Shit That Sucks

In 1994, Hammer’s career was about dead: that Addams Family shit was played out, his cartoon didn’t get picked up for another season, and he was the butt of some of the top elementary school jokes of all time. He had no choice but to go DEFCON 1 on the world. He unleashed the nuclear fucking explosion called “Pumps and a Bump” on our world on April Fools Day 1994 (OK, it was a day later, but close enough). But this was no joke. The world had moved on from his typewriter dancing, Palm-Springs-retiree-sunglass-wearing bullshit and caught a mean case of Gangsta Rap Fever. Dre and Snoop had completely changed up the set with The Chronic and our buddy Hammer was a day late and a dollar short. I mean, I didn’t take The Chronic out of my CD player for two years, and I know about a thousand other fools that did the same thing. So, to get the white dollar back in his pocket, and fight to avoid that inevitable bankruptcy, Hammer had to step up his game. He dropped the MC from his moniker, grew a goatee and wore a generic burglar outfit everywhere to catch the growing wave of gangsta rap.

But this man is a fucking (marketing) genius. Not satisfied to uninvent himself and ride the coattails of the leaders in one dominant sub-genre of early 90’s hip-hop, he had the foresight to try to incorporate the other trend in rap that was white-fucking-hot at the time: Miami bass. Genius. This is akin to when Bush combined Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, Morrissey, and muscular dystrophy into their own brand of awesome. Just when the West Coast was flooding with some hardcore uzi-popping, weed-laced, Dickies-rocking shit, Miami was assploding with the Booty Bass phenomenon. Tag Team was blowing up with “Whoomp There It Is” and the 69 Boys kicked out “Tootsee Roll” and “Daisy Dukes”. Videos of dudes yapping and chicks in bikinis grinding around on the beach or by a pool with a waterfall were the bomb-biggity. And Hammer took the best of both worlds and spun them into this classic. He filled the back yard of his Oaktown manor with fake rocks, a pool with the mandatory waterfall (Hammer’s high-class ass fronted for the remote control waterfall), and dimestore hookers in bikinis bumping and grinding to the catchiest track since “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega (if you’re singing “doot doot doo doot, doot doo doo doot . . .” in your head right now, sorry. Well, not really since I’m singing it too.)

Now, in light of the fact that Hammer was once a member of the Will Smith Club of rappers who say “fuck you to profanity and sexual chocolate,” (did I mention Hammer was so squeaky clean, he had a Saturday Morning Cartoon for a while? Will Smith didn’t even reach animation status.) this may seem like a desperate act of a desperate man on the brink of financial and social collapse, but I think “Pumps and a Bump” was inspired; no divinely inspired art (note: Hammer jumped from the Will Smith Club to the MC Run Club of minister rappers for JC). Art inspired by Jesus takes many forms, and I think Hammer lucked the fuck out and bestowed upon the world the ultimate mash-up.

And in case it’s not crystal fucking clear on first viewing how determined Hammer nee MC was to meld these two disparate genres into one huge steaming pile of dopeness, there is a scene in the video where he is playing dominos (the most gangsta hobby since drive-bys and tipping 40’s) with his fully-clothed homies while he’s wearing a zebra banana-hammock at poolside.

Oh, I hadn’t mentioned to marble sack yet? In case you don’t remember, it was way fucking cool for a while there in the 90’s to be a sexy rapper. Marky Mark did his shit topless, LL Cool J was topless and licked his lips and showed off the cotton balls in his armpits (see that “Mama Said Knock You Out” shit from MTV Unplugged). But Hammer had to go one further and not just let his pants sag off the bottom of his ass with his CK’s showing, but he went ahead and dropped his pants completely. For almost the whole damn video. Like a college dropout in West Hollywood. And let’s just say Hammer combined the Miami bass and gangsta shit in a way that being “hard” had a whole new meaning, if you catch my drift. In case you don’t, I mean HE HAD A BONER THE WHOLE TIME.

Later in the video, he raided Tupac’s wardrobe and stole that faux-bulletproof vest and black pants outfit to make sure you knew he was a gangsta (making sure to keep wearing Gred Tolan’s workout gloves from Just One of the Guys), and closed the video in a track suit and danced like it was 5 years earlier, so the whole thing comes full circle, but not before taking you on a journey you can never forget. I mean the image of Hammer trying to “hammer” some chick from behind in a Hillcrest Nut-Hugger may be burned into your mind forever after you watch this. And with that said, please, ENJOY!!!

The NFL has always been completely embarrassing and loathsome, but it’s now also lost almost all of its capacity to entertain; in the quest to make sure that every adult male between 21 and 45 knows exactly what he needs to buy, the NFL has colluded with advertisers to make sure that nothing but aggressive marketing and boring, overly complicated simulated ass-kicking goes on during the average NFL game. Apparently, this has led even people who are foolish enough to be into the NFL to dub it the “No Fun League.” I don’t know shit about sports, but I’ll tell you what: you won’t see anything as awesome as this coming out of today’s NFL:

Nah, we don’t want to do anything cool or funny like that; let’s get another interview with Tom Brady about his boring-ass baby or his haircut or something. Plthhhh.

