Current favorite quote:"Don't ask to live in tranquil times. Literature doesn't grow there."-Rita Mae Brown
I'd like to meet:
Courageous, loving, experimental people with open minds and hearts and a love for adventure. If you can say what you want and hunt it down until you get it we'll probably get along fine.
Music:
Ani DiFranco, Violent Femmes, Mozart. Indigo Girls, Blondie, Eurythmics, Vivaldi. Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Candye Kane, Jane's Addiction, James Taylor, Marianne Faithfull, Puccini. Paula Cole, Billy Idol, The Cure, Pat Benetar, Carole King, Concrete Blonde. Massive Attack, Madonna, Janis Joplin, Thelonious Monk, Bjork. Beethoven, Maria Callas, Queen Latifah, girl bands from the 60's.
Movies:
Dangerous Liasons, Pretty Woman, Good Will Hunting, Dancer in the Dark. Pulp Fiction, any River Phoenix movie every made(!!), Kevin Smith, Sadie Benning, Lili Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich. Pretty much anything that Marilyn Monroe starred in. I'll pretty much give anything a chance except movies based on sci-fi novels or bloodsoaking action flicks. Also a fondness for old classics, depending on who's starring in them.
Television:
Perennial favorites include Any Law & Order installment ever, CSI (Vegas, of course...), Medium, House, Ugly Betty and re-runs of Three's Company, Golden Girls, the Mary Tyler Moore show, Family Ties, etc.!! I use television to escape, so cheesy sitcoms from either the 50's or the 80's rank really high up on my list.
Books:
I'm a total book whore; I could probably furnish a wing of the Smithsonian with my own collection. *Sighs* Someday... Back to reality...
Still, this list has lots in common with the "heroes" section...Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Laurell K. Hamilton (her Faerie series is to DIE for), Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Allison, Gregory Maguire (Wicked is a MUST), D.H. Lawrence, Barbara Kingsolver, J.D. Salinger, Erica Jong, Flannery O'Connor (A Good Man is Hard to Find...find the book and BUY IT), Anne Rice, Sarah Vowell, and most (but not all) feminist theory. I also love to read books on spirituality, religion, and sex. A good section of my collection is made up of sexual how-to books, theory, and erotica. Fave writers in this genre include Carol Queen, Hanne Blank, Pat Califia, Maxim Jakubowski, Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Susie Bright, and Raven Kaldera. Oh! I almost forgot! My favorite mystery writers: Susan Whittig Albert, Agatha Christie, and Mary Higgins Clark, when I'm in the mood for something really mindless.
Heroes:
Mainly women who aren't afraid of speaking out and fucking things up. Some include:
Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Scarlot Harlot, Carol Queen, Alice Walker, Dorothy Allison, Anne Rice. Simone deBeauvoir, Germaine Greer, Susan Sontag, Wilma Mankiller. Any woman anywhere who has ever done sex work, for whatever reason. Big girls, smart girls, girls with Ivy League educations who would rather work three shit jobs at a time then sell themselves out to corporate America. And my mom, one of the finest feminist torchbearers I ever had the pleasure of knowing.
