Aqua Teen/Boondocks Themes

So yeah...my latest music downloads are:

Pet Sounds, Beach Boys
The Boondocks Theme
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Theme

The last two are like 30 seconds each, and rap-py...very cool, though I guess they might just seem blah if you didn't watch the shows. Took a bit of searching to find the ATHF theme, which is by Schoolly D; finally tracked it down over here. The Boondocks theme is done by this dude named Asheru, who also does other songs for the show. He's got a Myspace thing goin, which is where I snagged the theme song from. Niggas is another interesting song of his; I guess he actually wrote that and McGruder used parts of it to help write the big speech at the end of the MLK episode. I have to say, Boondocks is my new favorite show - the only fictional show I watch on a regular basis (if you count having watched in this week and last week as watching it on a regular basis, which for me it pretty much is) This past week's episode was again, brilliant; about soul food and its place in African-American culture, and how it causes so many health problems because it comes from slave cooking, and slaves were only given the leftover, worthless parts of meat to eat, and maybe today people should question the validity and wisdom of following traditions blindly.

But what really put the capper on the episode was the ending; see, a businessman wants to start a soul food restaurant with one of the characters, and he does. He mentions at the time that he owns all the businesses in the area, except for a local park which the state is unwilling to sell at a decent price. The restaurant becomes the "it" place because the food is so good. It's actually so good that people become addicted to it, start ignoring their jobs and families to stay and eat, and the neighborhood becomes run down because you have all these soul food addicts hanging out around the area begging for change, passed out on benches after eating the Luther (that's the name of the sandwich, named for Luther Vandross). Subsequently property values in the area drop, and at the end the restaurant is closed, ostensibly because of a lawsuit brought by someone who gained excessive weight eating there, and then recovered by having a stomach bypass and two liposuction procedures (which is an interesting and amusing point as well, the continual drive in American/human culture to address the symptoms and not the underlying problem - but that's another post). However, the last shot of the episode shows the businessman in front of the park, which is now being developed by his company; he was using soul food and African-American culture to drive down property values so that he could get the park and build whatever he wanted to build there. Just a fascinating observation about industry and how cultures and movements are co-opted by existing interests.

On a side note, Huey Freeman will hopefully soon be my myspace friend. That makes 8, holy crap! If only he was real. And one of them isn't actually anyone I know (Asheru; I do count the Whitest Kids as a friend because I know like 3 of the 5). I only 6 friends in the whole world, how sad am I?

Yes, that is sarcastic.