Creative endeavors of all kinds unless they take place in my ant-infested and hyperchilled grey office space dominated by a sizable window with a view of a mormon church parking lot, where cops secretly meet to exchange briefcases with dark haired men in unmarked cars. I like flagrant cleverness and pretentiously verbose, excessively smart music, really freakishly smart music, the kind that pisses people like you off because it takes itself so damnably seriously and why the hell can't it just have fun sometimes. I like weird for the sake of weird and enormous love that's sweet and disgusting and measurably unhealthy. I like disjointed creations that move like my mind does, skipping from subject to subject to open space and back again with frequency and at irregular intervals. I like words. All of them. Even the bad ones. Especially, maybe the bad ones. I like spies. I would be one of them if I wasn't afraid of torture and being totally alone even when you're not, and also if spies could have arthritis and herniated disks and be only 5'1" tall. I don't mind danger. In fact, I like to feel fear and a sense of warm, sticky intrigue at the same time. And I like to laugh, everyday, for several hours at a time, as it is good for the abs and for longevity and because you're all just so unfashionably funny. Someday, I hope to be unaccountably sexy, have a book published and adored by a small, fiercely loyal, and totally misunderstood audience, have a completed CD to sell to people at Portfolio and my mom, and live totally for the sake of love in tight jeans.
I'm not ashamed to say that I am actively seeking nice people. Freakishly, nice people who smell strongly of unbridled compassion. Courageous, lusty, mentally full-figured, wide open nice people who are also completely insane in a good way. I crave peace and wild mental and physical abandon. And I like french fries a lot. That'll do.
I like to make music that causes the easily distracted to become disoriented and run into things. I have extremely abnormal, thoroughly objectionable taste in music so I apologize in advance for hating everything you'll play for me thinking I'll like it. I like rockish folk music and folkish rock music. And I have never heard a bad Bob Dylan song. If you like Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, I'll buy you a pony (but I may have to do it on layaway as I work for a nonprofit). Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is so beautiful I actually can't stand to listen to it. And Ani DiFranco should be our king. Again, I apologize if I hate everyone you like. My dad raised me on Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan and I ain't never learned to like no hip-hop or R&B. It's nothing personal. I respect your appreciation for it. I really do. And I do like Alicia Keyes if this makes you feel better. I like all the Grungy guys in a very wistful, old lady kind of way. Like a "They don't make em like they used to" kind of way. It's vintage love. And though it is the most cliche of all feminine cliches, with the exception of a penchant for show tunes, I also like all the chick singers (which annoys my husband to no end)--Tori, Tracy, Ani, PJ, Sarah, Patti...but NEVER EVER EVER will I ever abide Jewel. And if you compare my music to hers, I'll never play at your open mike again, which is really not that big of a deal because I'll only disorient you and cause you to run into things.
The Departed (See this Movie Right Now) Dr. Strangelove City of Lost Children Ghandi V for Vendetta Syriana Million Dollar Baby The Aviator Sideways Spanglish Oceans 11 and 12 Closer Lost in Translation Wallace and Grommit: Curse of the Were Rabbit Everything is Eventual Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang Tsotsi Masked and Anonymous (Dear God I loved this) Off the Map Primer (best time travel movie EVER) Giant Cat on a Hot Tin Roof A Streetcar Named Desire Primer The Usual Suspects The Princess Bride Shawshank Redemption Arthur Die Hard Stand by Me Mystic River Some Kind of Wonderful Tombstone Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Shakespeare in Love Good Will Hunting Cinema Paradiso Casablanca Singing in the Rain The Wizard of Oz In America When Harry Met Sally The Lord of the Rings I,II,III What Dreams May Come Harry Potter I, II, III Fight Club Sound of Music Roxanne Schindler's List 12 Angry Men Breakfast at Tiffany's Mary Poppins Grease Terms of Endearment Steel Magnolias Magnolia Amadeus The Color Purple Ferris Buellers Day off Dead Poets Society Philadelphia Forrest Gump Pulp Fiction Mr. Smith Goes to Washington It's a Wonderful Life Indiana Jones I,II,III Peggy Sue Got Married Stealing Beauty Running on Empty Angels in America LA Confidential Life is Beautiful American Beauty The Hours Adaptation Gladiator Beautiful Mind Gosford Park The Pianist Annie The Matrix I Hotel Rwanda Dirty Pretty Things Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Garden State I (heart) Huckabees The Professional Big Fish Broadcast News Defending your Life Thunderheart Always Hamlet (with Mel Gibson) Minority Report Top Gun Alice in Wonderland Bedknobs and Broomsticks Puff the Magic Dragon Pete's Dragon X-Men 12 Monkeys Darby O'Gill and the Little People The Last Unicorn Shrek The Dark Crystal Toy Story Legend Time Bandits The Zero Effect Suspect Zero Code 46 Pi Seven The Big Kahuna One Hour Photo Much Ado About Nothing Dogville Northfork Secretary Midsummer Night's Dream The Royal Tenenbaums House of Sand and Fog The Simon Wiesenthal Story (give you a buck if you've seen it) Apocalypse Now The Silence of the Lambs The Shining Sin City The Sixth Sense Finding Neverland The Station Agent Being John Malkovich Munich Capote Good Night and Good Luck Brokeback Mountain An Affair to Remember Walk the Line On the Waterfront Lemmony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events Love Actually (I plan to keep listing movies until time stops, so if you're squirrely at this point, best to move on)
Alias...deep down I am a spy in leather pants.
