push it to the floor till the engine screams

I work at one of Greater Boston’s many universities, and one of the great perks of my job is the unbridled opportunities for people-watching it provides. Every trip to the restroom, vending machines, or ATM yields insightful (and often painful) glimpses into the lives of that strange breed of creature known as the “college student.”

Although nothing will ever top the time I quite literally ran into two wild turkeys out for a late afternoon stroll behind one of the lecture halls, yesterday’s sojourn in search of some decent vend-o-fare did include some interesting material for the empirical anthropologist. At the entrance to one of the college buildings, I crossed paths with a rather hirsute and odiferous individual who bore all the distinct markings of the stereotypical male sci-fi/comics/RPG fan, right down to the patchy beard and air of disdainful superiority.

Considering my well documented set of hobby-horses and other assorted interests, it may seem hypocritical for me to tag others of the tribe with labels. Fandom is not monolithic, however, and as an Algonquin from the Northeast would have been certainly puzzled by certain customs and practices of a member of the plains-dwelling Sioux -- and vice versa -- there are aspects of fan culture which remain baffling to me. I have spent too much time dwelling in the houses of the non-fan, perhaps.

That’s all beside the point, though, because there was something about this particular fanboy that set him apart from his peers: He was carrying a large, old-school boom box with him, with the Star Wars: Episode IV soundtrack blasting from its tinny speakers. In these days of listening technology, where smaller and more personal is better, projecting a full-on sonic assault in a ten-yard radius around one’s self can only be seen as a deliberate act of attention-mongering only slightly more subdued than having John Williams and the London Philharmonic follow one around and play the music live. It struck me as the ultimate realization of fanboy megalomania, the overwhelming compulsion to relentlessly inflict one’s interests upon passers-by, while the passers-by merely roll their eyes and do their best to escape.

One thing that struck me after the fact was “Why the Star Wars theme?” The franchise does have its share of obsessively hardcore adherents, but it has also become part of the mass popcult consciousness. Everyone knows the theme to the first film, even folks with minimal interest in the movies, books, and related ephemera. The fanboy’s choice of music flew in the face of conventional fan-behavior where there’s premium put on exclusivity, which in turn provides opportunities for condescending pedantry: “Oh, you would think that. Obviously you’ve never seen the Japanese laserdisc version.” It’s a form of (arguably) secular Calvinism that puts an emphasis on proselytizing, but only for the sake of reminding those outside the elect that they are stupid, while the proselytizer is a genius. I’d have been less surprised if he’d played the theme to some as-yet-unlicensed-for-American-release anime series, a filk remix of the Man from Atlantis theme, or Rush’s 2112.

It got me to thinking about what tracks I’d select for my own intrusively blasted theme song (though I pray that I’ll never have to face that particular demon). After careful consideration, I narrowed the field down to two worthy candidates. The final choice would depend on my mood at the time:

Mike Post & Pete Carpenter – Drive (Theme to Hardcastle & McCormick) (from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 6, 1996) – The original and superior version of the show’s theme song (with vocals by David Morgan). Truly the brightest, most glorious moment in the mismatched crimefighting duo with a bitchin’ high-end car genre of TV shows. Sure it was formulaic pap, but it was formulaic pap that spoke to the hearts and souls of a generation of kids too stupid to know better.

Quincy Jones – The Streetbeater (Theme to Sanford & Son) (from Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3, 1990) – I associate this track with pain, blinding white pain of the nausea-inducing variety. It’s not because I think it’s a bad piece, quite the contrary. Way back in the day when Maura and I first started dating, I was channel surfing and stopped on TV Land just as the theme began to play. I was thrilled; Maura wasn’t and she demanded I change the channel before the tune got stuck in her head. I tried playing “keep away” with the remote, at which point the woman I would eventually marry “accidentally” elbowed me square on the nose, causing me to black out for a few minutes.

My other strange encounter of that was considerably less irritating than the boom box nerd, but far more intriguing. In the courtyard outside the science building stood the most adorable pair of hipster undergrads, a gal and a guy, sharing a single pair of iPod earbuds as they made goo-goo eyes at each other. Ah, young love in bloom, free of all the complications, pregnancy scares, and drunken 2:00 AM phone calls…

As I dragged myself back to my dismal little cubicle, I found myself wondering what song exactly the little lovebirds happened to be listening to. My first guess was Sisqó’s “Thong Song,” the pinnacle of romantic sentiment in Western cultural history. Not even The Bard’s sublime Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate) can approach the passionate resonance of “She had dumps like a truck truck truck/Thighs like what what what/Baby move your butt butt butt.” (Ed. note: I’d sooner vote Republican than post that track here.)

After a little more reflection, I began to wonder if perhaps “Thong Song” was a little too much freak to handle in that gooey stage of their relationship. Maybe they were listening to more intellectually stimulating romantic material, like “Anthrax” from Gang of Four's 1979 LP Entertainment! It’s a heartwarming analysis of love as lensed though the Marxist concept of alienated labor and as compared to a deadly spore-borne illness. It’s one of the all time great make-out songs, too.

Then it hit me, and it was so painfully obvious that I cursed myself for not realizing it sooner. There is only one song that truly, madly, deeply captures the that sort of bliss in musical form, and that song is:

Commander Cody – Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries (from Lose It Tonight, 1980) – In the days when I used to buy used vinyl by the pound, the “C – Misc.” bins in every secondhand records shop in the metro Boston area were packed to the partitions with Commander Cody (with and without The Lost Planet Airmen) LPs. I never purchased any, but it made me contemplate why these stores just didn’t create dedicated slots for Mr. Frayne and company. Was it a case of hipper-than-thou audiophile bias against blue collar “boogie woogie” rock? Or simple laziness?

(The illustration for today's post was courteously provided by the incomparable Chris Sims.)