I collect signed, modern first editions in the literary fiction, thriller, young adult, sci-fi genres, and hard science books. Politics. Linguistic Anthropology. Egyptology. Photography. Art. Astronomy (currently Massive Black Holes/Galactic Cannabalism). Ciphers and Codebreaking. Crosswords. Dance (classical ballet, modern, cultural). Opera. Scrabble. Gardens. Ecology. Slam Poets. Indy Car Racing. Tennis. Ice Skating. Skiing (not actively anymore). Yoga. Meditation. Equestrian. Animals. Birds. Life, the Universe and Everything.
Learning new languages - it's a wonderful way to understand different cultures.
Nelson Mandela.
David Mitchell. Philip Pullman. Haruki Murakami. Carl Hiaasen. Tim Dorsey (and Serge A. Storms). Barry Eisler.
Sir Paul McCartney. Sting. Gustavo Dudamel.
http://www.gustavodudamel.com/
The NY Yankees (in the dugout). I want to know what goes on there during a game.
Emma Thompson (my favorite actress). Alan Davies (UK comedian). Stephen Fry. Hugh Laurie. Johnny Depp. George Clooney. Nathan Fillion (Firefly/Serenity/Waitress) and Christiane Amanpour.
Other people with interests in music (not just classical) books and baseball (my three addictions). People who love animals. Anyone with a great sense of humour (UK) humor (US).
For excellent info on CHF, how to live with it, the latest information on breakthroughs in transplants, devices, & treatments; and to find others who understand what you are going through, visit this website: http://www.chfpatients.com/
My Myspace friends, of course!
Barack Obama, our next President:
YES HE CAN
A British Prime Minister like this:
I listen to music from everywhere on the planet and every genre, though my least favorite is country.
Some of my musical faves are:
Argent.
Basia.
Bassomatic.
Beatles.
Bjork.
Mary J. Blige.
Bowie.
Tracy Chapman.
Eric Clapton.
Coldplay.
The Corrs.
Sheryl Crow.
Dead Can Dance.
Delerium.
Dire Straits.
Doors.
Bob Dylan.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Eminem.
Eurythmics.
Evanescence.
Family.
Brian Ferry.
Fleetwood Mac.
Foreigner.
Nelly Furtado.
Peter Gabriel.
Genesis (Peter Gabriel era particularly).
Lisa Gerrard.
Goldfrapp.
Gorillaz.
Al Green.
Arlo Guthrie.
Woody Guthrie.
George Harrison.
Jimmi Hendix.
Hotel Costes series.
Imagination.
INXS (Michael Hutchence era).
Michael Jackson.
Jane's Addiction.
Jefferson Airplane.
Kinks.
Eartha Kit(Santa Baby).
Led Zep.
John Lennon.
Annie Lennox.
Lulu.
Madonna.
Massive Attack.
Bob Marley.
Matt Bianco.
Dave Matthews.
Paul McCartney.
John Mellencamp.
Matchbox Twenty.
Moby.
Moody Blues.
Morcheeba.
Motown sound.
No Doubt.
Jethro Tull.
The Panic Channel.
Madeleine Peyroux.
Pink Floyd.
Poe.
The Police.
Portishead.
Otis Reading.
R.E.M.
Rolling Stones.
Roxy Music.
Santana.
Paul Schwartz.
Shakira.
Sniff and the Tears.
Bruce Sprinsteen.
Squeeze.
Steely Dan.
Steepwinter.
Gwen Stefani.
Sting.
Supertramp.
Talking Heads.
Tears for Fears.
Thievery Corporation.
Traffic.
The Tubes.
K.T. Tunstall.
T.Rex.
U2.
UB40.
Uriah Heap.
Rick Wakeman.
Amy Winehouse.
Robbie Williams.
Stevie Winwood.
Yes.
Zero 7
Jazz:
Brubeck.
Coleman.
Coltrane.
Miles Davis.
Duke Ellington.
Ella Fitzgerald.
