Cheetara can suck it.*

So last summer I became mildly obsessed with The World Series of Pop Culture on Vh-1. By all accounts, this faux-serious weeklong trivia contest was clearly (CLEARLY) what I should be doing with my life. It was the culmination of all the years I've spent reading schlocky magazines, watching endless amounts of television, retaining useless song lyrics, memorizing dates, all rolled into one. I spent the week glued to my couch, texting my friend Lisa (also a pop culture maven, but with more of an 80s spin to her knowledge) everytime one of these so-called "teams" missed a ridiculously easy answer, like who sang the lyrics, "I dont know but today seems kinda odd/No barking from the dogs, no smog/And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog" -- I mean, cripes, if you don't know that those lyrics are from "It was a Good Day" by Ice Cube, then you probably also have no idea that Ice-T is kicking serious ass on Law and Order: SVU every Wednesday, and therefore you have no biznass partaking in a WORLD SERIES of POP CULTURE.

Anyhow, at the beginning of 2007, Lisa and I, along with our friend Hannah, decided that when the time came around again, we should try out. Or at the very least, enter our names for the ability to try out. Between the three of us, there would be no subject that we didn't know. Rap lyrics? Check. Seinfeld episodes? Check. Duran Duran and Adam Ant? Check. Sitcom families and/or the neighborhoods they live in? Check. Plus we were convinced we would not choke like last year's many contestants when asked, in sudden-death, to come up with answers to such difficult questions like, oh, hey, can you name a TIM BURTON MOVIE?

We came up with a few names for our team:

The Karma Chameleons
West End Girls
The Sloane Petersons (my personal favorite)
Lyrical Gangstas
Heroes on the Halfshell

and so on.

Well, as you must have figured out by now, I am not in this year's WSOPC. We didn't even get a callback or an email back or whatever. I took the online wild card test, and I know I smoked it, so I can only hope that this year's contestants are flippin' pop culture geniuses. If they are not, I may cry. It looks like in the ad some of their team names include Three Men and a Little Lady and Twisted Misters. Whatever. I will be watching from my couch, tallying my scores. The slogan for this year's show is THIS TIME, IT'S WAR. Funny, that's exactly how I feel.

* Yes, I know Cheetara did not win last year. El Chupacabra won, but I was watching reruns this week and Cheetara was on and I got so worked up listening to their screeching that even though I knew those harpies did not win, I had to change the channel.