Wednesday, April 28, 2021

EP222: Things I hate that you might love


There are things universally loved in popular culture that Ken just doesn’t get. Everybody has their own list. Ken shares his. 

More podcasts at WAVE!


Listen to the Hollywood & Levine podcast!

32 comments :

DanMnz said...

Can't stand most Beatles songs. Off-key and very poorly written. Just because it's catchy doesn't make it a good song ;)

Opera is boring to me as well.



Mike Doran said...

You missed a bet here ...

Instead of the EZ-listening version of Hey Jude (Matt Monro, maybe?), you should have used Paul Frees's rendition, in the voice of Peter Lorre.

It's from his LP, Paul Frees And The Poster People, and it puts the song in what I feel is its proper perspective.

Vanessa said...

Not a fan of opera, but I love musicals and the one thing I hate that everyone else seems to love is Ricky Gervais. I hate that guy! He is as transparent as a squeaky clean window.

Jeff Boice said...

That was fun. I liked the "confession" on what stations actually did with the listener votes. I remember listening to those greatest-of-all-time countdowns, and one year after playing #2, the DJ said something like "Coming up-the #1 song of all time. You-know-what by You-know-who". But then "Stairway to Heaven" came along and that was that.

Once American Top 40 did a special on either the top songs of the Sixties or the rock era as tabulated by Billboard, and I was stunned when #1 was "The Twist" by Chubby Checker- Casey explained it went to #1 twice-in 1960 and 1962. Seemed like a cosmic joke. The Sixties were such an important decade right- how could the #1 song be that? Kind of like saying the #1 TV show of the 60's was "The Beverly Hillbillies" or the #1 movie was "Sound of Music".



Mike Barer said...

I see this on Facebook all the time, it's usually known as "Unpopular Opinion". There are so many things on those lists that I like, I usually want to joke and say that I don't like Weekends, holidays, paychecks, and happiness.
Kidding aside, one thing that I love that people post their hatred about is white chocolate. Just the words make my mouth water.

CRL said...

Mine would be podcasts......

Douglas Trapasso said...

My "overrated" is relief pitching. Specifically the endless delays caused by teams bringing in a new guy when the starter is doing perfectly fine.

Am I the only one who remembers shutouts, complete games and the possibility your starter will strike out eighteen on the other side?

America has taken many small steps towards The Shark over the past several decades (junk bonds, anyone?), but the insistence that a team needs six pitchers every night to beat, oh I don't know, the Mets, may have been the last one.

Kosmo13 said...

If you want a monotonous, droning song to loathe, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot is an offender equal to Hey Jude. Yet, most people seem to like it.

Also loathe-worthy but massively popular is anything within the 'Star Trek franchise.'

I'll never understand the appeal of coffee and am sick of it and hearing how its acolytes just gotta have it.

gottacook said...

Omigod, is that Bing Crosby at the end? Reminds me of the performance of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" by Eddy Arnold (of all people) that I personally witnessed at the Allentown (PA) Fair in 1970 or '71.

In the fall of 1968 I'd seen the music videos the Beatles had made of "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" during two consecutive episodes of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and soon owned my first Apple Records single with both songs; decades later these videos turned up on YouTube and I found that I liked the performance of "Revolution" (partly live, partly backing tracks, according to director Michael Lindsay-Hogg) even better than the single version.

So, Ken, do you have any comment on "Revolution"?

Mike Barer said...

If you remember high school car culture, if you are dating Betty Lou the head cheerleader, you don't want to make out in private, you want to make out in public.
In addition, if you watch a movie at a drive-in, you can smoke, drink, and bring in your own food, avoiding the high priced of the concession stand.
You can also bring along lawn chairs if sitting in a car is not your idea of comfort.
The aspect of bringing in your own food, and the fact that many charged by the car makes the drive-in attractive to families for a cheap night out.

Andrew said...

I love "Hey Jude," but I know plenty of others who hate it, so you are not alone.

On the subject of unusual cover versions, such as the one at the end of your podcast, here's an unexpectedly good cover version of Stairway to Heaven:
https://youtu.be/fw_Codf29Pw
Supposedly Robert Plant liked it.

I agree with you about the Masked Singer. What I hate is the hoopla and the spectacle, all about nothing.

My own choice for a popular thing that many love but I hate (I know you said write an email, but this will be brief): Gone with the Wind. It's not just because of the stereotypes and the glorification of the Confederate South. I just hate the main character, from beginning to end. I don't care what happens to her tomorrow.

