During the holidays, people come alive. They feel their joys and sorrows, lacks and regrets etc. Everything is more poignant. That's why they holidays are great. They lift their heads out of daily habits and look around.

Listening to:
Bad Brains - I
Devin The Dude - Briar Patch
Devo - Gut Feeling
Gangstarr - The Rep Grows Bigga (The version with the prison shout-outs intro!)
Irma Thomas - Time Is On My Side
Jackson And His Computer Band - Hard Tits
New Order - Age Of Consent
OOIOO - Grow Sound Tree
Ramsey Lewis' Finest Hour - Hang On Snoopy
Smif - N - Wessun - Sound Bwoy Bureill

Speaking of the "Age Of Consent," how excited am I for Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette. Okay, The Virgin Suicides was weak and Lost in Translation absolutely maddening. But here is a perfect pairing of writer/director and subject matter: world-class decadence, fascinating egos, queen-bee, feminine mystique, party culture - in short, a carnival of superficiality. This is what film needs: lively spectacle for its own sake.

I've started an mp3 blog.

My goals, as a writer:
a) To have Simone Weil write an essay about me titled "Yet another poem of force."
b) To write a screenplay that makes a star(s) out of the previously unknown romantic lead(s), and who can make a career out of recreating much the same part again and again.

The best poetry anthology I've yet come across:
The Rattle Bag, edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. It a) is obviously a work of personal taste/labor of love, rather than trying to canonize or accurately represent "Poetry." b) it draws eclectically across cultures and history. c) is organized alphabetically by title (rather than by date or subject), which makes for a wonderful reading experience - a la ipod shuffle. By squashes all structure and category, you come to each poem fresh.

Or the best recommendation: it's turning me into a poetry reader: it is seducing me.