What’s the stupidest pop culture-related fight you’ve ever had? I don’t mean over something subjective — like, was Wings a good show? — I mean something factual (like, when my sister left me an inebriated message a few years back asking me to please settle an argument that she was having over the name of Suzanne Sugarbaker’s pig, Noel). Here’s why I’m asking this question now: Earlier this week, Annie Barrett and I were telling EW’s Jason Adams that we were going to catch a preview performance of Broadway’s The Little Mermaid.
Somehow, the two of them ended up debating whether Sebastian was a crab (Annie’s vote) or a lobster (Jason’s). After Annie hurled a somewhat poorly-planned insult ("You’re a lobster"), they made me do a Google search. Now, this is where things got really stupid. As Annie approached my desk to look at my computer screen, Jason, who’d gone to the same basketball camp as Annie as a child, boxed her out. Annie then announced that she was doing a "reverse pivot," and worked her way past Jason just in time to see me pull up an official Disney FAQ confirming that she was correct. (Jason accepted his defeat, but noted that Sebastian is a professional actor, so for all we know, he’s actually a lobster playing a crab.)
Yes, that fight ranks right up there with the time that I watched EW’s resident Journey expert Missy Schwartz school Adam Markovitz after she heard him (falsely) claim that Steve Perry’s speaking voice was as high as Nicolas Cage’s in Peggy Sue Got Married. (Missy knew exactly which vintage interview clip on YouTube would prove that Perry’s voice is, in fact, "perfectly virile.")
Your turn. Confess your stupidest arguments — and to what lengths you went to resolve them…
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I did have an argument with someone over whether or not Christopher Gorham (aka Henry) from Ugly Betty was the same guy from Jake 2.0 (I knew he was the same guy, she didn’t agree). Nevertheless, we went back and forth for awhile, before I had to confirm what I already knew on Wikipedia.
I also got into an argument over whether or not Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh were married as I was watching that movie “Much Ado About Nothing” they did in 1995.
I won the argument, and then she refused to drive me back to my car after that (we were at a friend’s house). Bee-yotch! I really had to get home!
All of my friends know not to question my movie or celebrity gossip knowledge, now. I remember everything!
My friend and I once had a very *heated* discussion about whether the lead mouse in An American Tail was Fievel for Fifel. No blows were exchanged, just verbal snubs.
When “rules of engagement” began my husband and i fought because i was sure that the actress (Bianca Kajlich) who plays Jennifer (the fiance) was the same actress who played Lou’s hooker girlfriend, Candy, in Rescue Me. So me being the pop culture wiz of the family, i went to IMDB to prove him wrong and in fact Candy was not listed on Bianca’s page, but i still wouldn’t accept defeat because for a while i couldn’t find who played Candy, so you just prompted me to reopen my investigation and turns out, he was correct, dang! Milena Govich played Candy! gggaahhh, i can never tell
I once bet a friend that Haley Joel Osment DID NOT co star in The Patriot with Mel Gibson (it was future Everwood star Gregory Smith). I won a copy of Scooby Doo on DVD. But my friend refused to admit defeat, only doing so after checking every movie reference imaginable. (We’re librarians, so I’m talking books, web sites, and databases). I think it took him 3 days to exhaust his research materials.
I frequently argue with my co-workers over music. The last argument was about Kid Rock’s song Picture and what album it was on. My co-worker was saying it was on the same album as “American Bad Ass” and I was sure it was on the one after that one. He checked cduniverse and proved me correct, and now refuses to discuss Kid Rock with me at all.. which I think means I won twice.
A co-worker and I, both avid 24 fans, had weekly heated debates about whether or not Evelyn was alive or dead (Mrs. Logan’s assistant from season 5). Last seen, she was in the hotel room with Christopher Henderson. Her actual death was not shown.
My friend insisted that she was still alive. Yet, she never appeared on any subsequent episodes. I kept insisting she was dead. The only way we could agree to resolve the argument was at the season finale. If she didn’t appear by the season finale, my friend would agree she was dead.
He finally acknowledges that I won the bet, but still insists she is alive! I’m so glad he moved to Nashville.
i think she’s alive…just like Behrooz is still alive somewhere, as on orphan!
Ugh. When I was in college a huge mullet wearing Kiss fan and I got into a stupid argument over the song “Do Ya”. He said that it was originally performed by Ace Frehely. I said that Frehely’s version was cover of a song performed by Jeff Lynne and The Move, then redone when Lynne founded ELO.
I think my most ridiculous pop culture argument was when I sort of absently remarked once when “Ironic” came on the radio that most of the stuff in the song did not actually fit the definition of irony. My college roommate at the time (a huge Alanis Morrissette fan) took this as the highest form of insult I could hurl at her idol and proceeded to get into an argument with me that in fact EVERYTHING in the song was ironic and that I, the English major, did not know what I was talking about. I think the fight lasted at least a couple of days and was never resolved, mostly because I don’t think she could comprehend the definition of irony enough to realize she was wrong.
In college, friends and I got in the habit of watching Jeopardy together. One night they missed it. There was a neat question about the Australian possum. The next day, when I mentioned the Australian possum, one friend declared the American o’possum was the only possum there was. We argued for a week about it (because why would Alex Trebec lie) until I busted out an encyclopedia. Over a freaking animal.
When ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ came out, my friend made a comment about it being ‘25 years since the original’. I knew there was no way the movie came out in 1982, so we spent an hour debating how old we were when each subsequent movie came out, and how far apart they must have been. I finally conceeded that the EARLIEST the movie could have come out was 1986, and it turned out to be even later than that. A quick IMDB check when I got home proved me mostly right, though I was still to early on the year (misled by my friend’s claims).
My sister in law and I got into a screaming fight over what year the song “Baby, Baby” by Amy Grant came out. It probably lasted an hour. It stopped when we looked it up online and yes, I was right.
An ex-boyfriend and I once got into an argument over the name of the monkey in Aladdin – clearly Abu, but for some reason he was convinced the name was “Apu.” The argument didn’t actually last that long because I was so positive the name is Abu that I just called him an idiot and that was that. He’d probably still argue about it now though, if I were to bring it up.
I think the monkey in Aladdin *is* named “Apu”…
I once won $50 on a bet about “Grease 2″…which I guess isn’t that stupid after all.
Ok, IMDB proves me wrong. It is Abu.
My Dad is convinced that Nomar Garciapara is in the opening montage for The Tonight Show, and says it’s plausible, because Leno is a Red Sox fan. I know that it is NOT Nomar sitting at the bar in the baseball hat, but Dad cannot be convinced otherwise.
I’m not sure if this counts, but a group of friends got into a screaming fight on christmas night, 1999, because one of them accused another of “cheating” at Trivial Pursuit. This resulted in much slamming of doors, and susequently, the Trivial Pursuit game did not show it’s pie covered face again for over a year…
Apu is the name of the Quickie-Mart owner on The Simpsons.
Oh, this happens all the time. As the “movie girl” of the apartment, I flatly refuse to be wrong about anything, even if I, er…am.
The worst it got that I can remember is when I became convinced that Susan Sarandon was the actress in “Holes”, not Sigourney Weaver. Of course, I was wrong, but I was so freaking convinced I was in the right! In fact, I was so convinced that I IMDb’d it on the spot, and, finding that I was actually wrong, promptly lied about it and hoped nobody would ever double-check my story.
Apu- Simpsons
Abu-Aladdin’s Monkey
Baboo- Jeanie’s sidekick from Hanna Barbera. “Yapple Dapple”.
I got into a heated email argument with two friends over whether the song that should be remembered from the airband episode of Scrubs is “More than a Feeling” or “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend.” Mind you, they’re both in the episode, we were just arguing which song should be remembered MORE from the episode.
As it turns out, the only thing that “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend” should forever be associated with the Chris Farley/Patrick Swayze “Chippendale’s” sketch from SNL.
A favorite family movie is Baby Boom. This past Thanksgiving weekend, I recognized one of the yuppies in the Vermont general store as Chris Noth (who later became Mr. Big). My sister and my mom (both huge SATC fans themselves) were VERY vocal in their doubts until a visit to IMDb (where would we be without it?) cleared up the confusion: I was right.
Incidentally, my mom can recite Carrie Bradshaw’s entire monologue at the end of the episode where Big has his heart operation. And it’s loooong.
Years ago, when my brother and I were home both home sick with th flu, we got into a knock down drag out fight over the maximum number of points a couple could earn on ” The Newlywed Game” It must have been the fever that made us both crazy. To this day it ranks as not only the stupidest pop culture arguement I’ve ever had, but the stupidest argument I’ve ever had period. To this day, I get riled up every time I see Bob Eubanks.
As the office Pop Culture know-it-all, I am constantly (exasperatedly)correcting my co-workers. But my sisters are just as bad as I am. 2 fights over music come to mind. “Don’t you Want Me” by the Human League. Was she working as a waitress in a hotel or cocktail bar? Lots of yelling over this one. Also in the theme from Alice- did she have a “fresh freckled face” or something else? While the internet makes it possible to find the answers, it is more fun to argue these finer points. Especially since we are all on the same page about pretty much everything else.
I brace myself everytime my husband channel-surfs past a “Rocky” movie because I know it only leads to a heated argument between us over the chronological order of Rocky’s opponents. We also fight over which episode Mickey dies in.
Ashamed to admit it, but it happens anytime someone tries to quote their Survivor knowledge to me. The most heated debate ever was with an 80-something year old woman who kept insisting that they do start their fires from scratch without any tools (eyeglasses, flint, etc.). It got ugly.
What species is Gonzo from the Muppets? He is a whatever, sometimes considered a weirdo which may or may not be a species in the whatever family. He is not a turkey, or a buzzard, or a chicken (pfft – chicken), or an anteater. He is a weirdo. Two former coworkers would get me so worked up over this that I would start to get genuinely angry at them. It continued for months, and then one day I realized they just kept hammering it because they enjoyed getting me all riled up over a Muppet.
In the days before youtube, my friend Robin and I got into a heated argument about which New Kid sang which “step” in the song “Step by Step”. I was certain that Joey sang the falsetto “step three”, where as Robin declared it to be Jordan. Eventually, we had to breakdown and rent the NKotB video collection from Blockbuster (most. embarassing. rental. EVER.). Though I was wrong, I couldn’t help but feel that I had, in some way, won.
My stepdad & I had an ongoing argument for YEARS regarding whether the actress who used to play Kristen on “Days of Our Lives” was a transsexual. He swore she was; I didn’t believe it. I was finally vindicated when she gave birth a few years ago. However, he won’t admit defeat because there’s another soap actress with a striking resemblance who is a transsexual. I can’t win.