I'm straight trippin' Dogg

Dogg, have you heard that phat new Jay-Z CD? He's got some serious bling-bling, but he's still keeping it real. He ain't a sellout like Eminem, bro. His game is tight, yo?

And so goes my crash course in hipness.

I was studying up as much as I could because last week I couldn't get a root canal scheduled fast enough and as a result, I spent Friday as a chaperone at a teen dance.

I thought that if I watched MTV for two weeks straight, I'd be down with my peeps, so to speak, and fit right in with the 17- to 19-year-old kids at the dance. Yeah, right.

Turns out all I learned was about Steven and Trishelle's dysfunctional relationship on The Real World, and that I'm far removed from cool. It took me about two hours to get bored with the MTV programming, and about two seconds at the dance to realize that I have never felt so old in my life.

I never thought I'd admit it but I'm turning into my parents.

And I'm only 28, which is the really sad part. I should still be out raising heck myself, not trying to enforce the peace. By the time Friday night rolled around, I actually convinced myself, through repetitive thinking, that I was still a hip, cool hellraiser, not a married father of a 2-year-old who finds a 10 p.m. bedtime about two hours too late.

"I'm down with Nelly," I said into the mirror after getting out of the shower Friday morning in preparation of my big job later that evening. "And Ja Rule is the bomb. No, Ressler, da bomb. DA bomb. Get it right or they'll see right through you. OK, Outkast, Puffy and J-Lo. You've got it."

At the dance -- a great cause, by the way, as a coworker sponsored the dance to help spread safe driving habits for teens -- I recognized about four different songs, although I'm not entirely sure they didn't just play the same song over and over, because they all sounded the same.

It was uncanny how they wedged those monosyllabic grunts in between the molar-rattling bass thumps and ear-piercing shrieks of treble.

Frank, my senior in both job descriptions and age, was holding out for a little Bachman Turner Overdrive or REO Speedwagon, but those silly kids had never even heard of those bands. Those bands were popular when records were "groovy," and nothing is groovy anymore, most of all vinyl records.

Me, I'm a little younger, but I don't remember them playing a single U2, REM or even a Beastie Boys song at the dance. You know, the kinds of songs you hear on the "retro" station you said you'd never, ever listen to because you'd always be listening to the "cool" station. Or so I'm told, because I don't listen to those retro stations. I'm not old enough.

As much as it made me feel old, the dance made me feel young again, which isn't a good thing as it turned out. It was exactly like an old high school dance -- Frank and I, rather than Brian and I like it was in high school, just chillin' with our backs against the wall, as far removed from the dancing as humanly possible.

And then it happened -- my one shining moment. An 18-year-old (that's what she said, officer) girl wanted Frank to slow dance with her, but he relented to the point we thought he may be crying. He got that same look as he gets when all the copy comes in late on deadline. Anyway, she then asked me and Frank threatened to fire me (honestly, that's exactly how it went, honey) if I didn't dance with her. The music came on, and she asked me if I knew the song.

"Isn't this Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow?" I asked rhetorically. "Yeah, it is," she said, obviously surprised.

Cha-ching! Score one for the old guy.

And while Frank was making fun of me afterward because he said you could have driven a Mack truck in the space between the girl and I, I pointed out that he probably thought the song was performed by Englebert Humperdink.

And as much as Englebert was cool in Frank's day, he is most certainly not phat with the peeps these days.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He struts around the office singing "It's Getting Hot In Here" by Nelly.