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Interests

I enjoy the typical things that everyone likes: music, movies, books, and television, as you will (eventually) see. I like games such as Scrabble, go, backgammon, and dominoes and activities that make me feel like an old man: betting on horses, doing crossword puzzles, and playing bocce.

Really I am interested in everything, which according to Emily Post makes me a bore. My goal is to know at least something about everything, but the more I learn the more I know how little I know. Have broad tastes in music, literature, art, diversions, people.

Witness--

My first love is language. Im still learning English (on the job, I guess). Had six years of Latin and four years of Spanish in college and high school, respectively. I know some French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, and even less Sanskrit, Portuguese, Welsh, Gaelic (Irish), Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Wolof, Esperanto, American Sign Language, Pig Latin, BASIC, Pascal, and html, but I need to learn much, much more. Id be all right for a while on a deserted desert isle with nothing but a bunch of dictionaries to read. Of course eventually I'd want someone to talk to.

Play the guitar, guitars actually: a low-end mahogany Martin acoustic, a Gibson hollowbody electric, and a 1968 Fender Mustang that I bought for $85 in 1989, before Kurt Cobain made beaten-up old Mustangs collectors' items.

While languages, literature, and art were my favorite classes, enjoyed pretty much every other subject in school: music, mythology, philosophy, semiotics, history, physics, drama, astronomy, psychology, economics, algebra, calculus, chemistry, biology, anthropology, political science, computer science, gym, recess, and story time.

Love art, la lingua universal. Favorite painters include Matisse, Kirchner, Picasso, Duchamp, Braque, Cezanne, Dali, De Kooning, Dubuffet, Schiele, Van Gogh, Rothko, Hopper, Rauschenberg, Magritte, Botticelli, da Vinci, Caravaggio, Nerdrum, Darger, Basquiat, Warhol, Kokoschka, Gris, Klimt, Schnabel, Guston, Soutine, Rego, Gris, Lam, Miro, Freud, Goya, Richter, Whistler.

Prefer dogs to cats (sorry, Porkchop) and big dogs to small ones (sorry, Amy). Like dark colors more than bright ones. Favorite day of the week is Saturday, and my favorite times of the day are just before sunrise and just before sunset. Favorite time to get drunk is Sunday afternoon. Favorite season is summer. Least favorite month is February (why does the shortest month seem the longest?)

Will eat anything but pickled beets, pickled pigs' feet, pickled baby corn, certain squashes, and anything fig-related (bad experiences, plus there is a certain breed of wasp that lives, breeds, and dies inside a fig). I'm not a big fan of black licorice, either, but I can choke it down. Champagne tastes, tap water income. Love lobster, eat carp. Not really. Tuna, though. Like my steak bloody and my eggs runny. Love spicy food of all varieties, particularly Thai, Cajun, Spanish, Mexican. Will eat snails, oysters, and cicadas (which taste like shrimp). Consume caffeine and nicotine as if they were vitamins. They give me power. Would give up meat before any other food group, even though as of now I do eat more of it than I should. Would probably choose to subsist on pizza or peanut butter & jelly if given only one option. My last meal would be either paella or lobster, some kind of seafood anyway, unless I were being executed at the state's expense for some horrible thing that I had done, in which case I would probably choose bread and water, or maybe a plateful of figs and beets. It would serve me right.

Prefer Coke to Pepsi. Prefer Coke to water for that matter. (You are welcome Dr. Will Lee, DDS.) Favorite beers are Pilsner Urquell, Heineken, Becks, and others of that ilk. Love Guinness too. Like my cheap beer really cheap: Goebel, Schlitz, PBR, Blatz, Milwaukee's Beast, whatever. I'll drink it all. My favorite drink is a Manhattan. With the exception of a really good and spicy Bloody Mary. Mmmm . . . Bloody Mary. Favorite whiskies are Bookers, Jamesons, Wild Turkey, and George Dickel. Favorite scotch is Glenlivet. Prefer brut champagne to asti. Prefer gin martinis to vodka ones. Take that, James Bond. Stay away from sweet drinks though.

Consider satire the pinnacle of political, philosophical, and social discourse, as you can evince from my taste in books, TV shows and movies. Think that The Onion is the only reliable newspaper in the United States. Wrote my masters thesis on saturae menippae, which is now the topic of one of my probably never-to-be-finished books-in-progress.

Have always loved reading and writing. Always will.

Fascinated by theological, arcane, occult, supernatural, forbidden, and downright bizarre knowledge and ideas of any kind, even if I'm not sure what to believe: religions (attended Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran, Unitarian, Baptist, Church of Christ, Hare Krishna, and Buddhist services and am interested in Bahai, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Scientology, Mormonism (am also a member of The Church of the Subgenius and a minister in the Universal Life Church (by the power invested in me . . . by the internet)), cults, divination (Tarot, I Ching, astrology, dowsing), ESP, conspiracy theories, secret societies, parallel universes, chaos theory, time travel, alien invasions, vampires, werewolves, zombies, serial killers, smurfs, gremlins, cannibals, terrorists, angels, and demons.

