The Never Ending Pool

50 Things You Might Not Know About Obama

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball

• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili

• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father

• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed

• He has read every Harry Potter book

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream

• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia

• He can speak Spanish

• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead

• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't

• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia

• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs

• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name

• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancι, but left when a stripper arrived

• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy

• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books

• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker

• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician

• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine

• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)

• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal

• His house in Chicago has four fire places

• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop

• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)

• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire

• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers

• He was nicknamed "Bear" by his late grandmother

• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds

• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso

• His speciality as a cook is chilli

• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins"

• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life

• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government

too bad about the not drinking beer very often - he would be an interesting conversation down at the watering hole

i knew 48 of these

I knew about half, which pleases me, because most of this list is pretty trivial. These two make me smile:

QUOTE:

As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine

YouTube - Barack Obama "I inhaled frequently" "That was the point" At the 1:00 mark

QUOTE:

He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside

brothers should pull up their pants.

I'll believe he's a Dylan fan when he selects his entertainment for the Inaugural Galas.

...maybe he's the guy to help change the marijuana laws in this country....(State's choice; at least)

mcapas wrote:

QUOTE:
...maybe he's the guy to help change the marijuana laws in this country....(State's choice; at least)

I can see that happen, although I am of the opinion that the backyard growers will suffer for it, and the Mexican Mafia will benefit with a tax and tariff free product, business as usual.

A few more:

• He hasn't mastered the trick to opening an aspirin bottle; when Michelle isn't around to do it for him, he'll resort to prying the lid off with a knife

• He still holds the Hawaiian schoolboy record for macadamia nut spitting--77 feet

• Until he had an operation at age 14, his index fingers were twice the normal length; although a handicap in playing basketball, this made him very adept at getting cocktail olives out of the jar

• After high school, he considered returning to Indonesia for a summer apprenticeship program on board a Malay pirate ship, but his grades weren't good enough

• He can play the saxophone better than Bill Clinton, but doesn't like to brag

• Two of his former girlfriends now have successful dog-grooming businesses

• He still uses the Space Pen that his mother gave him as a stocking stuffer in 1979

• He always puts the toilet seat back down