1)      I am certified in four different bodywork disciplines, three of which are legal.

2)      I won a Science Fair medal in 7^th grade with my project to manufacture rubies using an electric arc. Years later it became a viable commercial process, but did anyone thank me?

3)      The first computer I worked on was the size of a refrigerator, had 16K of memory, and cost $100,000.  My phone now is hundreds of times more powerful, and cost $200 (with extension of my service contract).

4)      When I was 13 I had a part in a Civic Theater play in my Indiana hometown, with a New York actor named Marv Ramage.  Forty-five years later I ran into him in the Housewares department at Bloomingdales, in Hackensack NJ. He was wearing an orange leisure suit, but he still remembered me anyway.

5)      I love flowers. At the conclusion of a three and a half month long leadership course I led in Seattle every single participant brought me a big bouquet of flowers. All fifty of them. It was the coolest thank you I ever got.

6)      I have frequently been asked if I am Santa Claus. The first time it happened I was 19, skinny as a rail, and had long blonde hair and a red beard. Go figure.

7)      An article I wrote under duress, to satisfy a “publish or perish” policy at the consultancy I worked for, was reprinted in 23 different magazines and earned me an interview on national television.

8)      A year and a half after I appeared on “The Love Connection,” and refused to slam the woman who chose me to be her date on the show, a lonely Japanese esthetician wrote a fan letter calling me a “real gentleman” and asked to meet me. By that time every single person I’ve ever known had seen the re-runs of the show and I was in deep seclusion.

9)      I went all the way through school with a neighbor named Linda who was born within minutes of me, in the room next to me at the same hospital. Her personality was as unlike mine as one could get. So much for astrology.

10)   The first time I ate sushi was in Chicago, in the early 70s, with George Santo Pietro, who later became a famous west coast restaurateur and married Vanna White; and David Chan, the celebrated Playboy photographer. The uni made my lips numb, but in a good way.

11)   My uncle always held it against me and my mother that I had been named after an illustrious ancestor, thinking his “naming rights” as the eldest son had been usurped, even though he had no children of his own. But he never realized that my mother didn’t really care for the name, and that it had been grandmother’s insistence that I carry the celebrated name.  What a mean old crackpot my uncle was.  

12)   Linda Lovelace once told me I was the best she had ever been with. It was a real challenge being her scene partner in acting class, what with her see through blouses and the thug bodyguard outside the rehearsal room and her complete, total lack of acting talent, but somehow I managed to drag her through it, and she was grateful.  

Love, David

Photo & text © 2010 David Kinne