This is a long story that really requires hand gestures and hallucinogens to achieve the full effect...
In no particular order: Billie Holliday, New York Dolls, Rolling Stones, The Dead Kennedy's, Velvet Underground, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Stiff Little Fingers, Patsy Cline, The Damned, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Janis Joplin, The Pogues, Nina Hagen, The Blasters, Roxy Music, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, The Gears, Simpletones, The Dils, Joy Division, Lucinda Williams, X, Avengers, The Doors, Bauhaus, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Sleater-Kinney, Beck, Supersuckers, Tenacious D, Bob Dylan, Blondie, The Pretenders, The Cramps, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Gang of Four, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, Led Zeppelin, Wolfmother, Elvis Costello, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Ramones, Barbra Streisand, X Ray Specs, Violent Femmes, Television, Patti Smith, Neko Case, The Hangmen, Lou Reed, Johnny Cash, The soundtrack to Cabaret and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?I am old, so that is all I can think of at present.
The Wizard of Oz, Moulin Rouge, The Lord of the Rings, The Proposition, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Requiem for A Dream, Wizards, Black Snake Moan, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Transamerica, Chocolat, The Fifth Element, The Cowboys, Butterfield 8, The Jerk, Gone with the Wind, High Fidelity, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Say Anything, White Christmas, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Rosemary's Baby, Alien, Groundhog Day.
I am going to assume that since I can't care enough to remember what time or channel anything comes on, that TV is too much of a commitment for me to make.I will watch TV with my daughters, as long as they let me make wry social commentary.We are always up for a Project Runway or America's Next Top Model marathon.We watch Heroes and Avatar:The Last Airbender "because we are total nerds. We are totally desolate because the last episode of Heroes was a cliffhanger"! We also watch Supernatural "because those boys are total hotties"."These are real quotes from my teenage daughters"
Currently reading this week: The Age of Speed, This is your Brain on Music, Excel Hacks, A Confederacy of Dunces. MRI Enterprise GL set up manual.Finished last week: Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dexter in the Dark, The Lady in Blue. Finished last month: Anansi Boys, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, The Meaning of Night, The Jane Austen Book Club, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Let it Bleed, that Iggy Pop bio.I try to read purely for escapist entertainment and shun any reading material of too much relevance to actual life. Sometimes something of value sneaks through, but only if I am genuinely interested. I love reading and refuse to turn it into something that is "good for me" like eating fiber, exercising or kicking that nasty perscription drug habit.I am currently reading The World is Flat, The Thirteenth Tale and Artemis Fowl-The Lost Colony (a children's book). I just finished a biography of George Washington. I finished reading The Travelers by John Twelve Trees and The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. It is the 3rd book in a set called the Baroque Cycle. One review calls it the definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk love story. It is large and ambitious in scope and will blow your mind. The same can be said of Neal Stephenson's other works; Cryptonomicon was great and so was Snow Crash. A sequel to Cryptonomicon is coming out soon. I liked Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I have read and will continue to read anything by Stephen King or Anne Rice. I have read all the Laurell K. Hamilton books. They are pure violence, vampires, werewolves, fairies and soft core porn rolled into a delicious candy shell. Like I said, I like my literature like I like my men, fascinating and blatantly hedonistic. I have also read all 11 Robert Jordan Wheel of Time books, like the big sci-fi geek that I am deep in my heart. The only things that saved me from being a total dungeons and dragons nerd as a teenager were the magnetic siren song of punk rock and the fact that I was marginally too attractive to be able to live in that kind of social obscurity.Thanks to my stepfather I also spent long, boring summer vacations reading Elmore Leonard and macho paranoid spy novels by Robert Ludlum and others of his ilk.I will also cop to being fascinated by Shakespeare, Jane Austin, anything by a Bronte sister, Stephen Hawking, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Cahill.I like anything historical, which covers alot of ground. I have plowed through English rulers from Eleanor of Aquitane forward. I have read bios of most of the pivotal figures in the American Revolution and I know more than is proper about the building of the Panama canal.Oh yeah, I just read Wrecking Crew and has it signed by the author at Mike Martt's Wednesday night thing at Di Piazza's in LB. I read any and all punk rock books my husband and / or son bring into the house.Let's face it, I am just a big book slut, willing to roll over for anything in print that catches my fancy.
My mom.