Bats of all shapes and sizes - especially Monstrosa; octopus, squid, cuttlefish, cephalopods past, present, and imaginary; Bunny the cat; neurotoxin-spitting koalas; the rare vampire lemur from Madagascar; the elusive Alaskan fur-bearing squid; hat-wearing wolf spiders; jackalopes; history; architecture; religious hysteria that ends in catastrophe; natural disasters; real-life mad scientists; Things That Should Not Be; medical curiousities; forbidden esoteric knowledge; Things That Go Horribly Wrong; 1930's French sportscars; historical modes and fashions; pirates and smugglers; the Thirty Years War; political corruption through the ages; Bootleggers and Moonshiners; Los Angeles during the last ice age; kaiju; robots; the Weimar Republic; ancient Roman entertainments; overly-optimistic predictions of future technology; midcentury modern design (Eichler, Lautner, A. Quincy Jones, Neutra, Ralph Haver, the way-out set designs of Ken Adam, etc.); deep sea creatures, Lovecraftiana...
Like-minded lunatics, people for whom a good time out means barely hugging-the-rails near-disaster. Artists, scientists, musicians, engineers, inventors, naturalists, performers, adventurers, megalomaniacs. People who build their own tesla coils, dirigibles, or submersibles. Amateur test pilots. Foolhardy rocketeers. Collectors of esoteric knowledge. Builders of insane machines. Ladies and gentlemen who thrive in an atmosphere of orchestrated madness. People who see the beauty in the fellow creatures that fools recoil from. Those who find chaos and cacophony invigorating, inspiring. People with good hygiene. People who don't waste my time. Anyone who can either offer something interesting, exciting, and new, or someone who can do an old thing and make it fresh. People who don't try to kill me, and people I don't want to dispatch myself. Somebody with a really good squid costume. Anybody fascinated by cephalopoda or chiroptera. Somebody who's ideal houseboat is a fully-armed ironclad. Kitty cats, fruitbats, hell-hounds, hagfish. Lemurs and leeches, lampreys and leopards, and always the elusive vampire squid.
If I were listing by artist I'd be here all night, so: Lounge, Surf, Rockabilly, Psychobilly, Hickabilly, Blues, Northern Soul, Ska, classic Rythm and Blues, Cool Jazz, Ragtime, Dixieland, Juke Joint Swing, Punk, Industrial, Noise, Deathrock, Goth, Metal, Death Metal, Grindcore, all that whippersnapper music where folks do odd things with turntables and way too much feedback, Hip Hop, Trip Hop, Funk, Alt Country, Classic Country, Creepy Country, Blue Grass, Martial Music, College Fight Songs, National Anthems, German Expressionist Opera, Standards, Showtunes, Big Vegas Acts, Aboriginal Ritual Music, Gregorian Chants, Sea Shanties, Morbid Nursery Rhymes (is there any other kind?),Exotica, Schmaltzy instrumental music my grandparents liked to hear in their elevator in the Sixties, lots more.............................................. Music by Various Composers: Conlon Nancarrow, Harry Partch, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul Hindemith, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Bartok, Debussey, Delibe, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Mahler, Wagner, Lizst, Chopin, Ligeti, Penderecki, Corigliano, Verdi, Richard Straus, Johann Straus, Carl Orff, Holst....................................................... .................................................... Film Scores: Lalo Schifrin, John Barry, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith, Les Baxter, Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones, Miklos Rosza, Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, S. Prokofiev (again), James Bernard, Bernard Herrmann, Sixties Bollywood, Carl Davis, etc., etc., etc... I'm either extremely open-minded or I have absolutely no taste whatsoever
Kiss Me Deadly! Bond films, Hammer Horror, Amicus, Tigon, AIP, Noir films, Kaiju movies, Spaghetti Westerns, Spy-Fi flicks, Gangster movies, Blaxploitation movies, Kung Fu flicks, War movies, really bad epics, really good epics, German Expressionist films, Werner Herzog, Zombie movies, the Evil Dead series, HK gangster films, Universal horror, Swashbucklers, Hitchcock, Ken Russel films (still adolescent that way), Don Siegel films, Sam Peckinpaw, Erich von Stroheim, Pre-code Hollywood, Cronenberg movies, The Lion in Winter, Screwball comedies (especiallly Nothing Sacred), Polanski movies, Eisenstein films, anything starring or featuring Lee Marvin, etc...
Nature shows; Venture Brothers; Metalocalypse; Adult Swim; The History Channel; The Avengers; The Saint; Wild, Wild West; The Prisoner; Batman the Animated Series; programs about strange dwellings; Discovery Wings before it became The Military Channel; TCM; IFC; cooking shows; Speed Channel for 24 Hours of Le Mans; Storm Stories on the Weather Channel - I'm a sucker for natural disaster footage; ITV News, CBC News, BBC News; any program where people misjudge wild animals and get attacked/savaged by them; Smurfs'n'Snorks (I'm masochistic that way); the old Johnny Quest when they were really un-PC;
Al Azif by Abdul Alhazred; Cephalopods: A World Guide; Bats in Question; Human Sacrifice by Nigel Davies; The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser; Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe; all H.P. Lovecraft; anything from within the immediate Lovecraft Circle; Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile (just freakin' hilarious as well as scary - highly recommended); comics by Eric Powell, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, and especially the great and terrible Johnny Ryan; Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword by Marvel John Whiteside Parsons; The Liar by Stephen Fry; anything by Robert Anton Wilson; same applies to the late Hunter S. Thompson; many more...
Number One: My Father.Other than that: HEROES..?Hero sandwiches? Great Cthulhu, who I serve with The Mighty Cthulhu Old-Time Revival Show - see it at www.eatenbysquid.com; that six-year-old child heard in the background of a family vacation video from Phuket, Thailand, December 26th, 2004. The Aussie or Kiwi family is way up on a balcony, commenting on the sea receding, chuckling and puzzled by the sight. The six year old is really, really excited, yelling that it's a tsunami. Meanwhile, you can hear the dad telling the kid to settle down, pooh-poohing the entire notion. Just a little kid, doesn't know anything yet, blah, blah, blah, followed by "JESUS CHRIST!!!" as the wall of water comes slamming in below. Hey dude, next time, pay attention to what the small child is trying to say, you ignorant, sunburnt lager-lout! Anyway, that kid would have been me, except MY parents would have wisely paid attention.