 | 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 eleven published 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 has been described as "subversive, but in a fun way....like the offspring of Bob Dylan and some Muppet." 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.
Spider-man has him on speed dial.
He is occasionally known to harass the federal board of elections because his absentee ballot for Roosevelt in 1912 has STILL not been counted, and may be the youngest person alive to have his picture taken with Roosevelt (whose ghost allegedly haunts a hotel that Adam occasionally includes on his ghost tours).
When asked what he wanted to do with his life in high school, he said that he wants to be a starving artist. The only way to screw that up was to be a rich artist. He hasn't screwed it up so far.
He is occasionally known to dress up as "Obi-Wan Quixote" or "Darth Longbottom."
His aliases include William Griffith, SJ Adams, and H.A. LaSoul.
He moved a rubber tree plant nearly 14 feet in 1987.
That same year, shot off a bottle rocket which, briefly, orbited the moon.
He 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.
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.
He once saw Ethel Merman naked.
He ran for Mayor of McDonaldland, but was beaten out by Richard McCheese. He lost his early lead by being unable to identify what Grimace was supposed to be in a public debate. (click here to see Adam's poem, "Howl (for Mayor McCheese)".
He'll tell anyone who will listen that despite Mr. McCheese's campaign promises, the Hamburglar is still at large. Richard McCheese was soft on crime.
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 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.
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 and a strand of Charles Dickens's hair.
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 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.
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 former Secretary of War 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.
He survived an attempt to be banned from Idaho.
His books have been translated into several languages, none of which he speaks well (though he can usually get the gist of things written in French).
He is the 18th great grandson of Geoffery Chaucer.
He wrote what is believed to be the first text book on how to be a 19th century grave robber.
He reached the peak of coolness on 9/1/1987. It's been downhill since then.
He has seen Bob Dylan in concert more than 40 times and can talk about Dylan for hours. Don't get him started.
He has a tattoo of Gonzo from Muppet Babies.
His books are available legally in five languages and illegally in a sixth.
