No One In the Club has Swagger Like Us

Brian and I speak to each other in quotes. I don't mean that we use air quotes, like Chris Farley in his "van down by the river" speeches from SNL. I mean that we hear quotes that we just love from movies, tv shows, commercials, and songs, and then we just can't stop saying them to each other, over and over and over and over again. I suspect a lot of couple speak to each other in this kind of language. My parents had some quotes that I never even knew were from pop culture until I was an adult.

Apparently many of my parents quotes came from Monty Python, including "Not the comfy chair!" They also peppered in SNL references "Cheeburger, Cheeburger, Cheeburger" and of course the ever repeated misheard song lyrics like "Two American kids growing up, in a garbage can" (from Jack & Diane by John Cougar Mellencamp).

Brian and I have quotes that are primarily comprised of rap lyrics and Will Ferrell movies. For example, several from Anchorman: "Don't act like you're not impressed" and "Baxter, you know I don't speak Spanish" and "Go back to your home on Whore Island."

And then there are the rap quotes. I am really really cheesy and still have to tell people "So take off all your clothes" whenever they say "It's hot in here" (I know, I'm like ten years too late on that one, thanks a lot Nelly).

One of our most recent favorites comes from a T.I. song. Brian and I downloaded T.I.'s album after we realized that he was the rapper on two recent radio songs we liked "Whatever You Like" and "Live Your Life" (with Rihanna). T.I. has some pretty interesting lyrics. Not like Fugee quality intelligence, but cool none the less. I am not even going to get into the extremely naughty actual main chorus lyrics to "Whatever You Like" which give the song a FAR different meaning than the radio version does. Hint: "Treat you so special so nice" is replaced by "Late night sex so blank and so blank" (it doesn't exactly rhyme with special and nice, but it does rhyme with "bet" and "light" (come on, you can do it!).

But anyway, the oft quoted song in question is actually "Swagger Like Us." First of all, because I am like six months behind in what is hip, I didn't know until I finally downloaded awesome female rapper M.I.A.'s album today that "Swagger Like Us" is sampled from her very awesome song "Paper Planes" (which you might recognize from Pineapple Express, another movie we have started quoting).

Ok, but I digress. So the line in Swagger Like Us is not even said by T.I. The song features 3 other rappers: Kanye West (who has really creative lyrics on his albums), Lil Wayne (who I can't take seriously because he is like five feet tall and has a tear tattoo on his face) and the always loveable senior, Jay Z. Jay Z is actually the quote deliverer. He says "Can't wear skinny jeans cause my knots don't fit." When I heard this the first time, I totally thought he said "Can't wear skinny jeans cause my nuts don't fit". Which totally makes sense. If you have giant balls, it would be tough to wear skinny jeans. And then even after I realized it was knots, I still thought maybe knots was code for balls. But apparently knots refers to a large bank roll. So he's saying that he carries around too much money in a bankroll in his pants to fit into skinny jeans (which I guess, is the financial equivalent of having big balls).

For some reason though, Brian and I find this endlessly enjoyable to say to each other. We can work it into normal conversation with ease. That's the best - you've got to slip in your funny quotes so they just glide with the conversation, then they are funnier. Which means I can't slip one in now, because you'd be expecting it. Unless I said that we could play a little game called just the tip. Do you know where that one was from?