Dead Kennedys – "Holiday in Cambodia" (1980)

It’s a holiday in Cambodia

Where you’ll do what you’re told

Better Things is a TV series that aired on FX a few years ago.  It stars Pamela Adlon (who co-created the show with Louis C.K.) as Sam Fox, a divorced actress raising three daughters in Los Angeles.

There’s a scene in one episode of the show where the daughters are all talking over one another as Sam is driving down a busy L.A. street after picking them up at their different schools.  Each of the girls – a high-schooler, a middle-schooler, and a grade-schooler – is demanding that her mother do what she wants to do RIGHT NOW!

The Better Things cast

After putting up with the yelling for a minute or so, Sam loses it.  She pulls her minivan over and tells her daughters to get out and walk home.  When the girls protest that they are miles from their house, she points to a nearby bus stop and tells them they can get home that way.

Sam’s daughters are stunned into silence by her pronouncement – perhaps the only time in the entire series that none of the three are complaining about something trivial or otherwise being annoying.

*     *     *     *     *

A couple of days ago, my daughter Caroline suggested that I take my seven-year-old grandson Sully and five-year-old granddaughter Eliza to see The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants at a local movie theater.  It was only the first day of their Christmas break, and I thought it might be wiser to save that movie for a rainy day.  But I try to mind my own business when it comes to how my kids are raising my grandkids.

Sully and Eliza, looking guilty

We saw the movie in the middle of the afternoon at one of those theaters with fully reclining seats.  I figured if it wasn’t any good, I could at least catch 40 winks.

But the movie was incredibly loud from beginning to end – I can’t imagine how anyone could have fallen asleep while watching it.

The highlight of the movie for me was a scene that was accompanied by a karaoke track of the Dead Kennedys’ fabulous 1980 single, “Holiday in Cambodia.”

*     *     *     *     *

As I was driving home after the SpongeBob movie, the two kids began to bicker.  It seemed that Sully had placed his water bottle over the imaginary yet very important dividing line that demarcated Eliza’s half of the back seat of my car from his half – an unforgivable sin on his part.

A few minutes after I settled that dispute by quoting my favorite Ring Lardner line – “’Shut up,’ he explained” – my two little angels were at it again.”

“My real name is Elizabeth,” Eliza announced.

“No it’s not,” Sully demurred.  “It’s Eliza.”

“Yes it is!”

“No it’s not!”

And so on and so forth, world without end, amen. 

I thought about how the Sam character handled her daughters when they annoyed her while she was driving them home in the Better Things episode, and decided to see if her tactic worked on my grandkids.

“That’s enough,” I said.  “If you two don’t stop arguing right now, I’m going to make you get out of the car and walk home!”

We were in Frederick, Maryland – which is a far cry from Los Angeles – and much closer to my daughter’s house than Sam and her girls were when she threatened them with involuntary debarkation.

On the other hand, we were driving in total darkness, and my grandkids are much younger than Sam’s daughters – so I think my threat may have been even more frightening.

“Granddad, we don’t know how to get home!” they protested.

“Then I’d say you’d better be quiet,” I replied.

It worked like a charm.  Sully and Eliza didn’t say a word for the duration of our drive home.

I figured my grandkids would rat me out when they saw their mother – perhaps causing her to seriously reconsider the wisdom of ever letting them go anywhere with me again – so I came clean and told her exactly what I had said to them . . . but made the whole thing sound like a big joke. 

*     *     *     *     *

When I shared this story with my therapist, she said that my tactic worked because my grandchildren trusted me.

I found her use of “trust” in this context interesting.  By saying that my grandkids trusted me, she meant that they believed I would do what I said I would do  – not that they had confidence that I would take good care of them.

Before I said goodbye to Sully and Eliza that night, I tried to make it clear to them that I would have never put them out of the car and left them alone in the dark – that I just said that so they would stop arguing.

I think that was the right thing to do.  Plus I figured that they wouldn’t fall for the same trick again.

*     *     *     *     *

Here’s the picture sleeve of “Holiday in Cambodia,” which depicts a crowd member using a folding chair to beat the hanged corpse of a dead student during the 1976 Thammasat University protests in Bangkok:

Click here to listen to “Holiday in Cambodia.”

Click here to buy “Holiday in Cambodia” from Amazon.

Sir Mix-a-Lot – "Baby Got Back" (1992)

So Cosmo says you’re fat

Well, I ain’t down with that!

You heard it here first: 26-year-old television personality Carissa Codel is blowin’ up!

Some people would say Carissa has already blown up because she weighs 180 pounds (down from 235 a couple of years ago).  

But her weight doesn’t bother Carissa one little bit.  (If it bothers you, that’s your problem.)

Carissa Codel

Carissa – who is a morning anchor at a Springfield, Missouri TV station – chooses the rudest comments about her weight that viewers post on social media and reads them on the air.  

