My cultural life
The singer, Tim Burgess, loves horror movies, Van Gogh and all that jazz, but hates fly-on-the-wall documentaries
Films
I am an obsessive fan of David Lynch. I am currently reading The Complete Lynch by David Hughes (Virgin Books, £15.99), a collection of interviews in which he explains how he gets his ideas. Apparently he based Eraserhead on his daughter, which is pretty freaky. I went to see Mulholland Drive on the day that it came out and I think it is the best thing he has done. There is a real undercurrent of darkness to it and I found some scenes terrifying. It is also set on the street where I live - Franklin in Los Angeles - and the Hollywood satire made sense to me. I think there is a lot of evil in the movie business. When I was a kid I was into horror movies: The Exorcist, Jaws, anything daft. But the first movie that really made an impact on me was Ken Russell's Women in Love, when I was 20. I thought it was beautiful, and I remember sitting on the sofa afterwards and deciding to take films more seriously.
Music
I am on a bit of a jazz trip at the moment. Jazz is something I have only got into recently, but it is like opening a treasure chest that you will never be able to get to the bottom of. That is what I love about music: the searching is never over. Jazz aside, my favourite record at the moment is called Stars Come Out on Sesame Street. It features Johnny Cash singing a duet with Oscar the Grouch and Pete Seeger with Big Bird. It's fantastic.
Art
The last great exhibition I saw was the Sex Pistols photographs at the Proud Galleries in London. I knew most of the pictures but it was great to see them up close. I go to shows fairly regularly, and I want to see the Warhol show at Tate Modern (London SE1) when I am in London. I also went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam recently. It was amazing. If I could own any piece of art it would be Van Gogh's Potato Eaters because it is beautiful and I love potatoes.
Books
I am not really into novels, I prefer biographies and music books. I read a lot about Bob Dylan - he is a huge hero of mine - and I am desperate to read the Mötley Crüe biography (The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, HarperCollins, £17.99). If it is anything like their poodle perms, it should be outrageous.
City
I love Los Angeles. It is utterly debauched and fanatically healthy at the same time. To describe it as "eclectic" doesn't even come close. I tend to feel paranoid in other big cities, such as London and New York, but there are so many bonkers people in LA that it makes me feel relatively sane. It is also very surreal. I have seen so many crazy things since I have been living there: life-sized Teletubbies jumping out of bushes, families driving down the freeway with their homes strapped on the back of a truck. I love all the weirdness.
Pet hate
I can't stand those fly-on-the-wall documentaries in which people are stranded on a desert island. Why are there so many of them? I saw one in America recently where contestants had to fish about for some rings in a bag of squid to win a prize. I thought, this sucks.
Amber Cowan