Boy Band Song Interpretations

*To be more accurate, interpretations are more LeeAnne-ish than "literal."

My little teenage self just melted over that photo. Give me a moment to recollect myself.


I'll be the first to admit: I. Love. Boy. Bands. I loved them then, I love them now-- they are catchy and have harmonies that angels envy. And they have this:

I'm going to ignore how strange this is and just say, "Way to be ahead of your time, boys."

I know every word to every Backstreet Boys song ever penned (even the albums that have been released these last couple of years... yes, I have a problem). But I never thought about the lyrics until much more recently. When I stopped to listen to what I was singing (badly), I was struck by one thought over and over again:

THIS IS FILTHY!

Followed quickly by:

HOW DID MY MOTHER LET ME 

LISTEN TO THIS?!

Think I'm kidding? Below are some illustrations I've created for just a few boy band songs from the 90s and 00s. Needless to say, I didn't pen these songs. And don't bug me if they aren't right-- go to www.azlyrics.com and fix it there!

You're not getting it "all" from me, son.

 I know, I know, "All or Nothing" is supposed to be a sad break-up song. I get that. But this is what I hear every time. 

Giddy up: a song about bestiality?

 I mean, seriously? What do you think Justin Timberlake is singing about riding? 

Seriously. This was a hit?

I never liked LFO. There. I said it.

All those ooh's can't mean anything chaste.

If you listen to "Hey, Mr. DJ" you'll note that the singer is creepily watching this girl and then goes to dance with her, followed by lots of ooh-ooh-ooh's. 

Sorry. This is more filthy than usual.

 I hope no man I ever date has heard this song. (That may be difficult to accomplish since I make most people listen to it whenever they ride in a car with me.) The lesson is that shitty cell phone service can lead to kinky times with some stranger who lives close to a bar. No, no, no. At least at the end she finds out and the singer gets dumped, but that poor girl is left holding phone saying "Hello? Hello? Hello?" for a good three and half minutes.

Don't the phrases in parentheses just make it that much dirtier?

 I was clearly a Backstreet Boys gal. I listened to them non-stop. So how come it didn't trouble me that a pre-pubescent Nick Carter was telling me that he could hit my spot? Surely he didn't know what that was?! 


The dirtiest Backstreet Boys song I know is "Get Down." I couldn't possibly draw all that business, so I made a Wordle. (Yes, I used an educational song to illustrate this filthy song. Judge away!)

Yes, that's blurry. Click on it to see it more clearly!

A "night" for me is a handful of sparkly stars.

 What? You want in my pants in TWO languages?! That's just classy. Of course I'll give you just one night!

Every boy band had one...

Ooohhh... Well, maybe next time.


So you can listen to these songs and be troubled all over again, I conveniently made a Spotify playlist for you: spoti.fi/L5pi5S

Enjoy!

LeeAnne's Bar Skank Guide

Well, I've survived the holidays and apparently I've spent a full two weeks recovering from NYE in New Orleans. It wasn't depressing as my last post promised, but I digress. I'm here to fill y'all in on what I have been up to these last few weeks... Beginning with a guide to bar skanks.

Last weekend we had an awesome comedy magician and an amazing hypnotist on campus, and what better way to celebrate that than to get crunked? Just kidding, but I did go out with friends that came down for the show to the village bar, "The Regal Beagle." At the time I joked that they were lucky they were such "Three's Company" fans, otherwise I wouldn't go in there. But if I hadn't gone, where would my blog inspiration be? And what would you, dear reader, be doing right now?!

It all started with my friend Evie, who sort of prides herself in her people watching skills.

I want to clarify here that she is announcing "Skanks, ho!" as in "Skanks ahead!" or "Skanks ahoy!" (hence the pirate hat) and not as in "Skanks and hoes!" That's just redundant, and Evie wouldn't waste her time with such silly announcements.

Anyway, what better place to spot bar skanks than in a college bar? To save yourself some time next time you're out, we've put together a skank spotting guide for your general safety and convenience.

You are bound to encounter any variety of bar skanks in the wild, so I've taken the liberty of illustrating four for you. 

