The stock market certainly didn’t crash in 2017 – the S&P 500 ended the year almost 20% higher than it was at the beginning of 2017.
That was good news for Kanye West, among others.
* * * * *
Ladies, were you happy with the Christmas gifts your husband and/or boyfriend gave you this year?
Kim Kardashian West
I’m pretty sure that Kim Kardashian was happy with the gifts she received from Kanye West.
When Kim opened the box that Kanye gave her, she found items from Disney, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, and Adidas.
For example, there was a Disney Mickey Mouse figure, a pair of Adidas socks, Apple headphones, and Amazon and Netflix gift cards.
“And I’m like, ‘That’s so sweet!’” Kim said.
Kanye gave Kim Adidas socks . . .
I guarantee you Kim was not really thinking “That’s so sweet!” when she opened Kanye’s gift. She was thinking WHERE ARE MY F*CKING DIAMONDS???
No need to get your knickers in a twist, Kim. Kanye’s no fool – he knows better than to think you’ll be satisfied with socks, headphones, a couple of gift cards, and a stuffed Mickey Mouse.
It turns out that Kanye not only gave the missus trinkets from Disney, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, and Adidas. He also gave her hundreds of shares of stock in those companies.
A photo Kim posted on Instagram (she later deleted it) shows the stock certificates that were in the gift box that Kanye gave her for Christmas.
For example, she received 920 shares of Disney stock. Those shares have a market value of just under $100,000 (which may explain the odd number of shares he gave her).
. . . as well as Adidas stock
Kanye gave Kim 995 shares of Adidas stock, which have about the same value as the Disney shares. Assuming he gave Apple, Netflix, and Amazon stock worth the same amount, his gift was worth a cool half million altogether.
Which isn’t all that much, relatively speaking. (Forbes magazine says Kim’s 2016 income was $45.5 million. That’s over twice as much as her hubby’s income, although Kanye’s net worth may be double hers.)
* * * * *
“Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 2” was released in 2016 on Kanye’s seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo. “West just drops broken pieces of his psyche all over the album and challenges you to fit them together,” according to Rolling Stone, which called the album “both a mess and a masterpiece.”
West first said that The Life of Pablo would only be available through Tidal, a new streaming service owned by Jay-Z, West, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Daft Punk, Madonna, Jason Aldean, and a number of other famous musicians. After an updated version of the album was released for streaming on Spotify, Apple music, and Google Play, a class-action lawsuit was filed that claimed that West never intended to make the album available only on Tidal, but said that in hopes that his fans would download and use the struggling streaming app.
The day that The Life of Pablo was released, West tweeted that he was $53 million in debt and asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to invest a billion dollars in his ideas.
Think about that, boys and girls. You've got one Mercedes-Benz that people are used to seeing you in, but you're not driving it. Instead, you pull up in your other Benz.
Which confuses everyone, because last week you were in your other other Benz!
Imagine what it would be like to be Kanye West . . . even for just a single day!
You might think it would be better not to live the life of Yeezy for just a day because you would never be satisfied with your own sad, dull life after that 24 hours of bliss had ended. But I figure that 24 hours of Kim Kardashian would be plenty for any man -- after that, you'd be happy to have your own life back.
You see a picture like this one, and trading places with Kanye seems very, very tempting. But pretty soon she'll going to start talking -- and once she does, she may never stop!
Kim from the front (for a change)
Jay-Z is a phenomenal rapper, but I think he has to take a back seat to Kanye as an artist. And Kanye is younger and better-looking. But Jay-Z has an edge on Yeezy in one area: he's married to Beyoncé. Kim Kardashian certainly has her charms, but she's no Beyoncé when it comes to talent and wealth.
"Otis" was the second single from the 2011 Watch the Throne album. It borrows heavily from Otis Redding's classic, "Try a Little Tenderness," which was one of the songs featured in this year's edition of the wildly popular "29 Songs in 28 Days." Click here if you missed that post.
The Watch the Throne album cover
After the song opens with a 30-second snippet from "Tenderness," Jay-Z kicks off the first verse of "Otis" by announcing "I got my swagger back." (Who knew Jay-Z lost his swagger in the first place?) He gives a shoutout to his new favorite Swiss watchmaker, Hublot.
