Meet Nelson and Eddy

I'm a little late in posting, but you may have heard: The Greatest Singah in Zee World's wolfpack increased by two last week. I think it took Celine Dion two or three days to come up with names for the twin boys. I was surprised that a woman who has famously struggled for fifteen years in order to have three children didn't have names picked out before they arrived. I guess you don't want to jinx it, or you want to meet the babies before assigning names...but you'd think she'd have--I dunno--a mental list or something. Hell, I could kick it Gosselin-style and give birth to a whole litter of children today and have them all named by lunchtime.

So, drumroll...she named her sons Nelson and Eddy. I know, I was expecting something more French Canadian sounding. Or maybe names of the Von Trapp children. Something like that. Eddy was named after a music producer who has played an important role in Celine and Rene Angelil's lives. Nelson was named after Nelson Mandela. You know Gwyneth Paltrow is pissed she didn't think of that first. Celine reportedly said that she only met Mr. Mandela for a few minutes, but that it had a profound effect on her.  That's all nice and lovely, and I'm happy for her. Those names are nice enough. But those names together...they conjure up images of an R&B duo, a UPN sitcom, a flaxen-hair pair of brothers singing sugary pop music:

Nelson

That totally reminded me that I had Charles and Eddie's "Would I Lie To You?" cassette single. Come to think of it, I had a lot of cassette singles back in those days. Tween Samantha was practical like that. You kind of had to be, because for every Celine and Mariah, you had a dozen like Des'ree, Martin Page ("In the House of Stone and Light"--yes, I went there) Crystal Waters, Crash Test Dummies...

Steve: Umm, I wouldn't tell people you had a Crash Test Dummies tape...

Me: I most certainly will tell people that, because I bet under their old beds at their mama's houses is a dusty old Ini Kamoze cassette.

Steve: Who?

Me: Exactly.

Yeah, I'm talking about Ini Kamoze and "Here Comes the Hotstepper" --"excuse me Mr. Officer...still love you like thaaat!" Actually, I had the entire Pret a Porter soundtrack (which sucked). Hence the need for cassette singles. Maybe you had Soul Asylum or Tony Rich Project or Deep Blue Something. Ideally, you just keep a blank tape in your boom box with the radio on, and mash "play" whenever a song by Duran Duran or Expose' plays (bonus if you can get the entire song without any of the DJ's jibber jabber). Best. Mix Tape. Evah.