Wednesday, 6/7

I have a coworker who has never known a world without Sir Mix a Lot's “Baby Got Back”. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

I was working on a computer log at work yesterday when I saw the song's title pop up. Now, as we all know, I have no mental control; once I see the title of an embarrassing song, I tend to have that song stuck in my head for a length anywhere between five minutes and four and a half months. So it probably comes as no surprise that I was walking down the hall singing the epic opening line of the song (which, if you don't know what it is, I won't surprise it by typing it out here. Go ahead and Google “opening line of “Baby Got Back”. Go ahead. I dare you.). As I was walking down the hall singing the opening line, my young ESPN U.P. coworker Blake pipes up “I love that song”.

And, doing a little math in my head, that's how my mind was blown.

No, it wasn't blown by the math (something that HAS happened once or twice before). It was blown by this—the song came out in 1992. Blake was born in 1995 (I know because I asked). I now work with something who's YOUNGER than Sir Mix a Lot's “Baby Got Back”.

How the heck did THAT happen?

That means that Blake is three years older than “Baby Got Back”. It's been part of his musical vocabulary since he's been old enough to have a musical vocabulary. To him, it's just an “old” song, like Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or anything popular recorded by Madonna. To him, songs that I might consider part of the soundtrack of my life, songs by groups like REM or The Clash, are thought of the same way I might think of songs by Elvis or the Four Seasons.

You know---as oldies. Songs like my parents might like. I'm apparently old enough to have become an “oldie”, at least in the eyes of one of my coworkers.

I don't think I like that.

I consider myself fairly hip, fairly conversant in today's music. It's partly a benefit of working where I do, and partly because, as we all know, I refuse to act my age. But a song I clearly remember from its original release has proven, at least to a whole generation of people, that despite my best efforts, despite the way I act, that despite the fact that I'm fighting it with every fiber of my being, that time is passing me by.

I've become an oldie. And I have Sir Mix a Lot to thank for that realization.

(jim@wmqt.com)