since I just did this for four friends ...

[gordonzola]

Post a (real) memory of me.
It can be anything you want.
Then post this to your journal.
See what people remember of you.

(go ahead and make something up if we've never met. just pay attention to your comrade LJers and don't make them all about cheese.)

Comments

[systemerror.livejournal.com]

Remember that time where you said "Velveta isn't that bad."

That was awesome.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

hey, it's what I grew up on. "Mom, can't we cut off the hard bits?"

[tarynhipp.livejournal.com]

i remember when you came to my house & we sat on my porch & talked about zines & lj & basically just hung out. it was nice & i'm not very exciting.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I remember how hot it was there and waking up in a puddle of sweat on your couch. it was sweet.

[surlygrrrl.livejournal.com]

i remember visiting you at work & cowering in fear as you came at me with a giant knife. with a lovely sliver of brie on it.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

have no fear, I'm a knife professional.

[lth.livejournal.com]

I remember your initial smirk when my two year old wanted *you* to carry her up the steep hill (not me!), and then your smile fading as the full weight of her twenty pounds hit you. You told her, "E, you're half a cheddar!"

I remember you going to get cookies and then being surprised you had such good taste in cookies.

I remember watching you talking with Grapesoda at the border.

[grapesoda.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing your voice and it not sounding like I'd imagined it would sound. I remember calling you "dude" and wishing I hadn't. I remember feeling like a bonehead for not meeting you guys in V.

[slanderous.livejournal.com]

I remember when the power went out on Valencia, and you brought candles and psuedo-tiki lawn lamps (I think) from Rainbow to Epicenter. Because goddammit, the punks weren't afraid of a power outage! And the kids, well, the kids need their Jawbreaker LPs! God, what year was that? 1994? 1995?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

heh. I'd forgotten that. my favorite times at epicenter were when everything went wrong. and that place was pitch black w/o electricity.

What about that time we did that thing?

[citizenx.livejournal.com]

I remember it like it was yesterday. Actually, better, since I don't remember yesterday all that well.

It was 1934, or maybe '33, and I was stationed in Nairobi. There was really nothing to do but swelter in the shade all day in khaki shorts and guzzle down gin and tonic. (I've always been a firm believer in quinine as a malaria treatment.) I was sitting there on the porch with my feet up, watching over a herd of zebras, when I suddenly noticed a lion that had simultaneously snuck up on me and the zebras. Stupidly, I had left my gun in the house, and I obviously didn't have time to go get it. I thought I was a goner, but just then some maniac came speeding by in a Jeep, scaring the zebras, scaring the lion, and nearly making me jump out of my skin.

That was Gordon, and I've never been so glad to be frightened near to death in my life.

Re: What about that time we did that thing?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I can admit now that I didn't see the lion. I was just still drunk from the night before and trying to drive a straight line. but I'm glad i could help you out, my friend.

[slanderous.livejournal.com]

Wait, I also remember when you met me in a bar on Avenue A to give me the Boris the Sprinkler 7" with the song about "violating [my] body" with "the girls from Supersnazz." You were so sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I didn't want to be shot as the messenger. and I'll say it again in case there are any Midwest defenders out there*, Fuck Rev Norb!


* the only people I know who've tried to defend him say "it's a Midwest thing, you wouldn't understand"

[arasay.livejournal.com]

We bought you tequila (which was supposed to be funny, because you were turning 21, and we weren't there yet). I think we might have broken the top off on the way to the party, but that might have been another gift of booze on another night. I did tend to fall down a lot. It turned out you despise tequila for very specific reasons. I can't remember if you drank some to be polite or not. But someone (hippie G, I'm thinking) ended up downing most/all of it anyway.

Wow, we've known each other for a very long time.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

heh. if I remember correctly, my band mate set you up on that one. I think when I saw that bottle I turned green.

[bklyndispatch.livejournal.com]

Sure I have plenty of memories of seeing you at parties when I lived in San Francisco, or at the anarchist bookfair, but what I remember most were those days in Paris when we guarded the rue de brie barricade together, and then went on the roof of the sorbonne to throw our latest manifesto down to the students gathered in the square below. Those were the days...

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

yes yes, My friend. I still take my desires for reality but now I wonder if it's just a chemical imbalance.

[amnesiascope.livejournal.com]

oh, man, so many good memories, so many good times. like when gordon got his foot caught in that illegal bear trap at the boundary waters and we took bets on how long it'd take before he gnawed his own leg off and came after us, angry and bleeding profusely. too bad i left my gom jabbar home that day.

or when gordon tenderly nursed back to health that kitten we found in an old tannery in milwaukee.

my favorite, though, is the time i punched him in the face at a hardcore show in fresno and then we made out in a dirty bathroom for hours and hours. oh, gordon. too bad i left my gom jabbar at home that day.

you do know I had to look up what 'gom jabber' meant

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

making out in dirty bathrooms has never been hotter than that time with you. but i can't believe you didn't mention that wonderful kitty stew after we fattened her up! you were right about feeding her lots of milk and chicken instead of fish. Tasty!

