I am a winner.

No, I mean literally; I win shit. Like, on the radio, in magazine mail-us-a-postcard drawings, all that kind of stuff. Especially on the radio: I've won tickets to see at least four different shows by being the correct caller to KPCC here in LA and Mix98.5 in Boston. Once, after I had been living in LA for a while already, I got a call from Mix that I had won something in a random drawing and I didn't even live in Boston anymore! It was awesome.

In fact, I have seen three shows so far at UCLA's lovely Royce Hall, and for none of them did I pay for a ticket: for two of them I won the tix on KPCC and for the third, my date had won the tix on K-Mozart.

I won a Ben Folds DVD by calling in to the fabulous UCLA radio show "Automatic Stapler". I was caller number one. And two. And three.

Here's the best one: about a month ago, I was at a fundraising event for which Jack FM was a sponsor. They were there with their "Bus-stache" (oh boy) playing host and playing music, and they had a little booth set up too. At one point I wandered over to the booth and overheard the guy there asking the crowd a random question about the station, so I yelled out the answer... and won a Steve Miller double-CD-and-DVD set. I win shit on the radio when it's not even on the radio!

The moral is: call. send the postcard. I think I win because everyone thinks that no one ever wins, so they don't try. Put the damn number in your cellphone and keep hitting Send while you drive.

Or rather, don't, so I can keep winning.