SSSHHHH! You're not supposed to notice that!

I've changed my mind. You're not an android. You're a Vulcan. You sound just like one.

(And if I really had disdain for you I'd fill up this post with emoticons and sparkly-happy pictures of unicorns and rainbows.)

That's fine. I suppose my not being hurt by your disdain is similar evidence of that. Of course, every month when I menstruate it comes out red, which does suggest error in your hypothesis.

And a threat of smileys is misguided, as somehow the myth has taken hold that smileys offend me. That like garlic for a vampire they send me scurrying for cover. Au contraire, I just think that most of their time their use makes the user look less intelligent than they likely are. So go ahead, and use them to your content.

Just when I think I fully understand the depths of your pop culture separation I get surprised, again.

I do not have pop culture separation except insofar as you define pop culture as "music." I define it as much broader than that and think I'm perfectly well connected to most of those other areas.

And I was familiar with the music of Nirvana (it would have been impossible not to be), I just didn't know or care who it was making the music. The existence of Nirvana wasn't news to me, the existence of Kurt Cobain was. Courtney Love remains, to me, first and foremost a actress of some reasonable skill as demonstrated during a short window in the mid-'90s.

Ok. But what about the unicorns and rainbows?

Complete separation, no, but you've got to admit it's a significant blind spot. While I am now fairly versed in popular music, I was late to the game and very much out of the loop in 1994, but even I knew who Kurt Cobain was (having knowingly heard a Nirvana song maybe twice at the point of his death). I wasn't involved in that aspect of pop culture, but I was definitely aware of the handful of things that were getting mega-attention. To say, "Yeah I'd heard of Nirvana but didn't know the name Kurt Cobain," is kinda like saying, "Sure I've heard of the Lakers, but had never heard of this Kobe Bryant guy." It doesn't make you an anti social freak, but it does kinda make you a surprising and notable anomaly.

Yes; on Tuesdays during summer months, every other Monday during winter months.

Sure, and I have no problem saying a musically retarded. I just havee issues for when that gets expanded to an assumption that I've in no way partaken in the cultural zeitgeist of my time. I'm guessing I know far more about TV, books, movies, Saturday morning cartoons of the '80s, and sugared cereal mascots than the average person.

But when I run into someone who doesn't watch movies I just treat them like someone who doesn't watch movies, not express amazement and how hard it must be to live without a culture (not saying that CP did that, but she did expand it a lot from just being stupid about music).

And to a certain extent a big part of things is that I am horrible at remembering proper nouns. Though I'm sure I've been told the real names for everybody here many times, I wouldn't be able to give them for more than a dozen of the posters here. I'm horrible at remembering book titles and author names and that's in a realm I'm hugely interested. I"m sure that I had heard the name "Kurt Cobain" many, many times before he died. It just had not implanted and the fact that he was from a realm of culture I had no interest in made it even less likely it would happen. Some people suffer from face blindness (Oliver Sachs rears his head again), I sometimes wonder if I suffer from capitalized noun blindness.

I was about to post that I should have said "music" instead of "pop culture" but in thinking about it more, I think I stand by my statement, not in any way to contradict what you're saying about your areas of expertise. I'm certain you know more than I do on all those topics.

Knowing who Kurt Cobain was in the early 90's didn't mean you knew anything about music. GD mentioned Kobe Bryant - I agree. If you weren't a)in college at the time AND b)in Seattle at the time I might even give you a pass for not being close enough to the affected demographic.

I think what we're talking about is two different meanings to the phrase "knowing pop culture". Knowing the various changes made to Sugar Bear as Sugar Crisp became Golden Crisp means you are a pop culture geek. Debating whether you liked Fruity Pebbles or Cocoa Pebbles better as a kid makes you a part of the pop culture of the time.

I like that I used the phrase "pop culture separation" because I think that embodies the latter definition. If you were an expert on bands of the early 90's and could discuss the rise and fall of grunge endlessly but couldn't remember that it was Quentin Tarantino who directed Pulp Fiction, I would still say you had pop culture separation.

I'm not picking on you, just exploring the concept.

As someone who has equally significant blind spots, I am not surprised that Alex didn't know of Kurt Cobain. I couldn't, without a doubt, name a Nirvana song without getting it confused with the other grunge bands that sound mostly the same to me.

I was at P&P and listening to a song that "stole" (ie "sampled) from the Tom Tom Club. I mentioned that this was a TomTom Club song and I got blank stares. When I was told this was "so and so" doing this song I said "never heard of her". They tried further clarifying by saying that the woman was in "BellBivDevo" (or whoever it is correctly spelled). When I said I had never heard of that group I got more looks of disbelief. My response was that, if they didn't know the TomTom Club, Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz and the Talking Heads connection I should be the one with the look of disbelief on my face.