Stan Getz.
Billie Holiday.
Etta James.
Keith Jarrett.
Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Diana Krall.
Carmen McRae.
Mingus.
Modern Jazz Quartet.
Oscar Peterson.
Osibisa (Afro-Jazz)
Nina Simone.
Sarah Vaughan.
Classical/Opera/Soundtrack Composers:
Albinoni.
Malcolm Arnold.
Johann S. Bach.
Barber.
John Barry.
Bartok.
Beethoven.
Lenny Bernstein.
Borodin.
Brahms.
Britten.
Bruch.
Bruckner.
Cage.
Chopin.
Debussy.
Delibes.
de Falla.
Dvorak.
Elgar.
G. Gershwin.
Gorecski.
Gounod.
Rene Gruss.
Khatchachurian.
Liszt.
Lutoslawski.
Mahler.
Martinu.
Massenet.
Mendelssohn.
Ennio Morricone.
Mozart.
Mussorksky.
Arvo Part.
Pendereski.
Poulenc.
Prokofiev.
Puccini.
Paganini.
Rachmaninov.
Rimsky-Korsakov.
Rodrigo.
Rossini.
Saint-Saens.
Satie.
Schubert.
Schoenberg.
Schuman.
Schumann.
Shostakovich.
Smetana.
Stravinsky.
Tchaikovsky.
R. Vaughan-Williams.
Verdi.
Vivaldi.
Walton.
Kurt Weil.
World:
Afro Celt Sound System.
Ait Mengelet.
Alabina.
Ali Akbar Khan.
Amina.
Natacha Atlas.
Asha Bhosle.
Ray Barretto.
Ruben Blades.
Buena Vista Social Club.
Manu Chao.
Clannad.
Willie Colon.
Dalida.
Amr Diab.
Cesaria Evora.
Fado.
Fela Kuti.
Ferhat.
Flamenco.
Gigi.
Gipsy Kings.
Gnawa Diffusion.
Gotan Project.
Francoise Hardi.
Ofra Haza.
Idir.
Juanes.
Mory Kante.
Hector Lavoe.
Madredeus.
Cheb Mami.
Mana.
Manau.
Lata Mangeshkar.
Matoub Lunes.
Letta M'Bulu.
Loreena McKinnett.
Misia.
Khadja Nin.
Osibisa.
Eddie Palmieri.
Edith Piaf.
Mohammed Rafi.
Amalia Rodrigues.
Ravi Shankar.
Mercedes Sosa.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Shoghe Nafas.
Sunny Ade.
Zohar
I am always searching for something so different in music that maybe it doesn't exist yet. Most music requires my full attention.
All The President's Men. Amadeus. Benny and Joon. Braveheart. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Bringing Up Baby. Charade. Cinema Paradiso. Das Boot. The Departed. Desk Set. Desperado. Edward Scissorhands. 8 Mile. E.T. Gilbert Grape. A Hard Day's Night. Jean de Florette. La Femme Nikita. Letters From Iwo Jima. Mad Max. Manon des Sources. My Fair Lady. My Left Foot. North by Northwest. Now, Voyager. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Operation Petticoat. Philadelphia. The Philadephia Story. Pirates of the Caribbean. Platoon. Pride of the Yankees. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Rear Window. Run Lola Run. The Russians Are Coming... The Scarlet Pimpernelle (with Anthony Andrews of Brideshead Revisited fame). Sense and Sensibility. Serenity. The Shawshank Redemption. A Shot In The Dark. Spiderman. Some Like It Hot. Tie Me Up Tie Me Down. The Untouchables. Wallace and Grommit. The Widow of Saint-Pierre. Who Killed The Electric Car. Wit. Many more, of course.
Tim Burton, Clint Eastwood, Fellini, Tarantino, Frank Capra films. Baseball movies no matter how corny, love them all. All films with Cary Grant, James Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Spencer Tracey, Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Paul Newman, and Emma Thompson. All Hitchcock movies, especially Rear Window, sheer brilliance.
