I'm not over 40, that is.

But I got every answer on this quiz correct. And according to the quiz, I must be over 40.

Nope, I'm only 29 years old; I'm just steeped in American pop culture.

(I found the quiz @ weblog wannabe).

I got all but one right. And I'm 30. So... methinks this quiz is not quite right.

I only missed one. I don't understand the point of asking who the Beatles were; that's not a test of age. It's a test of whether you're minimally aware of your surroundings.

I only got some of them ("Good night, Chet. Good night, Dave") because of Mad Magazine's laudable devotion to constant reprinting of old material.

It does seem to me more a test of pop culture literacy than of age.

Though of course as I went through the list, I realized that some items were targeted towards people of a certain generation.

Thing is, I think that folks in their 20s-early 30s are more aware than most of these kinds of things from days past.

If nothing else, thanks to TV Land.

(Folks who I know who are over 40 are generally surprised at how much I know about old TV shows and commercials, for instance).

I'm starting to supect that popular

culture will take the place of the

myths that formerly sustained

humanity.

As I write this I'm listening to

Dick Powell singing "Lullaby

of Broadway" imagining how that

will play in 2876.

I'm 33, & I got a perfect score. There was only one that I wasn't positive about (Brylcream). I think whoever created that test underestimates the half-life of pop culture references.

I remember once reading an article about how a lot of people who had never seen Peter Lorre in a movie could recognize his speech patterns thanks to certain Warner Brothers cartoons.

Hasn't everybody seen Peter Lorre? I mean, Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, M . . .

However, when I first saw Double Indemnity, I was struck by how much Edward G. Robinson seemed like a guy imitating the Warner Bros. Edward G. Robinson caricture.

Okay, Robinson is a better example than Lorre (although I don't think that many people have seen M). I've never seen a movie with EGR, but I know what he sounds like. The point still holds; pop culture echoes persist long after the original has faded.