Long Burn

American culture's global reach

I ate lunch yesterday with an Argentinian, an Italian and a Dane. We were making small talk and I talked about the pain that owners of large vehicles must be feeling. The Italian said you might need such a car to get around if you lived in West Virginia and I thought about it, and then the Argentinian said, Just look at the Dukes of Hazzard. And they got around just fine didn't they, in a smallish car with two-wheel drive. The Italian said, they had a car like that on Starsky and Hutch, and then we started talking 70s TV shows. The Waltons. Columbo. Addams Family. Happy Days, The Jeffersons even, they grew up watching them. The only hole I have found in foreigner's knowledge of American culture is The Three Stooges. For some reason those guys don't travel.

I told them how I wanted my son to know something about American culture so I bought him music by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Clash. It took them a minute.

posted by Matt_J @ 7:12 AM