Writing, exploring, wine, cooking, conversation, good movies, jazz, poetry, design, backpacking, satire, philosophy, sci-fi, geology, technology, laundry lists, meaningless generalities, trite cliches... Engage me! ought to be my motto, except that I'm afraid some people might take it entirely the wrong way...
I'd like to meet:
Sarah Silverman! I'd love to be present at a George Carlin punch-up session. I'd like to pick Frank Orrall's brain over good food and as-appropriate alcoholic beverages. I'd like to meet... (see Heroes section)
Music:
From Abercrombie (John) to Zorn (also John). (I like lots of artists whose names are not John, too.)Jazz is an uncanny concept. "If you have to ask, you'll never know."Being a moody bastard, In A Silent Way, Ralph Towner's Old Friends, New Friends, Zorn's Naked City, PDP's Pomegranate, A Love Supreme, Towner & Abercrombie's Sargasso Sea, Sketches of Spain, Pat Metheny's New Chataqua & As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, Stanley Turrnetine's Sugar and West Side Drive, Kind Of Blue, The Crusaders' Scratch, and Ry Cooder's Jazz get an inordinate amount of play, considering the size of my library. I sing along (alone) to Tears For Fears, Sting and The Police, Albert Collins, Dire Straits, Robben Ford, Chicago, PDP (of course), ELO and Mr. Lynne, The Beatles, Michael Franks, Son Volt, Joe Jackson, The Moody Blues, Lyle Lovett, Midnight Oil, Steely Dan, XTC, U2, and, most amusingly (for me), Michelle Shocked...I love Ella and Sarah and Carmen and Betty and Etta and Nina and Nancy and Billie and Blossom, and Frank and Mel and Dean and Bing......A tiny, infinitessimal scratch on a seemingly interminable surface...
Movies:
...fascinate me. That flashing two-dimensional images can have such impact on so many levels continually amazes me.Film Noir is probably my favorite genre. Cheesy Sci-Fi is my guilty pleasure. Worthless dreck (95% of what gets made today) is the bane of my $9.50. (I think contemporary audiences are either incredibly ignorant of good writing/acting/direction or unbelievably Dreck-Tolerant, maybe both, and I think it is all TV's fault). I follow directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters; if it hits me, I trace its lineage and connections. Film gives such a unique window into the span and breadth of an artist's work; growth, technique, failure, risk, achievement, limitations, chops, cliches, genius...
Television:
X-Files. The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. Monty Python's Flying Circus. Chef. Ren & Stimpy. The Twilight Zone. The Prisoner. The Day The Universe Changed. California Gold. The Human Animal. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Nova. Cheesy sci-fi of all sorts. South Park. The Daily Show. Family Guy. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Fawlty Towers. Ken Burns Docs. MST3K.AND ON THE NEGATIVE...anything "reality", including all its variants: gross-out tv, humiliation tv, greed/lust tv, lying/backstabbing tv, pose/preen/be incredibly narcissistic tv, celebrity tv, gossip tv, never-happen-in-real-life-in-a-million-years tv, asanine stunt tv... yep, that's about half of what's on. Oh, and no brain-dead sitcoms, no "must see tv", and never, ever any Cops.
Books:
Sometimes A Great Notion, The Dispossessed, Stand On Zanzibar, Heart of Darkness, The Martian Chronicles, On The Road, Desert Solitaire, The Unteleported Man, Cat's Cradle, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, The Alchemist, the original Foundation series, James and the Giant Peach, Catcher in the Rye, Ender's Game & Speaker for the Dead, City, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series, Approaching Oblivion, the Rings trilogy, The Man in the High Castle, Dangerous Visions, The Illustrated Man, C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, Angry Candy, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Huckleberry Finn, Animal Farm, Catch 22, Timescape, Blood Music, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, News of the Universe, The Great Gatsby, The Ciderhouse Rules, The Chronicles of Narnia, Ubik, The Screwtape Letters, Macroscope, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Stranger, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Little Prince... I have come to terms with the obvious (which for many years I was in denial regarding); namely, that my reading list stretches beyond even the most optimistic estimation of my remaining years... Cheers...
Heroes:
People of depth, compassion and integrity. The people that make a difference.
