The Story Behind "I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses

 80s, Flashback Fridays, Music, New Wave, Retro, Rock, Video  No Responses »
May 172013
 

The Wait­resses released “I Know What Boys Like” in 1980; how­ever, it didn’t chart until 1982, when it peaked at #62 on the U.S. Bill­board Hot 100. The song was a cult sen­sa­tion and fea­tured on their debut album, Wasn’t Tomor­row Wonderful?

The Wait­resses got their start on the Akron/Cleveland music scene.

Chris But­ler was the leader of The Wait­resses and wrote most of their songs from a female per­spec­tive, because he found it funny and stu­pid and cool and dif­fer­ent. In 2005, he unknow­ingly bought the child­hood home of Jef­frey Dah­mer. He had orig­i­nally writ­ten “I Know What Boys Like” and recorded all the instru­ments for the track, before ask­ing his friend Patty Don­ahue to record the vocals as Patty Dar­ling. He bor­rowed the name The Wait­resses from a favorite t-shirt of a friend. After set­tling into New York, But­ler scored a record deal with “I Know What Boys Like” and scram­bled to find mem­bers for his imag­i­nary band.

Patty Don­ahue was the lead singer for The Wait­resses. She quite the band in 1984, then returned until the band broke up at the end of that year. After­wards, she worked for ABC in the Polit­i­cal Unit and the A&R depart­ment at MCA Records. She died of lung can­cer in 1996.

Drum­mer Billy Ficca also played drums for leg­endary punk band Tele­vi­sion, Nona Hendryx & Zero Cool, among many other bands.

Sax­o­phon­ist Mars Williams went on to play with The Psy­che­delic Furs, Billy Idol, Robert Palmer, Billy Squier, Power Sta­tion, Min­istry, and many others.

Bass gui­tarist Tracy Worm­worth went on to tour with The B-52s for 20 years. She was also a mem­ber of the house band on the Rosie O’Donnell Show.

Ver­sions
I Know What Boys Like 3’11
I Know What Boys Like 3’20

Music Video
The music video show­cases The Wait­resses per­form­ing “I Know What Boys Like” in a stu­dio, with some ani­mated seg­ments. Lead singer Patty Don­ahue flirts play­fully with the cam­era, while the rest of the band pro­vides addi­tional comic relief. The video seems ama­teur by today’s stan­dards; how­ever, it has a cer­tain charm rem­i­nis­cent of the early days of MTV that I miss so much.

Mem­o­ries
“I Know What Boys Like” by The Wait­resses reminds me of my older sis­ter, Vicki. She played the radio as she put her makeup on in the morn­ing before school and when she got ready to go out for the week­end, as well as giv­ing me a lift to school. I always enjoyed the catchy gui­tar riff and the monot­o­nous melody of this song, not men­tion the wicked sense of humor. I was still fairly naive, so I’m not sure I really under­stood what boys liked yet.

What are your mem­o­ries of “I Know What Boys Like” by The Waitresses?

Top Ten Tips to Have a Seat to Yourself on the Train

 Humor, Parody, Self-Help, Top Ten Thursdays, Transportation  1 Response »
May 162013
 

Inebriated Kim Wilde Singing on a TrainAfter a long day at work, the last thing you want is to ride a cramped, crowded train home. You can, how­ever, make a lit­tle more breath­ing room for your­self by fol­low­ing these ten tips to have a seat to your­self on the train:

01. Throw your head back and cackle for no reason.

02. If some­one sits down beside you, burst into tears and tell them they sat on teeny tiny Lady Hoboken.

03. Bor­row your friend’s boa con­scric­tor and per­form a dance with it while sit­ting down.

04. Keep cross­ing your legs and say, “I don’t know if I can hold it much longer.”

05. Ask the per­son who sits next to you if they would mind if you per­formed a Black Mass.

06. Whine to your neigh­bor about the injus­tice of being unable to legally marry your goat since you have a such a great rela­tion­ship, not men­tion that the sex is totally worth him eat­ing your night­gown off your body.

