Illustration by Josh Hagler

Wednesday October 24, 2001

Check this! I'm involved with a few different groups (let your imaginations run wild) and in one of them we have a listserv. This listserv is typically one of my few sources of e-mail in a day, often receiving dozens about nothing in particular. Like monkeys for example, and other primates - how funny they are, how funny they aren't and how unbelievably talented that one in "Any Which Way But Loose" is. When he drinks the beer and smashes the can · pure gold!

One of the most popular submissions of late to this particular list has been, well · lists. Lists of things that people really, really like. The lists are traditionally broken up into categories like books, movies, music, miscellaneous, etc. These lists have posed some interesting questions for me.

At first I thought, hooray! What a fresh and exciting way to get to know people quickly and efficiently and without all of that laborious talking and weeding through chitchat. Hooray! But the more I thought about it, the more complicated it became.

How truthful can such a list be? I started looking through the lists that had already been sent and while they started off simply enough, they quickly became more involved and obnoxiously long. Really long. Pages long. Why so long?

Screw it. I'm just going to break it down.

A lot of people seem to think - though oft times it be subconscious - that what they like is a good representation of who they are, and people are dying to express who they are. That's why the lists are so damn long. People are terrified that they're going to leave some precious little quirk of their personality out and they won't be fully represented. There is, however, a problem with this entire practice. The problem is that people understand that what they like is representing them so they put forward what they want people to see instead of what actually may be true.

James Joyce for example. Joyce made an appearance on a few lists and while I might understand appreciating Joyce, really, really liking him or loving him for that matter is another thing altogether. The only person who really loved Joyce was Captain Onanism himself, Joyce, and if you think that you love him too then you haven't read enough of him. "Dubliners" I can understand, but still · if you say that you love Joyce, then you're really just trying to put yourself on an academic and intellectual platform that he created for himself by not being reader friendly. That's not real.

And don't think that I'm trying to suggest that I'm immune to all of this. For instance, right now, I'm dying to tell you how much I like Bob Dylan, Raymond Carver and The Hustler but there's no way in hell I'd tell you that I like soft-core internet porn.

One might think that the best way to find out people's true likes is to ask them why they like a certain thing, but I have been less than successful with this particular approach. Most times when you ask people why they like something, they don't seem to know.

"I don't know. I just like it."

It's either that, or their explanation comes up short. Why is it so difficult to explain why you like something? Maybe it's because it's so difficult to confront who you really are. Maybe it's because we don't really know who we really are. I can't believe I just said that. The next thing you know, I'll be suggesting that we go try to "find ourselves."

Basically, all I'm really trying to say is: Don't be ashamed of what you like. As long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, then do it. If you like watching TV every once in a while, then great. Don't let the pseudo-intellectuals tell you it rots the brain. Screw'em! If you like stuffing cottage cheese down your knickers and donning an outfit of latex while skipping around and singing the theme to "Fat Albert," then so be it. Gonna have a good time! Do what you like.

You've been dancing with Mr. Brownstone. Thank you and goodnight.