Diversity Training with Drewpreme: The Music Edition

The master himself

Drew is black and I am white. I am female and Drew is male. I am tall and Drew is EVEN TALLER. We’re both from the suburbs, but we’ll ignore that. The point is, Drew and I are about as different as two people can get without one of us being a pedophile or a foreigner or something. And when it comes to music, we run in very different circles. Drew’s iPod deals heavily in R&B, hip-hop, rap and soul; mine jumps between art school drop-outs and people my parents used to like. So for this week’s Diversity Training, we decided to swap songs.

The players: Claire. Drew. The entire history of music.

The rules: We each pick three songs and send them to each other without explaining our selections. Then we listen and critique accordingly. After the initial review, the song’s original selector will offer a final defense.

Either/Or with Marc

Meet Marc. Marc has been one of my best friends since sophomore year of college when I discovered that he could play Ben Folds songs on the piano. I’m not sure what to say about our friendship except that it is based on mutual animosity and the knowledge that neither one of us ever wants to talk about serious issues ever. “I’m dying of cancer,” one of us will write in an email. The other one will reply with link to a YouTube video of a man getting hit in the nuts.

Marc has a lot of opinions, but they’re almost always wrong. For example, he loves the St. Louis Cardinals and hates the Cubs. I don’t even know how this is possible because he a) is from Illinois b) supports all other Chicago teams c) is an otherwise upstanding citizen. I understand when people from other states support their local teams; they were born in the wrong city and just don’t know any better. But Marc has no excuse. It’s wrong. It’s so wrong. It’s like stealing from a church donation bin or sleeping with a cousin or subscribing to Newsweek. Marc is probably the most sports-obsessed person I know, so I have a hard time arguing with him about his bad life decision. He knows more than me (like the names of the players…and what’s happening during the game) and there’s very little I can do to win the argument. Instead I rely on name-calling and insults. But even if Marc wins the arguments, I know I’m right. I mean, I can’t explain the scientific reasons why smoking crack is bad, I just know that it is. Oh man, Marc sucks.

Yet despite his obvious failure, he and I have remained good friends. I thought it would be fun to put Marc’s opinionated nature to the test. So I gave him a list of categories, and he had to pick which topic was better. Here is what Marc thinks about….

Sports v. Music