I’m hardly the first or last to say this, but if there’s anything we’ve learned from medical dramas, it’s that seemingly insignificant conditions unfailingly cause life-threatening complications. If you can’t get someone obsessed with seeing the doctor by saying, “Do you remember that one episode of House where the guy went in for a routine buttcheek-boil lancing, and if he hadn’t they never would have caught whatever absurdly rare malady in time and his heart and/or brain would have literally exploded?!” then I guess we don’t live in a world where WebMD’s iPhone app is always there to inject any citizen with 10 cc’s of liquid hypochondria, stat.
Good or bad? I don’t know. There’s something to be said for having more access to knowledge. Nine out of ten hipsters agree that being able to discuss the merits of obscure indie rock bands in online message boards enhances the enjoyment of said bands. Whatever you feel about Dr. Wikipedia, that’s the world we’re living in.
Now that we have that out of the way, imagine that your loved ones’ medical problems — real or fantasy, ignored or overzealously embraced — are Kings of Leon songs. Against everyone’s better judgment, your respective family members actually like these songs so much that they’re thinking about going to Reykjavik on August 13th with the hope that the band might play every single one of their ill-conceived pop numbers back to back to back to back beneath the lingering sunlight of an 18-hour Icelandic summer day. Yet just because we, and our shared exceptional taste, would rather suffer renal colic than a full day of subpar pop rock doesn’t mean it’s necessarily harmful for someone else to do so. Wait until there’s some real risk, like when squinting at the movie theater threatens to turn into impaired driving, or until someone tries to say that “Sex on Fire” is the “Heart-Shaped Box” of our generation.
After all, seriously, what kind of rock band walks offstage because a pigeon poops on the bassist? I’m pretty sure John Entwistle (on whom all bassists should model their conduct) would have just asked for a hat and an extra bottle of backstage whiskey.
I’m hardly the first or last to say this, but if there’s anything we’ve learned from medical dramas, it’s that seemingly insignificant conditions unfailingly cause life-threatening complications. If you can’t get someone obsessed with seeing the doctor by saying, “Do you remember that one episode of House where the guy went in for a routine buttcheek-boil lancing, and if he hadn’t they never would have caught whatever absurdly rare malady in time and his heart and/or brain would have literally exploded?!” then I guess we don’t live in a world where WebMD’s iPhone app is always there to inject any citizen with 10 cc’s of liquid hypochondria, stat.
Good or bad? I don’t know. There’s something to be said for having more access to knowledge. Nine out of ten hipsters agree that being able to discuss the merits of obscure indie rock bands in online message boards enhances the enjoyment of said bands. Whatever you feel about Dr. Wikipedia, that’s the world we’re living in.
Now that we have that out of the way, imagine that your loved ones’ medical problems — real or fantasy, ignored or overzealously embraced — are Kings of Leon songs. Against everyone’s better judgment, your respective family members actually like these songs so much that they’re thinking about going to Reykjavik on August 13th with the hope that the band might play every single one of their ill-conceived pop numbers back to back to back to back beneath the lingering sunlight of an 18-hour Icelandic summer day. Yet just because we, and our shared exceptional taste, would rather suffer renal colic than a full day of subpar pop rock doesn’t mean it’s necessarily harmful for someone else to do so. Wait until there’s some real risk, like when squinting at the movie theater threatens to turn into impaired driving, or until someone tries to say that “Sex on Fire” is the “Heart-Shaped Box” of our generation.
After all, seriously, what kind of rock band walks offstage because a pigeon poops on the bassist? I’m pretty sure John Entwistle (on whom all bassists should model their conduct) would have just asked for a hat and an extra bottle of backstage whiskey.
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