Contents volatile: May pop under pressure

I make no attempts to deny it: I am a child of the pop culture generation.

Having been born in the later 20th Century, I came of age in an era saturated with the mind-pleasing products of television, film and popular music. Like the great majority of my peers, my brain has been exposed and overexposed to a plethora of sappy sitcoms, big-budget action flicks and forgettable FM singles.

Chris Kula Unsung Ann Arbor

Some denizens of a higher society might look down on my "Entertainment Tonight" upbringing, but I embrace it, for it engendered in me a communication technique known to us as the pop culture reference. Virtually nothing delivers guaranteed smiles and laughs in both spoken conversation and the written word like a sharp, witty mention of a figure or phenomenon from our collective past.

My column is usually laced with these allusions, simply because I love to imagine readers thinking, "Whoa, I can't believe he referenced (insert obscure pop culture subject here)!" And while I'm sure that a lot of these references are lost on some people, I know -- mainly from cracking up over any reference-laden rant by pop culture czar Dennis Miller - how good it feels to "get it," like you're on the cozy side of an inside joke.

The thing I've become aware of, though, is that some people simply don't know what constitutes a good pop culture reference. And let's face it: There have been writers for this very college newspaper with shamefully little mastery of the referential arts.

To put it simply, obscurity is the key. When the time comes for a sly little reference, dig deep, deep, deep into your memory for the least likely of candidates - then go a little further back and you should have your blurb. If you take the easy route and rip something straight from today's headlines, not only will it seem dated later on, but you'll come off sounding like the oh-so-lame Jay Leno, and none of us want that.

To illustrate what I'm talking about in terms of pop culture obscurity, I put together the following tutorial showing poor ("Sure, I know him"), fair ("I had to think for a second there") and good ("Who?") examples of referencing. So allow me to break it down like the Fat Boys and try to teach you a valuable lesson a la Miss Bliss.

Sitcoms

-Poor: Friends

- Fair: Webster

- Good: Small Wonder

Cartoons

- Poor: South Park

- Fair: Thundercats

- Good: Jem and the Holograms

Horrible Comedy Actors

- Poor: Bob Saget

- Fair: John Stamos

- Good: Dave Coulier

Teen Shows

- Poor: Dawson's Creek

- Fair: Saved by the Bell

- Good: Saved by the Bell - The College Years

Teen Heartthrobs

- Poor: Carson Daly

- Fair: Jason Bateman

- Good: Richard Grieco

Game Shows

- Poor: Who Wants to be a Millionaire

- Fair: MTV's Remote Control

- Good: Press Your Luck ("No whammy, no whammy, no whammy - stop!")

Game Show Hosts

- Poor: Regis Philbin

- Fair: the late Ray Combs

- Good: Marc Summers (working in a Marc Summers reference is often a physical challenge in and of itself)

Late Night Hosts

- Poor: David Letterman

- Fair: Greg Kinnear on "Later" (2:30 or 3 a.m. in Metro Detroit)

- Good: Byron Allen/Pat Sajak tie

Space Movies

- Poor: Mission to Mars

- Fair: Spaceballs

- Good: Flight of the Navigator

Teen Comedy Films

- Poor: American Pie

- Fair: Weird Science

- Good: any vintage Corey Haim/ Corey Feldman feature

Horror Films

- Poor: the Scream trilogy

- Fair: the Friday the 13th series

- Good: any vintage Corey Haim/ Corey Feldman feature

Animated Movie Characters

- Poor: Jar Jar Binks

- Fair: Stripe the Gremlin

- Good: Howard the Duck

Mainstream Actor

Poor: Bruce Willis, "The Sixth Sense" era

Fair: Bruce Willis, "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" era

- Good: Bruce Willis, "Moon-lighting" era

Soundtracks

Poor: "Armageddon"

- Fair: "Footloose"

- Good: "Top Gun" (any usage of Kenny Loggins is good for bonus points)

Female Pop Stars

- Poor: Britney Spears

- Fair: Paula Abdul

- Good: Sophie B. Hawkins (actually, nearly any artist who charted a Top 40 hit between '90 and '92 can pretty much be counted on as a laugh-inducing pop culture reference)

Latin Pop Stars

- Poor: Ricky Martin

- Fair: Gerardo

- Good: Ricky Martin as a member of Menudo - Poor: Motley Crue

- Fair: Quiet Riot

- Good: Slaughter

- Poor: Jay-Z

- Fair: Kriss Kross

- Good: Hammer, in his post-MC "I'm from the hood, really!" era

- Poor: The Verve Pipe

- Fair: Ugly Kid Joe

- Good: Skee-Lo

And now, to see if you catch my drift regarding the art of pop culture references, here's a fill-in-the-blanks quiz. All answers can be e-mailed to me, and the person who shows the most creativity in their references will receive special props in next week's column. Good luck!

1). I went to Meijer to get some food, but all that they had left was _____.

2). You know it's going to be a good day when your clock radio wakes you up with ___.

3). So I answered the knock at my front door, and standing on my porch was none other than ____.