LOVE. (What else is there?)
OK, there are cupcakes.
Charles Nelson Reilly is the casting couch!
Below are bands I can remember being absolutely fanatical about at some point in the past 29 years, off the top of my head, in no particular order. Against Me!, Rainer Maria, Morphine, Pavement, Guster, Dismemberment Plan, Death Cab For Cutie, The Beatles, Metallica, Joan Jett, Cyndi Lauper, Bon Jovi, Saves the Day, Texas Is The Reason, Blur, Oasis, Built To Spill, Get Up Kids, Cruiserweight, Queensryche, Slowreader, The Impossibles, Rilo Kiley, Korn, Patsy Cline, Dinosaur Jr., Alice in Chains, Band of Horses, Wilco, Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin, Guided By Voices, Alkaline Trio, Thursday, REM, They Might Be Giants, Faith No More, Merle Haggard, The Thermals, Debbie Gibson, Tool, The Flaming Lips, Old 97s, Grandaddy, Eisley, New Kids on the Block, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Bananarama, The Smiths, Radiohead, Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, Mates of State, Lucero, Coldplay, Coheed and Cambria, Violent Femmes. Some of those may make you like me more, others less. Them's the breaks. I'm tempted to put asteriks with excuses like "first album only," "before they were huge," or "I was only 8" -- but that would be wimping out. I also know I'm almost certainly forgetting someone. I just hope it's one of the embarrassing bands, not one of the good ones. ;)
The 'Burbs (and other instances of The Old Tom Hanks, like the middle section of The Money Pit where the house falls apart and the scenes in Joe Vs. The Volcano where he dances on floating luggage or when the doctor tells him he is dying of a "brain cloud"), Clue, The Usual Suspects, Dreaming in America: a Film about Lucero, American Movie, The Sure Thing, Some Kind of Wonderful, Me Without You, Bandwagon (see it now!), When Harry Met Sally, Me You and Everyone We Know (back and forth forever!), and generally watching ..aries and movies about music.
Law & Order (dun dun!) original and SVU, VH1's Bands on the Run (why, oh why, is this not on DVD yet?), BBC's Pride and Prejudice, Veronica Mars, Project Runway ( CLICK AND READ THIS too!), The Office (UK and US), Roswell (season 1), Buffy, single-digit-numbered seasons of The Simpsons, Celebrity Poker Showdown, Fraggle Rock, Family Feud, and Match Game (all hail puns, double entendres, and Charles Nelson Reilly!)
Our Band Could Be Your Life, Youth in Revolt, Confederacy of Dunces, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I Know You're Out There: Public Humiliations and Private Longings from the Personals, the Harlan Chronicles, Little Critter's This Is My Friend, The Westing Game, the Phantom Tollbooth, The Babysitter's Club #8 (the yellow one where they go to the beach), anything by David Sedaris (especially in Naked when someone in his house is crappping on the chocolate brown towels!), Chuck Klosterman IV and Fargo Rock City, Magical Thinking by Augusten Burrows, The Charles Bukowski Reader, Queen of the Oddballs, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, Devil in the Details, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace, Bill Bryson, Dave Eggers, Neal Pollack, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Chris Van Allburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and everything written by my students at 826 CHI .
My parents. (I still miss you, Dad. And I would still pick my mom from the Mom Store.) Also, anyone who lives a life devoted to dreams, love, friendship, and charity.