I was a bit surprised when, in both Bernard Chapin’s video review and Matt Forney’s online review for Aaron Clarey’s latest book, The Curse of the High IQ, they mention how Clarey refers to sports entertainment as “sportsball”, a popular colloquialism that is typically used to describe sports as entertainment for the plebes.  I was under the impression a person like that would have a less cavalier attitude towards people who love sports and other popular entertainment, and that it is people on the left who judge people and call things “sportsball”; not to mention calling the people who enjoy it “dumb bros.”

Let’s get one thing straight; I may have tattoos, I may listen to weird underground music that nobody’s ever heard of, I may watch a bunch of cult films that nobody’s ever seen, but, when I go out, I would rather hang out at my local sports bar, watch sports on the TV, drink a stout, scarf down chicken wings and have said beer and wings served to me by a hot waitress, who wears black tights and a low cut tank top.  I’m over the era of my life where I want to sit in a dimly lit quasi dive populated by arty hipsters.  The fact that said bar will have a jukebox filled with the music of hip bands like Can, Captain Beefheart and the Fall DOES NOT MATTER to me AT ALL.  I literally DO NOT CARE if other people share my taste in music, and chances are these same people probably wouldn’t jam out to ZZ Top, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, UFO, the Scorpions or Deep Purple, bands I like just as much as the approved “cool” bands in the post-punk, post-hardcore, kraut-rock and noisy indie rock genres.

Furthermore, I do not care if a girl I sleep with/date is a total “sportsball” loving, reality TV show watching bimbo, a military history buff who shoots guns, a tattooed metal chick with an Acid Bath patch on her denim vest or a glasses-wearing book nerd.  I’ve had all of these varieties and realized that the only things that matter to me are whether the girl is attractive and fun to be around.

So, where am I going with all of this?

I realize that, at age 31, I was smarter, cooler, funner and more accepting of people when I was in high school, than during my college years when, all of a sudden, I attempted to be an elite “cultured” person.

I was reading a negative review on Netflix of Luis Buñuel’s 1972 classic The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and, while I believe whoever reviewed the film had the wrong idea that it was explicitly meant to diss the “bourgeoisie”, I believe that a good amount of younger people who are fans of the film believe that it is in fact supposed to be Buñuel’s “fuck you” to the rich, rather than just a charming series of surreal vignettes.

Y’see, arty hipstery people are leftists and they hate the rich, the 98%, yet, at the same time, fail to realize that the average working Joe would prefer to watch a super hero, CGI-filled Hollywood blockbuster rather than The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and that, in effect, would make the very people leftists are allegedly trying to help the target of their ridicule; in other words, the rank ‘n’ file are all idiots who would rather watch that “sportsball”, yet we want to help them.

And, sadly, though I was never a full on leftist, I had a similar view of people who I went to college with that didn’t share my tastes; people who didn’t watch countless hours of films by Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Passolini, Bergman, Herzog and Bresson or read thousands of pages of Faulkner, Hemmingway, Doestoevsky, Proust, Joyce, Camus or Balzac or didn’t spend thousands of hours filling their ears with the sounds of Can, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Faust, Public Image Ltd., the Fall, Devo, Miles Davis, the Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten or Captain Beefheart (ya know, smart people music).

On top of that, I convinced myself that I had to date “smart”, arty hipster chicks who wore the black rim glasses, had a pixie cut and wore skinny jeans and T. Rex t-shirts.  I cannot believe how hot the girl I was dating back in 2007 was.  If I could turn back the hands of time and do it over again, I would have been waaay more grateful for what the arbiters of sex had given me; a hot, blonde, boob enhanced ex-stripper, who wore a super short, denim skirt that revealed killer, worked out legs to boot.  She had the comforting personality of a stripper, the kind where she puts her hand on your knee and leans in to talk to you, sending shivers up and down your spine even though she only means it as a friendly gesture most of the time.  And she was like the ultimate bedroom slut.  Without getting too graphic, virtually nothing was off limits.  And she was ready to bang ANY time!

But, at the time, I thought I was above dating a blonde, former stripper airhead – just so you get an idea of how much of an airhead she was, she did fill-in puzzles, crosswords puzzles where they just give you the words, in her spare time and virtually knew nothing about politics, history or what was going on in the world – so, I didn’t take it seriously, just biding my time, while secretly feeling I should be with that kinda cute, nerdy looking hipster chick.

BOY, would do that over!

And then, after I left school, I began to realize how stupid all of that was.  Well not right away; what really helped me realize that I was being an elitist mangina was when I lived with Chris in Ypsilanti.  He took being an elitist, hipster, feminist pandering mangina to whole new heights that I did not think were possible.  At an age where I decided that the Bergman and Fellini can rest alongside the John Carptenter and Wes Craven, that I can be a fan of Can and Public Image Ltd. along with Slayer and Metallica, Chris, who is several years older than me, would still make snarky comments about my musical taste and try really hard to appease some of the local feminist hipster bitches.  On top of that, he would try to make me look stupid for having a sex drive!  Once he was talking about going to a “burlesque” show, a form of entertainment that allows manginas to look at naked women with impunity, since there’s an “arty” context behind it; burlesque shows have old time-y clothes, old time-y jokes, old time-y music and the women do an old time-y strip tease, rather than the pole dancing and dick riding that goes on at Deja Vu’s.  I say to Chris, “oh cool, do we get to see Amy naked?” and he responds with, “you’re into that sorta thing, aren’t you?”  Like, aren’t you, dude?  Last time I checked you are a heterosexual?  I know this because I actually played matchmaker in one case.

But, I digress.  The point is that people like that make you realize how dumb it is to look down on people who have different tastes from you.  I actually respect people who can nerd out on sports statistics the way that I can nerd out on bands or movies.  Although I made the point in an another article that, given the law of large numbers, you should judge a book by its cover, you might be surprised by what different people can show or teach you if you have an open mind and quit judging people by their tastes in music, movies, literature, women or their love for “sportsball.”