A short list of things I want to know more about: Opera, Ornithology, Mycology, Philology, Marksmanship, Farming, Quantum Mechanics, Psychopharmacology, Geology, Archaeology, the buildings underneath Denver International Airport, Homeopathy, Shiatsu, Yoga, Aikido, Alchemy, Unified Field Theory, The Golden Ratio, Chaos Theory, Superstring theory, Black holes, Quantum computers, Astronomy, Marie Curie, Atlantis, Alternative fuel sources, Galileo, The Electoral College, The Harlem Renaissance, The civil rights movement, , The Vietnam War, Rock and roll, USA Patriot Act, Gardening, Postnatal depression, Wild Bill Hickock, Freemasonry, Knights of the Round Table, Mythology, Chaucer, Civil disobedience, Welfare reform, Cognitive psychology, Meteorology, English spelling reform, The ACLU, The Promise Keepers, Jainism, The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tomatoes, Holistic medicine, Primal scream therapy, Cancer, Chronic Wasting Disease, , Malcolm X, Opera, Ballet, Venice, Antarctica, Sadomasochism, Salt, Foster care, Navajo code talkers, CB radio, Cell phones, Nanotechnology, Time travel, Science fiction, Environmentalism, The Age of Reason, The Gospel of Thomas, Daniel Webster, The Wright Brothers, Color theory, The Vatican, Chess, Nietzsche, Cicero, Horatio Alger, Karl Marx, Nunavut, Egypt, The Irish Travelers, Caffeine, Cartoons, Game Theory, Bertrand Russell, Joan of Arc, The Vikings, Mother Theresa, Marie Corelli, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Brontes, Andy Warhol, Munchausen syndrome, The Golden Gate Bridge, Mozart, Presidential Assassinations, Alcoholism, Prohibition, Beer Making, Media violence, The Salem witch trials, Online dating, Charlie Chaplin, Baseball, Firefighting, The Hippocratic Oath, Addison and Steele, Freud, Julius Caesar, The Norman Conquest, Television, Ambrose Bierce, Sherlock Holmes, Raymond Chandler, IQ tests, The Monty Hall Problem, Dian Fossey, The Cottingley Fairies, Womens Suffrage, Archimedes, Charles Stewart Parnell, St. Augustine, De Stijl, Yves Saint Laurent, Yves Saint Klein, The wives of Henry VIII, Jorge Luis Borges, Emily Dickinson, Anesthesia, Intellectual property, Lord Byron, Mark Twain, Caligula, Samuel Goldwyn, The Red scare, The J.F.K. assassination, Circuses, Jazz, Semiotics, Montessori, Andrew Carnegie, Homer, Hermaphrodites, Existentialism, Extinction, Geology, Charles Darwin, Erasmus, The apocrypha , Greek tragedy, Communism, Sinn Fein, Fidel Castro, The Supreme Court, Subliminal advertising, Alistair Crowley, Madonna, Simone de Beauvoir, Sam Peckinpah, Woody Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Sarah Bernhardt, The Scopes monkey trial, Jack the Ripper, Diogenes, Thomas Edison, Corporate scandals, Political scandals, Jonathan Swift, China, Al Capone, Lewis Carroll, Early childhood development, Pharmaceuticals, Radiology, Hate crimes legislation, Hip hop, Manifest destiny, Noam Chomsky, Urban Legends, Factory Farming, Alzheimers disease, Scientology, World Trade Organization, Photography, Diamonds, Solomon, Gone with the Wind, J.R.R. Tolkien, Space exploration, Krautrock, Paul Bunyan, Mental retardation, Easter, Accounting, The Olympics, Fertility drugs, The Boy Scouts, Forensic Odontology, Guerilla warfare, Etiquette, Wedding traditions, The insanity defense, Apartheid, Embalming, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Child labor, The theologians problem, Gourmet cooking, Ayn Rand, Same-sex marriage, Miranda rule, Illegal immigration, Stock market, Stem cell research, DNA, Antibiotic resistance, Lyme disease, Tuberculosis, The Sioux, Bermuda, The Bill of Rights, The Shakers, The American Revolution, Nat Turner, Birth Control, Nuclear weapons, The Academy Awards, D-Day, Three Mile Island, The Human genome project, Helen Keller, Mormonism, Gary Gilmore, The Roman Empire, Atilla the Hun, Machiavelli, The industrial revolution, The history of mathematics, Schizophrenia, Circumcision, Federal income tax, File sharing, Lafayette, Postmodernism, Luddites, The pyramids, Passion plays, Christmas traditions, Trepanning, Pop art, Attica, Architecture, Torture, Montaigne, , Camille Paglia, The Labor Movement, Andrew Carnegie, Malthus, Karate, Piltdown Man, Surrealism, Black Panther Party, White Panther Party, The War of 1812, Frogs, Turtles, Opium Wars, Navy Seals, Pacifism, John Milton, Impeachment, Khmer Rouge, Medici family, Elizabeth Bathory, Rwandan Genocide, Gulf of Tomkin, Phrenology, Physiognomy, The Hopi tribe, Byzantium, Butterflies, Faraday, Art Nouveau, Satan, Hell, Structural linguistics, Theory of Personality, Emotion, Determinism, Reincarnation, Dialectical materialism, French Revolution, Bananas, Mutations, The Adam Gene, Fundamentalism, Dag Hammarskjold, Anne Frank, Spanish Armada, Gutenberg, Flash mobs, IRA, Ramses II, Stravinsky, Human trafficking, The Pope, The Peloponnesian War, Genghis Khan, Kubla Khan, Mandela, Mao Tse Tong, Kim Jong Il, Synesthesia, Tao, Sun-Tzu, 12-tone theory, 1001 Arabian Nights, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sappho, Pranayama, Coulrophobia, Anarchism, Vitamins, STDs, Hyacinths, NASA, Non-proliferation, Abolition, Thomas Aquinas, Mega-churches, Whirling dervishes, Che Guevara, PBS, Old Faithful, Northern WI land grab, IBS, DDT, Nietzsche, Divine right of kings, Wabisabi, Samurai, Inheritance tax, Whales, No Child Left Behind, Profanity, Martha Stewart, Puberty, Iridology, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Fellini, LSD, Acoustics, Plate tectonics, The Mayan calendar, Fishing, Wolves, ADHD, Coffee, Blindness, Biblical translation, The Bible Code, Plagues, Lindbergh, Illuminati, Krishnamurti, Elephant graveyards, Intellectual property, Plagiarism, Kidnapping, Aphasia, Mengele, Smell, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Sight, Vegetarianism, Clipper ships, Inuits, Pregnancy, Virtual reality, Triboluminescence, Perfume, Cannibalism, Sequoias, Phoenicians, Pheromones, Montezuma, Horror films, The brain, Tea ceremonies, The gold rush, Sushi, Dynamite, Reconstruction, Benjamin Disraeli, G. K. Chesterton, Howard Hughes, Alphabets Ned Kelly, Cremation, Bhagavad Gita, Zeno, Mata Hari, Cosmetics, Cleopatra, Mustaches, Haiti, The Falklands, Iran-Contra, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Petra, Easter Island, Electricity, Snoring, Plastic surgery, Acupuncture, Margarine, Soap, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, IBM, Luddites, Railroads, Amanita Mescaria, Viking berserkers, Coelecanths, Devils Tower, The Grimm Brothers, Milton Friedman, Grace Kelly, Windmills, Prostitution, Photography, Antibiotics, Velociraptors, Narcissism, Calligraphy, Aqueducts, Plumbing, The Lost Generation, The Beat Generation, Generation X, Fabliaux, American Red Cross, NPR, Optimism, Quebec, Pantomime, Marcus Garvey, Hiawatha, Moulin Rouge, Paleontology, Ghosts, Insomnia, Sleep deprivation, Rain forests, School buses, Blackbeard, Hunger, Nursery rhymes, Product Recalls, Birth order, Garlic, Hypnosis, Flouride, Kendo, Lice, Numismatics, Organ Donation, Tower of London, Roller coasters, Tourettes, UPC, Vertigo, Zionism, Zydeco, Pulitzer Prize, Puerto Rico, Juneteenth, Mahjong, Passover, Lightning, Fencing, Dreams, Blood, Amtrak, Beowulf, Panopticism, Octopi, Nation of Islam, Poker, Rugby, Vanilla, Spiders, Vaudeville, Puppy mills, Commedia del arte, Twins, Suicide, Road Rage, Jokes, Massage, Kosher laws, Jim Jones, Cold fusion, Genealogy, Heroin, Bullfighting, Cockfighting, Etiquette, Hormone therapy, Faberge, Poverty, Nutrition, Feudalism, Love, War, Heaven, Earth, Art, Science, Life, Death, and more about everything else on this page. Trust me--I'm just getting started.

My mission is to be on Jeopardy, or at to be least somebody's lifeline. Before I start forgetting stuff.

