If you could watch any movie on the big screen right at this moment, what would it be?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. A fact which brings me no small amount of annoyance as my local theater just did midnight showings of ALL the Indiana Jones movies and I missed every single one of them. I feel ashamed.

But damn, how cool would it be to watch Sean Connery and Harrison Ford at the top of their collective games?

What's your favorite song to sing karaoke-style?  If you don't have one, why not?

I don't really like karaoke--something to do with my debilitating fear of being in front of people singing, probably--but when I do, there's only one song to get me through.

You Never Even Call Me By My Name
as performed by David Allen Coe
Written by Steve Goodman

It was all that I could do to keep from cryin'

Sometimes it seems so useless to remain
You don't have to call me darlin', darlin'
You never even call me by my name.

You don't have to call me Waylon Jennings
And you don't have to call me Charlie Pride.
You don't have to call me Merle Haggard, anymore.
Even though your on my fightin' side.

CHORUS
And I'll hang around as long as you will let me
And I never minded standin' in the rain.
You don't have to call me darlin', darlin'
You never even call me by my name.

I've heard my name a few times in your phone book
I've seen it on signs where I've laid
But the only time I know, I'll hear David Allan Coe
Is when Jesus has his final judgement day.

CHORUS...

Spoken word breakdown:

Well, a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song
and he told me it was the perfect country and western song
I wrote him back a letter and told him it was NOT the perfect
country and western song because he hadn't said anything about
Momma, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin' drunk.
Well, he sat down and wrote another verse to the song and he sent
it to me and after reading it, I realized that my friend had written
the perfect country and western song. And I felt obliged to include it
on this album. The last verse goes like this here:

Well, I was drunk the day my Mom got outta prison.
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train.

CHORUS:

So I'll hang around as long as you will let me
And I never minded standin' in the rain. No,
You don't have to call me darlin', darlin'
You never even call me, I wonder why you don't call me
Why don't you ever call me by my name.

It's heartache on a cracker, this song.

What is your favorite way to relieve stress?

I hunt children with a bow and arrow.

What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
Question submitted by charm.vox.com

My favorite drink is called the Ecstasy. They only serve it at this pseudo-dive cafe/bar in Bellingham, WA called the Horshoe Cafe. It is, more or less, a long island iced tea, but instead of 9 parts alcohol, 1 part non-alcohol, it's 9 parts alcohol.

They'll only serve you two.

What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?

Well, unfortunately, I'm not sitting at my home desk where I have my one and five year plans posted (yes, seriously). Luckily, however, I do have my little notebook where I started those lists in the first place.

Year goals:

1. Finish a screenplay/play/sketch collection
2. Complete, produce, and distribute a demo
3. Write for the Stranger

5 year plan

1. Get played on KEXP. (Dream big, plan big)
2. Get screenplay/play/sketch collection produced

Who is your favorite Muppet? Why?
QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com.

Sgt. Floyd Pepper. Easily. 'Cause he was, as part of a cast better crated, effortlessly cool and laid-back. Plus, you knew he could bring the funk when he wanted.

And, it seems, that you can buy an articulated action figure of the mustachioed bassman, which makes no sense to me. Why not a plush toy for the kids or--I don't know--a puppet for the nerds who can't work up the nerve to actually talk to other people.

I'm not going to lie to you; I used to harbor aspirations of being a ventriloquist. I also practiced magic. The torn and restored rabbit kind, not the wiccan devil-summoning kind. You can probably imagine how supremely unpopular I was in grade, middle, and high school. And yet I was happy. You know why? Puppets.

That's actually untrue. I'm sorry. The actual reason I wasn't terminally suicidal in school was because I choose to be intentionally oblivious of the sheer number of people who wouldn't be caught dead in my company. Of course, this is all in retrospect. At the time, I was a clarinetting magic-making puppeteer, a fucking king-maker.

Anyway, I had--have, actually, as they're probably in a box somewhere--two ventriloquist dolls: a cheap Charlie McCarthy knock-off that my mother purchased from the J.C. Penny catalogue one Christmas and a dog puppet that tried so hard to distract from his and my uncoolness that it wore hot-pink tie-dyed clothes and sunglasses.

My conscience is clear on Charlie McCarthy. I got it as a gift. You get lots of things as gifts that you don't actually want. Calendars, for instance. Please give me no more calendars. I neither want nor need a one-a-day calendar of pithy Tim Allen sayings or a glossy wall-hanger of the best in black and white roadside cafe photography.

But the dog. Oh, the dog. I wanted it bad, but you've got to understand the circumstances. I was 13 years old in the Mall of America, the biggest shrine to commercialization you're going to see this side of television. My eyes had grown numb to the spectacle of six floors of stores upon stores when, suddenly, I happen upon this kiosk manned by a bored high-school graduate and a talking dog.

Marketing wonks will quote you statistics and data compiled from double-blind studies and focus groups, but I'm going to lay it out easy for you: if you want to catch the eye of the ever-valuable tween-aged boy and girl, all you need is a talking dog.

I realized, of course, that the dog couldn't actually talk and resembled more an albino sloth with an arrestingly '80s sense of fashion than a mutt, but I was smitten. Here was my chance, I thought. Here was my chance to finally get some of that popular mainstream attention. Thank God that failed.

God, the more that I think about it, there's a good chance I brought one or both of those to school at some point. Strangely, I never had trouble with bullies. I think they felt sorry for me.

Eventually, I stopped talking without moving my lips, dropped the clarinet, and picked up the bass. And it's much easier to play when you don't have your arm up a big floppy dog sock.

- Tyson

When did you first realize that you were ___________? Was it a positive or negative experience?

Question submitted by George.'

Negative. Positive.