People tend to assume that, since I spend much of my life immersed in one genre of pop culture, I must be, at least to some degree, hip to the world of pop culture as a whole.

Which, sadly, is not the case. While I do, obviously, follow the film world closely, I tend to follow it from the making movies side, rather than from the star obsession / People Magazine side, leaving me embarrassingly behind on whether Brad and Jennifer are together or not at any given moment.

Beyond my own industry, things go downhill quickly, leaving me clueless as to new television shows, recently released novels, or hot new indie bands. In the case of TV, I’m somewhat happy not to know the latest reality hit. With books, as most of my friends tend to be serious bibliophiles, simply watching what they’re toting along for subway reading is enough to make sure I catch any fast-spreading paperback meme before I’m too distressingly behind the curve.

But music. That’s a tough one. I do, I believe, know a number of people with really good musical taste. But unlike reading choices, the contents of their iPods aren’t nearly as easily gleaned from casual observation. So, instead, I tend to follow the offhand comments of my most music-savvy friends, snapping up the names of bands and albums they mention like a dog hungrily collecting table scraps. Which works. But in a slow and haphazard way that leaves me to miss entirely bands and musicians I’d really like, and to search through the large number of mentioned groups that aren’t even vaguely up my alley.

Here, as in so many other areas, it seems I may be rescued by technology. Rescued, in fact, by technology I discovered and installed several months back, but then promptly forgot about.

Like with most things in the world of music, I may be one of the very last to discover AudioScrobbler. But, on the off chance that some small number of you readers lag even further behind, I highly, highly recommend that you download the plugin for whichever audio player you use.

In short, AudioScrobbler watches what you listen to, compares it to what other people listen to, and make recommendations based on other artists people with similar tastes are playing frequently. Last night, on AudioScrobbler’s advice, I downloaded a slew of Denison Witmer, Sufjan Stevens and Rufus Wainwright. And, frankly, I was shocked by how much I liked them all.

With those successes, I’ll be checking in on AudioScrobbler’s recommendations every month or two, and acquiring some new CDs. I may not be any hipper or better tied in to the indie music world, but, with a bit of help, it looks like at least I’ll be able to fake it.

In his excellent, if curmudgeonly, essay, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction,” David Foster Wallace argues that TV “is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

Which, frankly, is probably the best explanation of how, last night, three college friends and I ended up pigging out at Virgil’s Real BBQ, then sneaking 40’s of malt liquor into a screening of Meet the Fockers.

While I love the feeling of accomplishment in finishing reading a book, if I’m enjoying a read – and, particularly, if I’m enjoying a novel – I tend to look with dread at the swaths of pages disappearing to the left. With each turn, I get closer and closer to running out of story, to no longer feeling the constant tug of the book, away from what I should be doing, begging me to curl up, read a chapter, and then another.

That’s why I’m particularly glad I’ve enjoyed the first hundred pages of Anna Karenina (one of the many classics I somehow missed in my years of education). With literally hundreds and hundreds of pages yet to go, I have days of reading left before the fear of running out taints purely enjoying the unfolding narrative.

These days, with nearly 40 gigs of music spinning inside my iPod, I listen most any time I hit the subways or streets. And, by and large, it’s great. With sound-isolating high-fidelity buds in my ears, I barely hear the city grinding noisily away around me. With a click of ‘shuffle songs’, my entire CD collection pours seamlessly into my brain – from Aaron Copland to Zoot Sims, reminding me constantly of songs and bands I’d forgotten how much I love.

The problem is, from years of playing music, I can’t help but move in time to the beat. A year back, enrolled with a friend in a ballroom dance class, I was constantly amazed by the number of people with no sense of time – couldn’t they hear the music pulsing away? But, as iPodding goes, an overdeveloped feel for the rhythm is a bit of a disability – I can’t not move in time to the song. So, as my listening shuffles from slow ballad to up-tempo rocker, my walking speed shifts way up and down – a problem today when, already running late for a morning production meeting, I hit a stretch of laid back Clem Snide, Nico, Iron & Wine and Love is Hell Ryan Adams.

