posted 2007/08/24 at 15:39
... of Saturday Night Live alum Charles Rocket, were it not for his suicide nearly two years ago. For people who were alive during his SNL tenure, he may perhaps be better known for blurting out the f-word live on the show long before Norm MacDonald ever did, and at a time when the general tone of society made the utterance much more shocking than MacDonald's. For me, however, I will always remember Rocket as Ned Grossberg, the evil network boss on Max Headroom. Rocket's portrayal of evil was so convincing that even to this day the character still shows up sometimes in my nightmares. If you have never checked out Max Headroom, I highly encourage you to do so, as the show was so eerily precient that I probably wouldn't have believed the show was produced when it was if I hadn't watched it when it first aired. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What were the circumstances surrounding your last all-nighter?
My last all-nighter was probably an "accidental" one where I actually tried going to sleep but I wound up just laying in bed all night without actually sleeping. This happens sometimes when I've got a lot on my mind and I can't get my brain to shut off, or, less frequently (especially since I've managed to stick to my diet for so long here), when I've just put too much sugar in my body for it to process properly. The last deliberate all-nighter I pulled was probably back late last year when I was finishing my MA paper off.
2. What’s your favorite stay-awake-and-alert food or drink?
When I'm dieting, it's pretty much just green tea with Splenda, or, if I really need it, a sugar free Red Bull. If I'm not dieting then pretty much anything goes, but my favourite drink would have to be a drink that our local coffeehouse chain does which is basically a Frappuccino with smoothie powder; not only is it super-charged with sugar and caffeine and a little "good stuff" from the smoothie powder, but the combination of chocolate, coffee, and malt powder in the smoothie powder is absolutely delicious.
3. What are you most likely to be doing when you’re up in the late, late hours of the night?
Until recently I tended to do my best creative work in the wee small hours of the morning, but these days I tend to be too tired by then, so if I am up really late, I'm usually trying to squeeze in a bit of video gaming or something along those lines.
4. In what way does your personality change when you are sleep-deprived?
Well, my wit tends to get sharpened, and sometimes I have some creative brainbursts, but on the whole the main thing that happens when I get really sleep-deprived is that I tend to say stuff without thinking about it as much as I should, and getting in trouble for it later. This is why, as much as sleep deprivation can sometimes help me in some aspects, I try to avoid it whenever possible.
5. If you get home extremely tired and extremely hungry, which need are you most likely to satisfy first?
If I'm at extremes in both those areas, then I pretty much have to eat something, because if I'm really hungry then I sleep very poorly. Of course, once I eat something then I have to wait a while for it to digest before my body will go back to sleep, so that's not a good situation for me to be in no matter what.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon