Things That I Hate

I've often been accused of being nice. I say "accused" because when people say you're nice, a lot of the time what they're really saying is that you're a pushover, a softie, a bitch. And while I like to think it's true that I am nice in the important ways -- I generally try to do right by my friends, I don't kick dogs, and if I were walking by a lake or a river and saw that a small child was struggling to keep from going under I'd more than likely dive in, even though I'd probably just end up drowning the both of us -- I do also hate certain things. Lots of things, actually. In fact, sometimes under the outward "niceness" (a product of my Southern upbringing) I'm actually bubbling over with old-man-style grumpiness and irritation. And so I thought perhaps it would be helpful for my psychological well-being if I vented a little bit about some of the things that get under my skin. A few of these are tangentially related to pop culture, while others aren't. But things have been slow lately around the ol' blog, which I feel gives me license to write about whatever the hell I want. Deal with it, chumps.

1. Marilyn vos Savant. Riddle me this, Marilyn: if you are indeed one of the world's smartest women, as you so proudly declaim, how come the best you've been able to accomplish is a tiny weekly column in the back of Parade Magazine wedged between ads for Precious Moments figurines and NASCAR commemorative plates?

2. Actually, I pretty much hate all of Parade Magazine. Those stupid celebrity bits in the beginning (and you can drop the act; we know you're making up those questions. No one is writing in to say "I just love C. Thomas Howell -- what a dish! Can you tell us what projects he's working on now?"). The "fitness column" that dispenses such helpful advice as "Oranges are good for you!" and "Try walking!" Q&A's with such stars as Angela Landsbury and Bea Arthur. That sickeningly cutesy feature in which "real kids" write about their problems ("Middle school math is hard!" "My cat's breath smells like cat food!") Let me just say this, as a general rule: if you're the editor of a magazine in which the most compelling weekly feature is the comic strip "Howard Huge," please, for the love of God, do humanity a favor and just stop publishing.

3. People who think that just because a movie is old, or French, or subtitled, that it's necessarily good. Or that any major-release movie of the last ten years, by virtue of its being shown at suburban googaplexes, is necessarily bad. You know what? Sometimes it's fun to watch things get blown up. Sometimes it's fun to laugh. But very rarely is it fun to watch a fedora float on the wind for thirty minutes while a slow organ dirge plays in the background. I'm not saying there aren't plenty of great foreign films, because there are. Of course there are. Just like there are some great old black and white films (I'm partial to Hitchcock, myself). But French people aren't immune from making bad movies (these are the same people who are still celebrating the collected works of Jerry Lewis). And the aging process doesn't make shit stink less. Fifty years from now, will there will be faux intellectuals pretending that XXX: State of the Union is a "lost classic"?

4. People who are so scared shitless at the prospect of silence they can't sit in a goddamn airport waiting area for twenty measly minutes without calling every single person they know on their cellular phone. I guess this complaint is fairly fresh in my head because I just flew yesterday, and the shuttle that took me to the airport was running early and so I found myself with some extra waiting time at the gate area. Where I then made the unfortunate mistake of sitting between two people who apparently were just scrolling through their cell phone contact list and calling people at random. "Hi, Aunt June? No, no, it's Steve. Oh, I just wanted to say hi. What? The airport. No, it's been pretty nice here. How's the colitis?" Is the idea of reading -- or just sitting quietly -- really so abhorrent? Perhaps I should be grateful for their calls, though. Perhaps when things go quiet, the voices in these people's heads start talking to them, telling them to find the nearest book reader and cut him up into tiny bite-sized pieces.

5. Ann Coulter. If I were to wish out loud for a team of terrorists to fly a plane directly into Ann Coulter's face, would I just be sinking to her level of discourse?

6. The annual complaint that Christmas is too secularized. Particularly because the "fix" is for holiday shopping outlets to more frequently use the term "Christmas" in their advertisements. Does no one else see the irony in this? It seems to me like you have two choices for a religious holiday. Either emphasize the religious and/or spiritual aspects of said holiday, which will necessarily make it rather quiet and subdued and the sort of thing only a small percentage of people will seriously celebrate. Or add some flash to make it more popular: fireworks, or lots of gifts, or a big fat man in a red suit who gets his jollies by asking small children to sit on his lap.

7. The glut of memoir writing. There was a time, not so very long ago, when to write a memoir a person had to actually accomplish something: scale a mountain, serve as president, lead an expedition to the North Pole, contract some horrible disease but then make a miraculous recovery. Now, apparently all that's required is a moderately unhappy childhood and an inflated sense of self-importance. I'm willing to make an exception if the person is a terrificly talented writer and not especially whiny and self-absorbed (David Sedaris = fine. Elizabeth Wurtzel = no no no no no).

8. People who use their blogs to incessantly whine and complain. Oh, wait. Scratch that one.