There's been a small flurry of panegyrics for The Sopranos; I can't comment on whether or not the finalé was a let-down or not since I never saw a single episode of HBO's operatic goodfellafest. It's one of several near-universally lauded tv series (24, Alias, Boys From the Black Stuff, Deadwood, Heimat, Roots, The Royle Family, Six Feet Under, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy/Smiley's People, The West Wing) that I've never seen despite many an opportunity.

I was into Lost- big time- before the ongoing media war between Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson deprived me of it. And I mightily enjoyed the first episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. If anything, the fact it's been cancelled already makes it more appealling to me, as I know I needn't invest in it. I'm also digging Dexter; it's fun to think that he might at any moment bump into that other carrot-headed Miamian incarnation of justice, Horatio Caine.

This reminds me of a game Stephen Fry mentions in his books, and which uniquefergus recently indulged in; confessing to shocking, inexcusable gaps in your cultural experience. So, tv aside:

Authors whom I've never read a word of : any of the Brontës; Victor Hugo; Stephen King; Herman Mellville; Hugh McDiarmid; George Orwell; Ian Rankin; Sir Walter Scott; Will Self; Viginia Woolf.

Films I've never seen in full : Annie Hall; any cut of Blade Runner; Casablanca; Do the Right Thing; any of the Godfather trilogy; Gone With the Wind; any of the Three Colours trilogy; anything by Bergman, Kurosawa or Powell & Pressburger.

Music I've never listened to (rather than simply heard): Antony and the Johnsons; Woody Guthrie; Janis Joplin; Joy Division; Bob Marley; Pink Floyd; The Sex Pistols; The Small Faces; The Smiths; Rufus Wainwright.

In this last category I'm particularly guilty of transgression. In the past mcgazz and today mirpuri despair of my tin ear and apparent inability to be moved by music. I guess I'm just irrevocably, irredeemably visual. What music I do like invariably has a visual association to it; classical compositions, film scores or highly narrative song-writers (Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hanon) that encourage you to picture something as you listen.

That and my flinty, cold heart. Oh yes. Life's hardened me.
NB- Your correspondent, then aged 22, cried at the end of The Iron Giant.