[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9CTSRg4NDk&hl=en]
A DJ played LL Cool J's Around The Way Girl at a bar on the Lower East Side last night. Girls (and a few guys) danced in the narrow aisle between tables. I sat against the wall with my husband, drinking a beer, enthusiastically, yet modestly, bopping along.

I can use a dorky phrase like 'bopping along' because - admission - I am a girl who likes the Becky Rap. When a DJ plays Sir Mix-a-lot, Slick Rick or the reigning Becky Rap song from the winter of 2004, Outkast's Hey Ya!, I will feel the urge to get on the dance floor and flail around while imagining I'm doing the running man and looking as hot as Alfonso on Silver Spoons. I don't actually know if Alfonso did the running man on Silver Spoons, which speaks to my point.

The only thing is, this DJ wasn't spinning records. He was playing mp3s and fiddling around with fake vinyl. He was using Serato, computer software that emulates manipulation of actual vinyl. Ersatz DJing.

And that's why I wasn't dancing.

How often do you leave a store because the piped-in music is unbearable?

A shoe store on Broadway broadcasts techno-y dance music at such a painful volume, shopping there makes me want to throw stilettos at sales clerks and kick over displays. I won't cross the threshold anymore, not even for a blowout sale on Adidas.

A middle-of-the-road ladies' clothing store had me running for the door yesterday, due to non-stop treacly girly pop (pap) that must have tested well with the doped-on-Valium sweater set crowd. (Sample lyrics, set to a gently strummed, mind-numblingly repetitive 1 / 4 / 5 / 4 chord sequence: "You and me, by the sea, that's where we'll be, you and me....")

A higher end clothing store featured a live DJ and compelled me to wear earplugs as I shopped. No, I didn't wear earplugs; I just left.

And yet, I will linger at the grocery store on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn to hum along to the oldies. Good, solid, old oldies. There's always a chorus of singing shoppers, voices ricocheting off aisles of overpriced cereal and mediocre produce.

I finally saw No Country For Old Men last night. I realized about halfway through the movie that there's almost no musical score. So refreshing not to be smothered or distracted by soaring strings and grandiose themes!