public radio, "This American Life", eating around New York, Brooklyn, Fort Greene, my bicycle, indie-rock music, arts and crafts, my friends' bands, fashion, shopping, shoes, sewing, cooking, currently: exploring foreign countries, talking, meeting new people, psychology, relationships....
I have a new obsession and it's country music: Gretchen Wilson, Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley...Jenny Lewis, Rilo Kiley, Tilly and the Wall, Sondre Leiche, Belle and Sebastian, the Beatles, Arcade Fire, Fiona Apple, Carole King, Dolly Parton, Bjork, Joni Mitchell, Patsy Cline, Linda Ronstadt, The Magnetic Fields, Neko Case, the Wainwrights, Ben Folds Five, anything my friends Kristy Ivicek or Jerry Chen send me...
Secretary (I love James Spader), Amelie, Closer, Lost in Translation, Singing in the Rain...I love movies...I want to watch everything with Maggie Gyllenhaal or Scarlet Johansson. I love how creepy Phillip Seymour Hoffman can be in movies...
My grandmothers: Elsie Williams is 94 years old. She grew up in a Swedish immigrant family, where she wasn't allowed by her parents to be anything other than a teacher or a nurse ("the only acceptable jobs for women"). She went to UC Berkeley and got a degree in Maths. She eventually worked for NASA as a computer programmer after both her parents died. She made more money than her husband but never told him. Wilda Frances Wilhite died when I was in HighSchool. She had an extreme IQ but had four children by the time she was 24. She had another one 10 years later, too. She lived in a suburb of Idaho Falls and was the only woman who dyed her hair red and wore lipstick everyday without fail. She moved to Venezuela for a year with her husband and 4 small children. Then, they moved to California. She was a social diva and musical tyrant who never understood why her children were not interested in dating. She went back to school after her children were grown and became a music teacher and director at a local Highschool. She always won at Jeopardy. She was a chain-smoker and mixed a mean gin and tonic every night for cocktail hour. She made them with pickeld onions. She had a biting wit and a fetish for vocabulary and spelling. She died of cancer. My grandmothers are opposites but they both have influenced me with their personalities and their lust for life.