With the possible exceptions of my father and (maybe-not-so-strangely-coincidentally) my father-in-law, I don’t know anyone who is as voracious a reader as I am. I also seem to consume an outlandish amount of television and there is rarely a moment in my life in which there isn’t music playing. Oh, and I love movies.
Yet, as Anil so graciously remarks, nobody’s read everything. There are a surprising number of pop culture experiences completely missing from my life. Anil mentions how he is frequently met with shock and dismay any time he reveals that he’s never listened to a Beatles album from start to finish. (I was shocked and dismayed to read that on his site, actually.) I get the same reaction when I tell people I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz.
I know every word of every song from every album (and unreleased b-side) the Fab Four ever produced. I’ve got (as I’ve mentioned here many time) well north of 11,000 tracks in my iTunes library. And my wife constantly complains that we have no more shelf space to contain our astoundingly absurd book collection. But what amazes people the most, what stirs the greatest reaction, is not when I tell people that I’ve read every Hemingway novel or Shakespeare sonnet, or that I generally read a book or two each week and have since I was 12.
It’s when I say that I’ve never seen Porky’s.
So here — off the top of my head — are a few of the delicacies missing from my media diet:
- I’ve never seen Porky’s.
- I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz.
- I’ve never read anything by Hunter S. Thompson.
- I’ve never listened to AC/DC (though of course I’ve heard that one song that’s on the radio all the time, whatever it is).
- (As far as I know) I’ve never heard anything by Metallica or Megadeath.
I’ve never seen an episode of The Wire.- With the exception of the original Shatner/Nimoy series, I’ve never seen any of the Star Trek television shows. (Who the hell is that bald guy?)
I’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye.- I’ve never listened to Howard Stern.
- I’ve never seen an episode of Lost.
What pieces of pop culture have you never experienced? Which ones make friends say, “What?!” when you tell them “you’ve never”?
I’m right there with you having never read Catcher in the Rye. With the recent passing of Salinger I think you and I both should bump this one up on the reading list.