Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Four Play

Shot in 1923, this fading photograph shows my paternal great-grandparents, Lillian and Alexander Pierce (perched on the leftmost two camels), before Egypt’s Great Sphinx and Pyramid of Khafre during their round-the-world journey.

With an unusual bit of extra time on my hands, I’ve been playing around with this meme during the last week. I discovered it on the group blog Inkspot, and though I wasn’t actually invited to join in, I thought it might be fun. There were originally eight categories, which--because there’s no rule against this--I have expanded to an even 10, adding “4 things you want to do before you die” and “4 books you wish you could read again for the first time.” At the end, I have tagged a quartet of bloggers I’m pretty confident will enjoy tackling these questions themselves. But anybody can play at this game. If you have your own blog and post your responses there, please let me know, so I can tell Rap Sheet readers about it. If you would prefer to deposit your answers in the Comments section of this post, don’t hesitate to do so. And if you’re a regular contributor to The Rap Sheet, feel free to have your say on this page.

Anyway, here goes nothing ...

4 movies you would watch over and over again:

Casablanca
Chinatown
The Aviator
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

4 places you have lived:

Portland, Oregon (born there)
Detroit, Michigan (unfortunately, I didn’t live there long
enough to really appreciate the place)
Boulder, Colorado (where I occupied part of a carriage house across
from a mansion filled with party-loving sorority girls)
Seattle, Washington (my home ever since the mid-1980s)

4 TV shows you love to watch:

The Rockford Files
The West Wing
Deadwood
In Plain Sight (just so there’s a current series here)

4 places you have been on vacation:

New Orleans (ah, the beignets)
Broome, Western Australia (the only place I’ve ridden camels)
Quebec City, Canada (especially appealing in the winter)
Barcelona, Spain (certainly one of the liveliest and most beautiful cities I have ever seen)

4 of your favorite foods:

Tacos
Chocolate-chip cookies
Pizza
Corn on the cob

4 Web sites you visit daily:

Political Animal
Salon
Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine
Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

4 places you would rather be right now:

Browsing the bookstores around Charing Cross Road, London
Sipping a rum punch while surreptitiously watching topless lovelies on the beach in Negril, Jamaica
Having lunch in an outdoor café on Maiden Lane, San Francisco
Buying cheese, bread, and wine on rue Cler in Paris

4 things you want to do before you die:

Climb the Eiffel Tower
Cruise down the Amazon River to Manaus, Brazil
Finish writing, and see published, at least one novel of my own
Visit Egypt’s Great Sphinx of Giza and re-create the photo topping this post

4 books you wish you could read again for the first time:

The Underground Man, by Ross Macdonald
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
Around the World in 80 Days,
by Jules Verne
The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson

Tag 4 people you think will respond:

Patti Abbott
Donna Moore
My fellow Spinetingler Award winner, Peter Rozovsky
Nathan Cain

8 comments:

iasa said...

I love the picture at the top of this post. I played along.

Iden Pierce Ford said...

I don't know about your choices, but I do love the picture and the only site I visit daily is photographer Joe Mcnally's blog.
I do like the fact that you and I share the same name.
Pierce is my real last name. But I only drop by once per week now because I primarily read books about WW2 at the moment and photography books. But at least I get updated by your news and your humour.
Thanks

Ali Karim said...

GREAT PHOTO - A peep into the past is always fun. Very enjoyable post! Thanks

Ali

Randy Johnson said...

I was tagged and posted on my blog. Great idea. A little insight into fellow bloggers is always nice.

Peter Rozovsky said...

I'm going to play along even though I have no pictures of my ancestors in front of any sphinxes on camels or otherwise.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

Corey Wilde said...

I posted on my blog. Took me a while to sort out the answers though.

Peter Rozovsky said...

I play along here.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com

J. Kingston Pierce said...

Great, everyone. Way to show enthusiasm! I have installed links to your respective posts at the end of this Rap Sheet item:

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/06/
fantastic-fours.html

Cheers,
Jeff