Here's the Hublot "Big Bang" watch that Beyoncé bought for her hubby recently. It has 1282 diamonds and cost an estimated $5 million:
Jay-Z's Hublot "Big Bang"
The highlight of Kanye's first verse are the Mercedes-Benz lines quoted above, plus an out-of-left-field reference to Phillip Drummond -- that was the name of the rich white guy (played by Conrad Bain) who adopted two black orphans named Arnold and Willis (played by the late Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges) on the Diff'rent Strokes TV show.
The Diff'rent Strokes crew
Jay-Z cranks up the narcissism in his second verse:
Photo shoot fresh, looking like wealth
I'm 'bout to call the paparazzi on myself
You might think that the reference to a "G450" in this verse is a reference to a Mercedes-Benz G450, but you would be wrong. (You obviously don't own one Mercedes, much less an otherother Mercedes.)
There is a Mercedes-Benz GL450, but there's no G450 model Benz. Jay-Z is talking about the Gulfstream G450, a twin-engine long-range business jet with a list price of about $38 million. Jay-Z owns a G450, although I'm guessing Beyoncé is helping pay for it.
Gulfstream G450
The good thing about being rich enough to have a Gulfstream G450 is that you can get the hell out of Dodge and bribe everyone you need to bribe if the sh*t really hits the fan some day -- Jay-Z says he's got five passports, so he's never going to jail in the good ol' US of A.
Kanye follows up with some luxury-goods-related lines of his own. His brags that his verses are "couture-level" in quality, "the Hermès of verses" -- like high-end fashions, his rap "is never going on sale."
Kanye with his Hermès "Birkin" bag.
The next lines display the sophisticated wordplay that is West's hallmark:
I get it custom, you a customer
You ain't accustomed to going through customs
Kanye has always mixed the sacred and the profane in his lyrics -- he "writes his curses in cursive." He closes the verse by observing that (unlike most men) he doesn't have to impress women -- the women show off in hopes of impressing him. After he's "done" with one of the many women who throw themselves at him -- this song was recorded before he found true love with Kim K, of course -- he starts to make the obligatory promise to call her tomorrow, but then changes his mind . . . and shows that he's a master of wordplay in more than one language: "I'll hit you up maña . . . NAH!"
In his second verse, Jay-Z picks up where he left off in verse one, which ended with him using his Gulfstream, his passports, and his cash money to get out of the country and obtain political asylum elsewhere -- perhaps in Havana, when he can indulge in his love of cigars with Fidel Castro.
But Jay-Z says that he and all the other "illegals" that he consorted with when he was a drug dealer (Mexicans, Dominicans, etc.) will find their way into the United States regardless of the measures our government takes to keep them out:
Build your fences
We digging tunnels
Kanye's final verse is a tour de force. Of course, so many of Kanye's verses are tours de force that the term has little meaning when applied to him. He begins by taunting all his rap rivals, who have to take tour buses to get from concert to concert, while Kanye and Jay-Z travel on the G450: "Can't you see the private jets flying over you?"
Jay-Z and Kanye in the "Otis" video
Kanye's closes out "Otis" with a reference to Reinhold Niebuhr's "Serenity Prayer" -- since other rappers can never match him, he hopes they don't drive themselves crazy trying:
Lord, please let them accept The things they can't change
And pray that all of Their pain be champagne
The champagne/"sham pain" pun in the last line is quite old. There's an 1860 book titled The Toast-Master's Companion that contains this drinking toast: "Champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends." Click here to listen to Fall Out Boy's 2005 song of the same name.
Kanye and Jay-Z had such a good time doing this song -- that's obvious when you listen to "Otis," and it's even more obvious when you watch the music video (which is embedded below).
Apparently they really did chop up a Maybach for the video. (A new Maybach runs about $350,000, and it's estimated that another $150,000 was spent modifying it for the "Otis" video, which was directed by our old friend Spike Jonze.)
The "Otis" Maybach
Which reminds me of one final line from "Otis": "Maybach bumper sticker reads: 'What would Hova do?'" (Hova, of course, is one of Jay-Z's many nicknames.) A sacrilegious play on "What would Jesus do?" bumper stickers? Yes, of course -- but isn't putting a bumper sticker on a Maybach even more of a sacrilege?
Kanye was a favorite of the paparazzi long before he began to pitch woo at the comely Kimberly Noel "Kim" Kardashian. But since those two A-list celebrities have begun to liaise on a regular basis, the number of news crews who track their every move has increased exponentially.