I want to take a moment to say I didn't draw these panels to say that I'm a skank, even though I'm the example in each one. After my friend Jackie pointed out that I always make her my alcoholic friend in my posts, I realized I didn't want anybody else complaining that I always make them my skank friend. So there. Judge away, if you must!


If you disagree or have other bar skanks in mind, forget you, start your own blog. If you think these four are a little too specific and you don't know what to do with yourself, don't fret! If all else fails, study and remember the following bar skank behaviors and you'll be an advanced skank spotter in no time!

(As I finished the example skanks in that panel, I thought to myself, "Do I have a thing against blonde people?" but we'll save the self-discovery for some other time.)


In case you're wondering what a skank fight looks like, I imagine it looks something like this: 

Yeah, I just doodled crudely over the glitter explosion drawing I did for my Christmas crafting post. Have you seen what skanks wear? I don't think this is too far off the mark. Glitter, sequins, it's all the same.


In case you're wondering what a man fight looks like, fortunately for you we experienced one last weekend so I can share the whole thing in great detail:

Our reactions as I've described them are pretty accurate and say a lot about our character. Well, except Duke's reaction-- I don't really know what he was thinking, but he was working really hard on keeping his southern drawl all night so I hope against hope that he was thinking something like that. Or "those fellas are scrappier than a couple o' rabid possum" or "looks like two pigs fighting under a blanket." Well, that last one was from Steel Magnolias, but I think you get it.


Unfortunately, none of our reactions were at all effective. The fight was not broken up, the drinks were not saved, and although the table was initially flipped away from us, it eventually flipped back toward us, resulting in this:

(Technically I was covered in beer, but I didn't want to draw that because, well, let's think about what that would look like.)


Had we been bar skanks, we probably would have managed to get away from the man fight unscathed.


And just so Jackie doesn't feel left out of a blog post where I talk about booze:

Happy skank spotting!

Vampires Don't Make Sense.

Vampires don't make sense. 

Take my hand as I explore the reasons why I don't understand how vampires function (with the help of some of my friends.)

First of all, a disclaimer:

I'm just saying: Have you ever watched True Blood? I don't know when I've ever seen so many beautiful people on screen. And so many six packs. Helloooooooooooooo bare male torsos. 


I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a big vampire fan, though. I never watched "Buffy" or "Angel" or anything like that, but I did read a lot as a kid. And I read a lot of vampire stories. Sure, I started out reading Nancy Drew, but then I jumped right to R.L. Stine's Fear Street books (the "scarier" version of Goosebumps) and was absolutely obsessed with Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire series. 

Oh, Sita. You were the original dark and twisty character that I fell in love with. And the first vampire that piqued my interest-- which brings us to a few questions that I have:

*My friend Jonny pointed out to me that being disgusting doesn't necessarily keep zombies from being a sex machines, as demonstrated in this disturbing clip from "Dead Alive": http://www.youtube.com/wat​ch?v=2T8PWUgrVeA. Seriously, watching that made me want to puke. 

And then there's the question of vampire deaths. Vamps are some tough mamma jammas. 

So how am I supposed to believe that pesky little things can kill them off? Vampire lore is expansive and inconsistent, and there are about a million weird ways that vampires are said to be destroyed. They vary from convincing (decapitation!) to ridiculous (running water?). I found this fantastic chart comparing the top 50 vampires that covers vamp destruction in addition to other things (e.g., fangs, powers, reflections, etc): http://io9.com/5391215/top-50-vampires-the-ultimate-score-sheet.

And last but not least, the most adult of all things vampire that don't make sense:

VAMPIRE SEX.

Clearly, I watch "True Blood" so I'm not complaining or asking too many questions, but if vampires are supposed to be so damned sexy the topic needs to be explored.

Wikipedia has an extensive explanation of sexual reproduction-- feel free to visit it if you haven't had "the talk" just yet. What I'm interested in is how sex works:

So, if sperm needs to be a certain temperature, then it certainly wouldn't survive vampirism. Fine, I'll give you that. No vampire babies. That doesn't necessarily mean no vampire sex.

