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You've been given a robot that can be trained to perform one standardized task perfectly, as often as necessary. What do you train it to do?
Zack Wentz: Take over the position of some useless overpaid CEO and write me checks from his salary.
You are seriously ill. There are two vaccines that will save your life, but both have side effects: one will permanently eliminate your sense of taste, and the other will permanently eliminate all feeling in your genitals. Which vaccine would you choose?
Zack Wentz: What I'm looking at usually gets me off more than how it rubs me. If I couldn't enjoy the flavor of a fresh batch of Macaroni and Cheese, though... I would surely lose all touch with reality. Ahem... Let's go for vaccine #2.
Somehow you've gotten into a fight with someone twice your size. Where do you aim the first punch?
Zack Wentz: My own face, and then I would just go crazy on my ass. See if that stops them from fucking with me. If not, I guess we'd both just totally beat the shit out of me and would sort of be on the same side and kind of dude-bond that way, right?
The "fast-forward" and "skip" buttons on all your stereo equipment are broken, and you can't afford to repair them right now. For the time being, you can only listen to albums from beginning to end, without skipping any songs. What albums in your collection are still listenable?
Zack Wentz: Most all of them. I like to listen to the same CD on repeat for hours, sometimes days, on end. Believe it or not, Skinny Puppy's Too Dark Park just got a good week. Sign of the times, eh?
If given the perfect opportunity to be unjust, would a just person succumb to it?
Zack Wentz: This presupposes the reality of two ideal polarized extremes I don't believe exist in a "human" world. People are inherently unjust. To live is unjust. All is ultimately just from a vantage point some can glimpse towards in brief moments of illumination, but this is well beyond what any one of us can maintain a constant awareness of in daily life. Living is the perfect opportunity to be unjust and we succumb; dying, equally so. Aside from that, the question has some logical and semantic problems. If a person is "just" and succumbs to the opportunity to "be unjust", they are no longer "just". Say a person is "green" and has the opportunity to "be purple". Is the person still "green" if they succumb to being "purple"? It all depends on a pretty slippery definition of the word "just". I like to think of Judge Wapner... Didn't he seem like a pretty smart guy?
You've been asked to write the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on yourself. What does it say?
Zack Wentz: Zachary Sagle Wentz: Born on March 7th of 1974, Mr. Wentz occupied himself with a wide variety of artistic and political activities throughout all of his life. He was widely loved and appreciated, despite violent debates about the signifigance and meaning of his work, and was honored by having an old haunted toolshed named after him in Eugene, Oregon.
You've somehow been given the chance to spend the day with a character (not an actor) from any film or television program. Who do you choose?
Zack Wentz: Hmmmmmm... Either Fritz the Cat or Daisy Duke. Hard to decide, huh?
If you could instantly learn to play one instrument that you don't currently play, what would it be?
Zack Wentz: Piano. I could be the piano man.
The people of the town where you were born want to name a building after you. They've asked you to choose the sort of building that best matches your personality. What kind of building do you choose?
Zack Wentz: A small, abandoned, rotting shack people used to keep rusty old tools in that is said to be haunted by the ghost of a man who hanged himself in there many years ago. Although a clean toilet facility in a nice park would be okay, too.
What month of the year do you least anticipate? Why?
Zack Wentz: Any of them. I'm always saying, "What! It's ( ) already?" I also have to recite them all, kind of like the alphabet, to remember which one comes before and after which.
What animal would you most like to house in your back yard, if you could?
Zack Wentz: I wouldn't want to subject any animal to my back yard, although we feed some stray cats. Maybe a leopard would be nice, if it didn't bother the stray cats and it didn't mind it back there. Always wanted a "Beware of the Leopard!" sign...
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Zack Wentz: A ninja. Had to lower my standards a bit.
If you could buy any rare collection in the world, which collection would you choose? (This doesn't have to be a famous collection...but it can be.)
Zack Wentz: The former Soviet Union's collection of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. It'd be nice to know where they were and I think you all can trust me.
What's the best advice you've ever received? Who gave it to you?
Zack Wentz: My father on whether or not to end one's life: "Well, you get the alternative inevitably..." Hard to argue with that. Must run through my head a dozen times a day.
You've been invited to perform as the middle act in a three-act bill. You get to choose the other two artists. Who opens for you, and who follows you?
Zack Wentz: The Peppermints should open because many more people should see them, and the Strokes can play last. I figure the Strokes will draw big and we won't have to feel bad about leaving early if they can't live up to their überhype.
You've been placed in the Witness Protection Program, and must change your name. You're able to pick your new name. What do you call yourself?
Zack Wentz: John Smith. Sounds unassuming enough.
What lesson should the world learn from the failure of all those dotcom businesses?
Zack Wentz: Don't start another dotcom business, world.
What steps should airlines take to help avoid a repeat of the September 11th tragedy?
Zack Wentz: This one has been pretty well covered in the past few weeks. As many of the proposed steps as possible.
What is the greatest invention of the last ten years?
Zack Wentz: Those little photo machines at the mall that pump out tiny stickers of you and your friends. Aren't those cute?
Thanks to a breakthrough in technology, you can have a perfect memory-recording of one event in your life. Everything is included -- taste, smell, sound, vision and feeling; it basically means that you can relive the event over and over again. What event would you want to relive?
Zack Wentz: My birth. It might make dying easier. Besides, I could find out if the doctor really smacked me in the ass like they all supposedly did back in those days.
What toy from your childhood would you most like to track down now?
Zack Wentz: I used to take most of my G.I. Joe vehicles apart and glue the pieces of different ones together and paint them to these make funky custom hybrids. Wonder what happened to some of those things... They had kind of a cool Road Warrior look to them.
Assuming that money, legality, etc. is no object, what is your intoxicant of choice?
Zack Wentz: Nothing exotic, just good, clean vodka. If money wasn't an object I'd like to be able to pick up a new liver, stomach and nervous system at some point.
Which is more dangerous in the wrong hands -- guns or knowledge?
Zack Wentz: Guns, although if the people didn't know how to make them work...
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Every once in a while, a band answers the Pointless Questions so entertainingly that we want to go out and buy all their stuff. Kill Me Tomorrow did this. If you're considering your own large-scale KMT purchase, we suggest that you read this bit of info, borrowed from Holiday Matinee's Kill Me Tomorrow press materials:
On their latest release, Kill Me Tomorrow relies heavily on interdependant guitar/vocal arrangements, hypnotic effects, spare, analog electronics, dense, passionately-delivered lyrics and spastic, tom-heavy drumming applied to smart, psychedelic, nervy, new-wave/post-punk-pop songs. Recent comparisons have been made to bands as diverse as Joy Division, Suicide, Wire, The Fall, Neu!, Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground, Silver Apples, Can and Pere Ubu. All bystanders agree that nobody is currently producing anything that sounds quite like Kill Me Tomorrow nor delivered with their uniquely personable, quirky charm.
-- George Zahora
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