STUFF I LIKE:
Susie, Sally, Ella, hairy-nosed wombats, illuminated highway signs, Mark Rothko, capers, tigers, Bill Evans, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Guanajuato, Trinidad de Cuba, mountain bikes, Miles Davis, Soma FM, www.archive.com, Patti Smith, Don Cherry (ie Neneh’s father), the Dub Syndicate Collective, El Asador on Bloor Street, trances, Ricky Gervaise, Kate Winslet, The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Fela, Antibalas, Wes and P.T. Anderson, Scorcese prior to Gangs of New York, Spain, yoga, those Alfa Romeo sedans that they drove in Italian movies from the ‘60s, Gigondas, silence, sea lions, Jim White, Nicoise olives, crazy old John Giorno, capybara rodents, ball lightening, Freud, John Lydon, afro-jazz, Sly & Robbie, John Coltrane, Monet in his Garden, the Tate modern (or, more specifically, that piano hanging upside down), eel sushi, French food, matar paneer, poor ol’ Jerry may his soul rest in peace, meetings of the Wheatsheaf Literary Society, Wilco, excessive sleep, fish cakes, not caring, running in the fall, Aztec ruins, milkshakes, tulips, when chef Ramsay yells that he’s seen a pair of bollocks cook better, Jim White, zines, Randy Weston, the call to prayer, mission churches, staring at the I-tunes visualizer (full screen), Global Rhythms on CIUT-FM, my editor, my agent, the opening scenes from both JackAss movies, the theory of relativity, really sharp kitchen knives, Alan Ball, Elf, Ryan Adams, limestone houses, canals, ginseng-based stimulants, bocarones, The Ghosts of Hallelujah, cooking risotto, buttes, Cinematic Orchestra, acupuncture, ghosts, assorted slaws, circus people, sailors, Russians, gas stoves, the word “pulpy”, the word “chum”, the possibility that one day I will start a novel with the sentence “the chum was good and pulpy that morning,” dumpling-faced Chinese grandmothers, scrunchy-faced dogs, calm people, spotting transvestites, buying knapsack buttons for Sally and Ella, Cezanne, Picasso, Bill Laswell, corn tortillas, Laurel and Hardy, wind turbines, manatees, Gary Kasparov, spell-check, good tequila, walking to places, The Raconteurs, my fall jacket, Ry Cooder (particularly the border stuff), Mexican cinema, ping-pong, pork-pie hats and, last but not least, those little jars anchovies come in …