celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent

3. Big mugs or small cups?

    I typically drink a lot of tea from a small cup

4. What’s your craziest party story? 

    I'm sure I don't recall the actual craziest story. One of the runners up from freshman year: some friends wanted to fix me up with a friend of theirs, so they threw a party to bring us together. I arrived first and, over the next hour or so, pessimistically decided that he wasn't coming. What had started as drinking too much because I was nervous turned into drinking too much because I was disappointed. We were playing drinking games (of course). I was wearing the Three Man hat when he walked in the door, completely sober and straight from work. He was a big guy and had way more tolerance than I did, so I stopped (and ate a lot of pretzels) while he caught up. 

    We walked around the neighborhood, and talked until the sun came up. At that point, I needed to get home to change for work, where I needed to be in less than an hour. Only, I'd left my purse and keys at the party house. I walked back over there and tried to let myself in, but the door was locked. I had to knock, wake up one of my friends' hungover roommates, and then scour the house for my things. I managed to get home just in time to shower, change, and go to work.

    The guy and I dated for several months after that party, which was successful but definitely crazy.

5. What’s the worst pizza topping?

    though it makes me unpopular, I don't love pepperoni. It adds a lot of salt and not much flavor.

6. What kind of stage name would you use? 

    according to this site, you may now call me Alicia Madóre. (I added the accent because it seems so much more stagey.)

7. If you lived in a film universe, which one would you choose? 

     Russell Crowe's Provence, from A Good Year (2006, reviewed here). I'm not into France as a dream destination, but that one really drew me in.

8. Scratching pimples – yes or no? 

    ugh no

9. What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen? 

    there are so many! Besides the many awful Christmas movies, I'll share just a few: Joe versus the Volcano, All Hat, or Behind Enemy Lines.

10. Do you ever brew a coffee with no intention of drinking it and just let it sit there, being hot and smelling good? 

    uhm, no. I'm not really a coffee-drinker. Once or twice a year, I'll have an over-sweet, over-strong mocha or the like, which is enough to raise my blood pressure (and blood sugar) and warn me off for another several months.

11. Did you ever feel like you’d be best buddies with someone famous that you never even met? 

    God, no! And if I ever forget that, all I need to do is read a celebrity autobiography. Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl's The Storyteller and Chicago chef Grant Achatz' Life, On the Line both revealed a lot about their authors—and strongly discouraged me from wanting anything more to do with either. Grohl is more of a "celebrity" than I had realized, and Achatz has a massive ego that outstrips his appeal. (Also, molecular gastronomy isn't my idea of food.)

12. If you had to be eaten by an animal, which one would it be? 

    a wolverine. Pound for pound, the world's most violent animal. Surely that would ensure a swift process.

 

[from here; the title quotation is from Emily Dickinson]