Josefus – "Five'll Get Me Ten" (1970)

Five’ll get me ten

You’ve been doing it again

Most iPod models – the Touch, the Nano, the Classic, the Mini – have touchscreens that display the name of the song you are listening to and the name of the artist who performed it.

But the humble iPod Shuffle, a tiny device that retails for only $49, doesn’t have a touchscreen.  If you don’t recognize the song that’s playing on it, you are S.O.L.

The iPod Shuffle

That’s a big problem for me because I’m constantly downloading obscure and unfamiliar songs from my public library and then listening to them on my iPod while I’m walking or riding my bicycle.  

So it’s not unusual for me to hear a song that I want to feature on 2 or 3 lines but I don’t know the song’s name and I don’t recognize the group performing it.  I can identify that song by looking on my computer when I get home, but most of the time I forget to do that.

My new Shuffle has a feature called “VoiceOver.”  If you hear an unfamiliar song on your iPod, you just hit the VoiceOver button and a computer-generated voice tells you the name of the song and the name of the recording artist.

We all know computers are stupid, and the chip responsible for VoiceOver is no exception.  It reads at about a 3rd-grade level, and that’s being generous.  

When I hit the VoiceOver button while today’s featured song was playing, the computerized voice told me that the name of the song was “Five Ell Ell Get Me Ten,” and that the name of the group that recorded it was “Ho-Say-Foos.”  

Josefus

Josephus (which is pronounced “Joe-See-Fuss,” not “Ho-Say-Foos”) was formed in Houston in 1969.    The band released two albums in 1970, and then broke up.

“Five will get you ten” is an idiomatic expression that’s derived from betting.  It describes an even bet – here, a bet in which each party wagers five dollars.  The winner will walk away with ten bucks – hence, “five will get you ten.”

I was listening to “Five’ll Get Me Ten” while walking on the heavily-wooded Magruder Branch Trail in Damascus, Maryland, today.

The Magruder Branch Trail

It was very hot and steamy, and the trail – which follows the course of a tributary of Great Seneca Creek – was muddy in spots.  I was shvitzing like a Airedale by the time my Fitbit buzzed to tell me I had reached my 10,000-step goal.

After changing shirts and replenishing my precious bodily fluids with some cold H2O, I headed to the nearby Sunshine General Store for the best cheeseburger in Maryland – a fat ground beef patty cooked on a grill with American cheese, onions, tomato, and a big pile of dill pickle chips on the side:

Add a jumbo bag of sour cream and onion-flavored potato chips and a 20-ounce bottle of Dr. Pepper, and you’ve got an all-American lunch.

The Sunshine store is a great place to get a cheeseburger or a breakfast – it’s open from 5 AM to 5 PM six days a week (and from 6 AM to 3 PM on Sundays) – but there’s not much else to buy there.

This shot captures pretty much everything for sale at the store other than cold drinks and chips:

Here’s a closeup of the cereal aisle of the store:

Have a yen for Italian?  Here's the selection at Sunshine:

Here's the personal care section:

Don't forget to pick up something for Rover and Fifi from the pet food aisle:

In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll tell you about the two new farm breweries that I visited after gobbling up my cheeseburger.  I’ll also tell you about the very unpleasant surprise that awaited me later that evening.

Here’s “Five’ll Get Me ten”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

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

We be big pimpin’

Spending cheese

[NOTE: Today’s 2 or 3 lines is brought to you by the fourth-generation iPod Shuffle™ (The Official MP3 Player of 2 or 3 Lines), Jockey™ low-rise briefs (The Official Low-Rise Men’s Briefs of 2 or 3 Lines), Gold Toe™ socks (The Official Men’s Cotton Socks of 2 or 3 Lines), and the Christiana Mall (The Official Tax-Free Shopping Mall of 2 or 3 Lines).]

2 or 3 lines moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.  But every so often – today, for example – I like to pull back the curtain and reveal something about myself to my readers, who seemingly just can’t get enough of me.

Last weekend, my second-generation iPod Shuffle finally gave up the ghost.

A second-generation iPod Shuffle

I’m not sure exactly when I bought that iPod.  The second-generation Shuffle was discontinued in March 2009, so I must have had mine for at least seven years.  

