Sonic Youth (everything they've done together and solo - my favorite artists!) - Merzbow (modern genius!) - The Boredoms (modern insane genius!) - Brian Eno (all his ambient work) - Sun Ra - lots of the obscure free jazz stuff - Cecil Taylor - John Coltrane - Ornette Coleman - Ennio Morricone - Goblin - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Iannis Xenakis - Pauline Oliveros - Walter/Wendy Carlos - György Ligeti - Harry Pussy (r.i.p.) - Royal Trux - Cock E.S.P. - Stereolab - Squarepusher - Borbetomagus - Christian Marclay - The Haters - Space Streakings - Melt Banana - a lot of the Chicago no-wave stuff - High Rise/Musica Transonic - Jim O'Rourke - Jandek (fellow Texan!) - Kraftwerk - Neu - The Flying Lizards - Pere Ubu - The Residents - Sparks - Black Flag - Dead Kennedys - Butthole Surfers - Beastie Boys - X - Martha and the Muffins - Siouxsie and the Banshees - old 4ad stuff - Prefab Sprout - The Waitresses - Bow Wow Wow - Art of Noise - Laurie Anderson - The B-52's - The Plastics - Polyrock - Devo - Blondie - The Judy's - Talking Heads - Pat Benatar - Nina Hagen - Romeo Void - PiL - a lot of the old Factory stuff - Einstürzende Neubauten - Test Dept. - SPK - Jim Foetus - Laibach - Chris and Cosey - John Denver - The Carpenters - Public Enemy - Eric B. and Rakim - Madonna (The Bob Dylan of my generation)- Jimi Hendrix - Led Zepplin - Heart - Jefferson Airplane - The Doors - Yoko Ono (my favotite Beatle!) - Steve Miller Band - Boston - Captain Beefheart - I'm sure I'll add more shit to this list as I think of it...

    I also listen a lot to the awesome WFMU 91.1 and, it just so happens you can listen to this amazing radio station on the web - 24hrs! Click here to see how. I recommend the acerbic and abrasive wit (and acerbic and abrasive music) of the incomparable Pseu Braun on Friday nights 8-11, Saturday Night Toe Jamz with Kenny G on Thursday afternoon 12noon-3pm, or Incorrect Music with Irwin Chusid and Michelle Boule Wednesdays 3-4pm (where William Shatner's 'The Transformed Man' is merely a starting point), the surreal monologue/radio dramas of Joe Frank on Thursdays from 7-8, Secret Museum of the Air with Citizen Kafka/Pat Conte (features the miracle antique 78 RPM recording) AND The Antique Phonograph Music Program with MAC (a collection of music acoustically recorded on discs and cylinders and played on period machines circa 1895-1925), Tuesday nights 6-7pm and 7-8pm (the only shows of their kind in the world!) and of course, my all time favorite: The Green Room with Dorian Monday nights 7-8 (where she has fascinating interviews with people on the cutting edge of science, technology and mathematics). Pretty much everything they play is awesome.

more to come...
 

film:

    I am an insufferable film fanatic. I go through phases where I ignore cinema - then I go on dangerous binges, sometimes renting four or more videos at a time, or spending gobs of money to see a movie in a theater every night of the week - sometimes two a day! To me the world of film is an infinite universe. Just when you think you've seen it all, there's always some new director or genre or completely obscure, undiscovered "movement" from some unheard of country that awaits your plundering. Living in NYC, I have first choice of any and every new film being released (sometimes even shmoozing my way into a premiere or two - heh heh). Plus excellent repertory houses and museums that are always showing weird shit and having whole retrospectives of even the most undeserving directors. Plus, one great thing about living inside the cultural mecca that is NYC, you get these labyrinth "alternate" video stores run by brainy film nerds who's vast inventories cater to even the most snotty film connoisseur. And there's not just one of these stores - there's a whole gaggle of them - and they all compete with each other! These places are actually, in my opinion, huge film libraries... spreading the art of cinema to whole new generations. Where else are you allowed hands-on access to a video copy of almost ANY film you want, no matter how unheard of or out of print?

Almost anything by Alfred Hitchcock, especially: Rear Window (his masterpiece - my favorite film of all time), North by Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, Virtigo, The Birds, Dial M For Murder, The Trouble With Harry, Suspicion, on and on...

The earlier films of John Waters: especially Female Trouble (his masterpiece - my second favorite film of all time) and Polyester.

