Understanding the people and forces that really shape the world. Living long and prospering, traveling more, maybe writing a novel or screenplay someday. Releasing an album of original music. Re-learning Spanish again when I can spare the grey matter. Cutting to the quick. Time, money, the transmutation of time into money and (eventually) money into free time. I've been known to play a bit of Chess and Go - really good for the grey matter.
Non-interests:
Cars. Scapegoating. Going with the flow. Conventional wisdom. Unsubstantiated certainty driven by emotion, ignorance, or a mixture of the two. People who hate people.
Mr. T, George Soros, Martin Zweig, Gerald Loeb, Stan Weinstein, Warren Buffet, Jimmy Buffet, Kraftwerk, Ray Kurzweil.
Gustav Holtz, George Gershwin, Kraftwerk, Coil, Intermix, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Dylan.
Oliver Stone's pre-insanity movies, including Scarface and Wall Street. Also, 'The Eye', The Seven Samurai, Spaghetti Westerns.A new favorite - "Thank You for Smoking". Cynical and hilarious!
I would have killed my television long ago if not for The Simpsons, Frontline, The News Hour and Nightly Business Report (dry, I know, but dense). If you spend a big chunk of your life "seeing what is on" and generally watching pointless TV that leaves you with no information and only marginal entertainment value, I would advise you to kill you television, before it is done eating your life. Books rock - especially non-fiction...
Books are my primary vice - booze doesn't even hold a candle to them. I've read dozens of classic and contemporary novels in my time, but the staple of my reading is non-fiction, which leaves facts dripping from my brain like water from a soaked spunge, and leads to some interesting insights. These books are too numerous to list, but suffice it to say that I have one shelf of fiction, one shelf of music, and a bookshelf devoted to what I like to call Alchemy (which means, at its core, the transformation of the world through force of will): philosophy, psychology, history, finance, strategy, tactics and economics. I also held on to most of my books from college for reference purposes. It is trite but true that knowledge is power... but only if applied.
A few recommendations? Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, Alchemy of Finance by George Soros, Latticework by Robert Hagstrom, The Education of a Speculator by Victor Neiderhoffer and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Decline and Fall and Alchemy provide much insight on the current state of the world, and where the future may be taking us...
There are too many to mention... Let's put Gandi and Winston Churchill at the front of the list, though. Man did those guys know how to see their vision through some dark times until they won.