My Nixon List: Buck Fuffet Edition

Bucket Lists are all the rage nowadays. I guess that's what happens when you make the definitive movie of the decade. But we're forgetting a much more important list that each of us should live our lives with. An enemies list. Famously, Richard Nixon kept an enemies list during his days as this nation's President. If it's good enough for one of our three best presidents of the 1970s then it's good enough for me. Here' s the first in a series of what hopefully won't be a long list. 

Eric Cartman and I agree on two things, hippies and Jimmy Buffet. The only difference is that my hatred of Buffet runs much deeper.

My hatred started way back in 1990 when I was a wide eyed freshman with a killer mullet hitching a ride to school every day with junior that lived down the street. And being a younger member of my class I wasn't going to be getting my driver's license until my junior year. So for the next two years I caught a 20 minute ride to school with this guy every day. And this guy had one cassette tape, you guessed it, Jimmy Buffet's Greatest Hits... a term that has not been applied that loosely this side of Color Me Bad.

For 5 days a week, for 20 minutes to start my day, I was "treated" to Jimmy Buffet on a continuous loop. Even Donald Rumsfeld would consider that torture. By the end of my sophomore year my ear for music was so utterly destroyed that this and this made their way into my CD collection. And if that's not enough, U2 released Achtung Baby in November 1991. Now, you might think this is a good thing. Not so much.

For weeks I looked forward to its release, knowing that this cassette would get purchased on the same day it was released. I was like Charlie Sheen in Platoon counting down the days to the end of his tour, but then Oliver Stone decided to make a sequel. On the way home that day we stopped at Best Buy to pick it up. For the next week we made our way through the tape... Mysterious Ways... One... Even Better than the Real Thing... Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses. My sanity returned long enough for me to scrap my plans to base my wardrobe on my New Edition album covers.

Then, after two rotations through U2. My driver said "I guess U2 had to lose it at some point... we'll stick to the classics." My parole denied. Damn you Buffet. Damn you to hell.

Luckily I was largely able to avoid Mr. Buffet after my sophomore year. He always played Alpine Valley every summer but isolating myself from the 40 year old soccer moms who duct taped a shark fin to their mini-van and drove up for the show was easy enough. All was right with the world again. He had his world, I had mine.

But recently Buffet the corporate entity has started to encroach on my space. First, he launched a series of restaurants. Fine, I can still avoid that. He opened a series of casinos and partnered with Harrah's to drop the restaurant in a lot of their locations. Getting more problematic but casinos are big places. Then he bought into the Dolphins and wrote a horrible song (is there any other kind of Buffett song) that makes this horrible song about the Dolphins almost listenable. Fine, I lost interest in the Dolphins when Dan Marino and Ace Ventura moved on.

Then he started a line of tailgating accessories that are heavily advertised during college football games. Dear god man. Is there no shelter from the never ending string of shit you'll slap your name on? You're making Krusty the Clown look like JD Salinger.

And for invading my college football Saturdays I put you squarely on my Nixon list. As Cocunut Pete said, "son of a son of a son of a bitch." Buck you Fuffet. Buck you.