Reading history, how-to books and better fiction,seeing movies by the better directors in real cinemas instead of dvd or video, roughing up the customer, choking the chicken, boxing the clown, keeping up on politics and human trends, traveling both the world and America, American culture in most of it's manifestations (except for trash TV and rap, techno and modern country music), polishing the bayonet, eating fine food of all different kinds in the endless world of LA restaurants, maintaining both family and friends, shaking hands with the bishop, shaking hands with Yul Brynner, shaking hands with Mr. Clean, shaking hands with the unemployed, motorcycles, guns, architecture, avant garde art, vintage furniture, Nazi Germany, bruising the fruit, American Civil War, Stalin and all his henchmen, demonstrating by example that religion is unnecessary, slamming the ham, building things, making inoperable things operable, buffin' the banana, avoiding TV for the time wasting parasite that it is (except for South Park), a good game of 5 on 1, keeping my wonderful wife happy, keeping MYSELF happy.
Audrey Hepburn, The Tennessee Stud, Jonathan & Darlene Edwards, Gerd Barkhorn, Nadia Comaneci, Henry Ford, John Ford, Lola Montez, Pharoah Sanders, Julie Andrews, Marcello Mastroianni, Frank Sr., Malinche, Yuri Gagarin, Anne Frank, Bertold Brecht, John Wilkes Booth, John Wesley Hardin, Rasputin, Hayley Mills, Heinz Guderian, Dino, LBJ, Stalin, Madame Blavatsky, Celine, Gene Vincent, Leni Riefenstahl, Jedediah Smith, Wilhelm Reich, Roman Polanski, Giuletta Messina, Sacagawea, Art Bell, Phil Hendrie, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Chang & Eng Bunker, Nellie Cashman, Cassius Clay / Muhammed Ali, Houdini, Maria Callas, Frank Booth, The Toe Cutter, Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Liberace, Bugs & Daffy, Lenny & Henny, Eddie Haskell, Primo Levi, Ulysses S. Grant, Isadora Duncan, Harpo Marx, Peter Sellers, Zelda Fitzgerald (pre - nuthouse), Robert Allen Zimmerman (in one of his open, expansive moods), Sitting Bull, Sheila Kuehl (young - possibly pre lesbian?), Ted Bundy, Frank Hamer, John Lennon, Steve Jones (shouldn't be too hard, should it?) and, oh, gosh, how about Hitler?
Early Devo, early Captain Beefheart, early Pere Ubu, early Elvis Presley, early Gene Vincent, early Muddy Waters, early Anita O'Day, early Fear, early solo Iggy, early Jacques Dutronc, early Willie Nelson, early Damned, early Chuck Berry, early Slits, early Darius Milhaud, early Dead Kennedys, early Lefty Frizell, early Cabaret Voltaire, early Butthole Surfers, early Son House, early Ramones, early Ray Price, early Motorhead, early Skip James, early Bing Crosby, early GG Allin, early to middle Kinks, early Slim Whitman, early Swans, early Rolling Stones, early Public Image Ltd., early Louis Armstrong, early to middle and a select few late Bob Dylan, Faust, Nurse With Wound, Beatles, Clash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Skip Spence, Velvet Underground, Germs, Roy Orbison, Einsturzende Neubauten, Cecil Taylor, U-Men (greatest Seattle band of the 80's bar none, even on a bad night they would have wiped the floor with Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam), X Ray Spex, Serge Gainsbourg (even the late!), John Lee Hooker, Tim Buckley, Les Paul, Bonzo Dog Band, Rutles, Buzzcocks, Albert Ayler, Jelly Roll Morton, Holy Modal Rounders, Johnny Burnette WITH the Rock and Roll Trio, Nino Rota, Joy Division, Maddox Brothers And Rose, New York Dolls, Charlie Feathers, Herbie Nichols, Hank Williams Sr., Marlene Dietrich, Collins Kids, Little Richard, Black Flag, King Oliver, Charles Mingus, Stooges, Tom Grimley, Van Halen w/ David Lee Roth, Wipers, Sonics, Betty Carter, Gun Club, Maurice Ravel, Woody Guthrie, Ennio Morricone, Sex Pistols, Ella Fitzgerald, Perez Prado!, AC DC w/ Bon Scott, Charlie Patton, Iannis Xenakis, Yardbirds, Birthday Party, Link Wray, Leadbelly, Wanda Jackson, Monks, Charlie Rich, Mentors, Boswell Sisters, Flipper, Johnny Thunders, Johnny Fucking Cash, Lee Wiley, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Bob Wills, X, Thelonious Monk, Howlin' Wolf, Wire, The Fall, Dmitri Shostakovich, Carl Orff, Charlie And His Orchestra, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire , Zarah Leander, Minutemen, some Waylon Jennings, some Frank Zappa, some T. Rex, some David Bowie, some Lou Reed, some Doors, some Throbbing Gristle, some Abba, some Jefferson Airplane, most Miles Davis, most Raincoats, most Merle Haggard, most