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Musique

I like everything from Abba to Zappa, but just a few of my favorites are AC/DC, Hazel Adkins, The Arcade Fire, Art Brut, Chet Baker, Baptist Generals, The Beach Boys, The Beatles*, Beck, Big Black, Big Star*, Bjork, David Bowie, The Breeders, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Bright Eyes*, James Brown, Built to Spill, Solomon Burke, Butthole Surfers, The Buzzcocks, Can, Captain Beefheart, Neko Case, Johnny Cash, Cat Power, Ray Charles, The Clash, The Clean, Leonard Cohen, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Elvis Costello, Creedence, The Cure, Miles Davis, Dee Light, Dead Kennedys, Desmond Dekker, De La Soul, Iris Dement, John Denver, Bo Diddley*, Dinosaur Jr.*, Bob Dylan*, Jonathan Edwards, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Exploding Hearts, The Fall*, The Flamin' Groovies, The Flaming Lips*, Fruit Bats, Fugazi, Galaxie 500, Goat Cave, The Go Gos, Al Green, Guided By Voices, Guns N' Roses, Woody Guthrie, Half Japanese, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix, Holopaw, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Husker Du, The Jesus & Mary Chain*, Daniel Johnston*, Janis Joplin, The Kinks, Little Richard, LL Cool J, Loretta Lynn, Madonna, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Marley, MC5, Nellie McKay, Minor Threat, Minutemen, Misfits, Joni Mitchell, Modest Mouse, Van Morrison, Mudhoney, My Bloody Valentine*, Willie Nelson, Neutral Milk Hotel*, New Order, The New Pornographers, Nirvana, NWA, Charlie Parker, Palace, P-Funk, Pavement*, Pixies*, Elvis Presley, Prince*, Professor Freedom, Public Enemy, Pussy Galore, ? & the Mysterians, Radiohead, The Ramones, Otis Redding*, The Replacements, The Residents, Jonathan Richman*, Rilo Kiley, The Rolling Stones*, The Ronettes*, Royal Trux, Run DMC, Scriabin, Sebadoh, Bob Seger, The Sex Pistols, The Shins, The Smiths, Silver Jews, Simple Minds, Frank Sinatra, Sonic Youth*, Spacemen 3*, Spiritualized, Spoon, Starlight Mints, The Stooges*, The Strokes, Swell Maps, Television, Tenacious D, Thin Lizzy, Toots and the Maytals, The Top Heavies, Uncle Tupelo, The Undertones, Unrest, Townes Van Zandt, The Velvet Underground*, Tom Waits, Weezer, "Weird" Al Yankovic, The White Stripes, Wilco*, Hank Williams, Wire, Howlin' Wolf, Wolf Parade, Yo La Tengo, Neil Young, Zeppelin, Led, and John Zorn.

* Indicates my very, very favorites, the ones I regard as part of my family and would probably not be able to be friends with you were you to disparage them.

**Though I have already been criticized for having such a long list of favorites, I must insist that I was being selective. Look at everyone I had to leave out but still greatly enjoy:

Ryan Adams, Aerial M, Aerosmith, Afrika Bambaata, Allman Brothers, Ambulance Ltd., Adam Ant, Anthrax, Fiona Apple, Apples in Stereo, Archers of Loaf, Atari Teenage Riot, Atmosphere, The B-52s, Bad Religion, Badly Drawn Boy, The Band, The Bangles, Rob Base and DJ Easy Rock, Bauhaus, Beat Happening, Belle & Sebastian, Beyonce, Binary Star, The Birthday Party, Blackalicious, The Black Crowes, Black Flag, The Black Keys, Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath, Blondie, Bloodhound Gang, Blue Cheer, Blue Oyster Cult, Bongwater, Booker T & the MGs, Boss Hog, Braniac, Clarence Frogman Brown, Richard Buckner, Built to Spill, The Byrds, Camper Van Beethoven, Canned Heat, Jim Carroll, The Cars, Clarence Carter, The Carter Family, James Chance, Tracy Chapman, The Church, Clem Snide, Jimmy Cliff, David Allen Coe, Joe Cocker, Sam Cooke, The Coup, Cowboy Junkies, Country Joe and the Fish, The Cramps, Jim Croce, Crowded House, Crucifucks, The Crust Brothers, CSNY, The Cult, Culture Club, Cursive, Dead Boys, Dead Milkmen, Dead Kennedys, Death Cab for Cutie, Desaparacidos, Descendents, Detroit Cobras, Devo, Dexys Midnight Runners, Digital Underground, Dion, Dire Straits, Eric Dolphy, Donovan, The Doors, Dr. Dre, Dream Academy, Duran Duran, Theodis Ealey, Steve Earle, Eazy-E, Echo and the Bunnymen, Elastica, Roky Erickson, Everlast, The Everly Brothers, Faces, Fairport Convention, Fat Boys, Bill Fay, The Feelies, Fleetwood Mac, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Foo Fighters, Peter Gabriel, Gang of Four, Garbage, The Georgia Satellites, Geto Boyz, Gladys Knight, Gleaming Spires, Benny Goodman, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Grateful Dead, Green Day, The Grifters, The Groundhogs, Arlo Guthrie, Ben Harper, Richie Havens, Karl Hendricks Trio, Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians, Billy Holiday, Hot Hot Heat, The Housemartins, Human League, Husker Du, Ice Cube, Interpol, INXS, Iron & Wine, Michael Jackson, Jackson 5, Tommy James and the Shondells, Jandek, Janes Addiction, Jay-Z, Billy Joel, Elton John, Joy Division, Kid Rock, The Kills, The Killers, Ben. E King, Carole King, Kaki King, Kingsmen, Kool and the Gang, Kraftwerk, KRS-One,Ray LaMontagne, Cyndi Lauper, Leadbelly, Louvin Brothers, G Love and Special Sauce, Luna, Lush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aimee Mann, Mazzy Star, Johnn Cougar Mellancamp, Melvins, Tift Merritt, Bette Midler, Roger Miller, Charles Mingus, Moldy Peaches, Thelonious Monk, Mott the Hoople, Nada Surf, Negativeland, NEU!, Juice Newton, Northern State, Oasis, Sinead OConnor, Roy Orbison, Outkast, Dolly Parton, Pearl Jam, Pere Ubu, Phantom Planet, Plastic Bertrand, Pink Floyd, Pogues, Polvo, The Postal Service, The Pretenders, John Prine, Psychedelic Furs, Public Image Limited, Pulp, Pylon, Suzi Quatro, Queen, Sun Ra, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ike Reilly, The Residents, Ride, The Righteous Brothers, RJD2, Roots, Todd Rundgren, Sage Francis, Santana, Gil Scott-Heron, Seam, Ravi Shankar, Shakira, Slade, Sleater-Kinney, Slick Rick, Slint, Elliot Smith, Smog, Social Distortion, The Soft Boys, Soft Cell, Sonic's Rendezvous Band, Soul Coughing, Spectrum, Spinal Tap, The Squalls, Sufjan Stevens, Stone Roses, Stray Cats, Styx, Sublime, Stroke 9, Sugarhill Gang, Suicidal Tendencies, Suicide, Swirlies, T Rex, Talib Kweli, The Thermals, Too Short, Art Tatum, Travelin Wilburys, A Tribe Called Quest, Tina Turner, Ultra Vivid Scene, Urge Overkill, Van Halen, Vue, Loudin Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Ben Webster, Kanye West, Wipers, Bill Withers, The Who, World Party, Wu-Tang Clan, X, XTC, The Yardbirds, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Zombies.

