Friday, February 02, 2007

Weirdo

Lately I've seen a resurrection of that "six weird things" meme. You know the one... You're supposed to list six weird things about yourself and then tag several other people to do the same? I'm sure you've seen it around. As far as I know, I did not personally get tagged for this, but just in case I haven't shared quite enough weird things about myself, I figured I might play along anyway and make it a Friday Five. Six was a random and arbitrary number anyway, right? Besides that, if five isn't enough, take a look at my "100 Things" list. I'm sure at least one of those is certifiably weird. Here we go then... Five weird things about me.


  1. I like to visit IMDB every day just to see whose birthday it is and how old various celebrities are. I can tell I have been doing this for over a year, because I am starting to see names in the birthday box that I remember seeing before and thinking, "Oh that's right. She's the same age as I am" or "I still can't believe he's five years younger than me. No way."

  2. When I put in a DVD, I like to check what the special features are before I actually watch the movie. I don't select any of the special features before watching (hell, much of the time I don't even select them after watching the movie). For some reason, though, I just want to know what's there.

  3. I cannot remember at what temperature Fahrenheit freezing occurs. I know this is a very basic piece of information that 90% of third graders know. For some reason, my brain is incapable of retaining the data.

  4. I frequently don't get my hair cut until I'm already at least three weeks overdue for a cut. It isn't the money; it isn't that I'm so in love with the straggly and frayed ends. It is that for some reason, I hate calling to make appointments for anything. If I could do these sorts of thing online without ever speaking to a human, I would be happy. I also hate making idle small-talk with the stylist. Somehow I doubt the Internet can do anything to help me with that.

  5. At least three times a week, usually while filling my water bottle, a song from an old Sesame Street clip pops into my head and stays there for a few minutes. It was a song all about the wonders and benefits of drinking water, and the clip featured all sorts of live-action footage of people enjoying water in various settings and forms. I have searched unsuccessfully for this clip online, but I can find no evidence that it ever existed. Does anyone but me remember this?

    When it's hot and you're thirsty
    And your throat is dry
    Reach for the refreshment
    That comes to you from the sky!
    Drink wa-terrrrrr! (Wa-terrrrrrrr!)
    Come on, give it a try!


    If I knew you in person, I would sing this for you to prove that I even remember the tune for this song no one else can recall. Aren't you glad you don't know me in person now?

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate making appointments over the phone, too! I don't know why, but I prefer to make them over the internet. When I get really annoyed is when I make an appointment over the internet, and then someone CALLS me to confirm. You just defeated the whole purpose, fool!

Also, I absolutely can't watch a movie without knowing exactly how long it is. But I did seem to live through seeing "The Departed" at the spur of the moment and not knowing how long it was, so maybe it won't kill me.

3carnations said...

I make my appointment for the next one when I leave my haircut. I don't like going to get my hair cut, though. There's always something more fun I feel like I'm missing. I only do it every 8 weeks, though. A fellow blogger said her appointments take 4 hours. Mine take a half hour. If my hair required care that necessitated a four hour appointment, I'd probably just shave it off and buy a wig.

I love DVD extra features. My favorite is the alternate ending. There should be more of those, in my opinion.

Really? You don't know at what temperature freezing occurs? For some reason that makes me chuckle. I would tell you, but I'm sure you've looked it up already. :)

L Sass said...

Perhaps you should advocate that the US switches to Celsius. Then you could get a firm grasp on freezing being at 0 degrees.

Paisley said...

I go to IMDB every day, too! I like to read the "news" and check out the bdays. yay us!

I always make my apt. when I leave or I will never get around to calling. I'm great at putting that off for tomorrow, which is ALWAYS a day away. And then it is 3 months and I look terrible.

The Other Girl said...

I don't like making idle small talk with anyone, but it drives me nuts when the stylist wants to do it. I really couldn't care less where he or she went on vacation; I'd just like to leave the salon not looking like Moe or Billy Ray Cyrus.

lizgwiz said...

