Nobody Puts Milhouse Pete Barney In The Corner

This picture is not Fall Out Boy bassist-lyricist-has-anyone-figured-out-why-he's-the-most-famous-one Pete Wentz, who some people think looks more like Lacey Chabert than a character from The Simpsons. It's also not Fall Out Boy guitarist-what's-his-name-oh-yeah Joe Trohman, who some people think does look like a character from The Simpsons. In fact, it's Bart Simpson's best friend, Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten, pictured here in costume on the set of the film "Radioactive Man", which was filmed in Springfield and for which Milhouse was cast to play the part of Radioactive Man's boy-wonder sidekick, Fallout Boy.

When I started doing this a few months ago, I told "you" -- not " 'You' ", or " 'You' ", or " 'You' ", or even " 'You' ", but one or two of "you" -- that some day I would tackle the burning question: "What's the deal with Fall Out Boy's 80's-pop-culture-obsession in their band name and song titles???" I mean, for example, "Pretty In Punk", "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'", and "Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner", not to even mention the band's NAME [ahem, "Fall Out Boy", which really is a mid-90's pop culture reference, but close enough] or their [awesome] cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

Alas, I'm afraid this will not be that some day, as it seems that not even Pete Wentz can answer that question. Famously [or is that "apocryphally"???] the band took its name from a suggestion yelled out at one of their early shows, maybe-or-maybe-not because what's-his-name-oh-yeah Trohman resembles Milhouse, even though the band [supposedly] didn't understand the [admittedly-very-obscure-Simpsons-geeks-only] reference at the time.

No, alas, this post will hook into something else not even only peripherally FOB-related -- that one of FOB's song [as previously noted] has something to do with "Baby In The Corner".

"Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner" is, as I'm sure my readers know, one of the awesome cheesy awesomely-cheesy lines uttered by Patrick Swayze in that classic 1980's coming-of-age film, "Dirty Dancing". I have wine-cooler-impaired fond memories of that film, and I'm aware that it is the favorite of at least one of DHMBIB's loyal readers.

All of that bloviation is really just an elaborate set-up for a quick post about tonight's [Monday 1.8.2007] episode of the best sictom on network teevee [last item], "How I Met Your Mother". Tonight's story: Robin's teenage [16, I believe] baby sister is visiting BigSis in New York and is "traveling with" her boyfriend of two months [!!!] who "happens" to have family in town. BabySis tells Robin that she plans to lose her virginity to her boyfriend that night, which freaks Robin out and prompts all of the characters to relive their own when-I-lost-it memories. Famously-womanizing Barney tells everyone that he lost it when he was "17 -- 16 -- 14" at "a summer camp" in "upstate New York" where he was "teaching...dance". Here's the memory as flashback'ed by Barney:



A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it...

[Seriously, how does HIMYM keep raising the bar like this??? It's got to be embarrassing for the producers of the other sitcoms on the teevee. And seriously, doesn't Jennifer Grey look great???]

As I write, the ep is not online yet at Innertube, but is sure to be within 24 hours. So if you're interested, keep checking back. But at the risk of spoiling it for you, I'll tell you that Barney eventually reveals that he didn't lose it until he was 24 [I can totes relate]. Of course, the story is appropriately hilarious, but if anyone stumbles upon this blog who is facing these issues from either Robin's POV -- or from that of her "Baby" sis, or, heaven forbid, from BARNEY'S POV -- there may actually be some valuable life lessons we can all draw from this ep:

* don't do it [first] with someone you've known for only two months [BabySis]
* don't do it [first] in the dorm [Marshall]
* don't do it [ever] in the bottom bunk -- with someone else in the top bunk [eww, Marshall!]
* don't do it [ever] at a mythical summer resort in upstate New York back in the late-50's-early-60's [Baby, and Baby's sis]..[which you can't, because, well, ya know...]
* don't ever succumb to peer pressure
* don't set it up via SMS [yes, it's 2008 2007, but still...let's bring SexyBack, please...]
* and under no circumstances should you update your MySpace page about the deed before you do it -- Robin's BabySis, I'm looking at you [yes, they name-checked MySpace tonight too]...

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Hey, Rob, wasn't this post supposed to be about Fall Out Boy? Alright, fine -- here's Pitchfork's review [from Monday] of the new FOB single/video ["This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race"]. Summary: the video is awesome...the song -- eh...And here's Stereogum on the single almost two months ago...

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I recently found out that Blogger has a character-max-limit of 200 in the "labels" [tags] field for posts. Which means I won't be able to label/tag this with all of the labels/tags I would like...Hmm...