Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Suck My Kiss" (1991)

Do me now!

Do me here!

I do allow!

[Note: You may have noticed that there are a lot of 2 or 3 lines posts about money.  I’m not cheap, but I am frugal – I pay close attention to even relatively insignificant expenditures.  For example, I expend quite a bit of time and effort minimizing how much money I spend on gas for my car.  And I worry about spending a dollar more for a loaf of sandwich bread – which I purchase only once or twice a month.  All this is obviously indicative of some deep-seated psychological issues resulting from my being the oldest child of exceedingly frugal parents.] 

I do most of my grocery shopping at either Safeway or Harris-Teeter.

A 20-ounce loaf of Safeway’s store brand of whole wheat bread costs $3.09 at every Safeway in my area:

A 20-ounce loaf of Harris-Teeter’s store brand of whole wheat bread costs $1.99 at every Harris-Teeter in my area:

I’ve eaten both brands of bread, and they are essentially identical – same taste, same texture, same color, same shape . . . same everything.

So how can Safeway get away with charging over a dollar more for its bread than Harris-Teeter charges for its bread?

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“Price dispersion” is the term economists use when prices charged by different sellers for the same item vary.  (Technically, Safeway bread is not the same product as Harris-Teeter bread.  But as I said above, the two different brands are essentially identical.)

Price dispersion is usually attributed to the existence of consumer search costs.  For example, if there were significantly more Safeway stores in my area, it wouldn’t be surprising if Safeway’s prices were at least somewhat higher – after all, it wouldn’t be worth driving to a Harris-Teeter store that was significantly further away just to save a buck on bread.

There are more Safeway stores than Harris-Teeter stores in my county.  But you don’t have to drive that far to get to a Harris-Teeter store.  

And my impression is that it’s usually six of one, half a dozen of the other when it comes to which store has the lower price on the other groceries that I buy the most often.  So it’s a bit of a mystery why there is persistent price dispersion when it comes to store-brand whole wheat bread.

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In case you’re wondering, here are the ten grocery items I purchase the most frequently (in alphabetical order):

– Amy’s Organic quinoa, kale, and red lentil soup

– Campbell’s “Homestyle” chicken noodle soup.  (It’s my go-to when I have nothing else for dinner.)

– Dr. Pepper.  (I refuse to pay the regular price for Dr. Pepper – I only buy it if it being sold at a significant price reduction.  That’s not so much to save money as it is to limit my consumption of the stuff.)

– Eggs.  (White or brown, extra-large or jumbo – it don’t make no never-mind to me, as long as it’s on sale.)

– French-style green beans.  (In my experience, the Safeway’s French-style green beans are much better than Harris-Teeter’s.)

– Italian salad dressing.  (I don’t particularly care whether I have Ken’s, or Kraft, or Paul Newman’s, or Wishbone – one of them is usually on sale.)

Whatever is on sale

– Land O’Lakes butter with sea salt and olive oil.  (That’s mostly to slather on my French-style green beans.)

– Extra-sharp cheddar cheese.  (Cabot and Tillamook are much better than the store brands, although more expensive – but they go on sale fairly often.)

– Utz potato chips.  (I buy a box of ten one-ounce bags and have one bag each time I eat a sandwich.  In theory, it would be much more economical to buy one large bag rather than ten small ones – but if I bought a large bag, I wouldn’t limit myself to one-ounce servings per meal.)

– Wild-caught salmon.  (I eat wild-caught salmon two or three times each week, regardless of the price – I’m worth it!)

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The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik was one of the first two CDs I bought when I was given a CD player for Christmas in 1991.  (The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds was the other one.)

I wanted Blood Sugar Sex Magik because it included “Give It Away,” which still gets me all riled up when I hear it.  But “Suck My Kiss” is just as good – maybe even better.

I heard “Suck My Kiss” on the radio when I was driving around today with my 7-year-old and 4-year-old grandsons.  We had previously heard “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and “1, 2, 3 Red Light,” which are much more suitable for young ears – but I couldn’t bring myself to tune away from “Suck My Kiss” when it came on.  If that makes me a bad grandfather, so be it.

Click here to watch the official music video for “Suck My Kiss.”

Click here to buy “Suck My Kiss” from Amazon.

Jay-Z (feat. UGK) – "Big Pimpin'" (2000)

First time they fuss

I’m breezin’

There’s a memorable moment in episode two of season three of the wildly popular Hulu series, The Bear, when Jimmy “Cicero” Kalinowski greets Teddy Fak by saying “Hey, Teddy,” and Teddy replies with “’Sup, pimp?”

I used to greet people like Jimmy Cicero greets people – “Hey, [name].”  But effectively immediately, “‘Sup, pimp?” is the new official greeting of 2 or 3 lines.

