Holiday Trivia Fiascos (Musical Division)

Q. - What musician went by the nickname "Satchmo?"

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If you know the answer to this question, call it out ... roll the dice ... and move you @#$% piece the alloted number of spaces.

If you DON'T know the answer, feel free to stomp out of the dining room in a huff and pout in the guest bedroom for the rest of the night. You'll probably have cast a shadow of the entire after-Christmas-dinner festivities, but who cares?

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Seriously. Should a question like that be used as a gauge of one's cultural literacy? Or is it already too far in the past to be a fair indicator? I tested the question out at work today and so far no one under the age of forty knew who I was talking about ... and I find that outrageous. Everyone knows L.A.'s stuff when they hear it, right? Is Pops really that far in the past to have been forgotten so fast?

Caveat: My 34-year-old sister with the PhD in microbiology was the one who didn't know the answer to that question. Even my mom - who is, admittedly, totally L7 - knew the answer.

Outrageous. That's all I have to say about it.

"Caveat: My 34-year-old sister with the PhD in microbiology was the one who didn't know the answer to that question."

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment.

Off the top of your head, please tell me the difference between microbial taxonomy and microbial systematics. (I had to use Google to even make up that question.)

Now an analogy: Imagine pouring a gallon of water (knowledge) into a pint glass (human brain). I am not real smart in science, but I imagine that in the course of getting a PhD in microbiology, trivia like "Satchmo" just might spill over the side. I imagine that you're doing pretty good if the names of things like "cell phone" and "hamper" stay in the glass.

(Full disclosure: I'm good at trivia.)