things you (probably) like which I hate

My tastes have never been in touch with the mainstream, and so many deeply popular things leave me bemused. I'm not just talking about things like mayonnaise and tomatoes, either (and I don't ever want to hear anyone whining at me, "You don't like tomatoes? I'll be you just never had a good, fresh tomato!" I never correct other people's statements of their little culinary foibles; why does everyone try to pick at me over my hatred of tomatoes?).

Here's a short list of things I either hate or am indifferent to, which practically everyone else loves:

- "Seinfeld" (just not funny to me, just not funny. Whiny New Yorkers sitting around yakking),

- "Friends" (ditto, and why was the obviously stupid one supposed to be a professor of paleontology or something? Why did everyone lust after those actors? I Just Don't Get It),

- "Spiderman", in its movie, comic strip, and comic book forms... unbelievably, there's a comic book spin-off consisting of "Mary Jane: the High School Years." Jesus wept);

- Disneyworld, Disneyland, Disney movies, and the whole fell massive consortium of tacky commercialism. Someday my children will go into therapy and whine, "My parents would never take me to Disneyland, and ALL my friends went."

- the circus, Marineworld, swimming with the dolphins, and other selfish uses of exotic animals for idle recreation. Everyone in particular thinks swimming with the dolpins is so benign and majestic, but those poor bastards get mauled and tend to drop dead after a year or two of being manhandled. I have no problem with someone being out in the middle of nowhere and encountering an idle and curious dolphin, or perhaps one of those sailors who is shipwrecked and saved by a pack of roving dolphin Samaritans. Just don't, please, go to one of those godawful resorts where you subject the dolphins to your sweaty, groping self;

- Julia Roberts. She seems like a terrible actress, usually so sour-faced or stilted, and I don't see why everyone thinks she's such the "Pretty Woman." She's no Angelina Jolie. Watching her, such as in "Ocean's Eleven", is distracting because it seems like everyone in the movie is under the impression that she's beautiful and charismatic when she just isn't;

- Andrew LLoyd Webber and all his works. I had the misfortune of being compelled, against my will, to pony up for and sit through "Les Miserables" and a more agonizingly boring evening I can't recall since I left home. The worst was that my companions were bizarrely moved to tears by the experience and wanted to talk about it for days afterwards;

- "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Why did that movie become a comic classic? Can anyone tell me what exactly is so inspiring about a spoiled rich boy who feels no guilt about smashing up someone's car or traumatizing his best friend into a fugue state?

- "Monty Python." I've been subjected to plenty of Monty Python over the years, and I've never laughed at any of it. It just seems so belabored. They don't just tell you once that the frigging parrot is dead; you have to be practically beaten over the heads with the dead parrot.

Believe me, this is only the merest sample of Things You Love Which I Hate.