March 28, 2006 :: Watch your language, [buster]

Yesterday, I turned on one of the local "urban" radio stations. For those of you who know me, you know this is a rare event... I usually stay locked to NPR or some other news radio, or my own CD collection. I rarely listen to any "urban" stuff in the car anymore. I do, however, get to hear some of the newer songs when I am out at lounges, bars, clubs (stripclubs... lol) etc. So I got the opportunity yesterday to hear the radio edits of two songs I'd heard several times before.

I have always felt that when an artist does a radio edit (i.e. replace the naughty words with less-naughty words), it often results in a better song, because it forces them to be more creative. So goes one of the longstanding arguments against cursing in general... mental laziness. And for the record, I do curse, but it's rare enough that my friends laugh when they hear me say things.

So with these two radio edits, one song (in my humble and mostly uninformed opinion) was vastly improved and the other was completely destroyed.

The first song was Young Jeezy's "Go Crazy". In the chorus, the unedited version has some lyrics like: "When they play that new jeezy watch you n****s go crazy". Typical rap boasting and puffery. Doesn't sound all that good. But the "clean" edit is more like: "When they play that new jeezy watch the [dope boys] go crazy". Doesn't look like much written down, but sounds much better. Has a ring to it, as they say. And plus, you can play it in front of your mother and not get lectured or slapped (depending on who your mother is... lol).

The second song was T Pain's "I'm In Love With A Stripper". For the longest, that was the only version of the song I ever heard. Then yesterday, on the radio, I heard "I'm In Love With a [Dancer]". Completely and totally took all the fun out of the song. In the last month or two, I've heard many a joke based on the title or lyrics of this song. Hell, some of you even used them on me after the last episode. But the word "dancer" is so generic that, even though most adults know what the song is about anyway, it sucks the life out of it. It's not funny anymore. The original made me laugh, the radio edit made me change the station.

Besides, when did "stripper" become a bad word for radio?

posted by Rainmayun at 9:39 AM -

March 23, 2006 :: One-eyed jack

First, I will apologize for leaving you all with nothing but stale old posts for a while. I haven't had a lot to say lately, but I have a couple of things I can share with you.

A couple of Sundays ago, I got poked in the eye. It was a freak accident involving a stripper, that's all you need to know about how it happened. The interesting part is what happened afterwards. It hurt like hell (burned is probably more accurate), and continued into the next day, so I scheduled an emergency appointment with my doctor, who immediately sent me to an opthalmologist.

The eye doc declared that I had a corneal abrasion (that is to say, it was scratched and he could see it with his super scope). He put a bunch of goop in my eye and made me wear a patch over it. It wasn't a cool sexy black eye patch like pirates wear, it was a round white gauze pad with a bunch of clear surgical tape across half my face holding it in place. So I had to drive around with one eye (which was difficult at first but got easier) and do basic errands like going to the grocery store or the drug store.

In different places, people reacted differently. At Safeway, the customers looked like the Elephant Man had just walked in and asked to kiss their child... people shied away from me like I had the plague. In other places, people just looked at me and greeted me normally. I guess that probably gave me 10% of the experience of what it's like, socially speaking, to be disabled.

I wore the patch for 3 days, and then got to take it off. Never in my life have I been so glad to have two eyes, and to have regained my depth perception. But I still had to put this goopy ointment in it 4 times a day for the next week. Despite my best efforts, it resulted in one eye looking shiny most of the time, which as it turns out was a bigger detraction than the patch. I guess with the patch, people know you are injured in some way, but with a shiny eye, people just think something is weird about you. Thankfully I don't have to use that goop anymore, except at night when no one can see anyway.

And as for the stripper... I think she felt bad for me or something, because she gave me her number and told me to call. So I did, and I asked how she was going to make it up to me, and her answer was "ummm... we can go in the VIP all night." Wrong answer. Oh well, I should know better than to have any expectations of someone as young as she was. And no, I'm not suing anyone. It was a freak accident!

In the next episode, I'll have a rant about dating. Stay tuned!

posted by Rainmayun at 10:42 AM -