Maybe even this second chance left you tepid. Maybe you didn’t think about the song for months. But one day, over a plate of seafood pasta at a local bar and grill, the music returned to you, muffled, from the restaurant’s sound system. You thought you were merely enjoying some succulent scallops and fettuccine, but at work all around you were the song’s subtle tendrils of awesome, creeping into your brain between strained conversation, awakening within you a passion that must have lain dormant in your soul until this moment.

The next thing you know, you’re in your car wondering exactly how many times you can listen to Kelly Clarkson’s I Do Not Hook Up on repeat before your brain physically shuts down. And it’s crucial to know, because you will definitely be playing the song on repeat that number of times minus one.

Wikipedia claims that I Do Not Hook Up “has received unanimously positive reviews since [its] release,” so I want to be sure and tread carefully here, as I run the risk of being redundant and fading into the background (literally my worst nightmare).  For eff’s sake, the song is a pop powerhouse: rocking guitar…a chorus that dares you not to jump to your feet…KC’s reliably wicked pipes…

I won’t bore you. The reason I decided to blog about IDNHU today, almost 4 months after its release – other than the fact that I am utterly incapable of being timely in anything I do – is because the lyrics spoke to me. Yes, personally.

[Editor's note: there is a wooden sign hanging by the side of a road outside of Benton, PA that reads "You personally must accept Christ as your savior." I sh*t you not. Please consider the previous reference an undying monument to that sign's hilarity. Carry on.]

It seems ridiculous to point out that songs are much like poems, but in my experience, many people don’t realize the amazing mutability of poetry. The more you read a poem – or in this case, listen to a song – the more layers of meaning unfold. And hearing some of the words in a new way forces you to hear others in a new way, and so on, until the poem/song is a kaleidoscope of meanings, impressions, and emotions inspired both by the writers and by your unique interpretations of the words.

All right, I’m done gushing about poetry – but seriously, read some.

Anyway, needless to say, a week straight of IDNHU playing constantly (either on my stereo or in my head) plus a little late-summer loneliness is a killer combo. The presence of lots of easy cliches (“boys will be boys;” “with a snap of your finger;” “love the one you’re with,” etc, etc.) makes it easy to believe the song is vapid, but I now find myself overlooking the cliches  in favor of the broader metaphor of the song and the truths it speaks about the peculiar condition of being in love.

The premise of the song seems simple: the subject (“you”) is suffering from heartbreak of one variety or another, and KC spends 3 1/2 minutes prescribing a cure.  This does interesting things with the title line of the song, which many have interpreted as a testament to chastity or abstinence or waiting for marriage or some other repulsive agenda along those lines.

Blech. I see “hook up” being used here to mean “a drug hook up” as much as a sexy-times hook up. KC is the person who knows how to cure the subject’s broken heart, and a hook-up is not the answer (“A quick fix will never get you well”).  So, contrary to what some prefer to think, when KC says “I do not hook up,” she doesn’t mean “I’m a repressed virgin who won’t let you touch me unless it’s with a ring,” she means “I won’t let you medicate yourself numb when you need real care.”

You know, just like a psychiatrist with a non-rich clientele. Which makes the line “If you want me, I don’t come cheap” both funny and true.

And, incidentally, this taps into some of those “truths” I mentioned earlier. I appreciate the frankness of a song that credits a) our drive to fix people’s brokenness (“I can’t cook, no, but I can clean up the mess she left”) and b) our desire that someone find us worth fixing (“I see you through those bloodshot eyes”) with being powerful factors in falling in love.  As a rule, we don’t like to think about these things because it seems to cheapen the long-exalted concept of love. Or perhaps we don’t realize their influence because of how genuine love feels.

Or perhaps I’ve made that final, irreversible plunge into the depths of bitterness. Not ruling it out. I’ll leave that one up to you and Kelly Clarkson.

