I was watching part of Back to the Future the other night, and there’s a scene that I thought was funny as a kid but I had to stop and think about as an adult. Marty McFly travels from 1985 to thirty years in the past, and he walks into a soda shop:
GUY: You gonna order something, kid?
MARTY: Yeah, give me a Tab.
GUY: I can’t give you a tab unless you order something.
MARTY: Okay, I"ll have a Pepsi Free.
GUY: Listen, you want something, you’re gonna have to pay for it.
I had to stop and remember that Tab was a popular drink in the ‘80s although they only make about thirty of them a year now, and Pepsi Free was an early attempt at a diet drink that has long since been folded into other brands. Basically, Marty could have jumped ahead twenty years and had the exact same conversation as he had when he jumped back thirty years.
This made me think about the cultural references that we take for granted now. What crazy misunderstandings might happen if I traveled in time twenty years into the future and walked into a store?
GUY: You gonna order something?
ME: Listen, you guys got a web site?
GUY: What Lohanisms misalign your temporal thorax? That is uxorious.
I laugh just thinking about it!
Posted by Greg at 06:50 AM. Filed under:
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In 20 years, I will still be looking for one more GD can of Rondo!
wasn’t pepsi free the ancestor of coke zero?
you know, from that distant branch of the family that the bubbles don’t even talk about anymore.
I laugh that you laugh.
We’re all going to start talking like Mike Tyson? Your vision of the future scares me.
I knew people in college that came to 8 o’clock classes clutching a Tab for dear life. It was the only thing that woke them up.
I miss Pepsi Light. It was like Tab without all the saccharin. I think.
Yeah, it’s like how Marty wore a life preserver. And he had that truck with the huge wheels and the reflectors across the top. And being afraid of the Libyans. And basically the whole concept of the DeLorean.
Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies. As I’m sure you can tell from my obscure knowledge…
Do NOT cross the streams, Greg.
Wait...sorry, wrong movie.
points for “Lohanisms”.