Monsters, Replicants, Dead People.A fascination with times past and future. My day-to-day style lives somewhere between 1940 and 1960, but I'm also enamored with the late Victorian era and military- industrial visions of the future. I'm currently involved in Victorian/ Civil War re-enacting. I also enjoy 'time-travelling' to dances that take place in the 20's, 30's and 40's (and occasionally 50's or 60's Tiki), but I especially love the Big Band era, and most of my vintage clothes are from the 40's. I love old architecture and extinct places of distinction (such as Valentino's legendary Falcon Lair...) Living in the great necropolis of Los Angeles, I try to frequent any building built pre-1960 as often as I can, as this city loves to tear anything beautiful and old down to build strip malls and parking lots. The things that interest me usually involve a haunted place, corsetted and be-hatted persons dancing to something recorded at least 50 years ago, red lipstick, classic cars and hot-rod hearses, shiny riding boots, monkeys in ruffs, ancient objects, steel weaponry, elaborate leatherwork, dark and dramatic music, robotic entities and degenerate art. I am a fencer (NCAA Women's Foil Team Captain, CSULB), primarily foil, but I also enjoy a good bout in Sabre or Epee. Military re-enacting (modern to ancient) is also fun, especially WWII era, and I'm looking forward to learning more about historical combat-all that fun cloak and dagger fighting and such--any "Conquest" fans out there? I like hiking to places where there are waterfalls, and if I were to go to the beach, it would probably be to witness a giant squid sighting or to board Captain Nemo's submarine vessel rather than to be baked in the sun. I follow politics very closely, and I like debating issues, but I don't wish to use myspace to get into political combat with anyone....Let me just say that apathy never changed the world....
The Maker. And any other interesting lifeforms or entities dwelling about.
I love music, and I don't subscribe to any one label of muscial interest. My collection spans the genres, but it is all well off of top 40-- from Cocteau Twins to 18th C. chamber music to 20's Jazz to The Police to :wumpscut:--I try not to be too snobby about what I don't like, BUT... I DO get a bit homicidal upon hearing mariachi music on a Sunday morning. Also ice-cream truck music will get me reaching for the nearest deadly weapon...and so will Polka, for that matter .
I grew up watching black-and-white movies from the '20's, 30's and '40's, and that's where my heart is, but I'm a true-blue film buff in general. My favorite genres are gothic horror, film noir, victorian period films, classics, war films, silents, technicolor epics, Busby Berkley musicals, classic westerns and anything from 1939. Favorite Directors: Hitchcock, Ford, Bunuel, Resnais, Cocteau, J. Renoir, Sturges, Von Stroheim, Wilder, Cukor, Welles, W. Wyler, DeSica, Fellini, Scorcese, Eastwood, V. Minnelli, T.Burton, Kubrick, Spielberg, F.F.Coppola, Lynch, Ridley Scott and Chaplin.I can't pick ONE favorite film, but here are a few of my favorites...Western: Unforgiven, The Big Country, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, Red River, Shane, High Noon, Giant Sci Fi: Blade Runner, Star Wars and Empire, Logan's Run, Serenity (more for Firefly), Dune, Aliens;War: Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, All's Quiet on the Western Front, Platoon, The Rules of the Game, The Young Lions, Cross of Iron, Letters From Iwo Jima, Schindler's List, The Best Years of Our LivesDrama: Wuthering Heights ('39 and Bunuel version), Pride and Prejudice('05), Hamlet (Olivier), Angel Heart; Master and Commander, Dangerous Liaisons, Rebel Without a Cause, the Heiress, Citizen Kane (I begrudgingly admit-it really is as great as they say), The Magnificent Andersons, SerpicoSentimental Fave: Breakfast at Tiffany's;Favorite Performance, George C. Scott in: Patton;German: The Blue Angel, Das Boot, Triumph of the Will;Silent: It, Pandora's Box, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Flesh and The Devil, Metropolis 20's: Hell's Angels, anything with Chaplin, Keaton, Clara Bow, Fairbanks and Louise Brooks 30's: GWTW, Dinner at Eight;Stage Door, Dracula, The Mummy, Morrocco, The Women, Screwball comedies with Carole Lombard; 40's: Gilda, Cover Girl, To Have and Have Not; Casablanca, Sullivan's Travels, This Gun For Hire, Bringing Up Baby, Ball of Fire, Dragonwyck, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Errol Flynn swordfests; 50's: Anything with Marilyn, Audrey, or Elizabeth, Ben Hur, Sunset Blvd., Harryhausen films; Gene Kelly musicals, the James Dean trilogy, Vincent Price thrillers, Disney animation; 60's: Dr. No, Vertigo, Psycho, Dr. Strangelove, Baby Doll, Lolita, Don't Look Now, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, arty French New Wave flicks, Mario Bava and above all,Hammer Horror! 70's: Taxi Driver, THX1138; King of Comedy, The Duellists, Star Wars, The Godfather, Alien 80's: Breakfast Club, Vacation, Wierd Science, Caddyshack, Raging Bull, Aliens, Close Encounters; Vampire: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Near Dark, Dracula(Lugosi of course!), The Hunger, Nosferatu; Horror: Hellraiser, and anything with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Karloff, Bela or Vincent; Foreign: The Seventh Seal, Last Year at Marienbad, Orphee, La Belle et La Bete, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai. The world should also see 'An Inconvenient Truth' if they haven't already.
Deadwood, Rome, John Adams, Band of Brothers, BBC shows like 'Ladette to Lady'--a true GEM; Daily Show, The Little Rascals, Wonder Woman and the old Bionic Woman, Sherlock Holmes on Mystery! with Jeremy Brett, The Henry Rollins Show, Bugs Bunny, Mindfreak and Mindcontrol with Derren Brown, Anderson Cooper 360 (his gunmetal grey hair is truly mesmerizing), The Addams Family, Sid N' Marty Krofft, I Love Lucy, Firefly, the new (and sometimes old) Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Boot Camp, Combat Missions, Battle 360, NASA, Things That Aren't Here Anymore, How William Shatner Changed the World, and when I'm feeling very, very nostalgic for the normal childhood I never had in the 1880's, Little House OTP.
I love the classics; Shakespeare always tops my list, but I'm especially fond of all the Victorians--Dickens, Bronte, Poe, Lewis Carroll, just to name a few. I'll always love reading Austen and the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Rimbaud, Whitman, Coleridge and the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain, among many, many others... Some of my other favorite authors are Joseph Campbell, John Kennedy O'Toole, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, T. Wolfe, P.K. Dick and K. Vonnegut. My bookshelves are also jammed with playscripts and movie books, biographies and history books (especially military history), true crime, magic, space travel, philosophy, architecture, books on historical fashion and 'extreme' fashion, photo and art books and vintage children's books. I'm addicted to print newspapers, but I usually get my news from NPR.
Some Inspirations: The Rabble-Rousers, Rebels and Rogues of History, The United States Marine Corps, Joseph Campbell, Obi Wan Kenobi, Shakespeare, Christiane Amanpour, General Washington, Siouxsie, Adam Ant and The Bromley Contingent, the madness of Walt Disney, Jean-Luc DeMeyer, Al Gore's fight for the planet, John Willie, Vargas, Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Henry Rollins, Thierry Mugler, Galliano and Worth (amongst many idols of fashion), Lola Montez and Lillie Langtry, the Victorian Age in all its' sick glory, Fabricators of shiny black clothing, Astronauts and Explorers of the Further Regions of the Universe, Crimefighters and Exacters of Justice