As the author of a wildly popular blog that regularly features Kanye West's brilliant rap songs and pictures of Kim Kardashian's big-ass ass, I was ALL OVER Kanye's announcement last Sunday that he had knocked up Mrs. Kris Humphries. (That's right, boys and girls. Kim and Kris Humphries are still married.)
(Don't tell me that you hadn't heard the news before reading it here. People as clueless as you are NOT allowed to read 2 or 3 lines! Get off the damn computer and go back to your Murder, She Wrote re-run!)
So far, the biggest beneficiary of Kanye and Kim's announcement is Vivid Entertainment, which is one of the most successful porn film companies in the world. Vivid sells celebrity sex tapes featuring such luminaries as Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson, and even Jimi Hendrix.
But Vivid's best-selling celebrity sex tape features our favorite mommy-to-be vacationing with Ray J, a rapper of no great repute. And sales of that tape have been through the roof since Kanye told the world that Kim had a bun in the oven.
The Kim-Ray J tape was made in 2003, but it remained their little secret until a third party sold it to Vivid in 2007 for a million bucks. Kim immediately sued Vivid, but eventually settled the case for $5 million.
The outcome of that lawsuit is more proof that the American legal system is the greatest on earth. You've heard the term "win-win"? This was a "win-win-win" outcome. Obviously, Kim won. Vivid won as well. But the biggest winners were straight males of all ages and nationalities.
"Clique" is one of the singles from the compilation album, Cruel Summer, which was released in 2012 on Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music label. ("G.O.O.D." is an acronym for "Getting out our dreams.")
The Cruel Summer album cover
The Cruel Summer album features a number of G.O.O.D. Music's artists -- including John Legend, Common, Kid Cudi, Big Sean, and Kanye himself. "Clique" also features Jay-Z, who has his own record label but collaborates with Kanye frequently.
Big Sean does the first verse on "Clique," and it is a very good verse. Jay-Z follows up with the next verse, and it's outstanding.
Kanye saves the third and final verse for himself, and he knocks it out of the park. He begins by referring to his well-known love for Louis Vuitton and Gucci gear.
Some of Kanye's line of shoes for Louis Vuitton
But then he switches gears and alludes to Kim's sex tape:
Break records of Louie
Ate breakfast at Gucci
My girl a superstar all from a home movie
(Give Yeezy credit -- he's not afraid to bring up any topic, no matter how controversial or embarrassing. He's a true believer in "Never complain, never explain.")
Kanye then offers some sociological observations on the differing attitudes of whites and blacks when it comes to money:
You know white people get money don’t spend it
Or maybe they get money, buy a business
I rather buy 80 gold chains and go ignorant
I know Spike Lee gonna kill me, but let me finish
Kanye tells it like it is. Rich white people (think Warren Buffett, or Mitt Romney) don't live ostentatiously -- they prefer to invest their money in their businesses.
Warren Buffett doesn't drive a Maybach
But black hip-hop superstars like Kanye immediately start throwing money at gold jewelry. Sure, politically correct guys like Spike Lee don't approve of flamboyant lifestyles, but Kanye doesn't really give a rat's *ss about what Spike Lee thinks.
Kanye's looking for a house in Tom Cruise's neighborhood, and that's the high-higher-highest-rent district, if you know what I'm saying.
Now I’m looking at a crib Right next to where TC lives
That’s Tom Cruise, whatever she accuse
He wasn’t really drunk he just had a frew brews
The "frew brews" isn't a mistake -- that's what Kanye says. My friends at Rap Genius offer two possible explanations for "frew brews." First, Kanye could be pretending to slur his words -- which all of us are wont to do after a frew brews. Alternatively, Kanye might be engaging in drunk texting. If you look at your keyboard, you'll see that "R" is between "F" and "EW" -- so you could easily type "frew" by mistake when you mean to type "few."
But enough about Kanye and "Clique" -- let's get back to the "First Lady" of 2 or 3 lines.
Kim is reportedly about three months into her pregnancy. That means that her already voluptuous figure will continue to swell and engorge for a good five or six months -- making Keeping Up With the Kardashians "must-see" TV in 2013.
No doubt those six months will fly by before we realize it, but six months' worth of distraction from the fiscal cliff, and the debt ceiling, and all the other nonsense that will dominate the national news for the foreseeable future -- not to mention weeks of awful winter weather -- is worth a lot.
