For the Love of Flava

Sometime in college, couple days before Halloween, we had a party to rock and my roomates had already gotten pretty dope getups: Specs (token art guy) had made a dupe of Belushi’s SNL bumble bee get up and Day (token rich guy) had rented a full-size green foam Gumby outfit to ape Eddie Murphy’s angry take on the beloved claymation character. Land Shark outfits were sold out, and I wasn’t 100% that some drunk Kappa Kippa Koopa Delta dressed up as Neptune wouldn’t try to harpoon me with his trident in an attempt to testosterone the panties of his little mermaid sorority trophy date…so the clock was ticking, and I was sh*t out of ideas.

Until I remembered: I had recently stolen a clock. Not sure why. It was about a foot across, white hands on black face, hanging in the main atrium of the student union where a couple of thousand fake adults between the ages of 18-21 strut, stumbled and charged through every day and night. Wrapped snugly in my traditional 4 month bourbon blanket against the ridiculously cold autumn precursor to the impending Syracuse Sack Icing Winter ™, it seemed like a really, really good idea at the time. Exact details have been recounted to me as involving a industrial-sized trash can cum makeshift ladder that I apparently fell into hiney first and had to be extracted from by my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. I smelled like banana.

Soon-to-be-ex, like, as soon as she pulled me Keds first out of the trash can, if I recall. Which I don’t. So that may be a lie. She may have dumped me after we decided to use her living room to film “Curse of the Hand of Death” the full contact karate movie we made, fake ketchip blood and all. Which got an ‘A’, by the way. Even with the permanent-stained living room footage on the cutting room floor. So who’s the dumbass now, eh?

But that’s another story. I wore a fez (which was ironic, because off set I pretty much dressed like Fez), I was the evil Kipi, putting cigarettes out on random kung-fu lackeys. Walt was my paladinesque half-brother Clint Steel, shirtless and in day-glo flowered jams. The soundtrack was Slayer and the Patridge Family. It. Was. Magic.

Biz? Mellow? Binger? If you’re reading this and have the movie, email me toot sweet. I think we may just have our ticket to YouTube Director-dom!

Anyway, so the clock, plus listening to seminal Public Enemy opus Yo! Bum Rush the Show about a hundred times that week while playing dominoes on the porch instead of going to my Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence midterm, got my mind thinking back to those golden high school years driving around in Fat Pete’s candy apple glossed Monte Carlo SS thumping to P.E. Chuck D. And Flava Flav. The Flav. The King of Cold Lamping.

The ultimate costume.

Half an hour in JC Penney’s Active Boys section and a quick stop at the Sunglass Hut later, we three walked through the local mall to the cheers of ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages. Seriously. The upstate New York masses didn’t know who the hell the yellow beach ball or the green dildo were supposed to be, but damned if they didn’t holla for the freaky beat funk of the sweet, sweet Flava.

God bless those children. Every one.

Next time on a very special OhMyGowda!: MTV’s reality series “Flavor of Love”. Brilliant commentary on our America’s lust for fame over recognition for true merit and, barring either, infamy over fame? Or intestine splattered car wreck of culture that you just can’t look away from? Tune in and cast your vote!