Sarah Brightman. When I first heard her singing on the Phantom of the Opera original cast album, I was absolutely floored. I loved everything I heard her singing. Years later, after my passion for broadway had long since cooled, I heard her (at the time) latest album being played in a bookstore. I thought, “When did her voice get so souless?” I went back and listened to some of her earlier stuff that I had loved so much, and realized she had always been a passionless albeit technically proficient vocalist. It actually creeps me out when I hear her now; I feel like a computer is trying to fool me into believing it is human.
Just for comparison, how’s this stack up?
I got sick and tired of Brandi Carlile in about 10 minutes. Now I find her screaching and warbling comedic, like something out of a Mel Brooks film.
It took longer, but I finally figured out David Lynch is an ass-pipe and I shouldn’t bother with the latest “whatever” because I will only regret it. Except for that lesbian sex scene. 
Anne Rice. I’ve always liked vampire fiction, and after seeing the movie “Interview with the Vampire” I decided to read the book. I liked it, and read the next few. For me, the series went downhill starting with “Memnoch the Devil.” I just found it sort of preachy, although looking back, (especially with the author’s often-changing views on religion) I’m not sure exactly what I thought it was preaching. With the following books, they became more of an effort to get through, and “Blood and Gold” was just painful so I stopped reading after that. (I only finished the book because I have a thing about always finishing a book that I start.) It seemed like the book was nothing but one long whining session, with the vampire main character (I can’t even remember who it was) pining for his old life and his lost loves, and the burden of being a vampire, blah blah blah. Too emo for my tastes.
M. Night Shamalamadingdong. One movie blew me away. One.
I hadn’t checked back on this thread for a while, so I hadn’t seen your request…but in general, everyone who I knew who had interacted with her said that she was rude, haughty and thought the sun shined out of her arse-hole. I am not clear on the details, but at least two people have said she made extremely anti-gay comments while performing onstage.
From my first-hand experiences seeing her three times (once as the opening band for the Grateful Dead of all people):
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She sat on the floor of the stage and turned her back to the audience, basically ignoring us.
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She yelled at the audience for applauding too loudly while she was singing.
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In the middle of one song she was performing (I think it was “Headstrong” from the “Blind Man’s Zoo” Lp) she just abruptly stopped singing and told the audience “I can’t finish the song, I forgot the words.” (A song she wrote, IIRC.)
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At the end of one show, she ASKED for people to shout out requests, and said they’d entertain them. One person shouted out “Peace Train” and she shouted back “We’ll take requests, but NOT THAT ONE!!!”
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After the show, a friend of mine wanted her autograph. We waited around, and she did come out to sign some - but she clearly chose favorite people from the audience to talk to, and basically ignored my friend, who was a little crushed. (This one we joked about quite a bit because barely a month later, she was featured in “Rolling Stone” magazine and she made a big deal about how she spends so much time chattting with all her fans and never wants to leave until she’s heard what everyone has to say.)
Added to that, my friend also attempted to get the band’s guitartists’ autograph, but he was clearly very drunk. Of course, that’s not her fault but it didn’t make the band seem any more personable.
Also, there was a revealing comment by the bands’ drummer in a local Buffalo paper “ArtVoice” about a year after Merchant had quit the band. The interviewer asked if the members of the band kept in touch with her, if they were still friends and spoke. The drummer bluntly said “I didn’t speak to her the last ten years she was in the band. Why would I start talking to her now?”
Robert Jordan. I ate up the first five books of his series with an unearthly passion - in fact, I almost destroyed my military career by hiding in my tent for a week to read the Dragon Reborn. By end of the book 7, I no longer wanted to read another word of his, and I haven’t since.
I came late to the Sandman party, getting into them in my last year of high school, Boy did I get inot them. A bloke sold me all his old comics for the mindboggling sum of $500 (NZ) which I paid in installments over six months.
The I fell in love with Death, and paid silly amounts of money to buy the two trades from Amazon. That was the same year American Gods came out, so I bought that, devoured it, adored it.
For a few years he was my number-one, all-time favourite author. And then I found his website, and his blog. And I read it, getting to know my hero, and I read it, and I read another collection of short stories containing subverted fairy tales and at some point I found myself thinking ‘jeezus Neil, would you just shut up!’
So now I’m sick of him, and it’s my own fault. If I’d only ever read his actual work, and not the blog, he’d still be, well, not my favourite author, but I’d rate him higher than I do now.
