Writers: Vladimir Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh, Ruth Rendell, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, David Mamet, Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, Lee Child, David Mitchell, David Foster Wallace, Jean Echenoz, Emmanuel Carrere, Donald Barthelme, Charlie Kaufman. That’s the canon. I notice that there are three people named David in it.
Music: The Punch Brothers (or anything Chris Thile does), Alison Krauss, The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, The Kinks, Ella Fitzgerald, Ricky Skaggs, Tom Lehrer, John Mayer, Mark Knopfler, Eisley, Marina and the Diamonds, Steve Vai, Glenn Gould, Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, Radiohead, Imogen Heap, Kate Rusby, Andy Statman… This list is harder to pin down than the others, because it’s constantly lengthening.
Movies: Synecdoche New York, Edward Scissorhands, The Incredibles, A Clockwork Orange, Dead Poets’ Society, The Jason Bourne series, The Princess Bride. I have also seen the movie Clue roughly 150 times, and Beetlejuice about 100 times.
TV: Six Feet Under, The Wire, Mythbusters, anything involving nature, preferably with long wide-pan shots of snow.
Places I’ve Traveled: Burma (Myanmar), Vietnam, Italy, Israel.
Food: My favorite cuisine is Moroccan. Just typing “mechoui” makes me salivate. Bring me anything smoked. I gravitate toward strong, almost overpowering foods, and I wonder sometimes if my sense of taste is actually duller than most people’s, requiring me to turn it up to 11, flavorwise. I’m one of the few people in the world who actually enjoys epoisse.
