I'm looking for some completely useless, entirely self-interested, and utterly trivial facts about the author. Can you help me out?

Yes! I’d be happy to!

First off, you should understand I love lists. Go get some coffee and get comfortable.

We’ll ease into this.

My favorite color is orange. I also love black.

I love Sour Skittles. And Reese’s Pieces, though I feel bad for whoever Reese is.

I do not like cake (except for the carrot and angelfood and cheese varieties), I can take chocolate or leave it (though I love white chocolate), and ice cream only excites me if 1) it is pistachio or peppermint,  or 2) it is in coffee. Moose tracks in coffee is amazing.

I will basically never turn down a trip to a flea market, garage sale, book sale, antique store or resale shop.

People sometimes ask me, “Hey, do you like Over the Rhine, Iron and Wine, Po’ Girl, Hoots and Hellmouth, Band of Heathens, Adele, Lisa Hannigan, Pearl Jam, U2, The Cranberries, The Sundays, Phoenix, Warpaint, Chairlift, Metric, The Sounds, The Ting Tings, Shiny Toy Gun, Feist, A Fine Frenzy, Ingrid Michaelson, The Be Good Tanyas, Regina Spektor, Black 47, The National, Avett Brothers, Gogol Bordello, Coldplay, Beirut, Vampire Weekend, Cold War Kids, Anna Nalick, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dido, Duffy, Imogen Heap, The Swell Season, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, The Cure, The Tallest Man on Earth, Bon Iver, Buddy and Julie Miller, Cowboy Junkies, Mindy Smith, Poe, Portishead, Thom Yorke, Counting Crows, Eisley, Let’s Go Sailing, Stars, Hem, Arcade Fire, The Shins, The Decemberists, The Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, She and Him, I Heart Hiroshima, The Plastiscines, The Vivian Girls, Til Tuesday, Heart, Roxette, Joan Jett, Lady Gaga, Belanova, Julieta Venegas, Sara Valenzuela, Shakira, Toad the Wet Sprocket, The Frames, Bright Eyes, Rosie Thomas, Sufjan Stevens, Mumford and Sons, Air, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Katie Melua, Elliott Smith, Suzanne Vega, Jonatha Brooke, Josh Ritter, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, The Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain, Mazzy Star, The Wailin’ Jennys, Arctic Monkeys, The Zutons, Rich Mullins, Iona, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Kate Nash, Lily Allen, Crystal Stilts, The Radio Dept, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Bird and the Bee, The Streets, M.I.A., Matisyahu, Bonobo, Boards of Canada, Ray LaMontagne, Viva Voce, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes, Jose Gonzalez, Okkervil River, Peter Bjorn and John, Interpol, Louis Armstrong, Tilly and the Wall, Noah and the Whale, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s, Elizabeth and the Catapult and Jaymay, just to name a few?” and I respond “Yes. Yes I do.”

I just got on Facebook for the first time last summer.

I just got my first cell phone last summer.

I just found out where babies come from last summer. Okay, not really, but I wasn’t sure the last two were shocking enough.

I have been known to eat a pound of carrots in one sitting.

I have been known to have a stomach ache afterwards.

The best comic strips in existence, inmyopinion, are Calvin and Hobbes, XKCD, The Far Side and Dilbert.

I got a cat when I was a child and had her till I had to put her down when she was 19 1/2 years old. I haven’t gotten another one yet.

I own three different coffee/espresso makers because you never know.

My favorite beer varieties are IPAs and pale ales, followed by quality wide brew lagers like Sam Adams and Killians, followed by wheat ales. I will drink good porters and stouts but don’t care for them as much. My favorite Christmas present this year was a German-made beer stein from my wife, with one of those flamboyant hinged metal lids. I am inordinately proud of it.

I have maintained my childhood fascination with dinosaurs, and I am passing it on to my daughter.

I bought my daughter a Hot Wheels set for Christmas. Don’t you judge me.

I did not vote in 2008.

I shouldn’t have in 2004.

I will in 2012.

I consider myself well read, but I have never read a novel by a Russian. I plan to change that this summer.

I maintain an undocumented, partially summarized but at times strangely specific list of 1,189 reasons I believe in God. The first two hundred or so are a jumble of ponderings on math and art. Numbers 300-320 are noises I’ve heard my wife make. Reason #342 is a guitar solo I witnessed at an Over the Rhine show on their Ohio tour in 2003. Reasons #502-513 are French actresses. #638 is that hour at the end of an early summer day when the air is the temperature of skin and you feel you’ll die if you can’t capture and contain the beauty somehow. #748 is Zooey Deschanel around the 1:06:30 mark of Elf, as stated here. Most of the 800 block is taken up by transcendant moments of film, most of the 900 block by transcendant moments of literature. The rest is mostly my daughter.

