New Song from David the Uber Driver

I rode in a few cabs/Ubers whilst in SEVA this weekend.  My favorite ride was from my hotel in Norfolk to the Coach House.  My phone told me that David would pick me up in a blue Chevy Cruze, so when a blue Chevy Cruze pulled up I opened the door and said "David?" and David said "zman?" and I said "yes" and he said "KaMOANen!  We GOOOAN!"  I nestled into a thick plume of blunt smoke and looked at David's bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror.  I knew this would be a fun 12 minutes.

We made the first right and in a few blocks a clutch of young women dressed as naughty pirates passed in front of us.  "UUUUNNNGGHHH!" observed David.  "Indeed," I replied, "is there some sort of pirate party going on?" to which David laughingly responded "Pyra parda, pyra parda!  Nah, we own Gramma Stree, aw you eveh wan in yo life is own Gramma Stree!"  He expressed further opinions regarding Gramma Stree and then asked "You stain right by Gramma Stree, why you goan awway outta Colley?"  So I explained that I was in town for a wedding the next day, and I was meeting up with various attendees at a restaurant.  David clapped back like Clay Davis.

"Ya boy gettin murrd?!?  Y'all gah go tua strip cluuhs on Gramma Stree!!"  I demurred, "He already had a bachelor party for his first wedding, I don't think a strip club is in the cards tonight."  David was intrigued.  "He gen RE-murrd?  Sheeeeit, he must have money to get murrd twice!"  I replied "I haven't seen his balance sheet so I can't speak to that, but it's actually his third wedding so maybe he does."  David was apoplectic.  "Cot DAM!" he blurted, "this n***a a freak!  Three times, sheeeit!  He a freak!"  

The music gods intervened to save me, as David's jam came on.  I know this because he heard the early strains of the song and said "UUUUNNNGGHHH!" as he did when he saw the naughty pirates and turned the radio up very loud.  Our readers know I'm fond of hiphop and I'm no prude, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  "He can't be saying that" I thought to myself, so I Shazamed it and got this:

I then googled "shake sumn lyrics" and confirmed that yeah, DaBaby was really saying what it sounded like he was saying.  I can't do it justice, watch the video.

"Make the ghetto bitches put their hands on their knees" makes me feel like a scene from "10" where Dudley Moore complains about today's youth and their music--I can't find it on YouTube, but here are the lines:

• George Webber : If you were dancing with your wife, or girlfriend you knew in high school, and you said to her, Darling, they're playing our song, do you know what they'd be playing?

  Don : What?

  George Webber : Why Don't We Do It In The Road. Fuckin' hell kind of era is that?

Although I don't plan on pumping "Shake Sumn" from zmobile anytime soon, I might sneak it onto a jukebox the next time I'm out and overserved.

I wasn't able to completely tell this story to anyone because of my long and rambling storytelling style and everyone's general lack of interest in me.  One of Whit's high school buddies explained that "Gramma Stree" isn't Grammar Street or Grandma Street as I hypothesized, it's Granby Street, and clarified that there are no strip clubs there (but he wishes there were) and the story dissolved into a noodie bar tangent.  Similarly, I met some GTB lurkers and when I introduced David's car I said that it smelled like San Francisco and they recoiled shouting "Ah!  San Fran smells like shit and piss and vomit!" and went off on their experiences there so my story dissolved again.

Chronicles of teh Crazy

The fine Americans in our readership will be pleased to know that the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has taken a break this week from casting pointless votes to overturn Obamacare. Apparently 37 of those were enough. For now.

I NEVER TOSSED OFF!!!

Fortunately, the House has moved on to more important things. Like jobs, growth, national security, civil liberties, and taking another run at making certain types of abortion illegal. In this case virtually all abortions post 20 weeks of fertilization.

That's illogical, you say. There's no way that'll pass the Senate, and even if it does, there's no way President Obama would sign that legislation into law. Silly you, with your common sense and your cute outside-the-Beltway (metaphorically, given the geographic breakdown of our audience) simple little life. This is the United States House of Representatives we're talking about. Very Very Important People with a clear understanding of our nation's most vital priorities.

As we've said before, we're not here to debate a woman's right to choose. Not really this blog's oeuvre. But if we were going to do so, we'd be hard-pressed to find an adequate response to Rep. Michael Burgess' (R-TX) scientifically-reasoned position. According to Burgess, abortion after 15 weeks should be illegal...because fetuses like to jerk off.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” he says. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

Burgess, it should be noted, is an OB/GYN, and should probably be aware of the fact that major medical bodies in most of the developed world have refuted the notion that fetuses feel much of anything before the third trimester. I think Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) puts it better than I could when she says, “Well, I think all the members are cognizant of the fact that this is not a Congress that cares much about science."

I get honest political disagreement. I think it's critical to the function of a democratic society. But I agree with The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, who wrote yesterday, "The GOP’s' problem isn’t that it insults the intelligence of the voters. It’s that it insults its own intelligence."

I know a lot of intelligent Republicans. (Well, I know one. Two, maybe.) I wish their voices were the ones that got heard in Washington.

Instead, we get wankery about babywankery. Poor hairy-palmed little fellas. And that's just the Congressmen.