Making comics, playing old-timey cowboy songs, learning about history, talking about history, watching movies, griping about how great Disney could be if they got their act together, reading, walking around in a happy-go-lucky mood, drinking coffee(!!!!!), theology, and writing letters.
George MacDonald Fraser (edit: nevermind, he died), Terry Gilliam, kids who read Tintin, Garrison Keiler,
The New Pornographers, Deathcab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, The Avett Brothers, Allison Weiss, Cub Country, Johnny Cash, Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers, Harry and the Potters
N.P.R.!!!!!! Does "This American Life" count as music?
Orientalist classical music like Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies or Rimsky-Korsakoff's Sheherazad.
Soundtracks that invoke the feeling of whatever period I'm making comics about (currently, swashbuckly stuff)
I used to have a band.
Casablanca is the greatest movie ever made.Amelie, Spirited Away, Rob Roy, The Princess Bride, The Empire Strikes Back, Master and Commander, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and most 2D Disney Cartoons.Plus anything by Noah Baumbach (except Highball), Whit Stillman, and Wes Anderson.
Veronica Mars, Pushing Daisies, Mad Men, Futurama, Law and Order: SVU, Deadwood, 30 Rock, the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, Foyle's War, Masterpiece Theater, Mystery!, Psych, Burn Notice
The Flashman Papers series, Mr. American, Beau Geste, The Once and Future King, The Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Dorothy Parker, John Steinbeck
I also like Usagi Yojimbo, Bone, Tintin, Uncle Scrooge, lots of stuff published by Oni and Top Shelf, and the Cartoon History of the Universe books.
First and foremost,
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My dad, who by example has shown me that I can, and should, do anything if I put my mind to it.
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Indiana Jones, for providing an adequate life model.
My wife Liz, my mom, my grandfather, my grandmother