8:10 p.m. - 2002-12-10
Happy Birthday Bruce!
It's taken me all day and a ton of whining, cajoling, and waving around little tins of cat food, but I have finally gotten the cats to sit in a line and sing:
"Happy Birthday to youuuuuuu
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuu
Happy Birthday Dear Bru-uce!
Now give us some foooooood!"
Yes, it is the lovely day of days: December 11 is the day my dear Bruce emerged on this mortal coil. We think it was at about 10:30 pm, since his father claims to have been watching the nightly news when he was told of his son's arrival.
So, instead of writing a sappy tribute, I'm going to do the ultimate embarrassing thing: a "Bruce 100 list"!!
1. Bruce has memorised all the PLU codes at the local Kroger. "What's kale, Bruce?" "4627."
2. The night Nixon resigned Bruce marched around the White House with a weird welter of other happy people.
3. Bruce has a Ph.D. in Environmental Biology.
4. Bruce's first girlfriend was named Leslie. She had blonde bangs and large, blue eyes. This was in second grade. Precocious, wasn't he?
5. Bruce's first car was a 1965 red Mustang convertible with a V-289 engine. His brother smashed it.
6. Bruce's favorite food is peanut butter. Sushi is a very close second.
7. Bruce is a vegetarian but does not like broccoli, cauliflower, okra and seemingly any other vegetable you could name.
8. Bruce was hyperactive as a child.
9. Bruce's undergraduate degree is in Economics.
10. Bruce was captain of his high school's "It's Academic" TV quiz show team.
11. As a teenager Bruce had monumental sideburns.
12. Bruce's high school prom date, Janis, wore a PAISLEY prom dress.
13. Bruce sold a copy of Yipster Times to Joey Ramone.
14. In a stint as a writer for Boston Rock magazine, Bruce interviewed the lead singer for Killing Joke and the band UB40.
15. Bruce was arrested for protesting the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire.
16. Bruce's first pet was Blackie the cat.
17. Bruce always wears black jeans. Always.
18. Except in the summer when he wears denim shorts.
19. When he's not wearing swim trunks and waders.
20. Bruce was on the rifle team in high school. Indoor 50 foot target shooting with a .22 rifle.
21. He was a member of the NRA while on the team. Uh, remember this was many years ago!! He was just a naive kid! Really! He swears the NRA was different then! Really!
22. Bruce thinks the most interesting album ever recorded is "Secret Treaties" by Blue Oyster Cult. I'm not sure he's serious about this.
23. Bruce plays "Crucial Bass" guitar. His old bands were Cryptic Edge and Moose and the Mudbugs.
24. Bruce's favorite authors are Robert Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Roger Zelazny, Ed Abbey, Aldo Leopold, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
25. Bruce desperately wants to see Charles Darwin's family home, Down House, in England.
26. Bruce is the moderator for the Evolution List of Alabama. Yeah, he reeeeeally likes Darwin.
27. Bruce once did something really naughty involving a neighbor's window and a cherry bomb. But he was little and able to outrun the police so we have to forgive him.
28. Many of Bruce's ancestors were religious zealots who settled in the South.
29. Bruce secretly wants to have an entire house full of cats. Or at least, that's what we are trying to convince him.
30. The last book Bruce read was "Allen Ginsberg in America".
31. The last scientific report Bruce read was "The Ecology of The Mummuchog and Striped Killifish", published by the National Wetlands Research Center.
32. Bruce's dress shoes are Doc Marten's with the white stitching gone over with a black magic marker.
33. Bruce thinks neckties are evil. He only has two that he'll wear. One of them is a Celtic knot design and the other has beagles on a paisley background. We call it the Darwin tie, since Darwin traveled on the Beagle. Uh, get it?
34. Bruce always forgets to take his hair out of the bathtub drain.
35. Well, not always. But almost always.
36. Bruce can drive 14 hours without stopping to pee once.
37. Bruce used to be a shuttle driver for Boston Avis. He also was a typesetter and graphic designer before he became a scientist dude.
38. Bruce's favorite fishes are the Fundulus killifishes.
39. When Bruce was three he fell while running and a stick went into his right eyeball. His optic nerve had to be sewn back together. Oooooooh! Gross!
40. Ask Bruce or his brother what "Mr. Coqueroco" means!!
41. You can also ask him about "Big Rigs" while you're at it. Well, we have to embarrass him a little bit, it is his birthday!!
42. When he was in college he streaked the MIT Student Center. With about 150 other people.
43. The weirdest concert Bruce ever saw was Michael Metelica and his Spirit in the Flesh band. Mr. Metelica believed himself to be the reincarnation of Robert E. Lee.
44. Bruce's favorite beer in high school was Yuengling. They recently started selling it here, so he's been reliving those happy but bleary-eyed times.
45. Bruce's favorite beer now is Belhaven Ale.
46. Bruce has no tattoos.
47. Bruce once got goosed in the jabows by an adoring fan while he was playing bass with Cryptic Edge.
48. Bruce has a terrible habit of "embellishing" signs, especially the xeroxed type one finds around college campuses. Did you know that "Silber Swims In Circles"?
49. Bruce is so blind that he even has a snorkel mask with corrective lenses.
50. Bruce has sleep apnea and has to sleep with a pressurised air machine. It reminds me of a fighter pilot's mask with an octopus stuck to it. Very sexy!
51. Bruce once defended an Iranian poet, Reza Baraheni, from being attacked by a mob of hostile Iranian Maoists.
52. Bruce once slept on a rocky outcrop in the Appalachian Trail in Virginia during a thunderstorm. He watched thunderballs fly across the Shenandoah Valley and explode on the rocks below.
