5 Things You Don't Know About Me

1. From the age of 5-10 my family lived in a 13 room brick manor house on the south side of Columbus, Ohio, which was a couple blocks east of a big bluff that overlooked the C&O railyard and the Scioto River. We were told that river and the house had been connected by a tunnel so that the house could be used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. There WAS a secret room in the attic, complete with a small mirror covering a little peephole. We sold the house to the neighboring White Castle, who tore it down and expanded their parking lot.

2. I love heavy metal. There have always been certain bands or even just songs that have made me want to leap from my usual stupor and go stone cold crazy. The first of these songs was a cassette recording of a K-Tel album that included the live version of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water from Made in Japan, which I listened to over and over again with one of these pre-Walkman old school cassette players pressed up against my ear. I was probably 10 or 11.

















From there it was on to the unholy triumvirate of Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, then Metallica and solo-era Ozzy Osbourne, then at last my Doom Brother John von Pentengrammen led me into the arcane world of the metal underground, where I've spent the the last ~ 17 years exploring the various metal subgenres - doom, death, speed, and dozens more. Classification was never so important as that essential universal characteristic: the singular ability to compel me to launch myself from chair and into all-out rock-star arena-grade air guitar.

3. Within the last two or three years I have noticed a significant loss in my hearing.

4. I have successfully sold two pieces of "erotic literature".

5. During the height of my Half-Life playing days I was a frequent combatant in the countless online deathmatch servers, where I played under the banner of Essential Clan as "-Sgt.Rock-". There was one week in which the global statistics revealed me to be ranked 94th in the world, which is to say 94th out of a pool of around 14,000 players. That may well be the best I have ever been at anything in my whole life.