The Colbert Questionert

Scott Hardie | June 18, 2022
Good answers! I do feel like I know you both a little bit better now. Thanks.

1) What is the best sandwich?

Peoria, Illinois. Avanti's restaurant. Gondola deluxe. Mayonnaise, no tomato.

2) What's one thing you own that you really should throw out?

Somewhere in a closet, I have a box of a few hundred CDs that I haven't listened to in twenty years. I think I have questionable musical taste now, so I shudder to think of what I liked back then.

3) What is the scariest animal?

Whatever I suddenly see crawling on me out of the corner of my eye.

4) Apples or oranges?

Both! If I had to pick just one, apples, even though I live in orange country.

5) Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

Outside of conventions and book signings where an autograph is a built-in part of the celebrity encounter, only once, after a Southern Culture on the Skids show in Tampa. The individual band members were really nice and each signed one of their CDs for me, and it's not one that I'll ever throw out.

6) What do you think happens when we die?

I'd like to give a rational, atheistic answer to this. But to tell the truth, the thought of never again seeing certain loved ones is too painful to bear. I choose to believe in an afterlife where I'll see them again. Or to borrow a phrase from The X Files, I want to believe.

7) What's your favorite action movie?

I've probably seen Terminator 2 more times than any other movie, and I'd still watch it again if I came upon it on TV.

8) Window or aisle?

I haven't flown in years because of my size, and when I did, I took the window seat for the same reason: I crammed myself into the furthest seat and stayed there for the whole flight, wanting never to squeeze past people or force them to squeeze past me.

9) What's your favorite smell?

Vanilla. If I walk by a spice rack, and nobody is looking, I'll twist off the cap of the vanilla extract and take a sniff.

10) What's your least favorite smell?

Ugh. During summers in college, I worked at Taco Bell. And like any restaurant that cooks meat, they had a grease trap. And that grease trap had to be cleaned out periodically. Those mornings when I'd walk into the building before it opened and found them emptying the trap, it was like walking into an open sewer. Imagine enlarging a human colon until you could walk inside and that would begin to describe the foulness of the odor.

11) Flat or sparkling?

Flat is fine. Calm down, sparkling; you're just water.

12) What the most-used app on your phone?

I play a lot of board games, so I pull up Chwazi often, to choose the first player or otherwise pick someone at random. So handy.

13) Cats or dogs?

Life-long cat lover here. Dogs are fun but I'll take cats any day.

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

"You Can Do It," Ice Cube.

15) Describe the rest of your life in five words.

Today is the first day...