Recently, I made a comment on an FB page that I happen to follow, called Occupy Democrats Logic (yes, I am a moderate Republican and this page mocks Democrats/Liberals in all of its glorious hypocritical form).
Basically, they shared a post from Twitter that said the following:
Today, I slapped a man and he slapped me back.
People, this guy legit slapped me back.
How dare you slap a woman back?
How dare you?
And I wrote a comment that got about 140+ likes: And you expected what, a Kevin Bacon response, "Thank you ma'am, may I have another?"
Someone responded to my comment by saying that millenials would never understand the pop culture referent. I responded by saying, "Sad, but so very true."
For those of you who didn't get the reference, it was a tweaked quote from the movie "Animal House", where a very young Kevin Bacon is getting paddled in a fraternity hazing ritual.
That got me to thinking about the fact that anyone under the age of 35, for the most part, do not get any pop culture references that hearken back to the previous century. And thus, a topic for a blog post was born.
Case in point: I have a supervisor, who I love dearly, who falls under the category of being south of 35, which means that any pop culture reference from the 20th century she does not get. Anyways, for a while we had a staff member that earned the nickname of a particular movie character from the early 80's. Anyone who met this staff member immediately got the reference. Well, everyone except my co-worker.
Apparently, this was because the movie in question came out when she was but a toddler. So being the thoughtful individual that I am, bought the movie for her as an late Christmas/early B'day present.
But really, my overall point is that having to explain a pop culture reference after saying it can be quite exasperating sometimes (another example is that I had to explain "happy little clouds" to someone). But, as they say, knowledge is power, and a lot of minutia knowledge can make G. B. a very strange bedfellow.
So my question to you, my dear readers, is this: have you ever had to explain a pop culture reference to someone, simply because the reference was from the previous century?
{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
I don't work in an office and most of the people I hang out with are the same vintage as me, so, that doesn't come up very often. Worst example I can think of is some young'un asking who the Beatles were in an online forum. Horrors! 🤯
ReplyDeleteP.S. I don't understand this whole mocking/denigrating political crap that goes on. We are all human beings, regardless of political affiliations and yeah, I'm a liberal; Canadian variety. And yet, I still like you, GB! 😉
And I like you too. :D
DeleteI have a high threshold for political nastiness. I can tolerate quite a bit (I have friends/co-workers on all sides of the political spectrum), so it takes a lot for me to get really upset.
I've had to explain a lot of pop culture references over the years. Fortunately, I never had to explain a lot of it to any of my kids.
So funny, I was at the doctor yesterday and told the x-ray tech that I was "Uncle Joe, movin' kinda slow, at the junction..." She gave me the blankest of stares. I said, "you know, Petticoat Junction." SHE HAD NEVER HEARD OF IT!!!!!! Shoot me now.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen the show but I've heard of the show.
DeleteUsually at work I'll use a modified SpongeBob quote of "I'm ready, I'm ready!", which most people get (my co-workers like The Minions as well as Gumby, so there you go).