Lit – "Miserable" (1999)

You make me come

You make me complete

You make me completely miserable

Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard of Lit, an Orange County band that released the first of its five studio albums in 1997.

I had certainly heard "My Own Worst Enemy," Lit's biggest hit single, which reached #1 on the Billboard "Modern Rock Tracks" chart in 1999 and which was featured in the previous 2 or 3 lines.  But I couldn't have named the band that recorded it if you had put a gun to my head.

Lit is a pretty generic band – I've heard better, and I've heard worse.  But I've rarely heard worse than today's featured song, the aptly-titled "Miserable," which I heard for the first (and hopefully last) time on a recent bike ride.

Lit: bad clothes, bad hair, bad tattoos, bad music

"Miserable" (which was Lit's second-biggest single) would be a completely forgettable (and forgotten) song but for the tasteless (and unfunny) play on words contained in the lyrics quoted above.  (Those lyrics are repeated several times just in case you are the world's dumbest human being and didn't get it the first time you heard it.)

One other note about Lit: its song "Addicted" is such a ripoff of the Offspring's brilliant 1994 hit, "Self Esteem," that Lit should still be blushing with shame.

Here's "Miserable."  Feel free to stop listening after the first 20 seconds.  In fact, I would encourage you to stop at that point.  (Life is short, and it would be a sin to waste four minutes of your life listening to the entirety of "Miserable.") [NOTE: I crossed out the previous text after watching the video, which features a magnificent 50-foot-tall Pam Anderson and should definitely be watched in its entirety – although you might want to mute the audio after the first 20 seconds.]

Click below to buy the song from "Amazon."  (Hey, it's your money.)

Lit – "My Own Worst Enemy" (1999)

It's no surprise to me

I am my own worst enemy

The last 2 or 3 lines paid tribute to the much-loved educational computer game, Oregon Trail, which I played with my kids in the 1990s.

Earlier this week, I took my daughters to see the premiere production of Bekah Brunstetter's new play, "The Oregon Trail," which is one of the 50 or so plays written by women that are being presented in Washington-area theaters this fall as part of the "Women's Voices Theater Festival."  

Ich Bin ein Feministin!  (And I don't mean "I'm a jelly-filled pastry!")

The main characters of "The Oregon Trail" are two teenaged girls named Jane.

 "Now Jane" is a whiny, depressed teenager living in 1997 who tries to forget her troubles (real and imagined) by playing Oregon Trail in the computer lab at her school.  

"Now Jane"

"Then Jane" is a 13-year-old making the very difficult 2000-mile journey from Missouri to Oregon with her family in 1848.

"Then Jane"

The play goes back and forth between the two Janes.  The contemporary Jane's wounds are almost wholly self-inflicted – like the singer of today's featured song, she is her own worst enemy.  

When you see her moping around and making excuses, you can't help but think of the immortal words of Hank Hill: "BABY WANT A BOTTLE?" 

By contrast, the 1848-era Jane's problems – hunger, illness, and the difficulty of getting an overloaded covered wagon across a rail-swollen river – are all too real.

You can't help but feel more sympathy for "Then Jane," especially [SPOILER ALERT!] when her father and older sister die on the trail.  

But both Janes are suffering, and their suffering causes both of them to wonder if life is really worth living.  (Then Jane's mother apparently committed suicide a year before her father decided to pack up and head west, and that fact weights very heavily on her.)

[ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT!]  But the play ends happily.  Both Janes decide that while there is life, there is hope – dum spiro, spero – and they decide not to pack it in after all.  (Yay!)

"The Oregon Trail" computer game

Watching "The Oregon Trail" was an intensely nostalgic experience for reviewer Jennifer Clements – a young playwright who is about the same age as my daughters:

[U]ltimately, "The Oregon Trail" . . . invites you to return, for a moment, to your own young days of blazing the trail.

For me?  It harkened back to 7th grade, Mrs. Cushman’s keyboarding class, in a hidden classroom tucked behind a dance studio and a writing center.  Our monitors faced away from the teacher’s desk, and when we’d completed our lessons on finger placement and speed-typing, we would open the beloved game.

Macintosh IIc computer

To this day, no one knows why the game was installed on those computers in the first place.  Perhaps, like learning to type, surviving the trek to Oregon was a rite of passage intended for every new middle school student.  And, like that middle school student, "The Oregon Trail" is sometimes awkward, still growing into itself, but mostly just cute.  (Plus, the program gives you suggestions for your own ‘90s playlist, which is, like, a super kewl bonus.)

That playlist includes angst-laden songs by Bush ("Glycerine"), Live ("Lightning Crashes"), and Alanis Morissette ("Hand in My Pocket").  

It also includes today's featured song, Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy," which spent eleven weeks at #1 on the "Modern Rock Tracks" chart in 1999.

Critic James Oldham nailed it when he described the song as "totally loathsome, poisonous stuff, but quite addictive."  

Here's the official music video for "My Own Worst Enemy."  You'll never see cooler bowling balls and shoes than the ones in the video:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: