Hi there! I'm Creygor, aka Jenny Mellerick (everybody asks where Creygor comes from, and I always say don't ask, because the story is too long and crazy-sounding. Just accept it 8) )

I'm a Scorpio and although I don't believe in astrology I do have to admit the Scorpio characteristics suit me down to the ground. So those of you out there who know your astrology already know everything about me 8). I've just finished a law degree in Trinity College, Dublin, which is a fun place to spend four years - although advice for any of you out there thinking of studying law, be really, *really* sure it's what you want to do because around the two and a half year mark it will make you want to cry with boredom. You'll get there in the end, though.

I watch lots and lots of rubbish TV - even soaps! - and like nothing better than wasting my hard-earned money going to the movies, when I'm not spending it on books. I also love listening to music (who doesn't?). And, of course, simply messing about on the Web - remember life before email? What did we do with ourselves?? 8)

Okay, enough about me. Check out my links; but please note this site is under construction. If you find slips and typos please let me know; I will get to them in time, I'm just rather busy at the moment 8(

movies movies movies !

Like many people these days, I have a celluloid soul. I love movies, I obsess about movies, and in a crisis the first place I head is the cinema. I shudder to think of the amount of money I've poured into Hollywood's coffers over the years, and the hours of my life I've wasted staring at drivel. Then again, that's offset by the hours I've spent watching wonderful films that stick around in my brain and give me rich, nourishing food for thought. I've recently started writing film reviews - I was driving people nuts by picking apart every frame as soon as we left the cinema, so I'm training myself to wait till I get home in front of my computer instead, where the computer ca'n't yell at me to shut up and just enjoy the film. My recent start, combined with one of those infuriating accidents wiping out half of what was on my hard drive, means there are only a few reviews as yet...but please, have a look, and tell me what you think of my picking apart! Be warned - there are SPOILERS in all of them.

If you like enough to buy - and let's face it, what's the point in buying anything other than DVD? - check out www6.dvdexpress.com ; and for all your celeb interview needs, check out www.mrshowbiz.go.com/interviews - there isn't a star in the movie firmament they haven't interviewed. And of course, the moviegoer's bible is www.imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database. If they ain't got it, it don't exist.

books

First off, I may as well admit I'm a sucker for children's books, which often have a far better standard of writing, a better plot and more interesting characters than much adult fiction (which makes sense really - think about how hard it is to keep a child amused and how easily they see through artifice). So a lot of these books will be aimed at children. Most of them are books I read when I was young whose characters have been hanging around the quieter recesses of my brain slightly reproachfully, like old friends you've outgrown and are guiltily neglecting. It can be very relaxing to turn the brain off for a while, pick up one of these and slip back into its familiar pages - and often you have to turn your brain back on PDQ, as children's books are a lot more morally sophisticated than many adults give them credit for.

The rest are just a few of the bits and pieces I've picked up here and there and enjoyed...I'm putting them in because I love when I'm reading someone's page and find out they read all the same stuff as me - maybe someone else will feel the same about this page!

The following categories can overlap quite a lot: I've put books into the category that seemed to be the most appropriate fit.

Children's Books

Fantasy/Sci Fi Books

Mystery/Thriller Books

Miscellaneous

Check out Project Gutenberg, a site where nice, kind people with time on their hands have copied out hundreds of classic novels which you can download and read on your PC for free. Beats paying for them 8) There's also the Bartleby Library, which also has entire online texts of classic books.

I've also put some of my favourite poems online - the ones that still rattle round in my head no matter how long it's been since I've read them. Read 'em and see what you think.

fun and interesting links

• I have to plug my brother's page which those of you into computer graphics should check out - I don't understand any of it myself but I think his pictures look pretty cool.

