The following are various things I've either found enjoyable, or had an important effect on who I've become. In the future, expect to see further mentions of items from other mediums, or things I have forgotten to put here.
TV
Now and Again - An average man is brought back to life by the government as a superhero. Despite his newfound "powers", the main character remains a decent, yet ordinary person underneath. Were I a superhero, I would be this man. Was cancelled after one season, leaving a big cliff-hanger ending unresolved.
Law and Order - This includes the spinoffs
Criminal Intent and
SVU, and I imagine the upcoming
Trial By Jury can be counted here as well. The best thing about these shows is their casting, and it's not just the quality of the main, recurring characters that I enjoy. Week after week you are exposed to excellent unknown actors, be they the focus of the episode or just one-liners. Everyone on these shows is believable. Well, except the blonde DA who was from
Angel. I have trouble buying her, but I don't know why.
Space: Above and Beyond - Why aren't there more programs about starship pilots? I guess games like
TIE Fighter and
X-Wing have spoilt me. It had cool action scenes, awesome music, good writing and interesting characters. More than anything from any given medium, this show really immersed you in a futuristic war. Also, the "main" characters name is nathan. Sweet.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? - I love improv comedy. It suits my sense of humour far better than the planned, prepared sort, as anyone who has heard me try to remember and subsequently tell a joke can testify to. Personally, I prefer the UK version of the show since they have a greater variety of performers. The US version does, however, tend to have on funnier people more consistently. Both are good good.
Buffy/Angel - I'm sure you all know. It is so bloody hard to find a good website for this show, so, like, borrow my DVD's if you want to know more. I had to convince Michael to give it a chance. The result? I didn't see my DVD's for a long, long time.
Mysterious Cities Of Gold - Many, many years ago, ABC would show some very high quality cartoons in the afternoon. Most of these, I have but the briefest hints of memories about. Fortunately, I remembered just enough about this show to make some Google queries, and now it's all coming back to me. This show never ceased to fill my mind with wonder, and I hope to get hold of the episodes of this one day. I simply loved their ship and the flying, golden bird.
Brief, yet honourable mentions
Ed - I absolutely adore the characters in
Ed. Sadly, I missed an episode somewhere in season two, and so wasn't able to get back into watching it. I am very much hoping for a DVD release.
Samurai Pizza Cats - At one point in time, Kris and myself once knew the excellent theme song to this, and would break into it for no reason at all. Perhaps I will endeavour to learn it once again.
Jacye and the Wheeled Warriors - Space wizards, ghost knights, cool vehicles. If you've seen this, you know why.
Passions - Sure, you may think less of me for watching this, but that's because you just don't get it.
Passions is a comedy - a parody of the various soaps out there. Granted, it may not intend to be so, but that's how you need to look at it. And have I mentioned Theresa?
Ally McBeal - The quirkiness and the complete mental deficiencies of the characters is what drew me to watch this. Sadly, as the show went on, the quality dropped off. For the record, I did
not like the whole "dancing baby" nonsense.
Farscape - In the future, 95% of the galaxy will speak with the infinitely awesome and sexy Australian accent. We have a winner.
X-Files - Atmosphere, conspiracies and interesting character dynamics. I watched this religiously. That is, until I missed one episode, and hence was unable to bring myself to continue watching it. DVD will fix this one day. Also brought us the under-rated and short lived
The Lone Gunmen.
Animaniacs - Surprisingly adult in much of it's humour (no, not that sort of adult). I wish they would show this again, so I could enjoy it on a whole new level.
Dinoriders - Dinosaurs with weaponry fighting other dinosaurs.
Transformers - Robots with weaponry fighting other robots. Also had robotic dinosaurs.
MOVIES
Who am I? - In my opinion, this is the quintessential Jackie Chan film. This has the best fight scene of any movie, bar none.
Mr. Canton and Lady Rose - My favourite Jackie Chan movie. I was introduced to this by Johnny when we would sometimes watch movies instead of, well, whatever class it was. I love the setting, and would like to see the film(s) it was based upon.
Princess Bride - I hope to one day read the book this is based on. It has kissing in it.
Three Colours: White - I remember this as being terribly bitter, featuring petty characters doing low, pathetic things. For some reason, I enjoyed this. Don't ask me why. I haven't seen
Red or
Blue, and most probably never will. There's just no room in my mind for more than one film like this.
Groundhog Day - I just love Bill Murray.
BOOKS
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - I'm sure you've all read this, so I'll say no more. Go read
Starship Titanic if you liked H2G2.
Various Enid Blyton books - As a child, I must have read nearly everything she had written, and I still have many of her books sitting in my bookcase.
Contact - Forget you ever saw the movie.
Carl Sagan is somehow capable of making science and the natural world seem both wonderful and beautiful, all with just the written word. It also has some neat stuff with pi. Everyone likes pi.
Charlotte's Web - Rather then tell you why you should read this, I'll just say that you must read this. Seriously, it's a children's book, so it shouldn't take you long.
The Hobbit - My mother gave me her copy of this when I was about 7 or 8, which sadly seems to have been lost. I enjoyed it immensely, and this encouraged me to move on to LOTR, and get interested in fantasy in general.
Ender's Game - Flawed, but I enjoyed it. Particularly noteworthy for being a book with a plot twist I didn't see coming, even though it should have been obvious.