Here are some examples:

“This is who Sir Mix-a-Lot was rapping about.”

“Dayuum Gurl, I want you to put a hurtin’ on me like you do those midnight snacks.”

“I ain’t ever worked as hard as her ankles.”

“Girl, you’re thicker than a bowl of oatmeal.”

“Thicker than a peanut butter milkshake.”

“She’s thicker than zoo glass.”

“Built like my grandma’s prescription lenses.”

“She’s like the only fat 9 I’ve ever seen.”

 Trolling the trolls

“Built for breeding.”

“Shawty obese.”

“The Ford F150 of woman.”

“She’s got enough muffin top to start two bakeries.”

And last but not least:

“I mean, she is overweight.  That being said, she’s an absolute smoke show.”

(True dat.)

*     *     *     *     *

The nasty comments that Carissa reads on camera are (to quote my grandmother)  water off a duck’s back to her.  

Sometimes she offers a snappy comeback to the trolls whose insult her.  But usually she just laughs.  (And hen I say she laughs, she really laughs.)

Click here to watch one of her segments.

Click here to watch another one.  (Sorry, Josh – no cake for you!)

And click here to hear Carissa’s best laugh ever.

What may be even more amazing than Carissa’s sense of humor about herself is the fact that the news director at her station allows her to do this – I’ve never seen a local TV news show that was loosely-goosey enough to accommodate this kind of thing.

*     *     *     *     *

Sir Mix-a-Lot – né Anthony L. Ray –  released his one and only hit single,“Baby Got Back,” in 1992.

“Baby Got Back” was criticized for its buttocks-centric lyrics – e.g., “My anaconda don’t want none/

Unless you’ve got buns, hun!” – and blatant objectification of women.  (MTV briefly banned the “Baby Got Back” music video, which says a lot if you remember some of the music videos from that era that MTV didn’t ban.)

Sir Mix-a-Lot defended the song as being empowering to women who looked nothing the skinny models who dominated TV commercials and fashion magazines:

The song doesn't just say I like large butts, you know?  The song is talking about women who damn near kill themselves to try to look like these beanpole models that you see in Vogue magazine.

Click here to watch the official music video for “Baby Got Back.”

Click here to buy “Baby Got Back” from Amazon.

Foreigner – "Hot Blooded" (1978)

I’m hot-blooded, check it and see

I got a fever of a hundred and three

Technically, a fever of 103 degrees doesn’t constitute a medical emergency.  But it’s not something to be taken lightly.

I came down with the mumps shortly after my 12th birthday.  When my temperature hit 103, my mother didn’t take it lightly – she called the doctor toot sweet.

He told her the best way to cool me down was to put me in a bathtub filled with cold water.  (She added some ice cubes for good measure – better safe than sorry!)

Sir Francis Bacon described bloodletting as a remedy that is worse than the disease.  I felt the same way about that ice bath – the treatment was much worse than the ailment.

*     *     *     *     *

I had the mumps in 1964 – several years before the first mumps vaccine became available.  

Mumps usually causes inflammation of the salivary glands, which can make it very painful to chew and swallow.  (I remember trying to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I had the mumps – one bite was enough to make me realize that was a very bad idea.)  

Mumps sometimes causes other inflammatory conditions, including meningitis and encephalitis.  It can also result in sterility in postpubescent males.

Make up your mind, Foreigner!

I think I was physically postpubescent when I came down with the mumps.  (I may not have ever reached mental postpubescence.). But I have at least four children, so obviously the mumps did nothing to reduce my procreative prowess.

*     *     *     *     *

I had to spend the better part of a week in bed when I had the mumps.  There was no television in my bedroom, so I spent most of my time reading and listening to music.  

I remember playing “Rag Doll” by the Four Seasons about a thousand times that week.  I also listened to the B-side of that 45 – “Silence Is Golden,” which was covered by the Tremeloes a couple of years later – quite a few times.  

(I still own that record)

“Rag Doll” climbed all the way to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in 1964.   The record that preceded “Rag Doll” in the #1 spot was “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys.  “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals, “Where Did Our Love Go” By the Supremes, and Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Women” were also #1 hits in 1964, which was a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good year for pop singles.  (All five of those aforementioned records are members of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.)

*     *     *     *     *

A number of critics – including the great Robert Christgau – thought that “Hot Blooded” sounded a lot like a Bad Company record.  I agree.

One reviewer said it reminded him of the fabulous Crazy Elephant hit, “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’,” for two reasons.  First, both records begin with a “chug-chug” guitar riff.  Second, both songs “are about a fellow in search of fleshy fluff” [sic].

The song’s lyrics are anything but subtle.  For example:

You don’t have to read my mind

To know what I have in mind

(Shakespeare, it ain’t.)

Click here to listen to “Hot Blooded,” which peaked at #3 on the “Hot 100” in 1978.

Click here to buy “Hot Blooded” from Amazon.