Elizabeth Brion

I'd like to meet:

Mostly looking to catch up with old friends and find new work.

A favor please... if we don't know each other at all, please don't just send me an out-of-the-blue friend request. If you think I'd like your music or your comedy, or think we have a lot in common and should be new best friends, cool - send me a message and tell me why. I don't have half as much fun as you might think scrutinizing profiles trying to figure out why people want to be on my list, and I have zero interest in having 11,000 MySpace friends I've never even spoken to. So from now on, even though being mean pains my soul, I'm just going to deny all requests that don't come attached to either an actual friend or an explanation. Thanks!

Music:

(in no particular order except that of synapses firing) Beatles, Nick Cave, Nields, Hawksley Workman, Solipsistics, Old 97's/Rhett Miller, Andy Prieboy, Sun Ra, Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Jackson, Louis Armstrong, Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Loud Family, John Southworth, Prince, Parliament/Funkadelic, Flaming Lips, Anton Barbeau, Nina Simone, Brad Mehldau, Jason Moran, Lester Bowie, Kristian Hoffman, Robyn Hitchcock, eels, Magnetic Fields, XTC, Sex Mob, and oh, so many, many more. There's not really a genre I entirely don't like, except jingoistic country. Our child will have to work really hard to upset us with his musical taste.

Hey, here's what I'm listening to RIGHT NOW.

Movies:

Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Sunset Boulevard, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Say Anything, Princess Bride, This Is Spinal Tap, The Wedding Banquet, Punch-Drunk Love... those leap to mind as movies I can watch over and over. I will generally go see anything with Morgan Freeman in it because I love him so (this often does not work out well for me) or with Johnny Depp in it because I trust his artistic choices (this usually does). On the other end of the spectrum, Kevin Costner and Melanie Griffith are absolute dealbreakers for me - I couldn't even get through Costner's Robin Hood with Freeman AND Alan Rickman to balance him out.

Television:

I love: Pushing Daisies, Daily Show, Colbert Report, Gilmore Girls, Project Runway, The Amazing Race, Wonderfalls, Monk, MST3K (before you ask: Joel) and of course The A-Team. I watch because I cannot help myself: American Idol, The Apprentice, Semi-Homemade With Sandra Lee.

Books:

I've been on a mystery kick for the last few years, ever since - and my husband laughs at me every time I say this but IT'S TRUE - I finished the classics. Or at least, I wrung everything out of the world's back catalog that I was likely to enjoy; I read about 3-500 books a year - eventually, you catch up. Favorite mystery writers include Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Keith Snyder, S.J. Rozan, Carol O'Connell, Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Kinky Friedman, Laurie R. King, Barbara Seranella, Dennis Lehane, Jim Fusilli, Laura Lippman, and probably some other really obvious ones I can't think of. Don't like mysteries that have a lot to do with hairstyles, tea, or crime-solving cats, although I enjoy all three things in real life, and the fastest way to make me put a book back on the shelf is to start the back-cover plot summary with the words "A madman..." or "An operative..."

In the genre of "not mysteries," favorites include mid- to late-period Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Peter Carey, Angela Carter, Michael Malone, Christopher Moore, David Sedaris, sometimes Nick Hornby and John Irving (but sometimes really not), I've got really high hopes for Cintra Wilson and Zadie Smith based on early returns, and again, a bunch of stuff I can't think of because I'm not in the room with the bookshelves.

Heroes:

Audrey Hepburn, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Jon Stewart. Is that good?