Sean Daly's Pop Life: The Lunch Lady Playlist, the 'spank bank' and George Strait and Yim Yames

By Sean Daly, Times Pop Music Critic
In Print: Sunday, August 23, 2009

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So I'm at the Kenny Chesney tailgate party a couple of weeks back, mingling with thousands of tan, healthy concertgoers. The young cowboys and gals are winking and drinking and stealing BlackBerry snaps of each other in various displays of ab-toned sass. And as I pass these American PYTs with their clicking cameras, I hear the same phrase over and over:

"Spank bank!"

Yeah, you read that right.

Think of "spank bank" as the new "cheese" or "smile."

Well, sort of.

(If you're the least bit squeamish, now would be a good time to hit the comics, or the Jumble, or a church to pray for all of us.)

"Spank bank" is defined by the online Urban Dictionary (and a brilliantly funny video on YouTube) as a "mental depository" of images that someone conjures in a state of arousal. However, in this day of omnipresent phones and cameras, it can also be used thus: "Hey, sailor, is that Sidekick pic for your spank bank?"

When I was in high school some 20 years ago, I can assure you I never had the chutzpah to approach the hottest girl in my class and say, "Hey, Natalie, can you pose for this Polaroid? Great. Thanks. I plan on using it tonight when I pull on my PJs!"

And yet in 2009, "spank bank" is a whimsically blunt form of sexual honesty. Guys say it to girls and vice versa — a result, I imagine, of the unbridled stream of info and technology that sacrifices privacy for immediacy.

I later saw a friend at the Chesney show who said the term is actually liberating for women; "spank bank" busts boys on their base intentions. She might be on to something. After I took her picture, she asked if it was for my spank bank. My reaction?

"Uhhhhhh . . ."

The Lunch Lady Playlist

Most Tampa Bay kids head back to school this week. This includes my 5-year-old, who's boarding the rocket ride known as kindergarten. The other day I asked Lulu what she was most excited about: new friends, teachers, books? "Lunch," she said. Lunch? "Yeah, lunch. In the cafeteria. You know, by a lunch lady!" For a second there I was tempted to tell her about Pizza Day 1978, that history-rich moment when her dad, then just an unsuspecting third-grader, found a thick clump of black hair buried within his lunch-lady-crafted slice of pepperoni. But I didn't. Life is about to get very exciting for my daughter — why taint this brave new world? So to usher Lulu off to Big Girl school, here's the Lunch Lady Playlist! Eat up!

1 Gotta Serve Somebody, Bob Dylan

2 Meat,

Phish

3 Burnt Biscuits,

Booker T. and the MGs

4 Milk,

Kings of Leon

5 If You Really Want To, Meat Loaf

6 Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm,

Crash Test Dummies

7 (I Got a) Stomach Ache, Junior Wells

8 Can I Have My

Money Back?,

Gerry Rafferty

9 Girls Just Wanna

Have Lunch,

"Weird Al" Yankovic

10 Lunchlady Land,

Adam Sandler

Yim Yames

Album: Tribute To (ATO)

In stores: Now

Passing it on: This one is about as pretty, and pretty weepy, as they get, gang. Jim James is the loopy lead singer of Louisville psychedelicists My Morning Jacket. On this solo jaunt, he performs under the name Yim Yames, which is either really trippy or really stupid, I can't decide. Nevertheless, James/Yames can sing for sure, a lonely, reverb-heavy warble that's cracked-glass vulnerable. This EP is a six-song tribute to the late George Harrison; it was recorded on an 8-track reel-to-reel in 2001 and covers four cuts from the Quiet One's All Things Must Pass, plus two Beatles songs. Yames overdubbed a few effects and instruments, but for the most part, it's quiet, spare, mesmerizing.

Reminds us of: Yames' version of My Sweet Lord is spare, but hopeful, and you can't help thinking the deity he's singing to is the man who wrote the song.

Download this: Behind That Locked Door

Grade: A

George Strait

Song: El Rey

Album: Twang (MCA Nashville)

In stores: Now

It's good to be the kings: "King" George Strait just scored his 21st No. 1 album with the new Twang. The Nashville stud is money in the bank, his Lone Star baritone knocking down play-it-safe ballads and top-tappin' honky-tonk for the past four decades. The late José Alfredo "El Rey" Jiménez was the king of modern mariachi, a master of the canción ranchera. And now, in a downright besotted turn, the risk-averse Strait is honoring Jimenez's classic El Rey — and he's doing it entirely in Spanish. The closing cut on Twang, El Rey features George busting out the Español in a voice higher than usual; as the trumpets blast and the ay-yi-yi's cackle, it's a hoot.

Reminds us of: There's a new book, Mariachi by Patricia Greathouse, packed with glossy art, smart writing and a CD. It's nothing less than my current obsession.

Grade: A

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