7 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me (aka The Meme)

Weren't these things called "chain letters" a few year ago? Who came up with "meme?" Pretty g-h-e-y if you ask me. But since the Human Head tagged me, and you never want to get an ex-military conspiracy theorist with an unnaturally large cranium on your bad side, I'll play along.

1. When I was 16, I dinged Barbra Streisand's Rolls-Royce in a parking garage. It was huge, white, had vanity plates that said "Barbra" and was parked awkwardly in one of those tight spaces that say "compact" and are, you know, made for compact cars. I flung open the driver's side door of my VW Jetta without looking and it left a nice long scratch. I got the fuck out of Dodge about 15 seconds later, forgoing my planned matinee showing of "Forrest Gump."

2. The best job I ever had was as a singing cocktail waitress on a touristy cruise ship that docked at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. All of my co-workers were music theatre students (like myself) and out of work actors. We'd drink chardonnay and white zinfandel in the galley before our twice-nightly performances of "Get on Your Feet"-- a hideous disco medley interspersed with random Gloria Estefan songs. For the grand finale, we'd belt out "Proud to Be an American" as the ship cruised past the Statue of Liberty. Then, after 6 hours of seving Corona after Corona to soused corporate groups, we'd all go out and spend at least half our tips at a dive bar on Ninth Avenue called Wilson's. Still just about the best summer of my life.

3. Though I no longer consider myself a Catholic, non-practicing or otherwise, I was one of the first female altar servers in the Archdiocise of Los Angeles. There were protesters at the first mass I served at (how DARE anything with a vagina hold the big honkin' Bible for the creepy old priest) and I gave a quote to a local TV reporter as my father and I were walking out to the car.

4. I'm violently allergic to peaches. I haven't eaten a peach or peach product since I was a baby and my face blew up and turned the color of a strawberry after my mom fed me some of the canned variety. I don't even really know what they taste like... not that I want to find out.

5. The night before my interview with my first choice college, I got alcohol poisoning at a party in Malibu. At one point in my blackout I dropped to my knees, my eyes rolled back in my head, and I vomited into a bonfire. Or so I was told. I was drunk the next morning when I woke up and I was still drunk at the 2 PM interview. Which I totally nailed, of course.

6. In my pre-teen years I was such a dork that when my 7th grade class got an assignment to memorize a 10-line poem, I memorized all 108 lines of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" and delivered it in front of the class, complete with sound effects, props, a black cape and a fake bird. No wonder everyone thought I was a freak.

7. Furthering my dork cred, I was valedictorian of both my junior high and high school classes. This little piece of trivia has been a source of great amusement to Showcase for the last decade plus, especially when I manage to screw up something totally simple. Like changing a light bulb. Or making coffee.

Tagged:

Jen Leo
Amy Calistri
Poker Shrink
Carmen
Miami Don
Pauly (because he needs to be tagged multiple times)