Pop Culture Pig Ignorance Index

The PCPI Index was at its highest ever this morning. Usually when I check the birthdays column in the morning paper I find that almost everyone under the age of 50 is completely unknown to me. Occasionally, they throw in a ringer like a baseball player or a politician. But usually it's someone described as "actress" or "singer". Sometimes we go all the way up into the 70s before I know who somebody is. This is a fairly easy, and largely satisfying, way to graph my happy ignorance and occasional surprising knowledge of American pop culture. It's a sort of reverse snob thing. (What can be really depressing is to find that one of the femme fatales of my youth has turned 80. It seems that just because she stopped making movies doesn't mean she stayed 32. So if she's 80, I must be. . . .oh, Lord.)


But this morning the index began and ended at 88. Marty Allen is 88. No idea who anyone else in that list is. I'm delighted.

[You remember Marty Allen. Sure you do. Of Allen and Rossi? C'mon, of course you do.]