Obscure references?

[the 4th hanson bro]

A guy on my hockey team had to have mid season knee surgery. He expected to be out 4-6 weeks. We got a sub player for him for those 6 weeks. I told him that he'd better hope he wasn't Wally Pipped. I was very disappointed he didn't get the reference.


Wally Pipp played 1st base for the Yankees, got hurt and was replaced by a young player named Lou Gherig. Wally Pipp never saw the field again in a Yankees uniform.

 

[Finn]

This thread is turning into one of those threads where we learn all kinds of things people expect people to know like who Lou Gehrig replaced (I'll bet good money there are a good number of people who won't know who Lou Gehrig was).

 

[CorporalClegg]

I expect people to know who Gehrig is. Pipp? Not so much.

 

[TheKeeper]

This thread is turning into one of those threads where we learn all kinds of things people expect people to know like who Lou Gehrig replaced (I'll bet good money there are a good number of people who won't know who Lou Gehrig was).

I wonder how many youngsters think he invented a crippling disease?

 

[Finn]

Yesterday when I told my fiancee about the jeorpardy tidbit I mentioned upthread, she didn't get it either. So I decided that I shouldn't be surprised at what people don't know. After all, those tidbits aren't exactly vital to us.

 

[gturner]

This thread begs for a Lindsey Lohan reference, although maybe it's still a bit soon.

Wait five years.

Who is that, you will ask? I won't know, either. Someone will have to Google it.

 

[auntiehill]

^Dear GOD, I hope that's the case.

 

[trekkiedane]

This thread begs for a Lindsey Lohan reference, although maybe it's still a bit soon.

Wait five years.

Who is that, you will ask? I won't know, either. Someone will have to Google it.

When someone posted this I had to ask who it was... and then I had to google the name -pretty funny article on Encyclopedia Dramatica told me everything I needed to know - but before that the name wouldn't have meant anything to me.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Form hot to not in one quick .gif.

 

[Spot's Meow]

The other day some friends of mine were talking about "fro-yo," the slang term for frozen yogurt. I mentioned, "whatever happened to calling it frogurt?" None of them had ever heard the word! It was all my friends and family called it when I was growing up. I know it might have started on The Simpsons but I've heard it so many other places I thought it was common. I mean, it was even one of Sawyer's infamous nicknames on LOST.

And I just have to tell this one. I am not a big Elvis person at all but even this seemed obvious to me. I had watched the movie Hounddog recently (with Dakota Fanning) and I was telling my boyfriend about it. He asked me what the name of the movie meant...I said, "you know, based on that Elvis song." He said he didn't know what it was, so I sang the whole song right there in the restaurant and he still looked at me with this blank face and said, "no, never heard it." Not possible!!

 

[Finn]

^ okay, even I have heard of that song somehow.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

This happens to me all the time. I'm forever making oblique references or spouting lines from movies, songs, TV shows, cartoons -- what have you -- that people don't get, mostly because they're often from my childhood which I'm realizing more and more often was a very long time ago (though it doesn't seem so to me.)

Recently, when a work friend told me about her and her boyfriend being pulled over for a traffic infraction, I said "I hope I don't see your pictures on the Post Office wall." And gave me that little polite half laugh clearly indicating that she had no idea what I was talking about.

Not long ago I was playing a silly charades-like "parlor game" with friends in which each player writes the name of a fictional character on a piece of paper and then each player draws the slips from a hat and has to act out the character they've drawn for others to guess. No one knew who Lucy VanPelt was. And it didn't help when, in a last gasp effort to have someone guess correctly, I said, "You know, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder ... Peppermint Patty ... The Little Red Haired Girl ... (trying to avoid the obvious -- I thought -- Snoopy and Charlie Brown.) I'm old.

 

[CorporalClegg]

And for the record, Hound Dog isn't an Elvis song. In fact, the sooner everyone forgets his bastardization of it, the better off the world'll be.

 

[Mistral]

Last night some troll in an online gaming lobby was talking smack and managed to utter the immortal question "Who the f*** are you?" Without missing a beat, I came back with "I'm Henry the VIII, I am, I am!" and he responded in a confused voice, "WTF are you talking about, your tag says 'Cable'!"

Children. Can't educate them, can't have them executed. What's a guy to do?

 

[Goliath]

^

I was in a punk-rock band (tragically short-lived) that performed a cover of "I'm Henry VIII, I Am."

 

[captcalhoun]

i would've said "I'm Batman" or "I'm Spartacus"...

 

[CorporalClegg]

I've always liked "I am the great and powerful Oz!"

I actually got a date with that one once.

 

[Mistral]

i would've said "I'm Batman" or "I'm Spartacus"...

I wouldn't have thought of Spartacus but the Batman thing-loved that commercial.

 

[Spot's Meow]

And for the record, Hound Dog isn't an Elvis song. In fact, the sooner everyone forgets his bastardization of it, the better off the world'll be.

I know that, but everyone should at least have heard the Elvis version sometime in their life. It's pretty unavoidable!

I dislike Elvis so I agree with you.

 

[scotpens]

. . . Recently, when a work friend told me about her and her boyfriend being pulled over for a traffic infraction, I said “I hope I don't see your pictures on the Post Office wall.” And gave me that little polite half laugh clearly indicating that she had no idea what I was talking about.

They still post photos of wanted criminal suspects at the post office, don't they? Or does nobody go to the post office anymore?

And for the record, Hound Dog isn't an Elvis song. In fact, the sooner everyone forgets his bastardization of it, the better off the world'll be.

Okay, so it was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and originally recorded by “Big Mama” Thornton. But her version was straight rhythm-and-blues, while Elvis did it rockabilly style and changed a lot of the words. Besides, how many people would have even heard of the song if Elvis hadn't recorded it?

i would've said ”I'm Batman” or “I'm Spartacus”...

I’m Spartacus!