June 22, 2005
GOT IT
Alex Ross offers me the baton and I can think of no good reason to refuse it. So here goes.
Total number of books I've owned: About two thousand.
The last book I bought: At the Newark airport, the Oprah Faulkner trilogy, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and Fury and Light In August. Also got some dumb "hit" novel from Japan about piercing and body modification called Snakes and Earrings or something. Like a bad sex blog. Snauze. (For the record: I think it is fucking awersome that Oprah is asking America to read a natural avant guardian and freak like Faulkner. And I am not ashamed to say I barely remembered these books, and 1.5 of the way through them, they are beyond binoculars.)
The last book I read: As I Lay Dying.
Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (bummed out when I found out it was all Christaganda); Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum; James Salter's Light Years;Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems; A.J. Liebling's entire catalog.
Total number of films I own on DVD and video: One hundred and five.
Last film I bought: Office Space. A computer insists it is my favorite film, even though I've never seen it. I also just ordered Method Man's strip club documentary, but it hasn't arrived.
Last film I watched: Dark Passage, a bananas Bogart and Bacall movie about an escaped convict who undergoes plastic surgery to escape The Man. The first half is shot from Bogart's p.o.v. The whole thing is pretty much ür noir, many shots featuring no sunlight. The surgery scene is especially woozy and excellent. Soaked with Freudian self-critique and moving in a not phony way. And, duh, killer style in all clothes and set design.
Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): The Matrix, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Totoro, Sweet Smell of Success, Stranger Than Paradise.
If I could be any character portrayed in a movie, I would be: Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless, or Chewbacca.
Total volume of music on my computer: 4 GB on the laptop, almost a terbayte on various LaCie drives.
Last CD I bought: DJ Wreck's Jay-Z Unreleased Freestyles Part 2.
Song currently playing: W.C. f/Nelly "Whip Yo Ass"
Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me: 1. XTC "Making Plans For Nigel": empathy is a hard thing to put across in a song [cf. Prince's "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man"]. 2. Bad Brains "Pay To Cum": The most excited I'd ever been by a song, it's a moment I refer to almost every week. 3. Killing Joke "Requiem": when I realized lyrics weren't always in charge. 4. Brian Eno "St. Elmo's Fire": No, not just because we covered it. Beauty without cliché, pain without self-pity, wonder without daftness. 5. Beatles "She Said She Said': Because I will never ever figure it out.
Posted by Sasha at June 22, 2005 10:42 AM | TrackBack