If I Were on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

[This is a post in a series.  You may wish to read the introduction to the series.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

There is so much I want to know, there’s so many depths that I want to plum with my questioning, and yet there is no time.  So the scientists in the Late Show Labs came up with 15 questions, at the end of which, should you choose to accept the challenge of what has been called “The Colbert Questionert,” you will be fully known.
— Stephen Colbert

The “Colbert Questionert” (pronounced “questionnaire,” to rhyme with “Colbert”) is a newer segment of Stephen Colbert’s show: while The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been around since 2015, the Colbert Questionert debuted just last year, with Tom Hanks being the inaugural celebrity (in Janurary of 2021).  Since then, 23 more celebrities have taken it, and it seems like he’s just getting started.

The structure of the questions is obviously a humourous take on the Pivot Questionnaire used by James Lipton, and perhaps is even an homage to it.  While many of the questions are designed to be silly, some are fairly penetrating, if occasionally in a roundabout way.  Here, then, are my answers—longer than most of Colbert’s guests, but at least shorter than Jeff Goldblum’s.  (Note: This is the original, slightly longer, version of the Questionert.  Later interviews have dropped questions #10 and #11.  But that leaves 13 questions, so ... yeah, I’m not doing that.)

The Colbert Questionert

• What is the best sandwich?

Well, if it has to be a sandwich sandwich, then I have to go with a turkey club.  Gotta have 3 layers, gotta have bacon and tomato (which is weird, because normally I don’t care for tomato), lots of mayo, lettuce optional.  But if a sub counts as a sandwich, then I’m all about the Italian cold cuts sub, but I’m very precise when it comes to ingredients.

First of all, salami and pepperoni are a given.  I have very occasionnally come across a sub billed as “Italian” with no pepperoni in it, and my first thought is, where do they get the balls?  Hard salami works better than Genoa, in my opinion.  Next comes the ham.  Now, the vast majority of “Italian” subs come with regular old deli ham on them, and deli ham is barely ham at all, much less Italian.  It’s 100% American, and it’s about a half step up from Spam.  So why on earth would you put that on an Italian sub?  No, an Italian sub needs an Italian ham, and, while for some folks that means prosciutto, I like to buck the trend: I prefer capocollo.  It’s hard to come by in the US, so you definitely want an Italian sub made with it when you can get one.  Finally, espeically if you’re using a hard salami, you need a softer meat to go along with all the harder salumi.  Now, most “proper” Italian subs will use mortadella for this purpose.  And it’s a fine choice, if that’s all you can get.  But, realistically, mortadella is too fatty for this application.  Honestly, just use a decent bologna.  Real Italian bologna is actually really good, and the fact that we think of the Oscar-Mayer version as cheap fodder for kids’ lunchboxes shouldn’t reflect on the proud heritage of the Bolognese people.

Toppings-wise, I like a little olive oil but no vinegar; lots of mayo; lettuce and onions; and salt, pepper, and oregano.  Mmmm ... I’m getting hungry just writing this up.

• What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out?

Out of all the questions, this one is probably the hardest one for me.  I mean, I have a lot of shit that one could make an argument that I should throw out: I still have over 500 CDs sitting right next to me, in spite of the fact that they’ve all been digitized and I never even take them out of the cases any more.  I have way too many of a lot of things: books, fantasy miniatures, old computer equipment.  But none of it do I ever look at and say “I should really throw that out.”

I think the best I can do is the “bar.” Once upon a time, when I was in college (for the second time), there was a party house that we used to go to that was owned (or more likely rented) by three college girls, and they had the coolest, raddest bar in the world.  It was an actual piece of furniture, perfect height, sturdy wood construction, and it could hold a metric shit-ton of liquor.  Then those ladies moved out and broke up their house, and they offered us the bar, because they knew we sometimes threw parties, and they didn’t want to see it go to waste.  So then our house became the party house, and the bar was a big part of the draw.  I dragged that stupid bard with me across three or four different roommmate houses, even to a couple of the offices for my company Barefoot Software.  Then I made eBay pay to haul it across the country, from DC to LA, where it now sits underneath my TV, full of DVDs that we also hardly ever take out of the case.  Needless to say, at this point, it’s looking pretty bedraggled (chipped corners and whatnot), and there’s so much crap piled up in front of it that you couldn’t even get to the DVDs if you wanted to most of the time.  Other than keeping the TV a nice distance up off the floor, and providing a place for the PS/4 and the Sonos soundbar and the UPS battery backup so the Internet can stay up for a while after the power goes out and all that jazz, it doesn’t serve much purpose.  But I keep it, mostly out of nostalgia.  Most likely I should just break down and buy a new piece of furniture that will serve that purpose (and probably do it much better).  And probably some day I will.  But not today.

