The ways I keep up with popular culcha are two:
– In waiting rooms, I always read the magazines I would never buy or subscribe to. They are full of people everybody seems to have heard of but me, all tricked out in their for-camera duds and smiles, with their SOs in tow, or tears, in the back seats of cars. How else would I have known about Angelina and Brad and Jennifer?
– At home I rely on two sons in their early twenties (and their assorted friends and passersby) to keep me up on slang and tell me what’s really retro. I have no problem with being really retro, myself, but it’s always interesting to know what’s regarded as totally cool. That’s how I learned to say “sucks” and “ghetto.”