Sugar, sugar

It's happened, despite my best efforts, despite a self-administered oath it would never happen.

Mid-life crisis.

No, I didn't buy a Miata or get a toupee, take a hot young lover or decide to climb K2. No. My crisis is much deeper than that. It's all about music.

I was at the gym last night listening to one more rap or hiphop song on Hot 97 that put me over the edge--and I felt so damn old. These kids today, what do they know about music? Why, back in the day...

The truth is, I'm tired of hearing pussy, pimpin', and muthafucka in song, especially the same song. Give me words like boogie, rockin', and woo!--and maybe a little subtlety. Donna Summer's orgasmic moans, escalating to all-out climax, in Love To Love You Baby caused outrage in 1975. It's not about prudishness; it's about propriety--and well, we all know where society is with that.

I have pretty broad musical tastes. I favor pop, but my collection has liberal doses of alternative, ambient, bossa nova, bubblegum, Celtic, classical, country, disco, flamenco, folk, funk, house, jazz, Latin, lounge, mash, new age, new wave, opera, punk, R and B, rock, soca, Steve and Eydie, techno, theater, and zydeco. You get the idea.

Still, nothing makes me feel as giddy and boyish as listening to Bay City Rollers or The Partridge Family. The empty caloric content and syrupy euphony are exactly what appeal to me.

Luis makes fun of me for my musical tastes, even though his 40-GB iPod has only 125 songs, whereas my 20-GB iPod has 4500 songs. But I'm not bitter about it.

Like a binge eater, I try to deny my overindulgence in this air-filled, vitamin-deficient genre. But late at night, I hungrily surf the Web for songs from my childhood that strip away 30 years and satisfy my cravings to feel like a kid again--songs like these.

• Stick-Up, Honey Cone (1971). "Help! I've been robbed!" belts lead singer Edna Wright, who, with a generous heaping of boom-boom-shaka-laka-boom-boom-boom-booms, proceeds to plot vengeance on the man who done her wrong. As in Honey Cone's other excellent songs Want Ads and One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, you do not mess around with the Honey Cone, OK?
  
• Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again, Fortunes (1971). Violins, a Mellotron, and bouncy harmonies conspire to put off that rainy day feeling for yet another day. Sounding like a Brit version of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, The Fortunes are pure Merseybeat-inspired pablum.
  
• Heartbeat, It's A Lovebeat, DeFranco Family (1973). It starts out like a psych rock song, but the minute 13-year-old Tony DeFranco's unbroken voice kicks in it's Canadian Partridge Family all the way. Tony is now a 45-year-old blogger who looks sorta cute.
  
• The Lord's Prayer, Sister Janet Mead (1974). Julie Andrews, move over! This tambourine-toting Australian nun sold 2 million copies of the Catholic Church's #1 oration and landed it at #4 on the U.S. charts. On the heels of hippie works Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, the success of this song was not as miraculous as it may seem.
  
• Point Me In The Direction Of Albuquerque, Partridge Family (1970). This ode to a lost adolescent girl who needs a hug and a kiss before teen heartthrob David Cassidy sets her right on the road to Albuquerque is an uncynical look at a time when runaways like Eve Plumb and Linda Blair were all the rage. It always brings a tear to my eye.
  
• Don't Pull Your Love, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds (1971). You can't go wrong with a tambourine, and this ditty delivers big. Alternately brassy and sappy, with vibrato vocals that put American Idol contestants to shame, the lead singer really sells it when he threatens to "lay me down and cry for a hundred years."
  
• Candy Man, Sammy Davis, Jr. (1972). Darker minds might ascribe more sinister intentions to this song. But anything Mr. Entertainment sings makes the world taste good, and this saccharine tune from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory rots my brain in a good way. After indulging in the spritely chimings of children, hand claps, and --hooray!-- a tambourine, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and eat the dishes.
  

Just in time for my next feeding of ear candy before the next hot flash.