Confession of a Hater


Jacques Prévert by Robert Doisneau

So I’m reading the Shamus’s perfectly nice recent article in these parts about that perfectly nice artist Stevie Wonder and I had the awful urge to leave a comment, but after for once thinking it over, I desisted. So now I’m writing this instead.

Because I have to admit I fucking hate Stevie Wonder. No, that’s not true, I don’t hate Stevie Wonder, but I do hate the horrible sappy life-affirming music he puts out. Now if Stevie had called it quits when he was Little Stevie I’d have no problem with the dude. If he had hung it up after “Uptight” he would be in my own private pantheon of almost-forgotten 60s greats like Dyke & the Blazers, and the Seeds, and of course Gabby and the Gazelles. But Stevie did not hang it up, and he went on to record crap like “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Isn’t She Lovely”, and most horrible of all, “Ebony and Ivory”. Which brings me to Paul McCartney. I don’t hate the man, but I really hate his silly love songs, I hated them when he did them with the Beatles, and they just got worse when he didn’t have John Lennon around to cast a withering cold eye on him.

Let’s see, who else do I hate? Oh, yeah, Billy Joel; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Simon without Garfunkel; the Eagles. Hate him, hate ‘em, hate him, hate ‘em.

The Police? Please. Sting? Fuck off to tantric heaven, dude. A bunch of people I work with went to see the Police reunion concert. They loved them. Stewart Copeland is the best drummer ever, Sting still looks great and has the same voice he had back then. Really? That means I still hate them. The Police are the rock & roll quintessence of white boy smugness and I hate ‘em. Speaking of smugness, I never liked the Talking Heads and every other cracked-voice art-school band that followed in their wake.

I get tired thinking about all the crap I hate. I mean, I like the Grateful Dead (whom just about everybody else around here hates), but I hate Bob Weir’s songs and I really hate Deadheads, and I wouldn’t be caught dead going to one of these post-Garcia incarnations of the Dead.

And so far I’ve only talked about music.

I’m a writer and obviously I’m a contemporary or else I wouldn’t be writing this, but I hate just about any contemporary fiction I pick up. I loathed The Corrections. I was at my mom’s for a week and she had accidentally taken out a large-print edition of The Corrections thinking it was a thriller, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I tortured myself halfway through that book, hating every sentence and the onanistic self-loving personality underriding it all, and finally could take no more. I would have tossed it into the trash but it was a library book.

Don’t get me started on romantic comedies, let’s just not go into Bruce Willis, and I’ve already dealt with Robin Williams.

For years I worked in theatre, despite the fact that I have hated nearly every play I’ve ever seen. There’s something terribly wrong with me, I know.

Don’t talk to me about Bush and Cheney, those are givens. Me, I’m still hating Bill Clinton because if he had only kept his dick in his pants Al Gore would be president today and not Dick Cheney.

I’ll just close this before everyone totally hates me, but I do want to say one last thing; I hate magic tricks and I hate magicians. About ten years ago this woman friend of mine apparently thought she was doing me a favor by taking me to see Penn and Teller. God I hated that show, with that blustering big guy just never shutting the fuck up. I kind of liked the little guy because he never said a word. But why couldn’t the big guy keep his trap shut too? At least then I might have been able to catch a nap. But oh, no, it was ninety minutes of bellowing, I felt like I was listening to the mating cries of some magically boring tuxedo-clad elephant. And to make matters worse the dude had a ponytail.

And I really hate dudes with ponytails.

(Photo of Jacques Prévert by Robert Doisneau, neither of whom were haters. This has been another Newcritics exclusive and a Quinn/Martin Production, but you can check out my joint for charming little tales and poems of sunshine and love.)

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July 24th, 2007
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Viewing 34 Comments

    • ^
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    Bwhahahahaha! Good post.
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    Nurse, Mr. Leo's lithium drip seems to have run dry again...
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    I like about half of the things you hate, but I don't hate your post.
    I am in absolute accord on your take on the Grateful Dead and I love that you tried to read The Corrections (never looked at it because I hate books like that) IN LARGE PRINT. The only thing worse would be the audio book of it shouted for the hard of hearing.
    • ^
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    Stevie Wonder songs? Hate? You must pay to much attention to the lyrics. Superstition, Higher Ground, Sir Duke, Golden Lady, Another star, Master Blaster, to name a few.

