An employee of mine was astonished to learn that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had been partners and had made movies as a team.
The same person, in 1975, at my 35th birthday party, asked if I had fought in World War II.
Stevie, I’m so glad to have introduced you to Lili Marlene! Rush out and rent some of her films (she was a terrific singer, too). Start with Blonde Venus, Destry Rides Again, or Judgment at Nuremburg.
Yikes, there are some scary stories above! Just recalled two more:
• We had an article in our magazine by Kathy Cronkite. One of our ass’t. editors had no idea that Kathy had a dad named Walter who used to be on TV.
• Another editor gave me a blank look when I did a Roseanne Rosannadanna imitation (“Whaddaya tryin’ t’ do, make me sick?”). I said, “You know, Gilda Radner?” Light bulb goes on. “Oh, wasn’t she that cancer lady?”
Oy.
This may be more of a generational thing, but…
We were at a family gathering. My 10 year old nephew found that little plastic doohicky that used to go into 45s so that the could be played on the stereo (what are those called anyway?) and asked what it was.
“It’s so you can play a record on the stereo.” I said.
“What’s a record?” he answered.
I have a friend who is wonderful, but her parents are hippies all the way. Built thier house out of trees (not lumber, you understand, they cut whole TREES down and made a log cabin…) with no septic tank, so they have an outhouse. (this IS Vermont…) needless to say, she has never had a TV. I never realised how often I quote TV until I spent the weekend at her parent’s. I’d make some Sienfeld comment, or an obscure SNL quote, and the entire family would stare at me blankly.
The advantage was that I could pass jokes off as my own. They thought I was a riot.
As for the idiots, I am friends with an Austrian family. I told someone the grandfather had a heavy Austrian accent, and they said “What does that sound like?” and I said “Arnold Scharzenagger is Austrian, so like him.” And the woman said “Oh, that is a strange accent. Do you speak any Austrian?” I told her, no, I didn’t. But seeing as they spoke German, it hadn’t presented a problem yet…
Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth
For a while on AOL/SDMB, Ranger Jeff used the A H line as a sig. One of our less culturally aware junior members took issue with the sig on the grounds that it was not the Germans. A truly dim bulb then tried to argue that the first kid shouldn’t be re-writing history and that the Pearl Harbor attack really did occur.
Tom~
*Melin: My sister … and I were discussing the movie “Hamlet” some years ago, the one with Mel Gibson.
I made some reference to Hamlet dying at the end, and she yelled at me for giving away the ending . . . . *
Now you’ve spoiled it for the rest of us! 
The word is no. I am therefore going anyway.
Crystalguy: An employee of mine … in 1975, at my 35th birthday party, asked if I had fought in World War II.
I was born in 1964. Some kid asked me what I did during the Vietnam War. I replied, “I peed, I pooped. Then I learned to walk and talk. But it’s all such a blur; I’d rather not talk about it.”
The word is no. I am therefore going anyway.
I was working one weekend at my office. I brought in my CD player and was playing “Paul McCartney - All The Best”. A woman co-worker that I shared office space with came in with her 9-year-old son. He asked me if I could play something besides that “disco crap”.
<h1>GASP!</h1>
She’s lucky I didn’t toss the rugrat out a window!
The word is no. I am therefore going anyway.
My colleagues and I have fond memories of a secretary in her late twenties
who would say the most appalling things. Okay, the first three of these are
more general knowledge lapses than “cultural literacy” blunders, but I think
the last one both falls well within this subject and is good enough to
make up for my possible lapse in posting the first three.</p>
[ul]
[li]We were all leaving our office building to view a spectacular solar eclipse.[/li] We invited her and several others along. On the elevator ride down: “So, what
causes an eclipse, the weather?”