Intelligent thrillers. Romantic comedies. Funny comedies (some are just too over the top to be funny!). Films that are unpredictable and innovative. Old black and white films. I can't stand colorization, it destroys the feel of the film as it was originally intended.
I prefer to read books and more likely than not that's what I will be doing rather than watching TV. I will always watch Yankees games during the season and sometimes I watch:Grey's Anatomy. Boston Legal. Nova. Bill Maher's Real Time. Frontline. House.Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry was one of the best series on TV ever (they can be found on DVD now).
UK TV:
Q.I. Have I Got News for You. Jonathan Ross. Anything with Dara O'Briain (he's hysterical).
Extinct but brilliant: Firefly. Murphy Brown. The West Wing.
This is my favorite Murphy Brown episode (in 4 parts):
Featured authors:
Ann Patchett:
Books: The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant, Bel Canto, Truth and Beauty, What Now?, Run.
Some of my favorite authors:
Douglas Adams.
Sherman Alexie.
Jane Austen.
Iain Banks.
Max(x) Barry.
John Barth.
Matt Beaumont.
Louis de Bernieres.
Christopher Brookmyre.
Bill Bryson.
Anthony Burgess.
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland).
Mark Z. Danielewski.
Robertson Davies.
Tim Dorsey.
David James Duncan (The Brothers K.)
Barry Eisler.
David Eggers.
George Eliot.
Jeffrey Eugenides.
Craig Ferguson (Between the Bridge and the River).
Jasper Fforde.
Richard Flanagan.
David Foster Wallace.
Michael Frayn.
Mary Gaitskill.
Graham Greene.
Mark Haddon.
Sam Harris.
Seamus Heaney.
Robert Heinlein.
Joseph Heller (Catch 22).
Carl Hiassen.
Aldous Huxley.
Kazuo Ishiguro.
Michio Kaku.
Natsuo Kirino.
Andrea Levy (Small Island).
Cormac McCarthy.
Ian McEwan.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Somerset Maugham.
Herman Melville.
China Mieville.
A.A. Milne.
David Mitchell.
Christopher Moore.
Haruki Murakami.
Kenzaburo Oe.
George Orwell.
Orhan Pamuk.
Marisha Pessl.
Dan Pope.
Annie Proulx.
Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials Trilogy).
Tom Robbins.
Marilynne Robinson.
Shakespeare (visit the Globe in London to see one of his plays, excellent).
Ali Smith.
Zadie Smith.
John Steinbeck.
Neal Stephenson (Crytonomican my fave).
Scarlett Thomas.
Ivan Turgenev.
Mark Twain.
Sally Vickers.
Edith Wharton.
Marianne Wiggins.
Oscar Wilde.
Simon Winchester.
P.G. Wodehouse.
Virginia Woolf.
Books on baseball. Thousands more....!
Magazines: The New Yorker. Publisher's Weekly. Real Simple.
My mother who died with dignity and her sense of humour intact in 2000.
Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks. Leonard Peltier. Aung San Suu Kyi. Lennon/McCartney. The Beatles. Jackie Robinson. Roberto Clemente. Stephen Hawking. Bono. Robert Redford, for Sundance, for encouraging Bernstein and Woodwood in their quest for the truth. For making "All the President's Men."
Indigenous peoples everywhere who have suffered so much and who are trying to save their cultures and languages, and the land they care for. They have been treated intolerably and it's time to rectify terrible wrongs.
FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
My greatest heroes would be everyone of us who can change the way we treat our planet and each other. Do what YOU CAN to save it before it's too late. For more information on what you can do to help slow down global warming visit www.climatecrisis.com. I URGE everyone to do something NOW. Each of us can make a difference by doing small things.
I know I sound like a contestant for some pageant when I say this but it's true: I want peace for the world. I'm sick of war, religious intolerance, racism, genocide (we know, we watch, we do nothing to stop it), greed, corruption, poverty, indifference, and cruelty.