• What is the scariest animal?

Okay, this one is easy for me.  In general, I’m not scared of animals—I love animals.  All sorts of animals.  And, to me, most animals are easy to deal with: there are some that you just have to handle with a lot of care, and some that you just better not try to handle at all.  Animals make sense to me (often more than people do).

But I was watching TV once, and of those horribly cheesy “When Animals Attack!” shows came on.  And I thought, this should be good for a laugh.  And, sure enough, story one was a hunter who, when he came face-to-face with a grizzly bear, turned and ran.  Idiot.  Story two was an African guide who let his clients bully him into getting “just a little bit closer” to a group of hippos.  This guy even came out and said that he knew better.  Story three was a guy who, while out hiking on a beach, decided to go take a swim.  In 10 feet of water.  In Australia.  The only reason the sharks didn’t eat him was that the crocodiles got to him first.  And then came the last story: a guy in California (you know: the place where I live) was jogging down a highway, and stopped to drink some water.  And got attacked by a mountain lion.  Not doing anything, mind you: not encroaching on the cougar’s territory, not ignoring advice about what to do when confronted with one, just miding his own damned business on the side of a friggin’ highway, leaning against a rock, and blam! mauled by a puma.  That was chilling to me.

I mean, the standard advice for mountain lions is to use your clothes to make yourself appear bigger.  But he literally had no time: one second he was like, what the fuck? is that a puma? and the next second he was getting his arm chewed off.  If he hadn’t managed to stab it in the neck with ... something or other, something that no doubt didn’t do much actual damage to the cougar, just enough to make it think twice about this being an easy meal ... if he hadn’t managed to to that, he’d have been one dead dude.  Now that’s scary.

• Apples or oranges?

Oranges.  Which is typically the place where Stephen would point out that you can’t put peanut butter on an orange.  Which is true, but you also can’t bite into an apple slice and have orange juice squirt out.  So, you know: trade-offs.

• Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

The draw of this question is that the person answering is themselves a celebrity, so it’s interesting to hear who a famous person thought was so awesome that they wanted to get an autograph.  So poor little unknown me can’t possibly be nearly so interesting, even if I had a cool answer.  But, sadly, I do not: I’ve just never been into the idea that having someone scribble their name on a piece of paper is all that cool.  But, I dunno ... probably if I get the chance to meet of any of my pentagram of literary idols before they start to die off (or before I do), I would be hard-pressed not to ask for an autograph.

• What do you think happens when we die?

I mean, the simplest answer is, I don’t know.  And also that I’m fine with not knowing.  Here’s a quote that I’m fond of:

There’s nothing shameful in acknowledging that you don’t have the answers to every question about life.  Just accept the fact that you know only a fraction of what’s going on in the world.  You don’t have to attach explanations in terms of a special revelation of God’s will, a glimpse at the supernatural, evidence of a conspiracy, or anything else ...
— Harry Browne

In other words, it’s okay not to know.  Voltaire (supposedly) said: “Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.” So I’m comfortable with knowing that we can’t know, and just dreaming of possibilities.  Reincarnation is a possibility that I’m quite fond of, coming as it does with the concept of karma, which really satisfies my overblown sense of justice.  I’m also intrigued by the possiblity of ghosts, and I think it’s a little weird that we’ve culturally decided that people’s energy hanging around to talk to us after their body has perished is scary.  There’s also the possiblity that our consciousness just ceases to be and our atoms get scattered across the universe to make new matter, and I’m actually okay with that one too.  So many possibilities that are really intriguing; again, pretty weird that so many of us got hung up on this whole heaven and hell thing.

