Music. History. Dogs. Roadtrips. Film. Literature. Trains. Boggle. Baseball. Weather.
Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark Twain, Billy the Kid
The Pantheon: Robert Johnson, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Talking Heads, Radiohead.The Greatest Album of All Time: Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.Newest latest: The Dodos, Bodies of Water, The Mae Shi, The Silent Comedy, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, Shearwater, Two GallantsGenerally, I like music that is honest and/or challenging. Angular is better than smooth. Also, it shouldn't suck.
I tend to prefer indie films, or old classics, or foreign. Not a fan of your average Hollywood schlock, though I do love me a Bond film. Key directors are Wes Anderson, Coen Brothers, Jarmusch, Peckinpah, Herzog, Kurosawa, Leone, Malick, Scorsese, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some others. Just about anything with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart is gonna be good. If it emphasizes story over spectacle, I'll probably like it. There Will Be Blood, upon second viewing, went from fucking great to overwhelmingly fucking great.
Much as the strike did for regular supermarkets a few years back, the writers' strike seems to be making TV more or less irrelevant for me. And I don't think I miss it much.
Mostly nonfiction, a lot of history by people you've never heard of. Favorite books you have heard of: Moby Dick, Catch-22, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Trial, On the Road, The Great Gatsby, The Plague, Gravity's Rainbow, and anything by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry are currently enjoying heavy rotation whenever school gives me a chance to read for pleasure. In fact, McCarthy knocks my socks off. McMurtry just spins a good yarn.
Joel Hodgson. The Mythbusters. Smedley Butler.