Almost anything by Dario Argento: Tenebre, Opera, Suspiria, Profondo Russo, 4 Flies on Grey Velvet, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Inferno, Phenomenon, The Stendhal Syndrome, on and on...  my favorite director of all time! Plus most of Mario Bava's work, and Lucio Fulci.

Recent favorites? Todd Haynes' Safe, David Fincher's Fight Club, David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, Todd Solondz's Happiness, Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, Manuel Pradal's Marie Baie des Anges, David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey, Larry Clark's Kids, Alexander Payne's Election, François Dupeyron's La Machine, Chris Smith's American Movie, Tom Shadyac's The Nutty Professor (1996), Wes Craven's Scream, 2 and 3, I'm sure I will think of LOTS more soon...

I'm really into a lot of the Hong Kong action/comedy/horror stuff - especially Wong Jing's Holy Weapon and Tricky Brains, Most of the Happy Ghost series, and the Mr. Vampire series, almost all of Clifton Ko Chi-Sum's stuff, Yeung Kuen's The Seeding of Ghost, Laam Naai Choi's Story of Ricky and The Seventh Curse, Yip Wai Man's Sixty Million Dollar Man, um... I'll try and remember more of those hard-to-remember director's names later.

Everything Pedro Almodovar has ever done

The work of Jean-Luc Godard, especially Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, and Weekend

Michael Anderson's Logan's Run (filmed in my hometown!)

Three films by Jaques Tati:  Mon Oncle, Playtime, Traffic

Roman Polanski's Repulsion and The Tenant

Peter Weir's The Plumber (1979)

Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I

Michael Verhoeven's The Nasty Girl

Paul Verhoeven's The 4th Man, Showgirls, Starship Troopers

Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho

Woody Allen's Sleeper, Take the Money and Run, Annie Hall, Zelig, Manhattan Murder Mystery

Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (would somebody please cut through all the red tape and release the awesome soundtrack to this goddamn film!?)

John D. Hancock's Let's Scare Jessica to Death

Gillian Armstrong's Starstruck (1982)

Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva (1981 - BTW: I've heard there is an American re-make of this film in pre-production starring Will Smith and Whitney Houston - I guess Will will play the part of the tempermental opera diva and Whitney will portray the bumbling mail lady who has a fixation on him - perfect casting!)

Allan Moyle's Times Square (1980)

François Truffaut's 400 Blows, Fahrenheit 451 and Jules and Jim

William Cameron Menzies's Things to Come

Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls

Jean Rollin's Night of the Hunted (1980)

Ellen Hovde and Albert Maysles' Grey Gardens

Robert Stevenson's Non-Stop New York

Alex Cox's Repo Man

Terry Gilliam's Brazil(all versions)

Martin Scorsese's After Hours

Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Mudhoney, Up!, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Mondo Topless, Vixen!

Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda?, Orgy of the Dead

The entire Friday the 13th series

All the Three Stooges movies

Sam Raimi's Evil Dead I and II

Peter Jackson's Dead Alive

Eating Raoul, Apartment Zero, Blow-up, Blow Out, Dressed to Kill, The Eyes of Laura Mars, Carrie, Videodrome, Scanners, Wings of Desire, Misery, A Clockwork Orange, After Hours, Chopping Mall, Exorcist I and III, Night of the Comet, Alien, Aliens, Poltergiest, Phantasm I, II and III, Fright Night, Teen Witch, Kafka, Whore, all those Quay Brothers' films, My Life As a Dog, The Watermelon Man, A Bucket of Blood, The Gore-Gore Girls, I Bury the Living, Last House on the Left, Smithereens, Farenheight 451, Fantastic Voyage, Blade Runner (non-director's cut), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Pinoccio In Outer Space, Yellow Submarine, Head, Diamond's Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, Goldfinger, Casino Royal, Akira, Hold Me! Thrill Me! Kiss Me!, Heathers, Rock n' Roll High School, Freeway (1996), Basket Case I and II, Living in Oblivion, Bright Angel, Where the Day Takes You, Trust, Copycat, Simple Men, True Stories, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, 2001: A Space Odessey, The Shining, The Last Picture Show, Eraserhead, Wild At Heart, Raisong Arizona, Andy Warhol's Bad, The Bride of Frankenstien, Young Frankenstien, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Big Business, The Thin Man (and all it's sequels), Barbarella, 8 and 1/2, La Dolche Vita, Nights of Cabiria, All About Eve, The Women, Danger: Diabolik, Escape To Witch Mountain, Return to Witch Mountain, That Darn Cat, Zardoz, Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, Rollerball, The Touchables (1968), Jaws, Carnival of Souls, Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, ugh... I could spend forever writing this list!

more to come...
 

