New Beginnings

I have spent the last year plus writing about music and the effect it has had on my life, both through performance and recording. I've talked about the music I make, the music I love, the music I've seen.

Other passions in my life? Movies and books. I am not one of the well-rounded people of the world who shape Bonsai trees and whittle statues and cook internationally flavored food. I am addicted to art the way a cocaine addict craves crack. If you told me I'd have to spend the rest of my life at the same job, same pay, same apartment but I would have an infinitely expanding collection of art, music, movies and books, I'd sign up for that deal.

So will I write about movies? I can't quite bring myself to do that. Here's why. Being an actor at heart if not in profession I find it very difficult to criticize in print anyone who has appeared in any movie any time. As Dennis Hopper said about 'Waterworld', "It is just as hard to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one." Movie making is such a collaborative art that to rag on any detail is to nullify the hard work of some guy who made burritos for everyone on that set at 5 in the morning. It negates the good cheer of a boom mic operator who stood with his arms over his head to catch the whimpering cry of a starlet about to be murdered by an alien. I just can't do it. I can't betray my people this way.

That leaves art or books. The fact that my eyes are so bad that I need to stand an inch away from any painting in order to even see it leaves me unwilling to posit myself as any kind of an expert.

Et, voila. Books. The books that have meant the most to me over the years.

And off we go down another Top 50 List...

Tomorrow?

Ferdinand The Bull...