Maybe it is, but Gangnam Style is a song.
That’s almost impossible in the UK for someone that age, at that time. I figured that was pretty much a classic for anyone born between 1940 and 1990, in Europe - let alone the UK.
So, well spotted. 
I remember back around 1974, when Tony Orlando and Dawn, after a string of hit singles, landed a TV show on CBS. My mother was watching, and asked me in all seriousness, “Which one’s Tony, which one’s Orlando, and which one’s Dawn?”
For those too young to remember Tony Orlando and Dawn, they were a trio consisting of a male singer named Tony Orlando, and Joyce Vincent Wilson and Thelma Hopkins, who were recruited by Orlando to make records with him and collectively known as Dawn. Hopkins later became a popular sitcom star on such shows as “Bosom Buddies” and “Family Matters,” among others.
Nitpick: That’s Edgar Allan Poe. No E in Allan.
It’s a district, a neighborhood. Gangnam is the Beverly Hills of South Korea.
I’m in my fifties, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn this at school. Several people I know who are around the same age as me say the same. I wonder if our memories are faulty or perhaps there was a time period where this either wasn’t taught, or was mentioned so fleetingly that it just didn’t register.
I remember being shocked when it was described in a (fiction) book I was reading and needing to research it and asking myself why I hadn’t known this before.
Some of these posts surprise me…
I once went to the Wax Museum in San Francisco, and in the section where the Disney figures are, there was a figure of Disney himself. Some young woman said, “I didn’t know he [Disney] was a real person!” (I do; I was a high-school senior in December 1966 when I read in the paper that he died.)
I live near the Del Amo Mall in Torrance, CA, which was the world’s largest indoor mall for a while. I wanted to know where to buy dry goods, but when I called the directory line, the person who answered had no idea what dry goods are!
There was an older woman in the local Mensa group, known only as Gowen, whom I gave an oblique reference to Laurel and Hardy. She didn’t understand. It turned out she had never gone to the movies–she grew up in an old-fashioned Catholic family and her parents would not allow her to go to the movies.
I made a goof myself once: thinking that Katharine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn were mother and daughter!
It was downplayed at the time it occurred for fear of panicking the population. I’m not sure when the government shifted from trying to hush it up to openly acknowledging it happened.
Honestly, neither ‘George’ nor ‘Harrison’ is a particularly uncommon name.
Unless you’re talking someone like Picabo Street or one of the Zappa kids, there’s a damn good chance there’s someone else famous with the same name.
I was recently baffled by the number of people I know who didn’t recognize a drawing of Lon Chaney, jr as the Wolfman.
Oh, oh, oh! This reminds me.
In university, one of my housemates was a conservative from the States. Registered Republican and everything.
There was a news story about Reagan being chosen to be honoured as the best Republican president in the last 50 years, or something to that effect. I snorted ‘Like he had much competition. Who else would they pick? NIXON?’ The guy just looked at me like I’d grown a second head. ‘Nixon. Was. A. Democrat.’ I was too dumbfounded to argue with him. (This was at the tail end of the Clinton administration, FTR.)
Yes, but how many guitarists named George Harrison have you heard of? Or at least as equally famous? Remember, this was in a record store, so the name wouldn’t have come up in some other context.
Actually, neither do I. I know of one store called dry goods. They sell t-shirts and water bottles. As opposed to their other store wich sells coffee, tea, and cream cheese, which are, I suppose, wet goods.
Which doesn’t change my point at all.
‘George Harrison’ is not an uncommon name at all. That the George Harrison of the Beatles is the only one who’s a famous musician doesn’t mean he’s the only one who could be a famous musician.
Leaving music, there is comic book writer Erik Larsen, and novelist Erik Larson. And comic book writer Christopher Priest and novelist Christopher Priest. (That latter’s a weird example, since the comic book writer was born James Owsley and changed to Christopher Priest after his divorce, having no idea the novelist existed.)
If you were in a book store and someone spotted a copy of The Prestige, and asked if it was by ‘The Quantum and Woody guy’, or picked up a collection of Priest’s Deadpool issues and asked if it was written by the same guy who wrote Fugue For a Darkening Island, would you be boggled by that? Yes, both of these examples are comic book writer/novelist pairs, but it’s hardly unthinkable that someone would do both. (Examples off the top of my head - Brad Meltzer, Jodi Picoult, China Mieville, Peter David, and Chris Clairmont (an awful writer in both media, to be honest, but…).)
Well, there IS that one corpse that turned into soap all on its own
Game designing is not a huge field but there are two well-known game designers named Steve Jackson - one American and one British.
Not an American, but I’ve only ever seen the term used in a 19th century context, referring to (as I understand it) pretty much everything that wasn’t food or drink - I’ve seen photos from the Old West of shops with signs like “Jeremiah Booker & Sons, Merchants - Dry Goods, Provisions and Hardware”. It’s not a term I’d ever associate with modern retail, in other words.
I imagine calling a major shopping centre nowadays and saying “Where can I buy a wireless?” would elicit similar confusion, unless you sound old enough to be Mr Burns.*
*When I worked in electronics retail we did occasionally get older folks asking for “A Wireless”, meaning a radio, but the younger staff would often stare at them blankly and say “A wireless what?”
When we lived in Venice, CA, in the early 1950s, my Mom did a lot of sewing (she used an electric sewing machine). She bought the fabric, notions, and patterns at dry-goods stores in Santa Monica.
I am an American, and I am in complete agreement. I don’t know that people refer to “notions” much nowadays, either. I think the next time I go into Wally World, I’ll ask about their dry goods. What’s a little puzzling is that the term seems to be mostly used for clothing and clothing accessories.
My contribution, but it’s not strictly pop culture: I’d bet that if you asked a class of high school seniors “How many feet are in a mile” or “How many pounds are in a ton” probably not half would be able to answer.
Sketches. They’re called sketches in the business.
Skits are what you do a couple of times a semester in German/French/Spanish class to show you’ve learned the material correctly.
skit |skit|
noun
a short comedy sketch or piece of humorous writing, esp. a parody: a skit on daytime magazine programs.
ORIGIN early 18th cent. (in the sense ‘satirical comment or attack’): related to the rare verb skit ‘move lightly and rapidly,’ perhaps from Old Norse (compare with skjóta ‘shoot’).