Culture high, culture low.
If you think that "Rescue Me" is one of Aretha Franklin's best songs, we probably don't have all that much to talk about.
Autechre, Scorn, Godflesh, Eric B and Rakim, Alice Donut, Entombed, James Brown, Dead Kennedys, Neurosis, Melvins, Flaming Lips, God Is My Co-Pilot, Husker Du, Charlie Mingus, Donovan, the Cure, AC/DC, Techno Animal, Meat Puppets, Solomon Burke, Outkast, Bjork, Eyehategod, Al Green, Ruth Brown, Dokaka, the Cramps, Organized Konfusion, Aphex Twin, Slayer, William Parker, Nina Simone, Brain Police, Antibalas, Blackalicious, Seth Gordon, Underworld, Stevie Wonder, the Undertones, Cabaret Voltaire, the Revillos, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Wu-Tang Clan, the Roots, Ornette Coleman, My Bloody Valentine, Jesu, Matmos, Sepultura (with Max on vocals), Matthew Shipp, Radiohead, Made Out of Babies, the Rezillos, Isis, Del the Funky Homosapien, Magnetic Fields, New Order, Van Morrison, Johnny Cash (lately a little more into the older stuff than the Rick Rubin era), His Name is Alive, the Reducers, the Buzzcocks, the Replacements, Zeni Geva, way, WAY too many other bands to list (but isn't it clever of me to alternate them the way I did?).
I'm into sludgy metal with low-pitched vocals, scronky electronic stuff that's too herky-jerky to really dance to but is a lot of fun to analyse at high volume, sissy chimey folkish music (Donovan, Nick Drake, some but not all Belle and Sebastian), lots of hip hop (the more elaborate the rhyme schemes, the better), old punk, and blah blah blah de-blah blah blah.
Truthfully, I think that the blah blah blah de-blah blah blah scene is about to make itself known nationally.
Lately, I've been really into greasy 40s-50s rhythm and blues, and consider the dirty version of "Think Twice" by Jackie Wilson and Lavern Baker to be the high point of Western culture.
Most recently, Zodiac -- it was pretty much exactly the movie I wanted.
Night of the Living Dead, Mamma Roma, Once Upon a Time in America, Naked, The Apple, Grave of the Fireflies, Jacob's Ladder, The Godfather Pt. II, Blow-Up, The Conversation, This is Spinal Tap, Kings of the Road, Monsters, Inc. (sue me), Solaris (original), Lone Star, Dead Man, Our Hospitality, Lawrence of Arabia . I was really impressed with The 40-Year-Old Virgin, against my expectations...not sure if I would list it a decade after viewing, like most of these...
I'm in the process of tracking down comic-book-adaptation rights to a book on the filming of the movie Caligula...keep your fingers (and legs) crossed...
It seems that my appreciation of a TV show is the necessary ingredient for its painful demise: Arrested Development coulda been a contenduh...ditto Mr. Show...hopefully I won't kill off the US version of The Office or Curb Your Enthusiasm, as these are pretty much the only shows that I intentionally watch when they air.
Other favorites current and past: Pee Wee's Playhouse (though an absinthe bender during a Pee Wee marathon makes me a little ill if I hear the theme song, two years later), Twin Peaks, Six Feet Under, The Prisoner, Mister Roger's Neighborhood (seriously), A Chat With Glendora, plenty more I'm sure but I don't tend to think of 'favorite TV shows' and mainly have a TV to watch the news and movies.
I love me some professional wrestling, but the WWF is damned near unwatchable and TNA (get it?!?) is really good only when it isn't really, really bad.
Fiction: I'm pretty fond of Umberto Eco, Nadine Gortimer, George Saunders, A.M. Holmes, John Updike, Alice Munroe, Primo Levi, Orhan Pamuk, Norman Mailer, a bunch of other square 'canonical' novelists. I consider the "New Yorker-style ten page short story without a real resolution" to be one of America's great forms of art.
Non-fiction: David Sedaris, Jeffrey Burtron Russell, Steven Asma, Robert Rosenbaum, BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER, Joseph Cornell, a few true-crime books (not many, though), James Loewen.
Comics: Love and Rockets, Cages, Carl Barks and Don Rosa's "Donald Duck" and "Uncle Scrooge" stories, Acme Novelty Library, Stan Lee's run on Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, Black Hole, Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, Cerebus (until Dave Sim's schizophrenia derailed everything and the book became a fundamentalist, anti-feminist mess). I'm currently writing a book which will hopefully be out in the next year or so, depending on how quickly the cartoonist and I can get our shit together (the fact that we live on opposite ends of the continent is a bit of a challenge).
Aht Thee-oh-ree: Jonathan Miller, Hal Foster, Christina Kiaer, Leo Steinberg, Walter Benjamin, some Marshall McLuhan, a (very, very) little Theodor Adorno.
I would give Francis Fukuyama a fearsome DDT, given the opportunity.
Ayn Ra-- JUST KIDDING.
Yoko Ono. She married down, you know.
Why isn't there a "favorite artists" section here? Aren't we supposed to be worldly hipsters? I'll have to start filling that in soon.