***One more run through the alphabet. Here are twenty-six artists I should be ashamed to like but am not:
Air Supply, Backstreet Boys, Counting Crows, Dee Light, The Eagles, Fantasia, Goo Goo Dolls, Hall and Oates, Indigo Girls, Journey, Katrina & the Waves, Avril Lavigne, Matchbox 20, Nelly, Yoko Ono, The Partridge Family, Quiet Riot, Lionel Richie, Britney Spears, Shania Twain, U2, Vanilla Ice, Whitesnake, X-Ray Spex, Young Black Teenagers, ZZ Top

I realize now that this would have been a lot easier and less time-consuming had I just listed the music that I don't like. Although I like all genres of music, I'll be the first to admit that there is a lot of bad jazz, country, and hip hop. I like classical music, but it usually puts me to sleep. I don't get too passionate about anything but rock and roll. I'm not a big fan of Rush, even though I admire their musicality. I try not to like the Beastie Boys, ever since they were rude to me on meeting them, but some of their newer stuff is ok, I guess. Usually my reasons are personal like that. I've never been a big fan of Eric Clapton, but even less so since his crappy song capitalizing on his recently dead son hit the airwaves. I haven't liked anything by Metallica since And Justice for All, but I'll admit that it has as much to do with their greediness as it does with the fact that their newer stuff sucks. Basically I don't like music by any artist who refers to albums as "units." Garth Brooks, I'm looking in your direction. It's art--not product.

My Top 40:

1. "Be My Baby"       The Ronettes 2. "Oddity" (live version)       The Clean 3. "Sweet Jane"       The Velvet Underground 4. "Teenage Riot"       Sonic Youth 5. "Like a Rolling Stone"       Bob Dylan 6. "Freak Scene"       Dinosaur Jr. 7. "Summer Babe"       Pavement 8. "April Skies"       The Jesus and Mary Chain 9. "Wouldn't It Be Nice?"       The Beach Boys 10. "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"       The Beatles 11. "The Rainbow Connection"       Kermit the Frog 12. "Crimson & Clover"       Tommy James and the Shondells 13. "Angel of the Morning"       Merilee Rush or Juice Newton 14. "Where Is My Mind"       The Pixies 15. "Try a Little Tenderness"       Otis Redding 16. "Imagine"       John Lennon 17. "Come Down Easy"       Spacemen 3 18. "You Made Me Realise"       My Bloody Valentine 19. "Helpless"       Neil Young 20. "Purple Rain"       Prince

21. "Mama Said Knock You Out"       LL Cool J 22. "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and To Be Loved)"       Bright Eyes 23. "The Classical"       The Fall 24. "Throwaway Style"       The Exploding Hearts 25. "Pressure Drop"       Toots & the Maytals 26. "Just Like Heaven"       The Cure 27. "I Save Cigarette Butts"       Daniel Johnston 28. "Runaround Sue"       Dion & the Belmonts 29. "Beast of Burden"       The Rolling Stones 30. "Sweet Child O'Mine"       Guns & Roses 31. "My Town"       Iris Dement 32. "Castles Made of Sand"       Jimi Hendrix 33. "Night Moves"       Bob Seger 34. "Temptation"       New Order 35. "Felt Good To Burn"       The Flaming Lips 36. "Waiting Room"       Fugazi 37. "Thank God I'm a Country Boy"       John Denver 38. "Lodi"       Creedence Clearwater Revival 39. "Blame It on My Youth"       Chet Baker 40. "Boiled Dove"       The Butthole Surfers

The Thirteen Albums I Would Take to a Desert Island:

1. Slanted and Enchanted       Pavement 2. Loveless       My Bloody Valentine 3. Sister       Sonic Youth 4. Highway 61 Revisited       Bob Dylan 5. Live 1969       The Velvet Underground 6. The Beatles (White Album)       The Beatles 7. Psychocandy      The Jesus and Mary Chain

8. In the Aeroplane over the Sea      Neutral Milk Hotel 9. London Calling       The Clash 10. The Perfect Prescription       Spacemen 3 11. Exile on Main Street       The Rolling Stones 12. The Band Who Would Be King       Half Japanese 13. Live at the Apollo (the one with the Famous Flames, not the JBs)       James Brown

A Baker's Dozen of the Best Concerts I Have Seen:

1. My Bloody Valentine/Dinosaur Jr., Columbus, Ohio, 1992
My Bloody Valentine were so loud they blew all of the speakers before Dinosaur Jr. even took the stage, which somehow made Mascis and Co. sound even better.
2. Pavement, Columbus, Ohio, 1992
Gary Young stood out front before the show in a blaze orange jacket with no shirt, holding a cabbage in his hand, asking people why they were there. He did handstands on the stage between acts. Most people thought he was just some drunk. In a sense, I guess, he was. Played the opening of "Trigger Cut" with the high-hat in his teeth. Played many songs standing up. The entire night had a carnival atmosphere and a few of the songs completely fell apart, but it was more fun than I had ever had a concert before or since.
3. The Flaming Lips, Columbus, Ohio, 1995
Show was sold out, so I went and tried to try to find a ticket. Ran into Wayne himself unloading the fan, who put me on the guest list for helping them move about 125, 000 Christmas lights to be strung on fishing nets throughout the stage, which I thought was going to be a rather low-budget effect but become one of the most spectacular visual arrangements I had ever seen.
4. Sonic Youth, Detroit, Columbus, New York City
I've seen them so many times that they all blend together, and they've been great every time, but the most memorable times were the one in Detroit that Zach, Kristen, and I went to by limo because Mrs. Pollock wouldn't let us drive and we thought we were going to get jumped on the street; and the time in NYC when Thurston Moore berated a "fan" who had jumped on stage, hitting Kim Gordon by unleasing upon this asshole a flurry of profanity for full-on five minutes before dedicating "Teenage Riot" to everyone in the crowd except "that guy right there." I wonder whether he survived the night.
5. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Columbus, Ohio, 1995(?)
The man simply did not stop.
6. The Fruit Bats, Madison, Wisconsin, 2004
A cold, winter night led to a small turnout. I was one of maybe seven people there. The band actually gave me a ride home afterwards. Eric and Gillian are the nicest people in rock and roll.
7. The Rolling Stones, Cleveland, Ohio
Sure I watched most of the concert on video monitors, and sure they weren't supporting one of their better albums, but it was The Rolling Stones.
8. Willie Nelson, New York, New York, 1999
He played Whiskey River three times and nobody minded.
9. Nirvana, Columbus, Ohio, 1991
Don't remember this one as well as I should. Nirvana weren't that big a deal anyway. Still I got to see them at Stache's, which is smaller than your apartment.
10. Boss Hog, Columbus, Ohio, 1994
Christina Martinez is just too beautiful.
11. Guided By Voices, New York, New York, 1999
Played in Central Park for Free for probably five hours. Must have played 900 songs and drunk at least that many beers.
12. P-Funk All Stars, Columbus, Ohio, 1994-ish
Went by myself but had 1000 friends by the end of the first song.
13. Pixies, Detroit, Michigan, 2004
The one of my favorite bands from high school that I never got to see in its heyday. Thank you Zach and Kristen for the ticket, and thank you Charles Kitteridge Thompson and Mrs. John Murphy for forgiving your differences.

