Monday, June 2, 2008

See, it's got raisins in it...... You like raisins.

So, sometime last year, I think it might have been for Christmas, Cindy got me Trivial Pursuit. I love my trivia games, (as do most of my family) and I thought this was a great present. However, we discovered that she didn't get the current Genius edition, but the DVD Pop Culture one. This is going to be cool, we thought. Little did we know that, pop culture doesn't seem to be that popular here in Australia. Most of the things that it references, never existed Down Under, or weren't widely known. Consequently, it wasn't much fun for Cindy, (and I must admit, there were a vast number that I had no clue about, either!) and so has mostly sat on our shelf next to more used games, such as Tri-Bond, Picture This!, Scattagories, and Scene-It.

We also watch a lot of movies and tv, (mostly shows that we own or have downloaded... such as Star Trek TNG, DS9, and Voyager, MacGyver [Cindy's favourite!!], Smallville, ect...) and as such, are exposed to some pop culture there. After I got Cindy hooked on the Star Treks, which before she had always thought were unintelligent nerd trash, she started seeing a LOT of references to it in other shows, and understanding some more of the jokes and such.

One other show that we like a lot is Family Guy. There is so much mish-mash, random culture and current event references in there it's not even believable! While we were watching an episode a few months back, Peter was riding his maid as a horse, (don't ask...) and pulls up to a set of lights. Two Asian guys in gold suits pull up next to him, and one starts to announce a race in the style of
Howard Cosell. I was laughing at this, and Cindy had no clue. I was explaining to her that it was from a movie from the early 80's called Better Off Dead with John Cusack, (which one of my circle of friends really quite liked in high school), but she had never heard of it.

Just a few days ago, I got my bit torrent program working again, and have downloaded a few movies. One of which is Better Off Dead. I have just made Cindy watch it, and while I found it quite funny, I don't think she got it, (or maybe appreciated is the term....?) Evidently I now owe her "big time" for making her "put up with that mindless drivel" for an hour and a half. But you know what? We watched the Family Guy afterward, and she got the reference and laughed this time.... Maybe it's time to break out and dust off that pop culture edition again and see if we do any better now...?