View all my FavoriteThingz!
GeneralGood conversation
Good politics
Good art
Good food
Spending time with nonhuman creatures, particularly dogs, cats and horses. And goats.
Growing big plants with edible produce (chilis, tomatoes, citrus, bananas) on small balconies in impossible climates. Particularly love heirloom peppers, beans and tomatoes.
I'd like to meet:
Now that I'm no longer teaching at a university I'm looking for places where (and people with whom) I can share what knowledge I've gained by the combination of life experience and research. I love finding folks who know a lot more than I do about a given subject, and who can school me, too. I prefer the kinds of conversations that work cooperatively to build understanding. In my fiery youth I was a great lover of the crash-and-bang flame-war conflict, but as I've aged I find the whole opposition thing just makes me tired. I like talking to young people, middle-aged people, my elders, to men, women and the gender-queer--to just about anyone who has anything interesting to say.
Music:
I like almost anything if it's a good representation of its genre. Tend mostly towards hip hop, older blues (particularly the blues women), be-bop, modern and way off-center jazz (Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, late Miles and Trane, Herbie Hancock), amazing pianists (Elmo Hope, Chick Corea, Monk, McCoy Tyner, James Booker), old school punk, women country/folk singers who make me tear up (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Michelle Shocked), sixties stuff from the psychedelic to the pop-trash, and African drumming (particularly Mande drumming), Zulu jive and West African resistance music (Fela being the finest example). Not much gets left out. In the right mood, I've got Maria Callas on the stereo, bopping along to La Boheme or Lucia.
Movies:
Really tough to limit myself here, too. (Nothing succeeds like excess, I figure). I have a library of at least a 1000 "favorite films." Right now I've been immersed in blaxploitation productions from the late sixties through the seventies. It looks a lot different to the 46-year-old me than it did to the 20-year-old me. Some of it's shit of course, but I just sat through Shaolin Dolomite and I'm still having fits of laughter--the good kind of laughter; the kind that makes me think harder. Sci-fi fan from way back, so I have a soft spot for tacky genre movies in that department, too. If you want to talk movies, I can go at it all day, from art films to total hack horroshow.
Television:
Never owned a TV as an adult, but in the age of the DVD and p2p I got addicted to a few of them. Sure, I admit it. I'm a Buffy and Angel fan, though I came to them almost in their last seasons. One bitter winter I watched 6-8 hours of Buffy a day until I'd caught up with both shows (7 years total, at that point), and I swore then and I'll say it now: Buffy saved my life. "Buffy Therapy," I called it, and a number of my other friends will less publicly admit that they also indulge. I did find, over time, that there was barely a moral lesson to be learned that couldn't be illustrated by a Buffy or Angel episode. I watched Charmed, too, but only to pass the time while working on something else--wasn't riveted by that one at all. And I just finished Femme Nikita, which I liked a lot for the first few seasons but was bored with by season 3. Still, I'm a goer and waded through all of them while telecommuting. (Did I mention I have to do three things at once?) Watched Dark Angel and was disappointed it didn't go on for another season or two. Predictably, I think Whedon's Firefly is the best televised SF ever, no contest. And if I'm going to get nostalgic I've got to go back to The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (loved the documentary, Smothered), a long-forgotten show called Red Ball Express, My Favorite Martian, the early Hill Street Blues, and Northern Exposure. Oh, yeah, and Saturday Night Live, way back in the day when it was funny. I mean in the 1970s up to the very early 1980s.
Books:
I'm worse about books than I am about movies. I keep lists, sometimes. If you're interested in them, I've got a couple on Amazon.com and some on my weblog (rarely updated) at http://www.kalital.com . Maybe I'll put up some more in the next couple of months if folks are interested.
Heroes:
Real heroes? They all have warts, I'm afraid. But some folks who I am happy walked this earth include: Paul Robeson; Ida B. Wells; Leon Trotsky; C.L.R. James; Aimee Cesaire; W.E.B. DuBois; Victoria Woodhull; Cesar Chavez; Ella Baker; Malcolm X; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Shirley Chisolm; Sojourner Truth; Harriet Tubman, George Jackson; Geronimo; Chief Joseph; Kwame Nkrumah; Abigail Addams. That's not an inclusive list--just who I'm thinking about today as I write. Plenty of props for those still out there walking, but that would make this section too long to be useful.