Stupidly I did the same with FreakAngels, Warren Ellis’ online comic. It’s not the most original thing out there, but it’s pretty good, and I was enjoying it until I made the same mistake, and went onto the comic’s forums. And Warren Ellis comes accross like a teenage boy, constantly yammering about how HARDCORE he is, and how CRAZY his life is, and how much COFFEE he drinks until I found myself thinking ‘Warren Ellis, if you don’t settle down and shut up I am going to…’
Going to learn the damn lesson and stop reading blogs of authors I like, hopefully.
I loved early books of both Kinky Friedman and Andrew Vachss, but the whole “crazy NYC viligantes fighting crime” idea got old very fast.
They must have agreed with this, because both series have ended with the chief protagonist’s death.
I’m not a big reader of fiction, but after the movie L.A. Confidential came out, I was wild to pick up the novel by James Ellroy. (I think I had also read some short story of his in GQ, and had liked it.) So started reading the novel. and it started out with just the kind of gritty noir feel I was expecting. But as the plot developed, I came to realize (A) This is different from the movie, and (B) it’s actually kind of stupid. So I burned out on him midway through the book I was originally so excited about.
I thought the Daily Show with Jon Stewart was extremely clever for a few months, and it was. But his manufactured amazement of the goofy news got old really fast.
The Fratellis had some great music (and videos) but I got tired of them fast, too peppy.
He is an ex parrot, he is deceased hes pushing up the daisies !
Say no MORE, squire, wink, wink, know what I mean ? eh ?eh ?
And now that I’ve earned your undying hatred I’ll get my coat.
I got really burned out on the website “The A.V. Club”
I used to read it every day for the film and music reviews, Dan Savage’s (mostly good) sex advice, and the postings from all the commenters.
Over the past couple of years though the site seems to have begun to take itself, and all the pop-culture that it reviews, far too seriously.
My favorite writer also got the axe for posting a “review” of a book that wasn’t even published yet. After his departure I had even less reason to visit the site.
Tosh.0. Liked it a lot at first, like it less every time I see it. I have a pretty edgy sense of humor and I’m not at all easily offended, but the ironic racist and homophobic jokes are so frequent that they feel like a lazy substitute for joke writing and give the show a downright mean spirited feel.
Conan O’Brien - twice!
When I was in high school and then college, I was obsessed with Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Watched it every night. I even taped it every night (on an actual VCR!) when I was in college so I could go out and not miss the show. I was a member of alt.fan.conan.obrien on Usenet. I even tried to figure out how to get college credit for being an intern writer on the show (I was in journalism school…they said no).
Then at some point - I think when Andy left - I totally stopped wanting to watch the show at all. I still found Conan funny but I think I also started to find him hard to watch. IMHO he was never a good interviewer and he was worse without Andy.
I think I also started hating celebrities and thus could not stand the idea of watching a celebrity talk show. But, even if I forwarded through the interviews, I still didn’t feel like watching the show.
Then the whole recent kerfuffle came up with NBC (this is about 9 or 10 years after I stopped caring) and I followed along in the beginning. I followed his Twitter feed and friended Team Coco on Facebook. I watched the final episode and laughed. I quickly got burned out on all of the OMG CONAN shit. I was tired of all the Twitter and Facebook posts. Everything was a contest or a short movie clip.
I watched the first episode on TBS. The day after, online. Still not appealing to me. I wished him well. That was enough.
House.
I never watched it until they showed the reruns on USA, and once I discovered them I watched them every time they were on. They used to show all day marathons and I would sit and watch the entire thing in one shot, but the re-watchability left after a while and then I just lost interest.
Except for the military career, I could’ve written this. Loved the Dragon Reborn, lost total interest shortly thereafter.
Piers Anthony and Heinlein, in high school. I would go to the used bookstores and buy everything I could find and read it… Piers wore me out with his puns (I think he’s largely responsible for my now near-hatred of puns as a form of “humor”) and Heinlein… I eventually just realized I didn’t care anymore.
Another I read a lot of all in one go in high school was Kafka. Then nothing. I don’t think I dislike him now, but I haven’t re-read any of his stuff in probably 20 years. Don’t know if I’d like it anymore or not.
The TV show House, I’ll second. I love Hugh Laurie and was a fan of the show, but this past season, about halfway in, I realized when we sat down to watch that week’s episode that I really wanted to be anywhere else, doing anything besides watching that show. And I haven’t watched one since.