Samuel Taylor Rothschiller

Sometimes you just need a pseudonym for those crazy things you write or do, and STR served that function for me. A friend invited me to a local community access station talk show he was running; actually, it was just a thinly-disguised excuse for improv comedy. So I found myself in the small studio, taking off my shoes, and adopting the name as my own. Inspired by the visit, I decided to flesh out the information on this obscure but “noted philosopher and free-thinker.”

In a biographical profile, I had this to say about him:

“Samuel Taylor Rothschiller eschewed what he called “Biological Data” and never disclosed his age, though he looked about 30 when I met him in 1978. He did tell me that he was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, but called it “Quotidia” as both an insult and a way to hide its true location. From our conversations I managed to discover that he had grown up in a devout Roman Catholic family with two brothers and two sisters, himself the youngest of the group. Early on, he was a true believer, until thirteen years of Catholic grade and high school changed his mind. He then became a profoundly cynical agnostic, after a brief flirtation with Buddhism which he later called “too cloudy and too vegetarian.” The prospect of college seemed a good idea, at least at first, but he couldn’t decide on a major. Then he discovered that he could pay a one-time fee and get a degree without having to study anything. He did so, being granted both a B.S. in Psychology and a license to practice psychotherapy from a mail-order house in Berkeley, California.”

You can read the rest of the bio here.

I then attributed to him a series of written works in various genres, showing my penchant for crazy titles. (Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I very much enjoy a good/ridiculous band name.) I also produced a series of poems with titles such as “Ode to a Squashed Bug,” as well as some epigrams and quotations that sound either very Zen-like or one-linerish.

Apparently there are no purported likenesses of STR, though I imagine if I created one, he would look much like a mirror image of me. Without shoes.

Below are the STR links in one place: