SORC

SORC team member since: 1993

Hometown: Arnold, Michigan

Major: (it was) Business 

What is your favorite balloon color? Toss-up between jewel magenta and jewel lime green.

What is the most interesting fact about your life? I can speak entire sentences in reverse phonetic order.  I also have a maize and blue car whose name is Bo.

Who is your favorite cartoon character?  Why? Marvin the Martian! I like the way he talks, and the fact that he can manufacture other Martians by planting a seed and pouring water on it. What a brilliant concept.

What is your favorite movie? As a movie buff, it is impossible to pick just one. But before I start making a list of my favorites, let me go on record: the best movie ever made was The Wizard of Oz. 

• Some other favorite "oldies" are Singin' in the Rain, Witness for the Prosecution, All About Eve, and Casablanca.
• As for movies from the 70s and 80s, I am most appreciative of the Godfather movies (1 and 2), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, ET, and Gandhi.
• In the realm of more recent films, the ones I could (and do!) watch over and over and over again no matter how many times I see them are: Good Will Hunting, The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Fargo, The Silence of the Lambs, The Usual Suspects, Lost in Translation, The Sixth Sense, all three Bournes, and Juno. 
• Some of my favorite comedies are In & Out, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Witches of Eastwick, The Hangover, The Birdcage, Drop Dead Gorgeous (guilty pleasure) and Wedding Crashers.
• I am generally not a sci-fi movie fan, but I have a soft spot for a few really good ones: Total Recall, The Fifth Element, X-men and X-Men 2, and all three of the original Terminator series.
• Finally, some movies that are often listed as other people's favorites (or have received tremendous recognition) that I didn't enjoy or feel were worth the acclaim: Citizen Kane, West Side Story, Braveheart, Memento, Raging Bull, Lord of the Rings (although I only sat through the first one). I feel varying degrees of dislike for these. For some, I though they were so-so, but I just didn't understand the mass appeal; others I downright hated and can't believe they made it to the big screen and became so beloved.

What are your favorite TV/Netflix/Hulu series? I am not quite as passionate about TV as I am about movies. But a few of the programs I love watching are: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (RIP), Six Feet Under, Comedy Central Roasts, Saturday Night Live, Dexter, The Sopranos, Intervention, Breaking Bad, Schitt's Creek, and—dare I say it—Survivor.  Yup, I've been watching Survivor since the very first episode in 2000.  I had the pleasure of meeting Yau-man from seasons 14 and 16 (he played twice) at a table tennis tournament in March 2007.

If you could spend 24 hours with any person alive or dead, whom would it be?  Why?   My Uncle Marty, who passed away unexpectedly in April 2005.  He was only 8 years older than I, and we were practically raised together.

What did you want to be when you were a kid? A veterinarian

Why I chose the University of Michigan:  My college choices as I neared the end of high school were UCLA, Michigan, or Michigan Tech.  Since I was a huge football fan, Jim Harbaugh (who was the quarterback for Michigan at the time) and Bo Schembechler both heavily influenced my decision to attend school here.  I arrived in Ann Arbor in 1988 and never looked back.