mcgees.org

Not feeling so smug

(Oh, to clarify, I’m not the “fact-checking police” who originally posted the comment.)

I think somwhere in the fog of high school biology I may have been exposed to the correct information, but the plot lines and theme songs from two decades (60’s & ’70’s) of television seem to have used up all my long term memory slots.

Think I’m joking? Try this:

Sing the theme songs to Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres and Mr. Ed (extra credit for the closing themes). Good, now (without looking it up) tell me the periodic table symbols for Sodium, Potassium and Silver.

Not feeling so smug right now, are you?

No clue about the TV theme songs. I think the Gilligan’s Island theme lists the people on the island, and says something about a fateful trip, but when I try to hear it in my head I just get fragments of “A Whale of a Tale” from Disney’s version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. I had to look up what movie that song’s from just now. Mr. Ed: something about “a horse, of course, of course?” Hell if I know about Green Acres. But the elements are Na, K, and Ag, and I’m not a chemist.

I’m also not a child of the 60s and 70s, but I’m not sure I could do much better with more recent decades. If Cheers’s theme indeed has just the one verse that I’m thinking of, I could probably do that. Faced with the choice of recitation or immediate execution, I could probably come up with The Brady Bunch’s song. But not Friends, which had its theme song on the charts for a bit — or, well, anything else for that matter. Maybe TV show themes don’t have lyrics as much as they used to. Alias, X-Files, and Mythbusters don’t, anyway.

I’m not “feeling smug” right now, but it doesn’t strike me as a hard question.

Well, maybe I know bits of Thundercats, one of my brother’s old shows. And everything else I’ve forgetten. If you come up with songs you’re sure I’m forgetting, go ahead and ask. But let me state for the record that I have Gold, Antimony, Tin, Lead, and Tungsten down pat. [Not enough emoticons in my posts of late. Any time it seems like I’m being a dick, mentally add a smiley. That will work, unless I’m actually just being a dick.]