Blog Tag – I'm It

Jonathan Trenn was kind enough to Blog Tag me. This game of sorts seems to have been popularized by Jeff Pulver and entails a blogger to open up and say five things about themselves you probably didn’t already know. For some bloggers, this doesn’t seem so necessary (I’d love to see a future abstract game of Blog Tag where bloggers don’t say five things about themselves that their audiences don’t want to read).

In any case, here are my five things (with some bolding to make it more scannable), and then I get to tag five bloggers in turn.

1) My namesake is (surprise) not one of New York State’s most notorious penitentiary residents, but my grandfather, one of my family’s true heroes. He had the foresight to flee Poland, where his family lived for however many decades (if not centuries), marrying his beloved Esther and taking as many family members as would join, right before the genocide began there. After enduring the harsh conditions in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust and spending five years in Post-War Germany, his family (now including my father) emigrated to the US in 1951. It’s a mere taste of the story, but it’s a way to at least begin to share that my namesake’s name, David Berkowitz, is one to live up to.

2) In college, I wrote a book of children’s poetry with over 100 poems. I never published it or tried too hard to do so. I’m proud of a few of them, though for most of the 100, it’s probably best that they’re buried in a file cabinet somewhere.

3) My desk has hosted some version of a candy drawer, office supply holder, or other receptacle since I’ve been at eMarketer. I’m not sure how much of any success I’ve had in various roles can be attributed to the candy drawer, but knowing the sugar intake preferences of many of your colleagues and superiors is incredibly powerful information. At iCrossing, I assumed the role of the confectionery kingpin, keeping a secret candy stash to give select colleagues their fix. Someday I might have to write a book about what your sugar preferences say about you, from laid back peanut butter lovers to fiery and emotional dark chocolate addicts.

4) The only job that I ever did entirely for money: working at a beach club snack bar in New Rochelle on summer after college ended in May. I lasted three days before quitting.

Fake #5) I keep wanting to post some joke here for 5, about, say, a past arrest record or some fictitious scandalous news, but search engines don’t have a sense of humor, so lest some spidered content come back to haunt me, I’ll stick with a real example.

5) Two quick anecdotes about my first stints with public speaking: The first of sorts was with the theater, in third grade, Mrs. Karlen’s class. In the third grade play, which was based on the poems of Jack Prelutsky (my third favorite poet at the time, following Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash), I was cast in the chorus – in other words, the place for kids who don’t get any lines of their own. Teachers welcomed anyone to request a part if they wanted one. I was the only kid in the class who came forward – I remember asking during recess. They gave me the part of a squirrel. My lines: "I am just a little squirrel/something something something/I don’t belong in a zoo/Get me out of here!" A few years later, still in grade school, we had to give a talk posing as the character from whatever autobiography we just read. I read Iacocca. I can’t remember anything about the guy, but I do remember nailing the speech.

There we go. Now I need to name the five designees who’d have something interesting to say:

• Kelly McCoy Williams
• Darren Herman
• Tim Sanders
• David Wright (seems like he’s not blogging in the off-season)
• Noah Brier
• Google Blogoscoped – Philipp Lenssen

It’s hard picking just five. Thanks, Jonathan, for the tag.