I like this song, FIGHT ME
So it’s been cold enough now that I’ve been listening to my little portable radio on my runs (I use my super cheap $5 on-ear headphones to keep my ears warm). Today, the radio station I listen to played Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me,” which immediately transported me mentally back to junior high and whatever volume of “Now That’s What I Call Music” had that song on it.
(I want to say…Now That’s What I Call Music 6? *checks* Hell yeah, I’m right.)
Anyway.
Because the only things that my brain stores as concrete, irremovable memories are song lyrics and voice cadences, I noticed a difference in the chorus between the lyrics on the radio and the lyrics from the CD version I had way back when (and still have on my iPod). Because I was out running, though, and dealing with traffic noises, the best I could do is notice there was a difference; I couldn’t tell exactly what the difference was.
So once I got back to my office, I decided to look the lyrics up. Which, honestly, was something that I should have done a long time ago, because Shaggy’s verses were like 96% incomprehensible to me every time I heard this song and left me just saying “what?”
So I looked up the lyrics. Here is one said verse:
Mek she know say that she really no have right fi vex
A never you she see yah make the gigolo flex
A smaddy else weh favor you inna di complex
Seein’ is believin’, so you better change your specs
You know she a go bring a whole heap a things up from the past
All the likkle evidence, you betta know fi mask
Quick ‘pon yuh answer, know how fi talk
But if she pack a gun, you know you betta run fast
…What?
Anyway, the original chorus thingy I noticed was the following: in the CD version, it’s
Picture this: we were both caught making love on the bathroom floor
But on the radio version, it’s
Picture this: we were both butt-naked banging on the bathroom floor
So yeah. I know nobody cares, but I do.
I DO!
Roar
HAHAHAHA okay okay okay okay listen.
So it was really windy and quite cold this morning so I ended up wearing my headphones to keep my ears warm on my run. I was on my way down to Bowness when I heard this ad for Homes by Avi, which is a house building company up here.
Now, they advertise quite a bit on the station that I listen to, so I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the ad. They were talking about how you could experience nature right in your backyard in one of the developments they’re building in – there were all of these nature sounds and stuff like crickets, birds, etc. – and then I swear to god at the end of the ad there was a big bear growl.
But I couldn’t be sure…that is, until I heard the ad again on my way back to the bottom of our hill.
And yes: gentle sounds of nature including crickets, hooting owls, loons, chirping birds all throughout the ad, until the end, where the announcer was like “come enjoy life with nature” and the ad ends with a HUGE FREAKING BEAR GROWL.
I had to stop running because I was laughing so hard.
Edit: I listened to the radio for THREE HOURS to catch that ad again. Here it is:
That is the FUNNIEST THING I’ve ever heard, oh my god. I wonder if some poor intern kid was told “just throw some animal sounds in there” and just put that bear at the end.
Hilarious.
Nostalgia!
We’re getting into temperatures where I need to bring my radio on my runs because my on-ear headphones keep my ears from freezing.
The radio station I listen to, C97.7, does a “90s at Nine” every day at 9 AM. This involves the playing of three songs that have something in common. Often it’s a word in the song title or a genre or an artist.
This morning, the theme was “Disney songs” and the first song up was “A Whole New World” from Aladdin.
I cannot express the MASSIVE nostalgia hit I took when that song started. I hadn’t heard it in so long and it instantly took me back to when my mom and I would watch Aladdin back when I was in elementary school and we lived in our old house in Troy.
It just…it felt good.
Spooky Run
So I’m not one to be afraid of the dark or anything like that.
But when it’s 5:30 AM on a cold Halloween morning and you’re out in the part of Bowness Park where there is not a light to be seen save your one little headlight on your running vest, hearing people describe their creepy ghost stories over the radio is NOT WHAT YOU NEED AT THAT MOMENT.
Imagine being in the woods in complete darkness except for a tiny little light in front of you and you hear someone describe that as a child, they would often see a man standing outside their bedroom window at their family’s summer cabin, peering in with unblinking eyes, but when they finally told their parents about this mysterious man, their parents informed them that their bedroom was on the second floor.
I got goosebumps at these stories, yo.
At least they made me run faster.
Claudia’s Fake Radio Station from 1999
As I’ve mentioned on here multiple times, I was OBSESSED with my mom’s camcorder when I was a kid/pre-teen and was always making stupid videos, fake TV shows, and the like.
But before the camcorder came the tape recorder, and JESUS CHRIST it was the same sort of obsession. I remember having a tape player/recorder when I was really young (back when we lived in Troy, so like six or seven years old?) and it had this little microphone thingy attached by a spiral cord. I remember doing all sorts of interviews and other weird stuff with it.
Fast forward to the late ‘90s (1999 to be exact) and I had a fancier tape recorder but the same old desire to do weird-ass fake radio stuff with it. I recorded an entire tape of me doing commercials, interviews, news segments, and a decent amount of music I recorded from an old Monopoly game I had on CD.
Wanna hear it?
(Side 1 content starts around 0:17)
(Monopoly music on Side 2 stops around 4:27)
The “ZFAT 101” comes from the “Z-Fun 106.1” radio station in Moscow.
At least I’m not singing along with the Monopoly music. There’s a tape of me from fifth grade on which I distinctly remember singing about Rogaine to one of those songs on side 2.
