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02 June 2010

Ground sirloin out of sacred cows. Fess up: what universally lauded artist/work of art just isn't your bag?→[More:]I admit, with more than a little trepidation, that I have no patience for Stevie Wonder.

To be a little more modern, despite many attempts over the years to get in to them, The Hold Steady bore me to tears.
post by: ufez at: 08:37 | 62 comments
A lot of people expect me to love Ani DiFranco because I am female and I play the guitar. But despite the fact that a lot of songwriters and guitarists admire her for various reasons, I cannot stand Ani DiFranco and never could. I find her profoundly irritating and her lyrics obvious, self-involved, and uninteresting.

Love the Hold Steady, though.
posted by Miko 02 June | 08:49
I very much dislike the Mona Lisa. And Barbra Streisand. I also cannot make myself read Henry James.
posted by JanetLand 02 June | 08:59
Thomas Pynchon. Just. Can't. Do it. I'm good with other very dense novels, I'm good with post-modernism, but I dunno... just something about his writing.
posted by gaspode 02 June | 09:03
Picasso. Too overstimulating for me.
posted by Melismata 02 June | 09:07
I don't like Tupac.
posted by box 02 June | 09:12
The one that tends to get the biggest responses of shocked dismay is my absolute intolerance for Garrison Keillor.

The Beatles leave me cold, for example, but I know I'm not the only one, and I understand that many other people dig them, and that's cool.

But Garrison Keillor's appeal is simply incomprehesnible to me.
posted by rainbaby 02 June | 09:15
I'm with you on Garrison Keillor, rainbaby. The exagerrated folksiness is incredibly grating to me.
posted by mrmoonpie 02 June | 09:22
Oh, and Mandy Patinkin.
posted by mrmoonpie 02 June | 09:23
I hate David Sedaris and Garrison Keillor. My hand instantly turns the radio off without thinking.

I pretty much hate anything they play on the "classic rock" station, although they're starting to play stuff from my high school years (I'm 35 FFS!!!) and I like most of that.
posted by desjardins 02 June | 09:26
So very many, but I was just reminded that William Gibson is a hack.
posted by crush-onastick 02 June | 09:31
Oh, and Mandy Patinkin.

I saw him in concert a few years back- he is totally bonkers!

For me, it's Chess. The game, not the musical.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 02 June | 09:33
The owner of the clinic where I work weekends had a really severe cold this past Winter and sounded *exactly* like Garrison Keillor. It was extremely disturbing.
posted by ufez 02 June | 09:34
The Wire. I just finished watching the first season on DVD and after years of hype and I'm just not getting the love. It's an OK crime procedural but sorta boring.
posted by octothorpe 02 June | 09:38
There's a musical about chess?
posted by box 02 June | 10:01
Ah, the gentle humor of Garrison Keillor. Blech.

William Faulkner. I like some of his "lesser" works ("The Hamlet", "The Town", "The Mansion") but "The Sound and the Fury" drives me apeshit bat-biting crazy. If anyone else had limned the South so grotesquely and cartoonishly, they'd banish him. Instead, Faulkner's deified. Bah. Flannery O'Connor is twice the writer. I mean, it's hip to hate on Hemingway these days. But Faulkner, who at his worst was a logorrheic Thomas Wolfe in a white suit and Col. Sanders goatee standing on the moss-draped porch of his plantation yelling, "Oh Beauregard! Come HEAH, boy!", Faulkner gets a free pass.

Fuckin hate him, man.
posted by BitterOldPunk 02 June | 10:09
box: you're not old enough to remember One Night in Bangkok?

ye gods, I recall that a friend and I performed "I Know Him So Well" at a show choir fundraiser. Sigh.
posted by crush-onastick 02 June | 10:10
Dude, I've been hating on Hemingway for DECADES.

I'm kind of with you on The Wire. I watched a couple episodes but wasn't really catching on yet.

Even before she turned into this macrobiotic white Oprah, I couldn't stand Gwyneth Paltrow. Nasal accent. Smug as shit. Completely uninteresting.