My Favorite Music Video

Sonic Youth - Teenage riot

Add to My Profile | More Videos

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Literature

Novels, etc: Don Quixote, Lolita, Ulysses, Revolutionary Road, Gargantua and Pantagruel, The Stranger, The Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn, Moby Dick, Tristram Shandy, The Little Prince, Valis, The Canterbury Tales, Slaughterhouse Five, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Sound and the Fury, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Tropic of Cancer, Madame Bovary, Franny and Zooey, Les Chants de Maldoror, A Sport and a Pastime, Naked, Finnegans Wake, Laughter in the Dark, Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow, The Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Notes from Underground, The Brothers K, Crime and Punishment, Middlesex, Tough Guys Don't Dance, Midnight's Children, Frankenstein, Dracula, Swann's Way, The Sheltering Sky, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Nine Stories, The Beautiful and Damned, This Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Last Tycoon, Breakfast of Champions, Cats Cradle, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Absolom Absolom, As I Lay Dying, The Easter Parade, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Story of an Eye, Justine, No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It 'Cuz Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Geronimo Rex, On the Road, Masquerade, The Cartoonist, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Metamorphoses, The Trial, The Adventures of Augie March, American Pastoral, Through the Looking Glass. The Long Goodbye, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor, Fortress of Solitude, Neuromancer, Journey to the End of Night, Death on the Installment Plan, Letting Go, Sabbath's Theater, Barrel Fever, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Requiem for a Dream, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Go, Geek Love, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Siddhartha, Time's Arrow, The Information, Pale Fire, Rabbit Run, Infinite Jest, Brave New World, Still Life with Woodpecker, Infinite Jest, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tropic of Capricorn, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Gulliver's Travels, The Sorrows of Young Werther, A Fan's Notes, Housekeeping, A Thief's Journal, The Little Train That Could.

Poetry: Rimbaud, Eliot, Yeats, Whitman, Cummings, Stevens, Ashbery, Catullus, Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Keats, Shelley, Pound, Plath, Jeffers, Wright, Neruda, Berryman, Williams, Bukowski, Dickinson, Blake, Rilke, Langston Hughes, Li Po, Omar Khayyam, Baudelaire, Dylan Thomas, Dr. Seuss.

Books I would take to a desert island:
1. The Holy Bible, King James Version
2. The Oxford English Dictionary
3. Ulysses, James Joyce
4. Garg antua and Pantagruel, Rabelais
5. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton
7. Robins on Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
8. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
9. Complete Works and Selected Letters, Rimbaud (Fowlie, trans.)
10. The Golden Bough, James Frazer 

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Movies

The Big Sleep, A Christmas Story, Being There, Taxi Driver, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, True Romance, After Hours, Dog Day Afternoon, Ruthless People, Kingpin, Goodfellas, Annie Hall, Revenge of the Nerds, Heathers, Strange Brew, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, My Bodyguard, The Outsiders, The Muppet Movie, National Lampoons Vacation, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, A Streetcar Named Desire, Rear Window, Terrorvision, Cape Fear, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Star Wars, Dancer in the Dark, Raging Bull, Pumpkin, Rock 'n' Roll High School, Animal House, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Memento, City of God, Raising Arizona, Mask, Mean Streets, Reservoir Dogs, Repo Man, Bonnie and Clyde, The Goonies, Better Off Dead, Harold and Maude, Office Space, Stranger Than Paradise, Kingpin, Breaking the Waves, Drugstore Cowboy, Psycho, American Psycho, PCU, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, On the Waterfront, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Cool Hand Luke, Straw Dogs, Lenny, The Godfather (I, II), Halloween (I, II), The Terminator (I, II), Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Carnival of Souls, Stand by Me, A Clockwork Orange, Mask, Meet the Parents, Miller's Crossing, A Woman Under the Influence, The Last Seduction, Don't Look Back, Rushmore, An American Werewolf in London, Young Frankenstein, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, There's Something about Mary, Repulsion, Hollywood Shuffle, Fear of a Black Hat, Apocalypse Now, Un Chien Andolou, Gummo, Kids, The Seventh Seal, The Shining, The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Commitments, Bottle Rocket, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Clue, Gotcha, High School High, Ran, Airplane, Citizen Kane, Midnight Madness, La Dolce Vita, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, The Bicycle Thief, Breathless, Life Is Beautiful, 9 to 5, Blade Runner, The Princess Bride, The Big Lebowski, Five Easy Pieces, Lenny, Blow Up, Vertigo, Top Secret, Rosemary's Baby, Search and Destroy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Three Days of the Condor, Visionquest, Clockwatchers, Donnie Darko, Manhattan, Metropolitan, Mulholland Drive, The Royal Tennenbaums, Scarface, The Grifters, The Breakfast Club, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Belle de Jour, Pink Flamingos, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Let's Get Lost, The Lost Boys, Brazil, Midnight Cowboy, Irreversible, Bananas, Fight Club, Something Wild, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, Dazed and Confused, Time Bandits, Uncle Buck, Pulp Fiction, Clerks, Down by Law, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Full Metal Jacket, Do the Right Thing, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Usual Suspects, The Karate Kid, When We Were Kings, The Empire Strikes Back, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Max Dugan Returns, A Fistful of Dollars, Boogie Nights, Footloose/Rebel without a Cause, Trading Places, Unbreakable, Election, Eating Raoul, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Dead Again, The Dead Zone, The Dead, Dead Alive, Bad Taste, The Last Picture Show, Cinema Paradiso.

Best Directors (a definitive list)

Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Richard Kern, Howard Hawks, Luis Bunuel, Sidney Lumet, Roman Polanski, Sam Raimi, Mel Brooks, Elia Kazan, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Francis Ford Coppola, George Romero, Robert Altman, Wes Anderson, Terry Gilliam, Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, John Cassavetes, Mike Nichols, John Hughes, Jonathan Demme, Tim Burton, Whichever one of those Coen brothers does the directing, Brian de Palma, Sergio Leone, Quentin Tarantino, Francois Truffaut, Jim Jarmusch, Harold Ramis, Spike Jonze, Spike Lee, Bob Clark, Jeff Kanew, Roger Corman, Ed Wood.

Favorite Actors

Bruce Campbell, Christopher Walken, Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray, Al Pacino (before he considered two hours of screaming to be "acting"), Robert DeNiro (before he started playing coma victims), Steve Buscemi, James Gandolfini, Dustin Hoffman, Marlon Brando, Peter Sellers, Jeremy Piven, Crispin Glover, John Cassavetes, John C. Reilly, Kenneth Branagh, Joe Pesci, Peter Dinklage, Jim Carrey, Richard Pryor, John Candy, Chevy Chase, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Humphrey Bogart, Roberto Benigni, Richard Burton, Jeremy Irons, John Cusak, Gene Wilder, Woody Allen, Patrick Swayze, Peter Falk.

