Here I am! My real name is Steve Higgins, but I am known here on Geocities, as well as on the DCComics Message Boards and eBay, as Vacuumboy9. Anyway, here are some pictures, some basic info about my life, and a few of my favorite things.
I was born and raised in Centralia, IL, a small town of about fifteen thou that boasts about being the birthplace of James Brady and having the winningest basketball team in the nation. Although it's sort of small, it's not that bad a place to grow up, and I would highly recommend the schools. There are great teachers throughout the system and it really is a culturally diverse learning environment.
I was a PBS junkie as a kid and at the ripe old age of two I learned how to read from watching the Letter People. My mom tells this great story about a test I took for my kindergarten entrance exam. They had this area in which I was supposed to draw a picture of a man, and on the side they had a list of details that the evaluator was supposed to look for in my drawing. I simply read down the list and included everything.
(Another weird thing that happened to me at age two: I got the hook of a coat hanger caught under my eyelid. Ever since then I've had eye problems ranging from astigmatism to myopia. The doctors claim it is unrelated--and I guess they would know. They ARE the ones with the medical degrees, after all--but sometimes I can't help but feel that something is fishy. I especially had that feeling about the culmination of my eye problems, the surgery I had for retinal detachment I had in '96. It normally doesn't happen to people until they're eighty or if they receive a blow to the head, neither of which happened in my case. And they waited 'til after the surgery to tell me about the one in six chance that I would go blind.)
The Letter People is probably what began my obsession with English. All throughout my life I was always reading (usually comic books) and writing stories of my own. Once I reached high school, I took all the English classes I could. I ended up with nineteen semesters worth of English credits by the time I graduated. They had to invent a new class for me, Adv. Journalism III. I decided that English would be a good career for me to pursue, so when SEMO offered me a free ride, I came here to Cape and enrolled in English education courses.
After going through the English education program for four years, and taking more psych than lit, I decided that maybe teaching wasn't for me. I wanted to get back into my major field, the area I love, English. So after I graduated in the spring of 1999 with my BSE, rather than getting my teaching certification, I decided to stay at SEMO and go to grad school for my MA in lit. While I was there I worked as a teaching assistant in the English dept., teaching two sections of freshman comp a semester as well as spending a little time as a tutor in the Writing Center during my first year. It was a decent job for decent pay and my classes are paid for, so who was I to complain?
Other things going on at about that time in my life included (as you might have noticed from some of the pics on these pages) a haircut that was pretty drastic. From about sixth grade on, I had shoulder length hair, a style apparently known as a "shortlong," although I had never heard it before my sophomore year of college. Well back in June of 1999 I got it all cut off. I'm really used to how my hair looks now, and I actually like it better short. But there are still a lot of people surprised to see me this way, because for as long as they've known me, it's been long. I also wrote movie reviews for our weekly college newspaper, the Capaha Arrow for a while, winning an award (3rd place) for my reviews in April of 2001!
Also, as long as most people had known me, I'd been jumping between relationships. Until college I had never dated anyone for more than two months. But then I started seeing the same girl for quite some time and we finally ended up getting married on June 9th of 2001! Her name is Sarah and she really is the greatest aspect of my life right now.
The plan had been that, when she graduated with her Bachelor's and me with my Master's in May of 2001, we would go on to another school (possibly Florida State or Boston U.) so she could continue her education in marine biology and so I could go to film school. But those plans have been placed aside for a while because Sarah got too burnt out to continue (and because the few film schools I applied to in time rejected me). Instead I've got a job now teaching at Olney Central College, a community college in Olney, IL. It's a pretty nice job (good hours, good pay, somewhat rewarding, nice people) though the town is kind of small (only nine thousand and no major highways). Sarah's got a job here working in a day care with the four and five year olds, but she's not liking it too much. Because kids are germ-infested constantly, she was sick from December of 2001 until about April of 2002, but she seems to have built up her immunity now. I still eventually want to write, either novels and scripts or movie reviews. But as long as Sarah's with me I'll be doing fine. = )
People are always making fun of me becuase I'm big on lists. I constantly make "to do" lists, lists of things I need to pack and take home, lists of movies I want to see, and so on. So here for your viewing pleasure are some lists of my favorite things.
(Disclaimer: These lists are by no means definitive insights into my psyche. I reserve the right to change these lists at the drop of a hat. Items may be listed randomly or in order of preference, whichever suits my fancy at the time. Patent pending.)
Favorite movies: The Fisher King, Heavenly Creatures (check out this cool collage), The Godfather, The Truman Show, Dark City, Pleasantville, Fargo, The Ice Storm, Swingers, Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, Almost Famous, Memento, and of course, Shakma (which I now OWN a copy of!).
Favorite literature: Breakfast of Champions, Prayer for Owen Meany, Kitchen (by Banana Yoshimoto), Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsen, anything by Steinbeck or Raymond Carver or Elmore Leonard, The Last Picture Show, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Mother Night, Bright Lights Big City, most of Stephen King (but esp. The Green Mile), Stranger in a Strange Land, and to a lesser extent Gatsby, Catch-22, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Favorite comics: Starman (here's a picture), Preacher, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Sandman Mystery Theater, 300, Maus, Stuck Rubber Baby, Batman: The Long Halloween, Planetary, The Flash, Doom Patrol, The Authority, and The Crow.