When I was a kid, the ONLY thing that made the many NFL games I had to sit through even remotely endurable was the touchdown celebrations, and apparently even those aren’t allowed now. I mean, who the fuck wants to sit through a football game without the chance of seeing someone try to moonwalk in cleats? The only moment I remember out of the countless hours of NFL I suffered through as a child is the Ickey Shuffle. Without that, it’s nothing but crunching sounds and commercials aimed at guys who get excited about sampling seasonal varieties of Samuel Adams. SNORE.

But enough about that. Let’s get to the point here: I hate sports, but the absurd social trends that sports begat in the 80s might be one of my favorite sources of entertainment. Chief among those trends was the wave of sport-themed polo-shirt-and-sunglass-rope rock singles released in the mid-80s. In case you need a refresher, here are two killer examples (sorry, but I couldn’t find the original video for the first one because whoever owns the rights is a weenie):

And let us not forget that Huey Lewis and the News put out an entire album in 1983 that was called Sports (by far their best work, my son).

But without a doubt, the best jock-rock song of the era was Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life,” because the video not only featured the band wearing sporty terry-cloth headband/wristband sets and sneakers with their Sinbad-approved sports coats and permed thinning hair, but it also celebrated the greatest sports-related social trend of the 80s: sports bloopers! Check it out:

Ack!!! I can’t even handle how awesome that video is. There are seriously about 75 people on stage, and they’re all doing something incredibly cool. The drummer looks like he’s in a drum-kit contest with Neil Peart, they have a dude who’s there to do nothing but play the tambo and do the Molly Ringwald, the guy with the acoustic guitar is wearing one of Stephen Tyler’s microphone scarves on his head and is barefoot, and there are two keyboard players, one playing it cool in a Johnny Cash shirt and the other making sure everyone knows from his stage moves and his bolo tie that he drives a convertible and wears red underwear. And check out how stoked the band is to be playing the song! They even get together several times in the center of the stage and look at each other as if to say, “Goddamn, man, touchdown! Rock and fuckin’ roll!”

In addition to the absolutely stellar dancing exhibited by the band, I love this video because sports bloopers are just so funny! Seriously, what’s more hilarious than watching a guy drop a football? Fucking nothing, dude. Expect a post dedicated the 80s sports blooper craze real soon.

Dude, was Soul Asylum singing about the dangers of excessive oil consumption in 1992? Fucking visionaries.

Soul Asylum might be one of the funniest bands of the 1990s (behind Bush, of course). They were an incredible maudlin combination of grunge and REM-inspired whiny social consciousness, and their lyrics, stage presence, and videos inspire some serious awe. Check out the video for “Black Gold”:

Aside from the hair-tossing and hip-swaying that I think prove that David Pirner (yeah, dude, I looked his ass up) is Axl Rose’s illegitimate son (come on, dude, you know Axl Rose started having sex with adult groupies when he was, like, 5 years old), this video also contains some weighty social messages and symbolism. For starters, there’s the setting in which the band is featured hysterically hopping around and kicking up dirt all over the place to a song that might clock in at around 15 beats per minute: it’s nothing but sand and tumbleweeds, which symbolizes the destruction of our natural environment by the wanton consumption of Texas tea. Or the fact that they filmed the video in the desert outside of LA. And then there’s the shot of the doves, followed by a girl coming out of the darkness coated in oil and looking like Sissy Spacek in Carrie into a crowd of pushy reporters. Get it? Yeah, me neither. 

Maybe the lyrics will shed some light on this:

Two boys on a playground
Tryin’ to push each other down
See the crowd gather round
Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd

Black gold in a white plight
Wont you fill up the tank, lets go for a ride
I dont care ’bout no wheelchair
I’ve got so much left to do with my life

Moving backwards through time
Never learn, never mind
That side’s yours, this side’s mine
Brother you ain’t my kind

You’re a black soldier, white fight
Won’t you fill up the tank, let’s go for a ride
Sure like to feel some pride
But this place just makes me feel sad inside

Mother, do you know where your kids are tonight? 

Keeps the kids off the streets
Gives ‘em something to do, something to eat
This spot was a playground
This flat land used to be a town

I’ve got it, dude. This is an important piece of political folk music. The message is that the obsession with taking frivolous car rides among the disabled is fueling an industry that feeds on the desperation of the poor by trapping them in jobs that provide for their immediate needs but that contribute to the growth in pollution that will inevitably lead to the destruction of their playgrounds and to racism and violence among children. In Texas. And David Pirner is so pissed about it that he can do nothing but dance petulantly while staring at the reflection of his half-ass honky dreads in a pool of spilled Quaker State (see the video around the 3-minute marker).