Profile
I’m 51 years old, as of 2009. I can’t believe it. I live in Southern California. I like to play tennis and to run, and I like reading foreign policy articles and books. I occasionally read a novel.
I like Raymond Chandler novels from the 1940’s. James Joyce’s Dubliners is a favorite book, but I don’t care for his Ulysses, which I find to be close to gibberish. I used to play a lot of golf with my father as I was growing up.
My actual first name really is Tony, but “Downing” is a nom de blog. I lived in Italy for a year and in Wyoming for a year and a half, and I have good memories of both those places now. I used to be very leftist in my politics, but for about the last 20 years or so I have been moving steadily to the right, so that I would now describe myself as conservative. I like Commentary magazine and The Weekly Standard. Favorite authors now are Thomas Sowell, Ann Coulter, Shelby Steele, Norman Podhoretz, and Victor Davis Hanson.
I like to follow professional sports, but I only get really involved during the playoffs or the big tournaments. As a teenager, I was a walking encyclopedia of stats about the Lakers, Dodgers, and Rams. I like music, but not as much as I used to. I used to like all different kinds of Rock, from Punk to mainstream to Metal, anything that was fast and not boring. I also like music from the first half of the eighteenth century.
I have lots of siblings; I’m the youngest one. Traveling and being on the road is good.
I grew up in Southern California, and went to a parochial Catholic school through the fifth grade, then public school. I always hated school with a passion, but I always loved to read sports books as a kid. As a preteen, I would read books with weighty titles like, “The Comeback Guy” (not to be confused with“The Family Guy“), “The Mighty Men of Baseball,” or “The Sandy Koufax Story.”
Tony Downing
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1.
tonydowning | November 1, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Not a problem, raincoaster. You do great work in the forums. I see your name there constantly, and I appreciate the time you put in helping out the newbies like me. I visited your website and was very impressed– your level of expertise is so beyond me it seems unattainable, but I’ll keep on truckin’. Thanks again for your time and efforts in the forums.
2.
patricksperry | November 3, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Chuckles, I started out in Cali, Oceanside to be precise, moved to Colorado, and now am in Wyoming.
Thanks for the commentary over at CLO.
3.
tonydowning | November 5, 2008 at 2:24 pm
That’s a kick that you’re in Wyoming. I was living in Uinta County, in Lyman. Great place: quiet, no crime, good people, small scale to everything that makes life so much easier than here in Los Angeles County. The bureaucracy here is so bloated that it’s really a trial to do things such as get a driver’s license or car registration. In WY, I used to love to just drive slowly around on top of the mesas, looking for the pronghorn to watch them run. And those guys do run!
4.
patricksperry | November 7, 2008 at 9:35 am
Yes, it sure is fun doing that. I’ve seen so many Pronghorn, deer, wild turkey and pheasants since I moved here! It will be two years before I can hunt though because of residency requirements. In the mean time though, I am having a ball, other than looking for work.