And don't get me STARTED on Tom Cruise.
posted by Madamina 02 June | 10:22
Edgar Allan Poe, Joss Whedon and Terry Gross. And another vote for Keillor.
posted by arse_hat 02 June | 10:28
Love Sedaris.
Love Keillor.
Love The Beatles.
Love Gibson.
Hate Ani. (whew!)

Incomprehensible to be is/was David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest was just a slog for me. Bukowski also.
posted by danf 02 June | 10:30
I'm not the only one


Can't help but think you did that on purpose.
posted by danf 02 June | 10:37
Thomas Pynchon

Liked Lot 49, slogged through V and then gave up about fifty pages into Gravity's Rainbow. My tiny brain just wasn't getting anything useful or enjoyable out of his larger books.
posted by octothorpe 02 June | 11:04
This is fun.

Here are more SHOCKING ASSERTIONS:

Radiohead's best record is "The Bends".

Dave Eggers is the literary equivalent of a juggling clown on a unicycle. Neat trick, momentarily amusing, but we've seen it before.

John Fogerty is a better songwriter than Paul McCarney.

Tori Amos makes me want to kill people.

Bruce Springsteen has been writing the same song over and over again since "Born in the USA".

HP Lovecraft was a boring racist.

Philip K. Dick wrote mostly crap.

Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" is a brave and thrilling film, though Mel Gibson may very well be bugfuck crazy.
posted by BitterOldPunk 02 June | 11:09
There's a musical about chess? There's a musical called Chess.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 02 June | 11:18
Haruki Murakami

Maybe I read his stuff too closely to Orhan Pamuk's or something, but god, his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle just struck me as so contrived and self-indulgent. I think I have little patience for Japanese underworld mystical mystery fantasy fiction, for some reason (see also Number9dream).
posted by unsurprising 02 June | 11:18
Ian McEwan. Totally seems like somebody I'd dig, but I've read four or five of his books, and I just can't quite get into 'em.
posted by box 02 June | 11:25
I don't hate, but think are overrated: Eggers, Whedon, Ian McEwan, Pynchon & D.F. Wallace.
Can't read but understand why people like: Henry James.
Don't get: Faulkner, Lovecraft.
Don't understand why anyone reads: Cory Doctorow
Couldn't stay with: The Wire, Treme.
Appreciate but can't enjoy because of what I know about him: Keillor.
Enjoy but should quit wasting time with: Chess (not the musical, the game)
posted by Obscure Reference 02 June | 11:56
Andrew Bird. Modest Mouse. I've tried to like both and must admit I can tolerate neither.

I haven't been able to finish any Tom Wolfe book, ever, even when I liked the subject. William Gibson is trash pulp fiction neatly dressed in an avant-garde tux.

The Beatles, U2, REM and Bruce Springsteen are easily top of the heap of Most. Overrated. Bands. Ever.

Jethro Tull makes me want to kick puppies.

on preview: Obscure Preference, I am so with you on Doctorow.
posted by lonefrontranger 02 June | 11:59
Stephen King. Gone With the Wind (both the book and the movie). DeNiro and Pacino. Robert Heinlein. David Foster Wallace.
posted by WolfDaddy 02 June | 12:45
Basquiat. Jeff Koons. Matt Taibbi. Hunter S. Thompson. Wilco. Phish.
posted by initapplette 02 June | 12:59
Appreciate but can't enjoy because of what I know about him: Keillor.


What do you know about him?
posted by danf 02 June | 13:26
Maybe unspeakable things happen in Lake Woebegone? Maybe something ancient and evil lurks in those waters, worshiped by an ancient cult posing as Lutherans, following the hideous directions of their demonic leaders, the Norwegian Bachelor Farmers?


posted by King of Prontopia 02 June | 14:42
Just don't get the appeal of: Dave Eggers, McSweeney's (someday I will actually laugh when I read one of their jokes?), ABBA, Tori Amos, SNL
Overrated: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Pride and Prejudice
Authors that cause me to have a love-hate relationship with cyberpunk: Neal Stephenson - overly cute/hyperactive style of writing and sex scenes inserted willy-nilly into random parts of the book that kind of ruin the flow of the otherwise awesome story. Same goes for William Gibson. Cory Doctorow is like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson in that he writes in that irritating hyperactive-nerd way but doesn't do it as well.



