Here is how this works. You name your single favorite movie, TV show, album, and novel. You are allowed only one selection for each category. You may skip any you like (I realize that some folks may not have a favorite novel, for example). Just for kicks, you may add any one (and only one) category of your own (i.e. meal, wine, handgun, sexual act, whatever).
Why? I thought it might be interesting to see whose tastes run similar to each other. Maybe you’ll see someone’s list – someone you have had major issues with and perhaps have written off as a jerk-face – who, in fact, has Café Society-type favorites that are identical to your own. Additionally, you may see a list that contains many of your own likes but also includes an unknown: “Hey, she likes this and this and this too…maybe I should check out that novel that I’ve never heard of”.
Or, this could crash/burn. Time will tell.
Just to be clear, your post will contain no more than five selections. Additional commentary is encouraged.
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Movie: Tough one. I like movies. I’m going to use the criterion “movie I could watch over and over again and never get tired of” and so therefore I’m going to have to go with Ghostbusters. Maybe not a great work of cinematic genius, but I could watch it about a million times and never get tired of it.
Album: Easy. Flood by They Might Be Giants.
TV show: Toss-up between Doctor Who and Futurama, but I think I’m going to have to go with Futurama.
Novel: Again I will use the criterion of re-readability. For something I could pick up and read over and over again, I will go with Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Though ask me on another day and my answer might well be different.
Favorite non-alcoholic beverage: Thai iced tea. Nom nom nom, so tasty. Could drink it by the gallon.
Movie: Natural Born Killers – The perfect mix of Hollywood and experimental movies, and Oliver Stone at his best. It also has the best soundtrack (mixed by Trent Reznor) and uses a variety of different visual and cinematic tricks.
Album: This is tough for me, as I have a few that could qualify for different reasons, but today I’m going to go with Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch, a masterpiece of jazz that more people should be familiar with.
TV Show: The Pretender. It was a brilliant show that had a lot of influence for me.
Novel: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
Nonfiction Book: Critical Path, by R. Buckminster Fuller. Literally the Bible for me. I think it could provide the blueprint for a better world if followed.
Movie: Life as a House. I actually like Fellowship of the Ring, but since it’s part of a trilogy I ultimately find disappointing, I’ll go with *Life.
*Album: The 1985 cast album to Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George.
TV show: I’m torn between Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (by far the best of the Trek series) and Mad Men. I’ll go with the former since there’s more hours of entertainment there.
Novel: This is the easy one, though I may surprise some people: Valerie Martin’s A Recent Martyr.
The one other will be a short story collection: The Armless Maiden & Other Stories for Childhood’s Survivors, edited by (I think) Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow.
Non-Top 100 AFI Movie: Raising Arizona
TV Series (complete): Battlestar Galactica
Ethnic food: Thai
Book I read before I turned 15: Watership Down
Fart: Full-bodied, minimal brap
Board game: Settlers of Catan
Card game: Euchre
Television episode: West Wing, “In Excelsis Deo”
Saturday afternoon: Minor league baseball game
Movie - M by Fritz Lang
Album - Rammstein Live Aus Berlin
TV Show - Dr Who
Novel - Lois McMaster Bujold Memory
Memory - First year out of high school, 1981. Fresh out of the hospital, and in rehab for a bad injury, it was late spring and My 2 best friends and I were spending the weekend at my family summer cottage before the tourist season really began so the lake shore was empty where our cottage was. After a long day of swimming, hanging out in my sail boat grilling dinner and otherwise relaxing, it was that time of twilight where everything was a uniform grey - fog off the lake, a soft velvet silence, the air was the perfect temperature so that the humidity was cool and comfortable instead of muggy or clammy. We were relaxing on the dock with a bottle of wine and listening to crickets and frogs trying to attract mates. The small moon made everything luminuous instead of bright. It was like being isolated in our own tiny universe.
I have never managed to catch a perfect evening like that since.