I chose this week's topic in honor of my marathon playlist, which also happens to be the reason for the lateness of this week's blog post. I know, I should have been a good blogger and written it ahead of time, but my mind was full of marathon-weekend excitement. More on that to come later this week!
My running playlist is hard evidence that I'm stuck in the 90s. I have everything from Beastie Boys to Kris Kross, Young MC to MC Hammer, Salt and Peppa to Vanilla Ice. And those aren't my guilty pleasures. I'm not the tiniest bit ashamed to admit that I totally rock out to Sisqo and Sir Mix-a-Lot while I run up the steep hills of Cincinnati.
Nope, not one little bit. In fact, I've even been known to get up and do my own rendition of Ice, Ice Baby on Karaoke night.
So what DOES constitute a guilty pleasure for me?
Ke$ha. Yes, Ke$ha. The "dollar sign girl." I remember the first time I heard one of her songs on the radio - it was that god-awful one about brushing teeth with bottles of jack and going for guys who look like Mick Jagger. I thought to myself "Who IS this lady, and WTF is WRONG with her??"
Then I saw her on TV, and my confusion grew.

It was like Mungojerrie meets Jem and the Holograms.


But after a while, I found myself tapping my hands on the steering wheel and singing along. Oh, no.
Then I heard it. "Take it Off." A total party song that I just KNEW my old clubberific roommate from college would have been all over if it had only been on the radio 10 years earlier.
And it was catchy. And it had a beat. A great beat for running. A great energy for running hills. And oh my goodness, it was so much fun to turn the car stereo speakers up way louder than a 29-year-old should and sing along to the (pretty awful) lyrics. (not with Charlie in the car, of course)
So here it is, for your amusement.
Because come on, we all know of a place that fits the description. Glitter on the floor? I'm so there. Well, not really. In fact, maybe I like this song so much because I never was a clubberific party girl. My roommate would spend her Friday and Saturday nights getting all dressed up in tube tops and halters, heavy eye-shadow, curlers, blah blah blah. I was perfectly content to drink cheap keg beer with the guys across the street, who were much more Dave Matthews than Ke$ha.
In real life, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to admit that I'm a closet Ke$ha fan. Please don't tell my husband that I spent 99 cents to download the single. He still thinks it was Rage Against the Machine.