Not being a member of the Blog Poll, answering the questions of
the latest roundtable might be kinda lame of me, but I'm kinda lame and it's a pretty good meme type thing without the Blog Poll aspect anyway, so here goes:
1. Education. List the region of the country you were born in, what universities you attended and at least one other you would have attended if your alma mater didn’t exist.
I was born in Decatur, AL but my family moved to Birmingham when I was roughly 6 months old, so B'ham is the only home I've ever known. I graduated from
UAB, but if it didn't existd I probably would have wound up at either
Samford or
Alabama, both of which I applied to and was accepted by. Samford because it's in Birmingham and I didn't really want to go elsewhere or Alabama because I've been an Alabama Football fan my entire life.
2. Sports Affiliations. List your top 10 favorite teams in all of sports in decending order. For instance, your alma mater’s football team may be number 1, but perhaps there is a professional team that squeezes in before you get to your alma mater’s lacrosse team.
1.
Crimson Tide Football - Lifelong devotion trumps alma mater loyalty in my book.
2.
Pittsburgh Steelers3.
UAB Basketball - You couldn't grow up in B'ham during the height of the Gene Bartow glory days and not be a Blazer fan. Even though I'd probably wind up pulling for Bama if the two ever played, I'm putting them third because I was a fan of Blazer basketball before Bama basketball.
4.
UAB Football - Football is my true love, but I'm more into Blazer basketball simply because it's been around much longer.
5.
Crimson Tide Basketball - It's something in Crimson and White to pull for in the offseason.
6.
Dallas Cowboys - My mom's family lived in Dallas for a few years while she was a kid and my Grandfather became a big fan, so it kind of rubbed off on me.
7.
Green Bay Packers - A lot of my older relatives are/were Green Bay fans because of Bart Starr (just like they're Jet fans because of Namath, Raiders fans because of Stabler, etc.) so I heard a lot about them as a kid.
8.
Tennessee Titans - The Titans and the Falcons are the closest NFL franchises to Bham, but I just never could get on board with the Falcons, so the Titans it is.
9.
New Mexico Lobos Football - Purely because I had a dynasty with them in NCAA 2006.
10.
New York Yankees - When I was a kid I somehow wound up with a Don Mattingly poster (to this day I have no clue how it came into my possession) and claimed the Yankees as my team. I've never watched an entire game of (MLB) baseball in my entire life and probably never will, but I needed a 10, so here they are.
3. Movies. List the movie you’ve watched the most, your favorite sports related movie, the movie you secretly love but don’t like to admit it (possibly a chick flick or b film), and the movie you were (or still are) most looking forward to from this summer’s season.
Most watched: Probably
The Empire Strikes Back, but
Billy Madison would be a close second.
Favorite sports movie:
Necessary Roughness. Sinbad!
Shame flick:
A League of Their Own. Its like a black hole of entertainment, if I even see half a second of it while flipping channels I am helpless to escape it's grasp and must watch it.
Most excited about:
Superman Returns (this weekend, baby!)
Damn it, now I'll have to buy the DVD.....Oh, who am I kidding, I already have it...4. Music. List your favorite band from middle school, high school, college and today. Also, as with the movies, include the song you secretly love but don’t like to admit. If Nickleback is involved in any of these responses, please give a detailed explanation as to why, god, why.
First, there have pretty well been three constants in my life as far as music goes: Hank Williams, Bruce Springsteen, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. No matter what I was into, these three were always near at hand, so really any three of them can be the answer for all three phases of my life. Otherwise...
Middle School: Split between Guns 'n Roses and Sonic Youth. GnR because they fucking rocked and Sonic Youth because I was in one of those awkward "I don't fit in and therefor must do everything possible to not fit in even more" phases.
High School: Freshman year was pretty much the same, though by the end of my Sophomore year I had had it with GnR and all the "alternative" music I was into and dove headfirst into the jam band scene via the Dave Matthews Band.
College: I stayed pretty true to the DMB until after graduation, but got way heavy into both
Leftover Salmon and
Gov't Mule and saw each of them more times than I can count in more places than I can remember.
Now: I'm pretty well back to my roots of old country and classic/southern rock, but a new band that I've really become a fan of and can't seem to stop listening to are the
Silversun Pickups.
The shame song: I got over my music snobbiness awhile back when I finally came to terms with my love for the music of Alan Jackson and have since held a "if you dig it, whatever" philosophy when it comes to people's musical tastes, but "Love Shack" by the B52s is one of those songs that I totally love but feel kind of embarassed by.
5. Books. Favorite book you’ve finished, worst book you’ve finished and the book you really should read but haven’t gotten around to it.
Favorite:
Blood Meridian : Or the Evening Redness in the West.
Worst:
Mike Nelson's Mind over Matters. You remember that Seinfeld where Jerry is putting himself down all "I make shallow, fairly obvious observations?" Yeah.
Book I should read but still haven’t:
Great Expectations. I was looking forward to graduating from UAB so that I could read whatever I wanted without feeling like I should be reading for class, and I resolved to read all those "great" books that I somehow managed not to in school, and this was first on the list. 20 pages and 5 years later, I'm still not very far into that project.
6. Travel. Favorite city you’ve every been to and the one place you still must visit before you shuffle off this mortal coil.
Favorite city: New York City, which is mostly just because I was surprised that I had fun there because I generally hate big cities and crowds and had sworn I'd never go.
I've always heard lots about the Big Apple, so I thought I'd come up here and see...City I Must See: Athens (Greece, not Georgia. I've seen that one.)
7. What do you love most about college football in 20 words or less?
When your rival proves
over and
over that your team is best and they deserve nothing but your contempt.
English majors, each and every one...
