Marvin takes a tongue-in-cheek quiz seeing how much of a cultural elitist you are, according to Charles Murray. Here are my answers:

1. Can you talk about “Mad Men?” Well, I could talk about it pretty well for someone who’s never watched it. My mother and sister had a lengthy conversation when I visited them this month, so I have a general idea of what’s going on.
2. Can you talk about the “The Sopranos?” No.
3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right?” Yes. Though mostly because Slate reminded me recently, which is probably a pretty elitist reason.
4. Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? Yes, many times. Though not since around 1990.
5. Can you hold forth animatedly about yoga? No.
6. How about pilates? No.
7. How about skiing? Nope.
8. Mountain biking? Nyet.
9. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? Non.
10. Does the acronym MMA mean anything to you? Yes. (One of my co-workers is a fanatic for it.)
11. Can you talk about books endlessly? Pretty much.
12. Have you ever read a “Left Behind” novel? No.
13. How about a Harlequin romance? I read a trashy romance novel a long time ago, though I don’t remember if it was Harlequin specifically.
14. Do you take interesting vacations? I try to.
15. Do you know a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada? No, but I know a few people who do, if you’re interested.
16. What about an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor? No.
17. Would you be caught dead in an RV? I coveted an RV more than once during my road trip, especially when I was setting up the tent. But then I reminded myself of how much gas I’d be buying.
18. Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship? I’ve been hoping to go on a cruise sometime, but it is pricey. Since when is this a proletarian thing?
19. Have you ever heard of of Branson, Mo? I’ve been there, but didn’t see much that interested me. What does that say?
20. Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club? No.
21. How about the Rotary Club? No.
22. Have you lived for at least a year in a small town? No (assuming we’re excluding suburbs).
23. Have you lived for a year in an urban neighborhood in which most of your neighbors did not have college degrees? I don’t know. I might have in L.A., since there were a lot of immigrants there, but I didn’t do a poll.
24. Have you spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line? Technically yes, but since my mother was always ready to bail me out financially, I would say no.
25. Do you have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian? But of course.
26. Have you ever visited a factory floor? No. That’s a pretty big oversight for a business reporter, now that I think of it.
27. Have you worked on one? See above.

Does this make me part of the cultural elite? Probably. Does it mean I live in a bubble “isolated from mainstream America”, as Murray says? I’m less convinced of that. In fact, I wonder who these people are he’s been talking to who’ve never heard of MMA or Branson and have no evangelical friends? My guess is, young people. If you’d talked to me at age 23, I would have been like that, and might have come off as a bit of a snob. But parochialism is a common feature of youth. The nice thing about all this reading and travel that characterizes life in the elite is that it gives you an opportunity to broaden beyond where you grew up.

In fact, I would venture to say that if the New Elite is ignorant of “low” culture, they’re not only failing to listen to people outside their bubble, they’re failing to listen to people inside their bubble. There have been academic studies of every pop-culture phenomenon you could name, the New Yorker has printed lengthy profiles of such persons as Rick Warren and Brad Paisley, and Murray’s is one of a vast number of articles in elite publications I’ve read fretting about whether the elite is out of touch with the heartland. In fact, the charge of being an ignorant provincial is a very elitist sort of criticism itself. The more common populist charge is “forgetting where you came from.” If I came from Marin County, should I forget that?

1. Sometimes beginnings aren’t so simple.
Linkin Park, “Shadow of the Day.” A song getting a lot of radio play at around the time I left, about leaving your life behind and … doing what I’m not sure. Maybe killing yourself, who knows?

2. You give and take away.
Matt & Beth Redman, “Blessed Be Your Name.” I think the version I heard was by the Newsboys, but I’m not sure. A good song for traveling when you don’t know where you’re going.

3. And when we meet — as I’m sure we will — all that was there will be there still.
Dido, “White Flag.” A song about (to steal a phrase from a different artist) all that you can’t leave behind.

4. I dream of gardens in the desert sand.
Sting, “Desert Rose.” I spent a lot of time in deserts on this trip.

5. I blame it on the Cuervo.
Carrie Underwood, “Last Name.” As advertised, once you travel into Red America, you hear a lot more country music (at least in the southern half of the country).

6. Freeway like a river cuts through this land.
U2, “Heartland.” A song I’d owned for 19 years but didn’t think about much until I was doing what Bono was doing when writing the lyrics, namely roaming the highways of the U.S.

7. It was summertime in northern Michigan.
Kid Rock, “All Summer Long.” I never got to Michigan, but I sure heard this song a lot.

8. You are beautiful, my sweet, sweet song.
Third Day, “You Are So Good to Me.” Like Rilina, I’d first heard this in church, but going out into the land of CCM stations I also heard it covered with actual production values. I associate it especially with Interstate 84 through the Columbia Gorge, which is one of the most beautiful places on God’s green earth.