In case you readers were wondering how on earth I got away with chronicling my extremely personal, unnecessarily loquacious journey from uninspired to the opposite of that last week, the answer is: I didn’t.

If you want to know the truth, the universe has, in no uncertain terms, registered its displeasure with my melodramatic biblical references and metaphorical tears by unleashing an all-too-literal flood upon my abode.  Not even the whole house; just my room, where air conditioner evaporation-pan overflow (or some sh*t like that) filled two buckets with its constant dripping throughout the night.

That’s right, readers. You may think being subjected to my whims of verbiage is cruel and unusual, but the whole damn universe just went Dick Cheney on my ass. So, suck it up.

Anywayyyys…today’s pick peaked at #3 on the Hot 100 chart this week. Check out Keri Hilson’s Knock You Down featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo here. I linked you in since you really ought to see the original video, which is unembeddable thanks to copyright laws and whatevah whatevah.

It’s a song about love. It’s a song about synth. It’s undeniably a song about how you should really be dancing right now. What I really wanted this week was another song to tear apart, limb from limb, like it was a Philly Grrl mix cd, and as I listened to Knock You Down I felt sure I was going to be disappointed.  Keri Hilson can sing, and even though her lyrics are pretty cliche and sappy, well, that’s really what a summer love song is all about, and I can’t deny that she’s working it.

And then Ne-Yo steps in and delivers the mixed metaphor line that shoves KYD solidly into “gloriously ridiculous pop” territory:

I used to be commander-in-chief for my pimp ship flying high

That’s right. He is the president of the nation-state that is his own FLYING PIMP SHIP. I just need a moment to bask in that….ahhh…

But just as I start thinking this song could really make my Most Played list, Kanye hops in at the end and takes a big crap all over my buzz with his astonishingly bad rap.

I say “astonishingly bad” not only because I was astonished at how bad it was, but also because I was astonished that such mediocre rap was coming from Kanye West.  I’ll admit I was immediately put off by

Tell me now can you make it past your caspers

So we could finally fly off into NASA

…as if Kanye were plotting to crash Ne-Yo’s flying pimp ship into the agency’s headquarters as a hilarious act of pop terrorism.  Sadly, I think what’s actually happening is a stretch for a rhyme that has somehow made “NASA” synonymous with “space” and…that…is unacceptable.

Perhaps my whole vision of Kanye’s verse is tainted by this sketchy start, but the rhymes continue to seem forced, and as a result his narrative stumbles back and forth between clunky phrasing ( “So please don’t mess up the trick;” “Let the hour glass pass right into ashes”) and cliche (“You was always the cheerleader of my dreams/ Seem to only date the head of football teams”).

Kanye? Kanye, I’m bored.

So taken aback was I by the fact that Mr. West is the cold sore on the lip of this song that I took a few minutes to do some background research. (What?? I know. Bear with me.) The KYD Wiki confirms that Kanye’s vocals were a last-minute addition to the single.

Annnnd it shows. Wikipedia also quotes from this DigitalSpy review in which Nick Levine takes issue with Hilson’s choice to bring bigger names onto the track…because he thinks Kanye “steals the show with some typically ballsy rapping.”

Let me edit that line for accuracy, if I may:

“[Kanye] steals the [vomit right out of my mouth] with some…rapping [that is balls].”

You’re welcome, Nick.

//Tune in next week for more suckage. And email your picks and pet peeves to wegotthebits@gmail.com//

I drove into work today without the slightest idea of what I would write about this week.  I hadn’t heard anything new and noteworthy, one way or the other, and I had my doubts about how many weeks I could get away with writing about not-necessarily-recent songs that I just happen to like, and still have you all believe this was a topical pop music review column.

Approaching my desk, a lone tear swelled and dropped from my eye, a single gleaming reminder that the illusion would soon be shattered, the velvet curtain pulled back, that my days as a member of the pop music intelligentsia were now numbered.

And their number…was one.  I was sucked into a greased downward spiral of hopelessness and despair (even more so than I usually am at the start of my shifts).

