Music talk makes my brain explode

I'm envious of sports fans. Seriously, I know very little about sports, but I'm envious of the fact that you can strike up conversations on things that have right and wrong answers. Even if you know nothing, it doesn't take much to know that the Yankees win a lot and that the Colts frustrate and upset. "How about them Colts?" you can say, and people will have something meaningful to say back to you.\nNot in my case. I like rock music, a subject in which there exists no concrete answers and nothing meaningful to say. Music is subjective to the point that you can basically just fall back on, "Well, that's just my opinion," when you want to excuse your junk non-opinion based on misinformation. "Hoobastank is the next Beatles," you can say, and all that matters is that you believe it. It's gotten to the point that I don't want to talk about music with anyone, ever. I love music, and yet I hate it now; here's why:\nIt all started when I was driving some friends home one night and listening to At the Drive-In. One of the girls I was with was, well, stupid, and she was talking to me about how the band sounded like Rage Against the Machine. "I can buy that," I said, "at least in the singers' voices."\n"Rage Against the Machine is so cool," she continued. "They really believe what they say, and like, when that guy climbed up on the rails at the MTV Music Awards, he was, like, really raging against the machine." If you don't want to come across as an elitist, what do you say in a situation like that? "Yeah, it's the same thing with the Trail of Dead -- when I listen to them it's like they're totally leaving a trail of dead people behind them and you like, know them by it." Criticizing someone's music taste is a sure-fire way to make people sad and defensive. Somewhere along the way you hear enough boneheaded comments to make you want to only listen to music in a windowless, top-secret dungeon where no dorks are allowed. For me, it translates to pretending that music doesn't exist.\nYou can find examples of boneheaded music crap everywhere. Look at "Garden State" -- it was a pretty good movie, but there's a great point about music to be found there. Remember that part where Natalie Portman says the Shins will totally change your life? The Shins, for the record, have two albums, one of which is meandering and ho-hum and the other hum-ably okay. That's less than 30 songs; having the Shins change your life is like having Daryl Hall and John Oates change your life, which basically means your life is a waste of time and you should hurry up and die already. But, as always, that's just my opinion. I'd rather just pretend that I've never heard any of the bands people talk about than to get into an argument about Conor Oberst's dreamy, dreamy eyes. It's just not worth the energy.\nMost people can look at a bad painting and say, "Wow, that sucks," and few besides the painting's tortured creator will defend it. For some reason, however, people will fall all over themselves defending bad music. You don't like the newest bland indie album composed of broken pick-up hum and the same chord over and over again? "MAN, HOW CAN YOU JUDGE ART? YOU JUST DON'T GET IT." You don't like an album made by tuneless weirdos in mismatched argyles and black-and-white striped socks singing about blueberries? "YOU JUST DON'T GET IT."\nYou can't "get" an album. You can like it for a certain nuance, you can appreciate it in its historical context as well as for its musical merit, but it's not a Magic Eye painting that you have to force yourself to look at until you see the hidden secret. You can force yourself to listen to Broken Social Scene in hopes of figuring it out, or you could play white noise at full blast on your stereo and then jump in a cage full of rabid pit bulls while naked and coated in meat sauce and pit bull pheromones; when you think about it, they're basically the same thing.\nPicture it this way -- your friends take you to a restaurant where the meal looks like a giraffe ate a carpet and then puked it into a vat of mustard, but everyone somehow chokes it down because "eventually you start to like it." Eventually I might like living in a nightmare future where robots rule with an iron fist, but I'd avoid it if I could, you know? Why make yourself do something you hate?\nIt must be so much easier being a sports fan. No one is going to tell you that you have to "get" the Colts' defensive line or that you have to consider the 1990 Patriots in their context. While fat, shirtless guys do get drunk and paint themselves with team colors, at least they don't stand around looking bored at games all the while dressed like mutant zombie librarians from the planet Scream. Can you imagine a sports world where people say, "Just because they lost 52-3 doesn't mean they didn't win! You aren't looking hard enough!"\nYou would probably find yourself rubbing your head and saying, "I don't get it." It's not your fault, I promise.