Kulcha And Stuff

Via Red and Terry Teachout, the top 100 cultural choices, assuming one had to choose.

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Probably Astaire, although it's close.

2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Sun, hands down.

3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington?Duke. He had such huge footprint over so much music.

4. Cats or dogs?Both. Won't choose.

5. Matisse or Picasso? Matisse, although the genre leaves me a little cold.

6. Yeats or Eliot? Yeats.

7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Keats. Just a seat-of-the-pants thing.

8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? Flannery O'Connor

9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Casablanca. No question.

10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning?Pollock by a small splash.

11. The Who or the Stones? The Who. No question - one of the biggest bands in my life. I've never cared much for the Stones, although Exile rocks.

12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath?I have to pick one? I guess citing Plath reels in the babes. I'll take Plath.

13. Trollope or Dickens? Dickens.

14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Billie Holiday, although Ella is underrated.

15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy?Dostoevsky, but only by a nose.

16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair?End of the Affair. But only barely.

17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Balanchine.

18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Never cared much for hot dogs, although a sauerkraut Polish with banana peppers and onions rocks. No, gimme the burgers.

19. Letterman or Leno? Letterman.

20. Wilco or Cat Power? Wilco.

21. Verdi or Wagner? That's like comparing artillery and gardening. How do you compare the two? Wagner, but I really reject the comparison.

22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Kelly.

23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash?Tough call. I love 'em both. I'll take Monroe, but barely.

24. Kingsley or Martin Amis?Couldn't make the call.

25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon BrandoAnother tough call. Probably Brando.

26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Um - Tharp? Not familiar enough.

27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Rembrandt

28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin?I'm a Tchaikowskii fanatic. Love it all. Which isn't to knock Chopin.

29. Red wine or white? If it's not a really good red, I like a spunky German white. Although I'm more a beer guy.

30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde?Coward. Love 'em both, but I just like Coward better.

31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? High Fidelity, if only because I could identify with it more; I've been a lovelorn drifter much longer than I've been a lovelorn assassin.

32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Shostakovich.

33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Nureyev, although dance is the art about which I'm least literate.

34. Constable or Turner? Turner! Oh, good lord, Turner! My favorite ever.

35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Rio Bravo by a nose.

36. Comedy or tragedy? Comedy

37. Fall or spring? Winter. I mean, North Dakota winter, not these wussy Minnesota winters. Because spring is so much more precious after one. I take spring.

38. Manet or Monet? Monet. More subdued, which oddly enough seems a virtue in this genre.

39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? Simpsons. I have never seen the Sopranos. Not to say I don't want to.

40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? The Gershwins, but it's not a clear choice.

41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Conrad.

42. Sunset or sunrise? Love 'em both. Noon, I can do without.

43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Porter, but only barely.

44. Mac or PC? NeXT - in its day, the coolest computer ever. I have one, and I WISH it were still remotely current. It's not, of course. I have five Wintel boxes in in my house (three work), but as a GUI designer, I love Macs, and only wish I could financially justify one.

45. New York or Los Angeles? Never been to LA, but I still take New York

46. Partisan Review or Horizon? Don't know either.

47. Stax or Motown? Stax! Stax Stax Stax! Great as Motown was (especially the Four Tops), there's a raw, unpredictable quality to Stax that's just electric. Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Booker T, Otis Redding - all amazing stuff. If Stax had had the Tops, it'd have been the greatest label in history.

48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh.

49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? I never really liked Steely Dan, and I really only like the first three Elvis albums. I'll take Costello.

50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Tie.

51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Olivier.

52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Only The Lonely, but it's close. What?

53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown

54. Ghost World or Election? Election.

55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Min.

56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?Daffy. He's an underrated genius.

57. Modernism or postmodernism? Modernism, but only because neoclassicism isn't offered.

58. Batman or Spider-Man? Spiderman! No contest.

59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Emmylou Harris going away. I've met Emmylou. She's one of a kind. If Emmylou didn't exist, we'd have to make her up..

60. Johnson or Boswell? Johnson.

61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Austen. Not that it's a big issue.

62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Van Dyke. Gleason was a genius, but one of those geniuses that always bugged me. Like Ernie Kovacs.

63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Eames. I think.

64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Have never seen either. I'm unworthy.

65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Don Giovanni, that dawg!

66. Blue or green? Green

67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? MSND.

68. Ballet or opera?Opera, but only because I have a lot more to learn about ballet.

69. Film or live theater? Impossible to choose. It's like asking "which is better - a saw or a screwdriver?"

70. Acoustic or electric? Absurd question, but probably electric.

71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? North by Northwest.

72. Sargent or Whistler? Whistler, although only barely.

73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Kundera.

74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? The Music Man. Oklahoma bugs me for some reason.

75. Sushi, yes or no? Yes, but I haven't been all that adventurous with it. Cali Roll rocks, but that's sorta the McDonald's cheeseburger of sushi.

76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? Ross.

77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Tennessee Williams.

78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Only read a little bit of Portrait. Can't pick.

79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Taylor. Sheesh.

80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Wright, but it's a close call.

81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Probably Jones, but I'm not crazy about either. Jones loses a few points for the 2002 Grammies.

82. Watercolor or pastel? Watercolor

83. Bus or subway? We only have buses in the Cities (haven't ridden the Ventura Trolley yet), and they suck suck suck. I loved the subways in NYC, DC, London and Paris.

84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg?Stravinsky by a country mile.

85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? Crunchy.

86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Willa Cather.

87. Schubert or Mozart? Mozart

88. The Fifties or the Twenties? If this means "which decade would you live in", Twenties. I'm convinced I was born 50 years too late; I'd have loved to have been in on the golden age of Radio.

89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick?Huck.

90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? I've read more Mann (minored in German), and love him. Joyce is also great. Can't pick.

91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? Hawkins.

92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Whitman.

93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Gimme a break. Both. No compromise.

94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann?Tough call, but Aimee Mann. I find myself being more itnerested in her music over time. Haven't seen either of them live.

95. Italian or French cooking? Italian

96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Piano

97. Anchovies, yes or no? On pizza? Yes. On pancakes? No.

98. Short novels or long ones? Good ones. Length doesn't matter.

99. Swing or bebop? Swing

100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"? Supper.

Discuss.