Written by: Jeff
Stand Up and Get Crunk!
Stand up and get crunk!
As a long time Saints fan, there are certain things I’ve come to expect when going to the games. One is typical football fan douchebags. There are the ‘I could’ve done that’ guys. These are the ones that are mad at the kicker because he missed a 39 yard field goal. “This guy’s a bum, I coulda made a 39 yard kick!?” Meanwhile, this slovenly fat b-hole can’t walk 39 yards much less kick an oblong ball of leather and air up and over a 10 foot goal post and between the up-rights that aren’t even 19 feet apart from 39 yards away all while 9 of your friends try to stop 11 other guys from blocking said kick. Those guys suck.
Then there are first gamers. The first gamers are broken into two different subsections: ‘the party people’ and ‘the awed’. ‘The awed’ admire the sight of just being at an NFL game or even just being in the Superdome. They are amazed at the wonder that is 72,000 people under one 52-acre roof all screaming for the same thing. These people are hardly ever a nuisance. The occasional times they stand during a play to take a picture or come back to their seat from the concession stand or bathroom during a big third down play. But this can be chalked up to inexperience and easily let go when you see how much they love the things at the game that you take for granted.
But then there are ‘the party people’. They are people that don’t even want to be at a game; they just want to use the free tickets that their boss gave them to drink and have a good time. You’ll be able to recognize them because they participate in every game on the jumbo-tron during timeouts. They also love every song that is played at the game because it reminds them of riding in their big sister’s car during grammar school…just riding in the back seat thinking up good routines for cheerleading while listening to Jock Jams 9.
This brings me to my next topic of discussion: Music at the Superdome.
Over the past few years at the Saints games they decided to play a song by the Ying Yang Twins called “Halftime (Stand-up & Get Crunk!)” It is a very catchy song, don’t get me wrong, but they way people react to it is absolutely amazing. This may be a little racist, but after a certain age, older white people just do not stand up and get crunk. Hell, most of them don’t even know what crunk means… you know, come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I knew what crunk meant…so I looked it up. Apparently most people thought it meant being “crazy drunk” (mash the two words together to get crunk). Or that it meant to be high on chronic and drunk. This is also false. I even read that it was a word used to describe a drunk cripple, as in, “Dr. House is a serious crunk.” This is definitely wrong. The general consensus of the people that seem to know (aka, wikipedia) is that it was started in Atlanta, Georgia or Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-1990s.
ATL version says: Crunk just means to get all the way wild, shake your dreads: to be so unreasonably proud of where you’re from that you act like a maniac, you’re just so excited and you don’t know why.
Memphis Tenn. version: If you are “crunk” you are basically a juggernaut of energy and nothing will stop you and you won’t care what happens until such point that you decide to stop.
But here is the best example of crunk I found: Think of it as hip-hop’s version of punk or metal rock. Close your eyes and imagine an artist aggressively chanting – perhaps rapping, but more than likely yelling – simplistic lyrics into the mike. Ok… now picture what sounds like 100 (but is really more like 3) dudes behind him chanting the exact same thing as if they were of one voice.
But before all of that, back in 1972, my favorite emcee, Dr. Seuss dropped a hot joint, “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!” It was a followup hit to his early success with “The Cat in the Hat” and the B-side cut “Green Eggs and Ham” Anyway, he said, “You can go on stilts. You can go by fish. You can go in a Crunk-Car if you wish.”
So that might be the first instance of crunk ever.
The whole point to this was that the second that they play the opening notes from that song, all hell breaks loose. There are people that sit behind me that I know are Chalmette garbage (and, by default, hate black people). The guy has his name on his belt — Calvin Klein doesn’t even do that (his name is Travis, by the way). These people join in the festivities too. They love the song. They know all the words. They got their friend with a computer to download it and put it on a CD so they can listen in their truck. Same goes for old white guy that will not stop turning around and pointing at people while he dances. Both of these people are thinking of Sean Payton and Drew Brees and other really white things while they stand up and get crunk…but do they know who sings it. They are thinking maybe this is the Ying-Yang Twins:
Two handsome black fellas that really love them some Saints.
Meanwhile the actual Ying-Yang Twins are ok with the Saints paying them to use the song and were happy to perform the song at the Super Bowl Parade, but they are from Atlanta and they love the Falcons…Now, had they been sitting in the row in front of half of the whiteys in the Dome on Sundays and were standing up and dancing, they might have to go get security.
Long lost Gumbel sister interviews Ying Yang Twins
