Odd Woman Out

Things I hate that pretty much everyone else loves (or, as my husband calls this post, "Why I'm a Loser"):

• Bananas

They look like they're the texture of poop, they're phallic shaped, and they smell like vomit. What's to like? When my son, the Juban Princeling, got old enough to eat bananas I had to overcome a lifetime of revulsion to give them to him. Touching them made me gag. Smelling them made my eyes water. How do people eat these vile things?

Barf.
(Photo credit: Bananas, December 2006 by photographer Steve Hopson.)

Since getting pregnant again I can't have them in the house. The sight of even an unpeeled banana makes me nauseous. And the way my son eats them - taking a few bites, waving it in my face, leaving it out to stink and smell - they are absolutely out of the question right now.

• "The Wire"

Everyone loves this show and thinks it represents the apex of mankind's genius. My husband and sister-in-law want to petition the committee in Sweden to make a Nobel Prize in Television just for "The Wire."

I think it's crap.

For a long time I avoided this show, despite everyone telling me how great it was, that it would make my hair naturally shinier and fuller, give me better orgasms, teach my child algebra, clean my house, and feed starving children. "I don't like cop shows," I'd say. "Oh," people would gasp and clutch their pearls, "it's NOT a cop show! It's so much MORE than that!" Bullshit. It's a cop show. I have this insane "Three-episode rule," where I give any new show 3 full episodes to get its act together and be good before I write it off. After one episode of "The Wire" I knew I hated it, but my husband held me to my three episode rule. That's three hours of my life I'll never get back. Not a cop show? Please. It has every cop show cliche my husband and I always make fun of. The "loose cannon," the angry, yelling chief, the corrupt higher-ups, blah blah blah. After I gave it a chance - more of a chance than it deserved, IMO - someone said, "Oh yeah, if you don't like cop shows then you probably won't like 'The Wire.'"

DUR!

Not a cop show, except that it totally is one. A crappy one.

My husband and sister-in-law and brother and my friend Ronnie and her husband can all go ahead and start their new "Wire"-based religion, or whatever it is people who like this crap show do with themselves when they're not nagging me and telling me how wrong I am. I'll be off watching the entire series of "Firefly" again. Now, THAT'S a show.

• "Saved By the Bell"

For some reason, my brother, Mr. Funny, and I never watched this show growing up, and so we have no idea what the big deal is. Why would you want to watch a show about school when it's the weekend? I don't get it. I seriously don't get this show.

• Rome

Everyone loves Rome, and I know why: it's gorgeous and it's in Italy and there's all those fun, crazy ruins, right?

Here's the thing. I went to Rome at the tail-end of a 6-week study abroad trip to Italy, during which time:
My boyfriend back home cheated on me, twice,
I could not pick up the language to save my life, despite 3 hours of class a day by a native speaker, tutoring by his native speaking wife, and living in a town where no one spoke English,
Living on the sixth floor of a hotel with no elevator,
It being the mid-90s and therefore my only contact with friends and family (and my cheating boyfriend) back home being old fashioned postal letters and a once-a-week phone call from a crowded payphone bank in the center of town.

Meh.
(Photo credit: From Swedish wikipedia, picture taken by Andreas Ribbefjord)

By the time I got to Rome I was so OVER this whole thing. I wanted to go home. The one redeeming quality of the small town we'd stayed in up to that point was the food: we ate lunch and dinner every day at the town's one restaurant, where the chef/owner would cook us whatever inspired him that day. Rome was just...not happening for me. It was crowded and loud and people kept trying to run us down with their cars, and it seemed dirty all the time all over the city, and the food was crap compared to what we had gotten used to. And the Sistine Chapel was under scaffolding. And there was a monument to the "defeat" at Masada that disturbed me. And our hotel room had TV with cable, including MTV Europe, and we hadn't seen TV in a month and a half. And I wanted to go home.

I should probably give Rome another shot. But first, there are many, many other places in this world I need to travel to first. Rome and it's redemption will just have to wait.

• Vodka

Maybe it's my Eastern European DNA, but vodka makes me sad. I drink it and I cry, probably in memory of all my ancestors who were terrorized by pogroms. Or something.

I don't understand the current vodka trend. If I want to drink cranberry juice, I'll drink cranberry juice. And Red Bull and vodka? What, so you can behave like a tool faster and with more energy?

Yes, please. (Photo credit: Chris huh.)

I'll drink pretty much anything else. I'll do tequila shots with you. I'll drink whisky, whiskey, bourbon, or Scotch. I enjoy a good gin and tonic in the summer, or a nice mojito. Beer. Wine. But vodka? As far as I know it is meant to be drunk mixed in with other stuff, and it's meant to blend in so well that you can't taste it. So...what's the point? I don't go out of my way to find quality single-malt Scotch because I don't want to taste it. I get it because it's delicious.

Keep your trendy vodka. Some of us have better drinks to drink.

• Seafood

Fish are friends, not food!

No, I never had a bad experience with seafood. Yes, I grew up in Miami. No, I've never tried it. I can smell it. That's enough.

I like looking at fish. I like going to aquariums. I eat every other kind of animal. In my years on earth I've eaten reindeer, wildebeeste, various kind of deer, ostrich, quail eggs, lamb, and I've even tried crocodile.

For a while I ate fried shrimp, but after a few bad reactions I've even given up on that. While other women complain about giving up sushi during pregnancy, that's not an issue for me. So it's almost like an advantage, really. Right?

Srsly? People EAT this???
(Photo credit: Beyer at de.wikipedia)

My husband loves seafood. Since I don't eat it, I don't cook it. If he wants fish, he has to wait until we go out to eat, or cook it himself. (Oh, stop your crying. He enjoys cooking. We're modern like that.) I'm that annoying person at seafood restaurants - I don't deny that other people eat this crap - who orders chicken. Or steak. Just not fish. If it makes it's home in the sea, I won't eat it.


I'm not saying that I'm better than you people because I avoid these things like the plague. Just that...maybe I am.

***
Always wanted to be a patron of the arts, but you are lazier and poorer than the Medicis? Help fund Mr. Funny's animation project, "The Dangerous Wanderings of C. Philip Montgomery: A Cartoon About a Time When Earth Needed to be Explored All Over..."

About the project:
"New York comedians/writers Ash Louis and Evan Morgenstern want to take you on a journey to 1909 to witness The Dangerous Wanderings of C. Philip Montgomery. This hilarious 13 minute cartoon will be the pilot for a new absurdist comedy series following early 1900's adventurer C. Philip Montgomery and his crew as they explore the world, and deal with a petty rivalry with a Russian-Accented Canadian crew, an addiction to margaritas, a lack of money, and an odd use for punchbowls." Simply click here and donate the amount of your choice, though $15 gets you an e-newsletter and $100 gets you a "sexy" calendar of the creators. I told my brother I'll pay him $100 to NOT show me that calendar, but, you know, I'm his sister. Do it. Do it for ART.