[li]She thought that the word “quartz” on a watch face signified a brand name.[/li]
[li]On a related timekeeping note, when the NIST was reckoning with a “leap[/li] second” needed for its atomic clock, we quickly convinced her that the scientists
in Colorado were going to unplug the clock from an outlet, count “one one
thousand,” and plug it back into the wall. (I know this was cruel. I feel
bad about it. Really.)
[li]Drum roll, please . . . . My firm is predominantly Jewish, and someone[/li] made the mistake of engaging her in a mild religious discussion. A direct
quote: “But, how can it be a religion if you don’t believe in Jesus?”
[/ul]
Back in college at good old Kent State in the early 80’s, there was a big story on the local tv news (out of Cleveland) concerning the cable tv franchise rights to the city of Cleveland. ( FYI, Cleveland proper didn’t get cable tv until well after all its surrounding suburbs did). Anyway, this guy in my dorm was watching the news with us and said, what’s the big deal, nobody actually lives in Cleveland anyway. This guy honestly thought that the city of Cleveland consisted only of the big downtown office buildings where no one actually lived. We vainly tried to convince him that some 500,000 people lived within the city limits of Cleveland at that time but he just wouldn’t believe us.
I was at the D.C. DMV a few weeks back getting my license. There was an Indian guy ahead of me in line for the info desk asking how he could renew his license. He proceeded to pull out the renewal/expiration warning he received in the mail- for his Virginia drivers license. The DMV employee began to immediately harrangue him for wasting his time. I patiently explained to the guy that he needed to renew his VA license in VA.
In his defense, the VA renewal warning says “you can renew your license at any area DMV”. Being from India, he wouldn’t know that they didn’t mean DC or MD.
I suppose I should hasten to add that we were prepared to view it properly, i.e., using quickly-constructed boxes with a hole in one end and a white paper “projection screen” at the other, in case someone comes along to say “you’re calling someone a moron and you were going out to view an eclipse?”
Incidently, this is how a lot of Christians tend to think
Coldfire
"You know how complex women are"
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
I swear both of these are true:
-
Not long ago I was at a friend’s house watching a big fight (De La Hoya/Trinidad if you care). One guy was there with his wife, who was the only woman present. Suddenly she asked the room full of guys: “Any of you know a good obstetrician?” As we all stared at her in silence, she pointed to her husband and explained “because his eyes are terrible and I think he needs a check up.”
-
I grew up in Durango, Colorado. For those of you who have never been there, it is beautiful, mountainous country. It is also a very popular tourist town (whose idiocy caused my jaw to drop on many occasions). As you might expect, many of the higher peaks around town retain their snow caps well into the summer. One summer a tourist asked my mother (who worked in the tourism industry), “Who paints the tops of the mountains white? Is it the city or the state or what.” When my mother assured him that it was actually snow he replied: “Come on, you can’t kid me, I’m not your average stupid tourist.” How right he was.
::stunned:: Leprechauns don’t really exist???
-Melin
You may be thinking of Marlene Dietrich. There was a 70’s era porno star that went by Lili Marlene but you’re probably confusing M.D. with the song Lili Marleen.
…ok,ok, get this one…my Alma Matter,UGA, is located in Athens,ga, and the day Pope John Paul II was elected the Athens Banner-Herald ran a front page banner headline that read “First non-Catholic Pope elected”…woo, stop the presses,eh?
As a prof, I’ve seen many perls of wisdom in students papers. My favourite remains a 30 page thesis paper handed to me by a 4th year Archaeology student. Yes, a long expose on the greek statues of “Herpes”.
She never did finish the program…
E.
John Lennon was killed while I was in tenth grade in Tennessee. The day that he was killed was a weekday and geometry was my first class. Our teacher walked in and told us she was going to talk about John Lennon for this period because he had just been killed. So she starts passing around pictures and stuff and started to outline his early life.
I said:
“So, who is John Lennon?”
No, Pad, I was using “Lili Marlene” as an affectionate nickname.
Like you’d call Charlie Chaplin “The Little Tramp.” Or, was that Shelley Winters?