It has become a necessary part of our browsing experience, hasn't it? We cannot help but share with the rest of the world what we have found out there. I am no exception. I have a zillion different interests and you know me better if you know what I like and dislike.
I love music. Couldn't get through a day without some music to help me out. It's hard to pick out one particular favorite, but there are a few I'd like to give note to.
Stereolab are my favorite band of the past decade. They have a unique sound that tickles my sense of aesthetics while cutting straight through to my mid-brain. They have proven themselves to be spectacularly prolific. There are two places to go for info about them. The official site for the band has a ton of newer photos and some sound and video. It's cool.
Kraftwerk rank way high in my list of favorites! I was fortunate enough to see them a few summers ago in England and it is the most memorable live show I've ever seen. They have influenced a few generations of electronic music, from seventies space-rock to synthesizer driven new wave to hip-hop, acid-house, and techno. Their music contines to influence, and I think the they will seem even bigger in retrospect when we look back on the twentieth century.
XTC are one of my all time favorite bands. They are underappreciated geniuses, victims of the funk-pop-a-roll music industry, individualistic poets and pop sensations. They have been through punk, new wave, eighties jangly guitar, psychedelia and lush orchestrated pop music of no fixed origin, and they have always lead the way, carved out their own territory, and found a uniquely XTCish way of doing things, even though they occasionally and unabashedly wear their influences on their sleeves. There are two sites to visit to either learn more or simply soak up stuff if you are a fellow fan: Chalkhills and the band's own site.
Paul Weller used to be in the Jam, when he made punk music with a weird sense of soul, went on to be one half of the Style Council, where he made funk, lounge music, and delicious jazzy pop stylings, and has now gone solo, producing some of the best music of the nineties. I hope he continues to record until he's 90. His music is always warm and inviting, sometimes biting, sometimes clever, and always has a deep sense of poetry and soul. For info and stuff on his solo years, check out Heavy Soul.
Elvis Costello is an amazing songwriter and performer, unclassifiable and one of my favorites.
Then there's the Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo. You either know they're the best band ever or you've been living in cave for forty years and you think that World War II never ended. ( Don't laugh; it's happened ) I like the Internet Beatles Album, but there are a zillion sites on this band. Go to a good search engine and take a look around; you'll be amazed at the amount of listings for them.
Science Fiction has had a terrible, wonderful, awe-inspiring, and overwhelming influence on my life. As a kid, I would watch old black and white monster movies on TV, and they had a guiding hand in shaping my aesthetic values. Movies, though would never have the same impact upon me as books. One momentous day in the fourth grade, we had to make posters for books, in groups of about four kids each. The idea was to advertise our favorite book. Of course, I voted for some weird book with some cheesy sea monster on the cover. I think I was just maybe looking for an excuse for our poster to have a big creepy monster on it. I was voted down. Good thing, too. The book we ended up doing was Fat Men from Outer Space by Daniel M. Pinkwater. It is, by the way, a must-read for anyone, adults included. Not to give too much about the book away, but it concerned the invasion of our beautiful planet by large men in plaid tweed suits and tacky ties and the threat to our natural junk-food resources. I was hooked. If I had known that science fiction could be so far out, and be so much more than good guys save girl from creature from lagoon, then I would have started reading it much earlier, like when I was two. My mom was a librarian ( come to think of it, she still is ) and decided that if I was "into science fiction" then she'd grab some books from the science fiction section and bring them home for me. I soon found myself reading the likes of Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke , E.E. "Doc" Smith, and countless others. I'm pretty sure I read something by Harlan Ellison when I was only eleven. In hindsight, that explains a lot. I guess I was destined to become a unique and warped individual. Oh well, some of my recent favorites and all time heroes are Kathleen Ann Goonan , Larry Niven , Philip K. Dick , Isaac Asimov , Neal Stephenson , Lester Del Rey , Alfred Bester , Theodore Sturgeon , William Gibson , and of course, Robert A. Heinlein. If you want to find a wealth of information on SF, I'd suggest the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
Science Fiction comes in many forms, manifested in different media. While Literature tops my list, some of my all-time favorites have been in film. Blade Runner is tied for my favorite movie with 2001:A Space Odyssey.
Comics I Don't Understand -- No, not my opinion, that's the name of the page.
Page of Bad Candy -- I swear if you have ever eaten candy at all, then you must go here. It's a big scary world with , apparently, lots of bad scary candy.
Atheist? Me too. Go here for a big laugh.
If you are a movie fan in any sense, you haven't been anywhere on the World Wide Web if you haven't already visited and bookmarked The Internet Movie Database. It is a treasure trove of information on more movies than you can think about. I have yet to find a film I've seen that was not listed here. Membership is free, and lets you vote on your favorite and not-so-favorite movies.
I get my news from BBC News. I find it is just news, without much of the tabloid clutter that plagues the US media conglomerates.
Did you know that some of the earliest animated cartoons have now passed into the public domain? Visit Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921, from the Library of Congress to learn about and download some of the earliest, as well as finest, animation from the nascent days of American film. Make room on your hard drive, folks, 'cos if you like cartoons, you will be spending some time here (They even have Krazy Kat cartoons!).
