I have mentioned before that “the Bad Movie tradition has completely ruined my taste in movies.” However, it does not end there. I am beginning to understand that living in Mississippi is slowly but surely ruining my taste in everything. I have arrived at this shocking conclusion based on a painful assessment of the evidence.
The case of bad movies is only the beginning. Watching bad movies for their own sake gradually negates the desire to watch good movies. Why watch a good movie that would require you to think and have emotions, when you can simply watch a bad movie and mock it with merciless sarcasm?
But it does not end there. It has come to the point where I will eat anything. When I first came to Mississippi, I had ambitions; I even bought a cookbook (“Dad’s Own Cookbook”) with the proud intention of responsibly cooking meals for myself and others. I have cooked one, I repeat one, full recipe from this book, and that was within two weeks of my arrival here. Now, I will eat bacon and ice cream for lunch and chips and soybeans for dinner. “Cooking” rarely goes beyond spaghetti or my specialty, rice, corn, and beans (a starchy meal to be sure).
My musical tastes continue to decline as well. Although I am surrounded by people with interesting and complex tastes in music, mine have gone in the opposite direction. Many people, when asked what type of music they like, will answer flippantly, “all kinds” or “everything but rap and country.” Well, I listen to rap and country too. I still listen to Third Eye Blind and Dave Matthews. Once, I even watched an entire Miley Cyrus music video.
I grew up with a very healthy distrust of the television. Except for a few seasons of “Star Trek: Voyager” (which was admittedly fairly bad), I never watched TV, and when I started watching some it was only to watch a few shows on DVD (Buffy, The West Wing). Now, I can officially say that I have watched TV for ten hours straight. It was not pretty, and it has not happened since, but still. I try to keep my standards high (The Discovery Channel, the Daily Show, NCIS) but I do not always succeed. I have, on at least one occasion, come home, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and flipped on the Country Music Channel. Talk about depressing.
I can’t help but blame my decline in taste on Mississippi. Why else would I regularly order Budweiser, dance to that Apple Bottom Jeans song, drive around blasting Taylor Swift, watch (and enjoy) Killer Drag Queens On Dope (future review), and do the various other activities that now form such a large part of my life? Sadly, this is my irreversible destiny. Some day, doctors may discover a cure, but it will be too late for me.
If you find yourself in the same predicament, I advise you to do everything possible to stave off the decline. Keep enjoying your thought-provoking foreign films, quality micro-brews, independent rock played by starving musicians, and your zero-calorie yogurt smoothies. However, if you have gone, as I have, beyond the point of no return, then all I can offer is this advice: embrace your lack of taste and roll with it.
Hmm…..could there be a relationship between this post and your previous post? I wonder!
a pic from MK: Annihilation, I see.