Wanna B Ur Lovr

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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

[quote]Is that similar to The Compleat Al? Because I've seen that one.The Compleat Al one is the one I had in mind. The one on the Home Movies isn't quite as... compleat.
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Post by picklenose »

I didn' t like the constipation verse in Complicated either. But hey, I guess now that Al's married he has a right to "mature" a little. I guess now he gets a PG-13 instead of a PG.
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Post by scottidog »

Oh Al's been doing potty humor for a long time...



Won't Eat Prunes Again comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others. It's just that we get, what? Two references in PH. Or is it three?
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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

Oh Al's been doing potty humor for a long time...

Won't Eat Prunes Again comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others. It's just that we get, what? Two references in PH. Or is it three?


I count four (Couch Potato, Wanna B Ur Lovr, Complicated Song and Genius In France) unless you count a reference to a bathroom as a potty reference (Trash Day) in which case you have five. What's different this time around is that the references are more unequivocal. At least I consider "crap and pee," "diarrhea," "constipation," "bowel evacuation" and "poop" to be more immediately understandable than, say, "shouldn't have had that bag of bran muffins an hour and a half ago."



Maybe it's just an inevitable consequence of all those years of songs about food :lookround: and Al will now have gotten it out of his system, so to speak. Or maybe it's another sign of how closely in touch with the Zeitgeist Al is; it doesn't take a Genius in France or anyplace else to figure out that the Zeitgeist could benefit from somebody bringing out the firehose.
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Post by sarah_yzma »

well it's all gotta go......you know what...I'm stopping this before it goes farther!



complicated song is the worst in my opinion....cause i didn't even think that way about Wanna B Ur Luvr until people started saying that on here! and I don't think either of those are that bad....Truck Driving Song still bugs me.....just because it's so....scary.....I have no problem with these songs....as has been stated plenty of times before, go pick up any CD popular with the majority of teens, and see where we stand.....



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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

Truck Driving Song still bugs me.....just because it's so....scary.....


Yup. Nipple rings. I'm still glad they didn't do a video for that one.
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Post by scottidog »

and Al will now have gotten it out of his system, so to speak.


Funniest thing I've heard since "Just beat me up. Really, beat me up!"
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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

I know this song has already been discussed pretty thoroughly here, but I just can't resist revisiting those room-temperature equines... maybe this should be in the "(over)analyze this" topic.



The more I listen to "Wanna B Ur Lovr" the more it grows on me. It's sounding more and more to me like Al's subtle subversion of the "music to make out by" genre.



Oh... btw... I realize I overemphasized the cheese factor in the music when I posted earlier. But has anybody here heard "Midnite Vulture?" Was Beck doing an ironic take on "music to make out by?"



The pickup lines in the lyric were described by Al himself as "really bad ones. Horrible, horrible, horrible ones." So it doesn't seem likely that he's thinking of this as a "real" love song.



What I've come to really enjoy about the lyric is that, alongside the chorus of "wanna be your lover" and the extravagant compliments that seem suitable to the job of persuading the lady in question, every so often there are these moments when the mask slips: "don't speak or you might spoil it," "you must have fallen from heaven, that would explain how you messed up your face," and "are you pickin' up the subtle innuendo here?" Mr. Wanna B is thinking of himself, and presenting himself, as a great lover, but then come these clues to an underlying contempt for the woman he has in his sights: he has no interest in anything she might say, he's not interested in actually communicating with her; he doesn't mind hurting her feelings if, in the process, he can deliver a "clever" line, and he has a very low opinion of her intelligence (while, given his inability to catch the off-putting nature of some of his compliments, like the "water in my toilet" one, it's clear that he himself isn't the brightest crayon in the box). It's not really a lover Mr. Wanna B is looking for, he just wants to find (ahem!) a nice warm habitat for his anaconda. And then comes that "so you can meet my mom" line, which to me is hilarious because it suggests such a different kind of relationship-- one with a real, whole person-- than the kind Mr. Wanna B has been pursuing throughout the rest of the song.



This is one of those songs that have some extra light shed on them by knowing what kind of person Al is in real life: he respects other people (he can zing pretty good, it's true, but he's almost always zinging someone's pop-culture image or work rather than the person him-or-herself), he's considerate of others' feelings. And although he did quite a good job of keeping his social life private during all those single years, there was never any hint that he would consider a high turnover rate in that area to be a good thing, or that he ever regarded women as a sort of consumer product. So to me, at least, it's not too hard to see WBUL as an extended mockery of Mr. Wanna B and all his spiritual brethren. I don't think Al set out ahead of time to do all this on purpose... I expect that he just found the idea of a song full of bad pickup lines funny, but what Al finds funny is inevitably shaped by who Al is, and there you have it.



Oh... one other thing occurred to me. Do you suppose that the lyrics to this song have made the Altschul family (visited by Al in Rock The House) look at that missile crashing through their ceiling in a different light? :P
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Post by weird_el »

And then comes that "so you can meet my mom" line, which to me is hilarious because it suggests such a different kind of relationship-- one with a real, whole person-- than the kind Mr. Wanna B has been pursuing throughout the rest of the song.


Actually, I took that line to mean Mr Wanna B still LIVES with his mom -- he's still shallow.



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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

Actually, I took that line to mean Mr Wanna B still LIVES with his mom -- he's still shallow.

El


Well, I'd hate to suggest that every guy who still lives with his mom is shallow, but you're right-- and living with mom in this case does kind of undercut Mr. Wanna B's self-image of masterfulness and smoooooooooothness.
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