• Favorite action movie?

Well, as I’ve talked about before, I have a list of “top X movies”: I don’t like to restrict myself to any particular number.  Of those, none are what you might call a “pure” action movie—your Die Hards, your Lethal Weapons, your John Wicks or Jason Bournes.  But several are at least half action movie, and a few are more than that.  Here’s the ones that I think could be considered action movies: The Crow, Highlander, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, and The Road Warrior.  Now, thinking about which one I like best as an action movie, I can eliminate The Crow, Highlander, and Pulp Fiction: while they’re fantasic movies, and they have some great action scenes, I’m not watching them for the action, if you see what I mean.  And, while I’m tempted to give it to The Road Warrior—while Mel Gibson did turn out to be an unbearable shit, George Miller’s movie is still an incredible piece of cinema, and (much like Mad Max: Fury Road) the movie isn’t very much about Max anyways—I think The Matrix wins out in the end.  While the science-fiction aspects are a big part of the draw for me, I can’t deny that many of the action set-pieces are just iconic, and still breathtaking even on my tenth-or-so watch.

• Favorite smell?

This question (and the next) are where the influence of the Pivot Questionnaire are undeniable: Colbert just took “what sound or noise do you love?” and turned it into “favorite smell,” because ... well, because that’s funnier.  But, sure: I’ll play along.

I was fortunate enough to grow up with both my grandmothers—all four of my grandparents, really, until I lost one grandfater shortly after graduating high school—and both of them cooked.  My one grandmother was all North Carolina farm girl, cooking ham and white corn and collard greens and potatoes in all their myriad forms and “cornbread” that was really something called a hoecake.  My other grandmother didn’t cook much—she had a housekeeper for that.  But the one thing she did cook, only on special occasions, was her spaghetti.  Now, there are competing stories on where this recipe came from, from the tall tale of an Italian cook that my grandfather served with in World War II to “she just found it in Ladies’ Home Journal,” but it was essentially just a standard American spaghetti-and-meatballs (and, if you think spaghetti and meatballs is Italian, I must refer you to Alton Brown’s “American Classics” episode of Good Eats for further education).  Nothing too special about it, really, but it has to cook for what seems like forever, especially when you’re a kid knowing that you’re getting spaghetti tonight.  By the time dinner was served, my mouth would be watering like crazy.  To this day, that smell (because of course we still make it) is both enticing and nostalgic.

• Least favorite smell?

Tough call.  In my family, I’m the designated person to deal with all undesireable bodily fluids: poop, blood, vomit, you name it.  So for the most part I’m inured to those types of smells.  I have a few food triggers, but they’re almost entirely confined to “only if there’s way too much of it” (e.g. cumin) or “only if I have to smell it for a really long time” (e.g. coffee).  A lot of pungent animal smells I have a weird fascination for, like skunk spray or crushed stinkbug—I don’t like smelling them, but I’m not repulsed either.  Even dead animal (say, if one of the cats brings us a “gift” of a dead rat or what-have-you) I consider unpleasant but bearable.  I think I may have to say dead fish: I’m not that wild about the smell of fresh fish, and the smell of a fishmarket or fishing dock, or just a beach where there’s a lot of dead fish washed up, and maybe a soupçon of rotting kelp ... that really turns my stomach.

• Exercise: worth it?

Well ... yeees?  I mean, who’s going to take the position that exercise isn’t worth it?  Maybe that’s why this question has been dropped from the newer iteration of the Questionert.

But of course the problem with exercise is that the benefits are long-term and theoretical, while the downsides are both immediate and practical.  So I readily admit that, even though I intellectually know that exercise is very much “worth it,” I still have difficulty motivating myself to do it.  Especially in the winter.  In the summer, I can swim, and I actually like swimming, so I don’t mind doing a few laps as exercise.  But walking or biking or all that other jazz ... yeah, I admit that sometimes I’m just “nah, the couch is fine.”

• Flat or sparkling?

This is the other question that’s been dropped, and I confess I miss it.  The most intriguing thing about it is, Colbert doesn’t specify whether he’s talking about water or wine (or I guess he might be talking about soda? but then is there really soda that’s flat on purpose?).  I always interpreted it to mean wine from when I first heard it; it was only later than it occurred to me he might mean water.  So, for wine, the answer is clear: you want frizzante.

