The Guide To Tattoos, Part 2

I’ve written about tattooing before, mostly in an attempt to stop people from asking me stupid questions. Well, it didn’t work. And although I am tempted to lash out at the girl who wants to talk about her “ink” with me (a.k.a. a two inch fairy on her ankle) I’m instead going to double my education efforts. Think about it like sex ed in school, only instead of how babies are made we’re going to talk about tattoos, and instead of a mentally challenged gym teacher you get me. Oh, and you won’t throw up in your mouth after watching a video of a baby squeezing through a vagina. Or was that just my sex ed?
I’ll do my best to answer some basic questions, but I’ll probably get sidetracked along the way by random stories. Which reminds me…

If you’re an obese woman getting a portrait of her cat tattooed on your leg, it’s not necessary to explain how you, your husband and your two children spend most of your time naked. First, you and your husband are both wearing sweatpants, which for children is practical and for adults is gross. Second, don’t tell me and everyone else in the shop your ten and eight-year-old kids don’t wear clothes, I think that may be child abuse. It’s one thing to be a hippie family frolicking through a field naked while whittling sea creatures out of bamboo, but I’m picturing your family watching Japanese cartoons and downing whole downing bags of Cool Ranch Doritos naked. And for that picture I will forever be angry. What’s that have to do with tattoos? Not much except I was forced to listen to it in a tattoo shop and I felt the need to share. How about this; don’t get a portrait of your cat tattooed on you, but if you’re even considering it you’ve got bigger problems than I can address here.
I’m always getting warned that when I’m old my tattoos will just be giant ink blobs and I’ll regret it. First that’s not true, you’re thinking about the faded navy tattoos you’ve seen on grizzled old men. Ink quality has come a long way since the 50s. It’s roughly the equivalent of sucking a lime a day because you’re worried about contracting scurvy, it’s just not a legitimate concern anymore. Unless you get your tattoo done by your cousin Rick in his basement, but then you’ll probably be praying it fades. Plus, when I’m 90 not only will it be great to intimidate the other geezers on the shuffleboard court with my ink, but I’ll be more worried about not peeing my pants every hour than how I look.
Wait, this thing is really permanent? Yeah, actually it is. Make sure your tattoo is something you’ll be happy with for as long as you live, or as long as you have that body part. For example, I once knew a guy with a huge tattoo of a crying clown covering his leg. Unless his dad was a clown who died while being suffocated during a “lots of clown in a tiny car” stunt gone horribly wrong, which I doubt, the tattoo will get old quick. Seriously, a crying clown? Was he a clown who was ironically scared of other clowns? Is that why he’s crying? It’s been almost five years since I first saw it and the tattoo still befuddles me. Which brings me to regret. You can now get tattoos lasered off, only it hurts like hell and is pretty expensive, so have fun with that. You can also get it covered up, meaning a skilled artist can, for example, incorporate a crappy tattoo of a panther (a la cousin Rick) into the black flowing hair of a pin-up girl. The only way to cover up a tattoo is with a larger tattoo, so if your entire calf is covered with a crying clown, just to pick something at random, you’re screwed. And they’re tattoo artists, not Jesus (unless maybe if you’re getting tattooed in Mexico), they may not be able to magically turn your tattoo of Calvin peeing on a truck into a Monet painting. To use my favorite Southern saying, you can’t put lipstick on a pig. Well, you can, but the point is it’s still a pig, and someone should call PETA.
Let’s end with a real-life exploration. As I write this there’s a gentleman with a tattoo on the back of his arm that reads Born In Idaho. I can’t decide if it’s a great tattoo or a terrible one. I think it may say more about the state of Idaho than him as a person. People from the Potato State (or whatever their motto is) are so rare its citizens feel compelled to tell the world. And plenty of people get tattoos about where they’re from; a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge means you’re from San Francisco or a Red Sox logo means you’re from Boston. If you’re from Idaho your options are pretty limited, I guess all you can do is write “Born in Idaho.” What else is there to say really? You know what, good for him. Say it loud, I’m Idahoan/Idahoese/an Idahoite and I’m proud! Which proves the ultimate point, as long as it something that truly comes from your heart it can only be good, no matter what malicious bloggers may write.
Hope that made things a little clearer. More likely than not it just enveloped you further in a deep cloud of confusion, you’re welcome. Feel free to write in with any other questions, I’ll answer them all in another article. And just so you can take some shots of me that’s a picture of the back of my right arm, the tattoo is based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Why? Because I like Tibet, and books, though I’m not really a big fan of being dead. Hey it could have been worse. It could have been a portrait of my cat, dressed up like a clown, crying. Yeah, that would have definitely been worse.

