This is something I first saw and wrote seven years ago. Here it is again with a couple of changes or explanations.
Ten Good Questions.
Taken from “Inside the Actors’ Studio,” this is the 10-question quiz that closes every interview on the show.
Anyone who has watched the show finds him or herself answering these questions anyway, so here are my responses, with an occasional update.
1. What is your favorite word?
It would have to be “love,” which can mean so much (“I love you”) or so little (“I love pancakes”) taken in exactly the same context. One might be willing to die for the person they love, yet not walk a block out of their way for pancakes.
2. What is your least favorite word?
A tough call here, and I’m going to cheat a little with a hyphenated word — “free-market,” when used to glorify what Jacques Chirac called “capitalisme sauvage.”
Update: “Free-market” tends to mean the powerful can do whatever they want to the powerless.
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Both spiritually and emotionally, the amazingly alert, intelligent look in my 6-month-old granddaughter’s eyes.
Update: She’s going on 8 now, and that look is still there.
4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
People who do nothing more than parrot the words of someone else. For lack of a better word, and perhaps to make the point, call them “Dittoheads.”
5. What sound or noise do you love?
The sound of a waterfall.
6. What sound or noise do you hate?
Dogs that won’t stop barking.
Update: I’m actually going to change this one, and the new one is a little bit odd. I truly hate the sound of a vacuum cleaner, except when I’m the one running it.
7. What is your favorite curse word?
Sadly on my part, the “f” word. Call it freakin’, frickin’ or whatever you want, it’s one of the few words that can be noun, verb, gerund, whatever. I believe Lenny Bruce was the one who said, “Shouldn’t ‘f**k you’ be something you respond to by saying ‘Thank you?'”
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Politics.
9. What profession would you not like to do?
Anything involving waiting on people.
Update: Actually a comment. This eliminates a very large percentage of modern jobs.
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
“What took you so long?”