Marcy Playground's 'Sex & Candy' Music Video - A Conversation

    Ron is sitting on a couch.  Stuart comes in and sits next to him.

    “Hey,” says Stuart.

    “Hey,” says Ron.

    “What’s up?” asks Stuart.

    “I was just using your computer earlier and I gotta be honest: I find it disturbing that you’ve seen the Marcy Playground ‘Sex & Candy’ music video three thousand times.”

    Stuart blinks.  “What?”

    “I said I was just using your computer and saw your youtube history and it said you watched the Marcy Playground ‘Sex & Candy’ music video 3,192 times.”

    Stuart blinks again.  “It’s a good song.”

    “It is, I agree.

    “So what’s the problem?”

    “I just don’t think Marcy Playground deserves 3,192 consecutive views.”

    “Consecutive?”

    “Yeah,” says Ron.  “Your youtube history is Prince’s ‘Purple Rain,’ followed by 3,192 viewings of ‘Sex & Candy,’ and then, most recently, you watched ‘Tom Hanks Mowing Lawn;’ which, for the life of me, I can’t understand.”

    “It’s just a video of Tom Hanks mowing his lawn.”

    “No, I understand the video.  That’s not what I’m saying.”

    Stuart blinks, cocks his head to the left, inspects the ceiling, then says, “Are you asking about Tom Hanks or ‘Sex & Candy?’”

    “What?”

    “I asked if you wanted to know about Tom Hanks or the 1997 hit song ‘Sex & Candy?’”

    “Hit song?”

    “Yeah.”

    “You consider 'Sex & Candy' a hit song?”

    "Yeah."

    "Why?"

    “It spent 15 weeks at Number 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.”

    “Why do you know that?”

    “I don’t know.”

    Ron grits his teeth, his face turns red.

    “So which is it?” asks Stuart.

    “Huh?”

    “Do you want to know about the Tom Hanks lawn mowing video or the Already-Established-1997-Billboard-Number-1-Hit-Song-‘Sex-&-Candy?’”

    “The song, goddamn it, the song!  I wanna know about the goddamn fucking song!”

    Stuart picks his teeth, asks, “What do you wanna know about it?”

    “I wanna know why you watched the ‘Sex & Candy’ video 3,192 times!” cries Ron.  “Once, sure.  Maybe even twice.  It depends on where you’re at and what you’re doing, maybe ten times in a row.  I don’t know…You’re at a party and something gets put on repeat, nobody notices—it could happen—but even then you’d get to 20-30 times before somebody notices.  But 3,192 times?!”  Ron’s head twitches.

    “But you like the song, yes?”

    “We already established that!”

    Stuart blinks, scratches the side of his face, and says, “I don’t think I want you using my computer anymore.”

    Ron says, “Ok.”

    They sit in silence for a while.  “You wanna watch ‘Joe Vs. The Volcano’ or something?”

    Ron thinks about it and asks, “‘The ‘Burbs?’”

    “Sure,” says Stuart.  “Let’s watch ‘The ‘Burbs.’”

    They watch “The ‘Burbs.”