The host of KUSP’s ‘The Agony Column’ shares his thoughts with us.
What do you do for a living?
Read books and talk to the most interesting people in the world—those who wrote them.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing that?
Teaching high school English and writing weird fiction.
What do you do in your free time?
Read and cook very slowly.
What brought you to Santa Cruz?
Electronic music; one of my co-workers at Quotron handed me a help wanted advertisement from E-mu Systems and asked if I had any of their gear.
What’s your favorite street?
The street where I live.
Name something you’re excited about.
Thematic convergence across a variety of spectrums. For Mind-Body-Spirit and healthy living, you can start with Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s DIlemma), take one step to Mollie Katzen (Get Cooking), another Karen Armstrong (Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life), and another to Stephen S. Hall (Wisdom), another to Jeff Rossman (The Mind-Body Mood Solution). For macro-economics, you canstart with Erwin Chemerinksy (The Conservative Assault on the Constitution), then to Matt Taibbi (Griftopia) and then move next to Paul Pierson & Jacob S. Hacker (Winner-take-All Politics) to Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew) to Naomi Kelin (The Shock Doctrine). For our inner lives, you can start with Philip Roth (Nemesis), step to Karen Joy Fowler (What I Didn’t See), to William Gibson (Zero History).
The human continuum is in print at least, very interesting. A lot of people are shooting arrows at the same target from different places and for different reasons.
Name a pet peeve.
My pet peeve is a genetically spliced sea urchin and Humboldt squid. It is quite intelligent, like the squid and has 8 tentacles in a ring around its mouth. It lets the tentacles drift in the water and looks to its prey as if it is a plant. When a fish drifts into the tentacles, they pull it down onto the sea-urchin spines, impale it and then remove it so that it can be eaten. It’s a great aquarium pet, because it cleans its own tank. I haven’t named it yet, though.
What are you reading?
T. Jefferson Parker, Iron RIver & The Border Lords; Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone; Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches; Eric Alterman, Kabuki Democracy
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in the last three years?
To listen.
Recent personal food trend?
Sedanini Alla Credo, porchetta, ribs Provencal, Mollie Katzen’s clafouti, olive oil bread dough …. and four hours to cook a meal.
