Music. Punk rock, rock'n'roll, power-pop, delta blues, proto-r'n'b, good r'n'b/soul, good country old and new, hot and intense dance music from south of the border. Girls of that kind from any side of the border. Hot (spicy) food from south of the border. Drink. Coffee and beer, wine and whiskey, tequila por favor. Literature of merit: especially, great American (and international) novels, fantasy/sci-fi when I need to unwind, historical novels, biographies, autobiographies, non-fiction, collections of journalistic essays. Zines. Cool thrift store finds, especially impressive three-piece suits. Coffee, again, but this time as a social anodyne rather than a mere energy boost. Long walks to clear the head or explore, really both. Riding my bike. Driving my car and: listening to kickass tapes, listening to NPR, listening to the few good Air America Radio shows, listening to Coast To Coast AM, listening to baseball or football. Driving my car along new routes to new or old destinations. Debates. Good-natured arguments with friends. Bad-natured arguments with enemies. Lists. Is this all a little too sincere? I used to be called Nate Disgusting, and before that, you don't want to know. UPDATE: Go White Sox! Go Brew Crew! Go Twins! Go Mets! (these exhortations function similarly to the Laws of Robotics, wherein each "Go ___!" works only unless it directly contradicts a higher "Go ___!") Go Wild! Go Rangers!
Kinky Friedman, Amy Sedaris, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, Tim McGraw, Keith Olbermann, Matt Groening, Robert Baer, Miranda July, Derek Boogard, the eSurance girl ("Erin"), Aphrodite on a barstool by my side, and Greg Norton.Forget Scarlett Johansson and her Tom Waits covers (for now); I'd really rather duet with Neko Case. You?
Husker Du, the Replacements, the Ramones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Reigning Sound/Greg Cartwright music, the Rolling Stones, the Devil Dogs, the Beatles, Them, Screeching Weasel, Pinhead Gunpowder, X, Radio Birdman, Bent Outta Shape, the Ergs!, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, the Trashies, Johnny Cash, Sun Records 50's stuff, Gram Parsons, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, the Jam, I was listening to the Figgs "Banda Macho" LP as I wrote this, and your band, too.
Music This Week I'm thinking of resequencing the album "Setting Sons" by the Jam, because I don't like the order of songs right now. That's also what I'm listening to the most, along with the Jean Claude Jam Band.
Any and all films that exist in a theoretical pentagonal zone, the five defining points of which would be The Goonies, Repo Man, Times Square, Tuff Turf, and Escape From New York (if you haven't seen Tuff Turf, substitute Valley Girl but sprinkle liberally with violence, punk, Jim Carroll and the barrio epithet "maricon!").
The Simpsons, The Simpsons, The Wire, and The Simpsons.
Radio Baseball, any team, any game, any league. Marketplace on NPR! Also on NPR: The Sound of Young America. This American Life. Fresh Air, duh. Steve "Shmooze" Somers on 660am "The Fan," he's usually on from like 8pm to midnite, weekdays. Really late-nite sports talk, when it gets intense and samples the Coast-to-Coast A.M. listenership.
Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck, Breakfast Of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut, both Lester Bangs books, Omar Khayyam - Harold Lamb, Blue Highways - William Least Heat Moon, Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving, Bound For Glory - Woody Guthrie, the Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris, the entire Drizzt-related series - R.A. Salvatore, the Foundation novels - Isaac Asimov, How The Irish Saved Civilization - Thomas Cahill, The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway, A Wrinkle In Time - Madame L'Engle, the Plague Dogs - Richard Adams, the Nova trilogy by William S. Burroughs, anything by Hunter S. Thompson, anything by S.E. Hinton, anything by Nathanael West, anything by Kinky Friedman, on and on and on...
Books Read Recently Paul Shirley "Can I Keep My Jersey?", Alan Clayson "Keith Richards" (warning: very, very British - and yes, I loved it!), Dave Marsh "The Beatles Second Album," Elizabeth Little "Biting the Wax Tadpole," Mark Spitz "Nobody Likes You: The Green Day Story" (or whatever it's called), The U.S. Constitution and Articles of Confederation.
Johnny Cash, Deniz Tek, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Doug Hopkins (http://www.alphalink.com.au/~ord/doughopkins/index.html). Ok, maybe not Doug.