BUT LO, FROM THE VILLAGE OF INBOX THERE SHON A DIM BUT CONSTANT LIGHT.

Could this be? No, surely it was a figment of my imagination, a momentary hallucination created by my reeling ego to engender false hope and eventually sharpen the pain of my inevitable failure.

YET STILL THERE SHON THE LIGHT.

Oh readers, it WAS true! Not only was I to avoid ruination (this week), but it was none other than the Philly Grrl who had thrown herself upon the seldom-bestowed mercy of my haphazard musical tastes.

A MERCY SHE WOULD NOT RECEIVE. And here’s why…

Because this song friggin’ sucks.  I’ll be honest, readers, I have to keep listening to it over and over again while I review it because there isn’t a line or note in there worth remembering.  It’s literally like my brain recognizes that this is all completely useless input and refuses to retain any of it for any length of time.

It’s like Cobra Starship had some vague hope of making this into a Timbaland-level dance hit along the lines of the fabulous The Way I Are, but really they’re just a bunch of barely-pubescent kids dancing in front of the web cam in their underwear thinkin’ they sound like Mariah Carey (and speaking of amateurs, how in the eff does Leighton Meester have anything to do with this? And why do her parents hate her so much? Unsolved mysteries.)

I mean, never have the same twelve bars on a loop sounded less like music. Pop should be like cotton candy, melting easily in your metaphorical mouth and leaving behind a little bit of sugar. Good Girls Go Bad disintegrates in your mouth and leaves behind a little bit of bile.

And seldom is so very littled conveyed in 3 1/2 minutes worth of crowing (not to mention egregious “I-think-when-I’m-singing-this-is-what-I’m-supposed-to-do-with-my-hand” gesturing).  Take a moment, if you dare, to review the lyrics.

For those of you who don’t have the time, or who are taking notes, let me wrap up by distilling those down to a neat, bullet-pointed summary for you:

-He makes them good girls go bad.

-He knows you.

-You’re a good girl.

-He makes you go bad.

-Good girls go bad.

-She knows him.

-He is a bad boy.

-She was a good girl with an apparent hormone imbalance who, overwhelmed with lust, has succumbed to his indescribable undescribed charm and is now bad. At the time the song was recorded, she has not yet had the pleasure of vomiting up the drinks he bought her while wondering why, exactly, she would sleep with someone just because he liked to hang out in a dark corner of the club [Editor's note: This never works for me] and taking the bus to the nearest CVS for a morning-after cocktail of Plan B and refrigerated Star Bucks espresso shots.

- He makes them good girls go bad.

-Completely uncalled-for cheer sequence that Gwen Stefani couldn’t even pull off, what are you even trying to DO TO ME??

-Good girls go bad.

The only thing left to say is, Really, Philly Grrl? Danceable? …Pshaw.

/Send you pop dreck to wegotthebits@gmail.com and you, too, can have your spot blown up on the internets next Friday.//

It’s true that I have some beef with the Black Eyed Peas. Let’s just say I find their beats flaccid, their lyrics trite and in general I think they’re a pretty talentless act.

Let’s also say that this in no way means they did not release what is obviously the pop anthem smash hit of the summer, I Gotta Feeling.

How, you may ask, are these two things not contradictory? This is the fabulous nature of pop itself, readers.  Pop demands nothing of its artists beyond a marketable look and sound (which is not to say that some pop artists don’t boast much more).  This can be a bad thing, in the case of such regrettable music as Boom Boom Pow – and by the way, my brain still dribbles out my ears a little every time I think about how that song is apparently marketable.

It also means that if you (and by “you” I obviously mean “The Black Eyed Peas”) have the straight up balls to admit that what you really are is not “artists” but vessels for selling music with mass appeal you stand a good chance of making an awesome song that may actually be deserving of its popularity.