I have trouble making hair appointments, too. Partly it's my dislike of the phone, partly it's my frugality. I keep thinking I can get just one more week out of it...

I have a brain stuffed with useless trivia and song fragments, but I've never heard the water song. I can sing you the 70's vintage cheese jingle from the dairy council, though.

-R- said...

I have no recollection of that water song. Maybe they only played it from 1974-June 1979 and I missed out.

I kind of like the small talk with the stylist, most of the time.

H has to look at this list of special features before we watch a movie too. And if one of the special features is a preview of the movie, we always have to watch that. I don't know why we have to preview a movie before watching that same movie, but apparently it is required.

Unknown said...

Stefanie! The same thing happens to me with two Sesame Street short films that got stuck forever in my mind. It makes it even harder to try and explain them to people because they're from the mexican SS version.

Also: One of my weirdness re:haircuts is that I might end up doing small talk with the hairdresser, but I never go back to them a second time. NEVER. I realized that this is because I am very chatty and I always end up talking about something I later think, 'yeah, I don't think I feel comfortable with this person now knowing so and so about me'. So I never go back.

Stefanie said...

Nabb--Wow, and isn't The Departed something like three hours long?? See, that I would need to know going in.

3Cs--FOUR HOURS? That's just madness. I also like the alternate endings, but usually I watch them and think, "Yep. The one they picked was better anyway."

L Sass--Yes, but zero is the ONLY temperature that would mean anything to me then. Seriously, I have no idea if 20 degrees Celsius is warm or cold. The formula for conversion is too complicated.

Paisley--I never want to commit to an appt. at my previous appt. What if I'm not ready for another cut by then? What if I'm ready before that? My hair isn't that predictable.

Other Girl--I was going to ask whether you meant Moe from the Three Stooges or The Simpsons, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. I can't imagine you aspire to look like either one of them.

Liz--Ha. It's funny the information our brains retain, isn't it?

R--My little sister (who was born in 1980) doesn't remember it either, so maybe you're on to something with the timeframe.

LC--Yeah, I probably couldn't help you out with the Mexican Sesame Street references. As for your stylists... I think most of us babble about who knows what with the stylist, and yet, when I go back a couple months later, they don't seem to remember me at all, so you probably don't need to worry about it. That is, unless you're telling them some really messed up stuff... What exactly are you sharing with your stylist?? ;-)

Noelle said...

I was JUST telling a co-woker that I'm dreading my hair appointment in an hour. I didn't get enough sleep last night, and the idea of making small talk is really killer.

Also, I check my own imdb listing all the time, even though I stopped working in film & tv over a year ago. I love to check in on the progress of the projects I worked on because there are some that will never see the light of day.

Analyst Catalyst said...

It freezes at 32 F. Now you'll always know, for whatever that's worth.

Stefanie said...

Noelle--Did you make a decision on your bangs dilemma? Good luck with that. :-) And... you have your OWN imdb page?? Wow; I am impressed.

Analyst Catalyst--You know, I looked that up again earlier today, so I would like to think that after admitting this to the Internet and then finding the answer yet again it would FINALLY stick for once, but time will tell, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Number 4 I can totally understand because it involves picking up a phone. As a result, I have not had my hair cut in eleven months.

Since we're sharing, I almost never read the last paragraph of whatever article I'm reading.

Anniina said...

I think this would translate perfectly to a "Saturday Six"? I hate hair appt, both making them, and having them. I think getting haircuts can be a slightly traumatic experience - I'm always worried they'll give me a mullet thing (it happened once, OMG!). We didn't get Sesame Street in Finland at all, I feel left out!

Stefanie said...

Darren--Does that apply to blog posts, too? Because if so, perhaps I should stop worrying so much about coming up with decent endings for my posts and instead focus on the second-last paragraph.

Anniina--I had no idea this hair appointment aversion was so common! Perhaps it doesn't belong on a "weird things about me" list after all, if it turns out it's not so weird.

georgeious said...

in my house it's standard practice to check out all the features before you actually watch the movie. never mind that they're often listed on the box - we have to see them on the screen as well. AND the previews! duh.

i don't like being on the phone anyway, and have a HUGE phobia about calling a stranger to ask for something. i don't even like to call an acquaintance without practicing the conversation before i dial. yep, i haven't had a haircut in a while either.

