no explanation for this.
3. I once threw a rod outside Binghamton, NY. If you ever get the chance, don't.

4. The one time I led a cheer at a high-school football game, I misspelled it. I just wasn't meant to

   cheerlead. I am okay with that.

5. I once lived in a second-story apartment next to a church with a short steeple. This was in grad school, when I'd usually roll out of bed around 9:30. Except that the #&*(%)@ church would start ringing its bells at 9, and go for a solid 15 minutes. The church was a far more vexing neighbor than the drug dealer on the first floor, since he slept late and mostly kept to himself.
6. The first album I ever bought was Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! I learned about Devo from a feature on P.M. Magazine. That tells you all you need to know about growing up in the suburbs.
7. In my teens and early twenties, I was pretty un-squeamish. Shots didn't bother me, giving blood didn't bother me, and it took something pretty extreme to cause motion sickness. Sometime in my late twenties, I started the process my brother lovingly termed “wussification,” and now I'm terribly skittish about shots or blood, and I have to avoid the cool rides at amusement parks. As concessions to age go, it's pretty mild, but it's also counterintuitive. I'd expect to get desensitized with age, not extra-sensitized. Bummer.
8. I once had an extended conversation at brunch with the pianist Jaki Byard at Birdland. He talked about his painting – he preferred realism – and his kid, who was in and out of rehab. The trick to getting a musician to sit down with you is to be in the company of an attractive young woman.

Most folks out there have already been tagged, so if you haven't yet, and it looks like fun, consider yourself tagged.