Now, as a firm believer (and even pusher) of the theory of balance and paradox, it should come as no surprise to you that I find sparkling wines too sparkly and flat wines too flat.  If only there were a halfway point!  But of course there is: it just took me getting to my thirties (or maybe even forties) to understand enough about wines to realize it.  It’s called “frizzante,” and it means “gently sparkling,” or some say “semi-sparkling.” And, as it turns out, “gently” is just the right amout of sparkling, at least for me.

For water, it’s flat.  I don’t want bubbles in my water.

• What is the most used app on your phone?

I mean, pre-pandemic, it would have to be Waze.  The only reason I bought a smartphone, originally—and I held out long after most of my friends already had one—was so that I’d never have to try to read another map in the car again.

Nowadays ... well, my podcast app is a strong contender.  I listen to a podcast or two nearly every single day.  Other than that ... I guess it would be Medito.

I decided I would try meditating, and an app on my phone seemed like a decent way to go, but I soon found that they all want you to sign up for something or subscribe to something.  And then I found the Medito Foundation, with their radical concept that meditation—a global human practice for literally millenia—ought to be free.  Doing some research, I found a really cool article about its founders and decided to give it a try.  Now, I have to admit: when it comes to actual meditation, I’ve pretty much been a failure.  But the app also has a “sleep” section, where they give you meditations to do to help you relax and fall asleep.  And a subsection of that is “sleep stories.” These are brilliant little vignettes which tell an actual story that still somehow manages to work in the cues that help you relax: from “everything is completely calm” to “everyone is exactly where they need to be” to out and out “you feel your whole body relax.” Some of them are mostly realistic, some of them have a slightly dreamlike quality, and some are completely fantastical.  Many of them have a few different versions, read by different readers, so you can pick the one that you like best.  I listen to one of these sleep stories almost every night, rotating through the list of the ones I like, and I rarely get to the end of it.

• You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life.  What is it?

This is probably the biggest pain-in-the-ass question of the lot.  As of my typing this, I have over 20 thousand MP3 files under my music directory.  How am I going to pick just one?

Now, if anyone asks me what my favorite song is, I have an answer: there is one song that is exempt from my “no reuse” rule on my music mixes, and that is “Bonin’ in the Boneyard” by Fishbone.  I can’t say it’s my favorite song, but it is the one song that shows up on more of my mixes than any other, and that’s at least saying something.

But this question is not about my favorite song.  It’s about listening to one song for the rest of my life, and, as magnificent as “Bonin’ in the Boneyard” is, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t eventually get sick of it.  Something a bit more complex is needed, something that can serve multiple purposes, can stand repeated listens and still reveal new depths.  Today, I think the best choice for that is “Lazy Calm,” by the Cocteau Twins.  It was the very first song of theirs that I ever heard, being the opening track of Victorialand, and it still has the power to immerse me in its swirling depths some 35 years later.  It has that lonely saxophone that I dig so much (provided by Richie Thomas of Dif Juz), a hypnotic bassline (weird, since they were without their longtime bassist Simon Raymonde at the time), and that ethereal guitar work and formless vocals that are the hallmark of the Cocteaus.  There’s even a long version that adds another 3 minutes to peruse, if I’m so inclined.

But if you ask me again tomorrow, I might have a totally different answer.

• What number am I thinking of?

23.  It’s always 23.

• Describe the rest of your life in 5 words.

First, let me say that I think the word “childish” gets a bad rap.  Once we get to be adults, we somehow imagine that we’re so much better than chidren that to be compared to them is insulting.  Pish-posh.  If more adults were like children, we’d be far better off: to be childish is to be innocent, guileless, creative, to want to play instead of to acquire power and wealth, to be trusting instead of devious.  And, if you know children who are not those things, you know children who have already started to turn into adults ... more’s the pity.  Me, I’m happy to be childish, regardless of how old I am.  So, therefore, my 5 words are:

Being childish with my children.

Next in the series is actually the one I wrote a while back: Talking with Chris Hardwick.