TV shows
Kenny vs. Spenny (GSN) - No one has heard of this show. Made for about 15 bucks—and I mean a full season, not an episode—this Canadian import is juvenile beyond comprehension. Two friends old enough to know better engage in a different competition every week. Who can stand the longest, who's the best cook, who can stay handcuffed the longest, who do kids/girls/psychiatrists like best, and so forth. It seldom fails to amuse on a sophomoric level, and it recently provided me with the most jaw-dropping, holy crap, they're-not-going-to-HOLY SHIT ALMIGHTY!-THEY-DID-NOT-JUST-DO-THAT! moment of television I've ever seen.
Long Way Round - More known, but I still don't know anyone else who watched it. Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman ride their motorcycles from London to New York the long way: through Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and the U.S. Inspiring and endlessly fascinating. Besides Ewan's lapses into Obi Wan—"These aren't the bikes you're looking for. Move along."—my favorite nuance is simply watching people's race change not abruptly but gradually, as the longitude changes.
Athlete
Dennis Johnson (basketball) - He sat through his senior year of high school, and Lenny Wilkens called him a "cancer," but I adored the man and his game. A clutch shot and a defensive genius who could shut down Magic and inspired a young Michael to lift weights, he went utterly unnoticed in Seattle, Phoenix and Boston, and that's a damn shame. I once vowed to name my first born after him, but I eventually tired of getting girlfriends to agree to this to no eventual avail.
Alan Faneca (football) - You go ahead and watch the so-called "skill" athletes--I'll watch this big, ugly offensive lineman. I do on every play. I haven't seen him get beaten since 2000. Not one single play in five years. He runs like a fullback and hits like a steamroller. Bodies fly. Sweet, sweet carnage.
Writers
Teresa Strasser, Roger Ebert, Chuck Jones (TV host, TV film critic, animator) - Three people best known for things other than writing, and that's a damned shame. They're all brilliant. Strasser writes about dating for the L.A. Times, Ebert about movies and whatever else strikes his fancy for the Chicago Sun-Times, and Jones wrote a stream-of-consciousness masterpiece about life, people, writing and Bugs in "Chuck Amuck."
Music
Chuck Brown (lord of the D.C. "go-go" funk scene) - I don't know another soul who's heard of him. His music gets repetitive after a while on repeat, but DAAAAAAAAAAAAMN it's catchy and upbeat.
Cristina Aguilera (crack-whore) - Okay, first of all, I am not a gay man. Second, I'm as surprised by this pick as you are, but god help me, the trailer chick has some pipes, and few will admit it. It really hit me the other day when I was listening to some shuffled music and she ended up between Aretha Franklin and Etta James. She. Was. Better. Which means she has arguably the best voice since voices could be recorded. The universe is a truly arbitrary and unfair mess.
Movies
Big Night - An indy about two Italian brothers and their struggling restaurant, this is the ultimate flick for people who love to cook. Others find it as interesting as watching jello congeal.
High Fidelity - A minor hit, but when I ask, no one ever seems to have seen it. I saw this Nick Hornby adaptation about exes with my ex, and we laughed ourselves to death and back at this examination of life after love. Best line, screamed out the window by John Cusack, to the woman who just dumped him: "If you really wanted to mess me up, you shoulda gotten to me sooner!"