80's Trash Music

Have you seen that particularly hilarious form of graffiti where people put stickers or paint words on stop signs, making some statement of things that should "stop?" I've seen signs that say STOP wearing fur, STOP the war, STOP Bush, and STOP graffiti... (well, not that one, but the irony would be excellent.) Anyway, they're always good for a laugh... unless you work for the transportation department, where they've taken to slapping their own stickers that say "defacing stop signs." Well, yesterday Margaret and I saw one that was AWESOME! It was a stop sign with a sticker on it that said "collaborate and listen." I instantly recognized the opening words of Vanilla Ice's magnum opus "Ice, Ice, baby." Then, and maybe this next part happened because I had just channeled the 80's from watching the Transformers movie, (that's my only defense) I completely mortified Margaret by finishing the rest of the opening of the song: "Stop, collaborate and listen. The Ice is back with a brand new edition. If you got a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Check out the beat while the DJ revolves it." For a moment, Margaret was completely dumbfounded. What had she gotten herself into? Who knew that after a decade of marriage that that was lurking inside her husband? Actually, I couldn't believe that I'd remembered it myself. I guess that song meant more to me than I thought. Although, if you think about it, it does carry an important lesson that I've carried throughout my life since hearing it that first time: always put ice in your Diet Coke!

Speaking of that song which now cannot be named, I remember one time when my parents bought a used car. It was completely digital on the inside, with red lights on EVERYTHING! It was like driving an American version of the Starship Enterprise. Well, the first night, I borrowed the car and drove it in to town and picked up some friends to cruise around town with. I remember I had a cassette single of... the song which now cannot be named.... and we played it loud and over and over and OVER again, thinking we were the COOLEST! Well, it turned out that we weren't the coolest. We found out the hard way why the previous owner sold the car: it died in town and wouldn't start and when it finally did, it make some awful noise. Talk about destroyed street cred. I guess what should I have expected for an AMERICAN version of the Starship Enterprise. (That's why we bought our GERMAN version of the Starship Enterprise: our Jetta.... we call him Hansel.) Now, after all these years, I wonder if the car was just punishing us for listening to that insipid song over and over again. Fortunately Hansel didn't punish us after I broke out in song last night or we would have had to walk home. Good ole Hansel... he never judges us.