07. Ask your fel­low pas­sen­ger if she would like to meet. Mr. Happy, the hedge­hog who lives in your rectum.

08. Throw your leg over your head and begin giv­ing your­self a tongue bath.

09. Stick your hand, palm-down, on the seat next you to you and tell peo­ple, “Sorry, super glue accident.”

10. Turn to your neigh­bor and ask, “Do you love singing show­tunes as much as I do?”

Word Up Wednesday: Wonder Brawn

 Dictionary, Humor, Parody, Sports, Vocabulary, Women's Interest, Word Up Wednesdays  No Responses »
May 152013
 

Wonder BraWon­der Brawn (noun) \wuhn-der brawn\ — The feel­ing of strenth and power that comes from don­ning a sports bra.

Exam­ple: After slip­ping on her sports bra, Becky often felt like kick­ing her husband’s ass; how­ever, she chalked it up to won­der brawn and made him din­ner instead.

Can you use won­der brawn in a sentence?

 Posted by at 7:00 am

File Clerk with Fear of Paper Settles Out of Court with Employer

 Humor, News of the Weird, Parody, Tall Tale Tuesdays, Work  No Responses »
May 142013
 

Man Scared of Falling PaperKevin Culpep­per, 28, a file clerk for the Law Offices of Ditto, Ditto & Ditto, filed a law­suit against his employer, stat­ing he was unable to work as he suf­fers from papy­ro­pho­bia, a fear of paper.

““When­ever I would pick up stacks of doc­u­ments to file, I became dizzy, expe­ri­enced short­ness of breath, and heart pal­pi­ta­tions,” said Culpep­per.  “I know it sounds silly, but I kept hav­ing visions of trip­ping and toss­ing the stack in the air, then watch­ing in hor­ror from the ground as hun­dreds of pieces of paper fell down upon me and slice my body to shreds.”

When Cuplep­per spoke to George W. Ditto, Sr., about his con­di­tion, he was told he might be bet­ter off find­ing a new career, but Cuplep­per claimed his spent his entire inher­i­tance from his father’s steam­roller acci­dent on tuition to Ms. Rhoda’s Office Worker School.  (He grad­u­ated with a diploma in filing.)

““Besides that, I’m a hemo­phil­iac,” Cuplpep­per said, “and one I start bleed­ing, I’m like Old Faith­ful; I just keep gush­ing until I pass out.”

Upon hear­ing of his med­ical con­di­tion, Ditto made an offer to set­tle out of court.  In addi­tion, Ditto, Ditto & Ditto have offered to replace their paper files with elec­tronic copies.

““Kevin has been pro­moted to our PDF file clerk, and he will file these dig­i­tal copies into elec­tronic files, mak­ing his fear of paper cuts a moot point.

Cuplpep­per seemed pleased with the out­come.  “I’m touched that Ditto, Ditto & Ditto has offered to work with me instead of putting me out of work.”  He joked, “Unfor­tu­nately, I also have an irra­tional fear of the return key on com­puter keyboards.”

Ditto, Ditto & Ditto did not respond to his joke.  Evi­dently, they didn’t find it very funny.

How to Get Someone's Attention

 Essays, Humor, Memory Mondays, News of the Weird, Self-Help  No Responses »
May 132013
 

Toddler Not Paying Attention at ChurchIn my opin­ion, peo­ple have become really impa­tient over the past decade. We live in a world where infor­ma­tion can be found in sec­onds via the Inter­net, text, social media, or even by call­ing someone’s mobile phone. Have you noticed most of your friends send you mes­sages via Face­book instead of using your e-mail address or call­ing you? God for­bid they should have to stop play­ing Far­mville to com­mu­ni­cate with you.

Per­son­ally, I think it started years before with the high­way sys­tem in the United States. No mat­ter how high the speed limit, it never seems to be fast enough. How can it be that in a 65 miles per hour speed zone where I’m chug­ging along at 80 miles per hour that other dri­vers are still zip­ping around me? Where can they pos­si­bly be going that requires a near attempt at break­ing the sound bar­rier? I could under­stand if some­one is in labor with a baby’s legs hang­ing out doing flut­ter kicks, but all those men behind the wheel can’t be pregnant.

I went with 2Fs to cel­e­brate Mother’s Day with his fam­ily, since my mom is 800 miles away in Texas and, most likely, either at Zumba or belly danc­ing class right now. Jeff’s fam­ily decided to unof­fi­cially adopt me sev­eral years ago, so I always sign my cards from: YOUR FAVORITE ADOPTED SON.

