I weighed myself today...it had been a few days - i wasn't very optimistic.
Food has been my friend as of late. Doritos, McDonalds, Pizza, have all been angry with be as of late - I am sure there stock has gone down from my lack of attention.
I want to join or start a gay chicago book club. We read any books we want - but we can come at them from a gay perspective. Anyone interested? Let me know
I was watching Good Morning America today - when I was at the gym. And the aryan freaky little creepy childern were on - beware of these people!!!
http://prussianblue.net/
The following list is from - The Observer - Remember I want to hear your picks. If not top 100 - give me your top 10
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1061037,00.html
The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list
The case for the defence. Don't like the list? Post your own suggestions for the 100 best books on the Observer blog.
Robert McCrum
Sunday October 12, 2003
The Observer
1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries.
2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
The first English novel.
4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift
A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision.
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding
The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson
One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne
One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.
9. Emma Jane Austen
Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy.
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.
11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock
A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on the Romantic novel.
12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac
Two rivals fight for the love of a femme fatale. Wrongly overlooked.
13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal
Penetrating and compelling chronicle of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France.
14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
A revenge thriller also set in France after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing.
15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli
Apart from Churchill, no other British political figure shows literary genius.
16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens
This highly autobiographical novel is the one its author liked best.
17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed into the language. Impossible to ignore.
18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Obsessive emotional grip and haunting narrative.
19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
The improving tale of Becky Sharp.
20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
A classic investigation of the American mind.
21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville
'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel.
22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.
23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty.
24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll
A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.
25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott
Victorian bestseller about a New England family of girls.
26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope
A majestic assault on the corruption of late Victorian England.
27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
The supreme novel of the married woman's passion for a younger man.
28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot
A passion and an exotic grandeur that is strange and unsettling.
29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and Punishment.
30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best.
31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Twain was a humorist, but this picture of Mississippi life is profoundly moral and still incredibly influential.
32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
A brilliantly suggestive, resonant study of human duality by a natural storyteller.
33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome
One of the funniest English books ever written.
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
A coded and epigrammatic melodrama inspired by his own tortured homosexuality.
35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith
This classic of Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter.
36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
Its savage bleakness makes it one of the first twentieth-century novels.
37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers
A prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising.
38. The Call of the Wild Jack London
The story of a dog who joins a pack of wolves after his master's death.
39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad
Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of money, love and revolutionary politics.
40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
This children's classic was inspired by bedtime stories for Grahame's son.
41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust
An unforgettable portrait of Paris in the belle epoque. Probably the longest novel on this list.
42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence
Novels seized by the police, like this one, have a special afterlife.
43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford
This account of the adulterous lives of two Edwardian couples is a classic of unreliable narration.
44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan
A classic adventure story for boys, jammed with action, violence and suspense.
45. Ulysses James Joyce
Also pursued by the British police, this is a novel more discussed than read.
46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Secures Woolf's position as one of the great twentieth-century English novelists.
47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster
The great novel of the British Raj, it remains a brilliant study of empire.
48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The quintessential Jazz Age novel.
49. The Trial Franz Kafka
The enigmatic story of Joseph K.
50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway
He is remembered for his novels, but it was the short stories that first attracted notice.
51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine
The experiences of an unattractive slum doctor during the Great War: a masterpiece of linguistic innovation.
52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
A strange black comedy by an American master.
53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley
Dystopian fantasy about the world of the seventh century AF (after Ford).
54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh
The supreme Fleet Street novel.
55. USA John Dos Passos
An extraordinary trilogy that uses a variety of narrative devices to express the story of America.
56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler
Introducing Philip Marlowe: cool, sharp, handsome - and bitterly alone.
57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford
An exquisite comedy of manners with countless fans.
58. The Plague Albert Camus
A mysterious plague sweeps through the Algerian town of Oran.
59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
This tale of one man's struggle against totalitarianism has been appropriated the world over.
60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett
Part of a trilogy of astonishing monologues in the black comic voice of the author of Waiting for Godot.
61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
A week in the life of Holden Caulfield. A cult novel that still mesmerises.