The New National Pastime

There’s nothing America loves more than a thick cheeseburger…except maybe explosives, or breasts, or reality shows, or reality shows featuring potentially explosively breasts (genius, I know. I’ve got a meeting with Fox next week). No wait, what America really loves is painfully attractive celebrity couples who adopt children from Africa, or electronic fish that sing when you touch them, or perhaps just Cheetos. I got it, what America really loves, what it craves from the depths of its soul, is scandal. Celebrities, politicians, your neighbor’s wife, scandal is our true national pastime. That’s why while this summer will go down on record as a terrible time for sports purists, it’s been unbelievably juicy for the nation as a whole. Sports have always served as a place for America to work through some societal dilemmas (maybe there’s something to this whole “desegregation thing”) and this summer there’s been an avalanche of issues for us to work out.

The Barry Bonds Scandal
What it’s about: Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s hallowed career homerun record, but did he use steroids? Is the record tainted?
What it’s really about: Cyborgs. That’s right, cyborgs. Medicine is advancing at an incredible pace, we’re now able to replace limbs with adequate replacements and implant computer chips into brains to enable the blind to see. People can buy over the counter medicines to keep them artificially alert (energy drinks), artificially attractive (weight-loss shakes) and artificially erect (Viagra). Where’s it all headed? Will that guy in your office who can barely operate a coffee machine someday be able to swallow a pill and become smarter than you? Will an obese woman someday be able to step into a booth and emerge minutes later with a supermodel’s body? America’s a competitive place, driven by money and status, and we need to slow down before someone dumber and uglier starts taking what rightfully belongs to us. Bonds represents oure terrifying cyborg future and Aaron our purely human past. I hate Bonds because he’s a cheat, a liar, and a robot prototype bent on destroying all that is good about humanity.

The Tim Donaghy Scandal
What it’s about: Donaghy is a former NBA ref who bet on games he was officiating, quite possibly throwing games to ensure he won, and thereby calling into question the integrity of games.
What it’s really about?: We love the mafia and all mafia related activities. The Godfather trilogy and Scarface and Goodfellas are all well written and acted movies, but so was The English Patient. There’s a reason mafia related fare can be found nearly any time/any day on cable. America loves to fantasize about being in the mafia, living a life of constant danger and criminal honor. The very thought of Tony Soprano sitting a NBA ref down and threatening to break his kneecaps if the Spurs beat the Nuggets is a guaranteed blockbuster movie. The other story here is that apparently NBA refereeing is so bad no one noticed someone was actively trying to throw games. Donaghy was surrounded by so much incompetence his calculated idiocy was impossible to detect.

The Tour De France Scandal

What it’s about: For the third year in a row the world’s most prestigious cycling race was rocked by the discovery that prominent riders were taking steroids.
What it’s really about: No one in America cares about cycling, unless it involves a trash- talking Texan beating the beejezus out of Europeans at their own sport.

