Excuse me? Top Gun does not suck. Top Gun has…
A lame but intensely memorable cheesy 80s soundtrack. (Hiiiiiiiiighway to the dang-uh zone!)
Fighter planes
That bald guy that was in every 80s military movie ever made.
Michael Ironside.
“I am dangerous, Ice…MAN”
Val Kilmer eating scenery like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo.
The bar singalong voted Most Likely To Never, Ever Occur.
It is pure, refined 80s cheese and you can’t ask for much more.
I have never heard, nor could I name, a single song by Mariah Carey and/or Boys II Men.
I can look over the current Top Ten pop charts and recognize hardly a single song name, and not that many of the artists (except that they all seem to be “feat.” somebody or other).
I hardly ever listen to the radio; that way I don’t have to listen to the bad songs, and the good songs don’t get spoiled for me by overexposure. I have literally hundreds of CDs, so I’m in no danger of running out of things to listen to.
I don’t have cable TV myself, and I have never lived with or frequented the home of anyone who has any of the “premium channels” like HBO or Showtime. Thus, I am completely (and blissfully) ignorant of “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos,” and stuff like that.
I have never watched a complete episode of Friends.
In case you don’t recognize that reference, it’s from an SCTV (Second City Television) sketch called Farm Film Report. As this page explains (scroll down to section 3.3, item o):
congodwarf posted:
Tenebras responded, in part:
Actually, the Berlin Airlift antedated the construction of the Wall by over a decade. The Airlift was a response to the blockade of West Berlin imposed by the Soviet Union in June 1948. After 11 months, the USSR reopened land and water routes into West Berlin on May 12, but the airlift continued through September of 1949.
While the airlift was a response to an apparent plan to starve West Berlin into submission, the wall was erected in order to stop the exodus of East Germans to West Berlin (or, if you believed Soviet propaganda of the day, to prevent West Berliners from defecting to the worker’s paradise that was the German Democratic Republic). The wall literally appeared overnight on August 13, 1961, and became the most visibly powerful symbol of the “Iron Curtain” that divided the Communist bloc from the freedoms Western Europe afforded.
– Sternvogel, born in 1959, and thus one of the positively ancient Baby Boomer Dopers who lived through the bulk of the era of NATO-Warsaw Pact standoffs
<hijack continued>
congodwarf, you should check out pictures of the escape attempts, they’re quite spectacular - people dug tunnels, flew with balloons and even fit nine people in a car the size of a thumbnail. The mind boggles again.
<end hijack>
Back to the OP: Entering puberty I was woefully unaware of everything I should have known. I used to listen to my local radio station all day where they kept playing Modern Talking, which I thought was the height of pop culture. (If you don’t know Modern Talking, don’t worry, by the way.)
I came to my senses when I had acquired a sticker of a very hip (or so I thought) pop star which I proudly displayed. Immediately I started getting immense heat for “cutting George Michael off the sticker” - it was an Andrew Ridgeley sticker, but unfortunately I had never heard of Wham! Deeply traumatized, I threw my radio out and have been faithfully following pop culture ever since. Does this explain my penchant for reality shows? I’d like to think so…
Thanks, sternvogel, I thought I might be a little off on that bit…
I’ve never seen any of the Matrix movies nor do I really have a desire to. It’s become a joke among my friends because everyone is so surprised to hear that because I’m a movie buff.
I’ve never seen the Quiznos “spongmonkey” commercials although I have seen a couple of clips from rathergood. I don’t watch as much TV as I used to, but I still watch a few hours a week. I’ve seen the “Mmm Mmm Mmm Toasty” ones, but not these.
I haven’t listened to the radio in years other than NPR and college radio, so I’ve missed out on a lot of big popular hits.
I remember I was going to school in England a few years ago, and I was on one of the really long escalators in the Underground, when a busker started singing a song that I’d never heard before.
Everybody else had, because a growing chorus of people (mostly younger) joined in, so as I descended, I tried really hard to figure out what this Very Popular Song was.
Turns out, it was “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” If they played that song today, I still wouldn’t be able to recognize it (until that title line emerged). My car doesn’t have a radio and I never go shopping, so the only time I ever hear contemporary music is if it’s featured (1) in a movie, or (2) in a TV commercial.
Oh, and nitpick:
Actually, not true. Dark Crystal made more money (though not enough to make back the huge cost).
Well, I don’t have a TV, and I listen to NPR when I’m alone and the oldies station when I’m with the kids, and I’ve seen three movies in the last three years and they were all Lord of the Rings.
So I might have missed a thing or two.
I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars movies, or anything Star Trek. People always think that’s odd.
Also haven’t seen any of the LOTR or Harry Potter movies.
