I was raised by bohemian Jews in shitbag small towns in Ohio and Alabama. They saw my gift as an artist early on and thereby felt the need to spoil me rotten with art supplies and books on the subject from the paintings of Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso to the editorial cartooning of Pat Oliphant and Jack Markow. I soaked up visual and verbal information like a pickle in a Mason jar... R.Crumb's spoogy pen and ink work, the stand-up routines of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, and staying up late enough to watch Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show".

In no order... really. They are all close to my heart... bicycles. Riding either one of my bikes. Friends. Synesthesia. Jessica (the one and only DJ Jazzy Jess). Writing letters. Receiving letters. Quoting Monty Python. Quoting Tom Robbins. Kitties. Doggies. Bunnies. Rainbows. Dead unicorns. Horseback riding. Long walks on the beach. Long walks off of short piers. Lion tamers. Circus midgets. Fortune tellers with lobotomy scars.

Billy Bragg, Kenny Rankin, The Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, The Postal Service, Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins, Railroad Earth, Sufjan Stevens, The Polyphonic Spree, Andrew Bird, Richard Davies, The Moles, Cardinal, Devendra Banhart, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Iron and Wine, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Joanna Newsom, Richard & Mimi Farina, Kevin Ayers, Akron/Family, The Pentangle, Aimee Mann, Rilo Kiley, The Incredible String Band, Of Montreal, Richie Havens, Robert Wyatt, Neutral Milk Hotel, Michael Bloomfield, Dixie Blood Moustache, Al Kooper *John Fahey, The Palace Brothers, The Soft Machine, Bonny "Prince" Billy, 3 Mustaphas 3, Blonde Redhead, Rasputina, Kaki King, Tim Buckley, Steve Earle & the Dukes, Jeff Buckley, The Supersuckers, Nirvana, The Del McCoury Band, Foo Fighters, Jennifer Nettles, The Flaming Lips, Can, Stereolab, Amon Duul II, Grateful Dead, Nick Drake

Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Carl Dreyer, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, John Cassavetes, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese

...was great until about 1975.

Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Patchen, Brautigan, William S. Burroughs, Walt Whitman, Dorothy Parker, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, graphic novels, underground comix