My life is great and I'm happy with it. The people who are close to me are some of the best people in the world. I'm extremely passionate. I do everything 500 percent. I believe in and appreciate beauty. I admire strength. I don't like wimps. I place a high value on integrity. I place a low value on material items. I work really, really hard doing stuff I love to do.

I'm from Massachusetts and my identity is firmly planted there, though I've been living here a long time and Los Angeles is more of a home to me than anywhere else. I belong here.

I've always been very independent and self-sufficient. I grew up with a kind of Huckleberry Finn style freedom. I was a wild boy, completely ungoverned and accountable to nobody. I'm still the same in that regard. I left home and went to live on my own young. I was raised by books, music and TV. Because of that, I'm really not a family-type guy.

I'm not a sports fan. I don't know why, I just never have been.

For a living I'm a dog trainer. That involves a lot and it's a cool job and I'm glad to have it, but what I love doing is performing as a storyteller.

I'm currently working on a multi-installment documentary about the history of Los Angeles. I also write and perform live shows that are usually part memoir and part historical narrative. They go on for about an hour, sometimes two hours, just me talking. I've written and performed lots of these things now.

One of my most recent was a show partially on Ulysses S. Grant, which has been one of my favorites. The whole show is up on youtube, just go here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bVdxHWShU

I've recently written some on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the subsequent Gulag, the whaling industry, and the plague. My show on plague, Big Bad Black Death, goes up this June.

I've done some traveling and would like to do more. Next on my list is a Vienna to Istanbul trip. Partially for work and partially for pleasure. Then a trip back home to Massachusetts and the British Isles for work and pleasure purposes as well. Other places on my list are Borneo, the Azores, Cambodia, Poland and Jerusalem.

I also do a little bit of cartooning and painting for fun and also to provide some illustration for my shows. I play bass, keyboards, drums and do some electronic programming (beats and stuff) that I use as the music for my stuff.

I'm not an actor. I don't do these shows to get attention or anything weird like that. I do them because I have to. It's the only reason why you should ever do any kind of art. I also toured and put a record out as a solo musician years ago. Before that, I was in the Air Force. The military was not the place for a guy like me, but I stuck it out for the four years I signed up for. I said I was going to do it, so I did.

Eating the whole thing. I can always eat the whole thing.

My accent.

BOOKS
I read a lot of history. Favorite historical topics: plague pandemics, the Enlightenment, history of Los Angeles, Dutch trading history, New England history, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, Indian history, Jerusalem, Southeast Asian history, Hundred Years War and the Second Hundred Years War, America pre Civil War and post Civil War (bored to tears with the Civil War).

Other books: Look Homeward Angel, The Gulag Archipelago, Pale Fire, Death on the Installment Plan, On Fire, Nausea, Death of Socrates, The Innocents Abroad, A Feast of Snakes, Notes from the Underground.

AUTHORS
Thomas Wolfe, Harry Crews, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Lorca, Larry Brown, Daniel Defoe, Raymond Chandler, Upton Sinclair, Carson McCullers, Camus, Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, Marquis de Sade, John Fante, Celine, Knut Hamsun, Hemingway, Faulkner, Plato.

MOVIES
Cool Hand Luke, The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in America, Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Chinatown, North by Northwest, Notorious, Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, Saboteur, Casablanca, The Seventh Seal, Annie Hall, Woman in the Window, Dr. Strangelove, Taxi Driver, Out of the Past, Scarlet Street, Black Angel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rocky, Gilda, Goodfellas, Marathon Man. I also like a lot of the weird Italian films from the 60's and 70's. Favorite directors are Woody Allen, Hitchcock, John Cassavetes, Jaques Turner, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Elia Kazan.

MUSIC
I'm really into punk rock. Big, big fan of Black Flag, X, The Queers, Screeching Weasel, The Cramps, Gun Club, Wire, Magazine, The Clash, The Wipers, Husker Du, Minutemen, Killing Joke, Iggy and the Stooges, The Pogues, Hot Water Music, stuff like that. Also a fan of My Bloody Valentine, Sleater Kinney, Marnie Stern, Chad VanGaalen, Joanna Newsom, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Steve Malkmus, Clutch, etc.

I also really love classical music, namely Mozart. But not a fan of opera, even Mozart's operas. Other composers I really like are Telemann, Bach, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Handel and Bedřich Smetana.

FOOD
I'm a vegan. I like vegan food first and foremost. I try to keep it healthy but if it's vegan, I'll eat just about anything.

I can do without anything that isn't needed for basic survival. I'm a tough guy. I know that's a boring answer so I'll humor the topic. Let's see...

1. My record player

2. My Jeep

3. My books

4. Caffeine

5. The gym

6. Dogs

My next move.

Working

You can deal with a guy like me.