Other hobbies and interests are old movies, computers, fly-fishing, shooting, ham radio, cryptography, reading and gardening. And parenting! Parenting comes first! ------------
Sports? Not really interested. I jog every morning from 5-6 AM to keep my weight down. I'd like to get down from 200 to 175. I don't watch football/basketball/baseball on TV every weekend; or ANY weekend for that matter. I don't play golf; although I might want to take it up later in life. -----------
Travel? I don't have a strong interest in it, but one day I would like to take a week-long bicycle tour of Holland and Belgium and France. That sounds great! I've been to London (once) and Acapulco (once). That's it for foreign travel. I loved Key West; went there twice. The American Caribbean. The Conch Republic.
Politically I'm a libertarian: I'm in favor of gay marriage and assault weapons. I'm a member of the ACLU and the NRA and I don't see any conflict there. Many people see them as “liberal” or “conservative” organizations, but they aren't to me; I have reservations about BOTH organizations, but at least they preserve the Bill of Rights.
I have vacationed on the Outer Banks since the 1950's when I was just a wee slip of a lad. Manteo, Nags Head, Duck, Corolla, Ocean Sands and so forth. And a little farther up the coast in Virginia: Sandbridge and Virginia Beach. South of Sandbridge there are a series of wildlife refuges and state parks, including False Cape State Park, which has wonderful hiking and mountain bike trails, rustic campgrounds and miles of deserted Atlantic beaches. I miss it. I miss the smell of the sand and salt water and sea oats, mingling with the cocoanut and lanolin smells of the tanning lotions. I miss the open horizon to the east, and the dark skies at night. You can actually see the constellation Andromeda with the naked eye; it's as big as your thumbnail held at arm's length, but it's so dim that you need a dark sky to see it.
One thing about me is that I have a gun collection: if that turns you off, sorry. A lot of people are morbidly afraid of guns. I keep mine locked up in steel cases, most of them are disassembled, and the ammunition is locked up separately. I don't own anything unusual, just a dozen rifles and pistols. Where I live, gun ownership is very common and doesn't raise an eyebrow. Let me take you shooting at the rifle range; you can shoot a rifle or pistol.
I have a little computer network at home with three desktops and three laptops, plus a printer. I have converted three of the machines from Windows to Linux; I’m just sick of Microsoft and their high prices and high-handed treatment of customers, so I’m staying away from Vista. I’m using a version of Linux called Ubuntu; it’s from South Africa.
Music
Like: Vivaldi, Aerosmith, Berlioz, U2, Verdi, Rolling Stones, Tchaikovsky, Fleetwood Mac, Rachmaninoff, Peter Gabriel, Dvorak, Tom Petty, Ravel, Joni Mitchell, Debussy, Beatles, Rimsky-Korsakov, Wang Chung, Beethoven, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Ravel, Joan Armatrading. -----------
I like to wake up to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Excellent music to make breakfast to, or just to watch the sunrise with a hot cup of coffee or tea. The best tea, in my opinion, is Twinings English Breakfast tea; the loose kind, not the teabags. The tea to be avoided, at all costs, is Earl Gray. -----------
Movies
Yeah, I got your romantic comedies, right HERE! I like to watch romantic comedies on DVD: The Philadelphia Story, Sleepless In Seattle, Annie Hall, Play It Again Sam, Addicted to Love, The Cooler. And romantic tragedies, too: Brief Encounter, Casablanca, Doctor Zhivago, etc. But I also like cops-and-robbers movies: Heat, Man On Fire, Ronin, Miami Vice, Reservoir Dogs, The Score, True Romance, L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects, etc. -----------
I'm very fond of 1930's and 1940's movies by Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch and the Marx Brothers. I actually met Frank Capra, once.
My favorite silent movie is The Passion of Joan of Arc with Maria Falconetti. Anything with Louise Brooks. Anything by Stanley Kubrick or Robert Altman. -----------
Dr. Strangelove, The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, Flirting With Disaster, Bulworth, To Catch A Thief, Life Of Brian, Grosse Pointe Blank, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Crash, Witness For The Prosecution, The Devil Wears Prada, The Player, The Usual Suspects, Goldfinger, Mystery Men, Get Shorty, Lost Horizon, The Lady Eve, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, The Sixth Sense, Adaptation, Lawrence of Arabia, On The Beach, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Four Weddings and A Funeral, The Long Goodbye, The Maltese Falcon, The Lady Killers, Harold and Maude, Snatch, Body Heat and Ninotchka. ----------
Television
I watch DVDs and documentaries, but hardly any episodic TV. Except the Simpsons, of course. ----------
Books
The best book I've ever read is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and the best movie I've ever seen is Citizen Kane. The best play I've ever seen is Les Miserables; it was better than Cats! ----------
About me:
My personality? I'm very shy; studious; bookish; solitary. I love to laugh; social satire and irony, especially. I love The Simpsons. And Evelyn Waugh. And Woody Allen and Monty Python. And Preston Sturges. And Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. And the Marx Bros. I'm sentimental. I can get choked up and actually start to weep over sad movies or books. I read The Kite Runner and Cormack McCarthy's The Road recently, and I was just sobbing through the last few chapters. Whew! Just thinking about it, just now ... I'm getting verklempt! --------------
---------- In 2002 I was divorced after 17 years of marriage. We have two children, one born in ’89 and the other in ’91. The ex has remarried and we live about two miles apart, so I see the kids about as frequently as she does. The ex and I are on very bad terms and contact each other only by telephone, and only when we have to. When people ask, I tell 'em that she was killed in a mineshaft explosion [Woody Allen]. ----------
DANGER! I talk baby talk to cats. You have been warned! ----------
I had my eyes fixed with Lasik about 2003. Best thing I ever did. I had been wearing glasses or contacts since 1965 or so. Yeah, I know, some of you have MOMs who were born in 1965! OK, so I'm old! So fuckin' what!? ----------
I stopped smoking in 1982. I may smoke a cigar on the back porch once a week. I drink a little bit, wine, beer, whiskey; but most of my bottles of booze are dusty with age. I haven't smoked a joint since 1981; ditto for cocaine. Never did anything else narcotically speaking. Never been arrested; never cheated in a relationship; not secretly gay; not secretly pining for my ex. I'm not stalking anybody and nobody's stalking me. I'm not obsessed with Star Trek, Star Wars, golf, football or comic books. No infirmities, no chronic diseases, no health problems, no false teeth, no piercings, no tattoos, no scars. Pretty boring life, huh? ----------
Who I'd like to meet: Kindred spirits who are interested in books, movies, music, ideas and freedom. ------------
