Playing music, inspiring and being inspired, changing hearts and minds, rocking livers, and having good friends.
You. Unless you're a dick.
GBV, The Replacements, Drive Like Jehu, Mission of Burma, Hot Snakes, Tanner, Fishwife, Inch, Brian Eno, The Smiths, The Clash (duh), The Ramones (double duh), The Fuse, Flash Express, The Buffy Swayze, Viva K, Rex Aquarium, The Movies, RFTC, Pitchfork, Lungfish, Fugazi (yeah, yeah), Jawbreaker, Jets To Brazil, Wire, Three Mile Pilot, Husker Du, Superchunk, Built to Spill, The Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Misfits, Black Flag (when Morty was in it!), Circle Jerks, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies!, The Natural Lights, American Death Ray Music, Stiff Little Fingers, MC5 (mostly), Radio Birdman, The Saints, Thee L.A. Gentlemen Callers, Wiskey Biscuit, most two for Tuesday classic rock shit but esp. CCR, Tom Petty, Johnny Cougar, J Giles, Some Van Morrison and anything else I can Carry the Roake to on a Sunday night at the Drawing Room.
Being There, Watch Me Jumpstart, Breaking Away, The Big Lebowski, In the Name of the Father, Dead Man, Fletch, Time Bandits, Bad News Bears, Logan's Run, Young Frankenstein, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Taxi Driver, Up in Smoke, Bad Boy Bubby, Tommy, Watership Down, Roger and Me, My Best Fiend, any documentary by Jensen Rufe
Fuck that noise.
Our Band Could Be Your Life, A Riot Of Our Own, The Iceman Cometh, On The Road, Tristessa, Anything Kerouac except Pic (That Sucked), The Decammeron of Boccachio, The Fixer, Slaughterhouse Five, Fahrenheit 451 (Did I spell that right? Total dipshit.) 100 Years of Solitude, Aura, The Alchemist, The DaVinci Code, everything I've read by Pablo Neruda, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Henry V, Midsummer Night's Dream, Confederacy of Dunces
Those who walk the walk, anyone who manages to be a decent person in these topsy turvy times, Those brave enough to teach in L.A. Unified or anywhere else in California for that matter.