OK, so I recognize that the first two installments of Culture Jammin’ have now focused on Aerosmith, but whatever. That’s not the plan for this series, but I’ll stop writing about Aerosmith when Aerosmith stops being hilarious.

They’re back together, by the way. Or maybe not. Whatever.

The reason I bring up Aerosmith is that I wanted to talk about the Cryin’ video that featured Alicia Silverstone (plus a young Josh Holloway, better known as Sawyer from Lost) a little more.

It was all over MTV for like two years and I’m certain it won a bunch of MTV Video Awards, but man, who thought it was a good idea? I would have loved to have sat in on that prod meeting between Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, who I just assume make all of Aerosmith’s aesthetic decisions.

“OK, so we’ll have this hot chick, and she has all these problems with her boyfriend. Get it, like she’s ‘Cryin”, like the name of the song?”

“Yeah, that works — and then at the end, she kills herself!”

“No, dude. That’s too heavy. Too real. How ’bout we just make it look like she kills herself, but then, ahh… what could we have her do?”

“Oh, DUDE! She jumps off a bridge, but then it turns out she’s just bungee jumping!”

“Perfect! Oh my god, it’s so ironic I can’t stand it! And then… then she’ll give the guy the finger!”

“Aerosmith f@#$ing rules!”

When did Alicia Silverstone put on the bungee-jumping harness in this video? It’s not even clear she’s got one on when she’s first standing on the bridge. And how’s she going to get back up? And why did she… oh, nevermind.

Watch it yourself.

Little-known fact: When I was in sixth grade and had just discovered rock and roll, I loved Aerosmith. Loved them. I had nearly all their albums on cassette.

I have no idea how I even became familiar with their music, though I suspect it had something to do with Beavis and Butthead  or Wayne’s World or just watching tons and tons of MTV in the early 90s.

Anyway, during the next school year — Christmas of 1993, to be exact — I got my first CD player, and Get a Grip was among the first CDs I purchased (the others, which included Nevermind, In Utero and Alapalooza, were far less embarrassing.)

I nearly wore the album out. In seventh grade, I thought Aerosmith was about the coolest group of guys imaginable. They played distorted guitars in blues scales and sung songs with double entendres, and to top it off put Alicia Silverstone in their videos, thrilling seventh-grade boys everywhere.

By the end of calendar year 1994, my entire musical paradigm had shifted. First Kurt Cobain died, then the original Punk-O-Rama came out, then I figured out how much Aerosmith sucked.

Part of it was due to their ubiquity, no doubt, but most of it, I think, was that I realized they were creating music tailor-made for seventh graders.

Not completely terrible, to be honest. Just achingly unoriginal and overloaded with silly rock and roll affectations, from their music to their wardrobes. I’m reasonably certain Joe Perry doesn’t even own a shirt.

By the end of the 90s, after my musical tastes had completely splattered and I was listening to funk and ska and hip-hop and lots and lots of Rage Against the Machine, I began involuntarily emitting a noise whenever Aerosmith songs came on the radio.

My friends call this my “Aerosmith Sound.” It’s a high-pitched and nasal exclamation of panic, an anxious “AAAAH!” unleashed to let whoever is controlling the radio know it’s time to change the station. There’s probably a little bit of shame mixed in there, too, because I always do it knowing that at one point in my life I couldn’t get enough Aerosmith.

Anyway, that’s just a long introduction to the news that apparently Steven Tyler himself has finally had enough of Aerosmith.

The lead singer has pulled out of the band’s upcoming South American tour to focus on solo work and — no joke — promoting “Brand Tyler.”

How “Brand Tyler” will differ from “Brand Aerosmith” remains to be seen, but smart money says it will also suck.

Perhaps even more hilariously, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer (I didn’t even have to look their names up, which bothers me) will apparently try to carry on without Tyler as Aerosmith, meaning we could very well be faced with twice as much terrible music in the upcoming years.

Anyway, I’m sorry if you like Aerosmith and are not a seventh grader. Very sorry, actually.

