Hey anybody here remember the Wham Rap?  Is this song for or against leaning on welfare when you’re young and sexy?  I literally can’t tell.  The lyrics about how people should not do things they do not enjoy, those feel earnest.  But the characterization of the narrator, who advocates living off of welfare programs, is as selfish, looking out for number one.  It’s ironic people see social welfare as greedy when the main reason rich people don’t want to pay a reasonable tax to support society is because of absolutely inarguable baldfaced greed.  People “on the dole” need food and shelter.  Rich people don’t need a second yacht.  They just fucken don’t.  Anyway, dubious politics aside, it’s a bop.  Glad I remembered it exists.

One could make a whole study of references to welfare in music, and what they say about social perspectives.  Roots Manuva had a song called Mind 2 Motion with the line “Social survivor still scratching on, I’ll pay that money back when I get my hit song.”  This is eminently reasonable.  Rely on what you need when you are needy, pay your taxes when you are not.  And yet, I heard that he’s just another boring conservative greedlord.  Unsurprising if true.  One day Biggie Smalls was talking about how he lived in the projects and suffered poverty, feels blessed by his wealth.  The next he was literally saying “fuck the world, don’t ask me for shit.”

Sticking to the UK for another moment, commie rapper Bobbi from QELD and Pavlov’s House reliably hates on working for a living.  Warnings for flashing lights, doom-tinged chorus, and tankie feelz.  Austerity politics will get you feelin’ that kind of way.

The USA has its own communist rappers.  Boots Riley from The Coup is the number one guy on that scene, blowing up the World Trade Center on an album cover before that became unpopular for reasons.  But on the topic of social survivin’, I’d like to quote Killer Mike’s guest rap on The Coup’s WAVIP:  “I’m over here with the welfare recipients, we ain’t ever payin’ but we stay gettin’ shit, I am with the people on the bottom fella, we gon’ riot loot rob ’til we rich as Rockefeller… The one percent better learn this shit is VIP, if we don’t nut up everybody gonna D-I-E.”

There are more low-key ways to say Fuck a Job.  In Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s seminal extremely hateable dogshit buttrock classic “Takin’ Care of Business,” the drunk guy on the mic sez, “If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed, I love to work at nothing all day.”  I don’t know why I find that more offensive than intentionally offensive punk rock on the subject.  All he’s saying is “get an easy job.”  Could be worse.  I just don’t like the genre.  Speaking of punk rock on the subject, little known Desperate Bicycles had a song about making rock, with a very likeable message.  Backup vocals by the literal child on the drums.  “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.”

As for the intentionally offensive punk rock on the genre, the Dead Milkmen have two strong examples.  Nutrition is an all-around classic, covered by other bands, well-liked, and a good tune.  It captures the vibe of feeling like you were born to work but just don’t wanna, feeling simultaneously petulant and ashamed about it.  A lesser tune with a more didactic message, just literally “fuck working,” is Chaos Theory, from a later album.  “I used to get up and do my job, now I enjoy doing nothing better, I think I’ll go bum around, I think I’ll enjoy this lovely weather.  Maybe some day there’ll be a revolution, maybe some day we’ll have meaningful jobs, until that day I’m gonna be lazy, I’m not gonna be no working slob.  I am the god of unemployment, the antichrist of the american dream, I used to fight for church and country, but now I don’t give into the corporate schemes.”

That’s just being a bitch about it.  Not saying that’s my number, but I did spend a few years on unemployment at one point, and spent a lot of time back then walking around under blue skies.  Like the part in One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer when George’s landlady saw him leanin’ up against a post…  This could go on forever.

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Edit to Add:  How in the fuck did I forget Agenda Suicide by The Faint?  Content Warning:  The Obvious, Generally Grim as Balls.

Remember this post about Seward Park by Seattle local ’80s rap weirdo Maharaji?  My loving man did me a favor and transcribed the lyrics, so you can get a bit of the flavor even if you can’t figure out how to listen to the song on interwebs.  You won’t find this on genius dot com.

