Elmo's Got the Moves

We have a new obsession at our house. It is a brand new, kind of weird, autotuned, Sesame Street dance number called "Elmo's Got the Moves." It is presented for your viewing pleasure here:

We listen to this song approximately four bazillion times a day, and each time is met with joy and dancing. Crazy dancing. Run around the room as fast as you can while head-banging, flailing and squealing dancing. It has reached number one on the Tenor Dad family charts.

This has happened with other songs previously of course.  "Shakeable You" by the Imagination Movers, "Ice Ice Baby," the theme song from Ponyo, and pretty much everything by the Doodlebops have all enjoyed lengthy stays at the Repeat Button Hotel, so this is nothing new.

The weird thing for me is listening to Big Bird autotuned.  Elmo I can deal with.  Elmo is a total sell-out and I expect this kind of thing from him, plus his squeaky voice sounds half autotuned anyway.  Abby Cadabby I have no emotional connection to whatsoever, so who cares what she does.  But Big Bird!?  Big Bird is a favorite of five-year-old Tenor Dad, and is a constant and gentle reminder of the past.  Big Bird singing autotuned messes with my head.

I suppose we all have to look to the future or be lost to the past, and Big Bird is no exception.  And sadly, by the time of this writing, I am almost used to it.  But it still grates on an emotional and spiritual level.  Elmo may have the moves, but Big Bird just should not.

Screaming at Planes

Yesterday I went to a MOMS Club event at the airport.  We all went up to the observation tower with our toddlers (and Ruby because it is school vacation week) and watched the airplanes.  To a toddler, this is the most exciting thing ever.

As the planes landed, taxied, and took off, all of the children felt the need to scream goodbye to them at the tops of their lungs.  They also felt the need to scream goodbye to the baggage carts, the de-icing truck, the fuel truck, and anything else that they saw going by.  This made for a very successful event, by which I mean all of the children were happy and not bothering their parents.  Unless for some reason one might be bothered by a horde of screaming toddlers.  We parents are used to this though, and were able to hold adult conversations above the din.

Just so that you get the full effect of what it is like to be in an enclosed booth with more than half a dozen screaming toddlers who are watching airplanes, I have provided this short video for your viewing pleasure.  I know.  You are jealous.

The Names Change But the Food Stays the Same

Last night I hosted my 9th annual Oscars party.  This is basically the only time during the year that I actually host anything, so I get pretty excited about it.  One of my favorite parts of hosting is trying to come up with horrible puns that will link the party food to the nominated films, but I actually just make the same food every year, so sometimes trying to shoehorn it into a cute name is tricky.  Last night I actually tried some new recipes, but the old standbys were there as well.

Even though I have mostly given up Coke, I have to have drinks at my party, and since I don't drink alcohol, we have a variety of Coke products every year.  This has not changed in nine years, and I don't expect it to change in the future, although anyone is always welcome to the B their own B.  Or W, or whatever.

Half of the reason I have this party in the first place is because I need an excuse to make nachos.  I love nachos.  I want to make them every day.  But I can't make them every day.  I can make them every party, however.  It is sometimes hard to get nachos into the title of a nominated film though.  If only Nacho Libre could be nominated every year.

Whenever my mother has a gathering, her husband makes meatballs.  Birthday parties, holidays, or any large gathering of people, it is very easy (and yummy) to throw some meatballs and sauce into a crock pot.  I gave it a try this year, and it seemed to work well.  Perhaps the meatballs will make a reappearance at a future party...

My big experiment this year was my pecan pie baked brie.  As I hate both pecan pie and brie, this normally would not have occurred to me, but actually I think it is a good idea to make some party food that you will not eat.  Otherwise I would have eaten everything and been fat and sick.  The brie I baked in the oven and then covered with toasted pecans and some caramelized brown sugar and maple syrup.  It was gone fairly early in the evening.

My mother-in-law brought over some veggies and dip, so I cannot claim credit for this party food, but I will claim credit for the horrible pun name that I came up with at the last second.

Finally, we needed something sweet, and this last dish was all my wife's doing.  She had been wanting to make this cake that she had a recipe for, so she did and it was a big hit.  Even people who hated chocolate cake loved it, plus it was covered in cool whip and crumbled up heath bars.  The only problem was coming up with a name for it, but we finally decided to form the crumbled up candy into the shape of a dragon and just call it "The Cake With the Dragon Tattoo."