One more: I love the original Law and Order. I hate every single spin-off and derivative.

Thanks for an awesome podcast. Has anyone told you that you have a good voice for radio?

stephen catron said...

I hate: Hey Jude, Reality Shows, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel (except Deadpool, he's funny), Mya Rudolph. So you're not the only one. Drive-ins I liked as a teenager, not because I had any more girlfriends than you but it was a place to see BOOBS. B-movies that had boobs and usually some machine guns, or vampires, or women in prison movies. That was neat way back when.

iamr4man said...

I really liked the mural at the Van Nuys Drive In. My grandparents lived nearby and I would walk over and just stare at it. Seeing it again was one of the things I liked about Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Drive ins were great when you were a kid. I remember seeing movies like Darby O’Gill and Jason and the Argonauts at drive inns. I also liked the playgrounds many had. When what you had at home was a black & white tv with crummy sound you didn’t worry so much about the sound at the drive in. Can’t even imagine going to one now.

sueK2001 said...

Great podcast. I had to laugh at your description of "This is Us". I'm a faithful viewer of that show it really has devolved into 'suffering in time zones'. I still watch as I've come this far so I might as well stick to the end.(I do think your hate stems from your reaction to the Kevin character quitting his fictional sitcom in dramatic fashion. I seem to recall you were extremely upset by that in your blog).

I am with you on The Masked Singer. Don't get it one bit although it's Nick Cannon that irritates me.

As for comic actors, Jim Carrey and Will Farrell are ones I don't get. ( I do like their serious movies though).


I will say that the older I get the less I like the music of my youth. I grew up in the 80's and many of those songs were so insipid and dull...Two songs from that decade irritate me.."Take My Breath Away" and "Total Eclipse of the Heart". I also have grown to despise "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

...and last but certainly not least, I am a HUGE John Denver fan but "Annie's Song" makes me wanna upchuck every time I hear it or someone plays it. I've only heard one version I like and that was a friend's cover who sang with so much heartbreak in his voice, I actually liked it but if I never hear it again, it will be too soon...

71dude said...

I hate:
Led Zeppelin
Rush
ZZ Top
Pink Floyd
Queen
Aerosmith
Metallica
The Wizard of Oz
Home Alone
Lord of the Rings
Wheel of Fortune
The Price Is Right
Seinfeld
"Chicago" shows

Ed said...

I agree with you - I dislike those things as well. However... I do enjoy a few bites of a Tony Luke's cheesesteak when I'm at the ballpark for a Phillies game.

Here's my hate list:
Friends
Disney World
Big Bang Theory
Marvel movies
Cilantro

Rob Greenberg said...

I don't get Beyonce.

Lushie said...

I concur- hey Jude and It’s a Wonderful Life. Meh
I can’t stand Gwynnie Paltrow. When she showed up as a “super hero” in the last Avengers movie, I cussed out loud. I don’t like Judge Judy. I HATED the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Too serious and full of themselves. Cheers. Love your podcast. Stay safe

Tommy Raiko said...

This podcast was fun, but if you're gonna do a followup, I don't want to hear about more things you (or we in the audience) hate that others love.

I want to hear the reverse. I want to hear about the things you love that other people hate.

What d'ya say? How 'bout it?

Mibbitmaker said...

I agree with gottacook about "Revolution". Besides the mix of prerecorded and live (the end of the song there is a dead giveaway), it's the inclusion of bits from "Revolution 1" off of the White Album into the single version that really makes it for me.

Joe said...

I'm fine with the first half of "Hey, Jude." If they had chopped two minutes off the endless fade, I'd really like it.

The thing I hate that others loved was "The Royal Tenenbaums." Not only did it never make me laugh, it never made me so much as smile.

Wendy M. Grossman said...

That ending cover of Hey, Jude was jawdroppingly awful. Who was it?

wg

gottacook said...

Wendy - as I suggested earlier, my guess is Bing Crosby. Play it again and see whether you agree. Simply frightful, isn't it?

tavm said...

