I Hate. Therefore I Am.

Because I don’t find him in the least funny, and because I know him to be a Republican, I hate Adam Sandler. I am deeply unamused by the films of Judd Apatow. I didn’t find "I Love You Man hilarious." I didn’t find "The Hangover" hilarious. I don’t think I so much as smirked during either one of them. On the other hand, The Onion quite reliably makes me guffaw aloud, though, in keeping with today’s theme, I hate how uninterested they are in my writing for them.

I hate not being able to hate without reservation the rampant greed that fueled the economic collapse of almost two years ago. It would be hypocritical for me to decry the greedheads of Wall Street when I personally profited from what they had, you know, wrought. The house I live in now is worth a great deal less than I paid for it two years ago this month, but I’m still way ahead on the deal. I co-bought a house in Santa Rosa, California, at the end of 1998. When I sold it six years later, it was for 85 percent more than Nancy and I had paid. I am living proof that all Jews aren’t good with money, but it is my strong impression that the huge increase in the house’s market value owed to the greedy banks awarding subprime mortgages so wantonly.

I hate WDST, the radio station I listen to in the car because our reception of the New York City NPR station is awful here, and I don’t like the Albany one. Of course, some of the time — when they’re playing something good — I like it too. I could die quite happily having never heard a single Grateful Dead classic again, and I’m not crazy about the station’s taste in new music either; the Jakob Dylan track they’ve been pushing so hard would be the single most boring track I’ve ever heard if I hadn’t heard the One Eskimo track they’re so in love with. At least three over-familiar Pretenders hits I loved at the time, but the time was long ago, seem to be in heavy rotation, and what sort of radio station plays twice in one week the 25-year-old "Low Budget," surely the nadir of The Kinks' career?

I (love to) hate their commercials, in which the proprietors of local small businesses read dreadful scripts stiffly, or the station’s own announcers hype, for instance, the upcoming performance of Peter Tosh’s son at the Bearsville Theatre. Isn’t it enough that we’ve had to endure around 45 of Bob Marley’s sons? Now we have to start hearing from Tosh’s too? Uncle! Uncle! I persist in believing that Jimmy Cliff was twice the artist Marley was, and cite the latter’s iconic stature as as a vivid demonstration of life’s fundamental unfairness as John Grisham's legal fiction being more popular than Scott Turow's.

I hate that I settled my lawsuit against the good folks who insured the local 16-year-old girl who ran me down in the middle of Main Street two months after I moved to New York. I got what my attorney assured me was the best settlement I could hope for, but it isn’t uncommon for the pain in my injured knee to make me forget all else.

I hate requesting a novel like Michael Chabon’s Kavalier & Clay from the library because it made so many Best of the Decade lists, and then not caring for it much, and giving up after 50 pages. I hate reading something like Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith and realizing that on the best day of my life I was probably a tenth as good a writer as she was on her worst.

I hate how, at the end of an unbearably hot summer day, it’s inadvisable to go for a walk when it cools down because when you get home you discover yourself absolutely covered with insect bites. This neck of the woods is inexpressibly gorgeous in the autumn, but what a high price we pay for it in the summer and winter.

I hate that the Obama presidency has been so disappointing, and that we’ll probably get a Republican in 2012. I hate that when I was trying to get an invitation to tour the White House with Claire last summer, our congressman, who used to be in the group Orleans (of "Still the One" fame) couldn’t be troubled to respond to my emails. What was he so busy with, anyway — matters of grave national or even global importance, or something?

[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]