SEWARD PARK

by Maharaji

If you’re searching for a way to reach your peak
Come to Seward park with the pretty little freaks
Lay in the grass, let the sun hit your face
Drink cherry coolers while you listen to my bass

Here’s your chance to make your dream come true
Just hop in your ride when the sky’s plain blue
Roll down your window, let the freaks hear my song
Cuz my voice is really kinky and my beats so strong
I’m Maharaji baby, you know who I am
Come give in to the Seward Park jam
I see you on the sidewalk with your long silky hair
Eyes of light green with your skin complexion fair
Bermuda shorts and those tight, tight jeans
All the guys will name you
the Seward Park queen
Hot hot fun
In Seward Park
Oh girl
You know I want to enter your world

(groaning and heavy breathing)

Oh girl

Seward Park
Freak

You look so good, I can taste you from here
But that’s not the point, let me make myself clear
Oh baby, don’t you know I’m like a lifesaver
Just whisper in my ear if you want a new flavor
Physical changes
Naturally delicious
When you lick your lips, I get real suspicious
Mixed emotion, a climax stimulation
Wonderful memories of fantastic penetration
This brief encounter
The proper vitamin
I can ensure you baby that you’ll be back again
So come on and get it, and don’t waste your time
Cuz a freak like Maharaji you will never find

Seward Park
Gets crazy after dark
Sure enough baby
The dogs will start to bark

(dog fx and car horns)

You’re delicious dirty girl
with all your freaky friends
I see your golden face on the hot weekends
Walking your dogs
Or playing your box
Beads in your hair with your polka-dotted socks
I like to watch you move
To my northwest hot funk energized groove
Make no mistake by staying at home
Come dial a freak on the telephone
So how would you like it if I went and hopped a ferry
I’ll leave my phone number
you can even call me Terry
I think of Seward park on a hot summer day
Come take a deep breath the Cosmic Legion way

(grunting and moaning and dogs fx)

Deep breathing baby

Effective is compassion with universal powers
the feelings flowing through your body each and every hour
Your destiny’s fulfilled so lay on your back
I can help you out with a freak attack
My multi-track funky flex was all you freaks’ choice
It’s absolutely free
You know you feel moist
So let me know
Oh
What’s on your mind
Let me know your true feelings all of the time
Come my desert flower, come plant your seed
So I can eat the fruit coming from your tree
Relax

Ooh
Ooh-ooh

Intellectual essence, and all your finesse
You’re the finest freak in the great northwest
With your hot luscious tongue and your emotion lotion
Your strawberry lips, that’s your freak secret potion
With video cassettes of I Dream of Jeannie
You can sit in my spa with your two-piece bikini
Uhh

My lady Monica kicks
At Seward Park
Sir Mix-a-lot kicks
At Seward Park
Kashay kicks
At Seward Park
Jazzy D kicks
At Seward Park
The Wicked Angel kicks
At Seward Park
DJ Nasty Nes kicks
At Seward Park
Your dog wets a tree
At Seward Park
Your mama barbecues
At Seward Park
Spicy Shannon kicks
At Seward Park
Phantom of the Scratch kicks
At Seward Park
The Desert Sheik kicks
At Seward Park
Lawanda kicks
At Seward Park
I throw my Frisbee
At Seward Park
I steal your girlfriend
At Seward Park
I make love to you
At Seward Park
The Cadillacs ride
At Seward Park
The low riders roll
At Seward Park
Ain’t no dust
At Seward Park
The Central District kicks
At Seward Park
The south end kicks
At Seward Park
Everybody kicks
At Seward Park park park park park

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Occasionally over the years I would remember this song that played on the local radio when I was ten – Seward Park, by Sir Mixalot compatriot Maharaji, who was name-dropped in My Hooptie and Posse on Broadway.  The most recent time I remembered this, I went on a little tear through the internet for it, to no avail.  Seward Park is not on yewchoob, or sheisty downloading places.

But I did find the website of another Seattle rapper, Kid Sensation, and sent an inquiry about Maharaji, because these guys all knew each other.  Mr. Sensation’s publicist(?) got back to me, with a screen cap of a conversation with a Seattle DJ named Nasty Nes, who I realized I’d seen before in the video for Posse on Broadway, as well as a poster in Saap Fusion where I used to get my ube smoothie supply.  Used to!  Why don’t you have the ube smoothie anymore Saap?  wtf.