The Michael Vick Scandal
What it’s about: Vick, the most exciting player in football, is allegedly the ringleader of a large scale dog fighting ring, including electrocuting and executing dogs. And I mean allegedly in the same way Seigfried and Roy are allegedly gay.
What it’s really about: Fine, the State of Texas can execute mentally retarded minors, but killing dogs is going too far. We love dogs more than we love people, and I include myself in this category, because they’re symbols of innocence, while people are symbols of greed. If there was a fire and I had to choose between saving a puppy or that fucker at my gym who works out with a bluetooth in his ear…it’d be close, I’m actually leaning towards puppy. But as anyone who lived in San Francisco knows wealthy black athletes aren’t the only people raising vicious dogs; the Bay Area has seen a woman killed by dogs raised by a white couple on behalf of an imprisoned skinhead they had adopted (you can’t make this stuff up), and a young boy killed by a pitbull in his home, despite the fact his mother locked him in the basement while she went shopping because the dog was acting agitated. Remember, dogs don’t kill people, people with dogs kill people (who sometimes breed dogs to kill dogs if they don’t kill the dogs first). Got it?

There’s also news coming out of Japan that the country is in the throes of a sumo scandal. Apparently the Yokozuna (the heavyweight champion) withdrew from a match because of injury, then was caught on tape playing soccer with reckless abandon. Yawn, you call that a scandal Japan? Wake me up when steroid enhanced sumos start fighting dogs to the death to pay off mob debts. Now that’s something America would be interested in.

Senor Spam and the Getty Children

I have met a lot of obscenely wealthy people in my lifetime, essentially because of nothing more than an extended series of coincidences. Every time I’m in some new palatial estate I always look for signs of unhappiness and tragedy. After all, the only thing keeping me from hating these people is the belief that their money has left them empty shells of humans; that my meager existence has some happiness that is walled off to the rich. Well, rejoice my paycheck-to-paycheck brethren, I come offering substantial proof that money is not the key to happiness. In fact, it’s more likely than not to leave you and your children gnarled wastelands of humanity…

The Gettys are one of the most prominent families in San Francisco, Mayor Newsom owes no small part of his success to their money and influence. The young and beautiful jewels of the family are Billy and Vanessa Getty. The razor-sharp cheekboned couple has two young boys but have clearly turned over the bulk of the parenting responsibilities to an English nanny. I happened to be in the kitchen when Vanessa arrived home to spend some quality time with the boys:
Vanessa: “Hello my darlings, come here.”
(The two-year-old waddles over to her, she picks him up. The four-year old is much more interested in playing with his truck out on the back porch. He looks up at her and then continues playing.)
Vanessa: “I said come here, now.”
(The four-year-old is indifferent, continues to play).
Vanessa: “Fine then, Mommy hates you. I’m going to go upstairs and get dressed.”
(He spins around startled and then starts towards his mother, who is already well on her way upstairs. Begins to cry.)
There is absolutely no way that kid is going to have a serious cocaine problem by the time he’s 15. I wish there was a way to gamble on these things, this kid and Nicole Richie’s baby are stone-cold locks to become extraordinarily messed up adults. This is valuable insider information people.

On the other side of mean is crazy, also known in more kind circles as eccentric. Tom Hormel owns an unbelievably large estate in Malibu, the kind of place that takes your breath away, until you realize you’re looking at the guest house. Oh, I’m sorry, let me back up. Who is Tom Hormel? Tom is the heir to the Hormel fortune, as in Hormel Foods, the meatpacking giant. I shook the hand of the man who owns Spam, and that’s a pleasure I will take to my death. I feel a little bad about mentioning him here because he’s a genuinely kind man, but I have to. You see, he’s a strict raw food vegetarian, he won’t allow meat to even enter the property. Let that sink in for a moment, the irony’s almost overpowering. You have to believe he knows exactly what goes into those tins of processed meat and it can’t be pretty. If you ever find yourself with Tom be prepared to drink enormous of his special beet/ginger/macrobiotic enzymes juice. Consider yourself warned.