Enter I Gotta Feeling. The music is simple, repetitive, and uplifting. It makes me want to dance.  It definitely makes me want to dance. So: check.

It’s also an entire song about getting fucked up and dancing – of which, unlike spitting sick rap, I have no problem believing the Black Eyed Peas are capable.  Boasting about something you actually have the means to back up? Reality: check.

I Gotta Feeling brings the BEPs back into the realm of “self-aware comma patently ridiculous” (yea, thou must speaketh the comma aloud) from “utterly ridiculous comma totally annoying.”  A few of the highlights:

-When Will.I.Am repeats the line “fill up my cup,” and Fergie, beginning a series of call-and-response lines, simply hollers “DRINK!” at the top of her lungs. Not gonna lie, that’s my favorite part of the song.

-”Like Oh My Gawd”  …’nuff said.

-Okay, so the parts when Will.I.Am just says “do it” 187,000,000 times in a row verges on ear-bleedy. But honestly it takes up a good 30 seconds of the song in which he could be saying something infinitely more retarded.  ZING! Funny and true.

I could babble on about the details, but the fact of the matter is, this song is exactly what I was looking for in a summer pop smash.  It makes the perfect soundtrack for pre-gaming a night of epic crunkitude and dancing until one drops.

So while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the BEPs have earned my respect, they have indubitably earned my momentary obsession.

Go forth and dance.

/and send all your pop flotsam to wegotthebits@gmail.com//

Yeah, yeah, so I didn’t post for the past two Fridays. I was on VACATION, OKAY?!? I was too busy floating in the 85 degree dolphin-populated waters off the Savannah coast and gay bar hopping and drinking Sweetwater Blue, O’FRIGGIN’KAY? But now I’m back. *quiet sobbing*

And I don’t even want to talk about moving this past week except to say that I’m pretty sure I’m having pains in imaginary muscles right now. For instance, my glattulars are killing me. And also to say, R.I.P. 1722! We hardly knew ye. We never even got to set off fireworks on your roof! *quiet sobbing*

But all unnecessary back story aside, to atone for my bloggy sins this week I’ve decided to bring you a belated Independence Day post, featuring my top 5 favorite non-American (arguably) pop artists. Yeah, I’m not much of a patriot. So, in no particular order, here are five artists whose entire repertoire I could listen to on loop for weeks on end:

The Smiths.

What is there to say except “Marry me, Morrissey?”

Seriously. Morrissey has more lyrical vision than…well, I was going to make a comparison but there simply isn’t one. He walks a line between complex imagery that is often hauntingly just out of grasp and self-deprecating humor that banishes any urge to take depressive lines too seriously.

And you have to love a man who can moan and yodel his way through a song. And who can stuff a sunny day ditty chock-full of literary references or croon one used-up line over and over again and somehow make both songs feel like they were written about your life, which by the way has been much improved by the mere presence of the magnificence that is The Smiths. (Apologies, by the way, for the Cemetery Gates video, which is both unimaginative and full of unattractive people. Yuck.)

Also rec’d: This Charming Man; There Is A Light That Never Goes Out; Half A Person; everything else you can get your hands on.

The Sounds.

The Sounds may not offer quite the same lyrical smorgasbord as The Smiths… but they just rock. so. effing. hard. Their frantic drum, unstoppable synth and classic guitar riffs combine with Maja Ivarsson’s vocal ferocity to melt your face off with the force of pure awesome.

I would challenge you to listen to The Sounds without leaping to your feet to wail on a wicked air guitar, but you’d only fail and I don’t want to damage your already frail self-esteem.

Also rec’d: Ego; Song With A Mission; Rock N Roll; everything else you can get your hands on. And speaking of singers I wouldn’t kick out of bed…

Kate Nash.

In addition to being adorable, Kate Nash is also hi-friggin-larious. Among the many things my co-workers surely judge me for is the 6 hours I once spent shaking with quiet laughter at my desk as I searched every Kate Nash song in existence.

