Pop culture runs my life...maybe we'll just focus on music and TV

I am voracious when it comes to pop culture: TV, movies, books, music, not so much art, although I guess art isn't pop culture, unless it's pop art, and I frankly am not cool enough to know what constitutes actual art and pop art...smug artists can judge me now if they'd like.

I am presently watching the lost footage of the "Real Housewives of NYC," because this series makes me so happy. I don't watch the Atlanta version, and I'm not wild about the prospect of the DC version, but I'll give it a chance. It's seriously the guiltiest pleasure I have, except maybe my love of board games, but I dunno that loving board games is trashy and mindless like reality TV. If I liked Pictionary, maybe, but I'm addicted to Trivial Pursuit and Smitty will NOT play with me. I like to think it's because he's scared, but it's actually because he is irritated by all board games, except Risk, which I bought him recently and takes 9 hours to play. What a brilliant idea that was.

Music defines my life in a lot of ways. I say that I have a monkey DJ in my head, because, frankly, I do. Well, really Smitty says that because it comforts him to say that rather than to say "Emily is a schizophrenic; I've made an awful, awful mistake," because at any given time, I will just sing whatever pops into my mind. Recently, it's been Carrie Underwood's song about her scratching her name into her cheating boyfriend's truck...can't remember the name. That's the thing, often, I can't remember the names of songs or the correct lyrics, which is why Smitty and my song is "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake or White Lion or Great White or whoever, because not long after we started dating, we were coming home from a party, and I was singing at the top of my lungs, "Cos I know what it means, to walk along when love is sweetly dreamed." (Actual lyrics: 'Cos I know what it means, to walk along the lonely street of dreams.') There was silence in the car and then "WHAT did you just say?" and it pretty much set the precedent for road trips with me singing at the top of my lungs and his looking sideways at me because I even know the lyrics I just sang aren't right, but I just don't care.

Besides random incorrect lyrics, bizarre songs just pop into my head. There was a song from a hotel commercial from when I was little, and it went "We're almost there, I want to go swimming....we're almost there, I want to watch TV."  Also, any song from the "Three Amigos" or "The Princess Bride" or "Labyrinth" is burned into my brain. There is simply no way to undo it. If I ever get Alzheimer's and I so don't mean to joke about that, but it will end up with me quoting movies and singing the best of Wilson Phillips.

There was also this song from a completely ridiculous movie called "Summer Camp Nightmare" that my sister and I watched one Saturday while she was babysitting me while my mom was getting her Master's. Incidentally,during one of those babysitting adventures, my sister also broke my pinkie toe when she dropped a giant saucepan on it....because my sister in the kitchen is scary, then, now, and forever. Nonetheless, this movie had a song that the campers sang for a talent show or something that just went "Beef, beef, beef, beef baloney, beef, beef, beef, beef baloney," while grabbing his crotch and dancing around. It was horrible and horrified my sister, which is why I think I chose to hang onto that image and song, because I would torment her with it for a while after that. But, these are the things that creep into my head, unwarranted, that and Barenaked Ladies and Jane's Addiction and Frank Sinatra and Billy Joel, ad nauseum, I'm just giving you a glimpse into my psyche...it's scary and cold there, and the music is constant. This is why I need a Swedish team of people studying me. I could be on Oprah, I'm just saying.