Does He Like Butter Tarts?
I recall a time in elementary school when a friend’s dad drove us to science camp. Or something. The details are foggy, but I vividly remember the dad cranking Steal My Sunshine by Len. Absolutely blasting it. Maximum bass. The windows rattled. My very bones vibrated.
And I thought: goddamn, this guy is cool.
In retrospect, a middle-aged white dude blaring Steal My Sunshine from his Dodge Caravan while driving preteen boys to science camp is nobody’s definition of cool.1 It’s a caricature of uncool. But your standards are different when you’re eleven.
Never change, cool dad.
To be clear, Steal My Sunshine is a dope song. It was one of the first I pirated on Napster. The very first was Teenage Dirtbag. Sorry Len and Wheatus. I hope my repeated listens in the streaming era generate enough royalties to atone for my Y2K transgressions. ↩