Hmmmm... Let's see:
Melanie (and I don't mean the singer from the seventies),Dave Brubeck Quartet, Sister Wendy and her kooky art history thing on public television, Ludwig van Beethoven, Funki Porcini, Ringworld by Larry Niven, crazy beatnik stuff, smiles, old black and white cartoons with roundish animals singing and bobbing their heads while doing some kinda crazy dance, eyecandy, sonnets, stanzas, ballads, haiku, self-confidence, a really good pretzel, pencils, a comfy chair,
Progressive rock, comic books I grew up reading, rubber cement and magazine clippings, best viewed with your own two eyes, old globes that got everything wrong except like Spain, plain old bottomless cup of coffee that you can get at a diner for less than a dollar and with a smile, Veronica Lake, William S. Burroughs cars with outrageous and completely useless tailfins, Blondes, Kurt Vonnegut, all my female friends seem to have read Norman Mailer but I haven't yet, trying to explain to nongeek pals that the word GEEK does NOT offend me. What I was weaned on.
Ruth Welcome and her Zither, being seven years old and pretending that my toy planes were really spaceships and I could really go anywhere, Cab Calloway because he KNEW what it was really all about, Hope, barbecues, hot sauce, phone calls from old friends that come out of the blue, Valentina Tereshkova, letting the lawn grow, salt and pepper shakers that match, pictures of people from a generation or so ago having a great time, remembering the Bicentennial through eight year-old eyes, my modem, redheads, Leonardo DaVinci, wondering what will happen to our ionosphere, suitcases, gravity, hugs, the many uses for cardboard boxes, crayons, the Zapruder film, mitochondria, Laura Ingalls Wilder and her sister, beer, telephones, geodesic domes, firefighting foam, Pompeii, cool record stores, comfortable shirts, strawberry bushes, apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese on top, Stanley Kubrick, Edgar Allen Poe, tiled floors, argyle socks, Alan Turing, Galileo Galilei.
Beauty of both body and soul, hot cinnamon candies, my Mom, 5/4 time, Ska, cheesecake, You, martinis, the military industrial complex that has its big corporate finger on the button, ready to tear us all to a million pieces, puppies and kittens, my friends Maryellen and Josef, Candyland, Clue, Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, Life, checkers, Cosmic Wimpout, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody, George Washington, pizza, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, birch trees, Jeannine Salla, clevere marketing campaigns, Japanese Snacks, my morning cup of coffee, WFCS (the college radio station where I once DJ'ed at as the Lounge Lizard), Maxfield Parrish, my local museum.
Not hating the French because any nation that can produce so many different kinds of wine and cheese must be cool, mylar, Sputnik, eyeglasses, the Raymond Scott Quintette, colloquiallisms, sherbert, jargon, the future, cool ties that I have inherited from my Dad, people I can't stand because someone has to keep my optimism in check, bar codes, chocolate chip cookies, black ballpoint pens (the greatest accomplishment of our species, hands down!), gratuitous links to one's own home page, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus as goals for researchers of both artificial intelligence and robotics!, exclamation marks, freedom.
Steganography, electronic music, every woman I have ever loved, theremins, crossword puzzles, rainforests, cool lampshades, warm baths when needed, cold showers when needed, chess, backgammon, Sushi, Mah Jongg, Chutes and Ladders, the smell of napalm in the morning (oops, that one isn't mine), victory, triumph, dictionaries, Ayn Rand, Ernesto Durrutti, Che Guevera, hot chocolate when its freezing outside, marshmallows, bean bag chairs, pillows, Bach, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Glenn Miller, Doris Day, the Beatles, sunglasses, oceans, samba music, my friend Jason, hey thanks for reading my list-you must be cool, sound of cars passing on a wet road outside my window, Apollo 11, Yuri Gagarin, schmaltz, kitsch, doodads, the number 23, Bach, a glass of ice water on a hot day, brunettes, blondes, redheads, girls who dye their hair anyway they please, the Watchmen, pocket protectors (just kidding), Buddy Holly, a roaring fire safely contained in your fireplace, polka dots.
Peace, Quake, many compact discs stacked up all over my house, paisley, cool breezes on warm days, warm breezes on cool days, votive candles, tea, 1987, our moon, visible light which has yet to reach us from countless light years away, cola, "tea", Dub, road maps, Opera singers I have known and loved, ceiling fans, poetry, the Art of Noise, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Neal Stephenson, my friend Mary (who is cooler than anything), notes I wrote to myself in high school that I tucked into my cherished copy of the 1937 Pocket Oxford dictionary and I am still finding them!, bikinis, my late cool cat Max, vanilla, chocolate, Emily, oh no it's been years since I've had pistachio ice cream, King Tubby, trying to solve cryptograms, things as they used to be, Schiller's Ode to Joy as put to music by Beethoven in the fourth movement of his ninth symphony, getting sentimental over someone and listening to one album over and over just so you can deal, the fact that I can paste on a big fat phony smile all day long and at the end of the day I can still announce to the world via my website that MY BOSS IS AN ASSHOLE, and Bauhaus. Oh yeah, kisses are cool, too.
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