A different nerd has corrections...
It should actually be November 30th, 1988. I think I found some errors in Donovan Strain’s calculations about when Ice Cube’s “Good Day” occurred, and explain my own findings below.
I feel somewhat silly making this my first-ever Tumblr post on an account I’ve had open, forgotten and unused, for over a year, but I was so happy two days ago when I found all the links to his original post. I thought it was awesome, hilarious, and I was all set to celebrate on January 20th next year. But then I caught a link tonight (well, last night, by now) to another blog post about it, and saw a comment left about the beeper information being incorrect (eliminating two ‘88/'89 dates for being too early). I thought, “Hey, they’re right: I was already in high school then and beepers weren’t widespread yet, but they were around!” So I started doing some additional research and found that to be the first of three mistakes which, I believe, eliminate Donovan Strain’s proposed Jan. 20, 1992 date from consideration, and I posit November 30th, 1988 as the actual “Good Day” day instead:
As mentioned above: pagers certainly weren’t yet as widespread in '88/'89 as they’d later become but, speaking as someone who was already in high school in those years, I can say that they were definitely were available – and I’d say that a South Central gangsta would’ve been a likely candidate to have one earlier than most. So we shouldn’t use that as the sole reason to eliminate '88/'89 from consideration But on top of that, consider these additional facts we know about Cube’s personal life from the VH1’s “Behind the Music: Ice Cube” episode…
Cube started dated Kimberly Woodruff (his still-current wife) in the summer of '88, before any of the those final four dates. He’s famous for having always been a loyal one-woman man, who always went home to Kim and his family rather than partying after shows, so we can assume he’s talking about the same Kim. But the lyric in question goes: “I got a beep from Kim, and she can fuck all night,” which comes after the mention that he’d been trying to fuck her since the twelfth grade. Now, I can see Cube spitting those lines about a day that happened while the two were just dating – but after she was already his fiancee and the mother of his child? I just don’t think so. Certainly not about a day in January '91, when Kim was eight months pregnant! And highly unlikely for January '92 either, when their firstborn was one year old and they’d be married later that same year. And the final nail in January 20, 1992 coffin is…
We know that in '88 and '89, Cube still lived at home with his mom – the lack of cash-flow he saw from NWA, forcing him to stay at home, was part of what led to him leaving the group. But Cube got into an argument with Priority Records five days after his first son’s birth in Feb. '91 over his not getting paid an advance on his solo album – an advance with which he planned to get a house for himself, Kim, and their child. The argument led to his smashing up the Priority offices with an aluminum baseball bat, which in return led to his getting his advance. Thus, even if we assume a month or two before he actually cashed a check from the label, a couple months to get moving on a house hunt, a month or two of actual house-hunting, a month to close escrow, and a couple weeks to get settled in, we can also safely say that by Jan. 20, 1992, Ice Cube was no longer living with his mom, dropping Kim off somewhere after he’d fucked her.
So what does that leave us? We return our focus to the Nov. 30, 88 and April 4, 89 dates – which, you’ll recall, were eliminated solely on the basis of a false assumption about beeper availability. You’re now talking about dates in the wake of the release of “Straight Outta Compton,” when it was blowing up. We know Cube still lived at home with his mom during those years but you’re still dealing with touring, press, MTV, etc., all of which makes it tough to nail down one of those two dates as being calm enough for Cube to have such an uneventful day. However, there’s still one more heretofore unexplored clue left: after putting Kim’s ass to sleep, Ice Cube had a Fatburger at 2 a.m. Now, it’s nearly impossible to know now what the operating schedule was for an unknown Fatburger over twenty years ago, one thing is true for the vast majority of Fatburgers across the L.A. metro area: they close at midnight or earlier Sunday-Thursday, but stay open a couple hours later on Friday and Saturday nights. And what does a calendar tell us? That April 4, 1989 was a Tuesday. (For the record, Jan. 20, 1992 was a Monday, and so is eliminated by the Fatburger timing in addition to the reasons above; Jan. 18, 1991 was indeed a Friday, but I believe it to be eliminated most conclusively by Kim’s pregnancy.)
