I got this from Norm. This is my version.
I love to go back and re-read the books I was forced to read on my high school summer reading lists. Some are still stinkers (uhm Billy Budd
I love the opening chords of “Smells like Teen Spirit”. Gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I hear it.
I love a flawless double play.
I love the late-night scene in Only Angels Have Wings where Cary Grant and Jean Arthur find themselves alone in the now-empty juke joint, and they drink, and talk, and he propositions her. All he says is, “Would you like to come up to my room?” but he makes it sound like the most indecent and FUN thing in the world. Sexual tension never has been played so perfectly.
I love North Dakota. The flatness, the horizon all around, the vistas: thunderstorms seen miles and miles away. There may be a more spectacular place on earth, but I’d have to see it to believe it.
I love the contradictory nature of almost every sentence in Catch 22. Whatever is said in one sentence is then upended in the next, and it gives such an atmosphere or lunacy and madcap chaos.
I love Tori Amos’ album Little Earthquakes. I love it because it’s a great album, but I love it too because of the associations it brings. Freedom, running along Lake Michigan, single for the first time in years, living on my own for the first time ever … I was skinny, muscular, with boundless energy, on fire, my hair in crazy red curls … Tori Amos’s album was the soundtrack of that time.
I love reading the letters of John and Abigail Adams. Poetry, romance, passion, intellect. The sacrifice, the compromise, the sense that generations to come would be watching their actions … It has to be the most romantic correspondence in the public record. “My dearest friend …”
I love seeing old architecture in New York City. You can still see old signage here and there, in between the neon. I love the gargoyles, the detail of the stonework … it gives New York City a pagan feel to it. Powerful, primal.
I love the poetry of Seamus Heaney.
I love the transformations Jeff Bridges goes through in The Fisher King, one of my favorite movies ever. I love the scene when he and Mercedes Ruehl take Robin Williams and Amanda Plummer out on a double-date … and it is kind of a disaster … but he and Mercedes sit in the background, starting to see the humor of it, and starting to LOSE it with guffawing. Trying to hold back, but they can’t help themselves. That scene, to me, is when I realize how much the two of them love each other.
I love Christopher Guest.
I love the overpass going through Milwaukee. It was unfinished when I was there, or under construction … but I will never forget it, vaulting itself over the Summer Fest, like a dinosaur skeleton, or like one of the structures left behind on earth when all the humans are gone. P.M. called it “Sheila’s bridge”. I loved it. I have a picture of it, kind of blurry in the sunset mist, and it brings back my time there every time I see it.
I love the show Hill Street Blues. One of my favorites from way back when.
I love the films of John Cassavetes, and the acting of his wife Gena Rowlands in those movies. She doesn’t “nail” a scene, she doesn’t get anything right, no. Nothing that neat, or intellectual. She plays her scenes on the edges of it, she does not tie things up neat for us, she does not let us know how we should feel. She is my idol. I have her picture on my wall right now.
I love going to the Actors Studio, a converted church on 44th street. The ghosts crowd up against me in the balcony: Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Ben Gazzara, Al Pacino … The exposed brick at the back of the stage has soaked up the memories of 4 generations. A more potent place on earth there is not.
I love old maps.
I love Fenway Park.
I love the old rock club (no longer there) called Lounge Ax in Chicago. A million memories there. Some of the most important things in my life, to date, happened there. Life, love, friendship, fun, freedom, idolatry … I am sorry it is gone, but I have the memories. It’s also in a scene in High Fidelity, so I can visit Lounge Ax any time I watch that movie.
I love James Joyce. I love his writing, sure, but more than that, I just love the FACT of him.
I love how fat babies’ arms and legs are. I love how they have creases where their ankles and wrists should be. I love how babies smell. I love their soft big heads.
I love celebrity gossip. If I had the money, I would subscribe to Us, People, In Touch, Star, Vanity Fair, and a host of others. I love fame. I love watching how people handle it, either gracefully or not.
I love men. I love their hands, their laughs, their body language, how they smell, how they are strong but how they can suddenly turn gentle.
I love Mark Bowden’s book Black Hawk Down
I love the footage of a young un-famous Barbra Streisand appearing on Judy Garland’s television show. It’s exhilarating. She’s 19. She sings a couple of duets with THE Judy, and she is RAW, and FEARLESS … she wears a middy blouse, she looks unlike anything you have ever seen before … and that VOICE. She’s a TEENAGER. Phenomenal.
I love the soundtrack to Ragtime. Glorious!! Now THAT is a musical!
I love Ellen von Unwerth’s photography.
I love polar bears. I love them to DEATH.
I love the movie Moulin Rouge. I found it crushingly moving.
I love Fleet Week. I love seeing soldiers in their whites, strolling through our fair city. I mean, of course, I love it because they all look so hot – but I also love it because it makes me feel so PROUD.
And finally: I love the last scene in Notorious. I never get tired of it. Never.
red, why don’t you like “Billy Budd?”
I just got bored by the bam you over the head allegory of it all. I could have missed the entire point it – highly possible.
I love Sheila’s blog. I am not alone in that…
I love the overpass going through Milwaukee. It was unfinished when I was there, or under construction … but I will never forget it, vaulting itself over the Summer Fest, like a dinosaur skeleton, or like one of the structures left behind on earth when all the humans are gone.
