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Just Wait Till ’07 — That’ll Be Heaven!

I’ve been spending some time lately playing NBA Live on my PC. Enough time, in fact, that the songs playing during the game menus are now in heavy rotation in my head. They’re not songs that I would typically listen to — rappish fare, mostly, as opposed to my usual ‘obscure eighties crap no one’s ever heard of’ — but the songs are generally okay. Only one or two of them make me want to clean my ears with an electric hand mixer to make it go away. And that’s more than I can say for Skinny Puppy or Alphaville, so maybe there is something more than ’80s obscure pop, after all.

At any rate, one song in particular stands out from the others. Perhaps because it’s catchier (which it isn’t, really). Maybe it’s more memorable, because it’s more repetitive (nope, they’re all repetitive). Probably, it’s because it repeats the name of the game, over and over and over and over. Yes, that’s definitely it. Suddenly, it seems so obvious.

Now, keep in mind that I’m playing last year’s game, dubbed NBA Live: 2005. Because apparently, video game producers are as egomanically conceited as car manufacturers, and name their products for the year after their release date. Why do they do this? I don’t know. Teeny tiny little penises are involved somewhere, I’m sure.

But back to the song. The perpetrators of this particular ditty take advantage of the rhyming potential of ‘NBA Live: Two Thousand Five‘. The lyrics go something like this:

‘Yo, NBA Live!

It’s NBA Liiiiiive!‘

Just imagine that, ad infinitum, and you’ve pretty much got it. Except that ‘ad infinitum’ actally only lasts four minutes or so.

(And also, no rapper worth his beatbox is going to throw ‘sakes alive’ at his groove. Me, I can’t help it. I’m white like Katie Couric’s bionic teeth. In high school, I was voted ‘Least Likely to Raise the Roof’. And I think ‘booty call’ has something to do with a pirate on the telephone.

Still, you get the idea. I never said I listened to the lyrics, dammit.)

It got me thinking, though. As rich a rhyming landscape as last year’s version was — we didn’t even get to ‘arrive’, ‘revive’, ‘deprive’, or the ever-rappable ‘Clive’ — what are the poor lads signed up for the soundtrack for this year’s game going to do? Because ‘NBA 06’ doesn’t have nearly the potential. I’ve never ‘dropped a beat’ in my life, and even I can tell you that. What’s it going to sound like?:

‘Hey, yo, NBA oh six!

It’s NBA oh siiiiiiix!‘

Yeah. I think I’ll stick to last year’s model. Sometimes, it’s okay to be behind the curve a little. At least this way, I won’t have to hear them rhyme ‘Dixie Chicks’ with ‘dat phat Hans Blix’. Frankly, I’m not sure my joystick could handle that.