I was tagged on Facebook by a few friends on the topic, “25 random things about me.” Here are the rules.

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a post with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose five more people to be tagged. You also have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. To do this, you simply link to their blogs so that they know you responded to their tag. (You may include the above rules in your post so that the person being tagged knows them, too. You may also want to tweet your post to notify them on Twitter, too.)

OK, here goes:

1. I hate capers. I don’t do blackened, smoked, spicy, peppered, or char-broiled.
   

   #3 W/Grandma (in red)

2. I’m much more likely to order an entree that features mashed potatoes, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, and mango chutney. I can guess what my wife Beth will order with 80% accuracy.
3. I associate my paternal grandmother with “unconditional love.”
4. I didn’t see my first Broadway play until I was 18. It was Noises Off by Michael Frayn.
5. I wish I “knew then” what I know now.
6. I had to bring a corpse to the hospital morgue on my first day as a volunteer. On my last day a woman died on the geriatric ward.


#7 W/Harvey Fierstein

7. I met a number of celebrities for having raised more than $100,000 in one year for AIDS Walk New York. It was fun chatting with Charles Grodin at Phil Donohue & Marlo Thomas’ house.
8. I never smoked a cigarette or experimented with drugs.
9. I thought I wanted to be an investment banker in 1988 for all the wrong reasons. It was the highest paying, most glamorous job at the time.
10. I’ve been a bus boy, switchboard operator, ice cream clerk, dietary assistant, financial associate, cold-caller, stock broker, and marketer. I’ve sold books, cereal, bagels, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, flowers, day-trading services, a ridiculous Internet concept, Dannon yogurt, advertising, Campbell’s Soup, personal insurance, and now, medical devices. I worked in the World Trade Center at Marine Midland Bank in 1990.
    

    #11 As Scrooge

11. I tried out for the role of Scrooge in fifth grade because I thought it would be easier to memorize all the words and “just talk after anyone says anything.”
12. Despite living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at the time, I didn’t know about the 9/11 attacks until 1:00 in the afternoon. I was in a Wharton library cramming for an interview, Beth couldn’t reach me on my cell, and to “stay in the zone” I didn’t listen to the radio on the way to the interview. The VP of Campbell’s HR told me “the towers don’t exist anymore.”
13. My life is about my boys.
14. I’m amused at the prospect of being on Joe Narciso‘s yet-to-be-produced sitcom one day.
15. I’ve dreamt in Spanish. The sentence I remember best from high school is “Quienes son los tres que van delante” because Ted Baus amused me with it.
    

    #16 W/Bernadette Peters

16. I won an auction and got a walk-on role on Broadway’s Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters. Got to stay backstage the whole time. Beth too. Joined the curtain call. Of my performance, Tom Wopat said, “Wow! That was amazing!”
17. I don’t ski. But my first attempt was in the French Alps. (Beth forbids me to ski ever again. She doesn’t want the children to be fatherless.)
18. I don’t play golf. But my first attempt was at St. Andrews.
19. In my dreams I can fly, stay in the house I grew up in, and get a second Wharton MBA for some reason. In that dream I’m concerned about what to say on the interview about why I got a second MBA.
20. My favorite pizzeria is Pete’s on 76th and 3rd in Brooklyn.
21. I didn’t like to read until age 30, when Beth pointed out that non-fiction counted.
22. I get seasick.
23. I loved the sitcom ‘Soap’ so much in 1979 that I considered Thursdays at 9:30 the beginning and the end of the week. Friday morning was spent with Paul Karpowich and Timothy McEntee saying, “Did you see Soap last night?!”


#28 My life partner

24. 24 is my favorite number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and itself.
25. I once got a standing ovation for a joke I told at a Speech contest.
26. Having my tibia and fibula reset in 1983 was the most physical pain I’ve ever experienced.
27. I was an expert Defender player. I think 380,000 was my high score. I used to line up quarters on the machine and let the other kids know those quarters were mine too so they’d leave.
28. My wife is the perfect partner for me.

You can read more trivia at Joe Hage FAQs.

And I tag these five friends

Joe Narciso, Actor, high school friend

Christine Ness, pulling OLA '80 together on Facebook

Ted Baus, my high school speech coach + mentor

Salil Mehta, NBC muckety muck and Wharton buddy

Perrie Taylor Erickson ......... Alice in Whartonland

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