Mack Reed of LAVoice meme’d me about a week ago, to add to
the list of “5 Things You Don’t Know About Me.” This is trickier for me than you might think; because of my current day
job and my past day jobs, much of what might be interesting would result in
mayhem and/or what Government Code Sections 3300 et seq. defines as “harm to
the public service.”

Thus, I am going to delve back into earlier chapters in
the Book of Dave to see if I can dredge something up that might surprise even
those who have paid close attention to my long, pointless discursions…

1. The first time I ever drove a powered vehicle, it was
an M-60 main battle tank. The occasion was an “Open House” at  Ft.Coy,
in Wisconsin in 1970. At the time, the Pentagon was desperately trying to spiff up its public image –
something about an unpopular foreign war, massive anti-draft riots and a
faltering presidency. Anyway, they
invited all the good Midwestern people in for a day where the sullen and
suspicious draftees were put through their paces. Since my dad was then a Major in the Army
Corps of Engineers, I got to sit on the lap of a tank driver and peer through
the hatch as the huge metal beast grumbled and bellowed up an incline. I was very upset that I had to leave before
they fired the main 105mm cannon. I
still remember the sight of junked cars pinwheeling through the air more than a
mile away, where the explosive shell hit. Then the F-4 Phantom jets came overhead and really unloaded. This experience led to my lifelong
fascination with heavy equipment and gadgets that make lots of noise.

2. I have only been mugged once in my life. This was while
I was driving by myself across Oaxaca.
I pulled into a gas station in the middle of the jungle and was looking out at the
way the tropical vegetation was already prying at the fresh-poured concrete
slab. I turned around, and two sweaty, desperate campesinos were brandishing
machetes and demanding money. They were about ½ my size. But they held the
machetes in tough, leathery hands and looked like they knew how to swing them.
They were clearly not career banditos. I think they were just a couple of guys
in a bad space in their lives who saw me as the equivalent of manna from
heaven. I handed over a thick wad of bills that added up to about $50 U.S. and then sprinted away from me and into a pickup truck and screeched away.

3. Despite serious, total-out car wrecks, falling 3
stories onto my face on a concrete sidewalk, being shot, run over and set on
fire, I have never broken a bone in my body. Must be the thick bones from all
the cheese & milk from growing up in America’s
Dairyland.

4. The FBI tapped my phones after the Oklahoma
City/Tim McVeigh bombing.  I was in Kingman Arizona, trying to use a local neo-Nazi
punk as a source. I later found out that
the kid had been booted out of the Nazis not because he had found enlightenment
(he claimed he had woken up one day and realized that killing a minority just
to be admitted was “bad”), but because he was a dimwit meth freak.

5. [original story excised for being too dark and disturbing]

5a. When I was a bored paparazzi, we used to prank-call known irascible movie stars. Such as, we’d call James Woods and ask, "Is your refrigerator running? Better go catch it! Ha!" and then hang up.  Just totally stupid stuff, the more infantile, the better.  Sometimes I wonder if that was the real reason Sean Young lost her marbles so spectacularly… Ah, the halcyon days before caller ID became common.

And now it’s my turn to pass on this meme; first, to Canuckistan’s Dr. Tongue in his 3-D House of Pancakes; then to erudite Kung-Fu Monkey; high-def camera guru Mike Curtis at HD for Indies; freelance writer guru Angela Booth; and the highly caffeinated SharBean.