I came here to reconnect with old friends, but anyone interested in music I have listed below (rock, country, alt-country, bluegrass, jazz - more specifically with my next update) and progessive politics is welcome to email me.
My love of music all started with my dad's Beatles and Johnny Cash 8-Tracks tapes, but has expanded from there (in no particular order): My Morning Jacket, Radiohead, Gram Parsons, Flaming Lips, Drive-By Truckers, Willie Nelson, Grateful Dead, Joy Division, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Echo & the Bunnymen, Del McCoury Band, Rolling Stones, John Zorn, Neil Young, Miles Davis, Ryan Adams, (early-'70s, Peter Gabrial-era) Genesis, Hank Williams, The Pogues, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, New Order, The Band, Stone Roses, etc.
I'm kind-of on a Akira Kurosawa kick now. Otherwise it's hard to really point to favorites. OK, how about "Brazil"? Honestly, I'll never have the same, almost religious experience that I had when I was ten and saw "Star Wars" for the first time. I not ashamed to admit that! And no, I don't have a Jedi costume in my closet.
I don't do too much TV, and I certainly don't schedule my time around the tube. The original Twilight Zone is still a favorite. I'll catch the Daily Show and Colbert Report from time-to-time. If you want to be completely ill-informed watching television news is a "good" way of doing it. Yet, Countdown with Keith Olberman is a rare exception, along with the Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. I must say that Arrested Development was my favorite TV comedy of all-time. Do you have to have been from or familiar with the O.C. (don’t call it that!) to get the humor? No, but it helps. Like I wrote, I don't do the TV schedule so the wife and I watched it via Netflix. DVD is the best way to go - no commercials. One other thing - I've recently got my geek on with Battlestar Galactica (the new SciFi channel version, not the disco-era cheese-fest), there again via Netflix.
I'm currently working on Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Yes, it's waaaayyyy overlong, but I love it and most of Stephenson's other work. Dan Margulis' "Professional Photoshop" and Robert McKee's "Story" are also being picked up when the spirit moves me. Here comes another list, the books of, no particular order: Robert Anton Wilson, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Dan Simmons, Douglas Adams, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Orson Scott Card... I'll add more as they come to mind...
My wife - because she used no pain medication during labor and she has put up with me for 12 years, but mostly because of that first part.