    Name another song writer that has produced better songs from the mid 60's up to the 80's?

    Don't particularly like a lot of his lyrics either but I gotta disagree with you about the music.
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    I think all of us are quite like that - when you are passionate about something, the passion runs both ways.

    You should have seen / heard me when the (at the time) three surviving Beatles chose to work with The Anti-Lennon* for "The Beatles Anthology" sessions. I was so full of bile I had special agents from the American Liver Association trailing me with buckets...


    *jeff lynne of elo
    • ^
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    Love the photo, love you, disagree. But I'd rather read you and disagree, because you actually know what you're talking about and really do give a shit, than read any of a hundred other writers on the Web on these issues. One more "Ian Curtis was god and the Beatles were shit" post--and that's in the generic sense, it could just as easily be "Tupac was god" or "The Beatles were god"; any kind of intense but airheaded and uninformed low-key bombast--and I will shoot the monitor, innocent though it is.
    Frank Zappa pointed out that for most people their choice in music is like their choice in clothes, cars, or wallpaper: they don't care about it much, they just want to project a particular image to the world. Not for everybody, though. Not for all of us.
    • ^
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    This could be the best post ever put up at Newcritics! I love talking about who I hate. I got many of my blogging pal's undies in a bunch recently when I could no longer hold back my pure hatred of Bjork, and my feelings flooded out into a blog comment. I even made the claim that those who profess to liking Bjork only do so because they don't want their other friends to know that they secretly loath her. Nobody wants to be first to come clean. “You just don’t get her man…”. Yes, I think I do. I get the Jupiter size entirety of her suckiness. Hate me for my hatin’ if you have to.

    I sometimes use the word "sucks" as a substitute for saying I hate something. I've been told by past criticism professors and many others that I should avoid use of the term, but saying something sucks just feels better to me in situations where it’s undeniably warranted. Here’s an example using Viscount’s biblical truth above, "Jeff Lynn sucks, he has done nothing but ruin every record he’s ever produced by ego manically attempting to make them all sound like ELO, which sucks because ELO sucked". I’m far more selective about my use of the adjective, but in high school I used it quite liberally. Back then I hated everything because, well, everything sucked with the exception of the shit I liked. Now, I can hate things that others don’t without saying it sucks (i.e. I “get it”, but I don’t like it), but now the distinction is when I say something sucks it means that after careful unbiased consideration I hate it because it really does indeed suck (Newcritics readers take note).

    You’re about 90% on the mark with the shit you hate Dan, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m currently listening to the Grateful Dead record I was told should enlighten me to the magic that allegedly is them, but so far five tracks into it, and after 20+ years of giving them a “second” listen, they’re one for five and still firmly in the “sucks” category with me, but I’ll stick it out and see if they can’t improve their standing on my shit that sucks charts.

    “Sting? Fuck off to tantric heaven, dude.” Pure genius.

    “For years I worked in theatre, despite the fact that I have hated nearly every play I’ve ever seen. There’s something terribly wrong with me, I know.” There’s nothing wrong with you at all, you’re just saying what we all know in our hearts to be true and are afraid to admit.
    • ^
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    Hilarious post - I might point out, Dan, that you clearly hated the 80s.
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    OofC: Perhaps Penn Gillete should "read" the audiobook of The Corrections?

    Dan: I get dumped on for being "negative," "too critical," and "hating everything" when I say I hate stuff, as deserving as that stuff might be. So I try not to indulge. However, I was happy to indulge by proxy simply by reading your post.
    • ^
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    Ah what the hell:

    Frampton
    Hemingway
    Audrey Hepburn
    American Idol
    Woolf and Pynchon (but not Joyce)
    South Park (but not the Simpsons)
    ELO, Boston, Foreigner, Styx et al
    Jackson Pollock
    ER (but not House)
    Maureen Dowd
    The Cars, The Knack, et al
    Musicals of almost any kind...