On a more general note: Two recent newspaper articles have left me rejoicing. The first is about a recent rash of robberies in Bel Air. For those of you who’s only exposure to Bel Air is Fresh Prince re-runs, the real place is enormous, once you turn off Sunset Ave. and go through its exclusive gates it can take as many as twenty or thirty minutes to wind through it’s shaded streets to a house. As it turns out (much to my delight) Bel Air denizens have left themselves only more vulnerable to robberies. Their homes are surrounded by high walls and heavy foliage, a.k.a. perfect cover for robbers, no one can see into the property to notice someone breaking a window. Even if their burglary alarms go off it can take half-an-hour for the police to arrive, and since pool boys and gardeners are constantly coming and going no one thinks twice about a white van parked outside. HA! Suck on that rich people! Turns out being part of a community and regularly interacting with people actually makes you safer, and that’s why I choose to live in an apartment building (let me believe what I want to).
Also, on a parenting note, a new study has concluded that not only do Baby Einstein videos not increase a child’s intelligence, they make them stupider! Children who haven’t watched the videos have almost twice the vocabulary as those who did regularly. It turns out that talking to your kids and interacting with them is more beneficial than sitting them in front of the tv. In other shocking news the key to losing weight is consuming less calories while expending more. Who could have possible known? Oh, that’s right, I did. And not all the blame goes on parents, Baby Fuckin Einstein Inc. (or whatever they’re called) has been preying on parental fears by selling them a product that does the opposite of what they claim. People should be rioting, and I hope they do. Burn Baby burn!

Let me be clear, I need more financial assets. But the key seems to be knowing when to stop. You want money, but not “I only drink ginger/beet juice” money.” You want a large bank account, but not “Mommy hates you,” large. As Americans we’re not particularly good at moderation, in fact I’ve been suddenly inspired to coin the term “obesely wealthy.” That’s trademarked, if you want to use it you’re going to have to pay. Hey, I got to make a living.

The Great Potty Bus Adventure

There are moments when all the forces in the cosmos align, moments in which the unthinkable becomes eminently possible. While it may seem on the surface that these moments are random they are actually the result of an almost infinite series of events coinciding in careful coordination.
All that is an overly complicated way of saying that I was hanging out with legendary rap group Wu-Tang Clan in a Domino’s Pizza a few nights ago. Let’s review the chain of events:

My brother and I went to see the Rock The Bells Festival, a hip-hop festival featuring everyone from Talib Kweli to the aforementioned Wu-Tang Clan (click here for my full coverage). The show was at the Tweeter Center, a stadium about 45 minutes from Boston. Now for those of you not from Mansfield Massachusetts, and I sincerely hope no one is, it’s in one of those towns that rides the thin line between rural and suburban. There aren’t a lot of culinary options after midnight, save for one Domino’s Pizza shining like a beacon of greasy nutrition against a late night sky. This particular Domino’s was staffed entirely by barely conscious high school kids and after ordering we sat back to await our delicious fare. Then…

12:45 – Two enormous tour buses pull up. We figure it has to be someone from the show, and sure enough assorted members of Wu-Tang Clan pour out of the bus. Watching them approach the Domino’s will remain one of the more confusing moments of my life. On one hand it was completely surreal, on the other it made perfect sense that a group infamous for their marijuana smoking ways would be making a late night Domino’s run.

12:55 – A barrage of ordering commences; pizzas, soda, and crazy bread galore, along with endless special requests. The acned staff is completely overwhelmed, and frankly I don’t blame them. Various members of their nebulous entourage keep coming up and placing more orders, bickering over the relatives merits of mushrooms vs. peppers. Method Man announces, “all these white people are pissed these negros took over their Domino’s.” It’s funny because it’s true. It’s safe to say the all-time record for amount of black people in a Mansfield Domino’s is being obliterated. It’s also clear our pizza’s not coming anytime soon. We decide to play it cool.

1:10 – My brother’s sipping on one of those big cans of Arizona Ice Tea, and Method Man wants one, bad. We send him over to 24-hour pharmacy next door, the only problem is he needs to borrow a dollar from me. Mind you he says this was a diamond- encrusted chain hanging from his hand. I give him the requested dollar and he takes off for the pharmacy at full speed. Method Man owes me $1, and I fully intend to collect.

