By Alyce Wilson

I’m a pop junkie. The first sign of my addiction was reading biographies of Lenny Bruce and Leonard Bernstein, simply because they were mentioned in the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

The second sign was consistently laughing at Dennis Miller’s jokes - and kicking myself every time I didn’t get one of them.

Lenny Bruce

The third sign was realizing, recently, that I’m like the character Binkley from the 1980s comic, “Bloom County.” Yes, I am entirely capable of waking up in the middle of the night, fretting that the Van Halens might be breaking up. I have frequent dreams wherein I replace the lead character in whatever movie or TV show I saw before falling asleep. This is why I have a rule never to watch a horror movie before going to bed.

I inherited my condition from my father, who indulges me with long conversations on the latest entertainment news, and who used to win every game of Trivial Pursuit. (When my brother and I didn’t know the answer, we always guessed Richard Nixon.)

I am guilty of sharing multiple in-jokes with friends and family, loosely based on pop cultural references. But in some cases, the original reference is long forgotten, and we pass them on to new friends who never experienced the pop cultural artifact being referenced.

I am the sort of person who sees movies just because everybody talks about them, and I have to know what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, as with most pop junkies, my interests are too scattered to make me an expert in any one area. Music critic I am not. I fully admit I never listened to Fugazi. But I know that dropping that band’s name is a shortcut for referencing a certain segment of post-punk, independent alt rock.

Why this drive to become a human reference book, a walking encyclopedia of pop culture?

Because pop culture is our modern mythology, and by understanding the myths we create, we understand ourselves.

Pop culture — whether music, movies, art, dance or literature — speaks better than any historian can about who we are, as a culture, in a given time. The stories we tell ourselves, the dreams we live by, the things we hope to achieve, they’re all contained within the things we watch, listen to, and read.

If you don’t believe me, take a couple minutes to think about your own connections with pop culture. What music do you listen to? Which movie stars appeal to you? And then ask yourself what appeals to you about that music, that movie star. Chances are, you’ll discover something about yourself.

By exploring my own connections and intersections with pop culture, I hope to unearth some underlying truths about how we see the world and ourselves. In my column, “Dream Machine: Meditations on Pop Culture,” I will explore those connections, suggest possible meanings, and hopefully hit some universal truths about where we are at this stage of American culture.

Welcome to the journey.

Copyright 2002 by Alyce Wilson

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