Monday, June 30, 2008

The Boys Country Corner, Vol. III

This is only the third installment of the boys' continuing analysis of country music lyrics and already Brad Paisley appears twice. Is he one of America's greatest new poets?

This week's topic is Paisley's "Ticks":

cause id like to see you out in the moonlight
id like to kiss you way back in the sticks
id like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
and id like to check you for ticks


Kip says: "This song fits comfortably into the "corny pick-up lines" tradition of country music but it's so much more than that. Paisley seeks to celebrate the sexuality that can lie in the mundane. Here, the simple, everday task of tick-inspection can become a beautiful shared moment between two lovers. As Paisley surely recognizes, ticks often seek out one's nether regions, and pairing up to look for them can become a recipe for lovin'. Once, I had a tick on my balls."

Richard says: "This song reminds me a bit of John Donne's "The Flea," whose speaker uses the idea of flea-bites to suggest a sexual scenario: " MARK but this flea, and mark in this/ How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be./ Thou know'st that this cannot be said /A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead." Donne's is a lesser work than Paisley's, of course, but they build to the same conclusion, which is that insect bites are sexy."

Kip says: "I once wrote a paper on Donne's "The Flea," which was not well-received. In the parlance of my time, at Ft. Scott High School, to "suck" meant to give head. Yet when I turned in an essay in college titled Fleas and Fellatio: John Donne's Blowjobs, the teacher asked me to see him after class. Luckily, Paisley's "Ticks" is not as easy to misinterpret. Take these lines, for instance: "Everytime you take a sip / In this smoky atmosphere/ You press that bottle to your lips/ And I wish I was your beer." I know what he means! And he's an absolute genius. I'll be using these lines at Rusty's Bar in Ft. Scott, where most of the women have ticks on them at any given time."

2 comments:

Dr. C said...

Checking for ticks is not sexy. Ticks are horrific abominations of nature. And tick-checking is one of those things that can put you in the dreaded no-action zone: you're naked, she's naked, and sex is not the goal. Nakedness is halfway to becoming mundane.

On the other hand, if you find a tick, it can get the blood pumping and lead to something good. Especially if you decide to burn the tick off with a hot matchhead, and she's the kind that likes a little pain with her pleasure.

I also seem to remember Richard getting a beerjob at an earlier point in the Chronicles . . .

Anonymous said...

Sweet!