Playwrighting, cooking meals (esp. for other people), reading, finding new music, watching movies, theatre, concerts, art openings, good commentary tracks on great movies, midnight sales and yard sales, meeting interesting (even slightly crazy) people so I can secretly and lovingly put a bit of them in my next script.
Music
OK, going through the HUGE CD collection: Abba, Tori Amos, The Bird and the Bee, Bjork, Blondie, Book of Love, Celtic music, The Chieftains, Aaron Copeland, Crowded House, The Cure, Death Cab for Cutie, Duran Duran, Eels, Erasure, Eurythmics, Neil Finn, Ella Fitzgerald, Flaherty & Aherns, Franz Ferdinand, Gene, Henrik Gorecki, Adam Guettel, The Housemartins, Indigo Girls, James, Howard Jones, The Killers, Cyndi Lauper, Mary Jane Lamond, Stephen Lynch, Audra McDonald, Sarah McLaughlin, Brad Mehldau, Midlake, The National, New Order and all their spin-offs except early Revenge, Thomas Newman soundtracks, October Project, William Orbit, Michael Penn, The Postal Service, Preisner, REM, Robyn, Anna Russell, Sade, St. Vincent, Scissor Sisters, Simon & Garfunkel, The Smiths, Stephen Sondheim, Cat Stevens, Sufjan Stevens, Stone Roses, Sugarcubes, The Sundays, Tears for Fears, Toxic Audio, Vampire Weekend, Martha Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, XTC
Movies
All About Eve, Almost Famous, Atonement, Babe, Bad Education, The Barbarian Invasions, Beauty and the Beast, Being John Malkovich, Big Trouble in Little China, Brokeback Mountain, Chicago, Citizen Kane, Clue, The Color Purple, Dark City, The Dark Knight, The Devil's Backbone, Dead Man Walking, Edward Scissorhands, Election, Elf, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Far From Heaven, Finding Nemo, The Fisher King, Garden State, Good Night and Good Luck, The Goonies, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, His Girl Friday, Il Postino, Irwin Allen disaster films, Lilo and Stitch, Little Miss Sunshine, The Lost Boys, Memento, Michael Clayton, Monsoon Wedding, Mulan, North by Northwest, Northfork, The Orphanage, Pan's Labyrinth, Pieces of April, Postcards from the Edge, The Princess Bride, The Royal Tennenbaums, Saved, The Shawshank Redemption, Shakespeare in Love, Sideways, Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Wag the Dog, Wall-E, Wonder Boys
Television
Don't really watch TV - whatever I watch at friends' houses - Weeds, Top Chef, Rock Star, Wonder Showzen (mostly Clarence, natch,) and Scrubs. TV sucks unless it's a social event.
Books
Most Edward Albee plays,
American Psycho,
The Beautiful Room is Empty,
All Willa Cather (but especially My Antonia),
All Michael Chabon (especially The Mysteries of Pittsburg and Wonder Boys),
The Color Purple,
Cookbooks,
The Encyclopedia of Film,
I have a fondness for Carrie Fisher,
Giovanni’s Room,
The Harry Potter series,
The Hours,
In Character,
The Last of the Savages,
Less than Zero,
The Lovely Bones,
Lysistrata (I like several versions),
Made to Stick,
March,
The National Book Award Finalists/Winners,
The Nobel Prize Winners,
One Last Waltz,
Paris Out of Hand,
The Paris Review’s Playwrights on Playwrighting,
Plays,
The Pulitzer Prize Winners,
Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall,
Running with Scissors,
All David Sedaris,
Suite Francaise,
The Talented Mr. Ripley,
Theatre History Books,
The Tipping Point,
Three Junes,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
All Evelyn Waugh (especially The Loved One, Brideshead Revisited, and his short stories),
You are not a Stranger Here
Heroes
James Baldwin,
Buddha,
Joseph Campbell,
Christ,
Madame Curie,
Anne Frank,
Galeleo,
Ganesh,
The gays at Stonewall (mostly drag queens),
Emma Goldman,
Stephen Hawking,
The immigrants who made the American Heartland,
The Kent State rioters,
Coretta Scott King,
Nelson Mandela,
Michelangelo,
Mother Teresa,
My adopted grandmother Lorena Midgorden,
My siblings for what we survived,
My college professor Susan Maroldo,
My grandmother on my dad’s side,
The Native Americans at Little Big Horn,
Peaceful foreigners who suffer under shitty American foreign policy (Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Venezuela, the entire Middle East, colonial Japan, etc. etc. etc.),
Rosa Parks,
Poor David Hyrum Smith,
The Selma Bus people and the marchers who came after,
The suffragettes,
Elie Wiesel,
Lots of heroes, actually.
