Areas of general interest: film; pop music; cultural anthropology; literature and criticism; art history; architecture; food; beer; linguistics; languages; semiotics; grammar; etymology; saints, martyrs and relics; memorial images and artifacts; gadgets; ephemera; trivia; curiosities and apocrypha; museums; cats; gardening; body art; comix; posters; illustration. Particular obsessions: Symbolism; Art Nouveau; the Vienna Secession; Situationism; Weimar Germany; Catholic history, hagiography, and symbolism; Medieval art and literature; Renaissance art and architecture; Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; the art of the insane; incunabula.
I'd like to meet:
Geniuses. Prodigies. Polymaths. The striking. The unusual. The arty. The literate. The quisquose. People who know what "quisquose" means. Good spellers. Users of semicolons and the subjunctive. Keepers of promises. Kittens. Flowers. Hearts. Those who discover. Those who make. Those who share.
On the home front, I'm looking for somebody who can keep up with me. I have not had much luck in that regard.
Movies:
If you like cinema, you may enjoy my film series .
I'm partial to: Charly, Blade Runner, Bedazzled (the Cook/Moore original), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Punch-Drunk Love, Big Fish, Amelie, La Belle et La Bête, Brazil, Buckaroo Banzai, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, Prospero's Books, Curse of the Demon, Lost In Translation, The Bride With White Hair, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, Solaris, The Apple, Wet Hot American Summer, Cabin Boy, The Loved One, Popeye, Repo Man, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, La Jetée, Bringing Up Baby, Mr. Freedom, Qui êtes-vous Polly Maggoo?, Battle Royale, Spirited Away, After Life, In The Street, The Big Lebowski, Pootie Tang, Der Himmel über Berlin, Privilege, Starstruck, Idiocracy...
Television:
Never trust people who say they don't watch TV. When I'm seated in front of the Devil Box, I enjoy Good Eats, Iron Chef America, America's Test Kitchen, Mythbusters, No Reservations, A Cook's Tour, Bizarre Foods, The Thirsty Traveler, Project Runway, Robot Chicken, Saul of the Mole Men, The Tim and Eric Awesome Show--Great Job!, History Detectives, Antiques Roadshow, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Venture Brothers, Futurama, Family Guy, 24 (which has really gotten stupid lately), SCTV, Mr. Show, Get A Life, and th' Simpsons, along with bootlegs of MST3K, crazy-ass foreign stuff, and old holiday specials.
Books:
The Giving Tree. The Velveteen Rabbit. The Selfish Giant. Flowers For Algernon. 100 Years Of Solitude. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Good Omens. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Cassell's Colloquial Spanish. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin de Siecle Culture. Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. The Golden Legend. Magnificent Corpses. The Crying of Lot 49. The Difference Engine. Wicked. Philosophy In The Bedroom. Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America. Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement in Memorial Photography--American and European Traditions. Fragmentation And Redemption. Sexual Personae. Drama of the English Renaissance I: The Tudor Period. Zone: Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Curious George Goes to the Hospital.
Heroes:
Muhammad Ali, Joan of Arc, Brian Wilson, Lyonel Feininger, Alton Brown, Chris Elliott, Peter Cook, Charles Schulz, George Herriman, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam, William Klein, anybody willing to impeach George Bush.
