James Frey emailed me with some suggestions for my “about” page. Let me know what you think about his suggestions:

About

I was born just as the mortar given by Josef Stalin himself to Kim Il Sung exploded next to my mother. The mortar took her life but fortunately I was saved. I was found by a platoon of GI’s and they took me in as their own for a few weeks as they fought on the front lines of the Korean War. I remember them dropping me off at an army hospital near the front as they rotated off the front line. I was given to a couple of doctors to raise. I remember that these doctors had a distillery in their tent. They had a cross-dressing friend, but none of them felt it was all that strange. Of course, I was too young to remember all this, but this is what I suspect to be true since I have video tapes documenting all of this from my younger days (“video tape” being the technology of the times, I suspect).

After the war, I lived on the streets artfully dodging my way through the streets of London. Or maybe it was Paris. I’m not quite clear on that now, but it’s a tale, I’m sure, that is equally valid in either of the two cities. But I’m quite sure that during my stay in London (having been sent there by my aunt’s only sister) at my eccentric uncle’s flat, I discovered a very curious wardrobe that appeared to be a gateway to a magical land.

Having had all sorts of marvelous adventures during my youth, it was time for an education. As I noted before, my parents had perished and I was living with a most unfortunate uncle who, after discovering that I was mucking about in the back of his wardrobe, locked me in the attic which doubled as my bedroom. Luckily for me, one evening a great owl flew in and dropped off my acceptance letter to school! Hoorah! I was picked up by a flying car and sent off to gather myself an education. Let it be noted that I paid for this schooling with an athletic scholarship – I’ve got good hands.

Once educated, it was time for me to get into the “real world”, as they say. You know how it is when you’re striking out on your own. Well, I had to find a place and ended up in this house with 6 roomates. Oddly, none of them knew each other and – might I add – they were all asses. So here we are, seven strangers living in a house. If I had more time I could tell you what happens when 7 roomates stopping being polite and get REAL nasty with each other. If only I had it on tape!

After 16 long years of that – really, it went on about 13 years too long – I decided it was time to do something else. At this stage of my life I felt that I really had to do something with myself; get a career; have a family. But, alas, that was not to be. As I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a luxury liner, I met the woman of my dreams. After living in the shared house for 16 years doing nothing, I didn’t really have any money – or skills, really – and so all I could afford was a room in steerage. And I only got that on a lucky hand of Texas Hold ‘em. Well, I got on this boat and was minding my own business until I saw her – the woman I would one day make my wife. She was, naturally, up in First Class (ain’t it always the way, brother), but I was clever and just a skosh charming and soon we were macking it up in the back seat of a car (long story)! Unfortunately, the ship we were on had the bad luck of hitting an iceberg, and I died.