NPR podcasts, baseball, things that smell good, Will Shortz crossword puzzles, reading things (mostly books, but other things too), jumping up and down frantically, enthusiasm, bitterness, etc.
Marketa Irglova
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Jo March
Anne Elliot
Carole King
People with the last name "Sedaris".
David Tennant
Huston Smith
Helen of Troy
I'd like to meet you
In a timeless, placeless place
Somewhere out of context
And beyond all consequences
I won't use words again
They don't mean what I meant
They don't say what I said
They're just the crust of the meaning
With realms underneath
Never touched
Never stirred
Never even moved through
-S.V.
*The Clash* *MUSE* *R.E.M.* *Damien Rice* *U2* *The Frames/Anything involving Glen Hansard* *Bruce Springsteen* *Blondie* *Aimee Mann/'Til Tuesday* *The Killers* *Gillian Welch* * EISLEY* *Feist* *Jenny Lewis* *Dropkick Murphys (for Boston)* *Badly Drawn Boy* *Elliot Smith (I miss you)* *Social Distortion* *The Explosion* *Green Day* (American Idiot only, but that record is so brilliant it warrants their inclusion) *Nirvana* *Smashing Pumpkins* *Jeff Buckley* *John Wesley Harding* *Radiohead* *Blur (and anything else Damon Albarn has touched)* *Sufjan Stevens* *Carole King* *Gustav Mahler* *Felix Mendelssohn* *Ralph Vaughan Williams* *Thomas Newman* *10,000 Maniacs (Natalie-era only)* *INXS* *Patti Smith* *The Police/Sting* *Regina Spekter* *Live* *Duran Duran* *Billy Idol (and Generation X)* *Aaron Copland* *Beethoven* *Mozart* *Rufus Wainwright* *Strike Anywhere* *Ryan Adams* *Ani DiFranco* *David Gray* *Ben Folds* *Robbie Williams* (yes, I know, I have a problem, but I'm just being honest here) *Randy Edelman* *Nellie McKay* *Coldplay* *Travis* *Neil Finn* *Mark Lanegan* *The Streets* *Fleetwood Mac* *The Who* *The Faint* *Rage Against the Machine* *Flogging Molly* *The Bouncing Souls* *The Verve* *The Pixies* *NIN* (before Trent got all lame and shit) *The Cure* *Tears for Fears* *Teenage Fanclub* *Vast* *Simon and Garfunkel* (and just Simon) *Joni Mitchell* *Fiona Apple* (esp. When the Pawn and Extraordinary Machine) *((old) Weezer* *The Beatles* *The Stones* *Ella Fitzgerald* *Roy Orbison* *Gershwin* *David Bowie* *Led Zepplin* *The (International) Noise Conspiracy* *Johnny Cash* *Tom Petty* *Roy Orbison* *Elvis Costello* *The Kinks* *Hard-Fi* *Billy Bragg* *Jurassic 5* *Norah Jones* *Eminem* *Mark Knopfler* *The Ramones* *Common* *Stevie Wonder* *Suzanne Vega* *Sam Cooke* *Billlie Holliday* *The Roots* *Del tha Funky Homosapien* *Dan the Automator* *No Doubt* *Foo Fighters* *The Velvet Underground*, two Madonna songs and any band that doesn't try to get me to add them to my MySpace list...
Once, The New World, Amistad, Contact, Looking for Richard, Dark City, Wings of Desire, Heavenly Creatures, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Eyes Wide Shut, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (all six, and yes, I'm willing to have that argument if you want it), Run Lola Run, The Thin Red Line, Magnolia, 12 Monkeys, About a Boy, Moulin Rouge, Clockwork Orange, AI, The Truman Show, Rushmore, Amelie... And Jurrasic Park, 'acause I like Dinosaurs and junk. And Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, 'acause I like space and astronauts and junk.
Doctor Who. Torchwood. Life on Mars. Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Both versions of The Office. Battlestar Galactica. Wonder Showzen. South Park. The Catherine Tate Show. Lost. Anything involving Joss Whedon.
The works of:
Douglas Coupland, Italo Calvino, Laurence Durrell, Nick Hornby, JD Salinger, Hiruki Murakami, JRR Tolkien, Joseph Campbell, Philip Roth, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thich Nhat Hanh, Michael Chabon, Sherman Alexie, Salman Rushdie, and about a jillion other people who humble me and make me want to smile, cry, or just jump around in admiration...
And the Harry Potter books (and many other things that involve magic and escapism and young heroes and such...yeah, I know I'm a nerd. Thanks).
And, of course:
And: Joe Strummer, Nikita Kruschev, Joss Whedon, Italo Calvino, Jo March, Leon Trotsky, The Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jesus, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Michael Stipe, Tony Almeida, St Francis of Assisi, Ted Williams, Baruch Spinoza, Joseph Campbell, Severus Snape, Kevin Millar, The Green Lantern, Noam Chomsky, The 2004 Boston Red Sox, ASMIMH
My Non-Heroes:
Ayn Rand, John Calvin, Karl Rove, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Lee Atwater (death bed apology not withstanding), Joe McCarthy, Alex Rodriguez, Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, Stalin...Oh I could go on, but needless to say they all need a stern talking-to and a punch in the nose.
My simultaneous enemy/hero/enemy again: Christopher Hitchens