Alex Robinson
The Cultural Questionnaire.
What’s your favorite line from a movie?
‘Can you believe this cowboy bullshit?’
From the movie Casino, one of my all-time favorite films. I say this at least once a day when confronted by some outrageous situation.
Which movie do you love but would be embarrassed to talk about in a serious, intellectual conversation?
Star Wars, although I have more of a love/hate relationship with it. I still love to talk about it.
The tune of the moment?
I really love the new album by Zee Avi called Ghostbird, especially the song Concrete Wall. Beautiful, ethereal stuff. Name a museum where you’d be happy to be locked in for the night? The American Museum of Natural History. It’s my favorite museum on earth, though it might get a little spooky with all those skeletons at night.
The three books you’d take with you for a very, very, very long 100% environmentally friendly trip overseas?
Ugh, just pondering this question stresses me out because I’ve agonized over it non-theoretically every time I travel, especially to a foreign land where I know I won’t be able to buy a new book. Also, I’m not sure how the environmentally friendly angle plays in, since I’m not sure about the relative carbon footprints of various books. I’m going to go the literal route and pick big, long books I’ve enjoyed so:
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer.
- The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
- The People’s Almanac, by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace.
Hopefully someone will help me carry them.
You can give two “cultural items” (be it a book, a painting, a movie, a record or anything else), one to the person you like the most, one to the person that bores you the most. What would these two items be?
This year, I finally sat down and watched the HBO series The Wire and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t as great as everyone says. Complex, interesting plots and characterization, social commentary, dark humor—it’s got it all. Obviously I’ve become one of those annoying people who can’t stop going on about how great the show is so it only seems natural that I would want to share it with someone I liked. As for someone who bored me, I’m going to give them The Wire, too. Maybe it would make them more interesting, or at least I’d have something to talk about next time I got stuck talking to them at someone’s birthday party.
What painting would you steal if you could magically become invisible for a few hours?
Burgling fine art would probably not be high on my list of priorities should this happen, I’ll admit. That being said, I would probably go for something by Brueghel since I’ve always liked his stuff. But, really, what would I do with it? Display it in my home? I’m sure within a year I will have damaged it beyond repair, and how would I explain it? ‘Yeah, remember a few years back when the news was talking about that stolen painting? Yeah, that was me.’ I don’t have the infrastructure or connections to sell works of fine art so forget making money out of it. I think the inevitable outcome would be me wrapping it in brown paper and leaving it on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shame-faced.
Which artist, alive or not, in any given field, would you love to party with for a wild, wild night?
I’m not much of a wild party guy but if the ghost of Hunter Thompson showed up offering to take me on a wild night I would have to accept, although I am a novice and this would assuredly result in my death. Still, it would be a great story!
Filed In: Comics
October 7, 2011 at 8:00 am