On the way down to his older sister’s house, 2Fs told me that when he was liv­ing in Lon­don dur­ing his work exchange pro­gram in col­lege in 1980, he decided to cook a tra­di­tional South­ern meal for his British friends, so he mailed his mother a let­ter to ask for the recipes.

““You’re kid­ding me!” I said. “How long did it take?”

““About seven days.”

““Seven days! God cre­ated the world in that same amount of time and all you were try­ing to do is get your mother’s recipe for fried chicken.”

Nowa­days, mom would send you a link to her YouTube chan­nel where she’s uploaded a short clip of her mak­ing the dang recipe. Who has the patience to wait seven days–well, really four­teen days, since you have to send your let­ter, then wait for a reply.

It reminded me of when I used to order British twelve inch sin­gles from a mail order com­pany in Illi­nois. I’d look through their cat­a­log, fill out the form, and send my order off with a cashier’s cehck for the cost of the records, plus ship­ping and han­dling. It would some­times take weeks to receive my records. Today, we go to the artist’s web­site, where we can lis­ten to the song and watch the music video. If we like it, we can click on the iTunes icon and down­load it with­out pay­ing ship­ping and han­dling. Who has the patience to wait weeks, anymore?

All of this has com­bined to make most peo­ple very impa­tient lis­ten­ers. We want oth­ers to get to the point before we feel the over­whelm­ing urge to dis­en­gage and check our e-mail, Face­book, or Twit­ter feed. It got me won­der­ing how to get someone’s atten­tion once I’ve lost it.

Jeff’s mother told an inter­est­ing story this evening about their pas­tor, who has a rep­u­ta­tion for ser­mons that go on a tad too long. When he sees the con­gre­ga­tion drift­ing off, he usu­ally does some­thing unex­pected to get their atten­tion. A few Sun­days ago, evi­dently he pulled out a replica of a hand grenade from the podium and hurled down the main aisle of the church. Once he had everyone’s atten­tion, he fin­ished the ser­mon. What a bril­liant idea! I can wait to try that out.

The Story Behind "Dance Hall Days" by Wang Chung

 80s, Flashback Fridays, Music, New Wave, Retro, Synth-Pop, Video  1 Response »
May 102013
 

Wang Chung released “Dance Hall Days” on Jan­u­ary 14, 1984. The sin­gle only charted at #21 on the U.K. Sin­gles Chart, but peaked at #16 on the U.S. Hot Bill­board 100, becom­ing one of five U.S. Top 40 hits the band would have over the next three years.

Wang Chung is Chi­nese for “yel­low bell.” It’s also the first note in the Chi­nese clas­si­cal music scale. The band orig­i­nally spelled it Huang Chung, but changed the spelling at Gef­fen Records’ sug­ges­tion, as English-speaking peo­ple were pro­nounc­ing the band’s name as “Hung Chung.”

Lead singer Jack Hues stated in an inter­view that “Dance Hall Days” was par­tially inspired by Adam Ant, which led to Wang Chung record­ing the song with Chris Hughes, who also pro­duced Adam and the Ants’ “Kings of the Wild Frontier.”

Ver­sions
Dance Hall Days 3’58
Dance Hall Days [Remix] 8’02
Dance Hall Days [Remix] 7’22

Music Video #1

Music Video #2

Music Video
Two music videos were filmed for “Dance Hall Days.” The first was directed by Derek Jar­man and included his father’s home movies from the World War II era inter­spersed with footage of the band play­ing vio­lins and dressed as char­ac­ters from The Wiz­ard of Oz. (The tod­dler in the footage is actu­ally the direc­tor as a child.)

The sec­ond music video takes place in an art deco music hall. The band per­forms the song while cou­ples dance. Later, the cam­era pans across the tables and reveals the audi­ence is filled with iden­ti­cal twins. The mir­rored ball falls to the dance floor and a mir­rored dancer hatches from it and dances. Out­side the dance hall, lead singer Jack Hues walks off with­out his suit­case, which sprouts legs and chases after him. This video was nom­i­nated for Best New Artist at the 1984 MTV Music Awards, but lost to Eury­th­mics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

Mem­o­ries
“Dance Hall Days” is one of the few songs I can hear and instantly feel six­teen again. The song and the music video were in heavy rota­tion on radio and T.V. in the Sum­mer of 1984, which I feel was the apoth­e­o­sis of MTV. There’s just some­thing about the gui­tar and synth, the cryp­tic lyrics, and the sur­real video that has remained with me over the past almost thirty years.