Beyond that, to get scientific some more, penises need blood to be erect and actually perform the act of intercourse. If vampires are dead, how does that happen? In True Blood they explain that vampires "are the blood" or however they put it, so I suppose even that makes sense. But that leads to another problem:

Gross. 

Even if you can get past the necrophilia (I mean, they look alive, right?), there are other issues to deal with. Vampires are full of blood. Vampires can't make sperm. Ergo, when a vampire climaxes...

That makes that scene from "There's Something About Mary" even more troubling.

So many questions, but I'm sorry to say I offer only one answer:

Like I've said before, when I can't find a logical explanation for something, I know for true it must be magic.

Puts a whole new twist on True Blood's season 4 plot, huh?

The Day I DID Get My Hair Cut

So many adventures, so little time.

A few weeks ago, I shared a story about the day I couldn't get my hair cut and then madness ensued... I'm sure you've been concerned: Did LeeAnne ever get her hair cut?! Inquiring minds want to know!

So stop fretting! I did, in fact, get my hair cut, and that story makes me chuckle as well...

You may remember that Mother Nature seemed to have a personal vendetta against my attempts to manage my mane...

The extreme weather didn't stop, by the way. Another week passed after my previous attempt and the rain and tornado warnings kept up. I was about to give up and take matters into my own hands, like one of my favorite train wrecks:

Fortunately, I didn't have to go that route. I finally lost my mind and called around to find a salon that would cut my hair. Tornado or not, my windswept hairs would at least be short if  the weather took me out.

I arrived at the salon despite ominous clouds and fell in love:

You'd think that phrase would be expected in a salon, but I was traumatized. Anyone offering to cut my hair at this point was an angel on earth.

I changed my opinion about the "angel" bit pretty soon after I arrived though.

Rude comment, yes. But I was so happy to be getting my hair done that I didn't care. Even though it did some damage to my ego, I let out a feeble "yes" just to appease her so she would would cut my hair. She was probably right: my eyebrows were so untamed that she might have mistaken them for caterpillars or a furry headband or rascally kittens. I couldn't fault her for that.

While I was getting my eyebrows waxed, the lights flickered a few times. The thunder was, well, thunderous. I was getting really nervous, but she was just chat, chat, chatting away. To calm my anxiety, I interrogated her before we moved on to the actual slicing and dicing.

I was in heaven. Chatty, chatty heaven.

Things were going as normal despite the tumultuous weather. Even after the sirens sounded, I considered myself in good shape.

I'm not sure why the siren sounded like it was really excited, but it didn't affect my hair stylist. She kept up the chit chat to my monosyllabic responses: "Yes," "no," "wow," and "huh."

But that chit chat came to a screeching halt.

Call me sensitive, but I didn't really know what to do with that. What am I? 


Sookie Stackhouse would say "I'm a waitress." That would make me a housing professional? That doesn't even mean anything to this lady. Was she confused about my gender? I'm a woman. About my legal status? I'm a US Citizen. About my mood? Content, until that split second.

I knew what she meant, but I still wasn't sure how to respond:

I, of course, chose to be difficult. When people are rude, I like to make them uncomfortable. That's probably not healthy, but I am what I am. The conversation went something like...

      "Excuse me? I'm not sure what you mean."

      "Well, what are you? Where are you from?"

      "I already told you, I live just down the block. I work at the university."

      "No, no, no. Where are you originally from?"

      "Oh! I was born in northeastern Ohio."

      "No, I mean, WHAT ARE YOU?"

      "Oh, you mean my ethnicity?"

      "YES."

      "I'm half Vietnamese. My dad is white, my mom is Vietnamese. They met in the war."

      "Huh. I don't think so. You're Polynesian."

      "WHAT?"

      "Or maybe Hawaiian. Definitely. I lived in Bowling Green and I saw a lot of you people."

Oh yeah, that rude all right. But that horrifying conversation ended with shorter hair, at least.

I was happy again, so I tried to forget about the conversation and just have myself a nice evening.

Then I walked outside.

Mother nature still rained on my parade. Literally. 

So help me, I may never get my hair cut again.