I know that Jimmy Cicero – he’s the guy who put up the money for The Bear restaurant – is a serious dude.  (I get a very strong vibe that you definitely do not want to eff with him.) 

And I realize that Teddy Fak – like his brother Neil – is a dumb jerkoff whose role on the show is to provide comic relief.

But I like “’Sup, pimp?” much better than “Hey, [name],” so I’m going with the dumb jerkoff.

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“Big Pimpin’” is one of my favorite Jay-Z tracks due in large part to the distinctive instrumental sample taken from a 1957 Egyptian record titled “Khosara Khosara.”

The litigation over the use of that sample wasn’t finally resolved – in Jay-Z’s favor – until 18 years after “Big Pimpin’” was released.  (The mills of the American legal system grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.)

When Jay-Z was asked why he didn’t check out whether or not his producer had the legal rights to use the “Khosara Khosara” sample, he said, “That’s not what I do.  I make music.”

Click here to watch the official music video to “Big Pimpin’.”

Click here to buy today’s featured recording from Amazon.

Echo & the Bunnymen – "Rescue" (1980)

Things are wrong

Things are going wrong

The retirement community where my 95-year-old mother-in-law lives recently published this book of poems written by its residents:

I was flipping through a copy of that book while visiting earlier this week, and came across a poem titled “At 91” by Mona Berman:

It’s hard to believe

I’ve reached 91

And thought of reversing

The numbers for fun.

But 19 I suddenly realized

Wouldn’t be much fun at all.

What on earth

Was I ever thinking?

19 in the U.S. is

Underage drinking

So I guess I’ll stick

With 91.

I assume the poet wrote those lines with her tongue planted firmly in her cheek – because she would have had to have been an idiot to turn down the opportunity to be 19 instead of 91 if all it was going to cost her was the ability to drink legally for a couple of years.

I’m 72, and I would give up a whole lot more than alcohol if by doing so I could be 27.

If I could retain the knowledge I’ve acquired between the ages of 27 and 72, turning the clock back 45 years would be a no-brainer.  I suppose I would still choose 27 over 72 even if I had to surrender everything I’ve learned since 1979 – but it would be a much closer call.

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“Rescue” was released by Echo & the Bunnymen as a single in 1980.  It was subsequently included on their debut album, Crocodiles:

“Rescue” was produced by Ian Brodie, but the rest of the Crocodiles album was produced by our old friends Bill Drummond and David Balfe, who were the brains behind “The Lonely Spy” by Lori and the Chameleons.

Click here to listen to “Rescue.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon. 

Soho – "Hippychick" (1990)

Got no flowers for your gun

No hippychick!

One of my favorite bike trails goes past the lot in College Park, Maryland, where University of Maryland Police impound vehicles with an excessive number of unpaid parking violations.

Today as I rode past it, I saw a man writing something on the “Police Impound Lot” sign mounted on the chain-link fence that surrounds that lot. 

As you can see from the following photo, the man I saw – who is apparently a serious grammar Nazi – changed that to “Police Impounded Lot”:

Imagine being such a pedantic busybody that you walk around carrying a magic marker and looking for signs to correct.  There are sooooo many more important things to worry about.  This guy needs to get a life – right?  

Not to mention that “Police Impounded Lot” isn’t even correct!  The sign should have read “Police Impoundment Lot”!

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Soho is an English group that features identical twins Jacqui and Pauline Cuff.  Their 1990 hit, “Hippychick,” opens with a sample from the Smiths’ best single, “How Soon Is Now?”

Click here to listen to “Hippychick.”

Click here to order that recording from Amazon.

Cure – "Let's Go to Bed" (1982)

Let’s go to bed

Let’s go to bed

Let’s go to bed

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The Cure have released a lot of really bad records.  But what sets them apart from other artists who have released a lot of really bad records is that their music is not only really bad, but also really depressing.

The Cure singles that I’m most familiar with – “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” “Lovesong,” “Friday I’m In Love,” and today’s featured record – make me want to swallow the contents of the first bottle of pills I see and hope for the best.  (I assume the rest of their music is just as depressing.)

It’s depressing to watch Cure music videos because their frontman, Robert Smith, is truly a fright to see.  (Wikipedia accurately describes Smith as sporting “a pale complexion, smeared red lipstick, black eyeliner, a disheveled nest of wiry black hair, all-black clothes, and brothel creeper shoes.”) 

Robert Smith in 2022

When asked by an interviewer why he and wife had never had children, Smith gave this answer:

I objected to to being born, and I refuse to impose life on someone else.  Living, it’s awful for me.  I can’t on the one hand argue the futility of life and the pointlessness of existence and have a family.  It doesn’t sit comfortably.  

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It’s interesting that the Cure’s first six studio albums had an average length of 38:22, while their next six albums averaged 68:20 – almost twice as long.  