posted by millions of peaches 02 June | 14:46
Charlie Kaufman. I loved Being John Malkovitch, liked Adaptation but Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York left me flat. He gave a talk at EbertFest and came off as being very full of himself.
posted by octothorpe 02 June | 14:52
Just off the top of my head... these may not be the worst of all offenders but they are what comes to mind.

The Rolling Stones
Joss Whedon
Madonna
Shakespeare
John F. Kennedy
Alexander Calder
Jackson Pollock
Pablo Picasso
J.K Rowling
David Eddings




posted by King of Prontopia 02 June | 14:53
Electric guitars. They just sound whiny to me.
posted by filthy light thief 02 June | 15:07
When Springsteen made the covers of Time and Newsweek, all us cool kids wrote him off as an overnite sellout.

I have given the Grateful Dead so many chances to impress me, and they haven't done it yet.

Michael Chabon - 'nuff said.

Al Franken as a comedian. Helluva writer, though.

I'm coming around to appreciate Tom Waits.
posted by Ardiril 02 June | 15:09
I refuse to believe anyone dislikes Tori Amos! That bridge on Little Earthquakes is one of the greatest things evar
posted by Firas 02 June | 15:52
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yeah, Internet, I said it.
posted by box 02 June | 15:56
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yeah, Internet, I said it.

http://i50.tinypic.com/a2arcw.jpg
posted by Firas 02 June | 16:08
I forgot the biggie:

Seinfeld

hate hate hate

posted by Ardiril 02 June | 16:13
Dislike:
Saxophones
Jazz (headaches, instantly)
Tori Amos
Ani
the sound of brushing your teeth
The Alchemist
Craig Ferguson
Monet

but I like a lot of things you guys don't:
Seinfeld
DFW
Faulkner
Pollock
Koons
posted by rmless2 02 June | 16:23
Elvis Presley
posted by aniola 02 June | 17:19
Most modern furniture / design. Design week in Milan hanging out and being shown around by some of the nicest, sharpest and talented designers who gave me all sorts of insights, yet when looking at all the exiting stuff shown all I could think was stuff like what's the point? and that looks really uncomfortable..... Seems so pretentious, full of hard rough edges and downright ugly. Not to mention boring. Made me feel like a right heel too.
posted by dabitch 02 June | 17:32
I was a big Tori Amos fan at one point in time. Then she started putting out weird grocery lists disguised as songs and fluffy elevator music that I would expect to hear on the local soft rock station alongside Michael Bolton. I still like the first three albums and parts of the fourth but beyond that there is little that I can even tolerate.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs 02 June | 17:35
I like Hemingway
posted by gaspode 02 June | 17:45
I do not get:

Thomas Pynchon -- cold, weird, convoluted. Not engaging in the least.

Joanna Newsom -- "Wagner's music is better than it sounds"
posted by jason's_planet 02 June | 18:34
The movie "Pulp Fiction"
Jazz music
"Seinfeld"
"Entourage"
Pugs
Apple products- except my iPhone, I LOVE that. The rest of their stuff is overpriced crap IMHO. Never had an iPod that lasted more than 6 months.
BoingBoing- it just has this smug, ultra hip, vibe that leaves me flat. Shaddup, kid, you aren't as important as you think you are.

Wow, this list makes me sound like a cranky old woman.
posted by evilcupcakes 02 June | 19:26
I love Modest Mouse, Joss Whedon, William Gibson, William Faulkner, Buffy, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso (nobody cared if he was an asshole ;-) ) Hunter S. Thompson, and probably some more stuff y'all do not like. The Stones. Murakami.

