Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 01:01:21 PM

Login with username, password and session length

People with massive cultural voids

Started by George White, December 14, 2018, 08:58:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

buttgammon

I suspect I'm the one with massive cultural voids, to be honest. I rarely saw films as a child and even then I only liked James Bond films, so many films are more or less a complete blindspot for me. When I became a bit of a cinema buff in my teens, I had absolutely no interest in filling in the blanks.

I'd also never read a single Jane Austen book until I was 27; realising her brilliance was a rather embarrassing experience.

Quote from: Phoenix Lazarus on December 15, 2018, 11:00:34 AM
Someone who, if, like me, you don't know his race when you hear first hear him sing, you'll almost faint with shock when you find out he's white.

Yeah, I'd heard at least two or three of his songs before I copped that he was white. The combination of name and voice strongly suggests that he's black.

DrGreggles

Quote from: olliebean on December 15, 2018, 11:39:58 AM
Football.

Not remotely interested, don't know anything about it beyond the obvious. I doubt I could name a single current footballer. Maybe Wayne Rooney, only because he used to be made fun of on the comedy programmes for looking like a potato. Is he still playing? I have no idea.

He still looks like a potato.

Jockice

I'm still trying to get over the time around 20 years ago when I went out for a drink with a couple of mates and a workmate of one of them. We were talking about music and one of my friends mentioned Teenage Kicks (which as the Undertones are my favourite band ever, people always mistakenly think is my favourite song). This Alan chap had never even heard of it let alone knowingly heard it.

Absolutely bizarre. He was younger than me but not that much, I was just turning 13 when it came out, so he'd have been around ten. He went to a normal comprehensive, didn't seem like a loner or anything (so I presume he'd have gone to school discos and suchlike) and was quite knowledgeable about other stuff. I mean, I could understand him not knowing the name of the band who had done it - but not even being aware of the song's existence? Weird.

Lost Oliver


Camp Tramp

A bus driver once told me I'd been sold a bum steer when I showed him a invalid bus pass.

I had to look it up.

Thursday

This just makes me think of the time Michael Owen talked about how he doesn't like films

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/15/small-talk-michael-owen

or how Alan Shearer didn't watch cartoons when he was a child

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/mar/12/alan-shearer-small-talk-interview

kngen

Quote from: Lost Oliver on December 15, 2018, 01:13:25 PM
Why was George Best?

Because Denis Law-st?


The cultural void that is my mind has been reading George Ezra as Ezra Pound. So the bit about him singing like a black man had me a bit confused. 'Bit of a stretch,' I thought to myself.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: Thursday on December 15, 2018, 01:58:19 PM
This just makes me think of the time Michael Owen talked about how he doesn't like films

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/15/small-talk-michael-owen

QuoteWhat's the last film you saw? It's very boring, but I don't watch films. I think I've seen about five in my life. I just can't get into them. I do try – someone will say, 'Watch this film, it's great,' and I'll try but after half an hour, 40 minutes I can't take it any longer.

So what were those five?
They must have been absolutely terrible. Rocky, Jurassic Park, Cool Runnings, Ghost. Um, I can't remember any more.  Er ... and Heat. I've seen Heat. I can't think of any more.

But they're all ancient! Someone might have made the perfect film in the last 20 years! Maybe. All the films I've seen were when I went training with clubs, when I was about 12 and my dad wanted me to visit Arsenal or [Manchester] United or whoever wanted to sign me at the time. A lot of the time you'd go and there would be 20 trialists, all staying together the night before, and instead of sitting all night in the hotel they'd take you to the cinema. And I'd go, 'Oh no.'

Who would play you in a film of your life?
What, an actor? I don't know any actors.

I suppose you've got to pick one from those five films. It's got to be Sylvester Stallone, because Patrick Swayze and John Candy are out. Tom Cruise is a good-looking fella, he'll do.
QuoteWhat do you listen to in the car on the way there? I don't listen to anything. I don't know why, but the car's always been my own quiet space. When the kids are in the car they always want a song on, but I'm just happy with my thoughts.

Jockice

#38
I do know someone with no interest in music at all.  He once gave me a lengthy lift (we're talking several hours here) to the funeral of someone we both knew. He had one CD in his car (a punk compilation which he said someone had bought him) and said he didn't have any others at home. He did put the CD on for me but when that had finished we had to actually talk to each other. One of the longest journeys of my life. And then there was the return journey...



Sebastian Cobb

I've worked with my share of flow-charts that live in suburbia and have a nuclear family and whose idea of pleasure these days is driving home a bit too quickly to dad rock. Malvina Reynolds warned us.

Jockice

Quote from: Lemming on December 14, 2018, 09:57:29 PM
My friend said he'd never heard Loaded by Primal Scream, and asked me to hum it when I reacted with surprise.

Very difficult song to accurately convey with humming.

In 2006 I was visiting relatives in Scotland and was watching a music show on television with a cousin who is less than a year younger than me. Primal Scream appeared doing Country Girl and he said he liked it but had never heard of the band before. I was stunned as he lives near Glasgow and while certainly no music expert thought he would at least have some knowledge of them.

I even reminded him of the time around a decade earlier when we had seen a covers band in a social club whose set included Rocks, but he said he had no recollection of that and was adamant that tonight was the very first time he'd ever heard of, heard one of their songs or seen them.

This incidentally is the same cousin I've mentioned previously who says he has read the grand total of one book (The Beach by Alex Garland) since leaving school in the mid 80s. As far as I know the only thing he ever reads is the Daily Record. His parents were the same. When I'd go to stay with them as a youngster I'd always make sure I had at least a couple of books with me, otherwise I'd be reading the non-returned library book about tortoises for the 400th time.