9. My traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets.
Paul Simon, “Graceland.” Which I in fact visited, but that’s another story.

10. I won’t give up if you don’t give up.
Train, “Calling All Angels.” My trip involved a lot more death than I expected. That calls for a good lamentation song.

11. I had a dream last night. The world was set on fire.
Oingo Boingo, “Just Another Day.” A somewhat different response to the deathiness of the trip was listening to this album, Dead Man’s Party, which regards death with morbid whimsy.

12. If it was up to me, I’d show it every day.
Darryl Worley, “Have You Forgotten?” More country music, this one a pro-Iraq-war song. It gave me one of those definite “Gee, I’m not in L.A. any more” moments.

13. A million miles, a million miles.
Cracker, “Low.” A song that actually came out in 1993, but seems to be having a radio revival this year.

14. Her eyes are swimming-pool blue, dumb bells on a diving board.
U2, “Miami.” I never got as far south as Miami, but it makes a good mood piece for all of Florida.

15. No more cold iron shackles on my feet.
Albert Brumley, “I’ll Fly Away.” I heard Jars of Clay cover it while I was driving through Pennsylvania.

16. The men I knew ain’t seen me since I left the sheets and hit the Strip.
Luscious Jackson, “Sexy Hypnotist.” A song about Las Vegas.

17. You’ve got the universe reclining in your hair.
T-Rex, “Jeepster.” Probably my favorite radio station that I stumbled across was WXRT in Chicago, partly because they played oldies that I’d never heard before.

18. Why wait any longer for the one you love, when he’s standing in front of you?
Bob Dylan, “Lay Lady Lay.” The radio format you’re most likely to hear out in the middle of nowhere, even more than country and CCM, is classic rock. So after somehow not hearing this song all my life I got to know it pretty well.

19. If you’re not really here, the stars don’t even matter.
Sam Sparro, “Black and Gold.” Showing that Euro disco can be about searching for God too.

20. You talk about your searching, but I think it’s all for show.
Stephen Stills, “Know You Got to Run.” A line of which I occasionally accused myself.

Sorry posting has been sparse lately. I see that Rilina has revived the lyrics meme from a few years back. I still don’t really have an iTunes library, but while I was traveling I listened to a lot of music in a lot of different radio markets, as well as my own collection, and there are some songs that I know I’ll forever associate with this trip. So here are some quotations — see if you can identify the title and artist. I do mean to write more about the journey, really I do…

1. Sometimes beginnings aren’t so simple.

2. You give and take away.

3. And when we meet — as I’m sure we will — all that was there will be there still.

4. I dream of gardens in the desert sand.

5. I blame it on the Cuervo.

6. Freeway like a river cuts through this land.

7. It was summertime in northern Michigan.

8. You are beautiful, my sweet, sweet song.

9. My traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets.

10. I won’t give up if you don’t give up.

11. I had a dream last night. The world was set on fire.

12. If it was up to me, I’d show it every day.

13. A million miles, a million miles.

14. Her eyes are swimming-pool blue, dumb bells on a diving board.

15. No more cold iron shackles on my feet.

16. The men I knew ain’t seen me since I left the sheets and hit the Strip.

17. You’ve got the universe reclining in your hair.

18. Why wait any longer for the one you love, when he’s standing in front of you?

19. If you’re not really here, the stars don’t even matter.

20. You talk about your searching, but I think it’s all for show.

I’ve been feeling under the weather all week, and I haven’t had any very profound thoughts, so I decided to start a new meme. I got the idea for this from a conversation with my mother a while ago when she made some passing mention of the TV show The Sopranos. I remarked, “You know, The Sopranos is one of those shows that I’ve heard nothing but praise for, but have no desire to ever see.” My mother said, “Me too.”

This got me to wondering how many other people experience that. So here’s my variation on the Caesar’s Bath meme: what books/TV shows/movies does everybody else seem to like but somehow even the terms of their praise turn you off? Here are some of mine:

– OK, so why don’t I watch The Sopranos, I mean apart from not getting HBO? For one thing, I just don’t share the American fascination with organized crime. This is also why I haven’t seen any of the Godfather movies. For another thing, I’m not interested in stories about families ruled over by monster-mothers. It’s not a type of family dysfunction I relate to, and generally I find dysfunctional families more painful than entertaining to watch, even (especially?) when it’s meant to be funny.

– Pulp Fiction. This is also under the “not fascinated by criminals” heading, but it’s also due to the fact that I’m not interested in artworks that seem to be made in a pop-culture echo chamber. Much of the praise for this — and a lot of books and movies these days actually — seems to focus on how cleverly it plays around with pop-culture, without ever touching the ground particularly. I don’t know, thinking about that sort of thing just makes me want to go out and get a life.

