The Sexiest Man Alive

On my way to work this morning, the disk jockeys were discussing the sexiest man alive. And it reminded me of a story…

First, a bit of background:

There’s an old movie my mommer especially loves called “Come Blow Your Horn” in which Frank Sinatra plays a playboy juggling dozens of women.

When his date rings the doorbell, he shouts through the door, “And for my third wish, O Genie, when I open this door, let the most beautiful woman in the world be standing on the other side.”

Fifteen years ago when I was an undergrad, I had a long distance romance with a guy at Stanford University. I met him online through a poetry “newsgroup” when those were brand new. Critiquing each other’s poems led to emails and then to letters and phone calls. I did meet him once on a week-long trip to California, but otherwise we weren’t even in the same time zone for the duration of our silly virtual fling.

He worked as the resident techy guru in the Stanford computer labs, which closed at midnight. Since I was in deep smit (and had a private dorm room), I encouraged him to call me when he got home, even though the time difference made it well after 2 am.

One night, my phone rang at 2:30 in the morning. Feeling cute I answered, “And for my third wish, O Genie, let the person calling me now be the sexiest man on the face of the earth.”

And a deep stranger’s voice said, “Damn, girl! What the hell kinda number is this?”

And I hung up.

So, in case you were wondering, the sexiest man on the face of the earth circa 1993 was evidently a deep-voiced, African-American man who was probably dating a student in the Florida Avenue Residence Hall at the University of Illinois.

Sadly, we may never know the identity of this sexy man. If you or anyone you know has any information on this gripping case, please contact me.

Today I am reveling in my own geekiness…

Yesterday, I learned how to use Palm Markup Language. So I have now formatted my manuscript as an ebook (.pdb) for my palm.

With a clickable table of contents, and preserving my formatting.

I have no idea if anyone will ever look at it besides me, but I still think it’s pretty cool.

And possibly, agents or editors might like to read the file that way. It’s nice to have in case anyone asks, anyway. And meanwhile, I can review whenever the mood strikes me. 🙂

Brain the Size of a Planet and Still Dumb

Ms. Brain-the-Size-of-a-Planet was one of my ex-boyfriend’s nicknames for me (Douglas Adams fan, natch). There is ample subjective and objective evidence to suggest that I am a smart person. And yet…

I have a lovely mp3 mix that I listen to in my car. A playlist of ~200 songs that I listened to while writing The Edge of Memory. In short, songs that I have listened to approximately 116,000 times, give or take a thou.

About once or twice a month for the last 4 -5 months, I have the following internal conversation with myself in the car:

Huh… I never noticed the back melody in this song before… *tilts head to listen closer*... It’s an odd rhythm, really… *wrinkles nose*... I don’t think I like it. It really doesn’t fit with the rest of the tune… *shrugs* Huh… I don’t hear it anymore… *slaps forehead*… Crap, that was my cell phone, wasn’t it?

I have rationalizations of course. I hardly use my cell phone. When folks need to reach me, they usually page. My pager is on 24/7, and I can pick that sound out of any din, even when deeply asleep.

But still… you’d think I’d have figured it out by now, wouldn’t you?