Meeting interesting people, keeping on top of the arts and culture in general, especially reading books, seeing films and listening to music.
I'd like to meet:
Intelligent people who can think for themselves and have a sense of adventure.
Music:
Some of my favorite musicians are Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Iron & Wine, M. Ward, Interpol, Thievery Corporation, White Stripes, Air, Radiohead, Morphine, Strokes, OutKast, Flaming Lips, Pixies, Youssou N'Dour, Dandy Warhols, Johnny Cash, Shins, Elliott Smith, My Morning Jacket, Lucinda Williams, Modest Mouse, Beck, A Tribe Called Quest, Mogwai, Raveonettes, Kristin Hersh, Wilco, Massive Attack, Fugazi, King Sunny Ade, Underworld, Visqueen, Stereolab, Husker Du, Coldplay, Basement Jaxx, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Guided By Voices, Blackalicious, Smiths, Cesaria Evora, Libertines, This Mortal Coil, Echo & The Bunnymen, Style Council, Jam, Clash, Specials, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, Roxy Music, Steely Dan, Nick Drake, John Lennon, Randy Newman, Genesis, Neil Young, Nina Simone, Jonathan Richman, Lou Reed, John Cale, Velvet Underground, Desmond Dekker, Emmylou Harris, The Band, The Stones, Beach Boys, Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Harry Smith, Van Morrison, Kate St. John, Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, Talking Heads, Cowboy Junkies, Pogues I think that music is the only sacred thing that we really have anymore and it's very important to me. I've become very fond of CD boxed sets over the years. To give you an idea of where my musical tastes range, these are the boxed sets I have within arm's reach of my computer.
This Mortal Coil: 1983-1991
Echo & The Bunnymen - Crystal Days
The Complete Adventures of the Style Council
The Jam: Direction Reaction Creation
The Clash On Broadway
Fleetwood Mac 25 Years - The Chain
Bruce Springsteen - Tracks
Brian Eno I & Brian Eno II
Roxy Music - The Thrill of it All
Citizen Steely Dan
Nick Drake - Fruit Tree
The John Lennon Anthology
Have A Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box
Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman
Genesis Archives - 1967-75
The Velvet Underground & Nico - Peel Slowly & See
Emmylou Harris - Portraits
The Band - The Last Waltz
The Band - Across The Great Divide
Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series
Bob Dylan - Biograph
The Pet Sounds Sessions
The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
Frank Sinatra - The Reprise Collection
The Best of Broadside: 1962-1988
Washington Square Memoirs - The Great Urban Folk Boom
Tougher Than Tough: The Story of Jamaican Music
The Doo Wop Boxed Set, Volumes One and Two
The Jack Kerouac Collection
Testify!: The Gospel Box
Ray Charles - Genius & Soul
Billie Holiday - The Complete Decca Recordings
Louis Armstrong: A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, 1923-1934
Ken Burns Jazz
Club Verboten
Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.
Oh, and I'm a huge Tom Waits and Van Morrison fan, too. Basically, if they play it on NPR or KBCS, I love it. (KPLU when I wake up in the morning but KUOW in my car.)
My Desert Island Discs list would be something like:
Bob Dylan -- Blonde on Blonde
The Beach Boys -- Pet Sounds
Van Morrison -- Astral Weeks & Into The Music
The Beatles -- The White Album
John Cale -- Paris 1919
Lou Reed -- Berlin
Neil Young -- Decade
Miles Davis -- Bitches Brew
Tom Waits -- Blue Valentine
Emmylou Harris -- Wrecking Ball
Jonathan Richman -- The Beserkeley Years
The Clash -- Sandinista!
Nick Drake -- Five Leaves Left
American Graffiti Soundtrack
Rolling Stones -- Exile on Main Street
Desmond Dekker & The Specials -- King of Kings
Kate St. John -- Indescribable Night
Kate Bush -- Hounds of Love
Jane Siberry -- When I Was a Boy
Brian Eno -- Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks
Talking Heads -- Remain in Light
The Cowboy Junkies -- The Trinity Session
The Pogues -- Rum Sodomy & the Lash
Movies:
What are your all-time favorite movies and/or actors?
Pretty much anything that was released between 1967 and 1982. What a golden age of film that was. I don't get caught up in the cult of celebrities. I don't see or avoid films just because someone is in it. I also love musicals and hate typical guy action movies. I prefer independent and foreign films. My favorite film of all time is American Graffiti (which I think is the best film George Lucas ever made) and I think the most amazing film of the last ten years was Fight Club, which I see as a very feminist film.
Some of my other favorite films are anything by Kubrick, Fellini or Tarantino, Spirit of the Beehive, Wings of Desire, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cabaret, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Fanny &; Alexander, Lawrence of Arabia, Santa Sangre, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Paris, Texas, Full Metal Jacket, Rumble Fish, Apocalypse Now Redux, Jules &; Jim, Koyaanisqatsi, Bad Timing, McCabe &; Mrs. Miller, The Conversation, Where The Green Ants Dream, Dersu Uzala, Yellow Submarine, Amarcord, 8 1/2, Wages of Fear, My Dinner With Andre, The Dead, The Stunt Man, Betty Blue, Three Kings, Nights of Cabiria, Babette's Feast, Billy Elliot, Down From The Mountain, Titus, Quills, Six Degrees of Separation, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, Topsy Turvy, The Last Waltz, Moulin Rouge, Boiler Room, Don't Look Back, Hedwig &; The Angry Inch, Visions of Light, 'Round Midnight, Being John Malkovich, Election, The Stepford Wives, Magnolia, High Fidelity, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Saving Grace, Variety Lights, Spinal Tap, The Virgin Suicides, Orlando, Startup.com, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, Breaking the Waves, Amelie, Pi, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Pillow Book, La Double Vie De Veronique, Prospero's Books, La Dolce Vita
Television:
I'm not really a TV person. Outside of the evening news, 60 Minutes and the odd sporting event I don't really watch TV. And if it weren't for the DVDs I get from the library of all of those cool HBO and Showtime series (The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Queer As Folk, Six Feet Under) I wouldn't really watch TV at all. In fact, since the King County Library System has all 37 of Shakespeare's plays available on DVD I started checking them out one a week recently to finally see all of the ones I'd never seen, since I'd never seen any of the history plays, only half of the tragedies and way too many of the comedies.
I finally finished my first go round of all of them except for Antony and Cleopatra which, unfortunately, all three copies have gone missing from the KCLS. This first go round was just for plots. The next go round will be to gravitate towards the ones that really caught my eye the first time around and get more into the character development and subplot.
My comments now that I've seen them all? I'd never seen any of the history plays and all of the Henry/Richard plays really caught my eye. Timon of Athens was very intriguing for me, ostensibly because it kind of mirrors what happened to me in the last ten years or so. And I still think Titus is one of the best illustrations of the downward spiral of revenge I've ever seen. I think Julie Taymor's version with Anthony Hopkins is incredible. His performance in that totally wipes the floor with his performance in Silence of the Lambs which I always thought was just an overhyped B-movie TV film of the week anyway.
Books:
My all time favorite books are:
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa
Education and the Significance of Life by Krishnamurti
Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Ulysses by James Joyce
Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do : The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country by Peter McWilliams
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 by Charles Bukowski
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz
Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie
The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen
Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Heroes:
Just for one day.
