JoDee and I watched the first episode of "[The Librarians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Librarian_(franchise)" last night. It was a goofy show that mixed some of the best bits of Doctor Who, Dresden Files, and other media that shall not be named at this time. JoDee had heard of it but she didn't think it would be interesting because of the description. That got us thinking about other things that we like that we initially thought were silly or not-worth-the-effort. This is also apparently a blog post that I had on my someday / maybe list, so let's clear out some cruft and learn a few things along the way.

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In high school there was a girl (Hi Ann!) that was super into The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She had a fan-club and talked at length about the radio drama, the books, and everything about it. This was well before the time when you could have a crushing love for anything geek related and not seem like you were from another world. Her love for the series and her descriptions of it were part of the reason I didn't read the books until after college. When I read them I completely understood why she was so enamored with the series. After watching the TV series I grew even more fond of the series and after listening to the BBC radio series and the movie it has a special place in my heart. Ann, you were right, and I'm sorry it took so long.

• Doctor Who. I was a child of the Star Wars generation, where anything that didn't look like a blue-screened space dog-fight was crap. And Doctor Who epitomized the made-for-TV-on-a-budget effects that as a id I thought were ridiculous. Fast-forward to the Chris Eccleston doctor and folks were raving about this show that had an impossible history and goofy trash-can enemies that looked like they'd have more trouble with stairs than anything. But JoDee got hooked and by extension I got hooked and now Doctor Who is one of my favorite bits of science fiction.

• Babylon 5. This one was in part because I didn't have access to the series and because it looked like a cheap rip-off of the cleaner, more streamlined version of Deep Space 9 (how wrong I was). We finally watched it and Wow. Just, wow. This show takes Deep Space Nine and substantially ramps up the climax of the show. And, funnily enough, there's room in this world for both. Who could have predicted this?

• Genesis. Now, I was well aware of and moderately liked the "Invisible Touch" era of Genesis, but I was mostly unaware of the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis. I knew there was one person in college that went by "Squonk" which I learned was a Genesis song. It just seemed weird and impossible to understand. It wasn't until I got into Spock's Beard that I was finally ready to start exploring. And exploring I did, right during the period where genesis relesaed it's most milquetoast album "Calling All Stations". But I did pick up other albums of theirs from their "holy shit, Phil Collins is actually a remarkable drummer" period.

• Yes. Much like Genesis I hew there was a band that had some singles that all came from "90125" (which is still a fun album, Trevor Horn detractors be damned). The rest of their catalog has some remarkable songs and somehow I have learned to like Jon Anderson's voice (his lyrics are still something, but whatever. My favorite quote from Rick Wakeman about Jon Anderson was something to the effect of "Jon loves this planet and he visits it from time to time". Phenominal band with so much talent.

• Miles Davis. This one was in part because I didn't know shit about jazz, so I thought Miles Davis was in the same category as the smooth jazz folks like Chuck Mangione (who is still a great player, but if I hear "Feels So Good" one more time I will probably explode.) So I discounted him wholesale, which is a huge mistake because much like Herbie Hancock there are so many eras of his music and his bands. And if anyone can get folks fired up to want to explode on stage with intensity it's Miles.

• The Atari ST. I really blew it with this one. As someone who had and loved the Atari 8-bit I was jealous that the Atari ST was getting all of the attention. I resented that all of the new software was coming out for the ST (and the Commodore for some inexplicable reason) and I never bought one back in the day. I regret that now because it was a fabulous machine that would have smoothed over a lot of the hacks that I went through with my Atari 8-bit to adapt it to the 1990s. I have one now that needs rehabilitation, but it's quickly become one of my favorite machines of all time.

• Python. Initially I hated this language. It didn't help that one of the versions of Red Hat Linux (back in the 1990s) had adopted using it with the TK toolkit, which was less-than-stable at the time. I went on a crusade to try to rip out as much of Python as I could. Turns out it's the language that I use most often today and lead to several different jobs in my career. But at the time I detested it.

This is just a sampling of bands, shows, series, and technologies that I initially bounced off of. Some of them just required exposure, while others required me to drop my preconceptions and expectations in order to understand what I was experiencing. I remind myself of these whenever I experience something that's not right for me and wonder if dropping my expectations will help me to like this better. Sometimes it works, but some things I'm not ready for in the moment. That's OK. I'm constantly learning and experiencing new things. Sometimes it just takes me longer.