[vestalvixen.livejournal.com]

You covered in blankets recovering from the stomach flu while I judge your book collection.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

oh, I forgot how sick I had been. me and my weak stomach.

Thus far, in our briefish friendship:

[chitinous.livejournal.com]

I remember spraying you with bits of tobiko sushi at Hanabi as you related the story of the caveman necrophiliac Rainbow customer.

Re: Thus far, in our briefish friendship:

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I had thought you were classy until that moment. ;)

that was definitely a spit-out-your-food story

[trishylicious.livejournal.com]

< fake memory >
there was this time, during the summer when we were 19, we were having an impromptu picnic hanging out behind the 7-11 drinking slurpees spiked with vodka and eating french bread with cheese and tomato and basil.

After we were relatively ripped, we shoplifted a bottle of cheap wino wine and got kicked out of the liquor store. Then we went to the punk show and saw the Dead Milkmen open for Gang of Four. You told a lot of good stories while we waited in between bands and made fun of people. Afterwards we went to the diner with the bands and had coffee refills. Then I fell asleep on your lawn and you wrote funny things on my forehead in magic marker. Oh, those were the days.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

only a philly punk would link the Dead Milkmen with Gang of Four. ;) I remember the Electric love Muffin and Scram show better. remember, when we took on a whole gang of skinheads before fleeing, battered and bruised, to our friends waiting car? then driving straight at them, making them scatter in bald but stubbly fear?

[amarama.livejournal.com]

I remember you driving us to Ocean Beach and you going out of your way to take Ulloa.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

that street name just sounds so dirty.

[qthebrave.livejournal.com]

We were on the board of Whole Foods. I referred to you as my "team member" and you just lost it. You said, "fuck this! I'm going co-op!" and stormed out of the room. I still don't understand what you were so upset about. We all missed you at the company retreat in Jamaica.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

it's not "company retreat" it's "Tribal Gathering" in Whole foods speak.

p.s. this is not a joke.

[thetathrees.livejournal.com]

I remember hoping we would randomly run into each other in Milwaukee. . .not that I have any clue of what you look like. Heeee.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

awwwww. you should have stalked the Hilton.

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

The first time I saw you naked was in a hospital. You were beyond caring.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

you were at my birth?!?

[defenestr8r.livejournal.com]

What does it mean that all of my clear memories of you are in bars?
You would think that the ones of you at work would be clearer, but no. I guess I just get intoxicated by the smell of Reblochon and everything goes blurry.

I think my favorite was going to some bar on Upper Haight and being two of the less grotty looking people in there (yes, you and I, really). The Academy Awards were playing on TV which added a surreal black-tie element as well. I barely knew you then, but since then there have been several other blurry bar moments, most of which have served to prove that between the two of us we know 98% of San Francisco.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

yes, the night of the Jerry garcia humpfest, I remember it well.

[walktheplank.livejournal.com]

You witnessed one of my former co-workers sharing all the latest gossip at a mile-a-minute, while the people at the table behind literally threw their money at the waitress.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

that was pretty exciting! I thought there was gonna be a fight.

[teabee.livejournal.com]

but that's the only memory i have! when we met at the cheese conference.

also the time you sent me cheese buttons in the mail. that was good.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I just didn't want them to be all cheesey memories. i validate your memories!

[beowabbit]

I first met Gordon Zola in Paris in the summer of 1988 at the museum of his great grandfather Émile's house, where he was working as a tour guide.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

oh man, you blew my cover!

look! a cheese memory!

[slit.livejournal.com]

I remember the time we went horseback riding on the beach at dusk and talked about what we'd name our babies and the sweaters I planned to knit for our dogs. Then we walked hand-in-hand as the sun slipped below the horizon, listening to the distant call of the gulls, and as darkness fell you and I made tender love on the ocean shore while the waves kissed our ankles and reminded us of what was yet to come...

I always knew you had a poet's soul....

Re: look! a cheese memory!

[amarama.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, this RULES!

[obliviot.livejournal.com]

oh I got too many.... taking the heat for satan claus or you always cleaning us out at the monthly poker games.... want scott m's email?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

ah, good times. sure, send me scott's e-mail. he'll never write back.

[fattest.livejournal.com]

You stalked me as I walked through the cheese department.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

and i'll do it again. your one of the cheese heroes.

memory

[radcarrots.livejournal.com]

I remember when we had a poker night for a brief period many years ago and we had this strange but smart ritual of always eating small peanut butter cups from Safeway.

Re: memory

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Hey, I was there. Who are you?