A-Ron profile picture

A-Ron

Ace Virtueson is my hero.

About Me

I'm one of the most easy-going, relaxed people I know. I consider myself an artist and don't have a problem with that moniker. I love life and I love my friends.
Bernard Pivot Questionnaire:
1. What is your favorite word?
Disaster
2. What is your least favorite word?
Real
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Dialogue with someone who has the vocabulary of an artist
4. What turns you off?
Need
5. What is your favorite curse word?
Fuck
6. What sound or noise do you love?
A chord about four minutes into the Prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
7. What sound or noise do you hate?
Car horns
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Politics
9. What profession would you not like to do?
Salesman
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Heaven does not exist, but in answer to the question: "Everyone else is already here. You're fashionably late, as usual."
Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire:
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being hugged from behind by the love of my life while barbecuing in my backyard
2. What is your greatest fear?
Failure in any of its forms
3. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Oscar Wilde
4. Which living person do you most admire?
Jaime Rohrer, Arianna Huffington, Tony Kushner
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Laziness
6. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Selfishness
7. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Brilliant and totally
8. What is your greatest regret?
Not being willing to love a man who loved me. I loved him for years afterward, but by then it was too late.
9. What is your greatest extravagance?
Currently, its new furniture
10. What is your favorite journey?
The rehearsal, production and realization of a piece of theatre
11. On what occasion do you lie?
All the time
12. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Mercy
13. What do you dislike most about your appearance?
The fact that Ill never have washboard abs
14. Which living person do you most despise?
Any of a seemingly limitless number of religious nut-jobs
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
The theatre
16. When and where were you happiest?
Im happier every day
17. What is your current state of mind?
Exhausted
18. Which talent would you most like to have?
The ability to dance
19. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would spend more time with other people
20. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
I wish they did not believe in god
21. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Ignorance
22. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A solar panel
23. If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
A gay man
24. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My B.A.
25. What is your most treasured possession?
My library
26. Where would you like to live?
On cliffs overlooking the ocean and where the wind never ends
27. What is your favorite occupation?
Studying
28. What is your most marked characteristic?
Fashionability
29. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Wit
30. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Intelligence
31. Who are your favorite writers?
Tony Kushner, Michael Cunningham, Tori Amos
32. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Nick Guest from The Line of Beauty
33. Who are your heroes in real life?
Anyone doing with their life what it is they want to do most
34. What do you value most in your friends?
Adaptability, understanding
35. What are your favorite names?
Fernando, Tristan, Elizabeth, Madeleine
36. What is it that you most dislike?
Having to go to work
37. How would you like to die?
At the opera eating chocolate
38. What is your motto?
Roll with the Punches and Don't Feed the Animals Oh yeah, and...
You can read my weblog here .

My Interests

I like theatre, cinema, and culture of any kind, really. I am a strict Libertarian and I love discussing politics. I don't read as much as I should and probably watch far too many movies.

I'd like to meet:

Jon Robin Baitz, Adam Rapp, Tony Kushner, Brad Pitt, Wong Kar-Wai, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tim Miller, Edward Albee, Marian Seldes, Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Music:

Nina Simone
Will Dailey
Tori Amos
Rufus Wainwright
Youngblood Brass Band
Fiona Apple
Howie Day
Damien Rice
Steel Train
Rilo Kiley
Steve Reich
and especially Philip Glass .
I like musicals too. Right now I'm completely addicted to Caroline, or Change and The Light in the Piazza.

Movies:

My favorites are Lumet's Network, anything by P.T. Anderson, especially Magnolia, Malick's The Thin Red Line, almost anything by Woody Allen, especially Interiors, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Broadway Danny Rose and Bullets over Broadway, anything by Wong Kar-Wai, anything by Kurosawa, anything by Anthony Minghella, especially The English Patient, early Yang Zhimou, and Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs Trilogy. My current obsession is the oeuvre of Merchant-Ivory. I love those guys. I'm sure there are a lot more that I'm forgetting. I love movies as much as anything, and I watch at least five a week on average.

Television:

As a rule I do not watch television. I haven't for at least three years. I make an annual exception for the Academy Awards. I have nothing against people who watch TV, I'd just rather watch a movie.

Books:

My favorite book is Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham. No book has impacted me like that one. I read a good deal... mostly plays and other theatre books, but occasionally I pick up a novel. Recently: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (which is awesome) and Allan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (equally fascinating).

Heroes:

Justin Abarca
Arianna Huffington
Elizabeth Triplett
Nina Totenberg

My Blog

Poem from 8/17/06

The mornings sweat hereAtmosphere pushing me out of its wayI don't fit hereThere isn't roomFor me and the airTo live to gether in peaceThis war will last for yearsInfidel in the holy landTrying to wor...
Posted by A-Ron on Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:21:00 PST

A Poem I Wrote in August That Made Me Laugh Today

This poem is dated 8/16/06. I re-read it today and it made me laugh:I daydream sometimes about being underwaterFor a long time, I mean, as though I could live thereBe sustained far beneath the waves a...
Posted by A-Ron on Sun, 08 Oct 2006 04:09:00 PST

An Untitled Poem

It rained here once and    I thought of youIn my memory you danced in the rain,Your jet black hair soaking throughHiding and revealing your face from meMystery and familiarity in your e...
Posted by A-Ron on Sat, 30 Sep 2006 02:45:00 PST

A Poem for Friday (9.15.06)

On friday the campus quietsThe heavy air pushing the studentsOut of the classroomsOff of the fields and awayTaking refuge from the depressing airIn bars and barbecue jointsAnd parties where the keg is...
Posted by A-Ron on Thu, 28 Sep 2006 08:09:00 PST

Haiku IV

These are for (in no particular order) Elizabeth (you get another), Sally, Kim, Debbye, Aaron, Darren, my mother (Kim two/too) and a heretofore unnnamed personage (I'm not quite sure he's flesh and bl...
Posted by A-Ron on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 01:01:00 PST