You've got to be kidding

In the movie High Fidelity, John Cusack, as the music snob/record store owner Rob Gordon states, "It's what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films, these things matter. Call me shallow, it's the fuckin' truth."

I have to admit it -- I agree. I've shut down matches on eHarmony who claim the last book they read and enjoyed was The daVinci Code, just as I have turned men down who think 'alot' is one word that means 'many.' In fact, several (but not 'alot') of them have been offenders on both fronts, which makes it even easier. I've been called a snob for it, but, to quote, "these things matter."

I fear I've been judged similarly, but perhaps more benignly. Having learned that I majored in English, my neighbor, a retired English professor, regularly invites me to plays I have no interest in, and I'm too ashamed to admit that I don't really like Shakespeare all that much. She's a very nice person, and I'm sure she wouldn't think less of me for my tastes, though she did lament once that one of our otherwise intelligent neighbors preferred Harlequin romances to literature. And despite her kindness, when she called to see if she could borrow a copy of George Eliot's Middlemarch, I couldn't tell her I'd never read it -- nor wanted to.

The funny thing is that no matter how well versed any of us are, we're all subject to others' snobbery. While one person feels that anyone who reads and understands Ayn Rand is a genius, another may think the person is a poseur.

Sometimes it's almost laughable, like a noted tome sitting on a bedside table, never read. Is it meant to be some sort of turn on? 'Wow, this guy's deep.' I thought we were supposed to have gotten past this in college.

And why does it seem that the most indecipherable foreign film gets five stars in Time Out New York while something like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle gets panned? All of that got thrown out the door for me in early adulthood, when one of the biggest snobs I've ever worked with insisted that I had to see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure because it was her favorite movie.

I could never figure out the pecking order. I still snicker when I hear the Smiths on the radio, recalling the "Morrissey is God" grafitti in the bathroom stalls at Douglass College. Silly girls, Clapton is God. Get it straight. But who trumps whom -- a guy who learned how to play guitar from Buddy Guy, or some British dude whose songs all sound the same?

This differs from the quirkiness I brought up in a post last year, but it has a similar impact when used as criteria for who you let into your life. Some of us are just more selective than others, or maybe we just have odd ways of being selective.

Then again, I guess the real test is what you do when you find out a longtime friend never actually read whatever it is that you consider to be a requirement of everyone you have in your life. Do you ditch them?

Man, that would be shallow.