    I'm sure more will occur to me and to everyone else.
    • ^
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    This post has had me laughing all day, hater!

    ...Sting still looks great and has the same voice he had back then. Really? That means I still hate them.

    LOL...

    Stop it!

    And Tony Alva, stop saying "sucks." It's not a very nice word.

    And now I'm off to listen to "Isn't She Lovely." I downloaded it after I read The Shamus's (I hate when I don't know if my possessive puncutation is correct! With all those "s's" and everything!) fine, fine post.

    So there!

    Isnt she lovely
    Isnt she wonderfull
    Isnt she precious

    LOL.
    • ^
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    So Dan, whom do you LOVE? Who or what grabs you up and won't let go? So you know, your feet are off the ground whenever the musician, writer, actor, dancer puts it out there--and all just for you? What artists ring your bells every time? (What are politicians doing in your list anyway? If they don't merit LOVE, they don't merit HATE. Disdain is different.)
    This really is a great post. But for me it stopped at Chapter One.
    If you list your LOVES and what they do to how, every time? Half the time? Few are perfect. I'll list mine.
    The Grateful Dead, as I've said here before, will send screaming into the unknown night. That might not be all-out hatred, but my aversion to them is intense and personal.
    Here, I can't resist throwing in another example. I once worked with a woman, who was as level-headed and good natured as anyone I've known, but a few notes from Joni Mitchell and she'd start screaming, tear at her hair, and run around searching for the source so she could kill it.
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    It's so nice to see a humble late-night post on the subject of hating bringing out so much love.

    Dear E. Glenn: actually I'm not on lithium but in fact I did run out of weed yesterday. Q.E.D.

    Dear Marcus: as our Latin teacher Father Fahey at good old Cardinal Dougherty High used to say, when he wasn't whacking our wise asses raw with the heavy ribbed rubber soul of a boot, "De gustibus non est disputandum." But if you bring over some good weed I'll gladly sit down and listen to "Songs in the Key of Life" with you, which I believe I still have lying around here on vintage vinyl. (The fold-out sleeve is good for separating the seeds and stems.)

    Tony: we tend to toss around the term "lol" a trifle liberally, but your comments really did make me laugh out fucking loud. As for the Dead, I wonder what album you're listening to? The only studio albums I ever listen to are "Workingman's" and "American Beauty", but what I really like is the live stuff, especially the Dick's Picks from around '69 to '73. I just can't get into '80s or 90s Dead although that era has its strange adherents. Maybe Jason Chervakis could recommend a good live concert for you, I think he's much better versed on the Dead discography than I.

    Tom: I actually had a lot of really good times in the 80s on base physical levels, but, yeah, not too much of the music from that period is on my frequent-play list, with one notable exception, and, Kathleen, this begins to answer your comment: I am a complete and unapologetic fan of the Smiths. I just love Morrissey and Johnny Marr's songs, and I've never grown tired of them. In fact I'm listening to them right now.

    The boy with the thorn in his side
    Behind the hatred there lies
    A murderous desire for love...

    I hope that in some future pieces I can talk about some of my other loves. (And in fact in the "comments" to Tony Smith's piece above I have blatantly confessed to my love for Edith Piaf.)
    • ^
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    It's funny, the older I get the more I find I don't have these passionate hatreds.

    I pretty much give the benefit of the doubt to anyone trying to do something creative. I think that's a difficult lifestyle choice and god bless the folks who succeed at making a living at it, or just succeed at continuing to do it. I learn something from every creative act I witness and frankly I cherish the experience of witnessing it. There I go, in touch w/ my inner hippie again.

    What I hate is stuff I perceive as hack work...cynical, made for market, devoid of any shred of effort at creative individuality or insight, pure creation by focus group. The Devil Wears Prada, for example, remains my example of the worst kind of movie anyone could ever make (didn't read the book). That, I hated. (Which is not to say I hate commercial, made-for-market stuff...just the stuff that feels empty of any creative spark, driven exclusively by market consideration.)

    There's a load of creative stuff I don't get:

    South Park.

    Robert Altman (well, Gosford Park I hated because it felt like a vapid drawingroom/upstairs downstairs rehash, again, no creative spark).