Favorite Actresses

Grace Kelly, Monica Bellucci, Catherine Deneuve, Winona Ryder, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, Linda Hamilton, Natalie Wood, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Liz Taylor, Anne Bancroft, Christina Applegate, Parker Posey, Gena Rowlands, Sissy Spacek, Elizabeth Montgomery, Lung Leg, Karen Allen, Fay Dunaway, Jenna Jameson, Florence Henderson, Julie Andrews, Susan Sarandon, Heather Graham, Carol Kane, Jodie Foster, Annette Bening, Maura Tierney, Audrey Hepburn, Lillian Hellman, Nell Carter, Roseanne Barr, Bjork, Cher, Divine?

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Television

The Simpsons, Jeopardy, Family Guy, Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Shows on cable I can't watch: The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, The Daily Show, The Office (BBC). Shows I'm embarrassed to admit that I watch: Nanny 911, Cops, Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy, The Coral Ridge Hour, Elimidate. Have also harbored a shameful fondness for Saved by the Bell, Blossom, Days of Our Lives, and Judge Joe Brown.

Don't watch much TV these days, so I've missed a couple of new shows that have intrigued me, like I Shouldnt Be Alive, about near-death experiences, and that new-ish show House, with the grumpy, drug-addicted Sherlock Holmes-ian doctor. Still have an affection for my favorite shows of the past: Underdog (I cried when it went off the air), Rocky and Bullwinkle (I still have dreams about those two Cold War heroes), Different Strokes (I had to write home from summer camp to find out whether Arnold got away from the child molester in the very special two-part episode), Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Mr. Roger's Neighbrohood, Captain Kangaroo, You Can't Do That on Television, Happy Days, MASH, Welcome Back Kotter, Family Ties, All in the Family, Get a Life, Saturday Night Live (RIP), Seinfeld, Cheers, Dick Van Dyke/Mary Tyler Moore, Roseanne, Sanford and Son, Who's the Boss, Growing Pains, Laverne and Shirley, The Facts of Life, Gimme a Break, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The A*Team, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twin Peaks, Law and Order, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

I could say that I watch nature, history, news, and educational shows and I wouldn't be lying, but given the choice I'd probably end up watching one of those addictive best-of or where-are-they-now shows.

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(Not As) Recent Listening:

An All-Eighties Revival, featuring Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies, The Cure, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Smiths, New Order, Duran Duran, Crowded House, R.E.M., Pat Benatar, The Police, Violent Femmes, Prince, U2, Madonna, Half Japanese, Galaxie 500, Misfits, Minor Threat, The Exploited, Pussy Galore, The Fall, Daniel Johnston, Public Enemy, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Joan Jett, Journey, The Pretenders, Belinda Carlisle, David Lee Roth, et al.
I've been in a really Proustian mood lately, frequently lost in a flood of long-forgotten memories triggered by even the slightest of cues. Most of these memories have been from my schooldays, so I spent two long trips in a car listening to the music that I loved throughout that period, both those obscure and noisy bands that I prided myself on discovering and those pop hits that I loved in secret or as one of a crowd. And so I remembered as if I were reliving it the day Zach Pollock told me with a bemused and good-spirited disappointment that his grandparents had bought him an REO Speedwagon album instead of Duran Duran's Rio. I remembered Joel Davenport blasted "Cum on Feel the Noize" on his boombox from the back of the bus. I remembered waiting with my fingers poised on the record and play buttons for "Little Red Corvette" to come on the radio. I remembered I remember the crushes I had on Belinda Carlisle, who might have been my first love; Joan Jett, whose "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" I listened to twelve times a day on a fifth-generation tape recording; and Juice Newton, whose cover of "Angel in the Morning" I sneaked to the basement to listen to while my friends were playing outside. I remember the crush I had on Tracy Weiss, who introduced me to half the music I came to love in those years. I remembered getting Madonna's "Borderline" stuck in my head before the Kip Boulis Memorial Day 10k run and wishing I hadn't--the tempo was all wrong. I remembered the night I heard Dinosaur Jr.'s "Freak Scene" late on that Friday night show on Canada's CBC hosted by David Wisdom and how it changed my life forever. I remembered thinking how cool David Jaeger was for listening to The Cure years before anyone else had heard of them, and how cool I thought I was for listening to bands that most people had never heard of. I remembered riding my bike fifteen miles to the record store every time I had money to spend. I remembered how great R.E.M. were before Michael Stipe's lyrics were intelligible, what a great band the Police were before Sting revealed himself to be the world's third or fourth most pompous ass, what a hot solo "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" had. Since I spend so much time around people who are too young to remember the music of this period, it's easy for me to see that the music that gets passed off as 80s music today is much better than what was on the radio at the time. The list above shows that the decade was a better one for music than people give it credit for. Perhaps that is why I have been thinking so much about this time in my life--they were better days than I give them credit for too. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing.

The Velvet Underground, Live at Max's Kansas City.
Of all of the most monumental rock concerts, this is the one I would have most liked to attend, first to see what was perhaps the greatest band ever on the brink of collapse, and second to tell Jim Carroll--whose voice can be heard chattering away between and even during songs--to shut the fuck up. And since I'd be travelling from the future, I would also let him know tha--besides his one good song ("People Who Died") that occassionally pops up on movie soundtracks and for the fact that the movie of his book The Basketball Diaries took some of the blame for the Columbine Massacre, he will be largely forgotten in his own lifetime.

I had a headache the other day, so on my commute to work, as fate would have it, the haunted shuffle feature of my ipod favored some of the more . . . "difficult" selections from the archives: Royal Trux, Captain Beefheart's "Lick My Decals Off Baby," Frank Zappa, Britney Spears, and Pussy Galore. I didn't skip through them. I listen to what the good people at Apple Computers tell me I should listen too. I turned it up and took the pain like a man.

Radiohead, OK Computer: 
Perhaps it's just the fact that the video for "Fake Plastic Trees" (from the album before this one) was set in a supermarket, but it seems to me that this album is the best ever album to listen to on headphones while grocery shopping. Perhaps it's something about the alienating effects of technology--the perennial theme of Radiohead's music--that seems to fitting for such an antisocial activity.

Ugly Casanova, Sharpen Your Teeth
A one-time Modest Mouse side project with that band's Isaac Brock and the dude from a band called Holopaw whose name I don't feel like looking up. I like this better than any of Modest Mouse's albums. It's weirder, if you can imagine that. It's music by crazy people, for crazy people, and often about crazy people.

? and the Mysterians, "96 Tears"
I have one of those alarm clocks that you can plug your iPod into, and this song is the first one on my iPod, so if I forget to set it to a specific song, I wake to? Singing about making some mean girl cry. This song stands as the world's all-time greatest one-hit wonder. Irrefutably. I dare you to defy me. Try and you'll be crying your 97th.

