The Sunday Stealing asks about my favorites. I find these difficult because “my favorites” suggest things I do repeatedly.
1. What’s your favorite animal?
Conceptually, it has to be the duck-billed platypus, “a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal. The platypus is the sole living representative… of its family Ornithorhynchidae and genus Ornithorhynchus.”
I could say cat, although we just lost one of ours. Abstractly, I like golden retrievers because I like OTHER people’s dogs. I’ve never had one, and I’m not planning on getting one.
2. What’s your favorite book?
Oh, gosh. It’s often been the last book I’ve read, including Life Itself by Roger Ebert, Soulville, USA by Rob Bowman, The Heart Of Christianity by Marcus Borg, and How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. So I’ll pick Smilin’ Ed Comics: De Complete collection by Raoul Vezina and Tom Skulan because it brings me back to a certain time (1980s) and place (FantaCo, where I worked then.)
3. What’s your favorite color?
It’s odd. I’ve said greens or blues. But I remember getting a piece of furniture in the late 1990s, a mini-sofa in a Southwestern motif; it had warm colors. It was the first real piece of furniture I ever purchased, but I had to give it away because there was no room for it.
4. What’s your favorite dessert?
Fruit pie (apple, blueberry, cherry) a la mode (with vanilla ice cream)
5. What’s your favorite drink?
Diet Cherry Pepsi, but I can’t drink it too often because it wacks out my sleep pattern.
6. What’s your favorite food?
Things I tend not to eat very often: duck, steak, lamb.
7. What’s your favorite hobby?
Do I have a hobby? I’d say genealogy, but I’ve spent precious little time on it lately.
Cinema
8. What’s your favorite movie?
No clue. It tends to be the last movie I saw that I really liked. Casablanca is a candidate, but I’ve only seen it once. It had been Annie Hall, the Woody Allen movie I’d seen four times, though not this century. It did mirror a couple of aspects of my relationship at the time.
9. What’s your favorite restaurant?
Frank’s is an unassuming ice cream place that also serves decent Italian food.
10. What’s your favorite sandwich?
A spiedie because I’m from Binghamton, and there is no other answer. I had a TERRIBLE one at the New York State Fair in September 2019.
11. What’s your favorite season?
Spring. I’m not fond of heat, cold, or falling leaves.
12. What’s your favorite series?
The Dick Van Dyke Show or The Twilight Zone, both of which have a Binghamton connection. Both Richard Deacon (Mel Cooley) and Rod Serling lived in my hometown for a time.
13. What’s your favorite snack?
Ritz crackers and cheddar cheese
14. What’s your favorite sport to watch?
American football. Last season, I recorded nearly two dozen games, then watched them, fast-forwarding them through the huddles, replays, and commercials. I got through a 60-minute game in about 75 minutes.
15. What’s your favorite thing to have for breakfast?
Pancakes or waffles, fried eggs, sausage, and/or bacon. I don’t EAT that very often, alas.