Back in ye oldern days of my life – maybe first grade – a friend of mine asked me if I knew his friend Kay.
I told him no. And why? Is she a goer?
“Well,” he began, with apparently no intention of answering my question. “If you see Kay, tell her I said hello.”
I quickly used my six-year-old mind to piece together the words – If you see Kay – to get the joke.
“How delightfully witty!” I declared. “Now let’’s go play some Duck Duck Goose.” I had no idea then, nor do I now, whether this game is capitalized, like, say Connect Four, or just some silly generic game kids don’t play anymore because it’s too dangerous, like “tag” or “punch the kids with glasses.”
In college I read James Joyce’s Ulysses. I’m not bragging; it’s an important part of the story.
There’s a dandy little poem in there that goes a little something like this:
If you see Kay,
tell her I may
see you in tea.
Tell her from me.
So this gag is at least 100 years old and is recited by six-year-olds. Bud Abbott used to say to Lou Costello, “If you see Kay, tell her Who’s on first. And keep an eye on your kid when he’s in the pool, will ya?”
Bing Crosby told Bob Hope, “If you see Kay, she’ll have another black eye because she just doesn’t listen.”
And Fatty Arbuckle said (okay, he didn’t actually say, but I believe the words were there), “If you see Kay, tell her I’d like my champagne bottle back.”
Despite all this charming history, the Parents Television Council, in all their heroic wisdom, doesn’t want your children hearing a rendition of this old vaudeville tune contained within the new Britney Spears song, which is actually called, “If You Seek Amy,” meaning what many hetero males would answer “Yes, please!” too.
Spears might as well be singing And Bingo was his name-o, but the PTC, who track whenever Jack Bauer says “bitch,” and whenever one of Vince McMahon’s wrestlers makes a slightly off-color gesture, is now after song lyrics on the radio. Of course, this group has already had a go at radio. PTC kingpin, Ole Ginger Vag Face L Brent Bozell III, has gone after the likes of Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony is the past. He’ll soon have to change the name to the “Parents All Media Council.”
Now, granted, neither of my wonderful examples have the “me” part after it. So maybe, just maybe, this Britney Spears gal is nothing but a dirty slut who needs to be spanked. I don’t know. But she’s normally such a nice girl. She may merely be looking for someone named Amy, like Ben Affleck in that Kevin Smith movie, or perhaps she’s helping somebody find this Amy girl.
Spears’s greatest crime is doing a lousy job disguising her nastiness. Back in the 80s someone like Cyndi Lauper could get “She Bop” on the radio, and likewise with Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax,” because vapid nitwits like Bozell had no idea the songs were about masturbation or engaging in anal sex in the mens room of a KFC with your same sex lover or person you just met while in line.
Stop being such a baby, Bozell!
I’ve had a good go at LBB3 in the past, but stop it. You’re not going to save us by bringing the culture back to the 50s. I would have thought Vince McMahon’s punking of you a few years ago would have humbled you a bit and made you disappear.
I used to visit Bozell’s Media Research Center Web site and raise hell anonymously by finding out which words the site’s message board didn’t allow. I caused the board to shut down twice while discovering that – and I’ll censor myself harshly here – that, while the classic F-word was a no-no, of course, so were the words “lesbian” and “vagina.”
You couldn’t use the word “lesbian” on the MRC message board!
However, among the words that were perfectly acceptable – and this is where we’ll go strictly letters: the classic C-word, the F-word for homosexuals, and the N-word.
Imagine a world where the N-word is AOK, but “lesbian” is off limits.
My theory on the C-word was that the word can’t possibly even exist is Bozell’s world, the infant.
So, if you see Kay, give her a big wet kiss for me, will ya? And, if you see LBB3, head butt him right on the nose and call him the C-word. He’ll like that.
