Ellen Degeneres is Nice, Vol. MXCVIII

The "Ellen" producers totally busted out the Luscious Jackson "Ladyfingers" song cue to introduce longassfingernails-lady Lee Redmond to the show! Luscious Jackson! Remember, they were like positioned to be, basically, the Beastie Girls. But they were always a little too smoove-sounding to assume that mantle, and anyway their crossover potential was always limited by the fact that in general Beastie Boys fans probably weren't inclined to taking a ladyband seriously, even if the ladyband was pretty good.

And Luscious Jackson was pretty good, I had a few EPs. Badly dated, but wouldn't you say the same of the Beastie Boys were their music to arrive at your ears now, unburnished by familiarity or success? When you think about it, in hindsight: Beastie Boys, kinda LOL. And uh huh, yeah yeah yeah, I'm familiar with Paul's Boutique.

I wonder if even fingers this crazylong would fit as symbols of Thorstein Veblen's concept of conspicuous leisure--I recall a passage about long fingernails being conspicuous displays of a female/wife's economic inutility, and therefore deliberate symbols of economic surfeit and waste--or if after a certain length of keratin was achieved these fingernails ceased being symbols of anything but Serious Yuck.

Anyway, I think Ellen does a superlative job in this clip of playing what-a-freak! with this woman for her audience's amusement without ever being actually mean to the lady. Which I suppose is Ellen Degeneres' entire job, but still.

(Via D'arcy.)