People throughout history that I have been jealous of/people who have inspired me
(same thing):

Marcel Duchamp, Marilyn Monroe

more to come...

books:

Anything by Harry Stephen Keeler. So far I've read "The Amazing Web", "The Riddle of the Traveling Skull", "The Case of the Transposed Legs", "The Man With the Magic Eardrums", "The Man With the Wooden Spectacles" - and am working on the "The Marceau Case/X. Jones of Scotland Yard/The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne/Y. Cheung, Business Detective" tetralogy starting with X. Jones. I'd have read more if his books weren't so damn hard to find. Check out more about this amazing author at Richard Polt's Harry Stephen Keeler Society - of which I'm a member... heh heh. If anybody has a copy of "The Box From Japan" to sell, let me know!

Most of the work of Philip K. Dick, especially "Radio Free Albemuth", "The Valis Trilogy", "Ubik", "We Will Remember It For You Wholesale", "Maze of Death"

"My Name Is Asher Lev" - by Chaim Potok. This is my favorite book of all time - read it about 10 times!

"The Fountianhead" - Ayn Rand - I've been reading this for 15 years now - still unfinished and I STILL don't know what happened to Howard Roark!

"Infinite Jest" - by David Foster Wallace. Also liked "The Broome of the System" - haven't had time to check out his other work.

"Sexual Personae" - by Camille Paglia - never finished of course! I love Paglia's writing, I always look forward to her column in Salon magazine - she is the only current thinker/writer who can really get me inspired and ignite my brain on fire. I love her cut-through-all-the-lint, fearless take on everything in the cultural, political and educational spectrum. Her remarkable knowledge of world history and the arts, and her uncomplicated and often blunt way of relating it to the modern world is really refreshing. She also has an original writing style that is simultaneously compelling/informative, and can really pull you in (imagine Webster's Dictionary re-edited by Russ Meyer). I think it's unfortunate how she's been pigeon-holed as a contrarian and "queen of anti-p.c." by a lot of people, but unfortunately I think that how the world often works. She doesn't take refuge on the right or left of anything, and doesn't hesitate to point out the faults and strengths of either side. A true solo warrior. She describes herself as "...a biology-minded social anylist" or something like that. I've often written to her column in Salon, but she's never published or answered my letters (one was about how I suffered an embarrassingly strong case of Stendahl Syndrome at the awesome Universal Studios lot tour in LA, which I thought she would love) - guess I'll keep trying.

I've recently (re)discovered this great non-fiction book written in 1970 by Alvin Toffler called "Future Shock" - I remember seeing the cover of this book on my parent's bookshelf as a small child (the same exact bright orange cover with hokey computer lettering caught my eye in 1999 at a homeless bookseller's table on East 8th Street ) All Gen-X mopey cynicism aside, this book is hysterical! Check out a sample from the opening chapter:

 "Western society for the past 300 years has been caught up in a firestorm of change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force. Change sweeps through the highly industrialized countries with waves of ever accelerating speed and unprecidented impact. It spawns in it's wake all sorts of curious social flora - from psychedelic churches and 'free universities' to science cities in the Arctic and wife-swap clubs in California.
 It breeds odd personalities, too: children who at twelve are no longer childlike; adults who at fifty are children of twelve. There are rich men who play act poverty, computer programmers who turn on with LSD. There are anarchists who, beneath their dirty denim shirts, are outrageous conformists, and outrageous conformists who, beneath their button-down collars, are outrageous anarchists. There are married priests and atheist ministers and Jewish Zen Buddhists. We have pop... and op... and art cinétique... There are Playboy Clubs and homosexual movie theatres... amphetamines and tranquilizers... anger, affluence, and oblivion...  much oblivian."

 ...and it goes on just like that for 487 pages!!! Hahahaha!!! This book is great - I would love to do a spoken word version of this book set to music - like a 5 CD set or whatever.

I also am a big fan of Gilbert and Jamie Hernadez's "Love and Rockets" and ongoing comics series.

Another current author I like is Kenneth Goldsmith (also a DJ on WFMU on Thuesday nights 8-11). He's written two interesting books: "No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96" and "Fidget".

more to come...