Dave! Dave! Dave!

The good, the bad and I'm ugly.

When I started Round 1, I liked being a little secretive about myself. I figure a good solid look around this site should fill you in about me. But that's only if you care. I make fun of myself a lot on this site and rarely (if ever) pass myself off being nothing more than an idiot. Lately though, due to some questions about this, I was convinced to do a short autobiography. Just to make it simple for you, yes you, in particular.

I was born in 1970 to a family of well-read hillbillies. My dad is from the Appalachians of Eastern Kentucky. My mom is from Ohio, but her parents moved there from the Portuguese mainland. Like I said, we're a family of well-read hillbillies. Smart, but none of us are motivated by or for money.

I like surrealism, the Three Stooges and other slapstick comedy, basically most comedy, bizarre Asian movies, monkeys, large British bikes and small Italian bikes. I ran a couple of art house movie theatres in the Sacramento area, and took a banjo with me for the ride round Australia. Not that I ever learned to play it well. I like thrift stores, stores that sell offbeat things, World War I and WWII history, car, bike and war museums and other random stuff. Basically, I'm all over the place with my interests.

I grew up an outcast and a punk rock juvenile delinquent in the 1980s and 1990s. I'm still always on the side of the underdog. As soon as I graduated high school, I moved 2,200 miles away to Chicago. The weather there sucks and I came back. I still don't like the cold much so I try to stay out of it. I played in punk bands and traveled around the lower 48 states. Sometimes with a band, but mostly just to be traveling. Once I went with a couple friends and traveled the US in my VW Thing. I like to look at things in person. I thought about moving to the South but didn't, which is one of my few regrets. The other regret was trying to sell an NSU Sport Prinz on eBay where I canceled the auction with less than 12 hours left. Based on the feedback, that's tantamount to crucifying Jesus with a hammer borrowed from the Pope.

In my 20s I started drinking for real (no more high school amateur hour), and eventually drank my way through San Francisco State University. I picked up a degree in Anthropology. I've always had old cars and started riding motorcycles, and I'm definately not a mechanic. That's for sure which is pretty obvious as you read what I've written. I can work on mechanical stuff, but not very fast or very well. I had a job programming and I'm not much of a programmer either, but that's easy enough to fake. My favorite job was working with monkeys at a University of California which I hope to go back to one day.

Anyway, I spent most of the 1990s and this millenium, playing bass in a Star Trek band called No Kill I. It's mostly a drinking contest with instruments. Netflix Trekkies 2 to see it in action.

Okay, what have I covered... Punk rock. Delinquency. Drinking problem. Okay, that was me in a nutshell. I developed a problem keeping track of dates which I'll explain in a bit. In 2000 or 2001, while drunkenly wandering home from a punk rock show, I got mugged. I had my head knocked open and probably should've died. My family is a bit stubborn so I got up and walked home. I spent a few days of lying in a patch of blood and puke. My two best friends came by to check on me (best friends even before they stopped me from dying). It was Mike's idea but my roommate at that time was a little hard to handle so he brought Bill over as back-up. I was a mess so they took me to the hospital. The docs figured I'd die or be a vegetable. To me that's worse than death. They kicked around the idea of drilling holes in my head to relieve the pressure. Or maybe to stick wires in me and make me into a muppet. I got better. Four hematomas, four days in ICU, and then they sent me home. It took me more than a month to re-learn to talk (the first recovered word in ICU was "fuck"). It was also about a month to get to where I could follow the plot of the Andy Griffith Show. To keep from rattling what was left of my brain, I was told not to ride in a car and certainly not to ride a motorcycle. I hadn't had a car in a few years and only had a motorcycle. I didn't want my bike, a Honda GB500 , sitting around for the 6 month brain cooling off period, so I sold it. Completely bikeless and carless and noun less has been the worst extended period of time in my life. After that I can put up with just about anything. Still it wasn't as bad, or as damaging, as high school.

Now I'm mostly okay. Still have a problem with nouns and it gave me epilepsy. I grew up a smart-ass with a smart-mouth but having my nouns knocked for a loop made it a lot harder for me to be so quick with words. They're still up in there hiding, but it takes a while to find them so I'm quiet now. That's a good thing which anyone who had to put up a drunken Dave Smith knows. Having a problem talking also got me to stop drinking like my life depended on it. Which it did for a long time. Don't worry, I still drink, but I'm no longer a professional.

It was basically that near death experience (and I've had more than one near death experience but that one counted) that got me to get off my lazy ass and ride a motorcycle round the world. I like traveling and I tried to get bands I've been in to tour the world but it never happened. So I'll do it myself. I have a cousin that's my same age, who has Cerebral Palsy. She's been in a wheelchair her whole life and it's hard to figure out what she's saying when she talks. Her in a wheelchair has always bothered me. Why should I be healthy and she's not? Now I understand a little of what it's like saying something but it doesn't make sense to other people. Death doesn't worry me (much) but having a stroke or being a vegetable is a nightmare. Not only is life short, it's also very fragile. I try to cram as much into life as I can. I don't know what would be more useless than retiring from a job with a "well, he never missed a day of work".

It's not money I'm after, it's experience. I grew up positive I'd die before I was 30 so I tried to live it all before then. And now, anything over 30 is the bonus round. I don't want to die but I've done and experienced so much neat stuff that when I do die, I'll think, "it happens". Better me than you, I always say.

I had a seizure last April and fell off my bed bringing a lovely girl down on top of me. The doctor thought I broke my back but the x-ray said it was just plain ol' arthritis. Probably from growing up living off government cheese and gas station sandwiches that come wrapped in the plastic triangle. My dad used to sell them and that was the main food in the house (always remove the lettuce). I can ride and drive as long as my epilepsy is controlled. So far it has been. Knock on wood because if I had to go round the world on a bicycle, I'd probably try that. Like I said earlier, I'm smart, well educated but so lazy. So very very lazy. Man, a bicycle would be a pain.

To sum me up, I'm an epileptic guy who does a lot of sarcastic things just to make me laugh at myself. Yup, that's me.

As Ted Simon wrote, "A full tank takes me almost three hours without a stop, three hours of contemplation and speculation, contemplation of past mistakes, speculation of future dangers."

Posted by Dave at some random time.