Ordinarily I would say that getting more music for your money was a good thing . . . but there are exceptions to that rule. 

Click here to listen to “Let’s Go to Bed.”

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.

Talk Talk – "It's My Life" (1984)

It’s my life

Don’t you forget!

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about St. Louis Cardinals star Bob Gibson’s complete-game win over the New York Yankees in the 7th and deciding game of the 1964 World Series.  (You can scroll down to read that post if you haven’t already.)

What’s most remarkable about that game is that Cardinals manager Johnny Keane left Gibson in even after he  surrendered a three-run home run to Mickey Mantle in the 6th and solo blasts to Clete Boyer and Phil Linz in the top of the 9th.  

I doubt that any current-day manager would have stuck with Gibson after the Mantle HR, much less left him in the game after he gave up those home runs to Boyer and Linz in the 9th.  But Johnny Keane did just that.  

When asked why he left Gibson on the mound even after the Boyer and Linz home runs, Keane told reporters that “I had a commitment to his heart.”

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If you’re any kind of baseball fan, you know that Gibson was an outstanding pitcher for years after the 1964 World Series.

Gibson’s 1968 season was arguably the most dominant any starting pitcher has ever had.  He won 22 games that season and had an astonishing 1.12 ERA – the best mark of the last hundred years by a significant margin – while also leading the league in strikeouts and giving up fewer hits per inning than any other pitcher.    

And he completed 28 of his 34 starts that year and had 13 complete-game shutouts – more shutouts than any major-league pitcher has had in a single season in the last hundred years.  Last year, the pitching staffs of all 15 National League teams had a total of only 15 complete games and ten shutouts – fewer than Gibson achieved all by himself in 1968.

Not surprisingly, Gibson won the Cy Young Award and the regular-season Most Valuable Player Award that year.  And he came close to also winning a third World Series MVP as well.  (He had previously won that award not only in 1964 but also in 1967 – when he surrendered a total of only three runs in three complete-game victories over the Boston Red Sox.)

Baseball decided to lower the pitching mound and reduce the height of the strike zone from the batter's armpits to the jersey letters after the 1968 season.  By legislating these so-called “Gibson rules,” MLB hoped to limit the advantage pitchers had vis-à-vis hitters.

Gibson hung up his glove after the 1975 season, finishing with career totals of 251 wins, a 2.91 ERA, and 255 complete games in 482 starts.  He was easily elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame the first time he was eligible to be on the ballot.

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The trajectory of Johnny Keane’s post-1964 baseball career couldn’t have been more different than Gibson’s.

One day after Gibson’s World Series-clenching performance, Keane shocked the baseball world by resigning as the Cardinals’ manager.  A few days later, he was signed by the Yankees to replace Yogi Berra as that team’s manager.

Keane and the Yankees were not exactly a match made in heaven.  In his first season with the team, the Bronx Bombers finished with a 77-85 record – their first losing record in 40 years.  The team got off to a terrible start in 1966, and Keane was fired only one month into the season.  

Later that year, Keane was hired as a scout by the California Angels.  But he died of a heart attack in January 1967.  He was only 55.

Some believe that the immense pressure of managing the Yankees during the team’s collapse – which was probably inevitable given that Keane’s roster was loaded with aging players whose best years were behind them – contributed to Keane’s death.

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That’s a pretty sad story – right?

Before you answer, you should know a little more about Johnny Keane’s baseball career 

Keane – who was born in 1911 – signed a minor-league contract with the Cardinals when he was 18.  But any hopes he had of playing in the major leagues ended when he was hit in the head by a pitched ball in 1935 and lay in a coma, near death, for six weeks.  

After recovering, Keane managed in the Cardinals minor-league system for some 20 years before becoming the big-league team’s third-base coach in 1959.  When the team’s manager was fired in the middle of the 1961 season, Keane took over the job and led the team to four consecutive winning seasons – culminating in the Cardinals’ 1964 World Series victory.

If you’re a glass-half-empty kind of person, you look at Keane as see someone who failed horribly as the Yankees manager and then suffered a fatal heart attack when he was relatively young. 

But if you’re a glass-half-full guy, you see Keane as someone who might have died when he was only 24 years old, but who instead lived another three decades and eventually rose to the very top of his profession – becoming one of the only 74 men in the history of baseball who have managed their team to a World Series victory. 

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It’s not at all unusual for a band to name an album after the band or one of the tracks on that album.  But it’s very rare to name a track after the band. 

I can only think of two examples of that.  One is “Talk Talk,” which is the first track on Talk Talk’s first album, The Party’s Over.  

But Bad Company did them one better, releasing a single titled “Bad Company” on their Bad Company album.

Click here to listen to “It’s My Life,” which is the title track from Talk Talk’s second album.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.