What are your mem­o­ries of “Dance Hall Days” by Wang Chung?

Top Ten Red Flags Revealed Through Conversation on a First Date

 Communication, Humor, Men's Interest, Relationships, Self-Help, Top Ten Thursdays, Women's Interest  2 Responses »
May 092013
 

Bad DateA sin­gle friend of mine told me recently that she knows within ten min­utes of a first date, she knows whether she should agree to a sec­ond date or go into the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram.  When I asked her how she knew, she said what peo­ple say always gives them­selves away.  Here are ten exam­ples of red flags revealed through con­ver­sa­tion on a first date:

01.  “You remind me so much my dead wife.  Did I men­tion she was a saint?”

02. “I ordered a bot­tle of wine.  Did you want one for your­self, too?”

03. “A lot of women say they want a baby, but basi­cally it’s just a par­a­site liv­ing on the pla­centa of the liv­ing and mak­ing no con­tri­bu­tion to society.”

04. “Peo­ple always ask me about the chain­saw I carry in the back of my pickup, then I usu­ally show them how much fun it is to scare hitchhikers.”

05. “Some women like men to give them jew­elry.  For me, I pre­fer to be made the ben­e­fi­ciary of a large life insur­ance policy.”

06. “As soon as I saw your boobs, I knew you were the one.”

07. “The facil­i­ta­tor of my anger man­age­ment group told me I need to be forth­right about my his­tory of restrain­ing orders, but he really pisses me off.”

08. “I hope you don’t mind my mother tag­ging along.  We do every­thing together.”

09. “My ex-girlfriend told me I was a sex addict, but I can quit at any time–and I never have sex alone.”

10. “You seem like the kind of a guy who doesn’t care about a girl with a lit­tle mus­tache prob­lem.  I should know; I’ve been shav­ing since I was eleven.”

Word Up Wednesday: Charaz

 Dictionary, Humor, Religion, Spirituality, Vocabulary, Word Up Wednesdays  1 Response »
May 082013
 

Communion CupCharaz (noun) \shuh-rahz\ — Grape juice used in place of wine in some protes­tant communions.

Exam­ple: After sit­ting through the ser­mon with the ram­bunc­tious triplets while vis­it­ing her in-laws, Peggy had looked for­ward to a shot of wine dur­ing the Lord’s Sup­per, only to dis­cover the Church of Christ served charaz.

Can you use charaz in a sentence?

Man Has Alien and Anal Probe Surgically Removed from His Anus

 Aliens, Animals, Humor, News of the Weird, Parody, So So Southern, Tall Tale Tuesdays  1 Response »
May 072013
 

Truck DriverLeroy Burns, 43, a deliv­ery dri­ver for the Wishy Wash­ing Laun­dry Ser­vice, was found run­ning naked through the Hole-in-One Donut Shop/Minature Golf Course early Sun­day morning.

Local police took Burns to the emer­gency room at Kissim­i­coochee Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal after he com­plained of dis­com­fort of the bowels.

Doc­tors removed a large pickle and the car­cass of an uniden­ti­fied crea­ture with large eyes from Burns’ anus.

Burns claimed he was abducted by a U.F.O. while fish­ing in his pon­toon boat on Lake Yukatuka.  “They stripped me naked as a jay­bird and strapped me down to an exam­in­ing table where this lit­tle bald, gray guy messed with my where-the-sun-don’t-shine regions with one of them anal probes,” he said.

Burns, who suf­fers from a con­di­tion known as spon­ta­neous reverse flat­u­lence, said he suf­fered an attack dur­ing the exam­i­na­tion and the alien and anal probe were sucked into his rec­tal cav­ity where they remained until the fly­ing saucer ran out of gas and crashed in the lake.

Although Burns claimed the con­tents of his anus prove the exis­tence of extrater­res­trial life, local author­i­ties claim the alien (after being cleaned up) bears a remark­able resem­blance to Ms. Net­tie B. Perkins’ prize Chi­huahua, Chi­clet, who dis­ap­peared last week.

When asked about the anal probe, Sher­iff Hux­ley said it appeared to be sweet gherkin, but he was not curi­ous enough to take a bite and con­firm it.  He said Burns will be held at the county jail until police have com­pleted their investigation.

