b.y.o.m.

coming back from florida last week on jetblue i sat next to this woman, an earnest label whore who sported the usual ensemble of designer tags and bags, and took a minute getting herself situated in the middle seat next to me. a few minutes later, a man joined us in the aisle seat and immediately tried to pick her up.

he was middle-aged, tall, sporting a small paunch and a deep 5 o’clock shadow at 3 in the afternoon. he projected his voice like a motivational speaker. so for me, sitting just one seat away, every syllable was coming in loud and clear.

very quickly we all know that he works for himself out of his “home office” on 106 and riverside; he doesn’t have a girlfriend but is being set up that weekend with a 6 ft-tall blind date. she, on the other hand, is a brit expat with 10 years under her belt. she doesn’t have a boyfriend “at this moment” but seemed contend simply to be a huge princess di fan. in fact, she flew into ft. lauderdale a few days earlier from new york for a “special” princess di exhibit at the museum. “there was this one dress that was sooooooo beautiful,” she enthused.

i tried to block out the conversation: i put on my headphones, tuned to bobby flay on the food network and cranked up the volume; i tried to focus on a scary new yorker story on the infant goods market; i got briefly engrossed in a king magazine piece on an attempt to get a south dekota bank to issue a celebrity credit card with baby jesus (aka ol’ dirty bastard, r.i.p.). ultimately, none of it worked; the pick-up banter continued to penetrate my flimsy headphones. i was forced to watch a reality mating show unfold.

a great pick up song can do wonders for the mating ritual, not to mention calming the nausea of unwitting bystanders. we all have quoted a favorite line from a song to help get a message across, or at the very least, save ourselves from uttering some lame-ass chit-chat. of course, like sampling, if the source material is whack, you can still sound stupid, but with the added indignity of being dissed for someone else's words. like other cultural snippets we reference to help us communicate, pop music allow us to identify and orient our perspective, and to highlight and validate feelings, including love, lust and all things in between.

it can be argued that legendary soulmen like al green and luther vandross have contributed their fair share to the spike in world population. r Kelly is also frequently cited as a dependable spanish fly, although i must say i have a hard time separating the musician from the accused child molester; his shit just feels scummy to me. on the other hand, d’angelo’s nu-soul opus “cruisin’” (emi, 1995) is so potent, especially when heard in the context of his soft-core music video, brothers have been known to spread gay rumors about the singer ‘cus they feel so threatened.

kanye west produced “slo jamz” (from kamikaze, atlantic, 2004) by chi-town speed-rapper twista is the most memorable baby-maker to hit the airwaves lately. fueld by a gladys knight sample, the track is in part a roll call of all the crooners who helped bring a little love into this world, from anita baker to keith sweat. my friend tamara turned me on to this t.i.-spiced version taken from dj drama’s gangsta grillz mixtape vol. x, hosted by big boi of outkast. well, well, well, well...

Posted by cellpharmer at November 28, 2004 08:49 PM