62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor
A disturbing novel of religious extremism set in the Deep South.
63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White
How Wilbur the pig was saved by the literary genius of a friendly spider.
64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
Enough said!
65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
An astonishing debut: the painfully funny English novel of the Fifties.
66. Lord of the Flies William Golding
Schoolboys become savages: a bleak vision of human nature.
67. The Quiet American Graham Greene
Prophetic novel set in 1950s Vietnam.
68 On the Road Jack Kerouac
The Beat Generation bible.
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert's obsession with Lolita is a tour de force of style and narrative.
70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass
Hugely influential, Rabelaisian novel of Hitler's Germany.
71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Nigeria at the beginning of colonialism. A classic of African literature.
72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
A writer who made her debut in The Observer - and her prose is like cut glass.
73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee
Scout, a six-year-old girl, narrates an enthralling story of racial prejudice in the Deep South.
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller
'[He] would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.'
75. Herzog Saul Bellow
Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago.
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A postmodern masterpiece.
77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor
A haunting, understated study of old age.
78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre
A thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain.
79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
The definitive novelist of the African-American experience.
80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge
Macabre comedy of provincial life.
81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer
This quasi-documentary account of the life and death of Gary Gilmore is possibly his masterpiece.
82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino
A strange, compelling story about the pleasures of reading.
83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul
The finest living writer of English prose. This is his masterpiece: edgily reminiscent of Heart of Darkness.
84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee
Bleak but haunting allegory of apartheid by the Nobel prizewinner.
85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women.
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray
Seething vision of Glasgow. A Scottish classic.
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster
Dazzling metaphysical thriller set in the Manhattan of the 1970s.
88. The BFG Roald Dahl
A bestseller by the most popular postwar writer for children of all ages.
89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi
A prose poem about the delights of chemistry.
90. Money Martin Amis
The novel that bags Amis's place on any list.
91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro
A collaborator from prewar Japan reluctantly discloses his betrayal of friends and family.
92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey
A great contemporary love story set in nineteenth-century Australia by double Booker prizewinner.
93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera
Inspired by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is a magical fusion of history, autobiography and ideas.
94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie
In this entrancing story Rushdie plays with the idea of narrative itself.
95. La Confidential James Ellroy
Three LAPD detectives are brought face to face with the secrets of their corrupt and violent careers.
96. Wise Children Angela Carter
A theatrical extravaganza by a brilliant exponent of magic realism.
97. Atonement Ian McEwan
Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary classic of mesmerising narrative conviction.
98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman
Lyra's quest weaves fantasy, horror and the play of ideas into a truly great contemporary children's book.
99. American Pastoral Philip Roth
For years, Roth was famous for Portnoy's Complaint . Recently, he has enjoyed an extraordinary revival.
100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald
Posthumously published volume in a sequence of dream-like fictions spun from memory, photographs and the German past.
I recently started reading Pride and Prejudice and am now wondering what took me so long to start reading this book. I love it!!
So I decided to start compiling my own personal list of the 100 Best Books Ever Written. In compiling my own, I thought it would be fun to find other lists that have the best books ever written. Over the next few days, I will be posting various top 100's. Let me know what your top 100 books are....