Thank you, Kim, Thank you, Kanye. And don't wait too long to get to work on child number two -- neither one of you are getting any younger.
Yes, I know I broke the rules and went way over my quota of two or three lines. But how could I pick only one of those wonderful verses?
How do you expect me to choose between "Acid casualty with a repossessed car," "Screamin' jackass with a wet cigarette," and "Growin' hair like a shag rug on his greasy back"? It's like asking me to choose my favorite child.
How many of you are fans of the old MTV show, "Celebrity Deathmatch"? It's hard to believe that claymation masterpiece went off the air almost ten years ago after a 75-episode run.
The plots of each episode were pretty much the same. Two celebrities with grudges against each other (real or imaginary) were put into a wrestling ring, where they fought to the death. The shows were unbelievably gruesome -- people had limbs ripped off, eyeballs plucked out and stepped on, and so on.
The first matchup was Charles Manson against Marilyn Manson. Other notable bouts featured Dolly Parton vs. Jennifer Lopez, Mahatma Gandhi vs. Genghis Khan, and Pamela Anderson vs. Heather Locklear.
Here's the episode that featured Beck squaring off against Björk for the title of best monosyllabic musician of all time. (SPOILER ALERT: Bach appeared via time travel and killed both of them.)
I don't know about you, but when I hear a song that makes fun of rednecks, I immediately want to know if the singer is himself a redneck or not.
J. Edgar Hoover
President Lyndon Johnson once explained why he didn't replace FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover thusly: "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out that outside the tent pissing in."
In other words, it's OK for another redneck to make fun of rednecks. It is NOT acceptable for a non-redneck to make fun of rednecks. (Same principle as rappers using the n-word -- which is OK -- and white guys from South Carolina using the n-word -- which is definitely not OK.)
I often call myself a redneck, but that is really just an affectation. I have a lot of affectations. Another one of my affectations is pretending to be the CEO of a wildly popular and successful blog.
Truth be told, this blog is hanging on by its fingernails. We're just a hop, skip, and a jump from bankruptcy court. If only my readers would just use the Amazon search box that is so conveniently placed at the beginning of each 2 or 3 lines post whenever they ordered anything from Amazon, I could rehire all those disabled single moms I've had to lay off.
(Don't tell me you don't ever order from Amazon. I mean they sell everything there. And it doesn't cost you a thing to order through 2 or 3 lines -- just click on that search box and you go right to the Amazon website. Easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy.)
Unlike Beck, I at least have some claim to membership in "Redneck Nation." I did grow up in Joplin, Missouri, and I have Arkansas aunts and uncles named Ardith, Omer (not Homer), Ottis (not Otis), Thelma, Wilma, etc. Ancestors on the other side of the family founded Ava, Missouri, the county seat of Douglas County, where much of Winter's Bone was filmed.
By contrast, Beck has no claim to redneckery. I admit that when he appeared as himself on The Larry Sanders Show years ago, Artie the producer (played by the truly great Rip Torn) called him a "hillbilly from outer space." That's pretty accurate, but the "outer space" part really overwhelms the "hillbilly" part.
Beck was born Bek [sic] David Campbell but took his mother's name and became Beck Hansen when his parents separated. (Actually, he took his mother's father's name. All you women out there who didn't change your name when you got married do realize that you still have a man's name, don't you? You just have your father's name instead of your husband's name. If you don't get that, wake up and smell the cat food, for cryin' out loud.)
Beck Hansen
Beck is a really, really weird guy. But it's not really his fault.
His father, David Campbell, is a relatively normal guy. (In other words, Beck's family situation closely resembles my kids' situation.) He's a classically trained musician who played violin and cello on Carole King's Tapestry album when he was 23. Later he became an arranger, and has worked on albums by Bob Dylan, Metallica, Green Day, Radiohead, the Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow, and many others.
By contrast, Beck's mother -- Bibbe Hansen -- is a total loon. She is a performance artist, musician, and actress who appeared in several Andy Warhol movies when she was a teenager. She recorded an album with Jack Kerouac's daughter, performed with drag queen/performance artist Vaginal Davis, and was a founder of the satirical band Black Fag (which made fun of the great punk band Black Flag).