You must mean The Bridge To Nowhere. It was finished; it just never seemed that way. Except…it now sort of goes somewhere. It almost goes to the airport. Milwaukee: 160 Years of Doing Things Half-Assed.
What I like about polar bears, especially if you see them in those underwater tanks with the windows…is that they look just like men who are wearing polar bear suits.
Mark – yes – the bridge to nowhere. It was (is?) MASSIVE. Summer Fest raged on right below it. Annoying to residents, I am sure … but pretty cool to look at for outsiders like me.
bill -hahahaha exactly!!
How the hell do you do that!? Did those just roll out of your head? Those are amazing. I’m going to write mine down but it will take me a week or so.
Annoying to residents, I am sure … but pretty cool to look at for outsiders like me.
Not exactly annoying. We were just frustrated that this majestic span started from downtown and ended in some random Bay View residential neighborhood. Kind of anti-climactic. Most people who crossed and found themselves there said, “What the hell am I doing here?” and immediately turned around and crossed back to downtown.
Anyway, for some other lovely shots, I recommend doing a Google image search for “Hoan bridge”.
David – Well, I kinda just sat there and looked around my apartment for ideas. I saw: a picture of a polar bear I have on my bulletin board. Caught a glimpse of Catch-22 in the bookcase. Also caught a glimpse of Black Hawk Down. Etc. etc.
You have to let me know what you came up with when your list is done. I’d love to read it.
May I add a few of my own? (after reading his list and yours):
I love the sound of the national anthem sung by a male quartet (preferably military men; somehow that makes it seem more meaningful)
I love sitting in a half-darkened room in the evening, listening to a baseball game on the radio. Doesn’t matter too much to me who’s playing; I just love the sound and the cadence of the radio-announcer’s voices, how they can shift seamlessly from discussing something somewhat mundane and unrelated to the game to describing an exciting play, without a hiccup. I love the way they say “Swing-and-a-miss.”
I love town art fairs, town corn festivals, town tomato jamborees. Ice cream socials, stuff like that. The sort of thing where a small town/small city puts on its best face and offers up entertainment that some might snort at in derision or enjoy ironically and snark about later, but which I just eat up as one of the finest expressions of American popular culture.
I love the St. Louis Arch. Partly because it represents being on the way “home” to see my parents, but mainly just because it’s a cool structure to look at.
I love walking into a used bookstore and being surrounded by all the possibility – all the books I could read, all the things I could learn. All the books with histories, with someone who owned and loved them (or not) before I will.
I love getting out on a country road, early early in the morning just after the sun is up, and just driving. Just going somewhere that is not-here. I love driving the two-lanes when there’s no traffic and I can see the countryside open up on either side of me. I love the flatness of parts of North Texas, the way you feel like you can see forever.
I love Dvorak’s music. I love that he came here and was taken by Black gospel music and Native American chants and tried to incorporate some of the same rhythms into his work but without directly lifting tunes from them. His music makes me think he must have been basically a happy man.
I love big thick novels, either ones that are authentically Victorian (like Anthony Trollope) or that are modern-day “historicals” that try to be big and Victorian and dense with lots of characters and lots of subplots. I like needing to keep a little notebook with notes so I can keep all the characters straight.
I love detective novels, especially those set in London. Never been there, but somehow it seems right to have a mystery set there.
I love coming home at the end of the day, being able to close and lock my front door, and not having to talk to anyone else until the next morning unless I want to. I love my privacy.
Glories, Beads, Etc
Red and NormNorm did it. Certainly I must….
Glories strung like beads. . .
Sheila had this on her site today, and instead of clogging up her comments, I thought I’d write mine here. I love Norman Rockwell.
I did my own list on my blog, but ricki reminded me of one I thought I’d add here.
I love the novels of Susan Howatch, Penmarric, Cashelmara, and The Wheel of Fortune, where she takes a storyline from medival English royalty and sets it in Victorian England with everyday characters. They are a wonderful bit of storytelling, and perfect summer reads.
Agreed with so many of yours (re-reading books; instead of “..Teen Spirit..” almost any Metallica song; North Dakota-agreed; old architecture anywhere; old maps-yes; fat babies-yes; men’s wrists-Tom Rodriguez’ in 1974 made my breath catch-how could that happen?; Fleet Week reminded me of driving with my daughter into Grand Forks airbase and somehow men in boots….!). Thanks for getting memories and thoughts swirling.
Sheila: If you liked the musical, you might really love the CD of Randy Newman’s oscar-nominated soundtrack to the 1981 film of RAGTIME. As haunting and as evocative of a time and place as any film score I have ever heard.
I love all of these additions, people. So wonderful.
“swing and a miss” … totally!!
Steve – I love Randy Newman but I do not have that soundtrack. I will keep it in mind. Thanks!
red, when I read Billy Budd, I just found myself attached to the character (like one of the entourage of fellow sailors described at the story’s outset). I was not attached to the narrator, and blamed him for all of the story’s overcooking. But Billy Budd, I connected with and I was helplessly pissed off that I knew it would end badly. That type of real (embarassing even) involvement is why I dug the story. There’s more to it than I got down here, but I can’t seem to make it come out of my mind right.
hmmmm. Now I think I really might have missed all of that entirely. Perhaps I should give it another look??? I love Melville, so it might be worth it.