Fact & Fiction

Nice job Melissavina. Lisa, you disappoint me.

1) I have visited 44 states. Many of them were part of a great idea that my mom and her friend devised. It was about seeing the cheesy tourist traps, true cultural sites and eating regional food. Yes we were camping, but we didn’t roast weenies over a fire. Among my favorite meals: fresh shrimp just pulled out of the Gulf of Mexico, an amazing fish with a fluorescent green color caught off of northern California, and lobster in Maine. There was one disaster, the clam chowder from a roadside stand. We were sick in a way you don’t want to be when you’re sleeping in a tent in the middle of the woods.

2) I am a direct descendant of Samuel Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps known best for the beer that now bears his name. In 1975, People did an article on descendants and included a picture of my mother and me taken in front of Independence Hall. The caption was wrong though. It said I was 10, I was four. Peter Sellers is on the cover.

3) I do have a gun.

4) Jazz… I have tried to like it, I really have. I don’t. Music snobs have said it’s because I don’t understand it. Whatever. Maybe I am a moron, but I don’t like it, and I’m never ever going to try to play it on my guitar. What a waste of time, effort, and of the little ability I have.

5) We were at her grandparents after her prom. Both of our bedrooms were in the basement… that’s just an invitation for 16 year olds. But her grandfather walked down to check on us. By the time he made it down the stars, she had disappeared from the bed in record time. He looked at me and said “Oh John, you’re up.” Mmm hmmm.

6) We were trying to find an American air base in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert, right after the war began. Somehow, we thought it was a good idea to leave the road and drive through the desert, on the sand. It was like a scene out of a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby “Road to Kuwait” movie. After a half hour of seeing nothing in any direction, we finally spotted a building off in the distance. By the time we got there, the building was surrounded by Kuwaiti soldiers, bearing machine guns, wondering how we found the place and why we were there. They declined my request for photos.

7) I really am a very good cook!