This list is from - http://bluepyramid.org/edpop/booklist.htm
The 100 Best Books I’ve Read So Far
1. Watership Down, Richard Adams
2. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley*
3. 1984, George Orwell*
4. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
5. Non-Violent Resistance: Satyagraha, Mohandas K. Gandhi
6. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
7. Island, Aldous Huxley
8. Green Shadows, White Whale, Ray Bradbury
9. In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka
10. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger*
11. The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis
12. Borderliners, Peter Hoeg
13. Animal Farm, George Orwell*
14. Our Town, Thornton Wilder
15. Beware the Fish!, Gordon Korman
16. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
17. The Mouse That Roared (series), Leonard Wibberly
18. Night, Elie Wiesel
19. Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
20. The Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway
21. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
22. Antigone, Sophocles
23. I Sing the Body Electric!, Ray Bradbury
24. Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
25. All Creatures Great and Small (series), James Herriot
26. Babar’s Anniversary Book, Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff
27. Pigs Might Fly, Dick King-Smith
28. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
29. The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
30. Gandhi on Non-Violence, Mohandas K. Gandhi
31. The Little History of the Wide World, Mable Pyne
32. The Magus, John Fowles*
33. The Silver Chair, C. S. Lewis
34. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
35. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
36. A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines
37. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
38. The Zucchini Warriors, Gordon Korman
39. The Celery Stalks at Midnight, James Howe
40. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction, J. D. Salinger
41. Beloved, Toni Morrison
42. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
43. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
44. Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
45. Danny, Champion of the World, Roald Dahl
46. The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
47. The Time Garden, Edward Eager
48. The House at Pooh Corner, A. A. Milne
49. A Medicine for Melancholy, Ray Bradbury
50. 40 Stories, Donald Barthelme
51. Matilda, Roald Dahl
52. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
53. Losing Joe’s Place, Gordon Korman
54. Uncle Wiggily’s Story Book, Howard R. Garis
55. Nine Stories, J. D. Salinger
56. The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot
57. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
58. No Coins, Please, Gordon Korman
59. The Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
60. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", C. S. Lewis
61. Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger
62. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson
63. The Peace Book, Bernard Benson
64. The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe
65. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
66. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
67. Boy, Roald Dahl
68. Nothing But the Truth, Avi
69. Little House on the Prarie (series), Laura Ingalls Wilder
70. The Toynbee Convector, Ray Bradbury
71. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr
72. The October Country, Ray Bradbury
73. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Roald Dahl
74. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
75. Bunnicula, Deborah and James Howe
76. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
77. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
78. A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag, Gordon Korman
79. The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
80. We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
81. Magic or Not?, Edward Eager
82. The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (series), Hugh Lofting
83. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
84. Driving Blind, Ray Bradbury
85. Long After Midnight, Ray Bradbury
86. Early Stories, Anton Chekov
87. Marcovaldo, Italo Calvino
88. Dubliners, James Joyce
89. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
90. Quicker Than the Eye, Ray Bradbury
91. Miracle on 34th Street, Valentine Davies
92. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
93. How to Play Better Baseball, C. Paul Jackson
94. Dear Mr. Henshaw, Beverly Cleary
95. The Golden Apples of the Sun, Ray Bradbury
96. Frog and Toad are Friends (series), Arnold Lobel
97. I Will Adventure, Elizabeth Janet Gray
98. The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
99. Mossflower, Brian Jacques
100. Who is Bugs Potter?, Gordon Korman
I just watched the movie Adam and Steve - and Parker Posey has the funniest line in the whole movie - "You know, Oprah has made it impossible for me to have a close relationship with anyone, besides Oprah."
I want to get this new album - it's on my must list for FALL 2006. A little bunny told me that the KD LANG track is one of the best! I can't wait to hear it.
Track Listing for TONY BENNETT: DUETS/An American Classic
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams /STING
Smile/BARBRA STREISAND WITH PINCHAS ZUKERMAN (Violin)
Put On A Happy Face/JAMES TAYLOR
The Shadow Of Your Smile/JUANES
Rags To Riches/ELTON JOHN
The Very Thought Of You/PAUL MCCARTNEY
Lullaby Of Broadway/DIXIE CHICKS
Cold, Cold Heart/TIM MCGRAW
The Best Is Yet To Come/DIANA KRALL
For Once In My Life/STEVIE WONDER
Are You Havin' Any Fun?/ELVIS COSTELLO
Because Of You/K.D. LANG WITH CHRIS BOTTI (Trumpet)
Just In Time/MICHAEL BUBLE
Sing You Sinners/JOHN LEGEND
The Good Life/BILLY JOEL
I Wanna Be Around/BONO
How Do Keep The Music Playing/GEORGE MICHAEL
I Left My Heart In San Francisco/TONY BENNETT WITH BILL CHARLAP (Piano)
I am looking forward to this album - and I must say to the new Killers album - which will hopefully be fun.
I met someone today. He was so handsome and an incredible flirt. He had short gray hair and a low deep voice. His name is Moses. He is seven and a domestic short hair. For those slow on the uptake, he is a cat. An adorable handsome boy cat. I met him at Felines, Inc.
