Eight Things to Hate about Me

I'm fucking sick of blog memes. Not only do I find online surveys totally lame, I also never get tagged. Boohoo, nobody likes me. Now, John Logsdon orders me to tell you eight things about me. I'm only doing this 'cause we had dinner together last week. Here are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

The eight things can be found below the fold, but I'll put my taggees right here:

• Kevin
• Both of the Biocuriosities (that counts as two)
• Jacob
• I'm a chordata

Eight things to hate about me:

Where I'm from: I was born and raised in the Los Angeles area. I actually drove by the set of Baywatch on my way to high school every morning. I fucking hate that city and will never live there again.

I was an aspiring child star: I got my big break when I worked my stuff on the cat walk for a toddler fashion show; I looked dashing in my little sailor suit. I then auditioned for an Oscar Meyer commercial and got a call back. But, during my second audition, I spotted my mom in the audience and burst into tears. Needless to say, I didn't get the part, and my career was in ruins before I entered kindergarten.

I'm a Lakers fan: Being born and raised in Los Angeles, I grew up a fan of the Dodgers, Kings, Raiders (they hadn't moved back to Oakland yet when I formed my allegiances), and Lakers. I remember jumping on my parents' bed when the Dodgers won the World Series in 1988, and I went to the Stanley Cup finals the one year the Kings made it (I also got to see Gretsky break the all time scoring record). But the best year was the 1987-88 NBA season when the Lakers won their second championship in a row. I went to every home game that season (regular season and playoffs) and ran on the court when they won game seven (back when they still let you do that). Oh, I also made a sign that I took into all the games during the championship series against Detroit that read "Pistons Piss Tons," which my seven year old sensibilities found downright hilarious.

Soon, they'll convert my dead relatives: I was a voice actor for a series of Mormon audio tapes. Some Mormon dude called the director of my high school's theater program asking for a student to play the role of a kid in some tapes he was making for the Church of the Magic Decoder Glasses.

I'm tone deaf: Despite the fact that I've taken lessons on three different instruments (piano, saxomophone, and guitar if you're scoring at home), I can't carry a tune -- and even if I could carry a tune, I wouldn't be able to find it. In spite of my shortcomings, I managed to score a roll in a musical while in high school -- a singing role, no less (no solos, thank god). I mean, I'm helpless when I comes to telling if an instrument is tuned properly, and I couldn't identify a key change if [something clever] [something else clever] locksmith.

I'm bad with metaphors: I couldn't construct a clever turn of phrase if . . . well, there you have it.

My academic pedigree: Continuing the trend set by John and Jonathan, I'd like share with you some of the famous academics in my lineage. Neither my undergrad advisor nor my grad advisor are members of the National Academy, but my grad advisor did his PhD with an academy member and his post-doc with another academy member. Both of those gentlemen were students of Dobzhanksy.

Cleaning up loose ends: Before he passed away last year, Ed Novitski sent some emails to various Drosophila geneticists, including Dick Lewontin, regarding some experiments by Dobzhansky and colleagues. Lewontin forwarded the emails to my advisor, who passed them along to me. I was getting ready to do some experiments somewhat related to the ones required to examine the hypothesis Novitski proposed to explain Dobzhanksy's data. I did the experiments and found no support for Novitski's hypothesis. Sadly, we did not publish the results until after Novitski passed away.