Using pop culture in ledes

Generally speaking, pop culture metaphors are an easy device for people who can't write.

 

Here is my most memorable foray into pop culture ledes.

10 years ago, Shania Twain had a song out called "That Don't Impress Me Much".
So when bumfuck high wins their opening basketball game of the season 103-51, I use the lede that follows:

"Bumfuck High played so well Tuesday night, even Shania Twain would have been impressed."

Go ahead and pile on.

 

Nothing dates your work, empties it of meaning or condemns it to irrelevance faster than a reference to some personality or phenomenon in the popular culture.

 

I remember my first year at my college paper, covering a hoops game played on Dec. 7.
"The Podunk Tech basketball team celebrated Pearl Harbor Day by bombing State 80-45."
Ouch, never made that mistake again.

 

Unless your first year in college was in the early 1940s, that wouldn't be a pop culture reference.

 

Should you really be celebrating Pearl Harbor Day anyway?

 

Timeless?
Hey, Sports Guy has built an entire career on references that only he and six other people get. Timeless is not the idea. Yeah, so maybe 10 years from now when you're going through your clips, you're going to wish you'd never referenced the ongoing Kanye/Fifty competition. But if it gets people involved today, which is the only time you really have a chance to have an audience, go for it. I'd suggest it can be done more elegantly than in this particular case, but we're writing for today and tomorrow, not for posterity -- unless one of us here is Alice Sebold.

 

Make sure your references are timeless and won't be cringeworthy next week. I made one in my blog that will stand up for at least 12 months re New England Videogate: "The commissioner's office leaked like a Saturday night partier on the wall of a municipal parking garage."

 

I also get the feeling that teams will be cooling off with the fall temperatures

 

Pop culture references are best avoided, much like the musical acts on Sunday/Monday night football meant to appeal to a demographic that doesn't give a damn about football.

 

With any simile or metaphor (or perhaps a synecdoche), pop culture or not, the rule I learned early is don't fall in love with an idea. That is, if you're kissing yourself for your brilliance the moment you write it, delete it. Also, if you're forcing the story around the reference, delete it. You'll thank yourself later.

That said, this might have worked for a Rex Grossman lede. I laughed, at least:

 

pile on shania? in a freakin heartbeat!!!!!!