One of those damned blog memes, courtesy of Mr. Furious

1. Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies: The Bible, of course. Jesus is my favorite literary character after Frankenstein, Terl, and Velociraptor. Joking aside, probably Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things. I love the way Shermer draws parallels between creationism, holocaust denial, ESP, astrology and other bizarre beliefs to explore why people are drawn to superstitions, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and more. Shermer has a tendency to be knee-jerk in his skepticism, but none of that is evident in this book.

Speaking of the Bible, I’m about halfway through Misquoting Jesus and it’s really good.

2. Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music: Side two of The Beatles’ Abbey Road. It’s what made The Beatles my favorite band and pretty much started my love of pop music. I doubt I’d own the majority of my music collection if I hadn’t heard Abbey Road in high school.

3. Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue: Goodfellas. From the opening scene’s voice-over “As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster” to the final scene with Ray Liotta’s narration breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience that the good ol’ days are over, every aspect of this movie is perfect. (Halfway through writing this sentence, I had to run upstairs to grab the DVD. It’s that good.)

Runners-up : The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane

4. Name a performer for whom you suspend of all disbelief: For the last few years, all of my favorite character actors have finally gotten the mainstream attention they deserve. Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Paul Giamatti, John C. Reilly are brilliant in just about every movie they make.

5. Name a work of art you’d like to live with: A few months ago, I was at my friends’ art opening and was telling my friend Scot how much I was enjoying his new work. After a few minutes of my wine-fueled gushing, Scot seemed surprised and said “I always thought you hated art.”

“I don’t hate art,” I told him, “I hate pretension.”

That’s pretty much the story of my life. I avoid pretension the way George Bush avoids responsibility and self-awareness, so discussions of the fine art world put my bullshitting muscles to good use. “Quick, Greg, change the subject to something you know about,” I tell myself.

“So, have you seen American Idol this season? That Cowardly Lion girl was hilarious.”

But, like I said, even if I don’t know much about it, I like art. I can appreciate the aesthetics of art and can usually articulate why I like or dislike something, but I haven’t been exposed to enough art to speak about it with any degree of confidence. That said, here’s a piece of art that I do live with, which is also one of my favorite paintings of all time. An earlier version (minus the hand or blinds) of Tom Neely’s Sad Bird :

6. Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life: I rarely get “penetrated” by fiction. No, I’m not going for a cheap joke, just being honest.

7. Name a punch line that always makes you laugh: This bit from Mr. Show cracks me up every time I see it…

David: This show that we’re about to do is gonna blow your ass to high heaven!

Bob: David, David, you know the rule. Put a nickel in the swearing jar.

David: Oh shoot. [laughs]

Bob: Folks, we have a fun, new rule here at Mr. Show. Every time a cast member swears, they have to put a nickel in the swearing jar.

[David drops the nickel into an already full jar.]

David: The money goes to Swears For Cares, an non-profit organization committed to raising money through swearing.

Bob: So hopefully, we’ll make a little difference.

David: [holds up a nickel] A little fucking difference.

Since the rules are that I need to pass this on to three people, I’ll punt it to my three This Modern World co-bloggers, Tom Tomorrow, Bob Harris, and Jonathan Schwarz.