Mmm. Good.
Home | Email
CHECKING IN ON MONDAY, OCT 19, 2020! OK this is actually going to be a lot of fun. I haven't touched this page in 8.5 years! And even then it was to add maybe one or two new things. Reading it now, it's like a time caspule...I'm leaving many of these things in because I still like and love them, but some of these are so dated as to be downright HILARIOUS! To wit: Tues. July 6, 2021. So....yeah. That was 10/19/20, and my ADD flared, as you can see. Still want to do something with this page, and will...if I can stay focussed long enou........

....enough even read the thing THROUGH! (Mon. Sep 25, 2023!)

for starters...    last modified: 01APR12

Very good: Shadow Puppets by Chuck Gamble, Babe The Blue Ox, Roxorloops, Dave Attel, early Tom Clancy, Sin City (movie); Spectre Supreme (not VR), The Breakfast Club, Sharon Resultan (The Weather Channel), early Margaret Cho, Spalding Gray (except for the Slippery Slope monologue CD which was recorded in a damn STUDIO, for Christ's sake...get an audience!) [have since found several alternalte recordings of most of SG's famous monologues, and even several I'd never heard of]; Rockwell Automation's Retro Encabulator, "Colours" by Sweet Honey In The Rock, David Spade & Drake Sather on the 13th Young Comedians in 1989, The Wall by Pink Floyd (movie & album), Rip Torn, pre-"Uma-Oprah" Letterman, drummers who sing, "The Smoker" by David Schickler, Anthony Hopkins, pre-"Comedy Product" Jeannean Garofalo, running, the video for "And She Was" by Talking Heads, The Lost Scrapbook by Evan Dara, The Grandin Theatre (Roanoke, VA), @rationalists, Meigs Field (r.i.p.), "Dog's Death" by John Updike, Qix, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, Roland JC-120, Carl Lewis, McAfee's Knob, "You're What You Want To Be" by Cruel Story Of Youth, "Sentimental Clown" by Mike Russillo, Sean Rouse, Juno, Bill Hicks & Andrew "Dice" Clay on that Rodney Dangerfield comedy special on HBO in like 1989, Watermark by Enya, Garrison Keillor reading anything (The phone book. Recipes. Anything.), PageSpinner, "Valentine" by Delays, the Gymnast on the Pommel Horse statue in Atlanta, The Long Walk by Stephen King, The Boondock Saints, CrunchWrap Supreme at Taco Bell, Quisp, Saturday Night Live (Dear Sister, Great Day, Lazy Sunday (Narnia), Natalie Portman's Rap, I'm On A Boat), Jaws, Harlan Williams (comedian, not actor), "Morning Sickness" by What Peggy Wants, Body & Soul by Frank Conroy, Human Radio, Frisky Dingo, Chris Jones's writer's blog - "Son Of Bold Venture", Rob Reiner's first five movies, St. Louis Rams (sigh...), Color-It (graphics program from Microfrontier....they gave away free copies in like 1994 and I'm still using mine to this day), canard wings, The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, Shawn Colvin on Austin City Limits, Larry Sanders, Jeremy Piven & Paula Marshall on Cupid, The Fire Theft, Powers Of Ten, Tenacious D, Virginia Tech (Go Hokies!), Closer To The Flame and Work Songs For A New Moon by Rob Jungklas, Patty Wagstaff, 1989 Toyota Camry w/ manual-V6, Alan Rickman in Die Hard, The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, the lugubrious chatter at the end of Jackson Browne's song "Cocaine," Left Eye's rap in the "No Scrubs" video (starts at 2:44), "She's My Baby" by Mazzy Star, Greg Giraldo, Desmond Morris, the Sirius/Procyon/Pollux/Castor/Capella/Plieades/Aldebaran (i.e. Orion) section of the night sky, Living With The Law by Chris Whitley, Atlanta Braves, The Golden Mean, Johnny Carson, Cocoa Pebbles, Inside The Actors Studio, Gray's Anatomy (the anatomical reference book, AND the monologue by Spalding Gray, but not the TV show, which I've never seen), the word obtain used as an intransitive verb, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, Alessandro Ambrosio (have mercy!), Cast Away (movie), the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter, "Ta Douler" by Camille, Little Debbie Chocolate Cupcakes (back when they were hexagonal and a buck ten for six, and not trying to be Hostess Cupcakes and twice or thrice as expensive), Space Invaders, mid-80s John Hughes movies, Walt Mink (all four albums), Sun Chips, rigatoni, Burn Notice, Kahlua, A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Withnail & I, Boeing 747-400, Lunar Lander (simple 2D computer game that has gone through many iterations over the years...the link is to the original that got me into it but this one and this one are my current favorites), A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava, "Going Back To Miami" as performed by Look What Landed (Blacksburg, VA, c.1985), "Magic Carpet Ride" as performed in four-part harmony by Johnny Sportcoat & The Casuals (c. 1985, South Main Cafe, Blacksburg, VA), Underworld by Don DeLillo, Lincoln & Flood by They Might Be Giants, New Belgium 1554, Archer, Leo Kottke (esp. the Austin City Limits version of "Jack Gets Up" and the above-the-headstock-string-bend in "Easter"), Defending Your Life, Was It Something I Said by Richard Pryor, maps, The World According To Garp by John Irving, Manic Nirvana by Robert Plant, The Car (cheesy B-movie from 1977), the word remove used as a noun (particularly in the song "One Cool Remove" by Greg Brown by way of Shawn Colvin), @TheHolyAtheist, Eschaton in Infinite Jest, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, ER, Colin Quinn's HBO half-hour that they only showed once in 1993 or whenever, McSweeney's, Darwin's Radio, Moving Mars, and Blood Music by Greg Bear, Soul Coughing, Carrie Ann Moss in Red Planet, Fairchild-Republic A-10, The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, Greeks Cellar (Blacksburg, VA, circa 1985...is it still there?), "LA Song" by Deconstruction, James Burke (Connections guy), The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman (or anything else by Laura Kightlinger for that matter), Contact (movie & book), Tony Thompson (drummer), Love Actually, early Suzanne Vega, Pi, Woot, Cyclone I & II, Nick DiPaulo, Tony Thompson's airtight drumming (RIP, 1954-2003), the enormous star Antares in the constellation Scorpio (because if you put it where the Sun is, the four planets out to and including Mars would be inside the son of a bitch), Heaven's Above web page, Anker Stones, "Shakers" by Daniel Orozco, Gibson Les Paul Standard, @Slashleen, Barnes & Noble, "The Show" by Girls Aloud, The Naked Lunch (movie - haven't read the book), "3A Essay" by Hugh Gallagher, pre-1982 AC/DC, Kathy Griffin (her six hour-long Bravo specials, not the D-List reality TV show), Antrim Chapel (Roanoke College, Salem, VA), Sundowner 6362U (GSO), Murder By Death, Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, Tetris, Sno-Caps, Presumed Innocent (The book. The movie's decent but the book grinds the movie under its heel), House Of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, Jupiter, Judy Gold, Boeing 737-300, Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon, DeLorme Street Atlas 4.0, Love Spit Love's first album.