Random
As I may have intimated before, the shuffle feature on my iPod seems to be possessed by an eerily knowing intelligence, one with a keen sense of timing (playing, for instance, The Traveling Wilbury's "End of the Line" at the moment I reach the end of a highway or several tracks from Modest Mouse's This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About on a long drive); a clairvoyant insight into my moods; and a musically astute sense of humor, transitioning, for instance, from Madonna's "Justify My Love" to NWA's "Straight Outta Compton," from whom Madge's song steals its beat, and from CCR's version of "Proud Mary" to Ike and Tina's.

Sure, tell me it's all a coincidence. It can all be reasoned away by all the times it jumps from something like Bach to something like Black Flag. Some DJ. My next project is to listen to every song in alphabetical order. Rap at'cha then.

Pavement, various:
By any standard, this is my favorite band. I have more songs by Pavement on my iPod than by any other artist but Bob Dylan. If I counted the solo albums and side projects, they'd even beat old Bob, but don't tell him, or Chili, who would regard this as blasphemy. They're the only band that I have to deny myself to listen too so I won't tire of their music. During a seven-hour late-night drive, I finally let myself. Either my iPod has a preference for deep cuts or Pavement simply have a lot of great but hard-to-find songs. Perhaps the latter is more likely, as Pavement is above all else a band of record collectors for record collectors, so it's fitting that some of their best songs would be tucked away on b-sides and compilation tracks that are better than most band's singles. I have more to say about this most special of bands. When I get to that, it will be here.

The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street.
It's still my favorite Stones album, even if I don't think it's necessarily their best.

Wesley Willis, various:
Wesley Willis is a 6'5", 350lb. schizophrenic who writes and sings hundreds of nearly identical songs on a broad range of topics. Titles include, "Jello Biafra," "Ford Windstar," "Vultures Ate My Dead Ass Up," and "My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks." Read a bio and create your very own Wesley Willis song here.

Tapes 'n Tapes, The Loon:
Proof that filesharing doesn't (necessarily) hurt the music industry, I downloaded one of this great bands songs (free from their website, so put down the hotline phone to the RIAA) and bought the album the next day. It hearkens back to better days when bands such as Pavement and Guided By Voices (should have) ruled the airwaves (but didn't). The kids would be more likely to compare this band to their best contemporaries, Wolf Parade, The Arcade Fire, and the Decemberists. While the band does wear its influences on its sleeve, it manages not to be derivative at all. If you like your music loose and shambolic, I'd highly recommend this one.

Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped.
I fell in love with Sonic Youth about 20 years ago, and out of love sometime after Dirty. I hated "Youth Against Fascism" even more than Thurston says he does. They've had a renaissance lately, and this one is their best in a while. It's Sonic Youth at their most tuneful, which is to say that it has gobs of shrieking white noise. Beautiful.

The Exploding Hearts, Guitar Romantic.
Great, exuberant rock and roll, the real pop-punk, a la The Buzzcocks, not that Hot Topic crap. They were poised to be the next big thing until their van rolled over early in their first tour, killing three of the four members. Ars longa, vita brevis.

Highlights from a randomly played ipod on a long drive:
Three songs by Half Japanese, a band that prided themselves on not learning their instruments. They did, of course, but never lost the exuberance that so many great bands lose after their first album; "Shoot You Down," by the Stone Roses, one of the bands I just mentioned; "Make Everyone Happy," a song with a perfectly appropriate title, given what I just wrote about in my updates section, on a perfectly titled album for the context in which I was listening to it: This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About.

The Fall, The Complete Peel Sessions--I spent nine hours in a car today listening to nothing but The Fall. I don't even think I made it all the way through the 97 tracks here. The Fall have a sure-fire formula for success: repetitive, abrasively noisy tunes, a singer with utter contempt for his audience who addsah syllables to his wordsah, an unstable band roster, and song after song of brilliance and humor.

Built to Spill, You in Reverse:
I'll try to describe this album without using the word epic, but I've already failed. Maybe not their best, but a damn good one regardless. I don't understand why the jam-band kids aren't listening to this.

The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema:
The chorus at the end of "The Bleeding Heart Show" is what they should be playing in heaven.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre, various albums:
Watched Dig! three times in a week not long ago. Poor Anton. A difficult personality and a bad drug problem cost him the fame his music so richly merits. And poor me can't even shell out the money for his albums

Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary:
Why are all the best bands from Canada these days? And why isn't Bush doing something about this? 

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(Not As) Recent Reading

Student papers, reference books, Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which I just started.

Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics:
The best books tend to fall in one of two categories. There are the ones that grab you and hurl you from page to page, the so-called unputdownable ones. Then there are the ones that romance and seduce you, making you savor each lovely detail, each clever turn of phrase. Marisha Pessl's first book holds that rare distinction of being in both categories at once, like some of its more notable forebears/influences/reference points: Lolita, The Big Sleep, Emma. It may be the first novel written in the twentieth century worth teaching in a college course, and it may be the first novel in the past three centuries that many college students today would find worth reading. Its heroine, the hypereducated, awkward, and prematurely cynical Blue Van Meer, lives among those characters in American fiction who seem to take on life outside of the page. Somewhere she's at a dinner party with Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Holly Golightly, and Encyclopedia Brown. I suppose you could say it's a mystery, but it has something to win over everyone: equal parts intrigue and teen angst, peppered with enough little nods to cultures high and low to keep college professors and trivia aficionados salivating for weeks to come. Don't wait for the movie, which I'm sure is in the works. And the book's only been out a couple of months. The author's gorgeous too, but don't hate her.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers.
What a prodigy. What a savant. Not as allegorical as Flannery O'Connor or as pyrotechnic as William Faulker, but someone who can involve you in her character's lives in a way that few other writers can. The way the lives of a young girl, a drunk, a bar owner, and one of Georgia's first black doctors revolves around their relationship with a deaf-mute says it all about what it means for us to communicate. I bought the Library of America's compilation of her novels so I didn't walk around with the edition with the Oprah logo on it, so I'm looking forward to reading or rereading the rest of her books in the next coming weeks. I may even have to sneak a peak at what Oprah viewers are saying about it.

The Recognitions, William Gaddis.
My goal for the summer is to read this 900-page behemoth, but I keep having to interrupt myself to read a book I didn't particularly want to for a book discussion (March, American Gods) or reread a book for class (Slaughterhouse 5, Gulliver's Travels )

Boring book on html and CSS. Gulliver's Travels for about the dozenth time (We're discussing it in class next week).

I finished Sean Wilsey's Oh, the Glory of All, a memoir of his upbringing and misadventures; the divorce of his San-Francisco-high-society parents; his subsequent travails life with a truly wicked stepmother, who made him eat over the sink, refused to let him watch TV while his stepbrothers did whatever they wanted, made him change his favorite color, and cheated him out of any inheritance; and his miseducation, flunking out of some of our nation's finest schools. Though memoirs are perhaps unavoidably self-indulgent by nature, his was free of the annoyingly clever cutsiness that marred the somewhat similar A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by his friend Dave Eggers. Perhaps it ran a little long, but it was ideal summer reading, and very funny.