    Yes, Aerosmith (I hear the tightness, tho generally I favor looseness and improvisation; I love the bass playing. Joe Perry's good. The but songs barely qualify as songs--I need something a little more ambitious conceptually).

    Deadwood.
    Gilbert & Sullivan.
    Nirvana.
    Cat Power.
    Reggeaton music in general.
    Most 17th century English narrative poetry in rhyming couplets (I could never get through all of a Milton epic).

    But the only thing in the arts I can confidently say I hate w/ blood in my eyes is camp. I'd rather eat broken glass than see a John Waters movie or a Charles Ludlam play. If I wind up in hell, my torture will be an eternal screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
    • ^
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    Don't worry Blue Girl, I've grown up and normally refrain from using that word except on rare instances nowadays, but Dan's post was a chance to air it out. I've been a good boy for so long that a hate/sucks rant was overdue. Com'on BG it's one post, whadoya hate?

    Dan,

    Terrapin Station on my main man Jackson's recommendation. Opening track was so good it didn't even sound like'em. Went downhill for the next four. Many more to come so the verdict's still out.

    Man, is that Jeff Lynn a poopyhead:-)
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    TA, I toldja, Dick's Picks Vol 4, selections from the FIllmore East Feb 1970, just before they recorded Workingman's Dead. Might not sell you but you'll have the right context to evaluate the group.
    • ^
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    I've used this joke a hundred times on the blogs, but never here - so apologies to those who've already read it a hundred times:

    What does a Deadhead say when he runs out of dope?

    "Turn this shit off!"
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    There ya go, Tony. Now was that so hard? (I'd "LOL" but I don't want Dan to um, hate me.)

    I agree with Jason. I'm inspired or interested in most anything someone creates. Doesn't mean I like everything, but I hate very little.

    Being the sap that I am, I always think of this Vonnegut quote:

    Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

    Most things to me are hot fudge sundaes.

    Except that damn band my son listens to where the singer doesn't sing, he screams, cranked up to 11.

    Is this singing, I ask you?!

    Is it?! Is it?!!

    Oh God. How I hate it!
    • ^
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    Is this singing, I ask you?!

    Is it?! Is it?!!

    Oh God. How I hate it!

    Well, some of it is singing, and the rest of it is in a style that's actually been pretty common since the birth of punk thirty years ago. But how old is your son? If he's a teenager, part of the appeal is probably that you hate it.
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    Yeah, estiv, I get all that. Still doesn't mean I don't hate that screaming...

    ...with a passion that burns fiery hot.
    • ^
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    Blue Girl, teenage boys just gotta feel da noyze.

    Tony, that's a good choice for a live Dead from Jason. If you can't get into that then they're probably just not your cup of hash-infused tea.

    Well, this has been fun. (I'm only waiting for Tom K to drop in and bring up Ronnie Reagan.) If I may expand just a little on my post, I'd have to say I don't really hate any of the crap I mentioned; I'd just prefer not to be exposed to it. And I realize now that I mentioned only very famous and lauded (and, yes, talented) practitioners of their various arts. Of course Stevie Wonder is an excellent musician; his stuff's just not for me because it's too sappy. I wouldn't even have mentioned him if he wasn't so, um, all-pervasive and inescapable.

    I remember a few years back a writer named Dale Peck created a tempest in the tiny teapot of the literary world by beginning a review of Rick Moody's latest book by saying, "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation." Now I'm sure Mr. Peck knew that there were plenty of worse writers even than Moody of his generation, but what he was really saying was that he considered Moody to be the worst writer of his generation who was critically acclaimed and who sold lots of books.

    We writer folk sometimes make our points by slight exaggeration.

    I shall now take my bow and go write a poem about pretty flowers.
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    Dear Dan Leo,

    Ha!

    Signed (sealed, delivered)
    The Shamus.

    P.S. In the immortal words of Stevie Wonder: "When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer." Sounds sort of, uh, Morrissey-esque, eh? Cheers.
    • ^
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    A breath of fresh air.

    Whatlike most about this post is that it reminds me of me.

