Back in late August, there was a shooting incident outside the Empire State Building, in which two people died. But I hadn’t heard about it because I was in the hospital at the time, in intensive care, following my heart surgery. And even afterwards, I never heard anyone mention the incident until yesterday.
Have you ever missed something like that?
Despite being an avid astronomy buff back in the day I went a fair number of years not knowing Pluto had a moon (Charon). It was discovered, people got excited, the news past, somehow I missed it, then heard about it years later.
Apparently the world ended on Friday but I must have missed it.
The band Social Distortion. (About 4 years ago.)
Not myself, but my wife was in work situation on 9/11 that prevented her from hearing anything but filtered reports until late into that evening, west coast time. She is probably one of the few people around who, to this day, has seen only brief snips of the infamous footage (any of it) that ran endlessly that day.
Oddly enough, it was her phone call that morning that told me to turn the TV on, now. I might have gone well into the afternoon without knowing anything since my morning routine (then) was one of isolation.
When I was a poor newlywed, I went without TV for about a year (as we couldn’t afford the licence). During that time, the £5 note underwent a significant change of design - the first I knew of this was when my boss handed me one to send me out on an errand to buy something.
The change had been widely publicised, but mostly on TV. I thought he was playing a joke on me
I was living in the country with no TV, phone or newspaper when the Challenger blew up. I didn’t hear about it until about a week later.
I missed the death of one of my favorite authors in the personage of Roger Zelazny-his passing would have probably been buried on page 5 of the Lifestyle section of a typical newspaper, and wouldn’t have likely been mentioned during the evening newscast, so I just never saw the notice. Imagine my shock 5 years or so later when I finally found out.
When Nicole Simpson was killed I was working insane hours and had not seen tv or a newspaper for weeks. When I heard about the Simpson vehicle car chase, the only Simpsons I could think of were the Springfield Simpsons.
Big Bang
This is embarrassingly true: Somehow the idea of seedless watermelons went under my radar and many years ago when I first had one served to me I had no idea such a wondrous thing had existed. It must have been like the first time primitive natives had seen a match.
I live in a time warp both personally and professionally. I missed most of the early 1990’s and early 2000’s due to other commitments. Those became less intensive up a couple of years ago so I started going back and catching up on all the things I missed in sequential order. I still live most of my life like it is 1998 but I have recently branched out into things like Lady Gaga and I plan to start watching the first episodes of Lost soon.
If there is any pop-culture event you want to know about in the last five years, I am the last person you want to ask about it because the chances are excellent that I have I have never heard of it. There are probably some mega-celebrities today that I have never heard of. Top 10 movies or songs of 2012? I don’t know a single one and won’t for a few more years. I get all my media exposure from Netflix and the Sirius radio 90’s station. This isn’t some hipster bragging. I truly don’t know and am trying to catch up but they keep making new stuff faster than I can listen or watch.
I’m in this boat. Any celebs under 30-ish, odd are I’ve never heard of them, or maybe know their name without an inkling of what movie they were in, what song they sang, or whatever. The exception seems to be gorgeous women, because they catch my eye and usually I’m interested enough to find out their name.
And I like it that way!
Oh, hell, I can top that. I have a number of friends who are sf/f authors. One day, I was wiki-walking and thought to look-see if there were any new works by one of the biggest names among them.
I sat there looking at the two dates under his name, the latter one more than a year back, and thought, “Jesus Hoppin’ Christ, how do I word a note to his wife?”
The whole “Waaazzzuuuuppppp?!!!” thing. At the time, I didn’t watch very much TV and had a massively busy work and social schedule. I remember being up “late” one night (musta been a Monday, because I rarely watch the Tonight Show unless headlines is on). And Jay Leno was saying something to the effect of “unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know who these guys are”.
I was kind of annoyed at the implication that missing something on TV was somehow “living under a rock” seems to me (even though I’m much more of a TV watcher now), that being that attuned to something on a TV COMMercial, for crying out loud, is way more “living under a rock” than actually being out, about, and socially engaged.
Despite being a huge movie fanatic I didn’t hear about the Batman theater shooting for almost 24 hours. I don’t read/watch/listen to news in the morning before work. At work no one mentioned it because they assumed I already knew. After work I went to the movies. I think I saw 2 or 3. I got home late that night and checked out the front page of Yahoo and there it was.
I was enthralled with Lost when it was airing. Just remember it’s about the journey, not the destination, and you will have many hours of fun with that show.
As far as the OP goes, I always seem to be in the dark when menu changes happen at restaurants and fast food places. I’ll go to a place and order an old favorite, and they say “Uh, we haven’t had that for like six months”. Why that makes me feel like an idiot, I don’t know.
Actually, that meme transcended TV and became a social phenomenon. Countless people would quote that series of commercials ad-nauseum. Seriously, this was a very huge thing that annoyed the shit out of people very fast. Some people still drag that tired old thing out these days trying to be ironic.
Since it was on TV, and had several commercials using the same theme (they even started to parody their own ad by the end), I’d venture to say that it had more total views than that Goddamn Gangnam Style bullshit. If you don’t know what that is, it is certainly much more desirable to be under your rock than otherwise.
I am now officially old and living under a rock as I have no clue as to what Gangnam style bullshit is.
Same here, I’ve heard the term but so far at least I haven’t cared enough to look it up. Has anyone shot up a school in that “style”?