kjpepper | Attack of the Black 80s

The problem with iPod earbuds is that not only are they uncomfortable, they have this property of broadcasting quite clearly all of the treble registers of your music to everyone in your immediate environment. So it sorta sounds like a mosquito carrying a miniature boom box. And is about as irritating for everyone that's not you.

This morning's earbud special was a lengthy trip to the Black '80s, a magical time from about 1985-1993 when R&B was less about booty booty butt and more about insanely peppy synthesizer layered over beatbox (no real instruments here, kids), some guy named Christopher Reid popularized a haircut tall enough to qualify as a skyscraper, Bobby Brown's testicles hadn't descended yet but he still had the nerve to have a perogative, Michael Jackson was still sorta black but heading quickly towards high yellow, no one knew DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's real names, and Whitney Houston hadn't yet fucked up her singing voice with too much cocaine. Everyone wore shoulder pads, florescent pink and jungle prints, sometimes in the same outfit, and the hair... well, lest pictures of me in fifth and seventh grades come back to haunt me, it's best if I don't say much about the hair other than there was at least one inexplicable Patrick Nagel-esque print hanging in the window of every black beauty shop.

Anyway, this flashback was provided courtesy of some white chick sitting several seats in front of me on the bus with possibly neither the good sense to turn her iPod down (thust treating everyone to Whitney declaring that she will always love yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooou) or the hearing capacity to listen to it at a reasonable volume. I have to wonder if she's doing an ethnomusicology project... and I suddenly have this insane urge to watch Coming to America and Cosby Show reruns.