I hope you’re referring to Reagan.
Coz if you’re referring to Clinton you’re going to make me feel really, really old.
Billboard’s method of ranking the Hot 100 has always been arcane. I remember Casey Kasem saying one time that it was based on a combination of record sales and airplay.
Since individual singles sales started disappearing years ago, they had to do something to change the way they ranked songs, but who knows?
Also, if you look at popular songs from the mid-50s thru the early 60s, popular songs had long chart runs, usually over ten weeks, and often 15 or more. From the mid-60s thru the early 70s, for some reason the chart runs ended much faster, a number one song usually spending a maximum of 12 weeks on the Hot 100. Then in the mid-70s songs started having long runs again.
I have no idea on why that was the case.
Going back the the fact that the longest running #1 songs have all been in recent years, that could be due to the fact that airplay is the primary (if not the only) component in the rankings.
But for my own contribution, I missed the song “Shiny, Shiny” by Haysi Fantayzee. Thank you VH-1 Classic!
I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy”.
Three things that really stick out in my mind:
The original “Wasssssup!” commercials. I didn’t see a single one. Ever. (I caught all the obligatory follow-ups, so it couldn’t have been just a regional thing or me not paying attention.) The first time I heard this mentioned was in a Dave Barry column, and I thought he was describing some weird new urban fad.
The Fast & The Furious / 2 Fast 2 Furious. Had no idea when either was released or went to video. In nearly evey Initial D message board I went to, there was someone lambasting the influence these movies had on the anime…and I had no idea what they were talking about. (Finally saw both movies; don’t really see the connection.)
Disco. More specifically, how it totally sucks. And how it’s supposed to be dead. Which is good, because it sucks. I never had the foggiest idea why. Still don’t, BTW (it’s dance music, what more do you need to know?).
I’m female and the right age, but never saw Dirty Dancing.
Nor did I ever see Grease. (I kind of want to see that one day)
At around the same time those were hip everyone male or female was mad into the A-Team. Never watched a whole episode of it.
Cite? I have never heard this before in my life.
This site explains that the Rogers commisision investigated the crash and found the explosion had been caused by a fuel leak through a faulty seal or O-ring on the solid rocket booster. It also states that Nasa officials insisted that there was no pressure to launch.
So…cite?
A couple years ago I was visiting with my sister. After she let her dog outside she started singing, “Who Let the Dogs Out.” A couple days before I had heard the guys on the morning radio program of a rock station doing some kind of parody on this song. At the time I thought it was just some silly skit they had made up or something. After I heard my sister singing this I asked her if she listened to the same thing I had heard on the radio the other morning. She then had to explain to me that “Who Let the Dogs Out” was a real song and it had been playing for several weeks. Since I never listen to this kind of music I never heard it on the stations I listen to. Somehow, somewhere I did hear it played, unfortunately.
When I started hearing people say, “show me the money!” and “who’s your daddy?” a few years ago I realized that these must be popular catch phrases, but I had no idea where they had come from and realized I had been completely out of the loop on these. I finally posted something about this here and somebody answered it, but I’ve since already forgotten.
I have a friend who works with some people (they are all accountants) who are not plugged in. She’s very fond of her stapler (or something) and referred to it as “My Preciousss”.
Blank stares.
When she explained it was from a character in LOTR, biggest movie franchise in maybe forever, she only got slightly less blank stares.
“I guess we don’t see movies too often.”
Her response - “We hates the fat accountantsesss!”
Also got nothing from a Lando Calrissian reference a few weeks later.
She’s looking for a new job now. 
Well at least I have an excuse. We started having kids in 1982 and after they got old enough that they (and work) didn’t consume my attention 24/7, I simply became an old fart.
I have never seen Caddyshack all the way through (even on TV)
The only music from the 1980s I can remember is Michael Jackson. I am dimly aware that Madonna and Nirvana came along later.
For many years I was completely unaware of ESPN. I’ve never subscribed to HBO, so I can’t say anything about the Sopranos, Sex in the City or any of their other programs.
There seems to have been a fad to collect something called “Precious Moments.” I have no idea what that means.
I recall the Quebec separatist movement in Canada, but I lost track of it. Since Quebec is still a province, I assume it hasn’t been totally successful.
No, No you don’t. It was great when I was in third grade. It did not age at all well.
I don’t think anyone at NASA wha has ever come out and said there was pressure, but there have been plenty of anonymous news sources.
Anyhow, to the thread at hand. I still have no idea who Ryan Seacrest is.
I never saw a single episode of Friends, and I only discovered Seinfeld on re-runs.
In Wayne’s World they sing this song, something about Ricky? I still don’t get that one.