Pop Culture Graveyard

Sorry for the hiatus team.  Things are still going strong here in Doha.  This picture has entirely nothing to do with today's blog post, but I didn't want to seem too boring so I threw it in.  So let's do this.

I have never argued that I am a cool person, but living in the Middle East I am definitely out of the running.  I read the news online, but I am in a black hole when it comes to pop culture.  When we moved here, I was told a funny story.  Our friends (who we ate Thanksgiving with) lived in Oman for five years.  Their daughter graduated high school and was going back to the States for college.  The mother and daughter attended freshman orientation where a speaker ensured the parents that their daughters wouldn't turn into Snooki.  While everyone around them laughed, the mother and daughter wondered what in the world a snooki was.  This story was funny to me at first, but now it is more scary than funny because this will be me in a few years.

 

Watching television here has the same perk as watching the DVR.  No commercials!  All the channels here are owned by the same government company and funding isn't an issue, so if there is a break during a program, the break is used to show what is playing later that night.  Most of the time, what we watch isn't live so the commercial breaks are just skipped.  In the States, they might show two shows an hour and here they play three shows an hour.  Since I don’t see commercials, I have no clue what is playing in the movie theaters and I have to keep using my cuttingboard and knife because I’m clueless on the latest kitchen toy.

 

It isn't really a big deal that I don’t know what is playing in the movie theaters.  I have gone to the movies twice, and I’m not sure I will be going back while I live here.  The movie theaters are in the malls and filled with teenagers.  It is not usual for someone to answer their phone during the movie and expect the people sitting around you to send/receive at least five texts per minute.  I like to go to the movies to escape, but my movie experiences have increased my stress level instead of decrease.
 

Our TV channel options include 20 soccer channels, American ESPN, the history channel (we watch a lot of Pawn Stars and Storage Wars), cooking channel, MTV, and E!.  We don’t get ABC or NBC, but one local channel plays some popular shows like CSI and American Idol, but that is about it.  We get MTV but it only actually plays music.  I have no clue who is 16 and pregnant anymore.  My only outlet to the tabloid news is the E! channel.  I’m not sure what they play in the States, but here they play Jonas brothers and Kardashians on repeat.  At one point in my life I didn't think that could ever get old, but it has.

 

Our radio station selection is pretty limited.  Every morning we hop in the car to head to work and listen to the Quran lesson of the day which is broadcast on every station.  The lessons last about 15 minutes and then we get to select from five non-Arabic equally awful radio stations. 

     1. General English station is broadcast from the UK.  The DJs are 60 year old Englishmen who usually play music from the 30s and 40s.  The bonus is that this station plays an hour of country on Saturday mornings.

     2. Qatar University has a local and rookie station.  I think they play newer music, but then again I don’t really know what has been going on in musicland the past six months.

     3. French station which plays sweet, sweet techno and house jams.

     4. Hindi music is blasting on the two other stations.

Thankfully, our car has a television in it instead of a CD player.  We only get two TV channels which are both in Arabic.  No need to pimp our ride.
 

My final link to pop culture is facebook, which always has the most accurate and vital information.  It was the last time I was googling a friends’ statuses that I realized I was in the pop culture graveyard where important pop culture information goes to die when nobody cares about it anymore. 

 

I don’t love pop culture, but I feel isolated not knowing what duck dynasty means.  Just don’t expect me to understand any movie or television references any time soon.

 

And with that, I will start celebrating the weekend.