Caesar's Bath

A new game, via Matthew Yglesias: : Caesar's Bath. Here's how it works:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

Well, that sounds like fun: a list and an excuse to bitch!

1. College Basketball - Though not for the reason Yglesias gives. I actually don't watch any sports on TV outside of a few Olympic events, the Super Bowl and maybe some of the World Series. I like watching live baseball; Mrs Cleek and I make it a point to catch a game at whatever stadium is nearby when we visit a new city, and we usually do three or four Durham Bulls games every summer; and I like watching live hockey (though I wish it games were a bit shorter). But sports on TV ? And the whole bracket / fantasy league / "remember that one game, from 15 years ago?!" mentality ? Not for me.
   
2. .Net - Yes, it's nice to be able to use a friendly language like C# instead of an abomination like VBScript. But the fact remains that you're still stuck writing in three languages, in two environments, to do try to do things the web was really not designed to do.
   
3. The Fiery Furnaces - "How cute and clever can we be before we cross the line into twee ? Well, that was easy! Shall we try for obnoxious ?"
   
4. Texas Holdem - Sure, it's fun. But is it really the Pinnacle of Poker? Whenever we play, we spend half the time trying to remember the bidding rules and educating the novices on all the silly jargon: "River", "Flop", "Big Blind", "Turn", "Burn em", etc.. And yet, that's all we play when we get together. What ever happened to good ol 5 card draw ?
   
5. 24 - The first season was good enough. The second season became so unrealistic that it would make me giggle at the sillyness. During the third season turned into a comic book and I stopped watching. Apparently, it's still a big deal - everyone at work can't wait to talk about it.
   

Oh, and then you're supposed to pass it on to three other people. That's tough, since I can't think of three people who read this who have blogs of their own. :)