• A black parody of trash newspapers, The Onion frequently makes me laugh till I cry. Some people may find it offends against good taste, but I think any paper containing a story about a new snack cracker billing itself as "The Crispety, Crunchety Respite of the Doomed" ca'n't be all bad 8)

• My friend Mike in California has a girlfriend who keeps an interesting online journal about her transition from Dilbert-style corporate drudge to computer freelancer - it's at http://www.banned-width.com/diary/downsize.html .

• Another interesting online diary is that of Mary-Anne Mohanraj, who writes good poetry - I've never checked out her fiction (erotica - urrrgh) but her diary is fun to read! Her selection of favourite poems by others also has some wonderful stuff.

• Awww, heck, enough of this one-by-one business - just check out www.diarist.net, *the* online journal site 8)

• The Daily Star Trek Test, for all us ST:TNG nerds out there - bring back the Enterprise D!

• For those of you, like me, who are already thinking about provision for your old age, or just want to make some pin-money, swing by www.fool.co.uk for investing tips and advice. This is an excellent site with a "Fool's School" for those of us who know nada about investing. US readers, your site is www.fool.com

• Toy Movies!! The Adam & Joe show on UK TV features great "remakes" ie spoofs of movies and TV shows with stuffed animals and Star Wars figurines. Those of you in the US have really missed out, but you can see "The Toy Patient", "Emergency Playroom", and "Shiney" on their website.

• Are you a Guardian? A Protector? An Inspector? Check out the Keirsey Temperament Sorter for an interesting and scientific-sounding personality test - I'm an iStJ.

tv...ah, glorious TV

I know there are people out there who say TV rots the brain and of course that's true - it is scary how many of our attitudes are coloured by TV and particularly TV commercials - but I just love it, even my crappy Australian soaps. TV *is* a time sponge, but occasionally the time is well-spent. I have a soft spot for the rake of "teen" shows out at the moment which have enough clever-clever sass and style to entertain us twenty-somethings while harking back to the high-school rubbish we watched as kids. Good examples include

• Dawson's Creek - teen romance and drama in the small Massachusetts town of Capeside. This is fun and interesting - relationships and growing up as experienced by a small group of friends, at the heart of which is the ambivalent relationship between Dawson and his best friend Joey - she's always wanted to be more then just friends with Dawson, then when he finally realized that was what he wanted too, she decided she wanted "space" to "find herself" - we're still waiting to see what happens. If you can suspend your disbelief at the level of psychobabbling self-analysis sustained by these supposed 16-year-olds and the million-dollar words that keep dropping out of their mouths, you'll enjoy it. And of course there's the eternal question to ponder...Dawson or Pacey?

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - completely braindead, but has some fun action scenes as Buffy, the 16-year-old high-heeled blonde Vampire Slayer slays the heck out of those vampires in the small Californian town of Sunnydale, where every vampire in the entire world seems to hang out for some reason. Great dialogue and interesting characters make this one a lot of fun - just check your brain at the door 8) There's an excellent Buffy site I've found with good episode guides, character analysis, and so forth, written by people whose lives clearly revolve around the show - who better to write the stuff?

• Party of Five - actually the last few episodes I saw of this were rubbish, but it's been an interesting show at times - the adventures and misadventures of a group of siblings left orphaned when their parents are killed in a car crash. The oldest brother, Charlie, determines to keep the family together and keep the family business, Salingers' restaurant, on the go. Dealing with bereavement, alcoholism, illness, marriage breakdown, and infertility, it can be a grim ride at times, but above-average acting and an excellent soundtrack keep you coming back. There are so many PoF pages out there, just go looking, but I have to offer a link to one, a blow-by-blow episode guide from someone who clearly hates the show. Warning: this site is *extremely* offensive, with strong sexual content and a despicable and deplorable attitude to women, but the reviews can be very funny in an evil sort of way. Click here if you still want to check it out.

I do watch grown-up TV too! <you've already decided I'm a bimbo, haven't you?> 8)

• There's ER, of course - I don't need to say anything about this one! Great show, great characters, great action.

