Thank God He Quit His Day Job: Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch

For you youngsters growing up in these modern times, you probably know Mark Wahlberg, the star of films such as Invincible, Planet of the Apes, and the underrated comedy The Big Hit (I’m serious). You probably think that life is pretty sweet for Mr. Wahlberg, especially since his brother Donnie finally rejoined his old band and stopped borrowing money. But Mark has a secret. A secret that kids born in the last 15 years don’t know about.

You see, Mark used to be a rapper. He released albums under the name “Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch”. He looked like this:

And went out in public looking as such. Now, you have to know that in the early 90’s there was an interesting phenomenon: anyone could rap. It’s true, pussy-ass white kids from the suburbs could go out and put a few tracks down and people would be ok with that. Nowadays you have to prove that you’re tough enough to rap, but in the 90’s anything went. And as Vanilla Ice showed us, you could make it big even when you sucked. And Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch sucked more than normal.

Marky Mark’s big hit was a rap over the classic Lou Reed gem “Walk on the Wild Side”, a song that most people would enjoy listening to. Sadly, Marky Mark’s rendition was abysmal, throwing out painful cliches, embarrassing rhymes, and a social conscience that is more or less laughable. I offer a little bit of commentary through Mark’s song. Imagine Lou Reed looping in the back, with the sax part repeated two or three times.

Ah yeah huh..America the Beautiful
Huh, yeah, let me introduce y’all..to the Wildside

Things go badly right from the start. This is the “call out” like many rap songs have, except Marky gets sarcastic about America and then introduces us to his much lamer alternative, “The Wildside”. The listener hopes that the Wildside offers an improvement over America, but that is not to be the case. In comparison, if America the Beautiful was a decent-sized car with a few problems, The Wildside is a cramped broken car that is filled to the windows with pee.

Annie was a high school cheerleader
Pom poms and bobby socks, no girl was sweeter
Come Prom time everybody was on the line
All the fellas swinging nickel and dime
Tales about love and lust and trust
But Annie took it all in stride
Cause deep inside Annie had aspirations
Wanted to be a chemical engineer
Making 50 to 55 thousand a year
Her first year of college was a success
But along came Billy possessed and obsessed
He took Annie on a fatal date
And showed her things that make heartbeats accelerate
Annie took a hit breathed two short breaths
One for life..the last for death
Now she’s gone, a former Valedictorian
Ended up becoming a topic for historians
Washed up dreams and shattered pride
All because Annie took a hit - on the Wildside

Chemical Engineer? This is what was decided on in the writing room? A mid-level chemical engineer is what Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch chose to make his song about. After an exhaustive internet search using the most up-to-date software available (google), there are officially NO songs out there that deal with the protagonist aspiring to be a chemical engineer. Wichita lineman, yes, chemical engineer, no.

This girl, so set on her job working in a lab and being middle class, refuses to go to prom, yet is coerced into taking drugs on a first date and dying. And what drug is she “taking hits” of? Well, it’s not marijuana, since that doesn’t kill you. And smoking coke and heroin are not usual activities for college freshmen. Nope, she was convinced to either smoking crack or angel dust. See how this doesn’t add up, Marky Mark? There’s a reason marijuana is called a gateway drug - BECAUSE PEOPLE DON’T START OUT SMOKING CRACK.

Oh, and rhyming “Valedictorian” with “historians” is a huge, huge offense to the English language.

Ron had enough of being broke everyday
Saying to himself, there’s gotta be a betta way
Cause 9 to 5 wasn’t worth the headaches
So Ron figured out a faster way to make - money
Before you know it, he’s a rich man
Gold on every finger of his hand
A brand new BMW, a condo, Ron ended up a John Doe
A body was found in the alley but never clained
Full of bullet holes but none to blame
Ron became another victim of homicide
Because he chose to walk - on the Wildside

A rich guy, Ron, dies violently after amassing a small fortune and purchasing much gold, fancy cars and (the horrors!) a condo. And the body was never claimed? Mark, even David Ruffin’s body was claimed and he was a mess when he died. If he was selling drugs, odds are someone noticed. Then again, this was the early 90’s and we didn’t have shows like Bones that could identify a corpse from something as small as a toenail. Maybe in the 90’s the police were too busy looking for Jon Benet Ramsey’s killer that they couldn’t connect an empty condo and an abandoned BMW with a John Doe. And yes, he does rhyme “homicide” with “Wildside,” and as we shall see, he also goes for the other easy one in the next verse.