– Unforgiven. This type of thing runs into trouble with me because it’s a fresh take on a genre that I don’t really know the stale version of. I grew up after Westerns had ceased to be popular, so it’s not part of my personal mythos.

– Philip Roth. Or any of a whole bunch of authors who seem to write mainly about the problems of being a perpetually horny male. Part of me feels like maybe I should learn about this because the world seems to be full of perpetually horny men, but generally this falls into the category of things I don’t really want to know about.

– Catcher in the Rye. Like many popular works, this has probably suffered from being over-imitated, so the concept no longer seems that fresh or interesting. However, any work that depends on freshness to begin with is probably doomed to have a limited shelf life.

– Platoon. I remember this came out when I was in high school, and my math teacher said I should see it so I’ll know not to let it happen again. I have trouble with these works that strive mainly to expose the horror of something or other, because a) I have a pretty good imagination, and I don’t need to be slammed over the head with it to know that war is horrible, and b) exposing the horror of something is pretty easy; I’m a lot more impressed with artworks that actually show alternatives to it.

So, anybody else want to play? Maybe hearing from some men would balance this out, since I notice this is an awfully guyish list of works that I’m rejecting sight unseen here.

Updated to add: Dash played here, Mary Beth here, and T.S. O’Rama here. Judging by the responses, I may not have been clear about what I’m getting at with the meme. I didn’t mean any huge pop-culture phenoms that you don’t like; there are a lot of those that are as widely hated as they are loved (Da Vinci Code, Survivor, Britney Spears, etc.). I was thinking of things that you seem to hear nothing but good things about from critics/friends/people you respect but even while you’re listening to them tell you how wonderful it is, you’re thinking, “Boy, that sounds like it is not my thing.” I find that a somewhat more challenging phenomenon because, while I’ve never had to explain to anybody why I don’t watch American Idol, I have had to defend my non-viewing of things like The Godfather, it being widely considered one of the best movies ever made and all.

Both Jennifer and Pleroma (a blog that I didn’t realize was active again, I must admit) tagged me for the “Four Things” meme that’s been going around. Like Eve, I feel that my answers are extremely uninteresting, but I guess somebody must be interested since they asked.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. movie theater attendant
2. bicycling ice-cream vendor
3. proofreader
4. ad copy writer

Four movies to watch over and over:
I haven’t had any of these since I was a kid. (Though I did rent the DVD to watch Fellowship of the Ring again recently; don’t know if I’ll plow through the whole series.)

Four places I’ve lived (all of these are in California):
1. Mill Valley
2. San Francisco
3. Mountain View
4. Los Angeles

Four TV shows I love to watch:
I’ll admit I’m hooked on Lost, though my love for it waxes and wanes. Past TV shows I’ve loyally watched include Star Trek, Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I love those woman warrior plots).

Four places I’ve been on vacation:
1. northeast Vermont
2. Britain
3. Maui
4. Minnesota (yay!)

Four websites I visit daily (in addition to the assorted blogs in the sidebar):
1. Arts & Letters Daily
2. IPOhome.com (well, on workdays)
3. My Yahoo!
4. Technorati

Four favorite foods:
1. Rubio’s shrimp burritos
2. C&O’s chocolate cheesecake
3. my own zucchini pancakes
4. manhattans (what, isn’t that a food?)

Four places I’d rather be right now:
See: vacation spots. Also, anywhere of natural beauty around here with John (who knows the locations of natural beauty around here better than I do.)

(Edited to add: OK, I realize now that most of those vacation spots probably aren’t the best places to be in February. To be honest I kind of forgot that it’s winter, because the Santa Anas are blowing and it feels like the Sahara out there.)

Four people I’m tagging:
Seems like most people have already gotten this one, and anyway the meme’s gotta end somewhere. But if you, dear reader, want to take a shot at it, be my guest.

It’s been a long time since I attempted to write fiction — college, I think — but something happened this weekend that fairly screamed to be made into a sci-fi or perhaps occult plot.

On Saturday I bought a new car stereo, and the guys at the electronics store installed it. When I picked up the car, I saw the clock was set, and I checked it against my watch. It matched. That evening after I got home, I realized that my watch was about fifteen minutes behind my wall clock. I thought the battery on my watch might have been dying, but I replaced it only a few months ago, and the second hand was ticking along at the right pace. So I reset my watch to match the wall clock, and made a mental note to keep an eye on it.

The next morning, I got into the car, and saw that the clock on the stereo was about fifteen minutes behind my watch. Now I thought I’d reset the wrong device so I looked at my cell phone, which gets its time by signal from some master clock, and saw that my wall clock was in fact right. So somehow my watch and my stereo got fifteen minutes behind, independently, at exactly the same time, both while I was using them.