Bibbe Hansen and friend
(Note: I hope certain of my female readers will finally stop their bellyachin' about 2 or 3 lines never having any pics of hot guys.)
It wasn't all Bibbe's fault. Her mother was a bohemian-type poet, while her father (Al Hansen) was a prominent member of the "Fluxus" school of art and a close associate of Andy Warhol. Al Hansen's most famous performance art work was called the "Yoko Ono Piano Drop." (Yes, Al was friends with crazy Yoko. Birds of a feather, etc.) That name is no joke, by the way. He once pushed a piano off the roof of a five-story building.
"Calliope Venus," by Al Hansen
If David Letterman did that, it would be called a "Stupid Human Trick." When Beck's grandfather did it, it was performance art.
Here's the weirdest thing about Beck's mother. In 1974, she delivered twin babies -- Giovanni Ribisi (he was the star of the movie Boiler Room and also appeared in Saving Private Ryan and Lost in Translation) and Marissa Ribisi (who was in Dazed and Confused).
Ribisi played the smart girl with the curly red hair:
What a crazy performance artist like Bibbe Hansen was doing delivering babies is a good question, and I have no idea what the answer is.
But in 2004, Marissa Ribisi married Beck. That is truly weird. And so is the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Beck named their first two children Cosimo and Tuesday. (No hope at all for those kids, is there?)
One final note: all these people are Scientologists. (Case closed.)
But back to this song, which I absolutely love. It is on Beck's major-label debut album, Mellow Gold, which was released in 1994. I think my older son bought the CD over a decade ago, and I've had it on iTunes for years. But I must not have ever listened to the entire album, because this song was absolutely new to me when I heard it while mountain biking at Cedarville State Forest recently.
Cedarville State Forest is my favorite mountain biking spot in the Washington, DC area. It's about an hour south of my home, so I only make it down there once or twice a year. Despite having 19 miles of trails, it seems that almost no one goes mountain biking there. On my last trip to Cedarville, I rode for 2 1/2 hours and saw exactly two other bikers -- and they were riding together.
This may explain why some mountain bikers shy away from Cedarville:
It's possible that some cyclists are confused by the high-tech trail signs, and (like Charlie on the M.T.A.) simply never return:
The somewhat antiquated sanitary facilities also may discourage more finicky riders:
On closer inspection, you can see that this outhouse is a two-holer -- no waiting when you're in a hurry!
The trails at Cedarville are relatively flat, but there can be a fair amount of mud to deal with:
But the worst thing about the Cedarville trails are the exposed tree roots -- you gentlemen riders better come equipped with seriously padded shorts:
I half-expected to see a dinosaur or at least a toothless banjo player in a bateau here:
This scene reminded me of a T-shirt that my wife bought my older son at an Urban Outfitters store when he was 8th-grade. (It had the letter "I," a heart, and a picture of a beaver on the front. She had no clue what that meant.)
Before we hear the Beck song, how about a picture of Kim Kardashian to (hopefully) help get my numbers up a little:
Words are flowing out Just like the Grand Canyon And I'm always out looking For a female companion
Those lines could apply to any number of rap artists, who are rarely at a loss for words and who are usually in pursuit of the fairer sex. But there's no one they describe better than the rappers who wrote them -- the Beastie Boys.
You "Hip Hop 101" students are fortunate indeed today. I must admit that I am largely unacquainted with Paul's Boutique, the Beastie Boys album that "Hey Ladies" appears on. But today's guest lecturer (we'll call her Professor "Linda," because that is her name) did her thesis on this seminal rap classic.
"Paul's Boutique" cover
A Beastie Boys song may seem like an odd choice for a middle-aged woman from middle America to write about, but "they" say women are always attracted to men with a sense of humor. This band of merry pranksters from Brooklyn certainly has that going for them.
[Editor's note: I feel bad to be interrupting Professor Linda after just one paragraph, but I just had to comment on that "middle-aged woman" comment. I can't tell you how relieved I was to learn that Professor Linda was middle-aged. I'm only about 6 months older than she is, so I must be middle-aged, too. What a relief! That might not sound like a big deal to some of you, but it's much better than the alternative.]
You were introduced to the Beastie Boys a few months ago, when your regular "Hip Hop 101" professor lectured on "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party), so I will skip the usual biographical details." I will simply note that the three Beasties -- Michael Diamond ("Mike D"), Adam Yauch ("MCA"), and Adam Horowitz ("Ad-Rock") -- have been together since 1982, making them probably the longest-lived hip-hop act in the world.