    I hate that.
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    BG,

    I love when those "singers" audition for American Idol. I couldn't agree with you more, that ssssss . I know you want to say it:-)
    • ^
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    Funny post Dan but most of your targets (Joel, Eagles, The Police, Bruce Willis, Jonathan Franzen) are fish in a barrel, way too easy. Thing is as much as I dislike all the above I doubt I could work up much HATE for any of them. Joel is utterly innocuous, sure, the Eagles a combination of genteel melancholy and fast last schmaltz, and Franzen merely the most annoying prestige novelist around. Still, I doubt they are worth the bile. Criticism sure, but hate? Nah. Way over the top. Sting? Possibly, (his self-importance makes Bono's look quaint) if I spent any time thinking about him.
    Also: Rick Moody was Dale Peck's whipping boy, but Peck moved on to bigger targets: Joyce, DeLillo, Stanley Crouch (who slapped him in the face in an encounter in a restaurant)in his book "Hatchet Jobs"
    • ^
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    Dear Sean, well, as I said in my comment above, I don't really hate any of the above-mentioned, but what are ya gonna do, write a piece entitled "Confession of a Mildly-Annoyed Fart?" And I guess I didn't want to jump all over less mainstream objects of hatred (or annoyance-causation) if only because their relative obscurity makes them less annoying to me (if I know about them at all, which I probably don’t because I’m so nearly completely out of it). Although I do work with this guy who plays the most God-awful obscure (to me) dance music or club music or whatever the fuck it is. I think that stuff I actually might really hate, but I don't even know who the "artists" are because I just leave the room when he plays it.

    But getting back to Billy Joel for a minute.

    When Twyla Tharp put on that stage show based on Billy Joel songs all I could think of (as someone who has worked in his own share of low-rent shows), was, “Those poor fucking singers and dancers. They not only have to go through weeks of rehearsal working out the moves and music to these awful songs, but then they have to go up on stage and actually perform this crap, and not only that, there's always the chance that the show will be a hit, and they'll have to go on doing seven or eight shows a week of this nonsense for a whole fucking year.” And then the show ran for three years. Now that's some rough shit. That's reason enough to get out of show biz right there. I don't hate Twyla Tharp, but she's out of her fucking mind.

    But then it gets weirder if you think about actually being Billy Joel. I mean, that’s all he does, all his fucking life, sing and play Billy Joel songs. No wonder he gets drunk and cracks his car up every once in a while. That’s too much of a cross for any man to bear.

    Hey, where’s Tom K anyway?
    • ^
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    Here I am, just to remind y'all that "Peace has come to Zimbabwe."

    Guess that's just one more demonstration that even talented artists can be . . . errr . . . can fail to perceive political realities.
    • ^
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    Welcome, aboard, Tom. And, hey, wait a minute -- I just realized I actually dig that Zimbabwe song! Ah well..nothing to do but quote one of my favorite Morrissey songs:

    And now my heart is full
    Now my heart is full
    And I just can't explain
    So I won't even try to
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    I always thought it was "Reefer comes to the Zimbabwe..."
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    I can really get behind this post, which is pretty uncharacteristic for me (my support of your sentiment, that is -- it's fully characteristic of me to disdain and disapprove). However, I have to note that you appear to have more than a passing familiarity to things you hate. When I don't like (or indeed hate) something, I stop watching, reading, or listening. Are you being force-fed this stuff or something?
    • ^
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    Two words, dear Brutus: Bally's gym. The music there's enough to make a guy just give up and get fat. Although I must say I never get tired of hearing Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak".

    "Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak
    Somewhere in this town..."

    I definitely did not hate Phil Lynott, the one and only African-Irish rock star gawd.
    • ^
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    you're not a happy person are you?
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    Damn, and here I thought I was a happy guy...except I forgot to mention the shaved-head craze. Anybody else tired of seeing all these Lex Luthor-wannabees?
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    Have you ever watched the Penn and Teller Show Bullshit? Basically what you described but in concentrated form - I bet you would hate that as well. On that show they attack all kind of con artists, but somehow their own arguments tend to contain quite a lot of b-s as well ;-)

    Personally I find them quite amusing but as far as magicians go they certainly aren't my favorites.
 

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