MySpace a place for friends

I am single and would like to meet available women who share my joy in life and the possibilities life presents.

I would really like to meet Merle Haggard, George Jones, Hank Williams III, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Toby Keith, and Steve Earle, to name a few country singers I admire who are still alive.

I have met Chris Botti, but would like to have a deeper converstion with him, and I would really like to meet Brad Mehldau, an excellent young jazz pianist, David Bowie, Keith Richards, and both Becks--Jeff and Beck Hanson.

Lennie Tristano is a piano player that is not that well known, but I feel like he was really onto something, and I am trying to follow the path that he laid out. On the trumpet I am using Chet Baker as a role model, trying to emulate his beautiful tone, but after spending time on him I may move on to Miles Davis, Arturo Sandoval, Bix Beiderbecke, or Dizzy Gillespie--though I refuse to puff my cheeks like a bull frog.

Brad Mehldau is a young pianist who can play straight ahead jazz, like the old Rodgers and Hart standard "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" beautifully, but he will then play a Beatles tune, or maybe something by Radiohead. He has tattoos, is on MySpace, and is like the people of his generation, yet he has an uncanny ability to absorb and reflect the music of the past, making it fresh and new. I was really blown out by his latest project, a collaboration with opera diva soprano extraordinaire Renee Fleming called Love Sublime, with Renee singing the poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke and others of that ilk or persuasion.

I go to see the Flics film series, every other Friday evening at the Fox Theater. They show mostly foreign films, or other independent films that might not otherwise be shown in Bakersfield. Films I like are of course, Citizen Kane, Clockwork Orange, The Matrix, Streetcar Named Desire, Bladerunner, Blue Velvet, The Red Shoes, Crash, 8 Mile,, and if I want to see something so bad it's good, there's always Pink Flamingoes, Trash, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Mulholland Drive, Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Kill!!! or the spectacularly bad but nevertheless entertaining classic: Showgirls.

I really was a fan of a lot of the classic comedys, such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, Sargeant Bilko, Amos & Andy, Mr. Ed, Dobie Gillis, Leave it To Beaver, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, Car 54, Where Are You, Cheers, and feel that television comedy reached its zenith with Seinfeld, which paid homage to all that had gone before, while at the same time deconstructing and mocking it.

Again, I have great hopes for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and also liked some of Aaron Sorkin's other, previous work, such as West Wing and Allie McBeal.

I think it is a lot like West Wing, in that there is a parallel universe where we have a flawed but nobel Democratic President. In the new series we have a parallel universe where SNL is actually funny and relevant. Dream on! Not gonna happen. But Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is mildly entertaining and a pleasant fantasy to indulge for an hour per week.

Grey's Anatomy is a guilty pleasure. I like the characters, and really like Sandra Oh in anything she does (Sideways, Dancing at The Blue Iguana, The Diary of Evelyn Lau, Under The Tuscan Sun) but the plots are so preposterous. I mean, what are the chances of having a patient with a bomb in his chest next to another requiring delicate brain surgery, who is the boyfriend of one of the other surgeons, who is pregnant?

I guess I got hooked on that because it came .. Desperate Housewives, which I didn't feel that guilty about watching, because it was fresh and entertaining, but I might start feeling guilty about DHW if the writing declines any further.

Like Twin Peaks, that show was great at first, but then the writing just fell apart, almost like David Lynch was bored and wanted to destroy it so he could escape the burden it had become.

I have been told that there are some great things on Cable, but I refuse to pay for television. The Sopranos, Sex in the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm.

• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
• The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
• Be Not Content, by William J. Craddock
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Middlemarch, by George Elliot
• On The Road, by Jack Kerouac
• Journey to the End of the Night, by Celine
• The Man In The High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
• Last Exit to Brooklyn, by Hubert Selby Jr.
• Crime and Punishment, by Dovstoyevski
• Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, and Ullyses, by James Joyce.