TAMPA As I was walking around Ybor City, where I'm staying on this part of the excursion through the Grapefruit League, the marquee of the Ritz theater caught my eye. Coming on Tuesday night was Tyler, the Creator, with doors opening at 6 p.m. I was going to be at the Yankees-Red Sox game on Tuesday afternoon, a 15-minute drive away, so making it to an early concert seemed like a fun idea. The only thing was, aside from having heard his name once on the MTV Video Starlin Castro Jersey Music Awards, I had absolutely no idea what it is that Tyler, the Creator actually does. Create, I suppose, but what?Sean Gentille, Sporting News' hockey writer and my trusted source for information on cultural happenings among those younger than me, chimed in on Twitter: Tyler is pretty horrible, and there's a chance something truly insane would happen. Please go. Sean Gentille (@seangentille) For 24 hours, I waffled on whether I should go. Finally, I decided that Socrates was right and the unexamined life is not worth living. So, I lined up around the block with a bunch of people, most of whom appeared to be a little more than half my age, and bought my ticket an hour and a half before the show.I was completely out of my element, so far out that the discomfort of being out of my element was replaced with wide-eyed wonderment at nearly everything I saw and heard over the subsequent few hours.It started in the bar area, which was used as a pre-concert holding area more than it was used as a bar, because there were so few people of legal drinking age in attendance. That did make acquiring a beer a very easy proposition, and there was a large ma s of people near what I thought, at first, was the stage. It was a stage, yes, but not the stage, and the large ma s of people was congregating around the doors that led to the hallway that led to the main concert area. They started chanting "Tyler! Tyler! Tyler!" and then the doors opened, and it was a near stampede to Jazz Chisholm Jersey get to the concert floor, so everyone could get as close as they could to the evening's performer.Of course, there was a long wait after that, during which I was told, "Oh, you're gonna see some stuff tonight." I didn't know what kind of stuff I was going to see, but this is why I was there, to see some stuff, certainly. The pre-show recorded music was up my alley some Rick Ro s, some Flo Rida, some Kanye West and I was hopeful that even if it wasn't as crazy as I had been led to believe, I might enjoy Tyler's show.The wait dragged on, and someone checked up on Tyler's Sandy Alcantara Jersey social media. "He's backstage playing with race cars," one girl said to another, who replied, "What a douche."This antipathy did not seem to be uncommon among the crowd. Yes, there were a lot of die-hard Tyler fans, many decked out in clothing that featured donuts Tyler's logo, I was told, which earned him some respect from me but there also were a significant number of people who were paying to see an artist they openly disliked.Tyler, the Creator (AP Photo)Or maybe that's just the way things roll for Tyler and those who patronize his craft, because he arrived on stage J. T. Realmuto Jersey shouting, "What's up, as?" to loud applause."I was in jail a couple of days ago," Tyler told the crowd.Ravenous applause for that."That s was not tight," Tyler responded. "Why y'all fers clapping like that s tight?"More applause, because there are only so many ways a crowd can respond to something like this."I'm a free man!" Tyler yelled.Over the course of the following 90 minutes or so, Tyler informed the crowd that he is, as Sean had told me, pretty horrible."If you know the words to this song, please sing along, because I don't sound cool singing at all," was his introduction to one song."I hate this song," was another.Tyler's songs were not songs so much as very short poems yelled aggre sively into a microphone in the presence of a hype man and a DJ. He also got a lot of mileage out of having the crowd scream back the exact same thing he had just screamed. "When I say hey, you say ho!" was more advanced than this. Tyler shouted "ca-ca" and the crowd shouted back "ca-ca." Tyler shouted "f that!" and the crowd shouted back "f that!" It was mind-numbing.The best part, though, was the one time that Tyler did actually sing. What he sang was the name of the R&B/ Neil Walker Jersey pop star Jason Derulo, who sings his own name the same way as a tag on his songs, "Jaaaa-son De-ruuuulo." Back when I covered hockey, there were occasions in the New York Rangers' locker room, when, after practice, Brandon Dubinsky would plop down at his locker and sing Jason Derulo's name. It always made me laugh, and so did this, as Tyler did it, and then so did the crowd. This happened repeatedly pretty much every time the energy in the room waned even a little bit, Tyler would just throw a "Jaaaa-son De-ruuuulo" out there, the crowd would respond in kind, and everything would be back to normal, which was loud, with people shoving to get ever closer to the stage, and jumping up and down."Who threw this pirate hat?" Tyler asked Brad Ziegler Jersey after one landed on stage. "I don't want this hat. Take this hat back."It was mesmerizing. All night long, Tyler showed little but antipathy for his fans, and they ate it up. I don't think that my confusion is about me being old. There's a lot of Don Rickels' attitude in Tyler, but Tyler is getting by on half-baked raps and almost entirely mindle s call-and-response stuff. So, more than being about a generational i sue, I think what I learned is that there are people in every generation who enjoy garbage. Jim Belushi has made a career on this principle. If only Kendrick Lamar's show in Florida were on March 20 instead of April 20, I could test my theory that I would enjoy a hip-hop show aimed at people who were born after my bar mitzvah, but I'll be back in New York by then.The true crazine s never really seemed to happen, and it was fairly sudden when Tyler said, "All right, Tampa, that's it. See you next time." Sorry, Tyler, but you won't be seeing me.