Citizen of the World

The other day, I mentioned that erstexman was my "Doppelgänger".
My usage of that term was more in line with the actual German direct meaning of the word, which is a double walker - a person who does what you do somewhere else in the world doing what exactly what you're doing in the opposite direction, so that you two never actually meet. HOWEVER, in looking up the word in English, there's a sinister or negative connotation stemming from movies or 18th century stories where the Doppelgänger was a foreboding figure, which wasn't my intention. Upon further investigation, I think I prefer the term "body double". Interestingly, the term is most commonly used in the context of head-to-toe (or nearly) shots involving nudity. Whereas that may have been the case in a few instances, in reality, I'm only meaning to imply that we (as he's also noted) have experienced very similar things throughout our lives.

In his most recent post, erstexman mentioned being a camera whore. That's me through and through. Whenever there's an opportunity for me to appear on TV, in the newspaper, or on the radio, I'm there.

In college, I was on the news a few times when reporters were on campus. After my first study abroad summer, the local newspaper called me for an interview and my face was on the front page of the "Lifestyles" section. Recently, my father and I were both interviewed for the same newspaper talking about the trip we took to Russia.

When I moved to Princeton, NJ, I was on the radio one morning during a morning show on PST. At around the same time, I met Connie Chung (yes - the Connie Chung!!!) and sang The Star-Spangled Banner for her on Madison Avenue because John Bon Jovi had canceled his singing the song at the opening of a Mets or Yankees game and the local news was "taking auditions" on Madison Avenue. I happened to be there and sang the song. I didn't get the recording, but apparently it was not only really good (from the mouth of Connie Chung), but good enough to make it on the nightly news, which I missed. Friends of mine in the area called me that night screaming into the phone that they'd seen it, which was exciting, but, again, I missed it, and no one recorded it because they didn't know I was going to be on!

On our way out of town in San Francisco, Matt and I were interviewed (because I approached the reporter excitedly) about smoking cigarettes. We kept checking back on the website to see whether we made it on, but, alas, the interview never made it on the newscast at all as far as we know! Ho hum.

Most recently, I was on a TV show on FLN called Bartender Wars commenting on a drink. I had about a 10-second spot where I say, "The shot tastes like lipstick! I'm a guy; I don't wanna taste lipstick!"

And my eyes are still always peeled for my next spot on TV or newspaper interview. Who knows? One day, I might have my own TV show or my own newspaper column!