1:15 – We’re in full-fledged debate with their tour manager over whether Boston is a city of a state when a fifteen year old kid walks in the store looking for some pizza. I don’t think he knew who he was looking at, but he did know he was looking at a Clan of black people and he was momentarily stunned. Incredibly he decides to talk to them in his classic Boston accent, leading to one of my favorite exchanges of all time.
White Kid: “Is that your pahty bus outside?” [boston accent note: pahty bus=party bus, a bus frat boys would rent for a trip to the casino for example]
Wu-Tang: What?
White Kid: Is that your pahty bus?
Wu-Tang: Our what?
White Kid (looking intensely uncomfortable): Pahty bus?
Wu-Tang: What the fuck is a potty bus?
White Kid: I don’t know, sorry.

1:30 - Everyone finally has their pizzas and is heading back to the tour bus, detoured significantly by a smoking session in the parking lot. I’m frankly amazed we haven’t seen any police yet, this is by far the most action to happen in a Domino’s parking lot, ever. Only then do we get our pizza and head to the car at full speed to eat. We drive off to assorted head nods of recognition from Wu-Tang, probably just another night in their tour-filled lives, but one of the most surreal of mine. See, there are these nights when the cosmos align just so and an aspiring journalist from Boston and a legendary rap group from Staten Island converge, if only to borrow a dollar for a can of ice tea.

R. Kelly, the remix

When Lindsay Lohan was arrested in L.A. the other day (I’d like to point out that I live in the only city on Earth where being run over by a 90 pound alchoholic celebrity is a legitimate concern) they also found R. Kelly in her trunk with a pound of marijuana and a giant stuffed animal. Is that true? Not at all, but it could be, and that’s why I love R. Kelly. He makes anything possible. For those of you who missed it he recently put out a full length album, Double Up. For those interested here’s my review of the entire album. Today we’re only concerned with one song. The new greatest R. Kelly song of all time, The Zoo. Just when you think Kelly’s run out of sexual metaphors he’s raises the ceiling even higher, he apparently has an infinite amount of sexually charged concepts in the glorious brain of his.

Before we get into the lyrics, and believe me we will, let me just set the stage. The concept of the song is that R. Kelly and his special lady (or ladies, or girls, or unicorns or whatever he's into these days) are in the jungle, and their jungle animals, and they’re doing what jungle animals do. Now I recently read a New York Times article saying that R. Kelly is participating in a long tradition of black performers who push racist stereotypes (like black people are just sexually driven jungle animals for example) to absurd limits in order to disempower those stereptypes. There may be certain elements of that in Mr. Kelly, or he could just think animals doing it are funny. It’s probably a little bit of both. With no further ado allow me to walk you through The Zoo.
The music is classic R&B style, slow snapping percussion pulsing bass swerve while Kelly croons, “I wanna see your body, I wanna feel your body.” Just your run of the mill song, nothing special. There’s no way to prepare yourself for what’s coming.
“It’s like a jungle atmosphere/ and we’re two monkeys baby/it’s like we’re on the vine/ the way we’re swinging baby.”
I like to imagine actually saying this to someone. Candlelight dinner, oysters and chocoltae on the table, you look that special someone in the eye and softly whisper, “it’s like jungle atmosphere, and we’re two monkeys baby.” I’ll try it on the girlfriend and report back…if I’m still breathing. On second thought why don’t you try it and tell me how it goes.
“Girl, I got you so wet/it's like a rain forest/like Jurassic Park/except I'm your sex-a-saurus baby.”

