"Hi, Kids!"

Eminem: My Name is. This was another video I first saw at Nathaniel's house on TRL. Carson took forever to introduce the video. He started talking about this white guy from Detroit almost winning the freestyle olympics, getting discovered by Dr. Dre and so on. Then, he introduces Eminem by saying "His name is like the candy, but it's spelled all screwed up." The guy had a knack for completely ruining the viewer's interest (or, at the very least my, personal interest) with some weak off-the-cuff ramble in which he'll try to be funny. Maybe it was intentional. With his lengthy intro and completely boring jokes, he set the bar of expectations very low. And thanks to Carson's monotone rambling, Nathaniel and I plus several million other white kids were underprepared and then totally blindsighted by what we saw next.

Eminem |MTV Music

Trends Spotted: Lewinsky Joke, Spice Girls Joke, Marilyn Manson Joke

This was a pivotal moment. This was a moment that I knew was pivotal as it was happening. As soon as he hit the screen, I had to know more. I remember Nathaniel and I being immediately sucked in. It was confusing. He's a white rapper, but he's good! But he's making jokes and wearing funny costumes! Is he for real?
Daniel was in the bathroom and missed the whole video. When he returned to the living room, the two of us literally jumped to our feet and ran to him to rave about what he missed.
"He was this white guy but he was really good at rapping!"
"And he was like...he was all, 'I can't figure out which Spice Girl to impregnate!'"
There were plenty of rockers from the early and mid nineties who were upset over the gigantic success of all of the teen pop artists out there. But Eminem made it cool to joke about beating them up and fucking them.
And that's how he got 'em. He made little guys like me laugh with the radio edit of his single. I knew he rapped about drinking and tits or whatever, but listening to the actual album for the first time was a completely different monster. In short, the Slim Shady LP taught me all I needed to know to take profanity to a level previously unimaginable to a fifth grader. The Slim Shady LP is responsible for the thankless legacy of introducing many, many of the world's children to the word cunt.
And can we talk about the actual song and video some more? It doesn't make any goddamn sense. He's Bill Clinton! He's Marilyn Manson! He's a teacher. No wait, now he's trying to beat up a teacher! He's rapping in front of a bunch of blue circles wearing a jumpsuit! Can anybody tell me what the fuck is going on in the scene where he's laying on a bus stop bench, and people walking around him are edited into the scene? Is this a reference to something, or just something they decided to throw in? This has been bothering me for ten years now.
This video was the first in his first-single-from-a-new-album pattern. It's a strategy that he has stuck to very faithfully. Every time he needs a single for his new album, he gets this weird high-pitch voice, sticks it to fellow mainstream artists by making a good number of threats of violence, and in the video, he dresses up in about 40 different funny costumes that have nothing to do with anything he's rapping about. None of the videos make any goddamn sense.

"Get the Fuck Up."

Well, here we are. I feel that it's better that I don't post videos and memories in this blog in chronological order. I need a big, explosive first entry. And there wasn't a big, dumb explosion quite like the one this video set off.

Limp Bizkit |MTV Music

Trends Spotted: Backwards baseball caps, sick goatee, random breakdancing.

It was 1999. Limp Bizkit's Faith set it off. It was Fred Durst's over-the-top dry heave howl that set loose an avalanche of shit and Yankees hats over MTV.
At the time I was in the 5th grade. My friend Nathaniel and I had been going to the Berkeley JCC after school program together for two years. Our parents thought up the plan to save some money and just hire a babysitter to watch the two of us after school and help us with homework. The kid they hired was Daniel. A 15 year old skater dude without a care in the world. I don't ever remember doing a page of homework with him beyond the first week of knowing him. Under Daniel's eye, I played more video games, watched more TRL, made more prank phone calls, and got into more pussy slapfights with Nathaniel than at any other point in my life. Daniel was one hell of an enabler when it came to acting like an all around shitty kid. I remember the three of us going to the park near Nathaniel's house to set paper towels on fire with Daniel's lighter. At that point he was probably the coolest kid we knew.
So anyway, it's 1999 at Nathaniel's house, and Carson introduces the Faith video. Did I pump my fist, happy to see a video on MTV that wasn't some boy band? Did I start singing along? Did I get up and start a mosh pit in Nathaniel's living room?
Nope. Early on, I decided that I wasn't going to like Limp Bizkit. It was like a superhero and his arch nemesis being best friends before growing up to destory each other, only in reverse.
Daniel liked Nu-Metal. He had all of Korn's albums before they hit it big on MTV.
"Well why don't you like it?" He asked.
Back then, I was kind of afraid of it. I categorized all loud, aggressive rock with a Marilyn Manson video I had seen and it made me nervous. I have never been seriously religious or spiritual, but I remember telling Daniel that my reasoning for not liking Limp Bizkit was something along the lines of "Well I just don't like all of the loud 'ruh ruh ruh I hate God' thing going on."
"Hate God?"
Daniel pointed at the TV. "He's wearing a CROSS!"
Quick reminder, I'm Jewish. Barely Jewish.
But something clicked. How foolish of me! Fred Durst didn't hate a god that I didn't even believe in, and that made it okay to like his music.
A week later Nathaniel and I would be practicing that weird jump Fred Durst does 45 seconds into the video in my driveway, waiting for Daniel to skate to my house.
Thanks, Daniel.