Life on the Fourth Floor


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Fergie and the Peas

Peas

Posted 14:52 Sunday 30th April 2007

In the comic's history there have been very few strips which saw Amy as a direct source of comedy, the ones in which she featured instead concentrating on the reactions of others towards Amy. That's certainly a perfectly acceptable way of doing things but there is something about Amy herself which is inherently funny. Hence, Saturday's offering.

Some of you may already be aware that there exists a song by the Black-Eyed Peas or some other part of the nitrogen cycle which deals with the dilemma of what one is to do with the junk within one's trunk. Apparently, the logical solution is to get another drunk - not a literal state of drunkenness but rather love-drunk - a state which can force a man to spend all his money and, indeed, all his time on one. There are also repeated references to protrusions known only as 'lady lumps', which we can only assume are similar to boobs but at the same time wholly different.

To call this song annoying would be horribly, crashingly, marvellously inadequate. To call this song insipid would be unfair to that which is truly insipid. I have not heard the song in the best part of a year but simply by typing the script earlier this week I have got it stuck in my head, permanently stuck. Perhaps a better word would be fused. When my mind is at rest, when I am thinking of nothing at all, I can hear the chorus repeating itself continuously. When I open my mouth, my first instinct is to sing about making others work for the contents of my shirt. In other words, by merely thinking about the song it has become a part of my consciousness and to destroy it would be to destroy myself. I hate the song but to hate it is to hate myself because we are one now. Oneness is all very well if it is with, say, a beautiful woman or a double JD but when it is with an unmusical pseudo-song about the indirect procurement of bling it is easy to feel more than a little frustrated.

It seemed obvious that this was a song Amy would not only sing but sing voluntarily. Not only is it every bit as stupid and vacuous as she is but the message (that women should use their bodies to manipulate men in order to directly profit, which is different to prostitution only in that there is no negotiation of contractual terms through the rolled-down window of a BMW) seemed strangely fitting as well: demeaning to women, patronising to men, populist and tacky - the zeitgeist encapsulated! Perfect.

I could well have gone with one of the audio-viruses by the, ahem, PCD. I did consider it for a time. I did not, however, agonise over this decision for hours as I did when I chose a song for the Lone Warrior to sing in the shower. Even though my friend Jason commented on that line in particular as being funny, which tells me I made the right choice, a part of my sanity is lost forever as a result of that process, I fear.

Anyhoo, I'm off to bore into my skull with a drill in an attempt to get the peas out. Have fun out there in Legoland, childs!

Fergalicious

Posted 14:37 Monday 21st May 2007

The solo contributions of ex-crystal-meth-addict Fergie seem to be overshadowing those of her troupe of pretentious hip-hop cretins in the hate-centres of my brain. Where do I start with that one? 'London Bridge'? That video was not filmed in London. She's obviously in California. I've been to London - it's not that sunny. And from what I know about the royal family I'm pretty sure there are no black palace guards. Of course, I have know way of verifying that from Leeds so if you find one please send me a photo, I would love to be proved wrong about that one. Fergie's subsequent single 'Glamorous' serves only to demonstrate her ability to spell words. I have to say I underestimated her there - glamorous is a very tricky word and she has mastered it well.

In 'Fergalicious' Fergie, giddy with her success, has decided to turn herself into an adjective, although the definition she provides ("make them boys go crazy") seems to imply it's a verb. The lexical tomfoolery doesn't stop there: she spells her own (made up) name, bravo, and her friend William joins in the fun by correctly spelling delicious (you know, in case we were confused as to which two words Fergalicious was derived from) but then is defeated by 'tasty' (he spells it T to the A to the STEY). During the course of the song, it is almost impossible to infer any meaning from the constant spouting of letters and William's pronunciation of 'd' was such that I mistook it for a 'g' (which prompts me to question what is gelicious). It was like the scene in Mrs Dalloway when the plane spells out 'toffee' in the sky. This sudden obsession with words' inidividual letters - a sort of demented hip-hop spelling bee - just reminds me of my friend Liz who spells out the word 'pussy' rather than saying it directly because she finds it so abhorrent, just as an anxious mother might spell 'h-e-double-hockey-sticks'. To me it suggests a deliberate avoidance of meaning rather than an expression of it. The only difference is that Liz manages to spell pussy correctly. Jesus, William (sorry, Will.I.am fucking hell), did you drop out of kindergarten or something?

Oh, I almost forgot. The worst part of Fergalicious is that it rips off - ahem, sorry - samples another song. Heavily. It's just karaoke with different words, in fact. Having exposed this dark conspiracy I'm going to listen to some Franz Ferdinand to clean out my system, as one might eat a bowl of bran flakes the day after Hallowe'en. Except Hallowe'en doesn't make me want pluck out my eyes. And I don't like bran flakes.

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