Musical selections from the iPod at work can be troublesome. Countless times over the years I've been jamming out to Public Enemy or Guns N'Roses, laying out some sick text box action in Quark, and had a co-worker walk up to my desk to talk -- only to be accosted full-frontally with the timeless (no pun intended) raps of Flava Flav. Its not pretty.
Just yesterday, I was listening to '911 is a Joke' and the Prez walks up. Hears Flav say that, sees me sing along to it, and he just turned around and walked away. Hilarious. Railing against 911 is not exactly a value shared by my Bible Belt co-worker, apparently.
Later in the day I was jamming to Vanilla Ice's Ninja Rap. Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go! And this same guy walks up and was impressed at the fact I had such a song on the iPod.
That actually happened, so shut up. What a great terrible song. I'm not joking, so stop laughing. I mean it.
Just think about it. The Iceman's second single from his debut album "To The Extreme" was "Play That Funky Music", which included a chorus borrowed from the Wild Cherry song of the same name. When Wild Cherry heard it on the radio and discovered they weren't credited, they sued him. Vanilla Ice, sampling a song without crediting it? No! That would never happen!
Having not researched this -- just going from memory, I believe he, uh, lost the suit.
Anyway, a little while later, a movie called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" comes out, a live-action version of the popular cartoon which itself was an animated version of a popular comic book. As I remember it, you could only like one version. If you liked the cartoon, the movie was too weird. If you liked the movie, the cartoon was too childish. And if you liked the comic book, god help us all, you just wanted to smash the nearest pizza delivery guy with your nunchuks.
With characters named after famous painters -- great artists, all, and great original creative thinkers -- the natural choice to sing the theme song was...
Vanilla Ice, who was nothing if not a great original artist. What's that? Oh yeah, right. Nothing.
Some would say the song he recorded was itself a derivative of the very song for which he'd been sued over just months earlier. I don't know how he'd answer to that accusation, but that won't stop me from pretending about what he MIGHT say.
"In the original, I said 'Go white boy, go white boy, Go!', right? This song went 'Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!'. Its totally different."
Hmm. Even the explanation is itself a derivative of his own explanation over the Ice Ice Baby debacle...
"Theirs goes 'duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, shhh, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh'. Mine goes 'duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, shhh, DUH duh duh duh duh duh duh duh'. Its totally different."
You bet.
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So what I'm getting at here is, if I had a Vanilla Ice sticker on my truck, it would be cool, according to this guy in my office. But a Public Enemy "Dude in Hat inside a Scope Target" emblem? That's outrageous.
Seems odd to me. Am I off target here? Cos I'll shut up if I am.
Public Enemy is better, right?
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