 Permalink  Essays, Humor, Memory Mondays  1 Response »
May 062013
 

Credit Card Reader KeypadYes­ter­day, as I was check­ing out at Kroger, some­thing unex­pected hap­pened:  I for­got the PIN for my debit card.

Now, if I had received the PIN recently, I wouldn’t be alarmed, as they’re typ­i­cally a ran­dom string of num­bers that rarely spell out any­thing remotely resem­bling a van­ity license plate.  How­ever, I’ve had my debit card with the same PIN num­ber for so many years now, I should use them for my lotto.

Nev­er­the­less, I found my index fin­ger cir­cling the key­pad of the credit card reader like peo­ple on a low-carb diet wait­ing for an all-you-can-eat Chi­nese buf­fet to open on their cheat day.  How could I for­get my PIN? I won­dered.  I’d been get­ting more rest, exer­cis­ing reg­u­larly, eat­ing a healthy diet, and–here’s the most amaz­ing part–I’d actu­ally been drink­ing those dang eight cups of water every day.  If any­thing, I should have been able to cal­cu­late num­bers in my head like Dustin Hoff­man in Rain­man.

““Is every­thing okay?” the clerk asked.

““Yeah, yeah, just warm­ing up my touch-key fin­ger,” I said, try­ing to buy time.  I felt like it was just on the tip of my vir­tual tongue.

The lady in line behind me with her toi­let paper and Sugar-Free Orange Smooth Meta-Mucil cleared her throat and peered down her nose through her bifo­cals at me.

Giv­ing into pres­sure.  I punched in the first num­bers that came to mind, but they were incorrect.

I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry, I hit a wrong but­ton.”  I can­celed the method of pay­ment and swiped my debit card a sec­ond time.  Again, none of the com­bi­na­tions of num­bers seemed famil­iar.  In fact, it felt like I’d never met any of the num­bers between zero and nine before.  Finally, I can­celed the method of pay­ment again and paid with my last bit of cash.

The rest of the day, my PIN dogged me.  I just couldn’t seem to recall what it was.  It was like dat­ing some­one for sev­eral years and then not being able to pick them out of a police lineup.

I called 2Fs for reas­sur­ance.  “Hey, I for­got my PIN today at the gro­cery store. Is that normal?”

““And you’re ask­ing me this because …”

I knew what he was hint­ing at, but I wasn’t tak­ing the bait.  “Um, you’re so much wiser than I …”

““And I’m wiser because …”

I cleared my throat.  “You’ve, um, have lived longer than I have.”  I waited patiently while he laughed mani­a­cally.  You see, I refuse to embrace the cliche that every lit­tle hic­cup relates to me grow­ing older.  ”“Look, just because you’re a 50+ indi­vid­ual doesn’t mean you should go shop­ping for prime moun­tain­top prop­erty yet.  I just wanted to know whether you’ve ever expe­ri­enced for­get­ting some­thing that you knew quite well.”

““Well, I sup­pose I can let you off easy on this one,” 2Fs said.  “In the sec­ond grade, I once stud­ied so hard for a spelling test over the week­end, I for­got how to spell my name.”

I released a sigh of relief.  “See, it’s not an age thing, it’s just a … thing.”

““Yeah, go on and keep telling your­self that, but as you age, it’s going to hap­pen a lot more often.”  Jeff honked his horn and shouted at another dri­ver.  “Do you remem­ber your PIN now?”

““No, but I’m sure it’ll come to me.”

““Why don’t you just look at your bank­ing records at home to con­firm what it is?”

““Well, I’d have to remem­ber where I put those bank­ing records, wouldn’t I?” I conceded.

2Fs sighed.  “I shall pray for you.”

I must admit, after I hung up, things felt pretty hope­less.  For­tu­nately, it was a busy day and I soon for­got about it.  It wasn’t until that night, as I was try­ing to heat up a Lean Cui­sine that every­thing came around.  I kept try­ing to punch in four min­utes and 30 sec­onds into the microwave key­pad, but the dis­play showed some­thing else.  I rubbed my tired eyes, cleared the screen and tried again.  It wasn’t until about the fifth time that I rec­og­nized I was try­ing to enter my PIN into the microwave.

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