I don’t expect to ever solve this mystery in real life, but I thought I’d put it as a challenge to the readers. If this were a sci-fi story, where would it be going? What happened to those fifteen minutes? Did my car slip through a small crack in space-time while I was driving it?

Additional “things my friends like that I don’t” lists from ambivablog (I have to give her chutzpah points for the first one) and Somber Music (I agree with 1 and 3) as well as in the comments to my last post. I notice a recurring theme of “reality TV” occurring in this game, which I don’t much like either but didn’t qualify for the meme because in my peer group it’s more popular to bash reality TV than to watch it. Though I do remember Telford unreeling some theological theory of Survivor back at our Alpha course, which I don’t quite remember but earned him incredulous looks from around the table.

I was thinking about my non-interest in movies again the other day after Star Wars aired on TV. It first came out when I was six, and after seeing the posters with the huge Darth Vader head I decided it was too scary for me to want to see. But a friend had some Star Wars-related stuff that I found somewhat interesting, and then somehow or other I gained possession of The Star Wars Storybook, a picture-book version of the tale aimed at grade-school kids. It was that, actually, that I fell in love with, along with a fabulous book I was given a bit later called The Art of Star Wars. The next year the film was rereleased and my father took me to see it, and I enjoyed it, but since I was seven and this was the pre-VCR era, I saw it just once. When the Special Edition came out in ’97 and I watched it again, I realized that what I really remembered from my childhood was the books, not the movie. Which seems emblematic of my whole relationship with movies, somehow.

I can hardly turn down Noah Millman’s invitation to name five things everybody seems to love except me. So here goes, in no particular order:

1) Constantly improving music technology. I am about to turn 34, which means I’m not very old, but I still have music on vinyl, cassette and CD. (If I were a bit older, I’m sure I’d have eight-tracks.) Last week I went to the store to replace my busted personal CD player, but found the selection very limited because they were losing shelf space to MP3 players. I’m sure everything the salesman told me about why MP3′s are better is true, but can we just hold still for five minutes? I don’t know if they expect me to change out my entire music collection every ten years, or if they just figure I don’t still like anything that I liked ten years ago, but my 33s still sound good, darnit.

2) Movies. I feel about movies much like Ross Douthat feels about music. There are movies I like, even ones that I love, but I don’t share the general cultural passion for them. This can be socially difficult since many people see movies as something to proselytize, debate and bond with their friends over. Many times I’ve found myself on the defensive, having to explain why I haven’t seen X even though it’s said to be great, or why I saw X but didn’t want to see it again, or why I liked X but don’t remember it well enough to help you reenact the scene you’re quoting. People can be amazingly bullying about it: “You haven’t seen that? You have to!” I have, on more than one occasion, had movies loaned to me unsolicited because I had to see it.

There’s nothing wrong with that, I guess, except what they really want is something I can’t provide: they want me to have the same experience watching the movie that they did. I still have a videotape of Bride of Frankenstein that my deceased friend John loaned me a few years back, unsolicited of course. After it had sat on my shelf for some months, I tried to return it to him. But once he learned I hadn’t actually watched it, he refused to take it back.

“You know,” I said, “the trouble is that I always found the Frankenstein story unbearably sad. Here’s this poor creature whose creation was a mistake, and who knows it (well, in the book he knew it anyway). He’s rejected, feared and despised through no fault of his own. And then the sequel adds to his suffering by making him a bride who rejects him.”

He laughed incredulously. “I never thought of it that way. I just thought it was a great horror film.”

But he still wouldn’t take it back.

Actually, on the Internet I’ve enjoyed reading movie buffs who explain well what they love and hate about movies, such as And You Call Yourself A Scientist! and Sean Collins’ old blog. But I’ve enjoyed reading about the movies more than actually watching them. I just don’t seem to have a knack for the medium.

3) Monty Python. I feel about them much the way Noah feels about The Simpsons: it’s usually funnier when it’s quoted by friends or even printed out. The Python performances are too broad, screechy, over the top; I don’t like the gross-out visuals; the view of women doesn’t bear thinking about. Really, I think the problem is that I’m a young fuddy-duddy and don’t go for juvenile humor, which puts me at odds with about 90% of the population.

4) Casual-dress church services. They seem to be the norm rather than the exception around these parts. I guess my dissent is partly based on how I feel about going to church, and partly how I feel about dressing up. I like looking nice. I get the feeling the movement may partly be driven by men, who care less about how they look and whose dress clothes are significantly less comfortable than the casual ones.

5) French fries. Again, I don’t hate them so much as fail to have enthusiasm for them. I’ll eat them if they’re there, but they’re a really boring way to be unhealthy. Actually, there are a lot of standard American foods I could just as well do without, but this one seems to be the most ubiquitous.

Oh, and I invite anybody who wants to play.