(This post is going to be a rambling tribute to the show What It’s Worth, which I have recently become obsessed with.  I don’t have cable, so I’m trying to catch up on back episodes via the Web.)

For those of you who didn’t watch the old (but still great) What It’s Worth interview with Bob Moylan, you missed out on the “personal questions” component of the interview (around the 26.45 mark).

Moylan gave what I consider to be the official City of Worcester answer to “what is your favorite type of music”: “I like all kinds of music…except for rap.”  (Isn’t that an exact quote from Tim Murray?)

I actually never understand that answer.  So, you’d sit around for half an hour of death metal, but one Grandmaster Flash song is unacceptable? 

If someone asked me, I wonder what I’d say.  I tend to listen to a mix of late 70s/early 80s punk, traditional Greek, Romanian, and Irish music, and club music, with some glam rock thrown in.  (Can I also admit an embarrassing weakness for Luther Vandross?)  Perhaps “I like all kinds of music…except Dave Matthews Band?”

I also thought the following Moylan favorites were interesting…
Favorite movie: Scent of a Woman
Favorite food: Italian food
Favorite actor: DeNiro
Favorite book: The Godfather

…because my husband and I were watching the last City Council meeting, and he took one look at Moylan and said, “He doesn’t look very Irish.” 

When Moylan was asked who his favorite actress is, it took him a few seconds, but he decided on Hilary Swank. 

Tommy Colletta’s response: “Usually, most men come on, if they’re married, they usually say Meryl Streep.  … It’s a safe one.  They don’t want to say anyone too sexy or too beautiful because that means they’re  killing to get ’em.”

If my husband said Meryl Streep, I’d know for a fact that he was lying, because neither of us can deal with her for longer than five minutes.  A couple of months ago, I was watching The French Lieutenant’s Woman and he had to leave the room; after about an hour of the movie, I realized that I don’t much like either Streep or Jeremy Irons (except when he’s playing complete psychopaths, because I imagine that in real life he’s a bit like Dead Ringers), and stopped watching.

(That said, Meryl Streep is going to play Rose Tirella in the movie of my life.)

My husband used to watch Providence, and his reason was that “Melina Kanakaredes reminds me of you.”  So, gentlemen, the next time you express a fondness for an actress younger than 55, just say, “It’s because she reminds me of my significant other.” 

(This technique was perfected in the interview with Joe Casello.  Casello’s favorite actress?  Angelina Jolie, “because my wife looks like her.”  Even better?  He referred to her as “Angela” Jolie.  I’m telling you, it works every time.)

Colletta was on a roll when discussing being in a rut with Helen Beaumont (about the 23:45 mark):

Bally’s Gym…I go there about three, four times a week.  Now, all the lockers all the same.  There’s not a designated locker.  You’re not locker 163. … I go to one because it’s closer to the shower.  So when I’m done, I go to the shower.  And when it isn’t there, I could care less, I’ll go to any one, there’s like 300 of them.  But you know something?  If I told you how many times people have come over and there’s 75, 80 open lockers with no one in ’em, and they’ll squeeze into the one right next to you, you got a towel, your sneakers are there, and the guy’s going, “Excuse me,” and he’s squeezing in.  They’ve gotta go to that locker.  They’re squeezing people, and I goes, “There’s SEVENTY-FIVE OTHER LOCKERS!”  That’s how people can get set in their ways. … And I’ve seen this not once or twice, I mean hundreds of times.  Guys come in and they go, “Excuse me,” and they’re going by, and there’s like guys going, “What’s with this guy?”  He’s gotta get to that locker. 

It isn’t like one locker has champagne in it, you know, and a velvet floor, they’re all exactly the same.  They all smell dirty, they all look dirty, and they have three hooks.  But the guys are fighting.  That’s how we can get stuck in a rut.  This guy wants that one locker.  He’s so afraid of change in his life, to do something outside of the box, that he can’t actually exercize unless he’s at that locker 231.

The best thing Tommy Colletta has ever said, though, was in that Casello interview, around the 22:53 mark: “You know that cube they got all around the lights of Worcester? … That cube couldn’t get me to do anything.  If you told me I could have a date with Angelina Jolie, that cube wouldn’t do it.”

Someone give this man a newspaper!