Kids Today!

“You could open a window for more freshness. Or you could just open your arms.”

– from a commercial for Tide Special Outside Smelling Laundry Soap (or something)

Not my arms, lady. I’d go with the window if I were you.

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I was sitting here yesterday morning, merrily gliding, resting my plantar fascitis’d foot (who says a pregnant woman can’t hike! Who?? YOU? yeah, you’re right), eating a piece of leftover pizza and a grapefruit and watching Saturday morning TV. The MuchMusic weekly countdown, which I haven’t seen since I was 15 was on. (this week in the cheeseblog: once, I was 15!)

The number 29? 30? started up and it was Snoop Dogg and The Pussycat Dolls. It went: Snoop wants to have sex with the alpha doll. She shakes it a little but then is all “no, because you’re a funny looking pothead with some boundary issues and a serious speech impediment. On the other hand, there is a car named after you. On the other other hand, you’ve just been arrested – “

Then Snoop went away and the Doll broke into song, joined by her 5 sisters (I think – they didn’t stay still long enough for me to count) and they took off all their clothes (it must have been hot in therrre!) and made love to some chairs. One of them was wearing a turtleneck bodysuit but the others were dressed in regular stripper bodysuits. I felt like there should be an $8 pint of Canadian in front of me and Sarah beside me, that’s how much it felt like The Cecil. (No, that wasn’t when I was 15. I think I was 20 by then)

They danced for a while and at one point lay down on the ground and writhed in what looked like a CGI pool of fire. Snoop came back at the end and was all, “yeah? you don’t want me? fine! I’m married anyway,” and then it was over.

I blinked a few times. Then, like the Mack truck you never saw coming, Billy Talent started screaming angrily about something so I shut him out to consider what I had just seen and what could possibly have prompted it to have gone from somebody’s jerking off fantasy to the big(ish) screen. There’s probably a message, right? So being a Pussycat Doll – or just hot like one – is OK most of the time, but then if you’re intimidating men with your talent and you’re attracting all the wussy men, you still go home at night alone and wanting. And it does happen – some guy will be all over your humps all night long in the club but when you get him alone in the parking lot and actually thrust said humps in his face, he becomes paralyzed with fear and indecision.

It’s really very sad.

The first I had heard of the Pussycat Dolls was more than a year ago when I saw them on TV. A few months ago I realized they were responsible for the horrendously annoying song about how they are so much hotter than your girlfriend. (apparently it is actually about female empowerment. “The lyrics are, ‘Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me,’ ” [one of them] admit[s]. “But if you see the video, it’s all about being who you are, having fun and being confident — and feeling hot. It’s not so much about looking hot … although looking hot is important.”)

After weeks with the song in my head (and its banishment made ever so much more difficult by hearing it as a cell phone ring periodically and having one of my co-workers sing it in a poor falsetto on a semi-regular basis,) I eventually blocked it out and slipped into a blissful ignorance around the Pussycat Dolls. They lived their lives; I lived mine. Until yesterday.

In the course of digging up the links for this entry I have learned – against my will! – that they are the messengers of another overplayed song about female empowerment, called “Beep.” When I heard “Beep” for the first time, I thought gosh, this shit is worse than “My Humps” although, admittedly, this is a matter of personal taste and judgement.

Observe:
from “My Humps”

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
In the back and in the front (lumps)
My lovin’ got u,
She’s got me spendin’.
(Oh) Spendin’ all your money on me and spending time on me.
She’s got me spendin’.
(Oh) Spendin’ all your money on me, up on me, on me.

VS: “Beep”

(boy sings)
It’s funny how a man only thinks about the…
You got a real big heart, but I’m looking at cha…
You got real big brains, but I’m looking at cha…
Girl, there ain’t no pain in me looking at ya…

(Dolls sing)
I don’t give a…
Keep looking at my…
‘Cause it don’t mean a thing if you’re looking at my…
Ha,I’m a do my thing while your playing wit cha …
Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha

One of these is worse than the other, sure. But who can say which?

Anyway, who is the boy singer? It’s not Rob Thomas, no. It’s not Enrique Inglesias. It is none other than the thoroughly-crippled-by-punctuation Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas. And who are the Dolls opening for on tour? The Black Eyed Fucking Peas. And suddenly, it all made sense.

Evil, thy name is legumic and thy reach pandemic.