For the last 40 years It's a Wonderful Life has been my favorite movie, mainly because of the mixture of laughs and drama. Though one thing that bothers me about the movie is that during the "Never Been Born" sequence, we find out that George's younger brother Harry ended up dying after falling through the ice in 1919 as a pre-teen. I mean, there were other friends there skating so wouldn't one of them save Harry even without George being in existence? Though I do understand how that's supposed to affect present George to appreciate all the wonderful things in his life despite some things he sacrificed for his own happiness. That would also explain why Mary in the NBB sequence is depicted as wearing glasses, hair pulled back, in plain clothes as an "old maid" or the entire Bedford Falls town is sleazy instead of wholesome. As for the Bing Crosby version of "Hey Jude", well, it's not bad but of course, the Beatles' original is the one worth listening to over and over

Pat Reeder said...

According to the liner notes on the LP (yes, I have it), Bing recorded "Hey, Jude" on Nov. 21, 1968, and when it was over, the studio musicians gave him a standing ovation. Or maybe they were just thrilled that it was over.

As for the Beatles' version, I don't mind the first half but hate the second half. The lyrics sound like they were written by Phoebe Bouffay. As a fellow radio guy who's worked on both local and syndicated countdown shows, your revelation about their phoniness is no surprise to me. I'm also with you on hip-hop and rap, and Jenny McCarthy. A critic in a Dallas newspaper once wrote that she must believe she's a comic genius because ever since puberty, guys have laughed uproariously at all of her jokes.

Looking over the comments, I find many things mentioned that I can't stand, including Beyonce (a record number of Grammy Awards for a mediocre singer who has one song that anyone other than hardcore fans know), Gwyneth Paltrow, comic book movies and Will Ferrell (except in "Anchorman.")

At the risk of whacking the hornet's nest, I'll throw in that I don't understand why Kristin Wiig is considered to be one of the greats of SNL. I hate Journey and lunge for the mute button whenever "Don't Stop Believing" comes on. I'd rather listen to "Disco Duck" than Steve Perry's voice. And I'll never understand why the Rolling Stones are considered the world's greatest rock band. Every so often, I try to listen to one of their alleged classic albums like "Let It Bleed" or "Exile on Main Street," but I can't get more than three songs in before I'm hitting fast-forward. To me, they're a competent blues-rock bar band with a really annoying singer who writes dumb, witless lyrics. I think I'd rather listen to a Steve Perry/Geddy Lee duet than hear Jagger strangle "Angie" again. And I literally wrote the book on celebrity "singers" like Joan Rivers and Leonard Nimoy, so I have a very high tolerance for bad singing.

i

Norm duGare said...

My wife and I are big animation fans, but HATED "Inside Out," which took a happy-go-lucky view towards teenage depression. And the ONLY movie we have walked out on in the 22 years we've been together was "The Lego Movie," which we left when nothing had happened after 30 minutes, but the nothing had happened extremely frantically.

Personally, although I love musicals (musical comedy, that is; I dislike musical drama, and DETEST musical tragedy), my voted for the most overrated musical is "The Sound of Music," which has some of the worst lyrics in a so-called hit:

1. "Edelweiss": "you meet me"/"happy to greet me" is bad enough, but rhyming "forever"
with "forever"? That's just sloppy.

2. "Do Re Mi": "La: a not to follow So"? Do you get the feeling they couldn't come up
with something clever, so they put that in as a placeholder until they could come up
with something better, and never did?

3. "So Long, Farewell": "Adieu, adieu, to yieu, and yiue, and yieu"? All I can say is
Pee-yieu!

Owlchum said...

Borat movies
Endless trailers (and commercials) in theaters prior to the featured film
Personal injury attorney ads on every commercial channel known to humankind

DwWashburn said...

I've already sent Ken an email but I thought of two other items I hate that most people love --
-- James Bod movies - My Dad was in WWII and like many soldiers it left him with emotional scars. As such he discouraged us from watching war pictures. And let's face it, Bond films are just war stories in tuxedos.
-- The Godfather. Seen it once and it was the longest ten hours of my life. I don't get the attraction. I found it tedious while moving at a glacier pace. And every "plot twist" I could see coming a mile away. Yuk.

tavm said...

I'm surprised no one here mentioned "You Light Up My Life" or "My Heart Will Go On"!

Mike Barer said...

I'm surprised that no one said, commenters who use animated pictures of themselves (like Me)

BluePedal said...

The repulsive "sport" of MMA.
Alcohol
Kpop
Chinese Food
The month long celebration of Halloween
Christmas Movies
The NFL draft


Roger Owen Green said...

I had to write a whole blog post about my hates - https://www.rogerogreen.com/2021/05/05/things-i-hate-that-you-might-love/
but basically beer, coffee, watermelon, binge-watching, and reality TV.