A case of the fours

…I was starting to wonder why OOA was all of a sudden getting all these referrals from Joey’s blog. The far-famed Accordion Guy has tagged me for a list-of-four meme.

Well, let’s see now…

Four jobs I’ve had:

• Florist’s assistant (1968-69)
• Psychiatric nurse (1975-77)
• Writer’s assistant (1978-80)
• Story editor (1985-86)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (“Godzilla! Such language!”)
• A Christmas Story (“It’s…it’s smiling at me!” SFX: WHACK!)
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (“Smartly done.”)
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Oh, you know the line.)

Four places I have lived:

• Manhattan Island
• Northridge, CA
• Bala Cynwyd, PA
• Philadelphia, PA

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• Battlestar Galactica
• The West Wing
• Hotel Babylon
• The Muppet Show

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

• Ayrshire, Scotland
• The US Virgin Islands
• The Black Forest
• The source of the Rhine

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Maluns. (Ideally, as served in the Bündnerstube in the Romantik Hotel Stern in Chur. Tart apple compote on the side and a nice glass of Zizerser Gewürztraminer, please….)
• Peter’s incomparable goulasch: never the same twice, and better every time. (Took that picture about twenty minutes ago: as soon as I’m done here, I get to go make dumplings for it.)
• In springtime, the gitzi (that’s deep-fried kid nuggets, for the rest of you. …Oh, come on, not that kind of nuggets! Tsk.) at Kaiser’s Reblaube in Zürich
• The steak frites at “Ma Bourgougne”

Four websites I visit daily:

• The International Herald Tribune
• The Young Wizards discussion forums
• Blog of a Bookslut
• Fandom_wank

Four places I’d rather be right now:

• On the Moon, in a spacesuit…looking down. This is about the right time of month for that…
• In the picture to the right. (Well, in the picture to the right again.) Summer solstice of 2003, in the hot-spring-fed infinity pool at the Hotel Source des Alpes in Leukerbad, looking up at the Gemmiwand mountain-wall, the week after we turned in the first-draft screenplay for Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. It was a sublimely happy time: perfect weather, the best company, great and genuine relaxation…
• Zürich HB (see also this morning shot), waiting to catch a train to…just about anywhere, really. Budapest might be nice this time of year. Meanwhile, let’s go over to Brasserie Federal and have a Calanda Brau while we decide…
• Right here, at the desk, when the phone rings and it’s my agent telling me that the TV series has been greenlighted.

And now, to continue the meme, I tag:

• Matt
• Bob
• Charlie
• Ursula