About me: I ran into a simple romantic with a gift for words, and then came here inspired to a little honesty of my own.
I love my friends, more than they may even know. I am happiest with them, sitting on a couch or sailing in a car, cutting jokes and polishing them up, curled up in a restaurant booth, listening to their stupid problems, and telling them my more stupider ones. They cross my mind more than anything else during the day.
I love Sunday mornings tearing through the paper, drinking strong coffee and feeling spoiled the way I throw each section in a disorganized pile on the floor as I am through with it as if I rule the world for the next twenty minutes.
I love naps.
I love listening to intelligent people who help me forget my own venerated opinions.
I love that the banal activities of life are easier for me to accomplish with good music playing. I can clean, I can work, I can get through just about anything.
I love a really good question.
I love buying into any and all meta-scientific mythologies, because it feels like I’m doing Yoga on my imagination.
I love people who have little or no boundaries in musical taste.
I love a child-like sarcasm filled with vitriol and wonder at the same time.
I love that every time I stand at the ocean, I think it’s a miracle that everything exists. And I feel small and lucky at the same time. I love even more letting the waves beat the shit out of me; it’s good for my ego.
I love Goth kids, with their gloomy outlook and pale skin and colored hair. I just want to hug them and thank them for reminding us that even depression can be loads of fun.
I love a good tasteless joke that makes people giggle even minutes later.
I love curling my hands around a warm mug of tea when it’s cold or rainy outside.
I love playwrighting, seeing that I have completed 3 or five pages a day, or coming to the end of a scene and feeling good enough about it in its first draft.
I love that most self-proclaimed anarchists look pretty much the same – same dress, same slouch. I want to hug them.
I love it when people first read or see my plays and understand and empathize with the questions I am asking, because then my thoughts don’t feel so alone.
I love that I can always do things that I find humorous. I love how I take a joke too far for my own amusement, and I love that the people who love me, do so because of or in spite of my talent for saying out loud anything that crosses my mind.
I love my cat. I love that she trusts me so much that nothing I do makes her even flinch. I love that she seems to need me so much (and not just for food).
I love that so many things in the world interest me. It makes it easier for me to ignore the things that don’t.
Who I'd like to meet: I have a few questions for God or Jesus or Buddha or Ganesh or whichever Divine/Divinely connected being is willing to give more than a “No Comment.” Other than that (a random listing, and except for Jesus, I’m not picking dead people): Stephen Sondheim, Richard Greenberg, Carol Burnett, Neil Finn (oh God, would I love to have a long conversation with him!), Meryl, Audra McDonald, Vaclav Havel, the entire band of New Order including Gillian, oh Jesus I can’t believe I am admitting this but really Chris Evans, Tom Stoppard, Augusten Burroughs, Bill Clinton, Ethan McSweeny, Adam Guettel, Michael Frayn, Zach Braff, even though I’m not a pot smoker, I’d like to smoke a doobie with the Indigo Girls, I’d love to cook a meal with Tori Amos, I’d love to go yard sale hopping with David and Amy Sedaris, I’d love to go to Disney with Robert Smith of The Cure. People like that.