Well, if JK Rowling kills Harry Potter, I will probably take a day off of work. I'll start there so you can officially write me off or officially join the campaign to lobby the legislature to mandate Harry Potter Bereavement Leave in that threatened event. I've read every Lord of the Rings book 700 times and will start them all again if I'm not careful. Then there's Zorba the Greek...how I long to be Zorba, giddily dancing my life story to amenable Russians, though, I'm afraid, I'm usually the Boss. 1984 and A Brave New World kept my post-collegiate Utopia-seeking vacuum of a mind busy for months. I'll swear by Steinbeck's fierce and towering genius on my little, bitty life but most especially to the aching sweetness and painful delicacy of Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden. The Great American Novel has, alas, already been written, several times and, sadly or happily, not by me. I loved the Poisonwood Bible which stole a sizable bit of my soul for Africa (www.napafrica.org). A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius really is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and the surprisingly effective elbow distraction technique therein is the funniest thing ever penned by someone un-British. I recently read Already Dead and recommend it if you have a head big enough to absorb all the Nietzsche and patience for prolific insanity. Even better insanity can be uncovered in your own psyche when you read the book House of Leaves. You will never think the same about Feng Shui again. White Noise is better than white noise, which is saying a lot as I sleep with the fan on at night. White Noise knows about the supermarket...the REAL supermarket...and about "Airborne Toxic Events." I am not at all ashamed to say I've read every Stephen King book ever written and loved almost every single one more than I've loved almost anything else. If you disagree, you're just jealous or you're my mom. I admit I love Roland of Gilead like he really existed and when I'm feeling frisky I am not entirely convinced that he didn't. Shakespeare is a totally viably worshipable god, literally, ha ha, if you get my drift. However pretentious and absurd it sounds, I feel absolutely indebted to him. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments, love is not love which alters when it alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove, oh no, it is an ever fixed mark, that looks on tempests and is never shaken..." Seriously. Don't you just want to run out and love in the face of alterations. Nothing gets at my inside pieces like a Shakespearean Sonnet and a friend who, bless him, understands it. Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear. If I could revive a dead man for a brief visit, it would be Shake and he would receive a most passionate sloppy kiss, no matter what state of decrepit decay he was in. I realize this is gross. In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway writes "There is no good or bad. There is only sleep." Amen, brother. The Old Man and the Sea surprised the fish out of me and I had to read it twice. Love in the Time of Cholera was recommended by one of my dearest friends and so I was disappointed when it started off sort of slow and thrilled when it finished off deep in my deepest heart. The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and all it's satellite books make me LAUGH and LAUGH until I am laughing in public at various undisclosed and inappropriate locations and passersby are concerned for my safety and a man with a five o'clock shadow off to the left calls the authorities. Oh, that I can't actually go off hitchiking myself. And I'm proud, so proud, of all we've done for the dolphins. Speaking of raucous hilarity, I once met Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at Chapman University and fell in love with his white suit and gray hair and freakish knack for making me say "aah..." and "oooh." He shook my hand and he laughed when all I could say was "thank you, sir. thank you. thank you so much." Slaughterhouse Five and Welcome to the Monkeyhouse and Timequake...I too am a "monopolar depressive from a long line of monopolar depressives." I also learned from Mr. Vonnegut that I am a "Swooper." Look it up. It's totally spot on. And even if it weren't, I would forever yearn to come "unstuck in time." Then there's Isaac Asimov whose foresight and cleverness never cease to amaze me. I don't know the name of any of his stories but they have all been incorporated into my catalogue of possibility. Sorry, I read to fill in the half of my life I lose by working so hard, so I could go on like this forever. I think Clive Barker is a genius and a madman and I love him. Imagica was truly beautiful in an epic way. In a right similar way to The Stand and Hamlet and Great Expectations. All beautiful. Oh, did I mention Dickens? I love Dickens. And Sartre. No Exit describes the Hell I'd be willing to believe in and sometimes, too often in fact, believe I am in. Oh, and if you've ever believed in magic in your life, or if you've ever wanted to furiously, you have to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke. You'll say, eh, o.k., at first and then you'll be sucked in inexorably on this crazy magical journey to the Raven King. The card at the Barnes and Noble said "The Harry Potter for adults." And, while I thought Harry Potter was the Harry Potter for adults, this did fill the void left by the last Harry Potter after the fourth reading and before the fifth. I could go on like this all day, but I wish for you to still be my friend and at some point I should actually get out of this strangely shaped and very vindictive chair. Oh to be a wizard instead of an Executive Director. I could just wave my wand and...poof. A sofa...for starters. should...really...um...be...going...
Everyday my baby sisters fill me with more and more pride and awe and belly laughter. They are genius, amazing women who've made their lives and mine extraordinary. My nephews and my new teensy niece fill me with wonder and make my old bones feel like a kid again. I can't wait to watch them grow like trees. My mom and dad were the best parents kids could ask for and that is saying more than a lot. I am who I am because of them. Though, I'm not too sure that's a compliment (haha). My husband is crazy and wild and hilarious and all mine. My family fills me with a love too big for a web page. So that's it on that.And here are some more everyday heroes who are near to my heart: