"Hey Nineteen, that's Ree'tha Franklin
She don't remember the queen of soul"

- Steely Dan in a song from waaaay back.

As for

"Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other."
Most americans didn't know Iran and Iraq were at war at the time. They are often surprised to discover this.

"They have always been challenged to distinguish between news and entertainment on cable TV."
I had a professor in college who was a communist. He had once been an editor for Time. When he got the job he was curious to know how they justified his position given his admitted out look. His boss said simply this. ' Don't write anything the american public doesn't already know.' News is entertainment. I think it always was.

> They never saw a Howard Johnson's with 28 ice
> cream flavors.

The last officially licensed Howard Johnson's ice cream parlor west of the Mississippi, located in Kirkwood Missouri, closed last year (early 2004). The owner said he thought there were still two left on the east coast operating under the original license. So, if they ever tried retracing the old Route 66, they could have done this.

sPh

My family and I visited China in 1988 (I was twelve). Having heard about the new KFC in Bejing back in the states (and having taken a dislike to the local fare; though not as much as my sick mother), I insisted we go there. It was three stories tall and directly catty-corner to Tiannamen Square. The local cabbies called it something like Kendurgee. We went there several times. It was wonderful and it was always packed. The life-size Col. Sanders outside was hilarious.

They won't remember a President whose name was not either Bush or Clinton, and who was not educated at Yale University. That by itself is something of a national humiliation.

Some "golden oldies" radio stations now consider the 80s as the start of the definition of oldies.

Oh, Lord help us.

"And now, a triple play by Whitesnake!"

By the way, 40 is still very young. I came to that realization when I turned 50.

They don't remember American Motors.

I worked for American Motors. Who could forget the Gremlin and Pacer?

I used to like the Beloit list but this one seems to have jumped the shark. Overall, the comments are pretty lame -- "don't remember American Motors." Until I read this, I didn't remember American Motors. And I drove in a Pacer!

How bout these: SNL has never been funny (though they continued to watch and imagine it so) and the best serious actor in Hollywood is Bill Murray.

How about "they don't know where the expression 'jumping the shark' came from"?

Dude, you're old.

Anyway, about the Beloit list: one thing to remember is that the list is aimed at faculty (to remind them to keep a damper on humiliatingly dated references; I wonder whether it works)-- who can range in age from 26 or so to 80+. American Motors might not mean much to some of us, but there are undoubtedly some in that age range who will be shocked to realize that it's not in the froshs' vocabulary.

I used to ride around in the back of a Pacer, and the hit song from a cassette that I received for my bar mitzvah has played on "classic rock" stations for a few years now.

But I still don't know where the "jump the shark" comes from.

I'm a 42-yr old professor, and I think that the students would prefer my humiliatingly dated references to my half-baked -- and excruciatingly lame -- attempts to invoke 50 Cent or Eminem or whomever it is that the 18-24 demographic is downloading this nanosecond! "Yo, dawgs, it's a difference between International Relations and International Politics -- ya heard?!?"

To Trotsky: "Jump the Shark." That moment in a T.V. series where the writers have obviously reached into the Weird Beyond and everything goes downhill from there. Commonly thought to come from the episode of "Happy Days" where Fonzie -- by this stage in the series, a water-skier (!) -- jumped over a shark. Often associated with a new actor playing an established role (think Darren on "Bewitched") or, more recently, an obvious attempt to be topical ("The West Wing" jumped the shark after 9/11).

I remember AMC, I was in Milwaukee at college when the Kenosha palnt was bought by Chrysler and closed, I think that ended AMC. Kenosha was the strangest place to drive around in at that time in that everyone drove a Pacer, Hornet, Eagle, or someother unknown AMC. The Javelin, AMX, and Ramblers were good, but the most under apprciated car was the Rebel.

BCN