Literature, Theology, Spiritual Exploration, Music, tamales, Bloody Marys, and Tuna Melts.
I'd like to meet:
Bob Dylan,Willie Nelson,Jim Wallis,Harper Lee,the Dalai Lama,Robert Duvall,Billy Joe Shaver,Eddie Vedder,Kurt Vonnegut,plus some dead heroes I'd love to sip Tito's with and discuss Russian Lit...the Imperialists Tolstoy and Dostoevsky come to mind, as do the Soviets Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn. Would have like to chop wood with Thoreau, make salt with Gandhi, or discuss theology and poetry with Thomas Merton and Robert Lax. Other dead notables I'd like to share a glass with: St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas a Kempis, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, George Harrison, Jim Henson, Stanley Kubrick, Buddy Holly, John Steinbeck...there's more, but time and space are, alas, limited.
Create your own Friend Quiz here
Music:
Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Clash, Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros, Nathan Hamilton, The Texas Sapphires, Foscoe Jones, Iron and Wine, Slaid Cleaves, Hundred Year Flood, Jesse Dayton, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver, Waylon Jennings, Shooter Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Big John Mills and the Texas Road Dawgs (and to save time, every other band featuring Sterling Finlay on bass), James McMurtry, John Mellencamp, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Carter Family, Flatt and Scruggs, Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Whiskytown, Ryan Adams, The White Stripes, Outkast, The Roots, Tupac, Snoop, Dre, Nappy Roots, Pearl Jam, , Morphine, Ben Harper, G-Love, Jack Johnson, Jeff Buckley, Joseph Arthur, Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Sublime, Lovage, Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Nick Drake, King Crimson, Green Day, Black Crowes, Led Zep, Beechwood Sparks, Radiohead, Grateful Dead, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens, Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, Wilco, Mazzy Star, Sonny and Brownie, Lightnin' Hopkins, Buddy Holly, Flatlanders, Miles Davis, Charlie "Bird" Parker, John Coltrane, Gram Parsons, Mark Knopfler, Emmylou Harris, Dire Straits, SRV, BB King, Johnny Winter, Hound Dog Taylor, Lyle Lovett, Fugees, Wyclef, Lauryn Hill, Leon Russell, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nicolo Paganini, lovely lovely Ludwig Van, and so many more I'd get Carpal Tunnel just typing them out!
Movies:
Most anything directed by Akira Kurasawa, the Coen Bros., Terry Gilliam, or Terrance Mallick. Also old Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen. Darren Aronofsky's pretty cool too. Documentaries about artists, musicians, writers, and historical figures...recently the Townes Van Zandt doc Be here to Love Me and the Bukowski doc Born Into This have rocked my world, as has The Source about the Beat Writers and Herzog's Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Some foreign films, if they meet my standards of "really good" (Life is Beautiful, Downfall, Dreams, He Loves Me-He Loves Me Not, etc.)
Television:
When I was your age, television was called books...
Books:
A selection of the authors & poets I'd recommend: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, CS Lewis, Robert Frost, Wilfred Owen, Mikhial Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Bukowski, Graham Greene, JRR Tolkien, Toni Morrison, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Yann Martel, Jerzy Kosinski, Cormac McCarthy, Fernando Pessoa, Alan Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Charles Frazier, Tim O'Brien, Mark Twain, Kevin Baker, Saul Bellow, Pat Barker, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Bill Shakespeare, Jeff Chaucer, plus the autobiographies of Cash, Waylon, Merle Haggard, and Billy Joe Shaver, The Beatles Anthology, Henri Troyat's bio of Tolstoy, and most any history by Stephen E. Ambrose or Martin Gilbert; literary criticism by Leslie Fielder (Love and Death in the American Novel, etc.) and Alfred Kazin, drama from Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Willimas, Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee, and graphic novels like Preacher and MAUS
Heroes:
Jesus, CS Lewis, Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, Henry the Cat, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Jim Wallis, Dr. Cara Snyder, Rob Green, Jean Abercrombie, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Wesley, John Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, Jimmy Carter, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Kilgore Trout, Atticus Finch, Kermit the Frog