Paul's Boutique, their second album, was released in 1989, three years after their hugely successful Licensed To Ill. Brimming over with samples, Paul's Boutique is now considered to be one of their best and most innovative albums.
"Hey Ladies," the most successful single from the album, has the distinction of being the first single in history to chart in the Top 20 of both the Billboard "Hot Rap Singles" and "Modern Rock Tracks" charts.
Paul's Boutique wasn't nearly as popular with album-buying masses as the first Beastie Boys album. Some thought it was too sophisticated compared to the raucous Licensed To Ill.
Too sophisticated? Had those people ever listened to it?! The rhymes are unquestionably clever, but there's some pretty sophomoric stuff in here:
I met a little cutie
And she was all hopped up on zootie
I liked the little cutie
But I kicked her in the bootie.
(By the way, a "zootie" is a joint laced with crack.)
There are numerous references to people and characters from the 1970 -- Sadaharu Oh (who hit 868 home runs while playing professional baseball in Japan), game show host Chuck Woolery, and Chachi from "Happy Days."
I've got to give credit where credit is due. There are a lot of words in this song with no repetition of verses and it took a great deal of thought and effort to string together that many words and come up with a reasonably cohesive and coherent lyric.
I'm not sure I ever heard the song on the radio, but the first time I saw the video, I was hooked. It's a series of vignettes with mainly 70's themes. Mike D acts out his version of Saturday Night Fever. There's also a nod to "blaxploitation" films of that era (like Shaft and Super Fly).
The disco theme is carried out through the entire video, with a mariachi band thrown in for added visual interest. For me, one of the best parts of the video is the brilliant use of cowbell by various characters.
There are at least 16 samples used in the song. Some you'll quickly recognize, while others are more obscure. The main musical sample is from "Machine Gun" by the Commodores. James Brown is sampled at least twice. At around 3:28 in the video, you'll hear "uh, good God" from Edwin Starr's "War." And if you were paying attention during a previous "Hip Hop 101" class, you'll remember and recognize our old friend, Afrika Bambaata. (You weren't expecting a pop quiz, were you?)
One sample in particular is worthy of special mention -- the "She thinks she's the passionate one" line from "Ballroom Blitz" (at about 0:46 in the Sweet video below, and at 3:11 of the Beastie Boys video that comes a little later). That song was released in 1973 by the English glam rock band Sweet. It's been covered by at least 30 other artists and was used in Wayne's World as well as the video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
"Ballroom Blitz" seems to me to be sort of a hybrid; it goes along at the manic pace of of a punk song, but singer Brian Connolly's increasingly empassioned screeching in the choruses borders on bad English cabaret music. Considering that glam rock was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek genre anyway -- sorry to burst the bubble of any of you who take Queen seriously -- maybe that was the intent. In any case, it's a great song and the sample from it was perfect for "Hey Ladies."
If you're looking for depth of feeling or philosophical introspection, early Beastie Boys is not going to be your source. This was way before Adam Yauch discovered the Dalai Lama and Buddhist enlightenment. But if you're in the mood for a hilarious goof on the 70's disco era and some pretty darn good beats and rhymes, click "play" and enjoy.
2 or 3 lines is grateful to Professor Linda for teaching today's class. As you might have guessed, Professor Linda is the same person as Linda, the Chief Executive Senior Contributing Editor, or "C.E.S.C.E." But because I am always forgetting that acronym, I have decided to call Linda our "A.B.C.X.Y.Z." -- not because it stands for anything, but because I know I will be able to remember it.
One final note: 2 or 3 lines set a new high in visits and page views last month largely because I added a rather random shot of ex-model Paulina Porzikova-Ocasek to my post on the J. Geils Band's "Centerfold."
That explains why this photo of Kim Kardashian appears here:
Kim Kardashian
Hey, it's your own fault. If you people clicked on my ads and ordered from Amazon through the search box that appears on the right-hand side of every 2 or 3 lines post, I wouldn't have to stoop to cheap tricks like this to get my click numbers up.
Here's "Hey Ladies":
Here's a link you can use to buy "Hey Ladies" from Amazon. (Remember -- order stuff through 2 or 3 lines or you'll be seeing more of Kim Kardashian's backside!)
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