I had to actually look up Nikki Minaj to see why she's so famous. I'd heard her name but couldn't connect her to any actual achievements. Well, she's a musician and whatever her musical gifts might be, she does have a magnificent sense of self-promotion.

When I was a child watching game shows with my grandmother I'd see Charles Nelson Reilly on the "Match Game" and elsewhere on TV, and I asked her who he was. She couldn't tell me. I learned much later that he was an accomplished Broadway actor and director. Never did figure out Jaye P Morgan.

I miss those old game shows. "Hollywood Squares". "Match Game". "Password". The original "Jeopardy" with Art Fleming. "Concentration" with Hugh Downs. And Bob Barker and "The Price is Right". Never cared for "Let's Make a Deal".

My grandmother was a hoot. She's shake her head in disapproval at some of the double entendres on "Match Game", and occasionally declaim on how sinful Hollywood was, but she'd tune in again the next day and never missed an episode. She felt the same way about "Hollywood Squares". She looked askance at Paul Lynde and his jokes. The audience would roar with laughter, but she wouldn't laugh. I asked her once why she didn't laugh, and she suggested I go play outside. But there she was again the next morning watching Peter Marshall and his Squares.

Peter Marshall is still with us; turned 95 in March.

"Aging is the process of knowing who fewer and fewer of the Famous People are."
Knowing, and caring, for that matter.

I learned much later that he was an accomplished Broadway actor and director.
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Not to mention a very funny TV actor, as any kid who ever watched "Lidsville" or the sitcom "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" knows.

He also did a good deal of voice work for cartoons in the 1990s (which I didn't watch, of course), but I'm surprised to realize that I didn't actually see him in more live-action shows.

Back to the general subject, here's what commentator Halmyre said, elsewhere, in 2019, regarding a list of film people older than 90:

"Depressing stuff; when I first became aware of this list about twenty years ago I'd barely heard of any of the listees, or else they were people of myth and legend. Nowadays they're household names to me. :( "

Knowing, and caring, for that matter.
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There's definitely a reason that, after age 25 (many would say earlier), one should stop gossiping constantly (in face-to-face conversation) about celebrities, pop music, YouTube videos, etc. Unless those things have to do with one's job.

Columnist Alex Beam, a couple of years ago, also wrote derisively about those people who, when they get together in person, regularly discuss, say, "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad" as solemnly as they might a Tolstoy novel.

(I can't remember which TV shows or personal names he actually used, but that was the general idea.)

Just because "TV is better than the movies these days" doesn't make it intellectual.

“Columnist Alex Beam, a couple of years ago, also wrote derisively about those people who, when they get together in person, regularly discuss, say, "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad" as solemnly as they might a Tolstoy novel.”

Never forget that the things we consider high brow today, were all pop culture of an earlier era.

It will be interesting to see what out of the massive saturation of popular junk of the late 20th, early 21st century stands the test of time. Anyone’s guess really. Regardless, it will be a very small subset of humanity that is familiar with any of it.

‘ Columnist Alex Beam, a couple of years ago, also wrote derisively about those people who, when they get together in person, regularly discuss, say, "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad" as solemnly as they might a Tolstoy novel.’

In 2000 I went to the US east coast after being away 5 years or so, and I a layover or two along the way. At the first airport I heard a group of four young women arguing about what a friend (I thought) should be doing regarding a guy she was seeing, and her other friends’ thoughts on it. Next airport coffee shop, hundreds of miles away, but the same conversation, what Carrie had recently done wrong, and their and Samantha’s thoughts on it. I realized they must be talking about a TV program, and I was creeped out by it. They were so angry/passionate about it! That was my first instance of seeing it in person. It really strikes me as bizarre when people get so involved in a TV show that it becomes a focal point of most of their social interactions.

I think from the 20th century maybe the Beatles, Madonna, and Elvis.

From the 21st, not sure yet.

I think Harry Potter has a lot of staying power, he's still popular with kids.

Found it - it's from 2015. (If you want to know, Alex Beam was born in 1954. He's a moderate conservative.)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/10/02/what-are-you-watching/99WX5xHx7AE6MtOCsJ5VHI/story.html

"So, what are you watching?"

This has become a predictable moment in my life: My wife and I get together with friends. There is the usual chitchat -- Donald Trump bad/Elizabeth Warren good; our children thriving/other people's not so much -- and then, around Minute 45, somebody pops the question: "So, what are you guys watching?"

To repurpose a famous Dorothy Parker line: Constant Weader want to fwow up.

I am so sick of academics, clerics, white collar salary people, and the suburban booboisie -- my tribe -- discussing "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" as if they were parsing the grand inquisitor scene from "The Brothers Karamazov." The London Daily Telegraph wrote of HBO's "The Wire" that "it merits comparison with the works of Dickens and Dostoevsky."

Please. Can you imagine our parents discussing "Sea Hunt," or the latest episode of "Three's Company"? But now polite society has adopted oxymoronical "quality television" as the new benchmark for intellectual attainment. My wife and I are thinking of starting "Game of Thrones" so we'll have something to talk about after church.

Books? Books are done.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak explained that the show hardly ever asks contestants to solve for book titles now. "We rarely do books anymore," Sajak said, "because fewer and fewer people read them."

Statistically, sales of so-called trade books, which you and I read, are flat to down. The numbers are a bit squirrely, because "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "The Hunger Games" sold so many copies that they distorted sales data for the past five to seven years. Children's books and young adult fiction still sell OK.

"Books," that odd category of nonliterary proto-books dominated by Bill O'Reilly ("Killing Everybody") and this week's bestselling author, TV star Mindy Kaling ("Insert Millennial-Bait Title Here"), continue to sell well. Everything else? Blah.

Don't you love the ritual photo op of the vacationing Obama family visiting the Bunch of Grapes bookstore on Martha's Vineyard, charging up an armload of hardcover books? It's so quaint, as if the president took the girls to watch a flax-spinning demonstration at Plimoth Plantation. I wonder how many of those books actually get read. . . .

The only people I can discuss books with nowadays are book club members, almost invariably women. You can ask a woman "What are you reading?" and you will hear about books by Elena Ferrante or Alice Hoffman. (Not geniuses on a par with "Mad Men" creator Matt Weiner, but talented writers, nonetheless.) Ask a man what he's reading, and it's probably the score crawl underneath ESPN2, or the latest FanDuel updates on his Twitter feed.

Not me, babe. I'm not part of the problem. I'm reading "Crooked Heart," a wonderful novel by Lissa Evans, and I just finished Lauren Groff's massively hyped "Fates and Furies," which is sharp and excellent. I downed David McCullough's understated, superb"The Wright Brothers," too. That old fella still has plenty of pitches in his repertory, believe me.

And I'll be buying more books in the future, including but not limited to: some guy named Trollope and most of Charles Dickens -- I hear his best novels rival Season Three of "The Wire." I need to read Nick Tosches's "Dino," James Welch's "Fools Crow," Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow," and of course "The Century Hit Puberty," by Mat Gleason, the author of "Most Art [Stinks]."

But if you want to talk about Rachel McAdams in Season Two of "True Detective," well -- I'm all ears. I thought she was terrific -- didn't you? I've heard "Detective" creator Nic Pizzolatto compared to Dante Alighieri -- whoever that is.