Beating the Crowd

I guess it's pretty cool that the Obamas get to do things like have Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg over for an advance screening of The Pacific, which began airing this weekend.  And I definitely enjoy getting to request critics' copies of things.  But, and this may be a weird quirk of mine, I've never particularly cared about whether I beat other people to cultural phenomena.  Maybe I should have more bloodhound instinct, more desire to find something before everyone else does, and be the person who introduces it to the world, who can say that I was listening to whoever back when they were playing bars in Austin or releasing mix tapes in New York.  But I'd be really profoundly sorry to have my pleasure and enjoyment of any given thing diminished by the timing of my introduction to it.  And I care a lot more about trying to understand things and what they mean than the speed with which I find it.  Given how long it took me to really start a deep engagement in pop culture, there are huge swaths of things I'd be disqualified from getting into if I felt like I'd missed them, and it was too late and everything was ruined forever.  And I see no reason to deny myself that.