Filed by Bil at 5:07 pm under Fightin' Words, Pop Culture

I was playing Nintendo and eating cake like a responsible adult today when it suddenly occurred to me that rivalries are healthy outlets that evade people who don’t like baseball.

I spent all day today in a New York state of mind (irate) because a friend of mine — for anonymity’s sake, we’ll call him Wilbur the Cruel — has a tendency that before today puzzled me. What puzzled me was why I got so peeved when he started talking about music, because, really, he has fine taste. But I realized today that his taste is too fine. He is ordinarily 100% cool, no complaints at all; but when he starts talking about music, he turns into one of those pretentious, dickish snobs with a VERY limited scope of what’s good versus what’s bad, and it’s all black-and-white — it’s either a great tune or he FUCKING HATES IT. And that annoys me.

So I dreamt all day about the next time Wilbur the Cruel and I would next encounter each other, perhaps at a bar with a good jukebox. I got to a point of wanting him to start up again with the put-downs on some groove I’m diggin’ on. At first, I thought I would just walk away from this conversation as soon as it started, perhaps making a big show of rolling my eyes. That would surely prompt the question, “why would Bil just walk away from this discussion of music?” to which I would reply, “Because it’s not so much a discussion as a monotonous, thuggish rant about how any music that doesn’t come from London circa 1978 is absolute shit. Get over it. There. I said it.” And I would have said it.

Then I started thinking, no, that’s pretentious, too. Maybe I’ll just straight up call him on it. I’d say, “Yo, Wilbur the Cruel, why you gotta be a hater? You put your money in the jukebox, you’ll have your turn. Let the rest of us be.”

There were other scenarious that played out in my mind as the hours passed. One of them even involved arm-wrestling. But while I was zoning out with Mario Party 7, waiting for the next baseball game to start, it dawned on me that Wilbur the Cruel doesn’t like baseball. But he loves music. In baseball, or really in any sport, a good fan has one team that they totally hate. Don’t listen to what moms say, a sports rivalry makes it more interesting and provides an outlet for pent-up negativity. But if you don’t like sports, who do you trash talk? Who can possibly be the super-villain to your super-hero? This thought changed my attitude towards him.

I still can’t wait to meet him and have him start up with the old I-FUCKING-HATE-THIS-SONG, but now for a different reason. Rather than take it personally, I’m just gonna jump in and trash talk right back at him. Wilbur the Cruel feels the same way about Counting Crows that I feel about the Texas Rangers. I will engage him, and make him defend his statements. I’ll tell him that he’s just like one of those two guys at the New Amsterdam, starin’ at that yellow-haired girl. See what he makes of that.

Oh, and for the record: I like Led Zeppelin MORE than Counting Crows, thank you very much. But there’s no law that says I can’t like both. Fuck you.

Anyway, I’ll be Wilbur the Cruel’s rival just for the hell of it. Who knows? I might find I will look forward to this little game. And if I hate it, I can always just ostentatiously roll my eyes and walk away.

There. I said it.