Music:
Medieval, Elizabethan, Baroque, The Beggar's Opera, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Wagner, Das Lied von der Erde, Al Jolson, Annette Hanshaw, Gershwin, Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhart and Stephane Grappelli, Hank Williams, Nat King Cole, Judy Collins, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the Doors, Ravi Shankar, Johnny Cash, authentic international folk music, early 20th century pop music and early jazz, bossa nova
Movies:
Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Jazz Singer, City Lights, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, King Kong, 42nd Street, March of the Wooden Soldiers, Treasure Island, It's a Gift, The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Midsummer Night's Dream, Modern Times, Shall We Dance, Bringing up Baby, Topper, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Wizard of Oz, Sullivan's Travels, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Mighty Joe Young, The Third Man, Sunset Boulevard, The Quiet Man, Lady and the Tramp, Godzilla, Old Yeller, The Red Balloon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, The Innocents, Lolita, Zorba the Greek, Blow-Up, Rosemary's Baby, The Graduate, The Godfather, The Last Picture Show, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Carrie, The Man Who Would Be King, Fellini Satyricon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Stardust Memories, The Shining, Amadeus, My Life as a Dog, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Kurosawa's Dreams, Henry V, Trading Places, Groundhog Day, Barton Fink, L.A. Confidential, The Sixth Sense, Lost in Translation
Television:
I Love Lucy, My Little Margie, Honeymooners, Sandy Becker Show, Dobie Gillis, Leave It to Beaver, Twilight Zone, Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke Show, Get Smart, The Avengers, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Saturday Night Live, Cheers, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arthur.
Books:
Greek myths, The Odyssey, Herodotus, Plato, Juvenal's Satires, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, T'ang Dynasty poetry (Li Po, Tu Fu, Po Chu-i), Gargantua & Pantagruel, Montaigne's essays, Henry V, The Tempest, The Bourgeois Gentleman (Moliere), Gulliver's Travels, Candide, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Boswell's journals, Six Records of a Floating Life (Shen Fu), Andersen's Fairy Tales, tales of Poe, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Fathers and Sons (Turgenev), Moby-Dick, Notes from Underground (Dostoyevsky), Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Books, Letters from the Earth (Twain), short stories of Chekhov, A Mencken Chrestomathy, Winesburg Ohio (S. Anderson), The Great Gatsby, short stories of Hemingway and Saroyan, The Book of Marvels I & II (Richard Halliburton), The Little Prince (St. Exupery), The Screwtape Letters (C S Lewis), Edwin Mullhouse (Millhauser), The Cynic's Dictionary (Rick Bayan), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers)
Heroes:
Socrates, Tigran the Great, Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, Robin Hood, Columbus, Leonardo, Galileo, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Johnson, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Beethoven, Audubon, Lincoln, Darwin, Dickens, Thoreau, Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, William Saroyan, Duke Snider