One of the few advantages of growing old is that you get a better sense of what you do and don’t like (although a certain grumpiness sets in that leads to a lot less of the former and a lot more of the latter).

You’ve been to lots of places and tried lots of things, and having seen so much come and go, you also can better distinguish between that which is likely to stick around (The Beatles) and that which isn’t (Taylor Swift).

As such, when it comes to two things that have been important to me for as long as I can remember, music and movies, the following are some of my favorites. They aren’t necessarily the “best,” according to some detached critical assessment, but simply those

I’ve probably watched and listened to most over the years and would be upset if I never got to watch or listen to again (I thought about including favorite books, but that’s simply too hard for someone my daughter calls a “book doctor”).

■ Beatles Albums: “Rubber Soul,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Revolver,” “Help,” and “Sgt. Pepper.”

If I were picking just the single best side of a Beatles album, or, for that matter, the best side of any rock/ pop album, it would be side two of “Abbey Road.” If the Beatles had taken George Martin’s advice and made “The White Album” a single album, it would have topped this list.

■ Coen Brothers Movies: “O Brother Where Art Thou,” “The Big Lebowski,” and “Fargo.”

■ Westerns: “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” “The Searchers,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and “The Wild Bunch.”

■ Rolling Stones Albums: “Exile on Main Street,” “Sticky Fingers,” “Let it Bleed,” “Beggars Banquet,” and “Aftermath” (bizarre to realize these geezers just began what is likely to be another sold-out tour of football stadiums).

■ Stanley Kubrick Movies: “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange” (unpleasant but brilliant), “Dr. Strangelove,” “Paths of Glory,” and “Full Metal Jacket” (I frequently showed the last three in my War, Politics, and Cinema course).

■ Jazz Albums: The entire Ella Fitzgerald Songbook collection, from Cole Porter through Johnny Mercer (that’s cheating a bit, but …), “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman,” Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out,” Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debby,” Sonny Rollins’ “Saxophone Colossus,” “Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section,” Stan Getz’s “Sweet Rain,” Charles Mingus’ “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,” and “Ella and Louis” (as in Fitzgerald and Armstrong, with Oscar Peterson’s quartet).

■ Actors: Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, and Jimmy Stewart.

■ Actresses: Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman, and Elizabeth Taylor.

■ Quentin Tarantino films: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Reservoir Dogs” (with a nod to “Jackie Brown”).

■ Dylan albums: “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Blonde on Blonde,” “Nashville Skyline,” “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” and “Bringing It All Back Home” (like most “comeback” albums, “Blood on the Tracks” is a tad overrated).

■ Martin Scorsese Movies: “Taxi Driver,” “The Departed,” and “GoodFellas.”

■ Live Rock Albums: The Stones’ “Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out,” The Who’s “Live at Leeds” (extended version), and “Allman Brothers at Fillmore East” (Dickie Betts, RIP).

■ Steven Spielberg Movies: “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “Saving Private Ryan.”

■ TV Shows: “Star Trek” (the original, of course), “Mad Men,” “Frasier,” and “Monty Python.”

■ Sinatra Albums: I’ve long believed the 15 “concept” albums he recorded from the early 1950s to the early 1960s represent the greatest achievement in the history of popular music, especially “In the Wee Small Hours,” “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers,” “A Swingin’ Affair,” “For Only the Lonely,” “Nice ’n’ Easy,” and “Sinatra’s Swingin’ Session.”

■ Books about the Movies: Apart from the collected reviews of critics like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” David Thomson’s incomparable “New Biographical Dictionary of Film” (latest, 6th Edition) and of course Francois Truffaut’s “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (one of the few assigned books in college that I enjoyed reading, in a course on Hitchcock, Truffaut and Fellini).

■ Books on Rock/Pop Music: James Miller’s “Flowers in the Dustbin,” Greil Marcus’ “Mystery Train” (especially the chapters on Elvis and The Band), and Martha Bayles’ “Hole in Our Soul” (even though she disparages much of rock music in favor of jazz and Motown, a counterpoint to Marcus).

■ Hitchcock Movies: “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest” and “The Birds” (maybe I’ve just seen “Psycho” and “Vertigo” too many times).

■ Rock Music Documentaries/Concert Movies: “A Hard Day’s Night” (granted, not really a documentary or even a concert movie, but still a charming depiction of a day in the life of the Fab Four and Beatlemania), “Gimme Shelter” (Altamont caught live), and “The Last Waltz.”

■ Rock Album Not by the Beatles or Stones: The Band, “Music From Big Pink” and “The Band” (tie).

■ Bond Movies: “Goldfinger,” “From Russia with Love,” “Dr. No,” “Thunderball” and “You Only Live Twice” (there’s a common element in there).

■ Bond Songs: Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds are Forever” (obviously), Nancy Sinatra’s “You Only Live Twice” (the only disappointment in the recent Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s “Bond & Beyond” program was that they left this one out).