Anyway, Nasty said something like, that song was produced by Mix and never released, not even as a single, and even tho he has a tape, he can’t do anything about releasing it, outside of radio broadcasts.  His radio show is long gone, however, my boyfriend Mr. The Beast from Seattle is an internet wizard and found Nasty Nes radio shows, so you can hear Seward Park!  It’s just a lil tricky.  Go to https://www.rapattacklives.com/rapatt%20nightbeat/rapattshows/ and scroll down to January 8 2017.  See if you can figure out how to play it because it ain’t working for me on the site, my dude had to do some hack-the-planet junk to get a mp3 of it.  But yeah, it’s about 20 minutes and 5 seconds into this thing. I FUCKED UP!  Read the audio program backwards.  Call it 1 hour 40 minutes 56 seconds in.

The song isn’t exactly like I remember it.  The music is about the same, I didn’t remember how much of it was spent lusting after this Seward Park “freak.”  But the main thing I misremembered is that his voice isn’t quite as Humpty Hump as it was in my imagination.

And what about the man himself, Maharaji, aka Terence Matthews?  In May of this year he had brain surgery, but he seems to be doing fine now.  He’s on facebook and has some kind of affiliation with a food truck called Lumpia King, and a barbecue sauce business called We Be Smok’n LLC, but I don’t have facebook so the deets are a bit unclear to me.  With that, I return to my regularly scheduled eternal sighing.

u___u

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a song about memory, kinda

There’s this concept in art history called hierarchical perspective.  As I recall, before the rules of realistic perspective were worked out from observation of reality, artists would draw character’s and object’s size relationships based on how important they were.  Jesus lookin’ fifty feet tall next to a king who in turn dwarfs the peasantry, that sorta shit.

I wish I had a higher quality version of this music video.  I like it a lot.  The tiny mans always make me feel some type of way about art history.  Or maybe I’m just a giantess fetishist.

FreethoughtBlogs’s own William Brinkman is at it again!  He has a new story set in his Bolingbrook Babbler Literary Universe, and I got an advance reader copy of it.  The rest of you rabble can order it tomorrow, at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.  This is my review.

Like William’s The Rift, A Fire in the Shadows is action-packed genre fiction, set in the Weekly World News -inspired setting of his “Bolingbrook Babbler” articles.  At around 12k words, it’s long for a short story, but only covers a few short events.

There’s a lot of information around those events, and the author wants the story to stand on its own, so the exposition can land like bricks upside the head.  The references to events in The Rift feel particularly unnecessary, beyond the important fact of the weredeer incursion.  I do like being able to include a sentence like that in a review.

Still, as I said before, it’s fun to see SFF genre fiction that isn’t beholden to the conventions laid down by the titans of Intellectual Property.  There’s stuff here to enjoy.  The vampire battle strategizing reminded me of a bit in “From Russia with Love” where James Bond was thinking about how he could totally judo chop through his opponent’s chest if he wanted to, but now wasn’t the time for it.

One thing that struck me odd.  The vampire characters seem to regard their own human ethnicities as a thing to be disdained, and I’m not convinced they’d have any reason to feel that way.  This element seemed like a ploy to spell out the characters’ backgrounds without breaking from the plot and dialogue to do so.  In general, the bitchy attitudes of the vampires were unappealing, and while that may have been intentional, it’s not interesting to me as a reader.  I know some other readers like it, so YMMV.  I did like the main character Lydia being a lovefool like The Cardigans.

William’s writing style spells out a lot.  “Show, don’t tell” is one of the central dogmas of 20th century literature, but there are situations where even back then it was ignored.  Short stories in action-packed genre fiction, well, that’s one place where telling works.  His “The Rift” was short for a novel, and like this story, packed a lot into its length, by merit of willingness to lay ideas out plainly.

This creates a paradox (if I’m using that word right), because sometimes William does not spell something out.  Those can be pretty important themes and ideas, and since a reader gets accustomed to him spelling out the situation unambiguously, it’s easy to forget he might leave something unsaid.  I’m guessing a lot of readers might miss his unspoken ideas.

