I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.

I always told my students that if they were on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and they got one phone call, they would be fools not to give me a ring.

I know the names of all the members of Duran Duran, The Rolling Stones, Monsters of Folk, and Mötley Crüe. I can explain the difference between Saussure's signifier and signified. I can detail the chain of command on the USS Enterprise. I know most of the important rules for Magic the Gathering and can recite the short history of console gaming systems. I know the names of all the actors who played James Bond, and I can list all the films on which Johnny Depp and Tim Burton have collaborated. I can give a brief plot summary of all of Charles Dickens' and JK Rowling's novels and can fake it enough to do the same for Jane Austen. I know the lyrics to most Beatles and Michael Jackson songs. I can recite far too many Monty Python scripts. I can read enough French, Italian and Latin to provide a decent translation, and enough Russian to be able to say "hmmm, that verb is in the future tense." And I'm savvy enough to answer "Hank Aaron" for all baseball questions and "Wayne Gretsky" for hockey ones.

But there are plenty of things about which I don't know jack shit. I mean, I know at one point a teacher tried to tell me how to find the volume of a cylinder. Something area something something pi something something cubed. Right? And I never took chemistry or physics, and although I'm fairly confident the periodic table starts with H and contains O and C (wait, does it contain C?), I really couldn't tell you much about science other than to echo They Might Be Giants' assertion that "Science is Real!" My eyes sorta glaze over when my dad tries to explain "hedge funds" to me. And if you ask me to explain how my car/the microwave/my iPhone/the Stock Market works, I'd be hard-pressed to not use the phrase "it's fucking magic."

Actually, that's not true -- the fucking magic is that I can convince you that I really do know WTF I am talking about. So perhaps if my former students neglect to cash in on my knowledge for Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, I should try my luck at Hollywood Squares.

"I'll take Audrey, for the win."