one small corner of the universe

…person who can’t stop singing “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” the (gulp!) Oscar-winning song from “Hustle and Flow.” I didn’t watch enough of the Oscars to deliver a thorough commentary of last night’s festivities (my 2 cents: Reese Witherspoon is adorable, George Clooney rocks, Jon Stewart cracks me up, and “Crash” really IS the best movie in my opinion) but I did manage to tune in just in time for Three 6 Mafia’s performance of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” Lucky me. I was more than a little annoyed with the win (yeah, I was biased–I’ve been a Dolly Parton fan since before I could form sentences), and extremely annoyed with the gangsta reaction from the awardees (sue me–I teach high school where I’m showered with gangsta every minute of the day). But most annoying is that the song seems permanently trapped in my subconscious, and since I only know one line (don’t make me type it again–isn’t it obvious?), that line is playing over and over inside my head. I don’t really have a problem with all rap music, but I’ve been listening to “Out There Live,” Dar Williams’s brilliant on-the-road collection of some of her best music, and I had a good “Iowa”/”The Ocean”/”What Do You Hear in These Sounds?” thing going, and now it’s been blasted out by what MSNBC calls an integral part of the film, which is based on the “Memphis crunk subculture, and how fame can be achieved through parlaying mix tapes.” I’m sorry to say that any possibility of my actually seeing “Hustle and Flow” has now been completely eliminated by the word “crunk,” which makes me want to chew pencil lead while walking on fire ant condos.