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(Not As) Recent Viewing:

We Are Marshall: When I first heard the story eight years ago about the Marshall plane crash, I thought that it would make a good movie. I suppose this was it. It's the same old feel-good movie about a ragtag underdog coming together to overcome obstacles and win the big game (not because they are the best but because they have the biggest heart) at the last second in a slow-motion scene. While most movies have one or two scenes that leave lump s in throats, every scene is this movie seems designed to choke the viewer up. I'm a sucker for this kind of movie anyway, and this one had a lot going for it. Reasonably accurate period detail; excellent photography, especially in the football sequences; Matthew McConaughey's perennial charm; but more than anything the story itself, which more than anything is a story of .

Little Miss Sunshine: I don't think I could be very good friends with anyone who didn't love this movie. I'm not even going to say anything else about it. You will feel better after you have seen it. If you have seen it, go see it again. What a bunch of nuts.

The Black Dahlia: Did anyone read that little interview with James Ellroy in The New York Times Magazine a while back? It turns out he's a total asshole. I liked his books when I read them, and on a different day I might even like this movie, but I'm watching right now, as we speak, so to speak, and that should tell you how compelling it is.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: A new twist on classic Hollywood noir. Reminiscent of The Big Sleep and Chinatown, but this one plays it more for laughs. With two of Hollywood's most notoriously difficult actors--Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.--it can't go wrong.

The sixth season of The Sopranos: Even though this season pales in comparison to previous ones, it is still so much better than anything else on any screen that I won't be able to watch TV or movies for a while.

"Uncut" versions of the teen classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the surprisingly funny Not Another Teen Movie on Comedy Central late at night. I couldn't believe my ears; all of the dirty words were left intact. I couldn't trust my eyes either; some of the scenes were awfully blurry.

Dancer in the Dark: Bjork calls the filmmaking style of Lars von Trier, who directed her moving performance in this film, "emotional pornography." Evidently she did not have a good time on the set. Bjork's comment does not mean that this film is pornography with a lot of emotion in it, of course. She means that this movie does to the emotions what porn does to the libido. Yes this movie, like its sister films Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Dogville, packs an emotional wallop by making its sympathetic and innocent female lead do something horrible, but it is not more manipulative than any other movie, or if it seems that way it is just because it is so much better at manipulating its audience's emotions. I can see Bjork's point, though. I do keep coming back to this movie. I'm addicted to catharsis; what else can I say?

The sixth season of Oz. I don't think I can finish this season's episodes. All of the most compelling characters are dead, and the show has taken some pretty ridiculous plot turns. If you are into prison rape scenes, I suppose there is still plenty to enjoy, but I'm crossing this show off my list.

Some horrifying movie called Rest Stop, which was pretty horrifying and kind of horrible. Two great movies: Thank You for Smoking, in which tobacco lobbyists are finally the heroes again; and Art School Confidential, a dead-on satire of exactly what the title would lead you to believe. I would have loved this one anyway, being based as it is on Daniel Clowes' Eightball comic.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season Five. What an absolute asshole. What's curious about Larry David's sense of humor is that if you think about why it's funny or were forced to explain why it's funny, it isn't funny. It's best not to think about it.

Martha Stewart Living: My first exposure to Martha Stewart was in a segment about how to prepare an inexpensive lobster dinner for twelve. I was thus never much of a fan of pre-prison Martha Stewart. Prison seems to have served her well. She's trimmed and humbled. I would still probably rather watch Tony Danza stumble his way through his now-cancelled talk show, but Martha will be just fine.

Dark City, which was actually a pretty good film noir/sci-fi movie, like a feature length Twilight Zone movie. The penultimate episode of the Tony Danza Show. Too many episodes of Farscape.

A black bear in the wild. A big bear in the sky. (That's Ursa Major, folks). The Aurora Borealis. The largest body of fresh water in the world. Lots and lots of ravens. The bottom of a toilet bowl.

I've been wondering what it says about me that I cried at the end of V for Vendetta, or for that matter, at the end of On the Line, starring the members of 'NSync, in which Lance Bass finds love on Chicago's El. Yes, she was a woman, though I have to ponder the timing of Fox's Sunday movie. I also feel sorry for the fat one in 'NSync, not least because his name is Fatone.

No TV. No movies. Just two great bands. The Navigators at Cafe Zuzu and The Topheavies at the 2006 Camp Friendly Freedom Festival. And I'm not just saying that because I went to college with or came from the same womb as a member of these bands, respectively. Find their myspace pages and listen for yourself. I'm too tired to code the links right now, so get clicking and typing.

I only watched an episode or two of Six Feet Underduring its original run, so I've just finished watching the entire series on DVD. I'm not quite over it yet. I've had dreams about the characters, which is to be expected in a show with characters who seem somehow more real than many people I know. This show is proof that there is nothing wrong with the basic soap opera formula that great writing, acting, directing, and production values can't fix. Stories that could have been written by Raymond Carver shot on sets that look like Edward Hopper paintings. It is better than The Sopranos, no matter what you say.

I finally got to see The Devil and Daniel Johnston a documentary about the singer/songwriter whose mental illness is probably more famous than his music. I don't know whether it's because I've been waiting so long to see it (I've been a fan since I stayed up past my bedtime and caught him on MTV's The Cutting Edge in 1986), but watching this movie was one of the most emotionally overwhelming experiences of my life. Lots of artists pretend to be crazy. Daniel Johnston is the real deal, and there is nothing romantic about it. Thanks, again, Daniel, for letting me use some of your drawings on this page.

Really awful Friday night network TV. Read the full critique here.
Those animal rescue shows. Little bits and pieces of movies on TV, including a really gripping Denzel Washington thriller in which he plays a police chief in some small town in the keys. He falls in love, compromises his integrity, and has to cover his tracks before the feds find out. Sound familiar, anyone?

Nothing good. I've had access to cable these past few weeks and I am learning how little I've been missing. The Daily Show is always good, which must be why they play it ten times a day.

Mulholland Drive--The only David Lynch movie that makes much sense to me, except maybe the one with the guy on a tractor. I might be missing something in both cases, though.

City of God--Confirming my theory that the scariest thing in the world is a kid with a gun.

Rock School--Not the Jack Black movie, but a documentary that might as well have been the basis for it. A music teacher forces children to learn insanely difficult Zappa tunes and swears at them a lot. 

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Trifles

Random Facts:

Over six billion copies of The Bible have been printed.
Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down.
Anne Boleyn had three breasts.
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every category of the Dewey Decimal System.
The average bladder holds about 13 ounces of fluid.
Carrots were originally purple. The orange ones were developed by the Dutch to honor their national color.
It takes about 142.18 licks to reach the center of a tootsie pop.
Whale songs rhyme.
Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt.
The word with the most definitions is set.
Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln.
The word with the most consonants in a row is latchstring.

Made-up Statistics

100% of Americans believe that the party is over. (Courtesy of Sam Nash.)

Things Other People Said Better:

"The applause of a single human being is of great consequence."
Samuel Johnson

Websites You Have To See:

http://subservientchicken.com/