Saturday, June 11, 2011

Okay, then I'll be a regular kid and her cradle-robbing, creature-of-the-night boyfriend.

It seems to be hailing...good day to stay inside and finally knock off my netfux...

Speaking of which, wow, even the younger kids here who do watch movies don't know the good stuff. I was out with a big group Thursday night playing trivia at a pub. (One of the Aussie girls dubbed our team "The Win-terns.") There was a huge mix of questions, most of which were pretty obscure or hard. And some were cultural. (To be fair, some just caught you off-guard, regardless: the Australians were stumped for a good long while at the question, "What is the OFFICIAL name of Australia?")

(It's: the Commonwealth of Australia.)

My contributions make me question whether I got anything out of my time in university. Although I did tell everyone the proper capital of Nevada, my other contributions included: was Thomas Edison actually afraid of the dark? to which supermodel was Richard Gere married in the 80s? and my favorite: what was the 1984 musical penned by Tim Rice as well as by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA?

(The chicks wanted to say Mamma Mia! and I tried not to hit them. I was all, it's Chess! You know, One Night in Bangkok? And then someone wanted to argue with me about whether ONIB is really in Chess. I explained it was the first track on the flip side of the record, which I still own, and that seemed to shut them up. But anyway.)

My point about the movies came to me when I could not remember who sang Rockin' Robin. (I'm sorry, dad.) And then I remembered it comes on the radio at the beginning of Stand By Me, though I couldn't recall if the DJ called out the artist. (It retrospect I don't think he does. And yes, I know now it's Bobby Day. The people at my table wanted to put "the Jackson Five" because they covered it at some point. SIGH.) So anyway, I bring up the movie and even the guy at my table who I thought was into movies is like, what's that? Why would I know it? And I did not drop my head onto table or slap him, so that's a pretty big deal.

I just don't understand the argument that it was "before your time." So does that mean you don't know any Beatles and you've never watched Star Wars? Even scarier (because it's more recent, not because it's more socially relevant), someone told this girl at work that she looks like Sarah Michelle Gellar and the girl--an American, 22--was all, who?

On the bright side, the other teams seemed to be struggling as much as we were--out of 18 teams, we took third place! Which, in reality, is probably really, really sad.

4 comments:

REB said...

The flip side of "Rockin' Robin" is an even better song--"Over and Over"

Ellen Aim said...

I knew that was perfect bait to elicit an elusive REB comment... ;)

(But yes, I'll check it out!)

Corinthian said...

This is my frustration every day. Every day.

Ellen Aim said...

Yes, I thought of you. When I have not heard of something, I usually express a curiosity to know more. These people, however, are like, "Why do I need to know that?"

SIGH.