It’s Friday! I bet you guys got some big plans for the weekend, like gettin up in the club and so forth. If so, may I suggest a solid tune for pregaming? It’s a song called ”Butter On Ya Muffintop” by 4two7. I heard recently it on Billy Jam’s show on WFMU, and it is exactly as ridiculous as that title implies. It is, in fact, so dedicated to its specific area of the female anatomy that it nearly transcends the Ick Factor (almost like Foot Patrol).
I am tempted to transcribe some of the best rhymes here, but I think it might be better to just let you listen and experience them in their full glory. What Sir Mixalot did for big butts, 4two7 will do for muffintops and buttering them, with perhaps a bit of jelly as well.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
If you’re in a more old school mood, perhaps you’ll enjoy this slow jam by the generically named duo Charles and Eddie, “Would I Lie to You.” This video was available on demand on our cable, so my wife played it on a whim one evening, and I found its early 1990s-ness exquisite. That very particular time fascinates me, in large part because that’s when I had the misfortune to be in junior high/high school. It’s an era most people haven’t quite tried to mine for nostalgia or comedy, certainly not in the way the 1980s have been raided. But good lord, is it ever ripe for mining.
There’s a parallel here with the 1960s, which didn’t really start to happen until The Beatles came along. If you look at artifacts from the early portion of that decade–particular what was played on the radio–you can see people stumbling to figure things out, almost as if they’re waiting for something like The Beatles but they have no idea what that thing is yet. The pre-Clinton 1990s are a bit like that, with the catalyst being the arrival of Nirvana. The difference is that in the early 1990s, every aspect of fashion and culture was a million times worse. The Simpsons are a notable exception, but even The Simpsons didn’t really become The Simpsons for at least a season and a half. It’s like irony had to wait to arrive until we had an ironic president.
If you know nothing about the Very Early 90s, this video is a crash course. The Cavaricci outfits, the needless camera trickery, the white guy’s Fabio hair, the Quiet Storm beat–it all screams First Bush Administration, which we all know was a time of tumultuous change. Sadly, the Charles portion of Charles and Eddie passed away in 2001, but Eddie now fronts a band called The Polyamorous Affair. They never let the music die, guys.









YouTube Comment of the Week: Smurfs Pasta
The Smurfs received this tribute, of course, since they were on TV for roughly 73 years. Was the pasta blue? Of course not; such technology did not exist yet, and let’s pray it never does. The Pasta Smurfs looked and tasted exactly like the Pasta Pac-Man and the Pasta X-Men, which is to say carb-loaded blobs swimming in Campbell’s tomato soup. Uniqueness, verisimilitude, and taste were not the goals here. The goal was to make a canned pasta that you could put a cartoon label on so dumb kids (like me) would beg for it. Mission accomplished.
However, I do understand that the mere sight of these items have a nostalgic pull for folks of a certain age, myself included, which is why I found the comment you’ll see below this clip oddly endearing. And odd. Though no more odd than the commercial itself, in which Papa Smurf reacts to a Gargamel-induced food shortage by transforming a bunch of Smurf houses into Smurf pasta. Thanks, Papa Smurf! Now I’m no longer hungry but I have to sleep in a ditch!