These are a Few of My…

FAVORITE PLAYS

1. Angels In America
2. Waiting For Godot
3. No Exit
4. Long Day’s Journey Into Night
5. The Glass Menagerie
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
7. Jeffrey
8. August: Osage County
9. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
10. Elizabeth Rex
11. Equus

FAVORITE BOOKS

1. Hometowns; John Preston
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Michael Chabon
3. To Kill A Mockingbird; Harper Lee
4. Middlesex; Jeffrey Eugenides

FAVORITE MOVIES

1. Cabaret
2. A Clockwork Orange
3. Gone With the Wind
4. Chinatown

FAVORITE MUSICALS

1. The Secret Garden
2. Gypsy
3. Company

GUILTY PLEASURES

1. Funny Lady – the movie
2. Thoroughly Modern Millie
3. The Pirates of Penzance – the movie
4. Dogma
5. Drop Dead Gorgeous

In this space I look forward compiling lists of Favorites that stand the test of time. In hopes of avoiding the predictable trap of focusing disproportionately on more recent experiences so I am not going to populate this page with content immediately. I’ll add things as I remember them or encounter them.

Like most (hopefully all) people, my tastes change and evolve. Things I thought were hysterically funny at age 15 may not provoke a smile at 50+. Music and lyrics that seemed so deep and profound on those late nights in the dorm room may seem simple and trite after years of daylight.

If <insert your favorite here> does not appear on a list I’d love to hear about it. I may not have experienced it yet. I may have experienced it but your insight might help me see it in a new light. It might be one of my favorites as well but I simply forgot about it when compiling the list. Or I may just not see in it the same things you do.

Of course my taste, or lack thereof,  is not the only driver. Some things will make a list, independent of their intrinsic quality, because of the associations they hold for me or memories they evoke. Others are important because they entered my life at a time when, for whatever reason, I was most receptive to them.

I’ll also be populating a list of “Guilty Pleasures”; where I have heard all the critique, probably agree and still count the subject as one of my favorites for one reason or another.