Yes, there’s a commercial like every two minutes. It’s infinitely more entertaining than me going all improv on my electronic keyboard two-thirds of the way through side 1, though.
It’s shocking I didn’t go into journalism or mass media or film or something like that given all this nonsense I did as a kid.
(It’s actually not that shocking; I became much more introverted as I got older and also realized I was ugly and untalented and so had absolutely no chance of success in any of those fields.)
In This Blog: Claudia Shamelessly Plugs Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater
Heyo.
So I’m like 99% sure I’ve mentioned this on here before, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater episodes on my early morning walks the past few weeks, which has renewed my obsession with them. Thus, you get to hear about them on the blog!
I first came across CCRMT from my dad. He had a bunch of episodes on cassette tape and, for whatever reason, decided to give them to me back in high school.
I’m not a mystery-type person, but I decided to give them a listen and fell in love with them. The cassette tapes have long since been sold on eBay because I found digital copies of the shows (which, of course, I prefer, due to having an iPod and whatnot) and I still listen to them on occasion.
I don’t listen to music when I walk in the warmer months, but as it gets colder, I like to have my on-ear headphones on to act as earmuffs. And if I have headphones on, I will obviously listen to music on my walks. I crank the volume just loud enough so that I can hear (most of) my songs over the traffic while still being able to hear everything else well enough to avoid being in danger.
However, when I’m doing my early walks at 4 AM, it is dead quiet outside. There is very little traffic, no bikes, no pedestrians (at least during the first hour and a half or so), no birds/animals. This is actually the perfect environment in which to listen to CCRMT, because it’s quiet enough outside that even at a moderate volume level I can hear all the dialogue of the episodes (something that is harder to do when there is the background noise of traffic).
So it’s been CCRMT for the past few weeks in the morning, which has been awesome. It had been a while since I’ve listened to any of the episodes all the way through, and being able to do so reminded me of just how good they all are.
If you’re at all into mysteries or radio theater or anything like that, I’d suggest you give CCRMT a listen. Here’s their site.
Here are my top five episodes for anyone who cares:
- Mr. Hugo’s Night to Remember (the voice acting is really good in this one)
- The Junebug Mystery (a more historical mystery)
- Danger at Seven Mile Bend (a lot of detailed, intricate descriptions of the process of taking a tow barge up river, plus a pretty intricate story)
- The Curse of the Whale’s Tooth (this is probably the most “classic” mystery on my list, haha)
- The Hypnotist (this one is actually pretty creepy)
Woo!
Land of the Extreme and Home of the “Get Out”
I usually listen to my iPod in the car, but whenever I’m going a short distance, I don’t bother plugging it and just listen to the radio instead. This morning I happened to catch about 15 minutes of The Savage Nation, a program hosted by Michael Savage. And honestly, I’ve never heard anything so toxic on the radio before.
I seriously thought it was a parody show for the first few minutes or so. Some guy called in and was talking about people displaying the Mexican flag in the United States. Savage immediately started ripping this guy as being “anti-American” because the guy was saying that it was okay to display the Mexican flag on US soil—which, according to Savage—is equivalent to “giving the country over to the illegals.”
‘Cause, you know, everyone who is Mexican in the United States is an illegal immigrant, I mean, duh.
He went on to rant about how “those illegals” are ruining the country and that anyone who is not 100% for deporting/arresting every single one of them is”not a true American” and “doesn’t have a country.” He called the caller a “man with no country” and basically cut him off there.
Now, I understand that people have differing views, especially on a lot of political things. I understand that there’s nothing wrong with expressing your views. But this guy is just so freaking extreme. It was just a really toxic conversation. There was not a positive or hate-free thing he said the whole 15 minutes I listened.
Just…ugh.
Canadian radio: it’s not all Barenaked Ladies and The New Pornographers up here
I submit that you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a rap about Quebec.
Or a country jig about New Brunswick.
I’m not even kidding. I think Canada’s tourism department promotes solely through their music industry. I had the radio playing for about five hours this afternoon and I think I head a little ditty about almost every province. It’s funny until you realize it’s like rapping about Idaho or singing a blues song about Florida.
The rest of the songs were just freaking weird. There was this one whose chorus consisted solely of the phrase “watch out for the fuzz” repeated about twenty times (this, interestingly enough, wasn’t a rap but some sort of upbeat folksy tune). I’m not denying that there are some really weird songs from the States, but these are weird in an entirely different way.
And now I can’t stop singing “Noooooova Scotia!” to the Oklahoma! melody. This may need to be a song rewrite in the near future.
ALSO:
I’m not embedding ’cause the screencap will haunt you. This is perhaps one of the creepiest videos involving chocolate bunnies on YouTube. Don’t watch if:
a) you can’t avoid thinking that putting eyes on something automatically makes it a living thing
b) you’ve had a bad experience with an iron/heat lamp/hair dryer
c) there are chocolate bunnies in the room
You’ve been warned.
I fall into category A, which may be why it’s so disturbing to me, but I don’t know. I mean, I know it’s just chocolate, but it’s bunny-shaped and has eyes. Peep death doesn’t bother me, but the fact that the chocolate bunny eyes seem to be staring into my soul is somewhat unsettling. Some of the comment-leavers seem sufficiently freaked out as well.
Haha, I hope you don’t watch it right before going to bed like I did.
Today’s song: Round and Round by Ratt
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