• Then there's Frasier. Ahhh...wonderful Frasier. This is one of my all-time favourite shows, and goes to prove that TV can be funny and successful without having to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator. This is how TV should be - fresh, superbly acted, and above all *smart*, forcing us, the audience, to sharpen our minds instead of dragging itself down to our level. The last season has been a disappointment, relying too heavily on situational comedy and slapstick instead of the superb dialogue of previous years, but there were some gems - particularly the marvellous episode where Niles trips out on his parchment-mite allergy pills at a lunch with Nobel Prize winners and begins hallucinating and spouting gibberish - and there are always the reruns. Not just comedy, there are some touching, straight drama episodes, like Moondance and Thy Father Whose Art is Heaven - beautifully written and deftly performed. Hope the writers can solve their problems and bring it back next season with the wit and polish we all love!

• I think if I had to pick one show to take with me to a desert island though (a desert island with TV 8) ) it would be Law & Order. This NBC legal drama is one of the longest-running shows on network TV, and when you watch *any* episode it's easy to see why. Basically the show fuses the cop drama and the legal drama, starting with a crime, tracking the police investigation, and then following the prosecution of the offender. The acting is superb and there is never a neat ending to wrap up with - we are always left with a confused, morally ambiguous situation which we must make up our own minds about. And, joy of joys, the law is actually accurate for once (unlike shows such as Ally McBeal, the court scenes in which are always punctuated in my law-student-inhabited flat with cries of "oh, for crying out loud" and "oh, come *on*! you ca'n't just do that!" - what nerds we are 8) ). Here are some good L&O links, and a link to apocrypha, a L&O fanzine with some good fanfiction.

• Maybe I could sneak another show onto my desert island? please? 8) It would be JAG, another legal drama, but this one's set in the US military legal wing, the Judge Advocate General Corps. Our main character is Harmon Rabb, Jr, who used to be a Navy pilot before trashing his plane and killing his navigator due to night blindness (I would have checked for that before letting him get his hands on a multi-million dollar aircraft, but that's just me 8) ). So the show is a mix of courtroom drama and Top Gun - who could ask for more?? Not to mention the actor playing Harm, David James Elliott, is a *babe* 8) <okay, so I am a bimbo>

• And, finally, there's Due South, a show about a Canadian (far north) Mountie who ends up in Chicago <too long to explain why> working with a Chicago cop, with, as can be imagined, a resounding clash between their two cultures. The show is funny and sweet, although the third season is a great disappointment - stick to the classic episodes of seasons one and two. I found a great "everything I need to know about life I learned from Due South" page online - I ca'n't remember who wrote it but thanks, whoever you are!

music

My musical tastes are a bit random (or eclectic, if you want a nicer word for it). I don't spend a lot of time listening to music, as I ca'n't listen to music and read at the same time, and I spend a lot of time reading. But I've managed to hear a few things now and then 8)

Classical music I adore, but it's what I hear least of as I reckon to enjoy it properly you have to give it at least 80% of your attention, and it's hard to find a time when I'm not doing something that wants all 100% for itself. When I have the time the first composers I will turn to are Bach and Ravel. I love absolutely everything by Bach, without reservation, but he demands the most attention as you really have to concentrate to hear all the different strands of music he is winding together and hold them all in your head simultaneously. But it's the most relaxing concentration I know. Polyphonic music is perfect music 8)

Ravel was an interesting person, and an even more interesting composer - his work is varied, but all beautiful. My favourite are his trio and sonatas for various combinations of piano, violin, and cello, which formed an important part of Claude Sautet's 1991 French film, Un Couer en Hiver, one of my all-time favourite movies. Click here to hear a sample of my favourite piece of all of Ravel's, the allegro from the sonata for violin and cello, and click here to read an interesting quote I came across by him which I think says a lot about both him and his music.