Favorite music: Radiohead--OK Computer, Eels--Electro-shock Blues, The Beatles--Abbey Road, Ben Folds Five--Whatever and Ever Amen, Counting Crows--August and Everything After, Morphine--Yes, REM--Automatic for the People, Sarah McLachlan--Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, Toad the Wet Sprocket--Fear, and Nirvana--Nevermind.
(alternates: Squirrel Nut Zippers, Refreshments, Liz Phair, Weezer, the Rentals, the Sundays, the Suede Chain, that dog, Velocity Girl, Rufus Wainwright, Keb Mo, the Mysteries of Life, Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise, Jeff Buckley, Fiona Apple, Elvis Costello, Elliott Smith, Travis, David Gray and Built to Spill.)
Favorite TV shows: Law and Order (getting more into Criminal Intent lately though I like Angie Harmon's replacement on the series proper), X-Files, ER, Star Trek: DS9, Enterprise, Dr. Who, the Simpsons (quality has been waning for a while now though), Dr. Katz, Home Movies, Blue's Clues (bye Steve!), SportsNight (thank god for Comedy Central reruns!), Six Feet Under, and NYPD Blue.
Favorite foods: pizza (I love pepperoni and green peppers, but will eat any kind if it's from Pizza Man!) sweet and sour chicken (from China Palace), Long John Silver's, McDonalds hamburgers and fries (and McRibs, when available), club sandwich, grilled chicken breast, potato skins, chicken ramen, chicken Rice-a-Roni, Tuna Helper, brown sugar and cinammon Pop-Tarts, Cap'n Crunch, Twizzlers, vanilla wafers, and Nutter Butters.
Least favorite restaurants: Taco Bell and Wendy's.
Here I am in my new office in Olney. I've got all kinds of stuff on the walls, from the Starman poster I made by ripping the covers off some issues and taping them together (which you might remember from my old office) to all the Batman: The Long Halloween posters. (This photos a little old, which is why you can see a Beatles mini-calendar there, which was for 2001. I have a big Weezer calendar now.) I also have a ton of paintings on the wall that were left by my predecessor; I'm slowly phasing them out. On the desk I have my figures of the Golden Age Sandman and both Starman figures. There's also the oversized Pez dispenser my folks got me for my most recent birthday, a chess set my parents got me from Mexico, and most importantly a picture of Sarah and me. The shelves are crammed full of books ranging from Douglas Adams to Banana Yoshimoto, but they're also decorated with my Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes, and Justice League PVC sets and the glass head Thomas and Melissa got us for our wedding (which my students have named Bunbury--It's an Oscar Wilde reference)!
If you want to see more pictures of me, then you can go to my section of Sarah's website.
Finally, here's a link to my resume, should anyone want to check it out.
I was born and raised in Centralia, IL, a small town of about fifteen thou that boasts about being the birthplace of James Brady and having the winningest basketball team in the nation. Although it's sort of small, it's not that bad a place to grow up, and I would highly recommend the schools. There are great teachers throughout the system and it really is a culturally diverse learning environment.
(Another weird thing that happened to me at age two: I got the hook of a coat hanger caught under my eyelid. Ever since then I've had eye problems ranging from astigmatism to myopia. The doctors claim it is unrelated--and I guess they would know. They ARE the ones with the medical degrees, after all--but sometimes I can't help but feel that something is fishy. I especially had that feeling about the culmination of my eye problems, the surgery I had for retinal detachment I had in '96. It normally doesn't happen to people until they're eighty or if they receive a blow to the head, neither of which happened in my case. And they waited 'til after the surgery to tell me about the one in six chance that I would go blind.)
After going through the English education program for four years, and taking more psych than lit, I decided that maybe teaching wasn't for me. I wanted to get back into my major field, the area I love, English. So after I graduated in the spring of 1999 with my BSE, rather than getting my teaching certification, I decided to stay at SEMO and go to grad school for my MA in lit. While I was there I worked as a teaching assistant in the English dept., teaching two sections of freshman comp a semester as well as spending a little time as a tutor in the Writing Center during my first year. It was a decent job for decent pay and my classes are paid for, so who was I to complain?
The plan had been that, when she graduated with her Bachelor's and me with my Master's in May of 2001, we would go on to another school (possibly Florida State or Boston U.) so she could continue her education in marine biology and so I could go to film school. But those plans have been placed aside for a while because Sarah got too burnt out to continue (and because the few film schools I applied to in time rejected me). Instead I've got a job now teaching at Olney Central College, a community college in Olney, IL. It's a pretty nice job (good hours, good pay, somewhat rewarding, nice people) though the town is kind of small (only nine thousand and no major highways). Sarah's got a job here working in a day care with the four and five year olds, but she's not liking it too much. Because kids are germ-infested constantly, she was sick from December of 2001 until about April of 2002, but she seems to have built up her immunity now. I still eventually want to write, either novels and scripts or movie reviews. But as long as Sarah's with me I'll be doing fine. = )
Favorite foods: pizza (I love pepperoni and green peppers, but will eat any kind if it's from Pizza Man!) sweet and sour chicken (from China Palace), Long John Silver's, McDonalds hamburgers and fries (and McRibs, when available), club sandwich, grilled chicken breast, potato skins, chicken ramen, chicken Rice-a-Roni, Tuna Helper, brown sugar and cinammon Pop-Tarts, Cap'n Crunch, Twizzlers, vanilla wafers, and Nutter Butters.