Familiarity breeds contempt

I have some friends that work a lot with the written word. I tell them all the time that Times New Roman is the best thing since sliced bagels. They just roll their eyes in much the same way that Dan looks at me when I tell him that I love Dave Matthews because of Ants Marching.

If it's popular - it's bad. I would argue that Times New Roman is popular because it's the easiest to read (but what do I know?) I just tried to change the font on an article I wrote and anything different that I picked just made it harder to read...

Dane Cook is a comedian that’s become incredibly popular in the last couple of years. He’s selling out arenas like Eddie Murphy in his prime. Because of this, he’s starting to get ripped on shows like Mad TV and SNL. They say he doesn’t really tell jokes.

Comedians haven’t told traditional man walks in a bar kind of jokes in a couple of decades (outside of the occasional Mitch Hedberg or Steven Wright with their one liners)…they all tell funny stories with some really funny moments that bleed into the next funny story. Anyhow, he’s selling out arenas, so he’s no longer hip. He’s Times New Roman.

Ricky Martin quickly became Times New Roman. I wonder if the Beatles were like that in their prime…so popular that they weren’t cool??

I have a friend that rips on anything conventional. He wears the tight t-shirts that are in style. The kind that have weird graphics that don’t make sense… You ask him what the heck it means and he has no idea. The irony is that these clothes are becoming increasingly “in”…so eventually he’ll hate them.

He hates what’s normal.

In every high school there is a group that rebels by wearing the opposite of fashion. They’ll wear all black, with black eye liner and big black, heavy boots. I always thought it was interesting that they were bucking traditional garb by all dressing alike. “We’re going to be individuals and not buy into the everyone shops at Abercrombie crowd! Yes, and we’ll do it by buying into the everyone shops at Goth n’ Go crowd!”

We all yearn for community (to some degree) at least I think we do. With community there tends to be inside jokes, cliques, and a sort of dress code (not always…but you certainly see trends). It just happens…and that’s probably ok.

So leave Times New Roman alone – it’s served us well.