The food was good, the show was eh, and the party was fun.  Another great entry into the list of Oscar parties.  Now I just have to see Hugo when it comes out on DVD tomorrow...

Pop Lyrics as Filtered Through a Pre-Schooler

We listen to the radio a lot in the car.  We listen to kids songs on the iPod as well, but as often as not we are tuned to a pop music station.  Sometimes I worry that the lyrics are not appropriate for my children, but when I actually stop to listen to how they are processing these things, I get less worried.

"Your Love is My Drug" by Ke$ha
This is how Ruby sings this song:

What you got boy is hard to find
I think about it all the time
I'm all hung up, my heart is fine.
I just can't get you off my mind.
GET OUT!  GET OUT!  GET OUT OF MY TRUCK!

"Raise Your Glass" by Pink
Ruby will often fill in words she doesn't know with words that make more sense to her.  For example:

So raise your glass if you are wrong, in all the right ways
Ow!  A hundred dogs!

"Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" by Katy Perry
We were in the car one day when this came on the radio, and Ruby heard the first line of the song, which is "There's a stranger in my bed."  She started laughing really hard and said "A STRANGER in her BED!?  I guess she should have locked her doors!"

"Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5
Ruby consistently referred to this song as "Moves Like Jacket" for the longest time!

"Love You Like a Love Song" by Selena Gomez and the Scene
Actually, come to think of it, a lot of adults sing this song the same way Ruby does...

I, I love you like a love song baby
I, I love you like a love song baby
I, I love you like a love song baby
And I keep singing beep beep beep beep beep beep beep!

I have also successfully convinced her that "What the Hell" by Avril Lavigne is actually called "Walk the Cow," but that was my fault, not hers.  There are plenty of other examples of course, and hopefully many more to come in the years ahead, and I look forward to all of the unintentional parodies, as well as maybe a few intentional ones.

The Old Woman and the Cheese

Edward is learning a lot of new words.  Well, okay, not a lot, but some.  And the words he does know he uses a lot more often, and in increasingly appropriate situations.  And then sometimes he uses his words the right way, but it is still so wrong.

Like today, for instance, we were at the grocery store and Edward decided to say goodbye to everything and everyone.  Every time we passed a person in the aisles, he would wave frantically and yell "Bye Bye!"  Every time we passed a loaf of bread, or a sign, or a stack of cans, he would yell "Bye Bye!" at it as loudly as possible and flail his arms around above his head.  This elicited a variety of reactions, from cooing about how cute he was, to annoyed glares.  Edward did not notice or care about any of this.

Another word he has recently learned is the word "cheese, and as luck would have it, we were buying some cheese today.  No matter where I hid the cheese in the cart, somehow he would find it and reach it and grab it and hold it aloft and shout "Cheeee!  Cheeee!" as if he had just discovered a winning lottery ticket.  This met with the same reactions from the general public as when he was bidding them all fond farewells.

While I was at the deli counter waiting for, well, some more cheese, I left Edward in the cart for a few minutes, thinking I could trust him not to assault anyone.  It had been maybe a minute when I turned around and saw that he had attracted an older woman, as Edwards are wont to do.  She was oohing and aahing over him and generally making a fuss and I wasn't worried about it, so I turned back to the deli counter.

A moment later I glanced around just in time to see Edward haul off and smack the woman with his bag of cheese and yell "Cheeeeeeee!" at the top of his lungs, and when the woman quickly retreated, trying to protect her head with her arms, he grinned and yelled "Bye Bye!" even louder.  She ran off before I could apologize, but I did tell Edward that while the word usage was technically correct, he was still wrong.  So very wrong.  And bonus points for me, because I managed not to laugh until I got to the car.

Driverless Cars

As I was flipping through the DVR this morning looking for episodes of "The Doodlebops," the news was playing in the upper right hand corner of the screen, and it was telling me about driverless cars.  According to the news, they are working on vehicles that need minimal human input in a variety of situations.  For instance, a car that can parallel park itself may be in your driveway soon.  They also stressed that these cars of the future would mostly work on highways, not while cruising around your neighborhood that is full of stop signs, hidden drives, pedestrians, and surprise trees.

Now, I just want to take a second to rant for a moment about the idiocy of the direction our society is headed.  People!  We already have driverless cars!  They are called trains.  And buses.  And subways.  And airplanes.  If you want to drive down the highway, but also want to get your laptop out, play on your phone, or read a book, we have an option for that.  The problem is, our public transportation infrastructure in the country is mostly terrible.  But it can be improved!