**SPOILERS BELOW**

Like “The Rift,” I think the main character of “A Fire in the Shadows” has an unreliable perspective.  Lydia is the kind of person who is in love with the world, like a ramped-up high school student.  Like I used to be, once upon a time, wheeling from one crush to the next.

And that’s the exact kind of person that would repeat the social faux pas that exploded the atheo-skeptic community – a poorly timed pass at a person, which would come off as creepy.  Had Lydia followed through with her love confession at the end of AFITS, she would have been an even bigger creep than Tom during his elevatorgatery crime in The Rift.

Who wants to have an age-inappropriate leather-clad stranger confess their love for you, at night when there’s no one else around?  Big yikes.  Interesting to see a story show a character walk up to that edge and come back.

I think it’s funny that a person could miss that whole theme because it’s the source of the title.  “Fire” is vampire slang for your burning soul.  While Lydia is a reasonably good person, she has that fiery passion of a stranger lurking in The Shadows – something romantic until it becomes dangerous.  Something she needs to be mindful of, and that the targets of that affection are probably better off not knowing about.

That’s emotionally sophisticated stuff.  I liked it.  Thanks, William.
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Spoiler Warning for The Flash.  I really profoundly don’t care about spoilers, but hey, here’s a moment’s consideration for those who do.

Not really sure what the new business model at The CW is going to be since the takeover, but it seems like the crossover DC Comics shows are being phased out, bit by bit.  There’s a new DC Comics show that hasn’t premiered yet, but safe assumption it will have little to do with the rest.  It’s easier and more cost-effective to have your shows be modular, not interdependent in any way.  Hey, biz is biz.

Legends of Tomorrow was easily the best thing left in the DC slate and had its last season.  I hope everyone involved is well compensated and living their best life in whatever they do next.  After hinting The Arrow spinoff character Diggle was going to become The Green Lantern in crossover bits for a season, they wrote a weird little end to that plot, like, psych, never mind.  An thus the last of The Arrow‘s existence takes a dirt nap.

Stargirl‘s second season was COVID’d into a strange depressing mess.  They did as well as they could, but you could feel the characters were being isolated from each other for social distancing, the plot written in such a way as to denude the world of extras, leaving everything cold and dark.  Third and final season coulda been worse, but the amazing action of the first Season was almost completely gone.  They just didn’t have the budget for it anymore, I’m sure.

So The Flash is on its last season, which is good.  It’s time.  The most recent two seasons were hobbled by COVID and ended up totally bizarre.  I theorized here that the lady playing Flash’s main squeeze had come to dislike the production in some way, since her character was written out of contact with most of the cast during those seasons.  But she’s back in the house; looks like those strange writing decisions were probably more about COVID issues.  That will let them send the series into retirement with a solid season filmed under less strained circumstances.

The Flash has generally been marketed as less edgy, more superheroic and light than The Arrow.  That marketing was undercut by how grimdark and hopeless the main villain plots have been, over and over throughout its run.  Now that they’re back to their original form, without sensible plague restrictions, will the oppressive atmosphere return?  Who is the big bad of the very last season?

It’s Batwoman!  I did not see that coming.  Batwoman was cancelled and did a very competent job of its last season.  I liked it all well enough.  I think Greg Berlanti (or somebody else in his company) must love his actors, because he keeps giving them chances to show up even after their shows end.  Javicia Leslie is playing an alternate timeline version of Batwoman who became a Jokeresque wildhearted villain.  That means acting like a big campy goofball.  Let this season actually be fun!  We’ll see.

After all of this, I must share an amusing discovery I made.  For all the success of the DC comics shows – particularly The Flash – none of them touched the viewership of The Vampire Diaries.  Whatever big feels they inspire in a certain segment of humanity, the nerd audience is just smaller or less passionate than the romantic girly audience.  Take that, entitled-ass dorks!  And to whatever extent I share an identity with you – not as much as you might imagine – take that, me.

I guess I’ve only been paying attention to the DC shows because of the cultural connection with the comics, the art, the iconic characters in the background of my life since early childhood.  The Superfriends.  The guys on my underwear and my sippy cup, whatever.  If I wanted to pay attention to shows that really matter to most people, I’d skip the dork slate and watch sweet sexy vampires doing their thing…

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