I love books. That's something most people know about me. The older, the better. I do consume a frightening amount of television for an aspirant of literary splendor. I love words: where they come from, learning new ones, finding out about roots and mutations, and arguing semantics with people. The more archaic the phrase, the better. I am interested in bath oils and green tea blends and haggling various people over various articles of clothing down at Out of the Closet. I love window shopping and sitting shot gun on long drives. Tide pools are incredibly wonderful. I also love zoos, which make me cry 'wow!' in varying degrees of childhood glee. I'm trying to get into modern art, but it seems like a useless struggle; I much prefer the Baroque or Neoclassical, or Greek sculpture. Man really is the measure of all things, and no, I'm not mad it says 'man' rather than 'human' or whatever. Pet peeves: feminists; Bobby Brown; William S. Burroughs lovers; bad grammar; people who move to Prague; label whores; most cakes; carrots that taste like copper; mean retail reps; customers who don't read the contracts they sign; sitcoms; less than 300 thread count sheets; homeless people (on the bus in particular, everywhere in general); brown hairdye that turns your hair black; 'christian' 'existentialists;' tribal tattoos; overly calculated haircuts and accessories; people who think I'm a classic tragic girl because I like Virginia Woolf; Fisherman's Wharf, except for the sea lions; Shannon's mom's tap water; steak houses.
God.
A random selection of stuff I love: pretty much all the Elephant Six bands; Mr. Mixel Pixel; all that now passe electroclash stuff (Chicks on Speed, Ladytron; the Faint, Tracy and the Plastics, Peaches (except that song from that GAP add, I'm too cool for that), Stereo Total); Ms. John Soda; the Rapture; Death Cab for Cutie's older stuff; Le Tigre; Royksopp (but only when they are smart enough to include Erelend Oye); the Pixies; Ben Folds Five (seriously); French Kicks; Clinic; Talking Heads; TV on the Radio; Blonde Redhead; Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Mum; the Gossip; the Smiths; Arcade Fire; Death from Above 1979; Magnetic Fields; Air; Devendra Banhart; Depeche Mode; Charlatans UK; the Cure, on occasion; Grandaddy; the Liars; Unicorns; Kings of Convenience; Modey Lemon; Modest Mouse; Elliot Smith (sniffle); the Shins; Styrofoam; Whirlwind Heat crack me up in a good way. I've been having fun with the 80's, too: Berlin, Soft Cell ( I still can't believe they changed their name to Tainted Love, haha), Erasure (It's so gay it gives me a penis which I then want to cut off!), Bryan Ferry, the B52's, the theme song from 'Beauty and the Geek' by the Pet Shop Boys...
Here's some more stuff I like: Secretary, Magnolia, Virgin Suicides, Palindromes, the original Stepford Wives, Election, Big Fish, Freeway, Ghost World, Titus, Pumpkin, Closer, Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, Amadeus, the Graduate, Citizen Ruth, Bottle Rocket, Requiem for a Dream, Wonder Boys, High Fidelity, the Hours, Your Friends and Neighbors, the Aristocats. You can add me and Trevor as friends on Netflix if you really want to know... It's worth noting that I hate Napoleon Dynamite and Garden State. Who wants to fight about it? To add insult to injury to all those lovers of hip cinema, I was also terribly underwhelmed by Lost in Translation.
The shows I have on permanent Tivo right now are pathetic: America's Next Top Model; Top Design; The Agency; Project Catwalk; Lost; The Simpsons; Planet Earth; Rome; the Girls Next Door; Iron Chef America; My old pal Conan O'Brian; BAd Girls Club; Art of the Western World; Intervention and Ancient Almanac on History International. Jeez, I don't record any TV that I like! My standby, absolute favorites are Strangers with Candy, Wanderlust, and Insomniac from my old pal Comedy Central; Rich Girls (I could laugh at those bitches for hours!), Sister Wendy's art history programs, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Penn and Teller's Bullshit can be awesome, America's Next Top Model (although Germany's Next Top Model and Australia's Next Top Model are way better because Tyra is such an unbearable megalomaniac), Curb Your Enthusiasm makes me wish I was a Jew... There's probably some other stuff too. Someone remind me, why do I watch so much TV?
The Romance kick: Wharton, Austen, Lawrence, Flaubert, Chekhov, Chopin, Brontes (plural), Hawthorne (short stories). Time will never be wasted on Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, or Oscar Wilde. If you want to read awesome 'history' about people making rabbit stew on Greek beaches or about how Julius Caesar sodomized everything in sight, read Herodotus or Seutonius, respectively. Standard favorites: Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio, although Paradisio is way boring, as you might expect. The Seagull and Waiting for Godot are my most beloved plays. Grendel is the funniest thing I have ever encountered. Lucretius was the smartest man before Voltaire. I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and it was awe inspiring. Anna Karenina will always be wonderful, except when Tolstoy gives you the dog's perspective (how very postmodern of him). I recently was introduced to Annie Ernaux and she is the most self indulgent, sexually perverse French woman ever, which means I love her. Contemporarily, I like Bret Easton Ellis, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Robbins (in general); the Hours is the best book written by a man about women; Nick Hornby used to be good before he caught the buddhist bug; I like Elizabeth Wertzel for her ubiquitous self importance, and because anything I do will always look good next to someone who spent years of their life holed up in Florida snorting ridalin (sp?); and I wish so much that I could hate Dave Eggers but he has the English language twisted around his little finger. It should be noted that I hate poetry. It's gross and all those eye rhymes leave a bad taste in the back of my mouth. Never, ever, ever assume that because I like literature that I enjoy Hemingway or Faulkner. If I could have a conversation with anyone living or dead, it would be with William Faulkner, and I would simply punch him in the face and walk away.
I am my own hero, and my own Grandpa.