Escaping reality.
Homer Simpson, Jeffrey Lebowski
"Night Train" rules, but you name it, so long as it's funky but chic. Anything from "Doin' My Own Thing" to "Maintaining My Cool", "Lost Highway" to "Cry Me A River". My main man: Magic Slim & the Teardrops, the last real Chicago blues band. ..
Noir; Coen Brothers; music films (NOT musicals); Barfly; Pee Wee's Big Adventure; The Harder They Come
Never touch the stuff.
by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bukowski (there's a trio often cited in institutions of higher learning), Nabokov's Lolita, Nick Tosches, Charlie Huston, detective novels, Tim Powers, James Blaylock, Under the Volcano, Jack Vance, Fraser's Flashman novels, and (especially) music biographies and genre studies (just finished James Brown's autobiography and a bio of Mike Bloomfield; now on Howlin' Wolf's bio and an overview of country music)
Chuck Taylor; whoever discovered coffee as a beverage; the person who determined olives are edible; Leo Fender; the original Shark Tank mixologist; Henry Chinaski - "I don't hate people. I just feel better when they're not around."