cheech

I was sitting at work yesterday, and Paula Abdul came to mind. Specifically, the song "The Way that You Love Me"... specifically, an argument I had back then with my friend, at the time college roommate, Mike, about the lyrics. As anyone alive at that time (1990-ish) knows, Paula was on the radio and TV a lot. You had plenty of opportunity to hear, re-hear, re-re-hear, etc. her bold and incisive lyrics (or, well, whoever wrote them's lyrics) and draw philosophical conclusions from them. So, I was hearing "The Way that You Love Me" for about the 85 billionth time, specifically the part where (here, I have to interject, for those of you that don't know... hah, imagine, not knowing Paula Abdul songs!!.... anyway, the song lists all the things about her billionaire boyfriend that she doesn't care about. The mansion? The car? Vastly expensive wardrobe? The worldwide travel? Paula cares about none of it! And she proved it by marrying Emilio Estevez and dating Arsenio Hall, two paupers that, I understand from careful research, had a movie career and standup-comedy/movie/talk-show careers, respectively) Paula sings about one of the many things she isn't impressed by that her billionaire boyfriend owns: "It ain't your ninety foot.... yacht." At this point, I turned to Mike and said, "You know what she's talking about there, right?" and Mike's like, "What?" and I said, "His dick; she's talking about his dick," and Mike says, "What the fuck are you talking about? She says 'ninety foot yacht'!!" and I said, "But she pauses there... she says 'ninety foot,' and then there's a pause, and then she says 'yacht'. It's a clear phallic reference. She really wants his ninety foot dick, or rather, slyly asserts she doesn't care about his ninety foot dick, but she clearly does." Mike said I was stupid and didn't know what the hell I was talking about.
My point is this-- I was right, was I not? Come on, SGers, help me out here. Let the record of history show I was correct, that Paula was indeed talking about ninety foot dick, not yacht. I'm needing some resolution here.

I was also reminded of an occurrence at a later date, when ex-'Til Tuesday frontperson Aimee mann released... well, whichever album had "I Should Have Known" on it, when Kemp Mill Records had a contest in honor of this feat. They asked people to fill out in 50 words or less something they should have known, and the winner got like.... I dunno, whatever they give in contests. A trip, money, stereo equipment, or some dumb-ass concert tickets. Anyway, I was all poised to fill in my entry when I noticed the fine print saying that your entry couldn't be obscene, at which point I sadly walked away.

There was another contest, at Arlington's Go! Records, where you could win... I dunno what... and your entry had to be... I forget that too.... but I took the entry form and drew what was, ten years ago, my recurrent doodle, which was a WWI biplane, sort of a pimped-out Sopwith Camel, with a English gentryman at the controls, a figure who'd always be complete with 1) long, billowing scarf, 2) funny 1910s mustache, and 3) flying helmet and goggles on his forehead, who I'd named Sir Pomeroy Vauxhall. The plane had a message thing flapping behind it too, you know, like you see at the beach, and I forget what I wrote on that but back then it was likely to be something like, "I LOVE LINT," based on the fan-letter that David Letterman got back in the 1980s (when his show was still interesting), a card that had "I LOVE LINT" written in lint glued to the card, and nothing more. Letterman proceeded to do a joke about something else entirely, but the great fan-letter was what stuck in my mind. Anyway, I was positive my drawing would win the contest, and of course it didn't.

Know what the most commonly stolen book is in public libraries nationwide? The Bible. Does this mean I think Christians are thieves? No! It is obviously non-practicing Christians who are the thieves.

My proudest moment in world-capitals-memorization happened a few days back. I was speaking to a guy from Eritrea and asked him to quiz me on any country's capital. "Ghana?" "Uh................ Accra!" "Nigeria?" "Uh....... Nigeria...... uh....... Abuja?" He told me I was wrong, but then he wasn't sure. Looking on the net news this week, I see that the capital is- Abuja! I'm just glad we did all this after he told me he was from Asmara, as uhhh.... I think I'd kinda forgotten that one!

In the Let It Be book, it mentions one of the more interesting footnotes in Beatles-overdubbing history. Around the 2:57-2:59 mark, in the song "Hey Jude," Paul became frustrated with what he felt was a singing mistake and said, "Fucking hell," into the microphone. The book said that, while it was covered by other tracks/ vocals, you can still hear it. Being a skeptic, I went 'n played it last night. YOU CAN TOTALLY HEAR IT!! The book got it wrong, though; he doesn't scream it, he merely mutters it... but very audibly.