But I do not like, either, David Foster Wallace or Pynchon or Tori Amos (poor man's Kate Bush, I say) or Stevie Wonder or Ani DiFranco or - and this is the one where I get stoned but not in a good way - Johnny Cash. No, I'm sorry, the Man in Black leaves me cold. Sacrilege, I know.
posted by mygothlaundry 02 June | 21:43
Oh and I can't do The Wire either, but that's not the fault of the series. I think it's because I lived in Baltimore too long and there's an element of poverty voyeurism around the admiration for it that sends me into a crazy frothing rage.
posted by mygothlaundry 02 June | 21:56
Lots that I agree and disagree on, but I am compelled to comment on the awesome Ardirl's - NO on Grateful Dead. I'm in the car on Saturday morning, I think, oh, who changed my radio station, this SUX, and lo, I remember, it is the Grateful Dead and Friends show. What the.

Tori was relevant once - early - but now is very strange - a scene - an industry - I think the last lyric I heard of hers was: "I'm an MILF, Don't You Forget. . ." (repeat)

No.

I like Faulkner, too, but hey, this thread is like BOP's ultimate playground, so I won't fight.

Yes, mgl, since I am here, I stone you lightly with a cush-ball for not getting Johnny.




posted by rainbaby 02 June | 22:02
I don't enjoy reading AskMe. I know it's most people's favorite part of the site, but meh.

I can't stand NPR.
posted by Eideteker 02 June | 22:52
I was going to say that I don't like Joanna Newsome but I was afraid of not sounding cool if I said that.
posted by danf 02 June | 23:13
Neil Gaiman. I think his work is ok, but not particularly special in terms of characterization, writing style, plot, or imagination. I am perplexed by the nearly universal adulation he receives.

Also, War for the Oaks. I know it's an majorly influential urban fantasy, but the main romance gives me the creeps (it felt like the heroine ditched one controlling asshole and replaced him with another).
posted by creepygirl 03 June | 00:41
I never really got Banksy.
Mozart leaves me blah, and I like the 1st movement of Beethoven's 9th much more than the 4th.
I tried to read some China Mieville and couldn't get into it.
Neuromancer just made no sense to me.
Russian and Chinese almost universally are impossible for me to follow.
Lady Gaga's lyrics strike me as completely insipid and it makes me dislike most of her songs. The costumes also strike me as "trying to hard."
I am completely uninterested in nearly every Oscar-winning movie. My movie watching habits tend towards things that are mostly fluff, and don't like ones that try to make me Think.
posted by that girl 03 June | 01:14
Michael Chabon
Fassbinder
Madonna
posted by brujita 03 June | 01:45
Robert Altman and John Irving.
posted by Joe Beese 03 June | 07:42
oh god Joe Beese, don't even get me started on John Irving... is he really that well regarded? He and Ayn Rand are the only 2 writers whose works I've ever actually physically flung across a room in disgust.
posted by lonefrontranger 03 June | 08:43
Oh GOOD. I thought I was the only person in the world who didn't like Joanna Newsome. She makes me want to kick puppies.
posted by gaspode 03 June | 08:58
Trent Reznor
Sufjan Stevens
The Smiths/Morrissey
posted by octothorpe 03 June | 22:15
I forgot one--Star Wars. I just don't get why people like it so much. I'm big into science fiction and couldn't get into it at all. I didn't watch any of them until about 2005, though.

Also it's kind of a relief to see that there are people who don't like Dave Eggers.
posted by millions of peaches 04 June | 13:18
This thread is awesome.

Hate: Charles Effin' Dickens gaaaahhhh, do not make me read it, pleeeaaassse.

Faulkner's Sound & t. Fury, yeccchhh. Put me off Faulkner.
Not a big fan of John Updike, DF Wallace, Seinfeld, The Sopranos, South Park, Patti Smith (sacre bleu!)

Used a Mac for a while. meh, a few nice things, a few stupid things, no Aha! moment

I like Garrison Keillor, but I am from the Midwest. David Sedaris is pretty funny in person.
posted by theora55 04 June | 17:38
The Who.

Solidly just OK.

[runs away]
posted by DarkForest 04 June | 18:24
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