Art, music, environmentalism. Riding my bike because I finally replaced it after the last one got stolen. Chess, but I never get to play because most people don't.
People who do shit rather than just talk a lot of it. People who care about the future of the planet and not just their status symbols and immediate gratification. People who are kind but not wishy-washy. People who have culture and class but aren't pretentious and elitist about it. People without a lot of hang-ups that don't remind me of robots.
Lately, I've been listening to this Merle Haggard compilation of songs about drinking, Cub Country, and the Beatles--go figure. All time faves: The Fall, Make Up, Wire, Ramones, Talking Heads, Clinic, Bo Diddley, Clash, Lungfish, Leadbelly, Tubeway Army, Entertainment by Gang of Four, The Muffs, Buzzcocks, Little Walter, Archers of Loaf, Swell, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sugarcubes, The Warmers, Flop, Love and Rockets, Pixies, PJ Harvey, Jennyanykind, Camper Van Beethoven. Honourable mentions: Jets to Brazil, French Kicks, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Meters, Throwing Muses, Sleater-Kinney, Ladytron, Devo, Television, Tom Waits, Modern Lovers, minutemen, Rocket From the Crypt, Cop Shoot Cop and Firewater, Headcoats, My Dad Is Dead, Country Teasers, The Hives, early Sunny Day Real Estate...most bands start to suck after 2 albums. I'm biased towards rock, I guess. I'm still in awe over the cultural explosion resulting from the invention of the electric guitar. It seems to me that it is the true point of departure between the old and the modern world.
Meaningful ones or at least something with laugh-out-loud humor. I rarely see bad movies. Some pinnacle examples of filmmaking: Vincent and Theo, Shortcuts, Wild At Heart, Razor's Edge, Barton Fink, X, Edward Scissorhands, Clockers, Do The Right Thing, Immortal Beloved, Arizona Dream, Dancer in the Dark, My Own Private Idaho, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, Zoolander, The Jerk, Rushmore, King of Comedy, Amoresperro, and most recently Donnie Darko and 21 Grams. The best movie of all time might be Buffalo 66.
eh...
Right now I'm reading a biography of George Orwell, another about Albert Camus and this book called Genesis, the first volume in an trilogy which compiles all these Latin American creation stories and early colonial accounts. I just finished a book of trivial details about Beatles songs. I've read a few of those. Short Stories: The Hunger Artist, Ape and Essence. Books: The Wall/Intimacy by Sartre, A Happy Death, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Down and Out in Paris and London, A Moveable Feast, A Clockwork Orange, The Bog People, Popul Vuh, My Life With Picasso, Earth From Above, Five Letters of Cortes to the Emporer, Junkie, On The Road, Tristessa, Slapstick, Welcome To The Monkey House, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Man Ray: Self Portrait, Warhol by Bockriss. Anything about guitars or music related stuff, and large art books with good color reproductions.
Every person related to all the music, books, and movies I listed, I guess. Others: Caravaggio, El Greco, Martin Schongauer, Durer, Jacques Louis David, Courbet, Klimt, Goya, Theodore Gericault, Joseph Turner, Gustave Moreau, Edvard Munch, Magritte, De Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Redon, Rodin, Bridget Riley, Matta, Joseph Cornell, Frank Stella, Egon Schiele, Brueghel, Camus, Huxley, Burroughs, Heironymous Bosch, Van Der Weyden, Cranach the Younger and Elder, Malcolm X, Prince, Robert Johnson, Vincent Gallo, Jean-Paul Basquiat, David Byrne, Mark Mothersbaugh, Robert Campin, Dali, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Kertesz, Caspar David Frederick, Edgar Allen Poe, Ivan Stang, Woody Guthrie, Posada, Kahlo, Burne-Jones.