My favorite white wine is dry Riesling, and it’s the only white I’ll drink. My favorite reds are Shiraz (Syrah) and Merlot.

The t-shirts in my closet are divided into two stacks – black, and everything else.

I own several nice cardigans, but not as many as I did in high school.

I am a film aficionado and snob, though I have only in the last 5 years really started becoming knowledgeable and conversant in film history and terminology. I can now explain to you what a gaffer and key grip do, and I will bore you to tears if you want to know about Italian Neorealism, German Expressionism, the French New Wave, etc.

Some of my favorite active directors are Sofia Coppola, Terrence Malick, Martin Scorcese, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mira Nair, Wes Anderson, and Richard Linklater.

I’ve never seen a Francois Truffuat or Ingmar Bergman film I didn’t love.

I think Lost in Translation is the best film of that last 10 years.

I will eat anything that swims, crawls or scuttles through the water, freshwater or salty. Except oysters.

I like my steaks lean and medium-rare.

My dream vehicle is a completely average late 70s Jeep CJ-7 with a GM 350 swapped in, a 4 speed manual, and lockers on both axles, or an old Willys flatfender still in olive drab. Either would suffice, and both are completely impractical for my family, so I’ll never have either.

I once fired an AK-47 at a friend’s house.

Let me rewrite that sentence. Once, at a friend’s house, I fired an AK-47. Much better.

I spent my first semester at college as a Computer Science major. I dropped it and spent the second and last semester of my college career undeclared. A year later I was all ready to go back and major in English and then didn’t. A few years later I was all ready to go back and major in world history and then didn’t. I think about this a lot.

For as far back into my life as I can remember, it has almost never taken me less than an hour to fall asleep. I have accepted this, and I really don’t mind it. I get a lot of thinking done.

In fact, if I could have any one super power, it would be to need only an hour of sleep a night. If I could wake up refreshed, rested and reset every morning after one hour of sleep, I would be much more accomplished than I am.

I was once part of a club with my sister called the B.C.C.’s which stood for Blue Club Clashers. We had a song that we both still know 25 years later.

I was once part of a club with some friends in the 6th grade called the Skulls, which didn’t stand for anything. We did not have a song. My code name was Cortez. I’m not sure why.

I cheer for the Indiana Pacers (feverishly), the Ohio State Buckeyes (low grade feverishly) and the Indianapolis Colts (nothing to call the doctor about-ishly, but still). 

I love soccer, but like most American fans I definitely do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of players and teams like most Europeans do, which is why Europeans hate it when we say we love the sport. I do, however, go off my head during the World Cup. Don’t you judge me.

I once sang “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time On You”, with backup singers, to a random girl at the mall on a dare.

My wife and I never got engaged.

We both have tattooed wedding rings. So far they’re our only ink.

I would be tempted to judge people who wear diamonds (It’s like they HATE Africans or something) except that it’s pretty much everybody, so it would get pretty exhausting.

If there were some sort of apocalypse, and I had to survive for 18 months on nothing but baby dill pickles, green olives and summer sausage until a rescue party found me, I’m pretty sure I would be okay.

I can’t think of very many foods that buffalo sauce will not improve.

I am something of a weather geek. Nothing excites me more than an impending snow storm.

I make better paper airplanes than you.

I’ve never been in a fight but sometimes foolishly wish I had just to have the experience.

I’ve never smoked pot but sometimes foolishly wish I had just to have the experience.

I’ve never been completely stone drunk but sometimes…oh, nevermind.

My 3 favorite pairs of jeans are all hand-me-downs from my younger brother-in-law, mostly because he buys more expensive clothes than I do.

The only video or computer game I’ve ever played all the way through was Major Stryker, and it came on a floppy disk.

There is nothing better when it’s raining than sitting on the front porch with black coffee and a cigar.

I like Poker, Pinochle, Scum and Bullshit, but otherwise please don’t ask me to play cards.

I would have a pet tarantula if my wife would let me.

If I were ever to go back to school I would co-major in film history and criticism and English.

I have one novel I haven’t finished, a young adult’s fantasy series I have barely started and will probably never finish, and a non-fiction book on adoption that is finished and will stay right here on this laptop, thankyouverymuch. The novel is the most likely to see the light of day first.