Felines, Inc. Website
Felines, Inc. is a no kill cat shelter in the Edgewater Neighborhood of Chicago. I went over there today to learn more about there organization.
Here is what their website says: "Founded in 1977, Felines Inc. is a licensed cageless, no-kill cat shelter located on the north side of Chicago.
As a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), Felines Inc. is funded almost entirely through membership, adoption fees, fundraising events, and the generous tax-deductible donations of caring individuals like yourself. We do not receive any federal or state funding.
We care for over 160 cats and kittens in our two floor house. Our small but dedicated staff tends to the daily needs of the cats and, with our highly valued team of volunteers, spends time with helping to heal the bodies and souls of the injured, abandoned and abused cats brought to our shelter.
Our goal is to find the right lasting and loving home for each of our residents. We work with our adopters to find the right cat for them, with the understanding that a lifelong relationship is about to begin. We follow up on all our adoptions and are available for consultations to help ease the cat's transition into its new home.
Every cat admitted to Felines Inc. is examined by a vet, is spayed or neutered, and is kept up to date on all their vaccines. Most of the procedures are carried out on the premises by a skilled team of vets and vet techs. "
It was a really incredible experience to see all these great cats who need homes.
Months ago, my partner Rob and I were driving up Lake Shore Drive in our deep blue Volkswagen beetle having a very important conversation. The topic - what classical musical theater piece would be right for Patti LuPone? I know, I know - I mean while some people obsess over Oprah's sexuality, Tom's obvious imprisonment of Katie, and Jennifer's on again, off again marriage to Vince Vaughn, my Rob finds solace in Filofax agendas and Patti Lupone's career strategy.
So I was with great joy that the musical theater gods overheard our conversation and days after we decided that the only role Patti LuPone had truly left to play was Mama Rose in Gypsy, that the show was announced at Ravinia.
The day of the event, we rode the gayest train in Chicago - the Ravinia express. Another hundred homos got off of the train, another hundred homos got off of the bus and are looking around...I think you get the idea.
Anyway, the thousand of us gay men piled in to the theater prepared to be brought back to another time. A time when lyrics were actually rhymed and people actually sang. As the orchestra played the brilliant score by Jule Styne, we realized we were seeing something special. A brief moment of history was being recaptured.
It was incredible, or I should say she was incredible. The cast was fine, the orchestra was lovely, and the costumes were spot on, but is was LuPone's performance that shined. She was perfectly cast as Mama Rose, and with the subtle work she did in the critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd I am not surprised.
For a more indepth review - visit this spot on review at the NYTIMES. New York Times - Gypsy Review
A few weeks ago, I went to Minneapolis to do an talk show about my documentary film. It was a public access show and they give you your tape when you leave. I sat is horror as I watched the footage. I am tall, 6'5" and weight - 1230 pounds - ok maybe not that much, but let's just say I am fat - obese even. As I am watching the footage, I notice I look like a bald duck. I have big lips that protrude from my face. Almost Angelina Like. And I am nodding, repetatively. Very much like a duck.
I am an active listener. I also have been. I am the kind of person that would watch Days of Our lives in College and nod or scream at the television - giving the characters my advice as they would get buried alive or turn in Satan.
So, I realized in watching myself on this television interview program, that somehow without my knowledge, I have turned into a fat, bald duck. I don't know exactly when it happened, but slowly over the course of 5 years I have put on more weight that I would care to admit.
Working my crappy day job for 4 years didn't help matters. I would show up to this nasty ugly job and work from 9-9:30am to 8-9 at night. Now that may not sound like much, but when you hate your boss, and your job, and the company you work for - it's torture.
So I am making a change, I know - I have sad this many many times before, but I am doing. I just quit smoking. And I sure as hell am not going to up even more weight on from that. So I made the change, I went to the gym. It's a nice gym, It's has a pool and is in an old hotel ballroom. I go in the morning, before i go to my office (where my production company is located). I am looking at this like it's my job. Hard crappy work that I don't want to do - but if want to get what i want - I have to.
