Today I got stuck in the proverbial "battle of wits with an unarmed man". A guy I work with decided to assert that no good music had been written since 1988. And the whole thing just spiraled downward from there.

Unarmed man (UAM): Yeah, all the music from the 90s sucked.
Sara: (trying to be nice) I rather liked a lot of the music in the 90s.
UAM: No, it sucked. Name me one good band in the 90s.
S: Off the top of my head? Ummm... Pearl Jam. Nirvana. Soundgarden. Smashing Pumpkins. Alice in Chains.
UAM: Alice in Chains?! Who likes Alice in Chains? Who was even IN Alice in Chains? I bet nobody besides you even knows who was in Alice in Chains. But Poison, man, they ruled. EVERYBODY knows the guys from Poison.

At this point I knew that getting this guy to see the light was a lost cause so I just let him continue.

UAM: Dude. All those guys in the 90s were just a bunch of poseurs, man. They couldn't write a melody AND they were fake. Those guys in the 80s? Van Halen, Guns 'N Roses, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Billy Idol? They were the real deal.

How do you even respond to that? If I didn't know better, I'd assume the guy pulling out some hard core sarcasm, but alas, he was not. The only thing I could do at this point was throw in the towel. I conceded that I DID think Slash was pretty cool and we made nice talking about how much fun it was to watch a guitar being played by a Cousin It-like nest of hair with a lit cigarette jutting out of it.