Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo

More news on the nostalgia front: the Bloodhound Gang is back.

Back in 1999, I heard a song called 3.14 playing on a hip St. Louis radio station on my way home from school. The album, entitled Hooray for Boobies, was supposed to come out November 9, if I remember correctly.

But it didn't. The album was changed. Then changed again, I hear, and the release date was delayed for months. This seems to be a fairly comprehensive chronicling of it, as it's the kind of news, I guess, that only survives in message boards and wikis.

But a guy I ate lunch with somehow got his hands on one of those rare September discs, and he sold me a burned copy of it for $10. Anybody who charges you $10 for a burned CD, even in those primitive days of Y2K hysteria, when CD writers were the ultimate luxury, is not your friend. Especially when your bootleg version cuts off the last second or so from every track. And I paid ten freakin' bucks!

But he put an extra track on there, a demo with almost a Kenny Rogers flavor, which discussed (in graphic detail) all different kinds of ... never mind.

Since high school, they have released only one single. Called Jackass, and featured on the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back soundtrack, the song opened with the lyrics:

Jackass
I'm a pimped-out Jedi Knight
Obi Wan meets Dolemite

Despite this excellent opening lyrics, it was still a bad song! Poor production, a weak melody, a lousy refrain and monotone singing made the song a low point on an otherwise stellar soundtrack.

And before the soundtrack's release, this song was kind of a big deal. It was originally slated for an album inspired by the TV show Jackass, but that album fell through. Then it was supposed to go on the American Pie 2 soundtrack, but the Bloodhound Gang withheld it, saying they were waiting for a better movie.

You've probably never even heard Jackass.

But you probably will hear the band's new single, cleverly titled Foxtrot Uniform Charile Kilo. I'll give you one guess what it's about.

Correct! In fact, the song's verses consist purely of metaphors for putting the this in the that.

Songs such as 3.14, The Bad Touch and Mope off Hooray set the bar pretty high. Had anyone listened to Jackass, the bar would be lowered to sub par. Foxtrot brings the bar back up to mediocre.

It's kind of edgy. It's kind of clever. And it's kind of funny when you think about it. But only kind of. And this is coming from a guy who once spent an afternoon sitting around a dorm room with his buddies, brainstorming similar metaphors for hours. The list included verbs such as "yammed."

And there's the video, which really disappointed me. While the video succeeds in establishing that breaking concrete with a jackhammer is sexy, its only laugh-out-loud moment involves a presumably gay construction worker eating a banana.

Bananas are funny.

But a banana-shaped car not so much. And the video climaxes (pun intended) with the car driving into a tunnel, which is a blatant Family Guy rip off. (I looked really hard for a link to a picture of Peter Griffin driving his phallic sports car into the tunnel in the season 3 episode "And the Weiner is ...", but I couldn't find one. Stupid Internet.)

The song itself gets no laughs, and that's my biggest problem.

This is the track that's supposed to get us back into the Bloodhound Gang. This is the song that's supposed to make me feel the way I did five and a half years ago when I would drive around in my '87 Ranger, listening to my bootleg CD and trying to memorize lyrics about Waffle House hash browns.

Maybe bands such as Tenacious D have raised my standards for funny music. Maybe I've grown up. Today's high school seniors probably will love Foxtrot.

But I think the truth is that, if Foxtrot Unicorn Charlie Kilo and Jackass are any indication, the Bloodhound Gang has lost a step. I hope their album, Hefty Fine, proves me wrong. Anybody want to sell me a bootleg copy?