53. Bruce has strange ridges in the bones behind his ears. I think it's from his Pleidean ancestors.
54. Bruce's Ph.D. thesis was called "The Effects of Acid Rain on Lepomis Sunfish Reproduction in Two Ponds." I can't understand a word of this 150 page tome.
55. Bruce's favorite boots are U.S. Army paratrooper boots.
56. Bruce and his brother used to make "People's Hand Grenades" by packing an empty aerosol can with black gun powder. They set them off in sewers just to see how high the lid would jump. Once again, arrests were avoided. Can you imagine if they were growing up today? They'd be hauled off to the juvenile detention center and be analysed by a million shrinks.
57. Mr. Butch once asked Bruce to produce his album.
58. Bruce currently has about 60 fish. Most of them are native species.
59. Bruce has a Rwandan tribal spear behind the seat of his truck. It protects him from bad juju.
60. Bruce once spent a night at the Yippies Bleeker Street headquarters. He didn't have sex with any wild and crazy Yippie girls.
61. Some of Bruce's best trash picking netted him a new condition cat carrier. Also a whole set of bamboo chairs and a lamp with a marble base.
62. Bruce once found a whole bale of marijuana on a beach in the Florida Keys.
63. When I first met Bruce he would only wear paisley shirts, except for a shirt that had lobsters all over it.
64. Bruce met Jayne County at a nightclub in Berlin. She thought he was with LAFM.
65. Bruce wears Spaulding black sneakers size 13.
66. Bruce's favorite blues musician is Howlin' Wolf.
67. John Lee Hooker's pretty damn cool, too.
68. Bruce hit six feet tall when he was 15. He's now six feet two inches.
69. Bruce hates candy coffee.
70. Bruce also hates lite beer.
71. Bruce has a real thing about people cheating in his classes. If you cheat, and he catches you, he will leave your body in formaldehyde in the Freshman Biology lab as a warning to others. No, seriously, he has had students expelled. Don't do it!!
72. Do you know what an otolith is? Bruce does!
73. Bruce's favorite thing under a microscope? Plant vascular tissues stained with Toluidine Blue.
74. Bruce was so excited when we bought our washing machine he spent the first night we had it doing load after load of laundry. He washed every article of clothing and bedding we had.
75. Favorite yard chore? Pulling out the evil English Ivy that infests our back yard.
76. Bruce went to May Day in Washington, DC in 1971, and watched police helicopters gassing Georgetown fraternity students.
77. Bruce took me to see Repo Man on our first date.
78. Favorite movie? Blade Runner.
79. For years Bruce hung on to an old, yellow, stuffed chair that he would not throw away, despite my pleas. It was filthy and the cats had had their way with it. All the stuffing hung out of it like entrails. It was disgusting. He loved it. It finally "disappeared" when we were getting ready to move to Alabama.
80. Favorite historian? Howard Zinn. Bruce had him as a teacher at Boston University.
81. Bruce is the only man I have ever met who looks genuinely sexy in chest waders.
82. Bruce used to have a blues show on WMFO in Medford, MA.
83. Bruce can claim descent from Clan Buchanan. Groovy yellow tartan!
84. Bruce is also related to Charles the Second of England.
85. Bruce has a fetish for Innes' "Tropical Aquarium Fish". I won't let him buy any more copies of the many editions. I mean, enough is enough!
86. Bruce used to obsessively tape a show called "Rockin' With Greg" that was on Saturday mornings on WMBR. Every Saturday he'd unwrap a new tape... I'm actually glad he did this since we're now in a radio dead zone.
87. Bruce didn't spend his whole childhood blowing things up. He was Assistant Senior Patrol Leader of his Boy Scout troop.
88. Bruce's Boy Scout Leader was the last American to leave the American Embassy in Saigon in 1968 when the Viet Cong overran it. Bruce saw him jump out a window on TV.
89. Bruce misses Pickwick Ale.
90. Bruce wore a paisley cumberbund at our wedding. And his grandfather's tuxedo.
91. Since one of these items is supposed to be outrageous, I'll tell you that Bruce's secret sexual fantasy involves an apron. Ha! I'll never elaborate on that one!
92. Bruce has three posters on his office wall that he's had as long as I've known him. One is a WWII anti-Nazi poster, one is a signed S. Clay Wilson poster, and one is a German Friends of the Earth poster with a picture of a burning police bus in Berlin.
93. Bruce has a collection of political buttons ranging from "Nixon For President" to "Youth Against War and Fascism"
94. Bruce's parents were invited to Nixon's inaugural ball. Bruce can't remember what they wore.
95. Bruce dressed up in drag once for Halloween and did his radio show that way. Bet he was one helluva honkin' Amazon! Hootchie Mama indeed!!
96. Bruce was arrested on his way to visit the Bertolt Brecht museum in East Berlin in 1981. He had music tapes in his pocket which were illegal to bring across the border. The tapes were Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cramps, and X.
They let him go after three hours.
97. The most persistent medical problem Bruce has is that his ears get filled with wax and have to be flushed out.
98. Bruce was sick of Deadheads by 1975.
99. Bruce still thinks the Red Sox will win the World Series in our lifetime.
100. Bruce's favorite phone prank is calling someone randomly and asking if there is a "John" at that residence. Uh, you can guess what the rest of the joke is.
Did we make it? Did I embarass him thoroughly? Happy Birthday, dear heart, I love you!
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