Poll of the Day > We Didn't Start The Fire

(+) Yeah! (+)

But you did, Billy Joel. You and all the other boomers.

REEEEEE BOOMERS GET OUT
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this boomer was telling me about how he made 100k in real estate in 2005 like it was some sort of big deal. bro, everyone made 100k off real estate in 2005 lmao

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My drunk party trick years ago used to be being able to sing that entire song beginning to end without missing a single historical reference.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

My drunk party trick years ago used to be being able to sing that entire song beginning to end without missing a single historical reference.

I'd like to learn that actually
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SpaceBear_ posted...

I'd like to learn that actually

The way I did it was, when the song originally came out (I was in 5th grade), I taped it on a cassette.

And then I played it, over and over and over again, kind of memorizing it a little at a time, until my brain started making associations between certain sequences, so all you really needed to do was remember which name started each verse, and then it would flow from there through the rest of the verse.

So, "Buddy Holly" immediately reminds you that "Ben Hur" comes next, which in turn triggers "space monkey", which triggers "Mafia", and so on. It's like a chain of dominoes, and as long as you remember the starting word in the chain, the rest falls pretty easily.

The ability to do it lingered for years (it helped that I used to have a near-photographic memory), though I'm starting to lose it as I'm getting older and my memory in general is getting fuzzier. Plus I don't really do it often enough anymore to really maintain it. But I did just try it, and apart from a couple fumbles, I still have most of it on lock. So that's part of my brain that was literally wasted and which couldn't be used for something more important or useful.

The funny thing is, I only really did it as a kid because I liked the song and found trying to remember the lyrics a challenge, so I kind of did it just to see if I could. Then years later, I was at a party and the song came out and someone said "Man, no one can sing this whole song word for word!", and I was like, "Hold my beer."

I did also find it interesting trying to look up what a lot of those references actually were, though. As a 5th grader in 1989 I didn't necessarily recognize like half the stuff in the song, which in turn made me wonder about it, which led to me learning a lot more about late 20th century history.
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