I’m sorry R. Kelly, what was that? It sounded like you said you’re a sex-a-saurus. Oh, you did. Well then, congratulations, that’s the most insane line I’ve ever heard. If I remember my dinosaurs correctly the sex-a-saurus was primarily an herbivore who was frequently arrested for talking to underage brontosaurus’. I have to believe that he thought of the sex-a-saurus line a long time ago and he’s been saving it for just the right time. It was probably stashed away in some secret underground bunker just in case the Russians decided to get out of hand again. It’s hands down the new best R. Kelly line of all time.
You and me hopping/like two kangaroos/rattling and moaning/out here in these woods.
Here’s my theory: R. Kelly was high and watching Animal Planet, one thing led to another, and viola The Zoo was made. And by the way is he implying that kangaroos rattle? Or did we switch animal metaphors and I missed it? At this point I’m incredibly confused, and then the actual monkey sound effects kick in. As in: “girl we be goin oooo aaaaa.” Are those really the noises R. Kelly wants to hear from his lady when they’re making love. Honestly I can’t think of a noise I’d be more terrified of, but that’s only one reason I’m me, and R. Kelly is a genius/complete nutjob.
Believe me, it kind of goes on like that for a few more minutes, but nothing could possible top the first verse. Where will he stop? Will he ever stop? I can’t think of another field in which someone has so consistently exceeded expectations. In the “coming up with absolutely ridiculous pop songs that will still be wildly popular” R. Kelly is the undisputed king. If he releases anything better than Sex Zoo, and if history is any indication it’s only a matter of time, I’ll let you know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go light some incense and pray in front of my R. Kelly shrine.

You know I wouldn’t build up all the hype and leave you hanging, the link to the song's below. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHJ8N1o6gEA

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Well it’s July 16th and you know what that means, I’ve gone another 365 days without dying. Sorry to be a morbid but that’s actually quite an accomplishment when you think about it. The Darwin Awards, a website that keeps track of the myriad ways people find to cut their lives short, tells the tale of a man who tried to thaw a frozen car battery by sticking it in his oven. It didn’t quite turn out the way he hoped…meaning instead of his car starting his house exploded. It’s easy to look down on these people but truth be told I’ve done plenty of perfectly stupid things in my life, it’s essentially only a matter of luck they weren’t fatal. In all honesty I’m not as far from sticking a car battery in the oven as I’d like to believe…far enough to never do it, but not that far. All this is an extraordinarily long-winded way of saying as I look back on my quarter-century on Earth I feel, more than anything else, pretty damn lucky. Though beyond just sheer chance I have done some things to improve my chances; I don’t smoke, I’ve never been to Iraq, and I haven’t make any prison jokes during two conversations with Mike Tyson. Not so bad.
25 years is a real landmark moment, and today I sat down to reflect on my life up until now. It’s often impossible to recognize the moments that change out lives when they happen, only in hindsight does the lasting impact of certain events become clear. There have certainly been some momentous moments in my life, but I think one has truly shaped the way I see the world:
I was just a young Slovak, we’ll say 10 years for simplicities sake. On a vacation my dad takes me, my brother, and my cousins to Sea World. (Shamu, the acrobatic killer whale, was huge at the time. Not just physically but culturally. We stake out our seats for the show and during the audience participation portion of the program none other than yours truly gets picked to come down as a guest orca trainer. I make a jump gesture and Shamu jumps, I whirl my arms and he spins. People are clapping and I have control over an enormous mammal. I was feeling good. The trainer thanked me, had me turn to the audience and bow, and then secretly signaled Shamu to splash the bejeezus out of me. In the span of a few seconds I went from feeling as cool as I ever had in my short life to soaking wet and listening to a few hundred people laugh at me. What kind of satanic Sea World employee does that to a kid? Not only was it embarrassing but I was drenched in “algae/bacteria/killer whale poo” water. I swear to God if I ever meet that trainer I’m gonna make him drink a gallon of that stuff. And as for Shamu, let’s just say that at lunch I was scanning the menu hoping I could order orca burgers. I will hate Shamu forever, it’s pretty much a Moby Dick situation at this point. I would straight up wrestle that whale, no holds barred. I hear that in the wild dolphins sometimes kill orcas so I figure I got a fighting chance.
I’ve done a lot in my 25 years; traveled across the country, had some crazy jobs, tattooed entire body parts, and that’s the memory that sticks with me the most. It’s my Rosebud. I learned a valuable lesson that day: no matter how well things seem to be going, there’s always a giant whale waiting in the shadows to screw you. You have to be ready to battle anytime. I’ll let you decide what that says about me, but no one who knows me should really be surprised. If you really want to wish me a happy birthday get me Shamu’s number. It’d be the best present of my life.

