Phil
My blogs
Blogs I follow
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Location | Iowa City, Iowa, United States |
| Introduction | I work as a library assistant at the University of Iowa Law Library. I'm a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs--and yes, it hurts to say that most of the time. My favorite pasttime is reading, when I'm not watching movies. I also love the theater and go to a lot of plays. I enjoy art, but don't know that much about it (favorite painters are Van Gogh, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, and Edvard Munch). I'm not a big televison watcher, but I'm a devoted viewer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Favorite shows from the past include The Dick van Dyke Show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Twin Peaks, Futurama, and The Simpsons (when it was still great). I also still love the Three Stooges, but only the ones with Curley. Politically, I'm liberal, and so am very happy right now about the recent election. I belong to the Unitarian-Universalist Church, which represents my core values of equality, acceptance, inclusivity, peace, and love. |
| Interests | Movies, obviously, also reading, theater, baseball, and biking |
| Favorite movies | Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, The Asphalt Jungle, Touch of Evil, The Maltese Falcon, most of Preston Sturges' comedies (especially The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story), the Val Lewton horror films of the 1940s (The Seventh Victim is my favorite), Stagecoach, Winchester 73, The Bandwagon, The Wizard of Oz, The 39 Steps, Vertigo, Annie Hall, Mean Streets, Apocalypse Now, Sense and Sensibility, Grand Illusion, Tokyo Story, The Seven Samurai, Shoot the Piano Player, and too many more to mention |
| Favorite music | Jazz from the 1920s through the 1970s (Bix Beiderbecke, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Gato Barbieri are favorites), blues (especially Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy), classic rock (Buddy Holly, early Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin), classical of all periods (Brahms, Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn, and Samuel Barber are my favorite composers), some country (Emmylou Harris, Mary-Chapin Carpenter), some folk (I love the Roches and Suzanne Vega), bluegrass, and of course film music (Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklos Rozsa are my favorite composers for the movies) |
| Favorite books | The Maltese Falcon, The Moviegoer, The Old Man and the Sea, The Great Gatsby, everything by Jane Austen, the Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan (The 39 Steps is the first, but not the best), all the Sherlock Holmes stories, most of William Faulkner's novels, The Joy Luck Club, The Lord of the Rings, Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, Miss Lonelyhearts, Rogue Male, The Quiet American, The Heart of the Matter, and again, too many more to list |