I Just Don't Understand

...recently adam and I revisited the bad music of our middle school years...

...adam started off by sharing his misplaced love of the christian artist carman...he justified his pre-teen admiration by saying, "this guy sold out the old cowboys' stadium. supposedly no one ever did that before. not u-2 or madonna."

"that's because tickets to u-2 and madonna are $150," i said. "his are probably $5. i'd go to a $5 concert too."

...that's when adam showed me this video and i had to rethink that comment...

...where would jesus have been without the dialogue of dirty hairy?...

...we should have let a good thing die right then and there, but no...

...our next stop was dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince's "parents just don't understand"...a song i sang more than a dozen times each day of the summer i visited by cousin brandon in houston, texas...a song adam was not allowed to listen to...obviously because in it jesus isn't rocky and satan isn't mr. t...of course, singing along to it listening to it made me wonder what the hell i thought was so appealing--these parents could afford a porsche, but not a nanny or butler to look after their 2 sons and little daughter while they enjoyed their week-long vacation? i just don't understand...

...we moved briefly to mc hammer..."he looks like he's wearing a garbage bag with holes punched out for his legs," adam said...

..."u can't touch this" actually had the line "dance to this and you're gonna get thinner"...so basically it was just a "hyped" and "tight" version of sweatin to the oldies...did richard simmons sue? is that how the hammer lost his millions?...

...which lead us, naturally, to vanilla ice...the song "ice ice, baby" proclaims he's "cooking mc's like a pound of BACON!"...each line is punctuated with a chorus shouting the last word: a group of hulking guys in acid washed jeans and black tank tops, their hats turned backward, yelling "BACON!" into a microphone...

...BISCUITS! EGGS! GRITS!...

...see how cool that is?...

...they couldn't come up with anything else that rhymes with FAKIN!...

...i can sympathize...i'm developing my own suburban mom rap...it adopts the same end rhyme cheer... and i've got nothing to rhyme with "toddler in the backseat saying, 'i shit my PANTS!'"

...in case you're curious, young mc also uses bacon to appeal to his listeners in "bust a move": "girls are fakin, goodness sakin' they want a man who brings home the bacon"...

...i think i understand why there is suddenly so much bacon merchandise on the market...something about our generation craves crispy pork strips...and now that we can't eat it anymore, or sing about it, we want it on everything else--socks, wallets, drinking glasses...

..."funky cold medina" was last on the playlist...a raunchy rehashing of "love potion number nine" that touts the use of a date-rape drug...the perfect song for all of those middle school dances we attended...tone loc saying, "this is the eighties and i'm down with the ladies"...good thing we didn't catch him in the seventies...there's no telling what he was "down with" in that decade...



"no wonder our teachers thought we were idiots," i said, "we thought this music was awesome"...

...word to your mother...