Charles had everything going for him
A top paying job, a good life, a good wife
A baby boy on the way any day
A gentleman attitude is all he displayed
Carol was the wife he loved and adored
Her family and freinds treated him like an Ambassador
One night on the other side of town
A police dispatcher picked up a weird sound
Charles on the car phone asking for help
Claiming a burglar shot his wife and himself
His pregnant wife lay slumped over
Dreams corrupted and a young life over
Extensive searches throughout the projects
Put a lot of people through misery and wreck
Everyone a suspect til someone was found
Interrigated cause their skin was brown
Then there was Bennett, guilty until proven so
But soon as the case started moving slow
What do you know, sure as as sea gull gets webbed toed
Charles was the culprit
The whole plot was an insurance scam
Charles and his brother came up with a plan
Kill Carol, collect a big check
Blame it on a black man, what the heck?
And just before the story was known
Charles had a feeling that his cover was blown
So he jumped offa bridge
Committed suicide
This is how it is - on the Wildside

This reads like a goddam Canterbury Tale. I am of the opinion that Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch went a little overboard on this verse, since it comprises more lines than the Lord’s Prayer. Granted, only about half the lines are NOT ridiculously bad, but we’re talking all-inclusive here. Some of the greatest hits:

“Carol was the wife he loved and adored
Her family and freinds treated him like an Ambassador”

Huh? What? They graciously accepted him to dinners and listened to him bitch about the way trade was going?

“Extensive searches throughout the projects
Put a lot of people through misery and wreck”

Nice rhyme there, Marky Mark. It has about the same complexity as a 9-year-old’s poem about the first Thanksgiving.

“But soon as the case started moving slow
What do you know, sure as as sea gull gets webbed toed”

This is why Marky Mark never got any street cred. Never, ever, ever. When he dies I want to visit his grave and drop this lyric on his grave and pour out a 40 of Juicy Juice, because this line is hella fruity.

And finally,
Little Tiffany, only thirteen
Came to the city, place of big dreams
Visiting family and friends for the summertime
Sittin’ on a mailbox, watchin’ the boys climb trees
And the girls play hopscotch
So far, her vacation was top notch
Then out of the blue, a Mercedes at top speed
Gang bangers chasin’ the robbers on the stampede
Quick as a blink shots rang out loud
And a hail of bullets zipped through the crowd
One hit Tiffany, and instantly she died
Innocently - on the Wildside

Her vacation sounds dull. Watching other people have fun is not a fun vacation. And where the hell are there trees to climb in NYC that are close to roads? The horse paths in Central Park? Maybe the boys were climbing one of the few trees that are stuck in the concrete and surrounded by dangerous spikes to keep dogs away? I don’t know what trees Marky Mark is talking about.

Follow-up to the last post

I got an email from my uncle about the last post. This is what he said:

“Big Jim was just some guy who thought he looked like a rock star.”

So I guess that’s about as much of an explanation as you’re going to get. Big Jim, if you’re out there, please, defend your existence. And don’t be related to me too much.

A shout-out to laughter

I have Cake Wrecks in my blogroll for you to look out at your leisure, but I wanted to call this site out so you KNOW that you NEED to go visit it. Quite simply, it’s real, professional cake disasters and mistakes. Here’s today’s (I laughed out loud):

It’s obvious what the note to the decorator said. It’s just as obvious that the decorator was lazy or stupid, or probably both. The whole site is filled with these kinds of cakes, and I spent a decent chunk of last night reading through them. Do yourself a favor and read Cake Wrecks for yourself.

Ethan had a weekend

So I was out in Washington DC this weekend, doing some sightseeing, checking out the new Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian (I’d give it a 6 out of 10 - since Disney owns the rights to the later stuff AND a lot of the popular Muppets stuff, they declined to allow permission for any of it. Lots of good early stuff, but it kind of ended with the advent of the Muppet Show), and checking out some historical documents at the Archives. It’s been a busy weekend with little time for blogging, but I wanted to post this little thing.

In DC there’s the gorgeous WWII memorial.

Every little part is symbolic, and it looks amazing at night. But like all the statues and monuments in DC, it’s stuffy. Patriotic, classy, tasteful (which I think is a synonym of classy), but usually kinda sad. Luckily, the artists decided to throw in a little bit of humor with this memorial. Hidden in the back, behind one of the walkways, is this little bit, carved in on purpose.

