The Interview Meme

All right. I won't do anymore memes for a while, I promise. I've got too many other posts patiently awaiting their turns in the spotlight. However, I just couldn't resist being interviewed by real, live journalist Charlotte.

1. You come from a family where humour is very important. Who is the funniest person in your family and why?

Boy, am I glad I wasn’t sitting on Good Morning, America with you, Charlotte, trying to come up with an answer to this one on the spot. Everyone in my family is funny, but we each seem to have our true specialties. Forsyth, for instance, is the one-liner-at-the-right-time pro. You know how you have all these encounters with people in annoying situations, and afterwards you think, “Man, I wish I’d said that, instead of standing there, my tongue seemingly attached to the roof of my mouth with Super Glue?” Forsyth is the person who did say that. Lindsay (no surprise given that she’s an artist) has taken the art of self-deprecating humor to levels never before reached. She rivals David Sedaris. Ian’s the person you want to invite to any dinner party you might be having if you want everyone rolling on the floor in stitches as he tells hilarious story after hilarious story. I’m the Queen of Sarcasm. My mother is the one who can find humor all over the place and is really good for getting you into a fit of hysterical giggles over the most banal situations. Maybe my father is the funniest, because he’s equally good at all five of these types of humor, although each of us excels a little more than he does in our own particular specialty.

2. If you were given the chance to meet your favourite film director or writer, who would it be? What would you want to ask him or her?

Another toughie, because I have such a hard time deciding on favorites. If the director in question can be dead or alive, I’d love to meet Stanley Kubrik, but I’m sure I’d be way too intimidated by his genius to ask him why he decided to go with the American ending of A Clockwork Orange as opposed to its original ending. I don’t believe his claim that he’d never read the original until he was almost finished with the movie. He was too smart not to have explored both versions before filming. Maybe I would believe him if I asked him and he were to expound on that answer. If the director has to be living, I’d go with Jonathan Demme. I can’t claim to have seen all of his films, but I love what I have seen, and I love his originality and stick-to-his-guns mentality. I have a billion questions for him about working with David Byrne and making Stop Making Sense, as well as lots of questions about his cousin Bobby.

3. You are about to move home. What are you looking foward to most/ dreading most about the imminent change in your life?

I’m most looking forward to setting up a new house and “doing it right” this time. I’m sure I won’t “do it right,” and I’ll end up arranging and re-arranging, just as I’ve done with my current house, but one can always fantasize when reality hasn’t yet set in. I’m also very much looking forward to long walks in farm country and lots of very fresh produce for my kitchen experiments. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m looking forward to having a husband who’s once again gainfully employed.

I’m dreading packing up this house. And I’m dreading trying to make new friends. I have a completely irrational fear, which I’ve had all my life, that I won’t be able to make any friends. This isn’t quite as bad as it was when I was younger, because my best friend is coming with me, but still. I’d like to have more than one friend, especially since that friend is soon going to be very busy taking care of others and won’t necessarily be available every time I want to watch a movie with someone or discuss a book or go get ice cream or something. It’s irrational, because I’ve never been anywhere in my life in which I wasn’t able to make friends (even as a teenaged American moving to England for a year), but I’m always convinced with every new move/job change/etc. this will finally be the place where everyone realizes what a dweeb I am, and I’ll be avoided like a fourth-grader who hasn’t had the sense to get a cootie shot.

In the both dreading and looking forward category: having a nearly-200-year-old cemetery in my back yard. I’m dying to see a ghost, so I can really believe in them once and for all. According to books I’ve read on the subject, every cemetery is just loaded with them, so chances should be pretty good that I’ll finally encounter one. But I want any ghost I see to be a friendly, happy ghost sipping tea in the cemetery or something, not some chain-rattling, headless ghost who walks up from the cemetery and appears at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night. I’ll let everyone know if either happens.

4. If I could guarantee you a no strings attached, fully paid for, holiday, on your OWN for a month, where would you go and what would you do?

Oh, I want to do a month on a freighter trip that’s traveling around Europe, reading and writing while out to sea, and exploring and eating at every interesting port of call. Of course, I’d also love to find four English-speaking families in different parts of China, and spend one week living with each of them. And then there’s my idea of getting a sleeper car and riding Amtrak all around America and Canada (but then again, I can’t imagine doing that one without Bob. We had such a blast taking Amtrak from Manhattan to Santa Fe).

5. You have a very happy marriage. What's your secret?

When Bob and I were soon to be married by his uncle (who was also a Presbyterian minister before he retired), he met with us and counseled us that communication was the most important thing in a marriage. We smugly felt, “well, no problem there.” From the moment we had our first phone conversation; to our first date in which we almost missed the movie, because we were talking so much over dinner; to that very lunch with his uncle, Bob and I had talked incessantly with each other. It’s true: communication is very important. So is the other cliché about being each others’ best friend. But I don’t think either of those would work for us if we weren’t both madly in love (emphasis on “mad,” as in “insane,” as in “ready-for-the-loony-bin,” willing to do and be things we would never dream of doing and being for anyone else we know). Of course, don’t let us fool you. There have been plenty of times I’ve huffily walked out the door, claiming he’s never going to see me again (over something extraordinarily important, you have to understand, like who threw away the top to the olive oil), only to wonder what the hell I was doing and where I thought I was going, after an hour or so of aimlessly driving around with nowhere to go (because this always happens when the library is closed). However, once such moments are safely in the past, he and I are almost always able to laugh at ourselves. So I guess the fact we both have good senses of humor also plays a big role.

This is really fun. If you'd like to play along, here are the directions.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME

1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.