Matthew B
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"Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge"
Male
40 years old
Ardmore, Pennsylvania
United States
Last Login:
7/4/2008
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Mood:
productive
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http://www.myspace.com/matthewbudman |
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Matthew B's Interests
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| General | Books, movies, music, words. At the end of February, I finally set up an online bookshop on Advanced Book Exchange, which has occupied much of my attention over the past few months. And I'm still liable to ramble on about the white-slavery panic of the 1910s, Sylvia Gibson's priceless YA novel Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say "No" to Drugs, the scientific racism of the '10s and '20s, the childhood-sexual-abuse repression/false-memory controversy of the '90s, and politics, as always. And currently mulling over book projects on authenticity and incompetence. | | Music | Favorite albums of 2007 thus far, more or less in order (I tend to rank things, a holdover from junior high): Girl in a Coma, Both Before I'm Gone; the New Pornographers, Challengers; the 1900s, Cold & Kind; Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga; Charlotte Hatherley, The Deep Blue; the White Stripes, Icky Thump; Amy Cooper, Mirrors; Interpol, Our Love to Admire; Winterpills, The Light Divides; Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Is Is; Emma Pollock, Watch the Fireworks; the Mendoza Line, 30 Year Low; Mono in VCF, Mono in VCF; the Comas, Spells; Jesca Hoop, Kismet; Elliott Smith, New Moon; the Clientele, God Save the Clientele; Over the Rhine, The Trumpet Child; the Trolleyvox, Your Secret Safe/Luzerne; Rob Crow, Living Well; the 1990s, Cookies; Chris Cornell, Carry On; Lyle Lovett, It's Not Big It's Large; Robert Pollard, Coast to Coast Carpet of Love, Sahara Hotnights, What If Leaving Is a Loving Thing. Disappointments: Fountains of Wayne, Arctic Monkeys, Patty Griffin, the Donnas, Jonatha Brooke, Okkervil River, Sondre Lerche, and especially Crowded House's Time on Earth -- what happened, Neil?
Favorites overall -- this week, anyway: Elvis Costello, The Loud Family, Joni Mitchell, Francine, The Beatles, Neil Finn, Aimee Mann, Bob Dylan, The Decemberists, Steely Dan, XTC, Richard Thompson, The New Pornographers, Pat MacDonald, K's Choice, Soundgarden, The Sugarplastic, The Posies, Spoon, Elliott Smith, Guided by Voices, Suzanne Vega, Shudder to Think, The Magnetic Fields. | | Movies | Top twenty, in order: Brazil, Miller's Crossing, The Best Years of Our Lives, Goodfellas, Husbands and Wives, Some Like It Hot, Rebecca, The Apartment, Howards End, Manhattan, Pulp Fiction, This Is Spinal Tap, The Royal Tenenbaums, All About Eve, Persuasion (1995), Rosemary's Baby, Pride and Prejudice (1995), Out of the Past, The Little Foxes.
Favorites of 2007, so far: No End in Sight, Sicko, and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, plus Away From Her, No Country for Old Men, Knocked Up, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Live Free or Die Hard, Ratatouille, and There Will Be Blood. Disappointments: Eastern Promises and The Bourne Ultimatum.
Favorites of 2006: HBO's Elizabeth I miniseries, The Lives of Others, United 93, The Children of Men, Jesus Camp, The Prestige, The Last King of Scotland, Once in a Lifetime, An Inconvenient Truth, Once, Casino Royale, Quinceañera, Wordplay, Manufactured Landscapes, and, I guess, Pan's Labyrinth. Worst film I saw all year: The Devil Wears Prada. | | Television | Firefly, The Larry Sanders Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kids in the Hall, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, Entourage, The Office (U.K.), The Sopranos, The Wire, Flight of the Conchords, Deadwood. All on cable or DVD -- how does anyone watch shows with commercials? Oh, plus The Daily Show. Of course. | | Books | Recommended recent reads: Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason, Jonathan Miles' Dear American Airlines, Jessica Todd Harper's Interior Exposure, Charlie Huston's No Dominion and The Shotgun Rule, Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, Richard Dawkins' River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, Jincy Willett's Winner of the National Book Award and Jenny and the Jaws of Life, Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, David Lodge's Paradise News, Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Rudolph Delson's Maynard & Jennica, Amanda Stern's The Long Haul, Robert Reich's Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, Eric Larson's The Devil in the White City, Cameron Crowe's Conversations With Wilder, Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Henry Green's Loving, George Saunders' Pastoralia, Jacob Slichter's So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, Jennifer Egan's The Keep and Look at Me,
Edward Humes' Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Daniel Brook's The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America, Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One, Daniel Gross's Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy, Kelly Braffet's Last Seen Leaving. Plus some business books too dull to note here. Also, some authors of multiple novels I have read and reread and re-reread: Michael Chabon,
Anne Tyler, Raymond Chandler, Mark Helprin, Philip Roth, Richard Russo, Carl Hiaasen, Jane Smiley, John Irving, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roddy Doyle, E.M. Forster, Barbara Kingsolver, Ian McEwan, Kurt Vonnegut. | | Heroes | I once informed Wendy Kaminer that she was my hero, and she sternly told me not to have heroes. |
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Matthew B's Details
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| Status: | Married | | Here for: | Networking, Friends | | Hometown: | Sacramento | | Zodiac Sign: | Sagittarius | | Children: | I don't want kids | | Education: | College graduate | | Occupation: | Editor/writer/campfire singer/outside agitator |
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Matthew B is buying a big new iMac for Mrs. Matthew B this afternoon.
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Matthew B's Blurbs |
About me:
Hi all! I'm a politics-obsessed media junkie who has surrounded himself with news and books and music and movies and has memorized far too much of it. What else? I wrote a book a couple of years ago, on book collecting, but it was a work-for-hire deal for Random House so I pledged not to even ask anyone to buy a copy, and have thus far held to that. It's my first book without the word
"idiot" in the title. Since my life goal is to be a successful faculty spouse, that's a definite positive. Apart from that, I'm a skeptic and rationalist, managing editor of a business magazine in Manhattan (a proud member of the East Coast liberal media) and an occasional freelance book reviewer and editor, and have no memory of how I filled the hours of the evening before people began writing political blogs. Let's see: At 19, i was a pretty good guitar player, but I haven't improved since. I try not to tell the same stories more than once to the same people. Friends often tell me I should write about music, but I've never been able to do it as well as I'd like. I've worn a beard since 1990. I answer the telephone with infectious enthusiasm. I'm genuinely sorry to have missed my twenty-year high-school reunion. I was hoping I'd be a naturally good poker player, but I'm not. Let me know if I've missed anything.
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Who I'd like to meet:
Anyone who grew up playing Big Boggle rather than games that require skill in negotiation. Sam Harris. Authors of novels I've really enjoyed. Joss Whedon. Clayton Scoble of Francine. Penn Jillette. Frederick Crews. Elvis Costello. Anyone who understands my "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge" headline without Googling it.
James Randi. Meryl Streep. Barack Obama. P.Z. Myers. Anne Tyler.
People who can spell. That should be "WHOM I'd like to meet."
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| Matthew B's Friend Space (Top 32) |
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Matthew B has 280 friends.
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