My son just got a new toy from Target. It’s an over-sized guitar pick that plays the lyrics and music to hit pop songs.  It was on sale, so I figured what the hell.

The song that the toy makers decided to put on the fun guitar pick was “Semi Charmed Life,” that infectious pop song by the band Third Eye Blind. The song played non-stop and the chorus (“Do-Do-Do, Do-Da-Do-Da”) psychotically drilled into my head. For one solid day, my son relentlessly played with this new toy. In a satanic rotation, I heard the opening lyrics of “Semi Charmed Life” every two minutes for an hour straight. 

As I cleaned up the living room, I took a moment and actually listened to the song and the lyrics.   And to my amazement, I found out that the song on my son’s toy was a song about drug dealing, depression, cocaine, Crystal Meth, and last but not least, blow jobs.

“I’m packing and I’m holding,” sang the wanker from Third Eye Blind, “She comes around and she goes down on me.”

 Really? Toy makers? That’s the song you decided to put on a child’s toy? What happened? The song “Dog Shit” by the Wu Tang Clan was already taken?  Let me guess: You tried to use the song “Now I Want to Sniff some Glue” by the Ramones but couldn’t reserve the rights.

Normally, I could just throw something like this out. But my kid is like the Rain Man when it comes to his toys. He has methodically catalogued every toy he’s ever owned. Murphy knows what prize he got in his Happy Meal at the McDonalds in Siren, Wisconsin, three months ago (Murphy Smith’s direct quote: “It was Sunday, we were coming back from Jo-Jo’s cabin. We ate lunch. I ate a cheeseburger, but didn’t eat the pickle. I don’t like pickles. And the toy was Venom from The Spectacular Spiderman cartoon”.)

I let him have the guitar pick for a day. Then I told him the batteries died in it. That was the truth. Sort of.   While Murph was at preschool, I succumbed to my black Irish rage and chucked the thing from my back steps into the side of my garage.

Semi Charmed Life, my ass.