50 Adam Selzer Fans Can't Be Wrong

Adam Selzer was born in Des Moines and now lives in Chicago, where he writes humorous books by day and researches history, ghost stories and naughty playground rhymes by night. After nine books, including the acclaimed Smart Aleck's Guide to American History and I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It, not to mention How To Get Suspended and Influence People( which people try to ban now and then), he is just famous enough to have a page on wikipedia.

He is pretty sure he's the subject of the song "You're So Vain."

OTHER LITTLE KNOWN AND PARTIALLY TRUE FACTS ABOUT ADAM:

Adam was raised by wild Iowan orangutans, a very rare form of ape.. They tried their hardest.

He was the inspiration for the movie "Bedtime for Bonzo," which starred Ronald Reagan and a chimpanzee.

He is a noted acrobat.

In 1986, as a contestant on Double Dare, he nearly choked to death trying to eat a four-foot-long piece of spaghetti. The episode never aired, and Nickelodeon still won't acknowledge that the event ever took place.

When asked what he wants to do with his life, he says that he wants to be a starving artist. The only way to screw that up is to be a rich artist.

He is occasionally known to dress up as "Obi-Wan Quixote."

He starred in a musical version of "Deliverance."

He moved a rubber tree plant nearly 14 feet in 1987.

He shot a bottle rocket which, briefly, orbited the moon.

He collects Atari games, and once bought a Donkey Kong arcade machine for twenty bucks at Goodwill.

He is the national "Ghostbuster Baseball" champion.

He saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by The Blob.

He once saw Ethel Merman naked.

He once danced about the palace with the King of Siam.

He ran for Mayor of McDonaldland, but was beaten out by Mr. McCheese. He lost his early lead by being unable to identify what Grimace was supposed to be in a public debate.
(see here to see Adam's poem, "Howl (for Mayor McCheese)"

He once hopped a freight train from Dribble, AL to Tinklescent, OK.

He once assited in the building of a monument to the Loch Ness Monster. The color of the paint used on the base was called "monument." This inspired him to become a paint-color-namer, a job he held for nearly thirty years.

He is often mistaken for Richard Dreyfuss.

He is the second cowboy from the left in the famous "Lost Thunderbird Photo."

He is known to be a "terrible dancer with two right feet."

As a small child, he discovered six dinosaur bones, two lost cities, and a busted tractor while digging in his sandbox.

He was a close friend and confidant of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Almost nobody beats him at tetherball.

He has actually been to North Dakota.

In 1992, he swam to Italy to help start the Dada movement. Things went well until it was discovered that Dada had been started decades ago.

In 1999, he gave police information which led to the capture and conviction of The Blair Witch.

As a college freshman, he was kicked out of his dormitory when someone told the RA that he was a communist.

At the age of 7, he was an up-and-coming gymnast.

He once became an indentured servant to several peasants who caught him on their property in 1547.

At 18, he and his friend Ryan Clark started Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which became America's Favorite Teenage Traditional Folk Duo.

In one hour, he beat two men with cities in their names at pool (Seattle Phil and Toledo Taylor), as well as a man named for a Canadian territory (Saskatchewan Sal).

In 1987, he was reported to have died of old age. It turned out that he had faked his own death..

As a hobby, he makes prank phone calls to the corporate offices of Wal Mart and The Gap.

He didn't completely fit it at Gothcon 2000 (at the unbearably creepy Quality Inn on Peachtree Street), but had a good time anyway.

He owns Jim Morrison's old doorbell.

Blank Tape investors used to send him a nice card every now and then.

He eats an awful lot of cereal, and has boxes of Count Chocula, BooBerry and Frankenberry on his wall.

On two occasions, he went trick-or-treating dressed as a building. Neither occasion happened to be Halloween.

His first band was called Supernatural Anarchy, a metal-type band in which he sang and played lead bass. His second band, Scapegoat, was, for lack of a better term, punk.

He recorded his first solo album, "At Night All Cats are Grey," on a two-figure budget.

He kicked Al Capone's butt at a game of Chutes and Ladders.

He invented the stove.

The mall in his hometown used to have a life-sized statue of a naked angel on a tricycle. Look for it in an upcoming book or two.

He once dug through Bob Dylan's garbage and retrieved a sculpture made from a bent-up coat hanger.

He was best known in middle school as "that dork who's really into Star Wars."

He is the last surviving person to have voted for Roosevelt in 1912 when he ran on the Bull Moose ticket, and is the only living person visible in what MAY be the only genuine picture of Roosevelt's ghost.

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He is a noted expert on "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

He outsmarted Uriah Heep.

He once wrote an entire book about the Chicago gallows that was deemed "too grisly" to be published under his own name.

He has moved to have Sunday night declared "Simpsons and Pasta Night" nationwide, and is often seen outside of Obama's Chicago headquarters with signs promoting this cause.

He was cussed out by George Washington, an honor he shares only with Harry Knox.

He is the elusive author of "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells," and his silhouette can be seeing for a split second in The Dark Knight.

At his wedding, the officiant was dressed sort of like Clone Wars-era Obi-Wan Kenobi, and said "By the power vested in me by the state of Illinois and the Jedi Council."

He has a cat named after Victorian illustrator George Cruikshank.