Things We Hate - Rutgers State of Mind

"RU!!!!!!!"

We went to the Rutgers-UNC game last weekend. As usual the tailgating was excellent and early on Rutgers held a surprising 10-0 lead against the remaining, non-suspended members of the Tar Heel squad. As the first quarter ended with Rutgers looking dominant and we started planning our trip to the Sugar Bowl (we're nothing if not unrealistic), the world-famous D.J. Yoshi ("Moving the masses through music since 1996") started what seemed like the first few beats of the Alicia Keys hook from "Empire State of Mind." We were, of course, pumped because, as everyone knows, that's our shit! As we leapt from our seats (totally got some air), our euphoria came to a crashing halt as we heard something strange, and wrong, in place of the expected reference to the metropolis next door, there was "R U........" What .... the ... hell? And with that, we bring you this week's "Things We Hate" a bastardized version of the ubiquitous "Empire State of Mind" called, or course, "Rutgers State of Mind." Easily a 174 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. Take a listen.

Good, now we're not the only ones with this damn thing stuck in our heads. It's quite evil to take a song as catchy as the original and put in really shitty lyrics, your powerless to stop it from burrowing into your brain. Btw, were we the only ones rooting for a car to run the kid over when he's standing in the street at the 30 second mark? Our problem isn't so much with the song itself (the rapping kid isn't that bad, he's no Flo Rida - get it, it's like Florida, bet you can't guess where he's from - but he's ok). It's more about how embarrassing it is to be associated with it.

Imagine yourself sitting in a stadium full of Rutgers fans (yes, we said full ... of Rutgers fans, never let reality get in the way of your imagination ... or the story) all with confused looks on their faces as they try to figure out why the green "Chipette" is singing the hook to this thing over and over again as the jumbrotron plays scenes of past Rutgers football glory (again, imagination) and excited students unwittingly putting there hands in the air as if to say "Yeah, Yeah." It's like being waterboarded with awfulness. We've been embarrassed for other people before but we'd never gotten full body douche chills until then. Chills, red faces and flop sweat, the whole thing. We wanted to crawl into a hole but there was just no escape.

In fact, we're still uncomfortable after sitting here listening to it a bunch of times for blogging purposes (The Persnickety Project: We Endure Crap So YOU Don't Have To). No need to go into the rap portion in detail (way too hyper-local) other than to say - Excellent recitation of facts kid, those things do actually exist and/or happen at Rutgers.

As far as the hook goes - maybe if we put the words down in writing it will take away some of their power - kinda like when you confront your mugger:

R U ... The College Where Dreams Are Made

There's Nothing We Can't Do

Cause We're At RU

We Will Make You Feel Brand New

These Knights Will Inspire You

Let's Here it for R U, R U, R U

Nope, still frightening.