MY GENERAL INTERESTS: Literature, History, Philosophy, Arts, Architecture, Politics, Sciences, Occult and, of course, food and cooking, which may well succeed in making me a more well-rounded person even if those other subjects do not. Isn't that enough?
MY SPECIAL INTERESTS: I have an ongoing project of translating from Middle English into Modern English the 14th century poem SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Stanzas have been posted to my blog for the curious and interested. These days, though, I try to focus primarily on literature and books. I buy and sell modern first editions, mostly buying in order to build a substantial library to sustain me in my doddering years.
WHAT SUSTAINS ME IN MY PRE-DODDERING YEARS: Cracker Jacks, Mr Goodbar, Carnation Ice Cream Sandwiches, Cheesecake with fresh strawberries or cherry topping, Pizza topped with pepperoni or sausage, McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg, Broccolli, Chef's Salad, Anjou or Bosc or even Asian Pears, Chef Boy-R-Dee, Fuji Apples, Grapefruit every morning, Green Tea or Ginger Peach or Jasmine White Tea from Republic of Tea. Burger King Double Whopper, Nemo's Carrot Cake, Planter's peanuts, Dr. Pepper, Snapple Peach Tea, Arizona Ginseng Tea, Sobe Oolong or Zen Blend (now sadly discontinued), Popcorn with butter, Nabisco Twigs sesame crackers, Ritz crackers, Mother's Circus Animal Cookies, Glazed donuts with Raspberry filling, Croissants, Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Baby Carrots ...
SOME OF MY FAVORITE ARTISTS: Cecilia Bartoli (the love of my life!), Kronos Quartet, Laurie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Long John Baldry, Bow Wow Wow, David Byrne, Johnny Cash, The Clash, Elvis Costello, Miles Davis, Dr John, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Connie Evingson, Ella Fitzgerald, Bela Fleck, Philip Glass, Benny Goodman, Diana Krall, k. d. Lang, Ute Lemper, Lyle Lovett, Taj Mahal, Quartetto Gelato, Leon Redbone, The Roches, Jane Siberry, Talking Heads, Uncle Bonsai, Tom Waits, The Washington Squares, Frank Zappa.
FAVORITE ROCK ALBUM: "Exile on Main Street" by the Rolling Stones;
FAVORITE JAZZ ALBUM: "Money Jungle" by Ellington, Mingus & Roach;
FAVORITE CLASSICAL ALBUM: "The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas" by Alfred Brendel;
FAVORITE OPERA RECORDING: "La Centerola" with Cecilia Bartoli (natch);
FAVORITE COUNTRY ALBUM: "At Folsom Prison" by Johnny Cash;
FAVORITE WORLD MUSIC ALBUM: "Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares" by The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir.
FAVORITE MOVIES: Wings of Desire, Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, The Third Man, Amelie, The Lion in Winter, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Kill Bill, The Lord of the Rings, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Wild Bunch, Touch of Evil, Notorious, The Maltese Falcon, The Dead, A Very Long Engagement, Aguirre Wrath of God, Diva, Pulp Fiction, Soldier of Orange, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Searchers, Sleuth, The Ruling Class, Tampopo.
FAVORITE BAD MOVIE: Sante Sangre.
FAVORITE DIRECTORS: Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, David Lean, Peter Greenaway, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Tim Burton.
FAVORITE ACTORS: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Humphrey Bogart, Sean Connery, Greta Garbo, Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson, The Marx Brothers
WHEN I USED TO WATCH TV THESE WERE MY FAVORITES: The Prisoner, Jonny Quest, Twin Peaks, Star Trek in all its incarnations, Babylon-5, Washington Week in Review, The X-Files, Sopranos, Sex and the City, The Simpsons, Homicide, CSI, Mystery on PBS, Seinfeld, House, Lost, 24, Monty Python's Flying Circus. I become engrossed in any cooking show. Mostly, though I try to avoid watching the tube these days for sooner or later everything I like will be available on DVD.
FICTION WRITERS: Dr. Suess, Vladimir Nabokov, Don DeLillo, James Salter, Raymond Chandler, Samuel Beckett, Cormac McCarthy, W. M. Spackman, John LeCarre, Patrick O'Brian, George V. Higgins, Patricia HIghsmith, Elmore Leonard, Haruki Murakami, W. M. Spackman. P. G. Wodehouse, William S. Burroughs, Banana Yoshimoto.
NON-FICTION WRITERS: John McPhee, M. F. K. Fisher, Henry Miller, William Gass, Guy Davenport, E. B. White, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oliver Sacks, Stephen Jay Gould, Thomas Cahill, Michael Dirda, Edward Dahlberg.
FAVORITE POETS: Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, Charles Bukowski, Anne Carson, William Carlos Williams, Homer, William Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, Rumi, Seamus Heaney, Wallace Stevens, Heather McHugh.
FAVORITE GRAPHIC ARTISTS/WRITERS: Carl Barks, Edward Gorey, Neil Gaiman, Robert Crumb, Frank Frazetta, Daniel Clowes, Los Bros Hernandez, Wallace Wood, Alan Moore, Berni Wrightson, Frank Miller.
FAVORITE DIARISTS: Samuel Pepys, Ned Rorem, Bernard Berenson, Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, May Sarton.
FAVORITE PHILOSOPHERS: Georges Santayana, Henry David Thoreau , David Hume, E. M. Cioran, Mr. Natural.
MY ESSENTIAL NIGHTSTAND BOOKS: Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory, Life of Johnson by James Boswell, Iliad by Homer, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher.
FICTIONAL HEROES: Odysseus, Sherlock Holmes, Scrooge McDuck, Batman, Aurelio Zen, Jules Maigret, Philip Marlowe, Nick and Nora Charles, Alba and Gorodish, Sailor and Lula, John Steed and Emma Peel.
REAL LIFE HEROES: Dr. Johnson, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Robert Oppenheimer, T. E. Lawrence, Francis Drake, James Joyce, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, Stephen Hawking, Christopher Nolan. If you were hardy or foolish enough to read every item in the above lists, then you, too, qualify as one of my heroes.