I’m not supposed to move. My right leg is inside an MRI machine, one that’s designed only for limbs. So the rest of me is sitting on a piece of hard foam, flipping through the issue of SI with Stephen Strasburg on the cover. The MRI technician has the local Jack FM station on the radio, and the Jack station is playing their usual blend of non-sequitors. Tom Cochrane precedes Whitesnake precedes, I believe, something from “Aida.” There is no logic to defend what is happening, but I’m immobilized inside an MRI machine. I’m forced to sit there and take it.
At which point “What is Love” comes on the radio.
You know the song I’m talking about: it’s the one that spawned a recurring Chris Kattan/Will Ferrell sketch on SNL, and eventually, an ill-conceived movie. It’s impossible to imagine the song independent of Kattan and Ferrell, or their signature move: bobbing their heads in unison to the song.
I want, badly, to begin bobbing my head to this 1993 dance classic. But I’m trapped inside an MRI machine, knee immobilized, and if I move, they’ll have to restart the MRI machine, and maybe then Jack FM will begin playing the YMCA, or Cotton-Eye Joe, or the Macarena, and then I’ll be trapped inside this machine forever.
A 1993 dance classic plays, but I do not bob.