Her kicky, folksy music may not bowl you over, but her lyrics are honest to the point of endearing – which also endows them with their unique humor.

Also rec’d: Merry Happy; Mouthwash; Flourescent Adolescent (Arctic Monkeys cover); everything else you can get your hands on.

Belle & Sebastian.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a recent convert to Belle & Sebastian. At first I thought my love for this group could only be explained by the association formed from smoking doobies in my friend’s room in South Carolina and listening to their albums on loop for 3 days, so loudly was the music playing in my head at all hours.

And while I’m sure that helped, I can now attest that I am unnaturally obsessed with Belle & Sebastian even when not under the influence of vacation, etc. It’s been a week and a half now and I still can’t go 20 minutes without mouthing the lyrics to one of their songs. (Yes, I am starting to resemble a psych patient and/or crackhead.)

Their music is complex and catchy, incorporating the violin and trumpet in addition to your standard guitar, keyboard, drums and bass. Their lyrics are consistently clever and most of the songs weave sexually suggestive narratives about unusual women and existential crises. What more could I ask for in a band?

Also rec’d: Sukie in the Graveyard; The Blues Are Still Blue; Dress Up In You; everything else you can get your hands on. And finally, the quintessential European pop royalty that is

ABBA.

Oh, sweet ABBA. I bask in the glory of your inanity, your musical simplicity, your pop-for-pop’s sake. Your karaoke potential. Your drag queen potential. You effing embody pop music. And, as Ste would say, you guys have your harmonies down.

If you don’t like ABBA, then you can suck dicks and fall down. Because ABBA are pop gods, do you hear me? GODS. That is all.

Also rec’d: Lay All Your Love On Me; Take A Chance On Me; Chiquitita; everything else you can get your hands on (this is not a suggestion).

/Next week we will return to your regularly-scheduled pop-bashing programming. To facilitate the process, email your most loved/hated pop songs to wegotthebits@gmail.com//

In the interest of full disclosure, let me make one thing clear right up front: I really liked Crank That.  Call me crazy, but the simple beat against the bold rhythm of the words never failed to make me want to dance.  Plus, let’s be honest, any song featuring the refrain “supersoak that ho” gets automatic points for audacity.

And I, like many others, was intrigued by Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em‘s overnight success publishing his own music online.  Unfortunately, in his desperation to avoid the moniker of “One Hit Wonder” Soulja Boy unleashed Turn My Swag On upon the world.

And I would rather be known as a one-hit wonder than the artist behind Turn My Swag On any day.

There are some words in Swag On. I hesitate to call them “lyrics.” When you listen to the song it seems like three and a half interminable minutes of “What’s ups, ” “Yeahhhs,” and “Turn my swag ons.”  That’s because these empty phrases offer at least as much substance as the little else Soulja Boy says in this song (that is to say, none.)

Perhaps that’s unfair. Swag On does make a weak attempt to tell the tale of Soulja Boy:

I’m back again,
I know a lot of y’all thought I wasn’t coming back
Yeahhh, yeahhh
I had to prove them wrong,
Got back in the studio and came up with another hit
Yeahhh, yeahhh
I told the world my story, the world where I’m from
SouljaboyXL.com, boy what’s up?
Yeahhh, yeahhh

The problem is that the tale of Soulja Boy is the opposite of interesting. And being told straight out that Swag On exists solely for the purpose of being Soulja Boy’s second hit somehow doesn’t make me want to listen to it more.

I wish I could sit here and drag this song through the mud a little but more but, frankly, it’s so vapid that I’m boring myself  even writing about it. I mean, “bad” can mean so many things…the list of colorful synonyms is so long that I can even write a column about shitty pop music every week without getting bored.  But this song isn’t even a sort of bad worth using a thesaurus.

It’s just plain old, watered-down, standard bad, right down to the tired beat. BOOM BOOM tsch, BOOM…BOOM tsch – over and over again like f*cking water torture. Dressing it up with those little percussive bells and whistles doesn’t stop me from wanting to give up and tell my captors everything, if only they would end my misery.

