99. When I was about 10 years old I decided I wanted to learn how to make clothes. My dad gave me a box of his old t-shirts and a pair of scissors and I made shirts and pants for all of my old stuffed animals. I'm pretty sure I never told anybody about that until just now.
98. Probably the coolest job I ever had was as a DJ on a local alternative station. While I was in college, I was the mid-day DJ on Modern Rock 94-Z (which is now EXTREME RADIO 94.3). They played a lot of good music (think mid-90s alt-rock like Toad the wet Sprocket, REM, Pearl Jam, Live, Counting Crows... stuff like that) and it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of strange experiences working there, some of which I'll talk about later in this post. I was on everyday from 10-3 during the day but I recorded the entire show every night at about 11:30... so the night before, I would record the next day's show. This was cool because the next day I could have the radio on with friends in the car and I could correctly predict what the next song would be. I had friends who literally didn't believe it was me on the radio because they didn't know radio was often pre-recorded (sorry folks... at least half of the DJ's you hear are pre-recorded).
97. I paid for my honeymoon by selling CDs I got for free while working as a DJ on ebay. In the radio business, the record labels constantly send you free promotional CDs.. usually with just one or two songs on them (the singles they want you to play). I'm not exaggerating... we probably got 50 of these every day. They just piled up everywhere and I asked our program director if I could start taking them home. I didn't have a plan for them... I just thought it would be cool to have that many CDs. Well, fast forward a couple of years and it's time for me to get married and I need to come up with $4000 for a honeymoon. I was looking around on ebay one day and saw that there was a market for promo CDs among collectors... about 1000 CDs later, we had enough for a really nice trip to Jamaica! Thanks record industry!
96. I have never watched a single episode of Star Trek. When I was a kid, I thought that if you were a big Star Wars fan you were cool and if you were a big Star Trek fan you were a dork. It was only later in life that I figured out that you were a dork either way.
95. I have about 700 copies of "Chase the Western Sky", a CD I recorded last summer in boxes in my garage. This is not something I am happy about.
94. For about 2 years I tried to "make it" as a traveling singer-songwriter. I put out 4 albums during that time (2 full length studio records, a bluegrass worship record, and a collection of b-sides) and played about 150 concerts. It was a whole lot of fun, financially I broke even just about, and I had some really cool experiences and met a lot of great people. I'm still not 100% sure why I stopped but a lot of it is that I just didn't have the time and energy to put towards booking concerts anymore and if you're not playing shows, the whole thing just kind of dies. I still miss it a little bit sometimes but not enough to do the incredible amount of work it takes to book a tour. Maybe someday I'll get back out there but not now... there's just too many other things filling that space.
93. I haven't written a song since May of 2007. That song was called "Old Shoes" and it was a sweet little love song for my wife.
92. Prior to that song, between October of 2003 and May of 2007 I wrote close to 150 songs. Three of them are pretty good!
91. My favorite two fiction books are Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. They're both really long but well worth the read.
90. Strangest CD in my collection? "Big Top Pee Wee Original Motion Picture Soundtrack". Why do I have it? I have no idea.
89. My earliest memory that I can clearly recall... I was riding in the backseat of my mom's car. We were on a winding road somewhere... I want to say in the mountains and I was drinking a coke. I decided it would be a good idea to see how long I could hold coke in my mouth without swallowing it. That was a lot of fun until the winding road got to me and I threw up. Throwing up while you have a mouthful of coke is not a pleasant experience. I'm not sure how old I was but I want to say I was about 5 years old.
88. Once when I was about 12 my mom was taking a nap and my brother and I decided to go outside and play basketball. Unfortunately, my mom's car was parked in the middle of our basketball court. Being the brilliant children that we were, my brother and I decided to put the car in neutral and roll it backwards. That was great except for the part where we forgot to put on the brakes... the car rolled out of the driveway and down a dirt embankment, nearly running us both over.
87. I eat cereal in oversized coffee mugs. It's like a bowl with a handle. It allows you to easily eat cereal while sitting on a couch or even while walking around. You should try it.
