Culture Shock

I was making a grocery run this week (not a quick task when you live way the hell out in the sticks) and caught part of an NPR program about music in the 90s. It was fascinating and also rather saddening -- although I'm about the same age as many of the hosts, I shared about fuck-all of their nostalgia-soaked memories of that era. Maybe it's because I feel like I'm are still living in the 90s; the rest of the country, and the world, got pretty distracted at the outset of the new millennium by Bush's presidency and then by 9/11, but Dr. S and I have been tilting at the same ol' windmills for nigh-on two decades now. And as it happens, efforts to save the world from alien domination rather preclude cultural engagement.

I've been catching up, though, bit by bit. On the road, I whiled away many an hour in a crummy motel watching "Seinfeld" reruns and keeping up with "Lost," desperately hoping that the ending to our little adventure would be more satisfying than either of those. Two years ago, S's little brother sent us DVDs for a great little show called "Arrested Development," which led even the stern doctor to crack a few smiles (although I must take umbrage at milady's claim that it was funnier than "Caddyshack" -- heresy!), and last summer Gibson brought over a stack of discs for the new "Battlestar Galactica." (Dr. S opted out of that one; her loss.) I'm even liking this show "Community" that's on TV right now, and S falls asleep each night making her way through Franzen's latest doorstop. In short, I -- we -- have been reconnecting with the world at large, trying to remember what the hell it is exactly that we're trying to save, anyway.

So to you, blogosphere, I present the question: what else have I been missing? I checked the Internet-at-large, which seems to have many (variably articulated) opinions about what's worth anybody's time, but I don't trust the hordes of strangers to appreciate my refined tastes. So what do you folks recommend? What cultural artifacts -- books, music, TV, movies -- enrich your life, affirm your humanity, and generally make you feel as though this world is a place worth the effort of preserving?

Tell me in the comments, or post the artifact itself. We accept regular mail and carrier pigeon.