I am deeply interested in music and literature, as both a consumer and a producer. In addition to hosting my weekly radio program , I have written songs, poems, essays, polemics, and two novels. The first four chapters of my novel FEASIBILITY are now posted for your reading pleasure. Several of my (admittedly subversive) songs are available for download HERE . See also my Carpal Tunnel Kid myspace music page .
I'd like to meet:
Other fans of 1920s and 1930s music (such as I play on RADIOLA! ) with a view to helping it flourish on the internet, on the radio, and on CD.
Music:
I love early jazz, swing, 20s and 30s pop, classic calypso, and Vaudeville and British Music Hall selections--and play plenty of them on RADIOLA! I also love Gilbert and Sullivan and most 19th century classical music.
Movies:
I dig anything made before the Breen Office tightened the screws. Since then movies have been used as a propaganda tool to create phony morals and manners, and perhaps effects even more sinister. We've been wandering in a state of terminal Cognitive Dissonance forever thanks to the cinematic opiate. Take away the cheesecloth--I want a little more cynicism with my catharsis, thank you!
Television:
I don't watch television. It irritates me and eats up valuable hours of life that I am perfectly capable of squandering without electronic assistance. (TV's also an insidious mind-control tool--see "Movies" above.) I much prefer Internet Radio, which I pipe into every room of my house so that I'm not tied to the computer. I spend too much time on this damn thing as it is.
Books:
In addition to the classics penned by some of my heroes (see below), I read everything by Carl Hiaasen that I can find. Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, and Electric is one of the great unsung books of the late 20th century--a conspiracy theorist's family picnic, and funny as hell. Terry Pratchett is great, too. And A Confederacy of Dunces would be one of my desert-island books, of course.
My reading tastes are in flux--whenever I sit down with a book, I doze off. Either I need to sleep more at night, or I could use new glasses. Maybe all my chickens are coming home to roost, big time. Since I don't get up with the chickens, I have no way of knowing.
Heroes:
I'm too old to believe in heroes. We're all humans on this planet. But I do admire the following people for their various sterling qualities:
All investigators who bravely challenge our national Cognitive Constipation, especially with regard to the deceptions of 9/11/01, in the spirit of the kid who said the Emperor was butt naked.
Also, H.L. Mencken, William Schwenck Gilbert, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, George Orwell, Art Tatum, Eddie Lang, Fats Waller, Louis Armstong, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Fields, Sinclair Lewis, Evelyn Waugh, Thomas Edison.