[Editor's Note: If you are harboring a secret love for this song (as some of you must be, since it's still at #32 on the Billboard Hot 100), or if you don't want to see your dreams of becoming a self-produced smash hit take a blow, I could - maybe - excuse you for listening to the remix with Lil' Wayne.  I mean, at least they're actually rapping.  And it has to win points for the hilarious Lil' Wayne line "Holla back, bitch, I'm in the bathroom, takin' me a rich nigga shit."]

I’d like to make Green Day the winners of my first ever Most Depreciated Band award (unless someone can come up with a better name for the inverse of a “Most Improved” award, b/c I cannot).  As Exhibit A, I present their most recent smudge of psuedo-revolutionary dreck, Know Your Enemy.

I don’t know about Green Day, but MY enemy is 3 lines of melody masquerading as a song. Have you seen that anywhere? Sneaky bastard.  Definitely gives me violent urges.

But the thing about this song that really pushes it into the category of “unforgivable travesty” is its message.  You would think that after 3 full minutes of Billie Joe Armstrong screaming directives at you, you would at least know what that message is.  Why don’t you? If you haven’t figured it out already, give the lyrics a read (it won’t take long) and see if you can’t pin down where exactly Know Your Enemy goes horribly wrong.

Yes readers, it’s true. While the boys of Green Day obviously think it imperative that you “know your enemy”  – because, as they eloquently put it, you “gotta know the enemy” – they fail to give us even the tiniest inkling of who, exactly, “the enemy” is.   Maybe they don’t know.  More importantly, they couldn’t care less. 

Green Day has successfully co-opted the directionless, adolescent anger of their punk roots and turned it into vacuous psuedo-revolutionary rhetoric to be hawked for profit.  (This worked out pretty well for them during the Bush administration, when it was indeed difficult to pick only one focus for  political ire.)  Know Your Enemy is the ultimate hypocrisy, even more so coming from the mouth of a man who has long railed against hypocrisy and who used to encourage fans to think twice before doing something simply because someone else says you should.

It’s f*cking insulting.   And I’m not even a huge Green Day fan.  But I’ve heard your music, Billie Joe.  You can’t tell us for years and years that we need to be discriminating about which social influences we choose to obey, and then try to incite us to violence by hollering a few boring lines at us about an amorphous enemy.  The really sad part is that after years of making a name for yourself as a semi-respectable non-conformist, now you want to play at being a counter-culture prophet by exploiting those who are still willing to listen to you spew badly-written bullsh*t.

Attention Green Day fans: The band is using fear (of conformity, of authority, of “the enemy”) to try and get you to break sh*t while they sit pretty on the millions you’ve given them.  Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Green Day, I mean the Bush administration.

Billie Joe, your faux-corporate-stooge shirt-and-tie look is no longer ironic. It’s time to give it a rest.

/Don’t forget to email the best of your pop dos and don’ts to wegotthebits@gmail.com//

Here’s the deal, readers: it’s 3am. I’m at work. I am personally overseeing the top secret birthday surprise of a very dear friend in T-minus 16 hours. Between now and then I have to figure out how to a) not fall asleep at my desk, b) fall asleep in my bed, and c) make my room look like a tacky mess in a fun, self-parodying, super-gay way.

But rather than officially take the day off, I figured I’d phone in a blog and charge you minutes of your life anyway. So dig in to #9 on this week’s Billboard top 100 chart. And please refrain from vomiting it back up onto your plate.

Sean Kingston’s Fire Burning

I really hope it is apparent to all of you from the get-go that any song featuring the lines

Somebody call 911

Shawty fire burning on the dance floor

does, indeed, suck. But if you need further convincing, you can check out the lyrics here. I’m a particular fan of the worst attempt at being deep since Paris Hilton’s election video “Shawty is cool like fire.”

