Front Squat, Fully Frontal Lyrics

In any gym today, whether it’s class format or an equipment-filled gym, I’m always amused by the songs. In a HIIT class, co-ed format, girls and guys, all of us are doing front squats and jump lunges, and a certain song comes on. I can choose from hundreds that I’ve heard but some stand out. Let’s use the artist Lil’ Wayne for example. The mind behind the hit song “Lollipop”. Maybe you’ve heard of it. “She licked me like a lollipop… I let her lick the wrapper,” etc.

He is also featured on the song “Truffle Butter”, with Nikki Minaj and Drake, and Wayne brings the song home with an especially eye-opening verse that puts a pretty bow on the end of the song, which I want to highlight here now, in the context of a co-ed fitness class.

Here we are in our class, guys and girls at various stations, thrusting and grunting and sweating, and I hear it. Lil’ Wayne is talking to a woman, presumably, and it goes like this (I looked it up):

Can I hit it in the bathroom?

Put your hands on the toilet

I’ll put one leg on the tub

Girl, this my new dance move

I just don’t know what to call it

Now this is more of the subtle variety of verses that Lil’ Wayne would use. It gets much more descriptive from there, and I would type that out for your convenience, but I can’t bring myself to do it here on the page.

Notwithstanding what those lyrics even mean (he must be at a house-party, in the guest full bath, with the tub next to the toilet I guess? Or is he in the bathroom stall of a tasteful dive bar?), isn’t it peculiar that when we hear a song like that on a loudspeaker, especially while in the gym, we think nothing of it? If I were to read the lyrics of that song out loud, anywhere, at any time, most people would ask that I immediately stop talking or else risk being arrested.

However, when you put those lyrics to a good beat, and play it in a gym, with guys and girls all there working out, lifting this or that weight, sweat flying in all directions, no one seems to mind. Or we just block it out like we do everything else.

I recall my workout group consisting of men and women, both besides, in front of, and behind me, and here we are, all gathered in close proximity, doing front squats in tandemic-rhythmic flow to (in my mind anyway) an image of a man and a woman, in a guest bathroom, having sex, her hands on the toilet (is the seat down or up? Which is worse?) per the man’s directions, her legs in the air, her head downward I assume?, the man thrusting about, while he refers to it as a “new dance move”, searching, all the while, for a name to give to his new dance move.

Where else, but in a song, can you say something like that, and everyone moves about like it’s a normal thing to say. Am I prude? I know there are plenty of strange and vulgar lyrics out there, but the out-of-placeness of it is amusing. Where else besides the club bathroom itself where the toilet grab is occurring would you hear a song like that, blaring on speakers, and continue on with what you’re doing? The gym I suppose. Would I be OK with hearing it in the grocery store? If you say certainly not in the grocery store, do not forget that there are kids in these gyms where this music is playing, waiting for their parents to finish working out.

Maybe you’re thinking: “What do you want anyone to do about it? Walk out of the gym? Probably not going to happen. Or maybe you tell the gym owner? You could. If it bothers you that much.” But that’s not what I’m after. As I’ve named it, it’s simply an observation. It doesn’t bother me or my workout. Dance and sex, and a combination of the two, pervades my streaming services’ recommendations to me. (Am I as horny as they think I am?) For me it is more about how words like that can be put in a song and no one bats an eye.

What turning point did our generation reach—and it was our generation, millennials, make no mistake—to where we just can listen to those songs in the gym together and continue on? I guess I am the dork that I think I am.

Further along in the workout another song comes on: “A Milli”. By our man Lil’ Wayne. You know it, and some words of it are as follows: “Don’t you hate a shy bitch? Yeah, I ate a shy bitch, she ain’t shy no more, she changed her name to My Bitch”.

I hear it, and then I move to my next workout station, as do the rest of my classmates, and I grab the big, heavy kettlebell and start swinging it through my legs and up in the air. I don’t know what to call this move, either.

Radio Randomness, Part 2

When I’m driving now, I listen to the latest of my favorite podcast, or even better, a book on Audible. Also—pro tip, if you go get a library card at your local library, you can get an app (the one I have is “Cloud Library”), where hundreds of thousands of audiobooks are available for download, for free. Anyone with a driver’s license in the state of Texas can get an Allen Public Library card, and from that you can have access to all of their books, to their sister libraries’ books, and to the millions of audiobooks in their catalog. Libraries are worth their weight in gold.

When I am in the car by myself, it is my alone time. I get to listen to these podcasts and books. My commute is a little under thirty minutes, so maybe I’ll get about an hour of content in the car going to and from work. If you work from home, you miss this opportunity, but you can get it going on a run or a long walk.

I also now miss this opportunity when I take Jack to school. I must say that he is very tolerant of my audiobooks. He sits back there and listens, understanding not a word as I drive us to his “school” at our church before heading into work. Big Magic comes on by Elizabeth Gilbert and I imagine Jack is saying what is all this shit, Dad? Just start creating! A self-help book might come on and I wonder if Jack is thinking ‘Man, I sure hope daddy is OK.’