November 30, 1988, though… Nov. 30, '88 was a Friday (*EDIT*: actually, it wasn’t; oops! See my follow-up post for an explanation – and why it doesn’t matter!). The day when Cube could grab a Fatburger at 2 a.m. The day earliest in his relationship with Kim – when referring to her as someone he’d been trying to fuck since the twelfth grade would be the most relevant; when getting paged and then dropping her off elsewhere would still make sense; before her accepting his marraige proposal and giving birth to his son would make his speaking flippantly about their sex life like that even more awkward and uncomfortable…
November 30, 1988 was the REAL date of Ice Cube’s good day.
(P.S. We will conveniently overlook the fact that in '88, Cube was still driving an old Jeep – because it might not have been a pimpmobile with hydraulics, but it least it was a drop-top of sorts!)
(P.P.S. I’ve seen another Tumblr tonight which went with Murk Avenue’s beeper assumption, and the ignoring of Cube’s family timeline, but used the fact that according to Wikipedia, “By around 1992-93, MTV aired Yo! MTV Raps only once a week, for two hours, on Fridays after midnight” to also say that it couldn’t have been January 20, 1992, but drew the conclusion that this meant it was Friday, January 18, 1991. However, as outlined above, I highly doubt Kim was paging him for weed, booze, and sex while 8 months pregnant with his son! Besides, Cube wouldn’t have been at Short Dog’s place watching the show between midnight and 2 a.m. before going to Fatburger – that’s when he fucking Kim. No, this was in 1988 when he went to Short Dog’s and watched it in the late afternoon, which also fits with the timeline within the song itself.)
Shit… all that time and effort spent correcting the date of Ice Cube’s Good Day, and I made a basic mistake, too – Nov. 30, 1988 was actually a Wednesday, not a Friday. What can I say? Mea culpa… I think I was looking at the 1989 calendar while checking April 4, and then accidentally clicked forward instead of back. I guess that’s what I get for putting in all of that time and effort between the hours of 2am-5am!
However, if there are actually any correlations between Fatburger schedules today and what they were 20 years ago, there are Fatburgers in L.A. (more mid-city, not South Central), Hollywood, and the Valley that are open until 3-4am,even on weeknights. They’d be a bit out of the way for Cube to drive, drunk and high, for a burger… but not outside the realm of possibility, I guess.
Therefore, I stand by November 30th, 1988 as the correct day for Ice Cube’s Good Day! The ‘88/'89 dates definitely aren’t ruled out by the pager issue – hell, I even forgot to account for the fact that in N.W.A.’s 1988 “Fuck the Police,” Cube himself even rapped: “Fuckin with me 'cause I’m a teenager / With a little bit of gold and a pager” – so you certainly can’t say it was too early for him to have one! But the timeline of Cube’s & Kim’s family life rule out the '91/'92 dates, so we’re still left to decide between Nov. 30, 1988 and April 4, 1989.
The original edition of “Straight Outta Compton” was released on August 8th, 1988, so Cube would’ve been long done with the recording by November 30th, when it was in the 30-40 range of the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums. However, the album didn’t break onto the Billboard Top LP charts until into 1989. So November 30th falls until a bit of a lull period between when the album was done and when it truly exploded into the national consciousness; by April 4, 1989, Cube would have likely been too busy to enjoy such an uneventful day. Also by that time, the discrepancy in the financial situation of increasing album sales not correlating to an increase in his personal income would likely have started becoming apparent to Cube – the issue which would lead to his leaving N.W.A. later that same year – making it more unlikely would Cube could or would enjoy such a relaxed day in the Spring of 1989 as tensions began to brew.
No, November 30th, 1988 is the perfect time for such a good day to have occurred – a time when he had a rising album and knew he was on his way to stardom, but before he began to suffer the problems inherent with said stardom.
(And one final point: yes, I realize that it was all just a daydream, that the song’s not a true story and there never was any single “perfect day” as described… but c'mon, where’s the fun with that? It’s much more amusing to conveniently forget that fact and play this game of “what if?” now, isn’t it? ;-) )