The memorial has been tagged with a “Kilroy Was Here”. THAT is classy, DC.

Oh, and I got a kitten! Her name is Science.

Like I said, I’ve been sans internet access, but hopefully we’ll be back on track with the updates soon!

This week in Netflix

Every week, the DVD-through-the-mail site Netflix announces new DVDs for rental. Most are films that never got a theatrical release. Ethan Kaye brings you This Week In Netflix, the most inexplicable actual description of an actual film actually posted by the Netflix staff.

This week?

Marina Monster

With a deadly bull shark trolling the waters of the local marina, Earl Molar and his girlfriend, Oceana, drop everything to convince their parents — competing owners of rival yacht clubs — to cancel the town’s annual “Around the Bay” race. Earl’s father is so obsessed with winning the race to pay off his towering pile of debts that he hardly has time to listen. But he’s also worried about the nosy reporter who’s been watching his every move.

Notice how little copy the shark gets. 12 words in the beginning of a sentence, then isn’t mentioned again, a sure sign that we’re not supposed to be interested in the shark. No, we’re supposed to be interested in the political workings of the marina. And you know, that’s fine, I’m almost happy that there’s a movie that focuses on what it takes to run a profitable marina on a day to day basis.

And what about that nosy reporter? He gets 14 words to the shark’s 12. Obviously, the real villain here is the nosy reporter, attempting to bring down the marina through the press. And you know, that’s fine too. Better for a television pilot (sort of like “Hey Dude!”), but they made it into a 72-minute movie and that can function just as well as a pilot.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the shark didn’t kill anyone and was kind of like the Gentle Ben of the series? Like, Earl and Oceana are the protagonists and they have funny adventures every week under the eyes of the bumbling marina owner, Earl’s dad. Maybe Oceana’s dad can be all stuffy and preppy and he disapproves of their romance but he’s too tied up with work to do anything about it. And then the nosy reporter comes around, snooping for dirt on the marina (he is the “antagonist,” for those of you English majors). And then the shark can talk and the kids bring all their problems to him every episode and when things are bad he jumps through the wall or onto the boat and fights people. You know, kind of like Jabberjaw meets Knight Rider.

Sadly, I don’t think that Marina Monster is as interesting or as fun as my re-telling of it. It’s a Jaws rip-off, pure and simple, the best plot that 72 minutes and stock shark footage can buy.

W3lcom to Bolg! OI Ki55 u!

Hey kids.

This is Ethan Kaye. I am the most handsome man you’ll ever read.

This is my blog. It’s called Feed Me A Kitten. Some people might keep the “A” lower case, and you know? That’s fine with me. Let’s make this our blog together. You, me, a little oil, and some O’Jays on the Hi-fi.

Why? Because Ethan Kaye is going to make sweet, sweet love to you all. Especially the ladies of you.

…sweet love…mmm…ladies…

…

OK, I can’t keep that going. This blog’s going to be hella awesome, and you’re all invited to kick it with me in my swingin’ internet pad. My job is to scour the globe, looking for the weirdest things that pop culture has thrown our way, in the hopes of entertaining us. We’re going across the globe, deep inside the human mind, and into the depths of entertainment that most people would be afraid to touch because it would give them rabies.

That’s right, internet. Ethan Kaye is going to get rabies for you.

We’re going to be finding videos that were meant to be forgotten, songs that should never have been recorded, comic books that defy explanation, and toys that you wouldn’t torture a prisoner of war with. And I’ll be your guide, pointing out the humor, the love, the foibles, and the general “what the hell?” of the whole thing. I’m like Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum, except not dead.

And you’re probably saying, “Who the heck is Ethan Kaye, and why should I read his blog?” Well, Mr. and Mrs. Doubting America (and UK, if you live and doubt in the UK), I have three major qualifications that should erase your doubt:

1. I write for ToyFare and I’m the guy who makes fun of all the bootleg toys
2. I was once a featured in a Czechoslovakian documentary on American music
3. I had lunch with Bill Pullman once, and he was nice

Now that should ease your minds. So keep checking back to Wizard Universe and Feed Me A Kitten and you’re going to be treated to the best long-winded expository snark on the whole danged world wide web.

Oh, and if there’s time, I’ll make love to all of you.

Dig,
Ethan