Anonymous said...

I don’t remember the water song…about haircuts though, while I hate making appointments over the phone and taking the time to get my hair cut, I am really chatty with my stylist. I like to go back to the same one and give updates on what’s going on with me and what’s going on with her. I hate changing stylists, especially after finding one who knows how to do my hair and I can talk to. To be perfectly honest, I probably annoy her with how much I talk and I know I’ve crossed the line of tmi...oh well.

Stefanie said...

Georgeious--Hi! Glad I'm not the only one who has to check the DVD contents before watching it. And apparently the anti-phone thing is not just us, so we can both take comfort in that.

Simone--Hey, you posted a comment instead of just emailing me one! :-) Yay. I used to have a stylist I liked chatting with, but his salon's too damn far away, and his wait to get in for an appointment is too long. I do miss him, though. Glad you've still got one you like chatting with.

metalia said...

Oh, I love these.

Re: 4--I totally relate. Have I gotten my hair cut since I solicited advice on what to do with it back in November? No. Because I am LAZY.

While I don't remember that Sesame Street clip, there was another one that NO ONE remembers, except for me. It involved a little girl taking her pet llama to the dentist, and singing a little song that went, "Me and My llama, me and my llama, goin' to the dentinst todayyyyy!" I swear, it exists!

Stefanie said...

Metalia--It DOES exist!! My little sister remembers that one! Like -R- said, we may have found a slight generational divide here. They must have aired the llama one when I was already in grade school and no longer catching Sesame Street regularly, but like you, my now-26-year-old sister was still watching at that point.

Anonymous said...

Metalia, I remember the me and my llama song too. ("Me and my llama, me and my llama, we're going to the dentist who weee... yes it's just my llama and me"). I hate calling people (strangers, acquaintences, even my sister in law- I only feel comfortable calling good friends and my family) and practice my phone conversations with them first, too. For this reason, there have been times when I have gone 6 months without a haircut. And when I do get one, I go into Supercuts so I don't have to make an appointment.

don't call me MA'AM said...

I heart imdb.com so much... I use it daily, so that I won't go insane trying to remember which character in this show was also in another show, but I can't recall, blah, blah, blah.

I vaguely remember the water song... mostly the images... but if I heard the melody, I think I'd remember it. One of the songs from SS that I STILL sing even today is the "Take a BWEF" song... with a crazy looking pufferfish trying to take a breath. I'm so weird.

Stefanie said...

Est--I used to go to Great Clips, for the same reason. Unfortunately, the usually-bad haircut was probably a bad tradeoff for avoiding a phone call.

DCCM--I do the same thing with IMDB. I am always looking stuff up just to keep myself from going crazy. And I totally remember that "Take a Bwef" song! Do you remember "Oh gee; there's a bird on me?" That's another classic that pops into my head from time to time.

Anonymous said...

I can't say that I remember the water song, but I do remember an SS thing about water in which one of the main guys, whose name I cannot recall, was crawling through a blank white room saying, "Agua. AGUA." over and over again. Very weird. This was in the 70s, though, so everything was weird.

Lizzie said...

I just stumbled into this old post so you will probably never see the comment and/or if you reply I'll never remember to come back and look. But I needed to say that I am 100% with you on #s one, two, and four. AND I don't remember that Sesame Street water song, but every time I have carrots or celery, I sing another one: "It is I, Captain Vegetable! With my carrots! And my celery!" And nobody knows what I'm talking about.

Stefanie said...

Lizzie--Blogger emails me when I get new comments, so no worries; I saw it. :-) And I TOTALLY remember the Captain Vegetable song, though I'll admit I'm not really sure if I remember it because I actually remember seeing that one or because my little sister still sings that song regularly, too. (You aren't my little sister secretly logging in with a different name, are you??) ;-)