In case you were worried that you might ever be tempted to dance to such a song, fear not. Between the cookie-cutter synth beat and generous sprinkling of “whoa-oh-ohs” you’ll undoubtedly think you’ve fallen into a tear in the time-space continuum into 1996, so I doubt dancing will be your first concern.

Not that Sean Kingston thinking he can pull off Lene Nystrøm Rasted isn’t reason enough for concern. Seriously.

In lieu of further pop-bashing on my end this fine morning (*gurgle*), I issue a challenge to you, dear readers:

Can you name one reason why Sean Kingston deserves to exist?

Seriously.

/be sure to email all of your dirty little pop secrets to wegotthebits@gmail.com and see your pick in big internet lights next Friday. Or don’t, whatever, it’s your life.//

Katy Perry: Cheap Zooey Deschanel knock-off? Definitely. Responsible for some of the most inane music and backwards lyrics in recent pop history? For sure. A sign of the coming apocalypse? Quite possibly.

But today, readers, Katy Perry is the catalyst of a blogging decision I may soon come to regret.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what I could possibly  say about Waking Up in Vegas.  Lyrically, this song is extra-spicy lame sauce.  While I (sort of) appreciate the weak attempt to weave some semblance of a story into the song, the lyrics fall into the same over-simplified and cliche-ridden trap as every other KP song I’ve heard.

(Such as Hot N Cold, which – by the way, can we talk about it for a(nother) second? – reads like a pre-school-level children’s book of opposites:

You’re hot then you’re cold

you’re yes then you’re no

you’re in then you’re out

you’re up then you’re down

My “B.” I meant “a pre-school-level children’s book of the most basic possible cliches of opposites.”)

It’s kind of a shame because the music video does a pretty amusing job of telling the story…but when KP sings lines like “You’re hungover and I’m broke,” “I lost my fake ID,” and “Did we get hitched last night?” it sounds like a 14-year-old kid writing a story about what they think it would be like to go to Vegas.

It’s safe to say that this song is suffering two major setbacks: 1) Katy Perry sings it and 2) Katy Perry wrote it (along with 2 other people. Mind: blown.)

But in spite of these things, readers, in spite of my own pretenses to good taste and sound judgment, in spite of the bile rising in my throat as I type these words, I cannot bring myself to say definitively that Waking Up In Vegas sucks.

It’s just so darn danceable.  It does, in fact, make me want to “get up and shake the glitter off my clothes” (as far as I’m concerned,  the one redeemable line/image in the song.)

Take from this what you will.  Personally, I will never play this song in my car with the windows rolled down. However, if it happens to play while I’m (drunk and) in sight of a crowded dance floor… I… will be on that dance floor.

And I will be dancing.

In an attempt to rationalize my feelings for this song, I’ve rounded up a couple of decent remixes (Manhattan Clique, Calvin Harris) for your listening pleasure.  And if you don’t believe a remix can take a song from shameful to acceptable, listen to Jojo’s Too Little Too Late before and after the Harris Dance Remix. And then email me all your dirty little pop secrets at wegotthebits@gmail.com.

All right, so this post, cleverly entitled “PET SITTERS NEEDED” has been up on Philly’s Craigslist for like a year now. I wonder why they haven’t filled the positions?

OH YEAH BECAUSE THEY HAVE AS MANY REQUIREMENTS AS THE FBI.

But my favorite is this one:

Be looking for long term, permanent work. This is not the job for someone looking for any job until something “better” comes along.

Hell, I can name a dozen people off the top of my head who dream of becoming career pet sitters. I mean, come on: $15/hour, part-time, no benefits and a “go-with-the-flow” schedule including nights, weekends and holidays really sets one up for retirement. I can just picture the blessed few who qualify for this job bending over to pick up a steaming fresh dog turd at 3am on Thanksgiving Day, and thinking to themselves:

Here I am. I’ve really made it.