Ja, ich habe ein paar. German stuff; learning; whacky history; travel; outdoor adventure, like hiking, camping, rollerblading, softball, etc.; kickboxing; writing; reading; Malachi, my incredibly smart, sensitive, good-looking, hilarious, insightful son; my sensational friends.
My Grandma Ella and her husband Big Ben; my suffragette great grandmother; MLK; Edgar Allan Poe; Heinrich Boll; Stephanie Miller; Bob Marley
Okay, I'm starting to work on a list, but it's always hard to single 'em out. Nathan Smith; Greg Beever; Bob Marley; Burning Spear; Cake; Jonathan Richman; Dresden Dolls; Nine Inch Nails; White Stripes; Buddy Guy; Led Zeppelin; The Doors; Van Morrison; Queen; Radiohead; Local Legend Willie Phoenix; Linkin Park; Violent Femmes; old Liz Phair; Red Hot Chili Peppers; Squirrel Nut Zippers; Jeff Buckley; The Smiths. I'm really starting to dig on The Black Keys!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Clint Eastwood westerns; Forest Gump; The Lady Killers; Life Is Beautiful; Goodbye Lenin; Weimar era films (Germany used to be the Hollywood of the world); documentaries, etc.
History Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and I Love the 80's (please excuse the unparallel structure).
Heinrich Boll, Wolfgang Borchert, Brecht, and other German wartime giants; Kafka (ich bin Gregor); Al Franken satire (funny, funny guy!); Robert Fulgum; Edgar Allan Poe; E.E. Cummings; Nonfiction; Currently reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies...two pages at a time....just like I've been writing my novel - two pages at a time.
My mom (my mom's the one in radiation therapy cheering everyone else up. She's amazing, and I hope I can be half the woman she is.); my Grandma Ella, who raised two kids alone as the only single mother in town, working her ass off for a fraction of her male counterparts' salaries; FDR; MLK; Rosa Luxemberg; Victoria Woodhull; Charlotte Perkins Gilman; John Stewart (The Daily Show Rocks!); Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott; Stephanie Miller (listen to the Stephanie Miller Show M-F at 9 a.m. on Progressive 1230).