"Moon Town" Rap Scene & Al Gore's House of Persian Cuisine

So Olivia and I are driving (Olivia is now a licensed driver by the way) and she puts in a CD that her friend Kelly made for her. It's filled with mostly really awful songs because, well, because it's Kelly. I love Kelly, but Kelly's musical tastes are just crap. And this CD is REALLY bad. Some of the songs are okay, there's even a few I like, like "Summer in the City". But when "Summer in the City" is sandwiched on either side by The Pussycat Dolls and Rascal Flatts? Something is definitely lost in the translation, ya know?

ANYWAY, so we're laughing at Kelly's music choices (c'mon-"My Boo?" It was annoying enough three years ago. Nobody but Kelly still listens to this) and then something amazingly awful booms out of the speakers. The tune is somewhat familiar, but I can't quite place it...it's clearly some sort of rap, rap of a low skill level though. Olivia is grinning and I can tell she's waiting for my reaction. It takes awhile for me to catch on, because the rapper's enunciation is appallingly bad. (And before you say that's part of the genre-I beg to differ. If the point of rap is to amaze everyone with "mad rhyming skills" - yes, I'm cringing as I write that phrase - and send a profound - or profane even- message, ...it helps to actually understand what the rapper is in fact saying.)

Finally, some phrases start to jell in my brain. The rapper is talking about something called the "Moon Town rap scene". The lyrics are unintentionally hilarious-

• "Half Moon Bay, land of the underdog" oh, yeah. That's right. Home of the underdog. If the home of the underdog definition includes a town in which the median priced home is $750,000 and the kids all drive BMW's and Lexus'.
• "Running from the PO-lice" (emphasis is on the "PO") - totally, because our town police department, consisting of 12 officers, is SUCH a huge presence. Given the nature of my job, I happen to know that at any given time, there are a grand total of 2 officers patrolling our streets. I doubt sincerely that their resources are going towards policing a bunch of lame ass wannabes. Read our local newspaper "Police Beat" and you'll see that our officers spend nearly all of their time responding to tourists who have locked their keys in their cars.

Come to think of it though, I do have personal knowledge of an actual police chase involving local teenagers. It involved one of Ivy's friends and a trunk full of lawn gnomes stolen from the Rite Aid drug store. The lawn gnomes were recovered and Ivy's friend received a felony count for grand theft and evading arrest. This is the kind of incident that reminds us old folks exactly how stupid teenagers can be. It must've seemed like a good idea at the time: drive up to the Rite Aid, grab a bunch of lawn gnomes from the outside display and then lead the police on a high speed chase. If you're going to get a "first strike", do it style I say.

• "Doing 60 on 'The Higgins'" First of all, if you do 60 on "The Higgins" you're not cool, you're a moron because it's a narrow, cliff-top, two-lane, mostly dirt road that has some seriously scary sharp turns . Second of all, NOBODY refers to "Higgins Canyon Road" as "The Higgins." This is a semi-rural suburban town, a mix of folks like Eric's family who've lived here since the 1920's and Silicon Valley executives. We don't have notorious streets here. And if we did, I don't think "The Higgins" would come close to meeting the definition.

Anyway, the song is pretty damn funny and I would be really impressed if kids in question wrote the song as a parody or satire. But Olivia tells me that no, they are dead serious. These kids actually think of themselves as "gangsta rappers." In the song they even name check (and diss) P. Diddy and Jay-Z.

So everybody, let's sing it together:

"We've got something to tell you, Something that you oughtta know

From the 7-2-6 to the 7-2-8 in the parts of the (650) (in case you didn't know, those are telephone prefixes and area codes)

From the kegs at the beach, to the trees (? wtf, nature-loving rappers?) that we seek

Half Moon Bay is the place to play.

Every day I gotta strike up a blaze

Just to chase all the blues away."

So watch for these guys to hit it big real soon. I myself am really looking forward to the ascent of the "Moon Town Rap Scene."

In other news, Eric, Olivia and I had dinner with Mike Parvizi's parents on Saturday. After a little initial confusion locating the restaurant (the name of the restaurant was "Alborz's House of Persian Cuisine, but Eric heard it as "Al Gore's House of Persian Cuisine") we had a very pleasant evening, right up until we went to pick up Eric's car at the BART station and discovered that it had been broken into. Luckily Eric keeps his car pretty immaculate, so there wasn't much to steal. In desperation, the would-be burgalers popped the trunk and found:

A half dozen plastic bags filled with aluminum cans. I don't know why, but this just makes me giggle. So let's give a shout out to Eric, the Recycling King. I've been teasing him about his little recycling hobby, but now I am convinced of its worth.