86. My brother was in a garage band when I was in high school. They were called "Blind Thought" and they did the typical high school band thing... work up a few songs, play a couple of shows, break up. The lead singer from that band is now lead singer for a band called Shinedown... they have sold millions of records and toured the world. When they used to practice downstairs I remember thinking that he was a weird kid who probably wouldn't amount to much. Yet another example of how much I know.
85. I like hamburgers rare. Moo!
84. I regularly find myself watching strange religious television. Faith healers, health and wealth, that lady with big hair, Benny Hinn, all of it. Hear me when I say this... I am completely repulsed by most of these folks. I have a real problem with the way that they distort and twist the words of scripture and especially with the way that they prey upon the poor to pay for their private jets and mansions... it's completely despicable and yet... I'm fascinated by it at the same time. I don't like watch it all the time but if I'm flipping channels and it's on, I'll usually watch a little. I try to imagine the stories of the people there... what they're hoping to gain from the experience... what they see in these people that makes them trust them and believe them... it's really interesting to me. Sad, but interesting.
83. I was on the tennis team in 8th grade. To make the team, I had to win a play-in match... it was me against another guy and the winner made the team, the loser didn't. The winner? Me. The loser? Chris Moneymaker. Yes, the same Chris Moneymaker who won the World Series of Poker a few years ago.
82. I'm in a small group that meets at Spicy's. We eat chicken wings, drink lots of Diet Coke, and throw darts for a couple of hours every other week or so. No one believes me when I tell them it's a small group but really it is... no, seriously... it really is. We talk about serious stuff while eating and drinking and throwing. Really. No, really, we do. Quit laughing at me.
81. The lead singer of the band Anthrax has every character from "The Simpsons" tattooed on his body. I know this because when working for 94-Z I had to interview him one day on only about 30 minutes notice. My program director came in and was like "Hey, Anthrax will be here in a few minutes, can you interview them?". I was like sure, of course, except for the fact that I've never heard a single one of their songs and I don't know anything about them. Fortunately, the lead singer had those tattoos so we just talked about those for 15 minutes. Just a tip if you ever encounter the lead singer of Anthrax, don't ask him to see his Bart Simpson tattoo... I regret asking about that to this day... there are some things you see that you just can't un-see.
80. One time in college my roommate John Crooks and I each ate an entire large Papa John's pizza. That's 2 pizzas... 1 for each of us. I have no idea why.
79. That reminds me... another time John and I ordered delivery food from every single restaurant on campus for our friends Justin Sexton and Beaver Garza. About 20 drivers showed up in their dorm lobby with food and kept calling their room for them to come get the food and it ended up being quite a scene with several angry drivers demanding that they come pay for the food they hadn't ordered. Beaver got so angry he called the police. I know that was a mean thing to do and I felt bad about it... but not too bad. It was pretty funny in retrospect.
78. I was born in Knoxville and have never lived anywhere else. I thought about leaving a couple of times but could never bring myself to leave.
77. I have 20 bobblehead dolls in my office... if you've never seen them you should come check them out. They are awesome.
76. I'm finding it very challenging to come up with this many interesting things about myself... I was afraid that I wasn't very interesting and this is confirming that fear!
75. My final semester of high school, I came up with a brilliant plan. You were allowed to miss 15 days without failing and I noticed that there were only 13 full five day weeks on the schedule that spring. I asked my dad if he would let me skip school each Wednesday with the goal being that I would never go to school all 5 days in a week for a whole semester. I was already accepted into UT, I was taking easy classes, my GPA was already set, and surprisingly my dad agreed. It was awesome... most of the time I never had to go more than 2 days in a row. Mr. Beckett, my Calculous teacher caught onto my plan and started scheduling quizzes on Wednesdays about halfway through the semester to mess with me. He never said it out loud but I know that he thought my plan was awesome.
*** Disclaimer for kids reading this now: I now regret wasting this opportunity to receive the full benefits of my education. Drink lots of milk and stay in school!
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