Beethoven is another favourite - his music isn't as interesting as Bach's, but it's still pretty good. My favourite is the 9. Symphony ("Choral"), which contains a beautiful setting of Franz Schiller's Ode to Joy; but the Eroica and Pastoral are pretty good too. There're so many others! Corelli, Telemann, Handel, Purcell, Chopin, Tavener, Gorecki (whose 3. Symphony was used in Peter Weir's 1993 film Fearless)...my higgledy-piggledy list goes on and on. I don't like Berlioz; or Lizst; and my utter hatred I reserve for Mozart. I despise his music - frills, ornamentation, grace notes on the grace notes, it's not written to be beautiful or to say anything, it's written to show off. The only thing of his I like is his Requiem. But then, I have a soft spot for Requiems generally: my favourite is Faure's, a soft, gentle, peaceful Requiem with no menacing Dies Irae to spoil its wonderfully reflective, joyful mood.

Love of Bach leads naturally to love of choral music, and he's written some of the best: his Masses in F major and B minor are beautiful, as are his various cantatas. The St Matthew Passion I've never had time to sit and listen to in full...one day...8) Right up there with Bach I'll put Handel's Messiah - I've listened to so many recordings of this, all of them stirring and uplifting: a few years ago I went to a 250. anniversary performance of it conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, here in Dublin where it was composed - what a treat. There's so much good choral music out there I couldn't even begin to start naming things; my favourite group is probably the Sixteen, led by Harry Christophers.

Moving into more modern times, my other music choices are even more random. I hate and abhor jazz, but love the great jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. I could listen to either of them for hours, particularly Ella: her voice is so rich and faintly amused, it's a pleasure to listen to. She always sounds like she's smiling. Nat King Cole is another favourite, as is ol' blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, another guy I could listen to for hours on end, and the same for Paul Robeson. I'll listen to anything by Irving Berlin or the Gershwins or Lorenz Hart: I love that kind of thing.

Buddy Holly and Elvis - same era, very different sounds, but I love them both; before them, in Depression-era America, was Woody Guthrie, whom my dad got me hooked on. Woody wrote and sang songs about the Depression (Dusty Old Dust, Dust Pneumonia Blues, and other cheery gems) - he gave a voice to poor and dispossessed America, and his songs are a fascinating social record, inspiring Bob Dylan, amongst others. Besides, how could you not love a man whose guitar had a sticker on it saying "This Machine Kills Fascists"?

I tend to like more or less whatever's in the charts, current likes being New Radicals and Semisonic. I'm on a bit of a Welsh thing at the moment, with Catatonia, Manic Street Preachers and Stereophonics on my CD player a lot. I love REM: it usually takes me a while to get used to each new album, because each nowadays is so different from the last, but I always end up liking them. It never ceases to amaze me how an ass like Michael Stipe can produce such beautiful songs. Favourites: Nightswimming and Sweetness Follows; most hated: Everybody Hurts, that adolescent overplayed sickfest. Michael, how could you?

Pure pop, Pet Shop Boys have stayed consistent over the years: you either like them or you despise them. I like them, and it doesn't matter how many people point out that Neil Tennant ca'n't sing and that all their songs are the same, I'll go on liking them. Yes, some of their songs are drivel, but there's drivel in most groups from time to time, and how many bands come up with gems like their Go West cover, or My October Symphony? Great stuff.

American flatmates of mine introduced me to the Indigo Girls, a Southern duo - I'm not really sure how to classify them, actually - folk? folk-rock? - two girls with guitars and beautiful voices, anyway. They each write their own kind of songs and then work on them together. They both seem to have seen a lot of life and their songs are filled with experience, melancholy and joyful at once. Thanks, Americans! - you know who you are 8)

Since hearing her music on the TV show Due South, I have been a huge fan of Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan, who has nothing like the exposure she deserves. She has a beautiful, ethereal voice, and like the Indigo Girls her songs are suffused with life's experiences. My favourite album of hers is Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, although Surfacing is a close contender. She has just released a new album of live performances which I should be getting my hands on soon - I ca'n't wait!