PLEASE JUDGE ME: I often enjoy identifying my own character flaws, and I just stumbled on a major one. Here it is: As much as I'm into the NASCAR these days, as much as I don't mind wearing a NASCAR ballcap here and there, sporting my AC/DC-looking NASCAR t-shirt, and playing NASCAR Hot Wheels with my son in public areas...I still don't want to be pigeonholed. I want points for my eclecticism. Like Whitman, my ralling cry is something along the lines of "I contain multitudes," or whatever whoever said.

Back in the day, in high school and college, one of the ways I was able to advertise my catholic tastes was via my "wall stuff." My friggin' walls in my room were a testament to my good taste, to my wide-ranging interests and enthusiasms. Walk in my room and you were treated to a page ripped from INTERVIEW (some fashion photograph of the latest Edie Sedgwick-looking model), one of my poems writ large via photocopier, a ticket stub or backstage pass from some obscure rock show or another, a signed 8X10 glossy of Don Knotts or John Ritter, an old Polaroid of me in a high-school band, etc. It was all there, all of me, all my many moods and attitudes, etc. I remember distinctly an episode where I was trying to woo a girl -- this is way back in my Cincy days, when I had no money and no game but a ton of energy -- and she walked into my room and was like, "Wow, that's really incredible, all that stuff up on your walls." And my roommate, one of my oldest pals, just sort of rolled his eyes and chimed in with, "Yeah, you could call it that."

My younger brother Casey has, at times, isolated one of his own character challenges as not liking to be judged. I'm sorta the opposite: I'm dying to be judged, so long as I can kibbitz with the judges, glad-handle 'em, have some one-on-one interview time, turn on the old charm, etc. My worry is not that I'll be judged -- c'mon, lookie-lookie, I love it! -- but that I'll be misjudged. As the song says, "Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."

And I was reminded that this is an issue of mine just recently, when a new Blind Camel commenter (and the author of a captivating blog about marriage woes) opened her post here with the remark that she didn't care much for NASCAR (or something like that). She went on to say some hugely nice things about your humble blogger, supernice, but for the life of me I haven't been able to get over the fact that, for her, I may have been pigeonholed as "that NASCAR guy."

Funny, it just occurs to me that this blog...have I written this before...I'd swear I have...that this blog is just another example of my "wall stuff," tacked up on the ethers for all to behold.

No wonder my old pal never reads this. He's seen it all before.