Peggy Lee, most Les Baxter, most Ornette Coleman, most Duke Ellington, most Jimi Hendrix, most Sergei Prokofiev, most Billy Childish, most Dean Martin, most Residents, most Daniel Johnston, most Billie Holiday, almost everything by Eugene Chadbourne, ditto for Johnny Paycheck, Charlie Parker w/o strings. Over the years I've tried very hard to understand the big deal people I've respected have made over the Grateful Dead, the MC 5, the Replacements and U2, and I still just don't get it. Sorry! I like Sonny Rollins better than John Coltrane, who I can only stand if he's got some other freak like Eric Dolphy, Miles or most especially Pharoah Sanders blowing up his sanctimonious ass. Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix effectively sewed up and killed off their chosen genres for all time, people who follow in their footsteps end up looking (and sounding!) stupid. Hearing Stevie Ray Vaughan play "Voodoo Chile" makes me want to vomit and laugh at the same time - Tony Bennett, Mel Torme and Nat King Cole are soap opera hacks compared to The Big Guy. Don't even get me started talking about Dylan clones. Country music and Blues were beautiful in their original context but have long been dead. I really do think the Ramones and Black Flag were the white folk music of their respective decades. For me, black music ended at Parliament / Funkadelic and Sly Stone. After that, with the exception of some Public Enemy, the first Geto Boys album and most definitely the early Bad Brains, I don't care. I prefer a real live drummer to a machine, and with the exception of Negativland and Steve Stapleton I'd rather listen to an original well written song than any kind of sample. I have never been a metalhead. I try to keep an ear out for what the "kids" are up to, and like most cranky 39 year olds throughout history, I'm usually baffled - and bored.
1. Fellini's 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini) 2. Blue Velvet (David Lynch) 3. Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel) 4. Lawrence Of Arabia (David Lean) 5. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford) 6. It's A Wonderful Life (Frank Capra) 7. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick) 8. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks) 9. Ivan The Terrible Parts 1 And 2 (Sergei Eisenstein) 10. Funny Face (Stanley Donen) 11. The Third Man (Carol Reed) 12. Once Upon A Time In The West (Sergio Leone) 13. Mondo Cane (Gualtiero Jacopetti) 14. Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel w/ Salvador Dali) 15. The Misfits (John Huston) 16. The Manchurian Candidate (the ORIGINAL, damn it! John Frankenheimer) 17. An American In Paris (Vincente Minnelli) 18. Eat The Document (DA Pennebaker w/ Bob Dylan) 19. Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder) 20. Chinatown (Roman Polanski) 21. Mad Max (George Miller) 22. Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 23. Take The Money And Run (Woody Allen) 24. Little Big Man (Arthur Penn) 25. Slaughterhouse Five (George Roy Hill) 26. Deliverance (John Boorman) 27. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman) 28. Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog)
Television is a medium that allows millions of people to laugh at the same joke and still be lonely. - TS Eliot
1. Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham) 2. Pan (Knut Hamsun) 3. In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) 4. The Painted Bird (Jerzy Kosinski) 5. The Last Picture Show (Larry McMurtry) 6. South Of No North (Charles Bukowski) 7. Inside The Third Reich (Albert Speer) 8. Invisible Republic (Greil Marcus) 9. Dino, Living High Among The Dirty Business Of Dreams (Nick Tosches) 10. Memoirs (Ulysses S. Grant) 11. Sexus (Henry Miller) 12. Leaves Of Grass (Walt Whitman) 13. Last Exit To Brooklyn (Hubert Selby) 14. Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung (Lester Bangs) 15. The War (Marguerite Duras) 16. Please Kill Me, An Oral History Of Punk (Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain) 17. Journey To The End Of The Night (Louis Ferdinand Celine) 18. Storm Of Steel (Ernst Junger) 19. Survival In Auschwitz / The Reawakening (Primo Levi) 20. In The Midst Of Life (Ambrose Bierce) 21. Thus Spake Zarathrustra (Friedrich Nietzche) 22. Son Of The Morning Star (Evan S. Connell) 23. The Anabasis (Xenophon) 24. The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S. Thompson) 25. Homage To Catalonia (George Orwell)
And last, but not least Because I'm so great!