Pop Goes The Culture

 I understand that I am a victim of my own feed. 

I eat what I click.

If, for example, temptation gets the best of me and I am curious which "Friends A-Lister" has "amazing chemistry with David Harbour," I will end up paying for it in loads more celebrity tea being dumped into my stream. To save you the somewhat inglorious suspense, I will tell you now that it was none other than Courtney Cox who showed up on the set of the movie "Evil Genius" which is currently in production and hit it off immediately with the "Stranger Things" star. Insiders would like us all to know that this is merely a "talent crush."

And that should be enough quotation marks for now. 

So I understand that I was gifted this bit of Hollyweird gossip because of some previous dalliance with articles about showbiz. Shocked as you might be to find out that when I am not tracking all the nefarious schemes taking place in our government and boardrooms across this great land of ours, I am more than just a little curious about who is dating or breaking up with whom and who will have to go to movie jail because their blockbuster underperformed at the box office. This can make for lively banter out on the playground with my fellow teachers. 

It can. 

And sometimes these conversational gambits fail miserably. They tend to fall into the somewhat soulless vein of "did you know?" Apologies for that brief return to quotation marks. I live at what could be considered the far end of the demographic when it comes to elementary type teachers. In order to stay current, I have found that keeping up with Tom Holland and Zendaya makes it easier to communicate with this younger generation. Attempting to stay current in an endless river of pop culture is no easy task, and I want to believe that I am doing my absolute best. 

But did I really need to read that whole article about Courtney Cox and David Harbour? And why do you suppose I found it necessary to bore you with the details here? I suppose if you've made it this far, I can tell you that I believe that it is a direct result of the genetic connection between my mother, who used to pore over every movie magazine in her parents' drug store, and even though she would eventually go on to be a voracious reader of all manner of literature, she still had one foot in the scandal sheets. Clark Gable's halitosis was legendary. He used to chase Vivien Leigh around the set of "Gone With the Wind" with his false teeth in his hand. 

And if that's not a "conversational gambit," I don't know what is>