Despite broadening my (in-time) stride, I still arrived late. But it won’t happen again – just downloaded to the iPod is a ‘running behind’ playlist with enough Pixies, Donnas and Yeah Yeah Yeahs to have me fairly sprinting towards wherever I’m bound.

I’m in the Newark Airport. I have been here for the past eight hours and, according to the most recent departure time update, I should be here for at least two more.

With each passing minute, I’m increasingly cursing myself for having not yet seen The Terminal, as I’m pretty sure that, if I had, I’d know how to use this stretch of airport time to bed Catherine Zeta-Jones.

I recently finished reading a pre-release copy of Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs’ wonderful upcoming book The Know-it-All, which, in short, follows Jacobs – concerned that he’s become steadily stupider over the decade since graduating college – on a quest to counter that trend by reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, cover to cover. The Know-it-All is a surprisingly absorbing read, beautifully blending lessons Jacobs pulls directly from the volumes with the day-to-day impact his quest has on the rest of his life, on his relationships with his wife, colleagues, family and friends.

I enjoyed the book immensely, though I must admit it also brought forth from the back of my mind a similar fear of slow decline since a collegiate thinking peak. These days, I’m thrust into situations that make me think, and think hard, just often enough to remind me that I don’t think hard nearly as often as I should.

I blame that, in large part, on no longer owning a car. Or, to be more precise, on no longer owning a car radio.

I’ve never been a big radio listener outside of the driver’s seat, but, on the road, throughout high school and college, NPR almost never left my radio dial. With each short drive, I’d pick up a small dose of Fresh Air, the World, Marketplace or All Things Considered, any of which never ceased to occupy my imagination.

Certainly, I knew full well that, as a teenage guy, listening to NPR lifted me to nearly unparalleled levels of dorkdom. But I didn’t care. I loved it. I could almost physically feel my brain filling up with new facts and ideas, delivered fresh each day over the airwaves.

In standard New York style, however, I sold my car before moving to the city, and with it the only radio I owned. That was the end of NPR for me, save for short trips out west, when, in cars rented or borrowed, Terry Gross and Bob Edwards once again brought me up to date on the world. I knew that I could theoretically find any of those programs at home, archived online, but, frankly, I was too lazy to do so – I wanted my information pushed, not pulled.

Then, a day or two back, I downloaded a copy of iTunes. I did it mainly because, starting at the end of next week, I’ll be working part-time on a borrowed Mac for a nonprofit consulting project. And, with my trusty Dell laptop slowly disintegrating, I’ve also been toying with the idea of making the Mac switch full-time, trading my Dell for a Powerbook G4 and returning to my Apple roots. I downloaded the Windows version of iTunes as a baby step in that direction, a chance to ease my way into the rounded corners and aqua blues of the Mac world.

Overall, I’ve been fairly impressed with the program. But I was ecstatic about it this afternoon, when I clicked on down to the Radio icon in the left sidebar, just to see what was in there. Ambient, Americana… then, about two-thirds the way through the list: Public.

I clicked. Lo and behold, a veritable cavalcade of NPR stations! I recognized the third on the list, KCRW, from my LA rental car driving, and hit the play button. Instantly: Cory Flintoff, at 128 kilobits per second.

I am not too proud to admit I literally jumped around the room. By another miracle of broadband, NPR will, once again, be flowing back into my brain. Which, frankly, is excellent news, because my apartment doesn’t have nearly enough shelf space for an edition of the Britannica.

Go see Fahrenheit 9/11, now in previews here in New York City, and playing on a nearly hourly basis, all through the day and night, at the Loews on 3rd and 11th. It will change your life.

I don’t know if it’s a judgement on me or on the state of the American film industry, but I headed out to see Mean Girls last night, and found it one of the best films so far this year.

Also, in the ‘absolutely wrong’ category, I now totally have a crush on Lindsay Lohan.