I sat down this morning, fired up my laptop, was immediately forwarded the hilarious new Andy Samberg SNL video with Justin Timberlake (note to NBC, I would happily link to the uncensored version that you put on your website instead of YouTube but you don’t provide a way to direct link to it),  and then realized that I was blog-tagged by Ian Kennedy.  Ian’s apparently trying to force me out of the 1-2 posts a month habit that I seemed to have formed.

What is blog tag?  Here’s the post that started it.  Link and learn.

So you want to learn 5 things that you may not know about Cody Simms.  Here ya go!

1. I majored in Mandarin Chinese in college.  I can still use it for pleasantries and for getting by in a restaurant, but for a time I was nearly fluent.  I keep telling myself that someday I need to pick it back up again.  I went to China twice in college, once to study in Beijing (I was there in 1997 during the British handover of Hong Kong) and once on an internship with the US State Department in Guangzhou where I got to take part in President Clinton’s summit there in 1998 (check out the Washington Post mention — you have to scroll down).  During the internship I also interviewed visa applicants (see, I really was pretty fluent).  Turning down applicants to their face was one of the more emotionally challenging things I’ve ever had to do ("I’m sorry, I know that you want to go the US to visit your grandson whom you’ve never met but I cannot approve your application").
2. My wife, Molly, and I lived in five cities during our first 5 years of engagement and marriage: San Francisco, Kansas City, London, New York and Los Angeles.  She had only lived in San Francisco for a year before our engagement…so she did six cities in six years.  Prior to my nomadic twenties, I had spent my entire childhood and adolesence in Kansas and Texas.  (Molly gets a little nervous about social media so she’s probably going to be upset that I’ve put her name in this post).
3. I might hold the record for having the most characters in a master’s degree title.  My degree is a "Masters of Art in Transnational Communication and Global Media from Goldsmiths College, University of London".  My masters’ thesis was titled "’Don’t Try Your Jive on Me’: Jazz Music and National Identity in Britain, 1926-1937".  I got to spend a few weeks at the amazing British Library reading 1920s jazz music magazines and a few weeks at the wonderfully collegial BBC Archive going through old internal memos about jazz programming policy.  I had a blast researching the project; I hated writing it.  If you want to read it, leave a comment and I’ll send you a link.  Maybe someday I’ll get around to actually posting it on here directly.  This era marked Britain’s first battle with bottoms-up popular culture in a recordable world, and the power of grassroots media as subverter of hegemony was just as interesting then as now (the popularity of 1920s underground music mags and the rise of pirate radio in the 1930s is really powerful stuff). 
4. I used to act.  And sing.  In fact, I was the star of my high school musical my senior year, playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls.  I even starred in a Nickelodeon commercial for "Clarissa Explains It All" when I was in seventh grade.  I have the tape somewhere.  It will NEVER appear on this blog.
5. I was a four-time state tennis champ in high school.  Ok, so I played doubles.  In the small school division.  In Kansas.  But, hey I was undefeated in the state tournament, and had three different partners over four years!  And there’s even proof.  There are three funny footnotes to my past tennis glory days:

• When I won my freshman year, I don’t think I was yet even five feet tall.  (Not that I’m much taller today).  My doubles partner used to stuff me in my racquet bag.
• My only loss in the "post-season" actually came during my senior year in the pre-state regional tournament.  The night before the loss, I was stopped at gunpoint by the police for trying to steal a street sign with my ex-girlfriend’s name on it.  I must have been a bit rattled the next day.
• I have picked up a racquet probably less than 30 times since high school.

So who am I tagging?

1. Kareem Mayan
2. Greg Cohn
3. Don Loeb
4. Matt Kuzma
5. Chad Dickerson

I’d love to tag a few of my friends on MySpace but due to lack of trackback and in-bound traffic analytics I don’t think they’ll ever notice.  But I’m going to break the 5 person rule and try to also tag Bob Moczydlowsky and Dan Eberle.

Cheers!

(Photo by freshelectrons).

Kansas City, MO - based Roman Numerals competed a two week western US tour on December 9.  The excitement of their tour hit an unexpectedly sad note early last week when a close friend of the band from San Diego tragically passed in a car accident four days before the band was scheduled to play there.

I saw the band play in Long Beach two days after they learned of their friend’s accident and a day after they attended her wake.  Though they were noticeably somber, there was something refreshing about watching the four of them take the stage and do what they love to do.  It seemed very cathartic to them.

I’m an acquaintence of one of the band members, Shawn Sherrill, and my good friend Bob Moczydlowsky manages the band.  I’d like to extend my congratulations to them for finishing the tour during such an emotional time while at the same time offering my deepest sympathies to them and everyone else affected by the tragedy. 

Drop by their MySpace, wish ‘em the best, and listen to a track or two.

You can also watch them right here in a video directed and edited by another friend of mine, Bill McShane.