U is for...

"U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer


Really quick story here: if you had the chance to play an American song for someone from another country, to give them a little piece of our culture, what would you pick?  Would it be "U Can't Touch This"?  It would be if you were me and my friends in Jr. High.  We had an exchange student from Korea in our class one year, a very nice, quiet, sweet girl who sadly believed pretty anything people told her.  More than one kid had some fun with that, but by the end of the year most of our class was genuinely sad to see her go.

Me and my friends had a study hall with her in the computer lab, and while the network control settings were pretty high, we still found ways to get where we wanted.  Remember that "I'm Feeling Lucky!" button Google used to have?  That was our best friend.  If the network was blocking a website, you could put the address in Google, hit "I'm Feeling Lucky!", which would take you right to the address you entered, but since it was going through Google it went under the network control's radar.

This is how we watched videos on YouTube.  We had to search the video on Google, find the exact address for it, put it in "I'm Feeling Lucky!" and boom!  Video.  Now, I'm not sure if our exchange student asked us to show her some American music, or if we just took it upon ourselves for some reason, but we ended up showing her "U Can't Touch This".  She thought it was pretty funny, so we felt good with our decision.

I couldn't find the exact video we showed her.  It wasn't the official video, it was some weird thing with different colored stick figures dancing with a boom box, and I'm not sure if that was better or worse for her to see than the eighties girls and Hammer Pants.  Oh well.