Excessively high expectations

Sometimes we build them by ourselves. Other times others help us. Nothing quite like that crash from on high, is there? Here are a few excessively high expectations I’ve had.

  • After Zoë Bell talked up Vanishing Point in Death Proof, I was sure I’d love it. Instead I just found it tedious. Furthermore, I had no idea what I was supposed to take away from the car inexplicably changing from a Challenger into a Camaro at the very end. Turns out I wasn’t supposed to notice.
  • If you say Bonefish Grill to someone, there is a 99% chance that person’s reply will contain “Bang Bang Shrimp.” Wow at this appetizer’s word of mouth. By the time I finally had the opportunity to try them, I was half-expecting to have an orgasm as soon as I tasted one. Guess what? They’re good. But I wouldn’t go back just to have them again, particularly when you have to sit so close to everyone else in the restaurant. (I don’t know if that’s a Huntsville thing or not, but I don’t want to spend date-night money for dinner and then have another table barely a yard away in every direction.)
  • Having listened to literally nothing else in the car but Appetite for Destruction for six months, I was excited to get Guns N’ Roses’ follow-up LPs, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Given that I thought (and think to this day) that Appetite was and is the best hard rock/heavy metal record ever, the Use Your Illusion albums were bound to be a step or two down. Indeed, the good stuff is. But a little more than half of the material is mediocre to awful. There is nearly 152 minutes of music on the two albums. There’s a really solid 60- to 70-minute album in there to be mined.
  • The Great Gatsby is as close to pointless as anything I’ve ever read. This must be the greatest (heh) case of the emperor’s new clothes in the history of American literature. Quoting myself at the above link: “It is crafted with skill. But bricks can as easily compose a whorehouse as a cathedral.”

What have you thought was going to be fantastic and then wasn’t?

You might also like:

  • I’m such a lab rat
    Saw Death Proof. Loved it. Off to Amazon.com for Vanishing Point. Oooh, customers who bought Vanishi…
  • Happy Halloween
    Whew! We’re near the end of a bang-bang-bang eight days or so at our house. Lea told me two days ago…
  • Cinematic expectations
    Iron Man 3: met expectations. I don’t walk into a Marvel superhero movie looking for artistic excell…
  • The high-dive and the male external genitalia: a case study
    We found ourselves at Fulin’s last night because of a dinnertime power outage at home. As we ate, th…
  • Defund NPR now
    NPR apologists miss a hole you could drive a HMMWV through in their primary counterargument, which s…

9 thoughts on “Excessively high expectations”

  1. 1. Generally, I am often underwhelmed by movies in the theater that I highly anticipate. What makes it worse, is that I rarely go, so when I do, I really, really want to not waste my time.

    2. There’s a restaurant in gulf shores area that many people have talked up to me. I hated it. My family all were of the opinion the food was “meh” at best.

    3. Chicago.

    Reply
    • Have we ever had a president who just straight-up hated the United States? I rather doubt it.

      When history fades the shallow novelty of Obama’s skin color (as it inevitably will), that may well be his ultimate legacy.

      Reply

Leave a Comment

CAPTCHA


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

BoWilliams.com