• If you could only choose 1 cd to ever listen to again, what would it be? – One? Only ONE? Ack! I live and die by my music. Okay, okay, if that’s how you want it. The special edition ‘Toy Matinee.’ There’s not one bad song on the original version, and one of the bonus tracks (Blank Page) quite eloquently states my own artistic frustration. Kevin Gilbert, we hardly knew ye. People, you must buy ‘Toy Matinee’ and Kevin’s solo work, ‘Thud.’ Do it now. I’ll wait. Go on.
  
• If you could only choose 2 movies to watch ever again, what would they be? – This is a tougher question. In this fantasy scenario, I’d say that one film would be Miyazaki’s ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind’ in some sort of complete, uncut and either well-subbed or well-dubbed form. (Let’s assume I have a DVD player and can have it both ways.) The botched dub of ‘Nausicaa’ known as ‘Warriors of the Wind’ was my first exposure to feature-length anime, and I still treasure it most highly. I’m not sure what the other film would be. You could set me up with one out of a number of other Miyazaki films (‘My Neighbor Totoro’ or ‘Princess Mononoke’ or even ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’) and I’d be quite content. I can’t imagine which live-action film I could stand to be limited to, I’m afraid.
  
• If you could only choose 3 books to read ever again, what would they be? – Most of the books I read are parts of series. I’m going to bend the question and count each series as one work. So there, nyah nyah. 1: Anne McCaffrey’s “harper hall” trilogy. 2: The Eddings’ “Belgariad”. 3: Stephen Donaldson’s “Mordant’s Need” double-book set. If I really wanted to abuse the question, I’d take McCaffrey’s entire Pern set and all of the Eddings’ Belgarath-centric works, but that would be greedy. Oh wait, I am…
  
• If you could only choose 4 things to eat or drink ever again, what would they be? – French bread pizzas, those Stouffer’s things. Orange juice. Vegetable-beef soup w/ crackers. Hot cocoa.
  
• If you could only choose 5 people to ever be/talk/associate/whatever with ever again, who would they be? – Let’s see, who would I be willing share my cocoa with? And how do I answer this question without pissing off everyone I leave out? Sheesh. What a mean question. If I take Wendi and the kids, that leaves only two slots. If I’m allowed to discount my family, I could select: Mari Toshimitsu, Benjamin Studtmann, Heather Dvorak, Steve McMullen and, say, some random really cool famous person. And yes, I know I haven’t talked to Steve in years. And also, yes, there are online friends I didn’t name, but most of those I haven’t really met so I wouldn’t (yet!) feel comfortable adding them to my list. See how hard it is to do this without slighting large numbers of people? The Friday Five folks should be ashamed of themselves. Sheesh.
  

Friday Five