I kinda hate to admit this, but a while back I finally bowed to the inevitable and allowed myself to assimilated into the Facebook collective — feel free to look me up over there if you’re into that scene.

If you’ve never played there, Facebook has its own version of the memes that drift around the blogosphere, and over the past few weeks I’ve been tagged approximately 432,000 times for one called “25 Random Things About Me.” I’m cross-posting the list I came up with here, for anyone who may be interested. (Long-time readers may already know some of this stuff; it’s not easy to come up with entirely original material all the time…)

Anyhow, meme-age below the fold:

1. My first name is Reginald. I don’t use it because it’s also my dad’s name, and I got over the novelty of mistaken identity long ago.
2. I still live in the house where I grew up, with my parents as backlot neighbors. I’m not entirely comfortable with this arrangement, but these days it rarely embarrasses me the way it used to.
3. I’m an only child, and to answer the inevitable follow-up question, no, I never felt lonely while I was growing up. At least not in the sense that people usually mean when they ask that. I often felt alone, but never in a disagreeable or longing-for-something-I-could-not-identify way that people with siblings always expect. I didn’t miss having siblings because I never knew what it was like to have siblings.
4. Because I’m an only child, I’ve often thought that if I ever get around to reproducing, I ought to have more than one, to avoid some of the issues I know I have. Which do not, by the way, include loneliness.
5. However, based on the horrific stories many of my be-siblinged friends have told me, I’m not so sure that I’d be doing a kid any favors by having more than one child. Seems like I’d be sparing him or her one set of issues in exchange for another.
6. The first girl I ever kissed was a pretty brunette named Sheryl. I was terrified I was going to somehow screw it up, and I dealt with the anxiety by just telling her up front that she was my first. I think she was flattered. And unless she was a very good actress, all the evidence suggested that I did not screw it up.
7. The first car I thought of as “mine” (as opposed to simply one of my dad’s fleet that he was letting me use) was a brown 1970 Thunderbird with leather seats. I really liked that car; I wish I’d been able to keep it. I haven’t seen another one like it in years.
8. I’ve worn a beard more-or-less continuously since 1990.
9. I’ve had a ponytail since about 1995.
10. I hate people whistling. Seriously. I don’t think I could find it more grating if you surgically exposed all of my nerve endings, sprinkled them with cayenne, and then went after them with a lemon zester. I find it especially aggravating in the workplace.
11. I also hate when people repress their sneezes so they issue only tiny little squeaking noises that suggest a hamster being strangled in its sleep. Women are more usually guilty of this than men, but by no means is the phenomenon confined to a single gender. Just put your hand over your nose and let fly, people, before the pressure differential knocks your eyeballs out of your damn-fool skulls!
12. I never really knew either of my grandfathers. My mother’s dad died when she was just a girl; my dad’s parents divorced when he was just a boy, and grandpa didn’t come around much.
13. I’ve seen Rick Springfield perform live six times, five of which have been in the last 10 years.
14. I have fond memories of the early ’80s video arcades of my youth, but I’m utterly indifferent to modern video and computer games. The last game console I owned — still own, actually, although it hasn’t been hooked up in years — was my old Atari 2600. Viva Space Invaders!
15. Now that I think about it, I’m not real big on playing games in general. Board games, card games, whatever. Just not my thing. I’ll do it from time to time for the sake of being sociable with friends, but it’s never my idea.
16. I used to work at a movie theater and find that my body clock still tends to default back to the schedule I kept then, i.e., I naturally want to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning. But I also find that I can’t sleep in the way I used to — these days, I seem to naturally wake up around 8 — which means that I’m all kinds of screwed up most of the time.
17. My sense of humor was strongly influenced by the original Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players (that’d be Belushi-Ackroyd era, kids), the stand-up comics of the ’70s (pre-angry-guy George Carlin, Richard Pryor), the Looney Tunes cartoons, Mel Brooks’ golden-era movies (Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles), the original Inspector Clouseau movies with Peter Sellers, and, shamefully, The Benny Hill Show. Which means I don’t think much of what’s called “comedy” these days is funny.
18. I love to travel, but haven’t done nearly as much of it as I would like. I’ve only been outside the U.S. twice, to England and Germany. My top dream destinations (that are actually possible) are Scotland, France, and Japan. I’d also like to see Venice, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam, among many, many other places.
19. If money were no object, I’d love to take a year (or three) off and travel around the entire world, including Antarctica and an African safari. If part of the journey involved a tramp freighter and some trains, so much the better.
20. I regret that I didn’t take language studies more seriously back in school. I took a year of French in high school and a year of Italian in college, but I don’t remember much of either. I envy people who can speak more than one language fluently.
21. A good day for me is taking a drive along an old two-lane highway through farm country and eating at a small-town, non-chain cafe.
22. Someday, I’d like to fly to Chicago, rent a car, drive the length of Route 66 (as much of it as still exists anyhow) to L.A., then drop off the car and fly home.
23. I think a woman in jeans and a crisp white button-down shirt is immensely sexy.
24. I can’t relate to people who won’t watch black-and-white movies, or movies that are more than five or 10 years old. There’s “living in the moment” and then there’s just plain ignorance.
25. I don’t like the super-gooey and sticky-sweet dessert items that are so popular at restaurants these days. Keep your caramel-drizzled, hot-fudge-coated death-by-brownie with the extra chocolate on the side. I’d rather have a simple slice of key lime pie, thanks.