DJ Funky Fresh

Well coming up soon is our middle school "Movement Marathon," which could more aptly be named the "ADHD Marathon brought to you buy HFCORNsyrup SolutionsCorp and Industrial Light and Caffeine LLC." This no-sleep extravaganza is going to feature, once again--God spare us--yours truly as DJ. You may be asking yourselves, "Whud the fud?" Well, apparently I am the only teacher who knows what an "MP3" is, or how to plug speaker wires together.
This means that I am now the arbiter elegantiae for 100 or some 13-15 year olds for approx. 4 hours. In the past, I have allowed my open contempt for the market-driven top 40 to allow me to play my favorite music with no thought to the utter horror of these "tweenagers (gag me with a pitchfork)" who weren't able to rock out to their favorite Brittany Spears tune.
Anyways, although sorely tempted to bring my new Ozomatli CD, I have been given a laptop laden with Top 40 treasures from the last three or so decades by our resident tech guy, who is actually a professional DJ. Anyways, as true believer in pure democracy, I have given my students a chance to tell me what they want to hear. Therefore, I passed them quarter-sheets of paper to tell me what they want to hear.
Now, the genius who requested the unedited version of "Holidae In" by Snoop Dogg is going to find his wish sadly unfulfilled. However, this leads me back to my previous dilemma. If I am going to choose music based on the following criteria, what am I left with?
--appropriate subject matter (NO sex, drugs, alcohol, devil worship, etc...)
--music which 13-15 year olds listen too (i.e. music foisted upon them by the audio industrial complex)
--good music (for those of you keeping track with Venn Diagrams, you may have noticed the tiny corresponding area between the three categories)
For some reason, more illustrative of my thought processes than any logical development upon the previous ideas, I was thinking about the life-saving station story popular among Evangelicals. You know the one, you've heard it a million times. The life-saving station is set up on the beach, eventually becomes a social club, and its members stop saving people from shipwrecks. Eventually a faithful remnant moves a mile down the beach to set up a new life-saving station, which in its turn follows through the same cycle.
This is supposed to be a metaphor for the church, but I would suggest, possibly a rather unbiblical metaphor. For instance, for Chuck Colson, who is my primary source for this story, I believe that the Unitarians and the PCUSA might be examples of the now socially elitist life-saving stations that have turned their back on saving lives. However, I think it is interesting to notice that the Unitarians and the PCUSA probably go on as many "mission" trips and send as much money to charities as any other more orthodox protestant demonimation.
When Jesus criticizes the stuffy religious types like the Pharisees or the Saducees it isn't because they aren't trying to do the right thing, which he acknowledged that they were. It was because these guys had become way too literal minded in their interpretation of the scriptures. It was this juvenile literal-mindedness that kept these guys trapped from experiening life as it was meant to be.
I am thinking of a conversation I recently had parsing the actual meaning of "Hey Ya!" by Outkast and whether or not this song is appropriate for the middle school crew. The fact of the matter is that we take the meaning out of something that we put into it. This, I think, is well demonstrated by The DaVinci Code. For instance, for centuries, the literati have all winked and nodded at the fact that John is clearly depicted by DaVinci as Jesus' catamite--you know, the beloved disciple. Seriously, people. However, now that Dan Brown comes along with his "historical fiction", suddenly we have to discuss the more boring and played out theory that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were knocking boots. By the way, if anyone out there is under the impression that the pagans were proto-feminists, I would encourage you to disabuse yourselves of said notions.
If you're still reading this, I'm done, thanks for indulging my intellectual narcisism.