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When I was single and meeting girls through the internet, there were certain questionnaire-responses that were dealbreakers. One question was, “What is a single or album that turns you on?” Anyone who answered with “Radiohead” was off my list. Similarly, there were a whole bunch of books that disqualified otherwise worthy girls.
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George Will (sorta) supports my thesis that Las Vegas is an alien theme park for planet earth.
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The anti-Ehrenreich: Adam Shepard tried to work $25 and the clothes on his back into a home, a car, and $2,500 in savings in one year.
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Death of a Breakdancer (apologies to Robert Townsend)
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Vodkapundit goes cover to cover.
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Witold Rybczynski on the oxymoronicity (?) of the Pritzker Prize.
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Michael Bierut laments the Camden Yards-ification of baseball parks: The retro-future ain’t what it used to be. (The commenters call him out for ignoring the Nats’ new park, but I don’t recall Safeco being very Camden-like, either.)
I almost refused to talk to a guy next to me on Amtrak once because he was reading The Fountainhead, but then we dated for 3 months. I’m not sure if this rejects or supports the premise that literary taste should influence dating choices.
Music taste is the corollary, as you also note. I have to admit, if a guy claimed that he only listened to obscure post-punk garage bands from Iceland, I probably wouldn’t go out with him, although he probably wouldn’t ask in the first place since my Bermuda shorts and kelly-green cardigan weren’t being worn ironically.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/93-music-piracy/
Another corollary is the TV issue. Is it bad to own one at all, or are the program preferences the problem?
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv/
I was particularly amused by the responses to the article in which people took great care to assert their literary bona fides and taste by listing preferred authors, then noting that they are not, in fact, snobs.
For the record, I passed over any girls’ profiles that included Fight Club, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Running with Scissors or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Of course, my profile’s Last Great Book I Read was “Gould’s Book of Fish,” so hey.