"You Can't Fake Da Funk"

I was on my way through the train station this morning when I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt with the above-mentioned slogan on it: “You Can’t Fake Da Funk.” This got me thinking on my train ride (as I didn’t feel like reading the paper, or the papers of my fellow commuters over their shoulders).

Can you Fake Da Funk? I am determined to prove the young man’s T-shirt wrong, just out of sheer perversity. I intend to convince everyone in my vicinity that I indeed possess—or am suffering from—Da Funk, so that they will gaze upon me with wild surmise when they are informed that I am Faking Da Funk and never had it at all.

So—how do I go about this? Funk? Anyone?

Well, I saw a TV ad for a “funk” collection. Most of the songs in the collection weren’t funk at all, but simply 70s/80s R&B, i.e. Super Freak. Not a P/Funk .song in the lot!

I don’t know if they’re getting away with it, but they’re definitely attempting to “fake da funk”.

“Free your mind and your ass will follow”

“Tear the roof off the mother”

“Ain’t nothing but the dog in me”

“Flashlight…neon light…spotlight”

Commit all of these to memory. Additionally, you can get up off that thing, and dance 'til you feel better…get up off that thing and try to releave some of that pressure…

Can you still buy blow out kits? If so, get one and fix that 'do…attempt for one of Don Cornelius proportions.

You can bet your last money, its gonna be a stone gas honey…'til then…Peace, love, and…SOUL

I am certainly not going to tear my mother’s roof off! For one thing, her valuable Persian rugs will be ruined in the rain.

Getting out my Webster’s, I find:

Funk:

  1. To become frightened and shrink back (fairly easy to fake, I’d say)

  2. A depressed state of mind (again, a scowl and a sulk would effectively fake that)

  3. Music that combines traditional forms of black music and is characterized by a strong backbeat; the quality or state of being funky (here I fear I am in foreign territory)

  4. Having an offensive odor (I can borrow some Opuim perfume)

on a naaaaaasty dunnnnk.

Maybe you could get homsar to tutor you.

If you get funky, you need to let your head bob. I’m pretty sure you can fake da funk with your head bobbing correctly.

Head-bobbing is purely external. Funk must come from within.

Get thee down, be thou funky.

If you gotta ask if you can you fake it, you probably can’t.

Concern for Persian rugs, or any furniture for that matter, is pointless. Nothing matters but the funk.
Bowwowwowyippieyoyippieay.

I hear the Mothership.

It’s my funkentelechy

I’ve got lunchmeataphobia
THINK! It ain’t illegal yet!

Go see Mr. Clinton in concert sometime (George, not Bill or Roger). You will soon realize that you can not, under any circumstances, fake da funk.
“If anybody’s gonna get funked up, it’s gonna be you!”

You don’t even know what the funk is!

Fakery is, I fear, out of the question.

The funk is either in you or it ain’t. It can come down on you, or swell up in you, but until it is, listen to the t-shirt and save yourself the heartbreak.

Well, now I’m terrified—would antibiotics help?

You cannot fake Da Funk. If you try you will be afflicted by the Pinocchio Theory and will be marked as a follower of Sir Nose D’VoidofFunk. Funk is a feeling that make you move and groove.

All is not lost however, for you can still become groovisized and join the Funkateers. You must become dedicated to the preservation of the motion of hips. You have to take a ride on The Mothership and be On The One. Take up your flashlight, put a slide in your glide and a dip in your hip and then you will join the One Nation and become funkified.

Are you up for the down stroke?

Here’s a description of what happens when those with the funk meet those without the funk. Be warned, it ain’t pretty…

http://www.theonion.com/onion3104/mothership.html

See, that’s just what I’m saying - faking the funk would involve bobbing your head like you feel the music, when in truth you don’t. Hence the “faking” it part.

Rent the movie Silver Streak with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Pryor gives Wilder a classic lesson in how to Fake Da Funk!

[quote]
Getting out my Webster’s, I find:

[quote]
Shouldn’t you be looking that up in your Funk & Wagnall’s?

Shouldn’t you be looking that up in your Funk & Wagnall’s?

Funkin’ double-post…

My two cents:

The reference to “faking” funk makes it clear that they are thinking of the music, and, especially, the music as performed by the various George Clinton groups.

Therefore, the sensible way to fake da funk (or, as shorthand, FTF) would be to try to impersonate George Clinton, or, if at all possible, Bootsy Collins.