I listened to music on that iPod almost every day.  Since it only cost $49, I certainly got my money’s worth from it.

The Shuffle appealed to my minimalist sensibilities.  Unlike fancier iPod models, the Shuffle has never had a video screen, or a camera, or a microphone.  If you’ve never owned one, it’s tiny – it weighed barely half an ounce – but it held about 15 hours of music (which is somewhere between 200 and 300 songs). 

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I bought a new fourth-generation Shuffle (which is even smaller than my old one) at the Christiana Mall in Delaware when I was driving back to my Maryland home from Cape Cod on the day after Memorial Day.  

A fourth-generation iPod Shuffle

The Christiana Mall is a hundred miles north of where I live, but I visit it once or twice a year – which is more frequently than I visit any of the malls near my home.  It’s just off I-95, so I go right by it when I’m driving to or returning from the Cape.  

Not only is the Christiana Mall a convenient place for me to shop, it’s in Delaware – which has no sales tax.  So it’s where I stock up on stuff I need every year – like underwear and socks.

I usually get my underwear and socks at the J.C. Penney store there, but I was disappointed when I stopped there this week.  They had plenty of Jockey full-cut briefs, but didn’t have a single package of white size-36 low-rise briefs.  (They had black low-rise briefs in my size, but I’m not really a black underwear kind of guy.)

There’s a big difference between the two styles.  Here’s a full-cut brief, which is sort of meh:

The low-rise briefs are much racier:

I think I'll eschew these Jockey briefs, which don't leave quite enough to the imagination:

I had more success when it came to socks.  Penney’s had plenty of the black cotton Gold Toe socks I wear most days in a special promotional package: buy six pairs and you got a seventh at no extra cost.  Throw in the fact that you don’t have to pay sales tax and we’re talking MAJOR savings, boys and girls.

*     *     *     *     *

Just as I was about to leave underwearless, I had a brainstorm – maybe the Christiana Mall Macy’s would have white Jockey low-rise briefs in my size.

I trotted down to Macy’s and found exactly what I was looking for.  As I was buying my briefs, I noticed that Macy’s was also selling a special promotional package of Gold Toe socks.  But the Macy’s was giving you two free pairs when you bought six instead of just one free pair.

Those of you who know me well may be surprised to learn that I didn’t buy the socks at Macy’s and return the socks I had bought from Penney’s.  Somehow getting a free pair of socks wasn’t enough to motivate me to go back to Penney’s and ask for a refund.

*     *     *     *     *

I may end up returning my iPod.  After buying it, I found out that it will only work with Macs that come equipped with fairly recent versions of iTunes and the Mac operating system.

My Mac is six or seven years old, and I’m not sure it can handle the software updates that will be required for me to use a fourth-generation iPod.  I might have to buy a new Mac to use my new Shuffle.

Macs start at $1099 and go up from there, so you might think it’s ridiculous for me to consider buying a new Mac in order to use a $49 Shuffle.  But a Mac that’s six or seven years old is almost as antique as I am, so I probably need to buy a new one anyway.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the reason that I bought my current Mac six or seven years ago is because my previous iPod stopped working, and the new iPod I bought to replace it wasn’t compatible with my previous Mac.

The Apple Store at the Christiana Mall

By the way, the Christiana Mall’s Apple store outsells every other Apple store in the United States except Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue store.  Obviously  I’m not the only one who cares about sales tax.

* *     *     *     *

While doing some research about the history of the iPod, I stumbled across a Huffington Post piece titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on Their First iPod.”  (You grammar absolutists out there are no doubt thinking to yourselves that the piece should have been titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on His First iPod,” while you feminist grammar absolutists are thinking to yourselves that it should have been titled “25 Songs Everyone Had on His or Her First iPod.”)

Those 25 songs included a number that would have been worthy of being featured in today’s 2 or 3 lines – for example, Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite,” Sisqo’s “Thong Song,” and “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys.  

But the most worthy song on that list was definitely Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’,” which featured a distinctive sample from a 1957 Egyptian recording titled “Khosara Khosara.”

Click here to watch the official music video for “Big Pimpin’,” which is definitely worth watching.

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