My Lovely Lady...um...shoes

No matter how paranoid you are, it’s not enough (unless you’re dressed in a tinfoil suit of armor and living in a bunker, that’s enough). As hip-hop veteran Davey-D pointed out, marketers and advertisers is at war. They’re battling for control of your brain, which is presumably connected to your wallet, but it’s been a massacre because the general public doesn’t realize they’re at war. It’s been a completely one-sided fight. There’s probably no other art form that’s as closely connected to marketing as hip-hop, though by no means the only one. I’m sure Toby Keith is busy shilling Chevy’s or Bud Light right now, and if that sounded like I was taking a cheap shot at country music because I don’t know anything about it, you’re absolutely right. Materialism and hip-hop are currently locked in a chicken-and- egg cycle with advertisers and product placements so interwoven it’s impossible to tell which came first. Actually that’s not always, sometimes you can tell exactly which one came first.
Take this little nugget of loveliness; Fergie signed a $4 million deal to promote Candy shoes in her upcoming songs. First of all the point is that she’ll mention the shoes in her songs and then Candy will use her shoe lovin lyrics in their commercials, so it seems as if the commercials came after the songs when the opposite is true. I’m telling you, the tinfoil hat and a bunker thing doesn’t sound so bad now, especially if my bunker was stocked with a lifetime supply of carrot cake, but then I’d just be a fat crazy guy in a bunker…anyway I would be a little concerned about how this is going to affect Fergie’s lyrical content and artistic integrity, except this is the woman who once sang “my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.” The second thing that kills me is the records exec who says that with record sales down he has to find new ways to make money. Here’s a crazy thought, maybe record sales are down because the music’s crap and people don’t want to pay $15 for a cd that turns out to be an extended shoe commercial.
With thinking like that I should control of A&M Records, and if I did this is what I’d do: I looked at Fergie’s last album The Duchess and I’ve prepared a re-release that I feel provides some excellent opportunities for synergy. Here’s the tracklistings with the original title in plain text and my suggestions in italics.

1. Fergalicous Ferg-a-Butterfingers-are-de-licous
2. Clumsy Clumsy (because the heels of my shoe broke, I should have bought Candy shoes, they have the most reliable heels in the business)
3. All That I Got (the make-up song) All That I Got (the Max Factor song)
4. London Bridge London Bridge Tours Only 5 Euros!
5. Pedestal Tough Actin Tinactin Stops Athlete’s Foot Dead
6. Glamorous Glamorous in Gucci
7. Here I Come Here I Come, in my Ford F-150
8. Velvet Velvet (trimmed shoes by Candy)
9. Big Girls Don’t Cry Big Girls Don’t Cry, They Go Shopping
10. Mary Jane Shoes Mary Jane Shoes Suck Only Buy Candy
11. Losing My Ground Losing My Ground, Gaining Frequent Flier Miles
12. Finally Crazy Eddy’s Used Car Emporium

What do you think? We’ll make millions, millions I’m telling you. Somebody get me Fergie’s people on the phone. I was also planning on making fun of 50 Cent's disastrous lip-synching at the BET Awards and then shamelessly plugging his ownership of Vitamin Water…then I got scared he’d have me killed. So let me close with my suggestion for his new Vitamin Water ad campaign and call it a day:

“Vitamin Water, guaranteed to have you feeling more energetic, even if you’ve just been shot in the face nine times.”

I think it has a certain ring to it don’t you? Anyone else have any marketing campaign suggestions? Remember, this is war.