Like him, his folks (lest we forget, his mum was my dad's sister) were just spectacularly uninterested in reading. Not unintelligent, just uninterested. Which, as someone who reads all-day everyday if given the chance, just mystified me.

massive bereavement

I haven't watched any films in over 25 years and haven't listened to any music produced since the 1990's. The only thing I know about this side of 2000 is Cbeebies programmes up until about 2012.

Sebastian Cobb

When we were around 12 or 13 a pal admitted he couldn't read an analogue clock, to which his mum announced 'we're just all so used to digical[sic]' and I thought 'ahh, that explains everything'.

Icehaven

A previous singer in my band had a shockingly poor knowledge of David Bowie. He's 2 or 3 years younger than me so he'd be about 36 or 37 now, and when Bowie died and we were all talking about it at practice he was saying he'd heard of him but didn't think he knew any of his songs. We reeled off a list of the most obvious he must surely know, Heroes, Ashes to Ashes, Space Oddity etc. and we sang bits so even if he didn't know the titles he should have recognised the songs, but no, not a dicky bird. "I'm a few years younger than you though" was his excuse, when there's unborn foetuses who could sing along to Life On Mars ffs.

manticore

"...instead of being the synaptic co-ordination for the sales brigade; instead of eagerly handing the baton along—it can be intercepted and set quietly on the ground. You can not make the connection. You can cause a Bermuda triangle to settle over the scene of industrial entertainment. It's a pleasure listening for the engines to conk out, where the conversation folds up and pitches into the waves. You might not know what that movie was about, and are indifferent anyway; maybe you can't recognize the punch line to that advertisement; maybe you don't know which team plays which sport; or maybe you couldn't escape knowing the ad lines, or the movie plot, but you do as if. It's a possibility. One can save the capacity of familiarity for what might be genuinely familiar. I wish people would. Let the big ship leave by itself, one rider less."

https://brooklynrail.org/2007/3/art/robert-hullot

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on December 15, 2018, 05:55:08 PM
his mum announced 'we're just all so used to digical[sic]'

Did she say 'likkle' instead of 'little'?  I want to strangle anyone, especially except under-fives, who does this.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

I can win this thread with either of these 2 stories:


1. At the office I was working in back in 2012, I just read on the internet that Donna Summer had died. I mention this fact to the 20something sat opposite me, who blankly replied that he didn't know who she was, does not know anything about old pop music, and in fact "don't even know what decade The Beatles were in".

2. In a fancy coffee shop a year or 2 ago, I notice "A Day In The Life" playing on the speakers, attached to a laptop. I drone out my opinions about Sgt Pepper to the 20something northerner behind the counter. He is fascinated, and replies: "Who's it by?"

Mark Steels Stockbroker

The Michael Owen interview would be brilliant if he'd only ever seen Tarkovsky or Fassbinder films, and gave detailed analysis of why they're shit.

Brundle-Fly

I know somebody in his forties who has been a life long fan of Velvet Underground/ Iggy And The Stooges/ New York Dolls/ The Ramones but rather bafflingly somehow he had never heard of MC5. When he got back to me after looking into them, it was as if I'd introduced him to chocolate. Or pornography.

I met Bernard Bresslaw in 1991.

Sin Agog

I remember reading that Owen interview at the time and finding it strangely refreshing.  Maybe because I'm the kind of guy who has to curb back on the 'that's just like that scene in...' similes.  You can skip a life completely on this pop culture shit.  I mean, I even paraphrased a Velvet Underground lyric in that last sentence.  It's like a disease.

buttgammon

The Michael Owen interview is weirdly fascinating. It's bland, but not in the expected way; at least he didn't say his favourite film is The Shawshank Redemption like any other sportsperson would in an interview. For what it's worth, I've never seen it.

king_tubby

I knew someone at school who wanted to do an Eng Lit degree who had never read any books that weren't set texts.

Quote from: thraxx on December 15, 2018, 08:58:37 AM
Funny you should mention this. I got massive bants from work colleagues the other day because, when asked if I liked George Ezra, I had never even heard of the cunt.

Dunno much about his music but I've seen him being interviewed a couple of times and thought he was really funny, enough to make me remember him anyway. Saw him pop up on Vic and Bob too so I think he's pretty cool.

mothman

Topically, Harry Redknapp hasn't seen a film since Dr. Zhivago came out and knows literally nothing about anything but football. I get the impression there are millions like him.

Urinal Cake

When we were teenagers my cousin told me that he didn't listen to music that had guitars in it.
I suspect he still holds those views.

manticore

Quote from: Urinal Cake on December 15, 2018, 11:17:15 PM
When we were teenagers my cousin told me that he didn't listen to music that had guitars in it.
I suspect he still holds those views.

I don't go to that extreme, but the vast majority of guitar based music sounds clodhopping to me, as does music that reles on metronomic thump thump thump percussion. I don't really think I like 95% of popular music and I'm not too bothered about keeping up, especially since I realised that I was motivated as much by a fear of missing out than a desire to hear something genuinely new and interesting. Also John Peel was my curator and filtered out a lot of the stuff I don't like, so when he went, it wasn't really worth the trouble.

95% of everything is bullshit, best to let it pass you by I think.

George White

Quote from: mothman on December 15, 2018, 11:01:20 PM
Topically, Harry Redknapp hasn't seen a film since Dr. Zhivago came out and knows literally nothing about anything but football. I get the impression there are millions like him.
Yes, my dad's not that far off. Knows a lot about motorsport, construction, some aboutcountry music, but little else.

mothman

I've talked before about two of my closest friends at work who only read autobiographies of sportsmen and musicians, and watch things like that Guy Whatsisface on Channel 4 doing crazy things with motorbikes. And that's it. Though one of them does watch GoT though, and we're all fans of the Fargo series, and they do keep on at me to watch Peaky Blinders, so..?