Hands clean

"We'll flash forward to a few years later/No one knows about the two of us"

I heard this recently for this first time in ages, and it really took me back . . . to getting to see Alanis Morissette in concert in Chicago with my dear friend Fouchat, a birthday treat from him way back in . . . 2006? 2007? 2008? I honestly cannot remember anymore. My life in Pennsylvania has become something of a blur, especially during the Pittsburgh Era. The year 2007 runs into 2008 into 2009 into on and on and on. Seven years in da Burgh, ten years in Pennsylvania, the longest I've lived anywhere except my home state of North Carolina. Who'd have ever thought it possible?

Oddly Alanis didn't perform this in concert that night, despite it being a top 30 hit for her in the U.S. The concert took place not long after she had broken up with Ryan Reynolds. Pity that--while I generally loathe his movie choices, he is always pleasing to look at.

Or possibly at the time he had just married Scarlet Johansson? Honestly, I can't recall.

At the time I figured the reason was because the song was about Ryan R. and still too sensitive a subject. But lo and behold, the back story to the song is far more interesting in a gossipy, TMZ sort of way. According to Alanis, she had a secret affair with an older man when she was much younger. The video hints at this--Alanis is seen in bad '80s hair, then during her Jagged Little Pill angry-young-woman phase, then supposedly today, older and wiser. And the speculation on the 'net is that the man in question, who bedded, betrayed, and begat her, is none other than Full House's Dave Coulier, a man no one has thought much about since the mid-90s.

Timewise, I don't think this quite works out the way the web would have you believe. Alanis would have been in her late teens, maybe 20 tops, when she was dating Dave; he would have been in his mid-30s. But Alanis has said the affair "Hands Clean" is based upon life that happened when she was too young, 14, which would place events in the '80s when she was on TV, not in music. The dates don't match for "Hands Clean," although they might match for "You Oughta Know," the jagged little pill of a song that brought her to international fame.

Who can say? And who could imagine that Dave Coulier would inspire such passion and anger? But smarminess pisses me off as well, so there you have it perhaps.

Oh, Alanis. I feel your pain. We all make terrible choices in friends and lovers when we're younger. Despite my questioning your inspiration, you at the very least made some very fine art out of the experience. The video alone, which illustrates the commodifcation of emotion--the moment, songwriting, the recording, the selling, image-making, production and distribution, and finally karaoke--is a pearl, a ruby, a diamond of meaning and talent.

So kudos, brava, and any and all accolades coming your way--they're well deserved.