Currently mastering my iPod and loving swanning around to my own soundtrack. Everything from the Stones to blues to classical. Specifically, f'rinstance, Pulp's Common People, Dr John's Gris Gris, Oasis's Wonderwall, Iggy Pop's Lust For Life, Eminem's Fack and Lose Yourself, George Thorogood's Who Do You Love (must stop strutting in Sainsbury's when that's playing ...), various classic soul, Ray Charles, Hendrix, 60's movie and TV themes like The Avengers, Mission Impossible, The Saint, loads from Kill Bill ... Oh, you know the score.
And a good blast of punk/thrash/metal to freshen the palate and pump up the adrenals. If anyone wants to recommend great new bands, please get in touch. I'm all ears. As you can see.
A Matter of Life and Death, Wizard of Oz, Dr Strangelove, Pan's Labyrinth, Some Like It Hot, Ridicule, Onibaba - the grandma of all Japanese horror movies, Spartacus (I yam Spartacus ...).
Garbo, Monroe and the whole pantheon of Hollywood screen goddesses.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, Curb Your Enthusiasm, C4 News, 1960s series like The Prisoner and The Avengers (I yam Emma Peel ...). I wanted to like The West Wing but the way it flattered and sucked up to the political class was pretty creepy.
Watching Heroes and liking what I'm seeing ...
Theatre: Harold Pinter, Eric Bogosian
Lolita, Animal Farm, 1984, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), Fight Club, Dorothy Parker
Teenage infatuations: RD Laing's Knots, John Fowles's The Magus, and the Liverpool Poets collection.
I just read Vernon God Little. Don't be put off just coz it won the Booker Prize. If you liked The Catcher In The Rye (I yam Holden Caulfield ...), you'll love this.
Special honours go to William Gibson, Jack Womack, Geoff Ryman, Pat Cadigan, Roz Kaveney, and Adi Tantimedh (check out La Muse online comic series).
Visionaries Hall of Fame: JG Ballard, Philip K Dick, William S Burroughs, Alan Moore, and (again!) William Gibson.
Preacher, Transmetropolitan, The Invisibles, From Hell, Watchmen. However, despite my perfect taste in the classics, heretical as it sounds, I'm a DC gal rather than Marvel.
A special mention for Waiting for Kate Bush by John Mendelssohn. Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray, the definitive book on Hendrix. And ditto on John Lee Hooker: Boogie Man.
Anyone with a backbone. Not to be confused with an excess of testosterone.
Just read Joe Queenan's hilarious NYT review of Joe Eszterhas's The Devil Wears Prada or Guide to Hollywood or whatever it's called. I think I want to have Joe Q's babies. (As opposed to Joe E's rabies ...) http://www.nytimes.com/ 2006/09/17/ books/review/Queenan.t.html?ex= 1316145600&en= 2a33924f05477d10&ei=5088...
Oh, and Rosa Parks