Wednesday, March 23, 2011

I'm gonna howl now

Well, Liz Taylor is dead and on television I just found some asshole pre-teens advertising something called “Kidz Bop” to my 2 year old (no small feat considering that this ad is on an educational channel which specifically promises to never have advertising…I guess Kidz Bop is such a good product that they fudge the rules for it).

Liz Taylor was extremely beautiful for a long time. She was Cleopatra. She got married, got divorced, got married again, she was kind of like the horseshoe crab version of Madonna, in that she was a different breed of ‘take no bullshit’ kind of woman than the staunchly anti-fun, anti-male types that people tend to think of when they think of anything surrounding the idea of women’s rights (though that’s completely stupid. It’s about the same as thinking that everyone in the army is a moron or everyone that’s Mexican in the US hopped a fence or swam to get here…but that’s a whole other deal).

Liz Taylor kind of took ‘slut’ and turned it into ‘go fuck yourself,’ which is pretty cool. She was classy and hot and then she got old and crazy (you’ve all seen her howl at the moon when, near the end of her life, that reporter asks her if she’s gonna marry again, right? It’s worth a google if you haven’t. Wow) and she hung out with Michael Jackson and I dunno, man. She was an original and her actual life was a work of experimental art. It’s sad that she’s dead. What’s left? Kidz Bop.

Now, Kidz Bop, for those of you who don’t know, is a CD of hit songs as sung by kids. So, it’s the tunes of dipshits like Jason Derulo, BOB, that one douche with the real soft voice…Mark Posner, shit like that. Some of these people are little more than kids themselves and the whole thing seems to wildly vacillate between completely irrelevant and vaguely offensive. I mean, I really don’t have a problem with kids listening to whatever songs they want. I had a rogue copy of 2 Live Crew’s “Hey, we want some pussy” that I listened to on headphones when I was a wee lad, and aside from being a jobless waste of space with a penchant for foul language, I turned out okay. It’s just more that I don’t want to hear kids singing about lighting up clubs or fucking on the dancefloor, not because it’s salacious, but because it’s fucking stupid. These kids don’t even know what they’re singing. Nope. Actually, they really, truly don’t. Let me give you an example.

The song 50 Things by the Dead Milkmen was a big part of the soundtrack of my middleschool years, when I was approximately the age of the kids in the Kidz Bop ads, and it featured the line “no, I haven’t got any pills. No, I haven’t got any hash” and I thought that it referred to vitamins and corned beef hash. I thought the song was literally about getting your day started right, with a hearty breakfast and some vitamin C.

Now, it’s completely possible that this could be because I was stupid, but it’s more likely simply because I was a kid. Even though I did shit like write graffiti and look at playboys and ride skateboards and follow skateboarding and punk rock culture through magazines I sent away for, and even though I hung out with the dude that ran the bong shop that was located inside the skateboard shop, and I heard people talking about drugs and stuff, I just NEVER even considered that the song would be referring to ACTUAL pills and hash. Here’s the weird part: I didn’t realize what this song was really about until I was in my late 20s, and to this day, I still vaguely associate that song with breakfast.

My point is, kids don’t pick up on direct references, so they definitely don’t pick up on Usher’s euphemisms for getting head. I dunno, maybe they do. Maybe the kids are just that much more sophisticated than they were. I guess that’s entirely possible.

I mean, what happened to that simple time when a young girl from Arkansas could grow up and marry 8 times and hang out with a manchild with an ape for a best friend? What happened to that golden, bygone era of sweetness?
RIP Liz Taylor.

16 comments:

Andrew Hudson said...

yeah pills and hash maybe not the hash or the pills just heaps of drinking and smokes with a bass line but i dont know it cause u squiddicks wont tell me it

Anonymous said...

I feel like I associate songs with what I originally thought they were about. No matter what...

Sometimes the real meaning (not in the case because pills and hash are awesome) bums me out a bit and isn't as awesome as the original (vitamins and corned beef hash, also awesome) meaning I thought was there.

Donnie said...

in middle school I thought "Rally round your family, with a pocket full of shells" meant sea shells, it was a confessing time.

Hamilton Martin said...

I started listening to bad religion at 8 years old, I got a hella list of misinformed nostalgia

Unknown said...

Actually, and I won't explain why I know this (it's boring), those fucking Kids Bop CDs change the lyrics that any parent anywhere might find offensive or questionable.

Which is worse than turning "fuck" into "ksssshhhhhff" like the radio does, because they actually use words. Fuck becomes duck, shit becomes split, entire sentences are changed to retain coherence and actually end up making less sense, etc.

Anonymous said...

kidz bop is a pox upon humanity. Truly. It creeps me out to think that a parent would agree that their children could listen to music that, at one point, was questionable to their parental ethics but is now acceptable because it's sung by other kids and censored slightly with rhyming words. Fail.

crazycarl said...

BK! where the fuck is your post about ben weasel???

Gregory said...

anyone going to see the Much the Same show at Reggie's this weekend? It's going to be a great time so if you're in Chicago, come out!

Drunken Acorn said...

Ha thats good stuff. I never knew why Bone was so excited for the first of the month until I was older. I would play Doom and listen to E 1999 Eternal all day long. Ah the summer 95.

Robb said...

Mmm. Kid Jamz reminds me of that "Eminem baby songs" compilation J-Kimmel talked about when Em was on there promoting Detox or Relapse or whatever his latest is called. Which may be even lamer since it's just intrumentals I think. On youtube but not really worth the hassle.
Daaaaamn Acorn!
'An I miss mah uncle chaaaaaaaaaarles yall'

FranklinStein said...

Alright, Brochacho. I want to hear you howl about Ben Weasel. My balls are bluer than Matt Skiba's face circa 2003, so get on with it!!!!!!!!!!!

jbody said...

Im gonna get real beex.its time for you and tobias (tha meltin creamsicle)jag ta do what yall dooohooo.hack weasal manor dawg.get him while he weak,shut down that server(and i dont mean every other member of sw,they cool)i mean like web shit

jbody said...

90z sup par call and response rap chorus-"see what i did there(dont u hate that phrase)see how I flipped dat(in a creative waaay)" cause they all prob waiters!(we'll laff later)

BEEXtrix Potter said...

Daaaaaaaayum can yall imagine the awesome funkk of Paz de la Huerta's feet? Hyaaaaa ugly azz bitch

BEEXtrix Potter said...

Right up there w Jennifer Carpenters' snnniiiiiiiiiiiiiiffff~~

eric said...

I'm on board with the ben weasel thing. I don't know how I JUST heard about this.

Awesome.