I fear this will change, what I listen to. It’s a good fear, like a nervousness, having butterflies. What is going to happen is that Jack will soon be asking—demanding—that we listen to his songs. I’ve built him a playlist, loaded up with Moana and Encanto songs (all bangers—thank you, Lin-Manuel Miranda), and an eclectic spread of the Grinch, James Brown (“I Feel Good”) and the Jackson 5 (“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”). It’s Christmas year-round in our household, and on the radio.

My dad, during those long drives to school in the 90s, would have the radio on country radio, or an alternative station. He had the Matchbox Twenty album with Push and 3 AM on it. He had Brooks and Dunn, the album where Ronnie Dunn says “Maria” in an elongated fashion no less than 30 times. Dad had the Hootie and the Blowfish Album. You know, the one. Mom had the Dixie Chicks (er, the Chicks), Tina Turner, and Natalie Merchant. To this day, I still know every word to “There’s Your Trouble.” These are the sounds I grew up on. I don’t recall my parents ever listening to music from the 60s or 70s, or even the 80s. Maybe some Bruce Springsteen. I mean I’m sure they did, but they were into the new stuff of the time. What’s the “new stuff of our time”? Is it as good? Will it last?

Sometimes I would request a song. Most times I would just look out the window and listen to what was playing. “Goodbye Earl” by the Chicks came on and I yelled to my dad LEAVE IT! Don’t touch that dial, daddy. And when we listened to that song together, me for the fourth time, him for the first, I would be sitting in the backseat imitating Natalie Maines’ granny-style screamvoice while she laid out the plot about a loyal but sinister group of girlfriends who took a redeye midnight flight into town to visit a bestie while they worked out a plan to murder the bestie’s abusive husband by feeding him some poisonous black-eyed peas, and when it was over, and my blood was running hot, my dad simply lamented, “woah.”

Of course I only had a vague idea of what the song was about, but I was smart enough to pick up the tenor. “Earl had to die!” I’d proclaim. “Na na na na naaaaa na, goodbye, Earl!” I’d sing along from the back, as the bestie and her girlfriends wrapped Earl’s body up in a tarp.

When I’d hear Hootie and the Blowfish sing Let Her Cry, and I pictured the young woman sitting alone by a lamppost saying she loves her dad the most, I had no idea that her second-most favorite was Michael Stipe from R.E.M. Didn’t matter. The words still hit me. If only we knew that 20 years later Hootie would transmorph into a band that covered Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show, we’d all agree together that that tidily sums up the last 20 years of country radio.

Liddy the Gator, a Litigator

Liddy the Gator is a Litigator

She’s always off to work early, home later and later

Peeking in at her hatchling through the crack of her door

She asks herself: What am I doing this for?

So Liddy thought up a story, a fun way to say

The work that Mom does while she’s gone for the day

But hang on to your blanket—litigators are wordy

We must get you to sleep by at least 9 or 10:30

It starts with a beaver who lives on the creek

Tooth is his name, he’s so mad he can’t speak

“I hired Buck,” he says, “to build me a lodge”

“I paid him two quarters, and he got out of dodge!”

“If I find him, there’s no end to what I might do

I don’t care what it costs—I’m ready to sue”

Liddy first tries to talk Tooth down off the ledge

“We’ll send Buck a letter, we’ll confront him instead”

“He’ll answer for not doing what you paid him to do

For not building your house, for not seeing this through”

And if he doesn’t, we’ll sue him! Then we’ll dig and we’ll dig

We’ll do some Discovery: turn over every rock, every twig

Discovery lets us ask questions of Buck and his friends

How much can you know? (Well, how much can you spend?)

Enter Roger and Tori—for Interrogatories—

You won’t hear that word in every bedtime story

And Esther the Fish, my legal assistant

Will write up and send Buck a Request for Admissions

In those we’ll have Buck make a decision:

To admit what he did, or admit what he didn’t

We interview him too, in a recorded Deposition

Are you still awake? Try to stick with me, listen:

The Swamp is where we go now, to meet a jury of Buck’s peers

Made up of porcupines, frogs, chipmunks, and deer

What Liddy does next, is litigate this mess

Down at the Swamp in her very best dress

And finally, when the case comes to a close

Buck’s lawyer’s had all he can handle, and goes:

“Let’s resolve this case now. Between you and me,

Buck will build Tooth the house, he will build it for free”

“He’ll pay you your fees, plus two quarters—with interest

“Let’s end this,” he’ll say, “all this swamp ’n’ muck business”

Let’s end this fight, this mudslinging and strife—

We call this a Settlement, and it’ll add years to your life

Can both sides agree? Yes they will indeed!

98 and three quarters percent guaranteed!

After all, Liddy just wants more time and more fun

An evening or three spent with her little ones

Though settling in life is not the best path

In the Swamp, you see, it’s like taking a bath

So though your teeth may be sharp, and you’ll grow big and strong

Remember my child, it’s OK to be wrong

And in the swamp as in life, it’s best to agree

It gives me more time for the you and the me

For when I’m home in time for a story and kiss

A trial is not worth missing moments like this

And finally, we’ve arrived at the end of Mom’s little ditty:

Just another day in the life of a gator named Liddy