Wow, who’d of thought it’d be so hard to self-summarize?

Well, I’m generally a very happy person – I have an amazing group of friends & family that I absolutely love, a stimulating career doing exactly what I want to do, and a great apartment in my favorite Brooklyn neighborhood. I’m even happy enough being single – and not in the “playing the field” sense, but rather in the “non-serial dater -- need a real connection” sense. But of course I'd like to meet some one special.

So while I’m a little skeptical about online dating, I want to believe that it could lead to something great.

I manage the studio of an internationally recognized artist, live in Greenpoint with my skittish but loving cat Scarlet, and spend most of my free time hanging with friends, engrossed in/by a good book/movie, obsessively consuming music, seeing shows (audio & visual) & movies, eating out, going to unpacked, watering-hole-type bars and sometimes playing pool, shuffleboard or (speed)Scrabble at them. I also like to get away from city-life in favor of greener pastures from time to time – for hiking, camping, tubing (or river faring by quicker means), etc.

leading a healthy, balanced life, making spur-of-the-moment decisions, finding ways to avoid turning on overhead lighting, listening, assessing & giving (I think) good advice re: interpersonal situations, negotiation, non-straight-on pool shots, finding new music, not touching anything whilst standing in moving subway car, being empathetic, Bust-A-Move 2 for original Playstation, brainstorming during morning shower, doing impressions of Animal from Muppet Babies, not fiddling with my phone every few minutes, jaywalking,...

is deceptive -- I'm older than I look. Amazing how quickly this has gone from mildly annoying to kind of great.

Books: Underworld, American Pastoral, Stoner, 1984, The Border Trilogy, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Dark Tower series, Purple America, Tender Is The Night, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, A Fairytale Of New York.

Movies: Kubrick (too many to name), Lynch (ditto), Cronenberg (ditto ditto), Coen brothers (last ditto, promise), Malick (all pre- New World), Peckinpah ('69 - '74), Alien Quadrilogy, Breathless, Children of Men, City of Lost Children, Dead Man's Shoes, The Descent, Halloween, Head-On, The Last of the Mohicans, Let the Right One In, Lilya 4-Ever, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Cache, Memories of Murder, Once Upon a Time in the West, Paris Texas, The Proposition, Repulsion, Session 9, Shotgun Stories, Stranger than Paradise, Sunshine (the Danny Boyle one), All The Real Girls, Kicking And Screaming (no, not the Will Ferrell movie), After The Wedding.

TV: Freaks and Geeks, The Wire, Twin Peaks, Deadwood, Fishing With John, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, Mr. Show, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Lost, Arrested Development, True Blood, 30 Rock, The Office, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Music: An ongoing work in progress in which I'll name some all-time favs while peppering in some recent things on constant repeat, and totally randomized -- 70's-era Link Wray, Heron, Pavement, Silkworm, Om, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Big Star, Dawes, Deep Dark Woods, Jehu/Hot Snakes/Obits, Shotmaker, Jason Molina, Woods, Talking Heads, Michael Hurley, Levon Helm, The Wedding Present, Spacemen 3/Spiritualized, Gillian Welch, Bruce Springsteen, Teenage Fanclub, Superchunk, Faces, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane, Humble Pie, Smog, Them, Unwound, Tinariwen, Black Heart Procession, Nick Cave, Thee Oh Sees, Dead Moon/Pierced Arrows/earlier Fred Cole outfits, The Drones, Crystal Antlers, The Kinks, Galaxie 500, Tom Waits, Archers Of Loaf/Crooked Fingers, Jim Ford, Reigning Sound, Built To Spill, Moondoggies, Dinosaur Jr., Guided By Voices, Poco, Terry Reid, John Fahey, Jawbreaker, Misfits, Tinariwen, Radio Moscow, Kurt Vile, Unbroken, Kath Bloom, The Clean, Comets On Fire, Leonard Cohen, Silkworm/Joel R L Phelps, The War On Drugs, Roadside Graves, Rex/Pullman/Curtis Harvey solo...

Food: strong coffee, hoppy beer, dark chocolate, fresh oatmeal, DuMac 'n' Cheese, toasted sesame bagels with cream cheese, strongly spiced ethic cuisines, Italian food.

Well I don't know about "never," but I'd sure rather not go without these "things":
- strong coffee
- hoppy beer
- dark chocolate
- tea tree infused tooth picks
- iPhone
- unlimited Metrocard

picking up the guitar, what I have learned from this experience or that, and when in a particularly dreamy mood, the cosmos.

Seeing as how this is the most public outlet I participate in on the Internet (that's right, no other social networking sites for me), I'm going to cheat on this question and admit something that I'm not shy about in the slightest:

I love New Jersey, and I'm not even from there.

Okay, and I'm also considering rereading The Dark Tower (even though I only finished up marathoning the series a couple summers ago).