St. Augustine said we should never use the truth to injure. Who am I to argue with a patristic saint? Especially when you regularly allow your soul to be shot out of a cannon on someone else's behalf. The Buddhists believe the dead don't know they're dead. So maybe some people die and go to hell and never know it. It's just another day, like this one now. Do you think that's true? That hell is just a place you step into on an ordinary day?

riding buses looking for weirdos, trying to get my knee and teeth fixed (auto accident), old movies, tasty fiction, the Boston Red Sox (though I live in the heart of enemy territory), taking dictation from the dead.

Cable shows: Boardwalk Empire, The Newsroom, Girls, Game of Thrones, Treme, Shameless, Banshee, Generation Kill, The Wire, but then some things from broadcast: Sons of Anarchy, Justified, Simpsons, Family Guy, The Boondocks, Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives, Iron Chef (I admit it, I'm a Food Network geek).

I see everything, but give me a B&W fifties noir (The Killers, Cop Hater, Odds Against Tomorrow, Asphalt Jungle) or an old screwball comedy (Larceny Inc., Bringing Up Baby, The Whole Town's Talking, My Man Godfrey) and I'm in heaven. But my single favorite film, if I had to pick one, is probably Sweet Smell of Success (that James Wong Howe cinematography -- that's the way New York City should always look). Modern directors I love are Scorsese, Fincher, Nolan, Polanski, Gilliam and the Coen Brothers.

Modern fiction almost exclusively, but in many genres: James Lee Burke, Thomas McGuane, Richard Price, William Gibson, Colin Harrison, James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, Neal Stephenson, T.C. Boyle, Elmore Leonard, Philip Roth, Chuck Palahniuk, Andrew Vachss . . . somebody stop me before my fingers bleed.