I am absolutely hopeless at pop culture. It’s one of my more endearing traits.
My friend Bieler, on the other hand, is very into what’s going on. I have no idea how that girl keeps up with her e-mail inbox, because every time I see her log in it’s full of celebrity gossip and fashion ads. She’s always opening up her e-mail to show me a skirt she wants or a piece of gossip about some musician I’ve never heard of, except half the time she can’t find the message she wants, even with the search function.
I basically rely on Bieler to tell me how to dress and feed me the choicest tidbits of gossip so that I can pretend to know what’s going on. This system has worked for years.
The odd thing is that I can talk forever about things no one else cares about. I was absolutely thrilled when the North American Discworld Convention became a thing, because prior to its creation I didn’t think anyone else in North America knew what Discworld was. My main talent is being about to talk about Andy Warhol for far longer than other people can possibly maintain interest. I can explain the differences between the Dewey and Library of Congress library cataloging systems in detail and teach someone how to conjugate verbs in Spanish and German.
Just don’t ask me about TV, or the radio, or movies. I really like Doctor Who, but don’t ask me to explain any of it or ask what my favorite episode was, because I won’t be able to come up with an answer other than, “I really like David Tennant”, which doesn’t answer the question. I have no idea what celebrities look like, for the most part.
Case in point: my husband and I are currently watching Hugo, and Tristan just said something about Jude Law. I replied, “who is Jude Law?” while Jude Law was on the screen.
I’m also not very trendy. I like clothes and shoes a lot; I’m just not particularly fashionable. I have an ancient black cardigan that doesn’t really fit, but I love it and wear it all the time anyway. My everyday uniform consists of jeans and a sweater in winter and jeans and a shirt in summer. I wear a lot of black because it matches, and as an art history major I am obligated to wear a scarf with everything. I have a lot of scarves. For the most part, this is okay, but every time I have to go out and look nice I end up sending picture messages to Bieler to make sure my outfit isn’t horrible.
The rest of the world can keep its actors and musicians and fashion icons. I’ll keep dressing like an idiot and reading about Andy Warhol. When the world ends, culture will be the domain of historians, and no one will remember who Jude Law was.