keep going...

Great bordering on genius: Patton Oswalt, John McPhee, Mute Math's video for "Typical", Mom's tomato sauce, rainbows, Bill Hicks (r.i.p.), The New Yorker, Firefly (Joss Whedon's utterly brilliant sci-fi/western/comedy/drama TV show (and now DVD set) inexplicably sabotaged by FOX Network execs then cancelled before its first season finished), Macintosh Computers, Tom Cruise dancing to Ludacris at the end of Tropic Thunder, Duck-Rabbit's Milk Stout and Duck-Rabbator, Arthur Ashe (r.i.p.), XTC, MYST & Riven & Exile & Revelation & End Of Ages, Starry Night (sky software), gravitation (will we ever know just how the hell it works?), "CommComm" by George Saunders, both Steven Moffat AND Russel T. Davies!, Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video, Doug Stanhope, Papa John's Pizza, Tim Minchin, Steven Spielberg (esp. the first thirty-five minutes of Saving Private Ryan), "The Fourth State of Matter" by Joann Beard, The Ancestor's Tale and The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins, Led Zeppelin, ThankYou brand tapioca and chocolate pudding, "Enough" by Alice McDermott, OK Go' s first album, Apollo 11, "A Little Night Music" by W.A. Mozart, Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron ($5 a bottle, and worth more), Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, freshly ground coffee, The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers, Carter Beauford, a particular atmospheric ocurrence: when the sun at sunset peers in under a broad, thick and dark overcast, Flim & The BB's, The Matrix movies (esp. the first one, though all three do indeed rock hard), A-10 Attack/Cuba, Haughty Melodic by Mike Doughty, Cate Blanchett, Maria Bamford, Isaac Newton & James Clerk Maxwell & Albert Einstein, "Sad But True" by Metallica (almost nothing else by them does anything for me, but THIS does almost EVERYTHING for me), the "Man Your Man Could Smell Like" Old Spice commercial, The Beatles, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (hell, ANYTHING by Neal Stephenson), Richard Curtis, "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake, "Love's Recovery" by Indigo Girls, Land-O-Lakes Special Collection Vanilla Egg Nog, "Sloop John B" & "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, the Sun (it spawned us, it sustains us, and someday it will rend us beyond molecular—but not atomic—recognition), House, M.D. in general and Hugh Laurie in particular, French Vanilla ice cream, Misplaced Childhood by Marillion, Jeanette Goldstein in Aliens, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Infinite Jest & "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" (the title "cruise ship" essay) by David Foster Wallace, Voyager 1 & 2, the Chinese guy who stood in front of the tanks, Meryl Streep, the End Credits sequence from Sherlock Holmes 2009 (music/Hans Zimmer, animation/Danny Yount), Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, High Tension Wires by Steve Morse, Carl Sagan (r.i.p.).

Email me: russillosm@gmail.com