This guy I used to work with hated everyone. I mean everyone. People everywhere were any kind of combination of ignorant, ugly, psychopathic, or unstable. It was worse if their were foreign. He was a older than I was, and you could feel a lifetime of prejudice propping him up, which would end up overpowering any conversation had with him or within his vicinity.

So this one day, at lunch, I offered him a slice of Polish sausage I had with me. Asking me what it is, I told him, quite simply, “It’s Polish sausage.” Not unsurprisingly, he grumbled how sausage was the only thing the Polish ever got right as he popped the sliver of meat in his mouth.

I asked him what he had against the Polish. “It’s easy to hate the Polish,” he answered me in a discomforting pedagogical tone. “Fact is, it’s easy to hate everyone, if you know how to go about it.”

He then reached over for a napkin and began thoughtfully scribbling on it. “See, basically, you start with the Polish and work your way up,” he said once he was done, handing the napkin over to me. This is what was written on it: Polish > Lithuanians > Russians > Krygs > Pakis > Indians > Asians > Australians > Irish > Welsh > English > Americans > Canadians.

I was stunned: he had handed me a flowchart. A flowchart on who I need to hate before hating someone else. He had essentially mapped it out for me. “It’s really the best path to take,” he said.

The guy put tremendous effort and thought in his contemptuousness, and in retrospect I would have needed to counteract this situation with something for him to like. Something he couldn’t backhandedly dismiss with his usual enmity. Something like a This Is Ivy League song. London Bridges would have been a good candidate. It is a scintillating piece of AM-friendly yore-pop influenced music that executes itself like a sigh brought on from a fluttering twinkle down your spine. Carried by the duo’s crisp and dreamy harmonics, balmy guitars glide with fashionable stresslessness and wistful drums diligently provide an eager flow without being impetuous. It’s spright, it’s catchy, it’s laid back, it’s engrossing, it’s a charm to like.

It makes a great starting off point on a flowchart of stuff to like. Then, pudding.

MP3: This Is Ivy League - London Bridges

www.thisisivyleague.net
myspace.com/ivyleagueonline

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