At the time of this writing, I am 53 years old. This means I’ve celebrated my 21st birthday twice at this point, which in turn means the original celebration, way back in 1988, was a long time ago and my memory is going to be faulty at best, revisionist at worst, and most likely completely wrong. Continue reading
Author Archives: CaptainJaq
How did you celebrate your 21st birthday?
Categories: Friends, Personal, storyworth
Tags: birthday, danger zone 2, frankenstein general hospital
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Who are your favorite artists?
“What is art?”
“I can’t explain it, but I know it when I see it.”
It’s an old joke, to be sure, but it’s kinda true, especially for me. I know very little about art, especially intrinsically. What I mean is that everything I do know, I’ve had to seek out and learn on my own. I have no built-in sense of the technicalities of art beyond the most basics. I think this is partially true because I have no artistic abilities, pretty much at all. When I was directing my short film some 25 years ago, I tried my hand at doing storyboards and they ended up looking like anemic stick figures. Even longer ago than that, I tried to teach myself special effects make-up* (thanks to Tom Savini’s seminal books) and was so excited when the sculpture that took me days to finish looked vaguely like a cat person (which, to be clear, was actually my goal). Continue reading
Categories: Art, Europe, Personal, storyworth, Travel
Tags: dali, M.c. Escher, magritte
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Did you have a car in high school?
We’ve got ourselves another deceptively simple question here. As a journalist, I have a fundamental problem with these closed questions. Queries about “favorite something” or “tell me about your” prompts are great for sparking a lengthy answer or discussion, something which can get to the heart of something bigger, perhaps, but “Did you have a car in high school?” A simple yes or no, followed by what kind (if the answer was affirmative) or maybe what you desired (if the answer was negative) and you’re done. Continue reading
What are your favorite movies?
Again, we’re faced with a “what are your favorite X?” type question. This time around it’s movies instead of books, but the storytelling aspect still holds tight. And again, I’m left trying to decide to answer with a straight-up list or to approach it as some sort of esoteric exploration of life and art.
Odds are, when the answer finally emerges, it’ll be a combination of both. Continue reading
Gail
You always know.
When you get a message from someone using someone else’s account or phone number, you know. “Hello, this is so and so, can you call me back?” You get that pit in your stomach that something is wrong with whoever owns that account. I’ve been that person in the past, the one charged with updating the social media of a friend who was involved in a serious accident and was undergoing brain surgery.
But yesterday, I was on the receiving end of that message. “Jaq,” the message read. “Call Gail.”
I knew. I didn’t know the details until I called, and the phone was answered by someone else, but this wasn’t going to be good news. I just didn’t know how bad it was going to be. Continue reading
Categories: Friends, Personal
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What are your favorite books?
This week’s question about my favorite books is, as you’ve probably guessed, going to be a bit more difficult than merely spitting out some title and moving on. Then again, this is my 16th answer, just over 30% done for the year of this project, and if you haven’t figured out by now that none of these answers are that simple for me, well then, you haven’t been paying attention. Continue reading
Tell me about an adventure you’ve been on
This seems like an odd question to me. “Tell me about an adventure you’ve been on.” Sure, but really, isn’t that the same as a number of the questions I’ve answered already? I suppose it depends on what we consider an “adventure” right? But also, due to my having blogged about trips and travels regularly since the summer of 2013 (and a bit more haphazardly before that) haven’t I already covered most of my adventures?
Do I take the easy way out and just say “well, life is an adventure” and leave it at that? I don’t think that’s in the spirit of the game. So no, I need to think of an adventure I’ve not talked about before or delve deeper into one I have. But this also means I need to explore the idea of what, exactly, an adventure is. Continue reading
Categories: Adventure, Friends, History, Personal, storyworth, transportation
Tags: big texan, gateway arch, hotel el rancho, kentucky derby, motorcycles, painted desert, route 66, storyworth, winslow arizona
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Are you a morning person or an evening person?
Most of these StoryWorth questions lend themselves to a decent amount of discourse and, as has already been noted, the purpose of this blog is to leave a record, it only seems natural I should make the most of that discourse opportunity. That is to say, when I answer these questions, I want to approach it as an exercise to get the most out of it. Continue reading
Categories: Personal, storyworth
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What was something you were surprised to learn when you moved out from your parents’ house?
The first, immediate response to this week’s question is ‘which time?’ I think, over the course of 43 years or so, I moved out of my parents’ house a total of six or seven times. Some much more successfully than others.
The first time I moved out shouldn’t even count since I was only gone for about 18 hours in total, but if I don’t mention it, the folks will certainly give me a ton of grief. Therefore, I want to briefly discuss it, and then put it to bed forever. It went something like this: Continue reading
On Learning the Marvel Method
Last summer I got an email from a friend who works in the video game field. She wanted to know if I’d be interested in talking to her boss about writing something. I said “sure,” and then this crazy adventure began.
Now, to be fair, this wasn’t the first time she’d contacted me about something like this nor the first time I’d said yes. The last time it happened we tried to make it work and, for a variety of reasons, it didn’t. No hard feelings, just wasn’t a good fit. Still, it was nice to be thought of again. So I sent her boss an email with all my bona fides and awaited his reply. Continue reading
What famous or important people have you encountered in real life?
For me, this question about what famous or important people I’ve encountered in real life is a bit different as I’ve spent most of my adult life involved in various aspects of entertainment, often with people who would get recognized and stopped for autographs while walking down the street. Continue reading
Categories: Personal, storyworth
Tags: frankenstein general hospital, Hiko, Hiko in tonga, the groundlings
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What is one of the best photographs you’ve ever taken?
Photography has changed quite a bit since I was a kid, so the exploration of today’s question, about the best photograph I’ve ever taken, feels like it’s going to be a bit roundabout and circumspect. I mean, first off, we have to talk about the word “best” don’t we? What does that even mean? “Best” according to whom? Continue reading
Which sports teams were you a fan of as a child?
It’s an interesting question this week. The problem, really, is that I wasn’t so much interested in sports teams when I was a kid. At least not of the big four organized sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL). Of those, I suppose baseball would have been my game and the Dodgers my team, but that didn’t really have much to do with me. Continue reading
Categories: Personal, storyworth
Tags: anaheim ducks, Formula One, golden knights, hockey, kraken, las vegas, sports
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Goldie
A couple of years ago, I decided we needed a pet. Not just any pet mind you. Oh no, we needed a fish.
As I’ve mentioned many times before on here, I got a dog, Laika, back in 2009, about 4 months before I accepted a job to move to Hungary to teach English in a small farming village called Mezőtúr. Laika left us back in 2016 and while I would love to get another dog, that’s just not in the cards at the moment. Neither is a cat, for similar reasons. Continue reading
Who was one of your favorite high school teachers? What made them great?
High school was such a long time ago, I’m not sure how this answer is going to come out. I graduated in 1985, which basically means that most of the folks I graduated with have kids who have also already graduated from their own high schools (and have probably already celebrated their own 10-year reunions and started to forget about their own experiences, so what chance do I have of having actual coherent memories, all of which is just crazy to think about.) Anyway…this is about my own favorite teacher(s) so let’s see what we’ve got. Continue reading