*- The phrase “Culture Jammin'”, as used here, refers to a series in this blog that I’ll occasionally use for my no-more-than-once-per-day non-sports item, and not the practice of culture jamming. While I appreciate large-scale hoaxes and well-intentioned subversion, I recognize how ironic it would be to advocate anti-consumerism on this SNY.tv blog.

Over at the Perpetual Post this week, Jillian Lovejoy Lowery and I listed our horror movie Top 5s for Halloween.

Jill includes movies like Dead Alive, an early Peter Jackson campfest that I loved, but I only listed movies that actually scared me.

I love lists, but not really ordered lists. I find it really difficult to quantify the difference between my No. 3 and No. 1 horror movie of all time, and I think if I did this list again I might make The Omen the winner.

At NorthJersey.com, Bob Klapisch relates the story of how a young Jay-Z once indirectly bought him a car.

I’m hoping Jay-Z can very directly buy me a car.

My current ride is a 1999 white Infiniti G20 that belonged to my grandmother until she was no longer capable of driving. A couple of weeks ago, it started making all sorts of funky noises, and not like the James Brown kind.

It’s in the shop as we speak and I’m waiting on an estimate from the mechanic. Until it’s fixed, life in Westchester will suck hardcore, because there’s basically nothing to do within walking distance of my house except stay inside my house and watch TV. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’d be nice to be able to get out to the batting cage and Taco Bell once in a while.

Things would be a whole lot better if the jiggaman could pony up to buy me a car. He obviously owes me one, since I own the Black Album and all. And I don’t need anything fancy. If money really ain’t a thang, I just fail to see why it’d be such a big deal for him to buy me a car. After all, he sort of bought one for Klapisch.

If you happen to know Jay-Z, please tell him he should buy me a car.

In one of my earliest non-sports posts here, I weighed in on Justin Bieber, a young pop star I had never heard of before he showed up to play for throngs of 10-year-old girls at the Today Show studio near my office.

Anyway, I trashed him a bit, assuming he was just some run-of-the-mill record-company lackey selected for stardom for his looks and charm.

I have since learned from a source with inside knowledge that Justin Bieber is actually something of a savant in both music and weirdness. Apparently the reason Bieber’s Today Show performance was underwhelming is that he had never even rehearsed the song with his live band, but decided on a whim to play it instead of the song he had prepared. While dancing. With no backing track.

I’m also told that he is, as I suspected, closely handled by managers and mother, but mostly because he’s prone to saying particularly bizarre and downright inappropriate things. And apparently in a recent trip to MTV’s studios, he was given a Rubik’s Cube with which to entertain himself, and promptly finished it and launched it at his manager’s junk.

So maybe Justin Bieber is pretty rock and roll after all. Good luck with that, Justin Bieber. Your next challenge is to actually make worthwhile music.

Apparently Darryl Strawberry will join the cast of Celebrity Apprentice, alongside such current and relevant celebrities as Sharon Osbourne, Bret Michaels, Cyndi Lauper, Sinbad and someone named Curtis Stone.

I don’t watch Celebrity Apprentice, but I’ll certainly pull for Darryl. I’ve never gotten the chance to deal with him much, but one of the great and surreal upsides to this job is that occasionally Darryl Strawberry is just walking around the office.

Plus, Darryl will have the opportunity to redeem the good name of the 1986 Mets in the business world after Lenny Dykstra’s ignominious decline. Also, he wears some amazing suits.

Still, Sinbad is a formidable opponent. Don’t forget what he brought to the table for the Texas State Fighting Armadillos. Dude’s a competitor.

As for Sharon Osbourne, does she really count as a celebrity? I mean, isn’t the thing she’s most famous for just another reality TV show? I guess she’s Ozzy Osbourne’s wife and that counts for something, but nothing makes my head hurt more than the concept of the reality-TV celebrity. I think Bret Michaels kind of falls in that category now, too.

Rod Blagojevitch will also be on the show.