See, the thing is, nobody actually wants to improve it.  People like driving their own cars, although I cannot for the life of me understand why.  They think it gives them freedom, and sometimes it does.  The freedom to sit in traffic for hours.  The freedom to get pulled over and pay fines.  The freedom to pay for maintenance and insurance.  The freedom to get cut off a dozen times by jerks.  The freedom to pollute the crap out of the planet until the whole world smells like China.  And people have even started taking the freedom to do other stuff while they are driving (cause actually, driving is boring and a waste of time and we all know it).  People talk on the phone.  They text.  They surf the internet.  They eat cheeseburgers.  They do their hair.  They break up fights between children in the back seat.  They put on make-up.  They fiddle with the radio.  They scroll through their iPod playlists looking for that one Goo Goo Dolls song that they can't remember the name of.  In short, driving is miserable.

So why on Earth do we keep going to great lengths to make driving more like riding a train, when we could just build better trains!?  Remember streetcars?  Trolleys?  All the fun ways to get around before we decided we should all have our own cars?  Jump on, read your book, jump off when you got to work.  Perfect.  I'm not saying there aren't advantages to having your own car (filling up the trunk with groceries would be harder on a trolley), but when I picture two possible futures, I much prefer the vision of enhanced and upgraded public transportation over the vision of thousands of people in their own isolated little bubbles zipping around the highways relying on a computer to not kill them in a fiery crash.  My computer has a hard enough time opening documents without freezing, I don't want it driving me around.  Thanks anyway.

Ruby Plays "Wedding"

An actual conversation I had with my four-year-old yesterday:

Me: How was school today?

Ruby: Good.

Me: What did you do?

Ruby: Oh, I played wedding.

Me: (suddenly terrified) You did?

Ruby: Yes.

Me: And how do you play wedding?

Ruby: Well, you just have a wedding silly!

Me: I see.  And who did you marry?

Ruby: Nobody!  I was just supposed to get the hotel.

Me: The hotel?

Ruby: Yes, for everyone to stay at.

Me: Oh, so you didn't get married?

Ruby: No, silly!

Me: Well, who got married then?

Ruby: I don't know.  Just some people I don't know.  I didn't even go to the wedding part, because I slept through it.

Me: I see.  So nobody in your class was the bride or the groom?

Ruby: No, we were just getting the wedding ready, and then we were so tired that we fell asleep and when we woke up it was Christmas!

Me: And that's how you play wedding?

Ruby: Yes.  Also we had oranges for snack.

And that is the story of how Tenor Dad was very relieved to discover that his four-year-old daughter was actually playing wedding planner.

The Sanitization of Children's Music

I remember music when I was a kid.  I remember my cassette tapes and campfire songs.  Music has a way of sticking with you long after other memories have faded, and so I recall most of the words and melodies of the tunes I sang lustily as an eight-year-old.  Now, as a parent, it is my happy duty to introduce some of these fun songs to my children.  Except they seem to be different now.

One of the best parts, to me anyway, was the irreverence of the lyrics I was singing.  "Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts!" I would shout out loudly, grinning at how gross I was allowed to be because, hey, I didn't make it up!  It's a song!  I was definitely not supposed to say "ain't" in everyday conversation, because my mother would faint and my father would fall in a bucket of paint, but all of the best songs had this word in them, and what were the parents going to do about it?  It was right there, recorded on my cassette tape!  And how fun it was to change the boring old adult songs about Ol' Smoky, and instead sing about spaghetti and my lost meatball.

When I am looking at albums of kids' songs to purchase for my children, I will often be attracted to ones containing songs I loved as a child.  Nostalgia I guess, or clever marketing on their part, or both.  But they have changed the words!  I remember a verse I used to sing, either to "Turkey in the Straw" or "Boom Boom Ain't It Great To Be Crazy" depending on the day, and it went like this: "A horse and a flea and three blind mice/sat on the corner dealing dice/the horse he slipped and fell on the flea/oops said the flea, there's a horse on me!"  Now, I had no idea what "dealing dice" meant.  I was seven!  But on our version of it today, they have changed that line to "sat on the corner feeling nice."

In the classic call and repeat song "The Other Day I Met a Bear," there is a line that once went "He said to me/why don't you run?/I see you ain't/got any gun."  This is now "I see you don't have any gun."  This is more grammatically correct, I agree.  But it is less fun!  I have found many examples of lines in songs altered to make them more "kid-friendly," and it drives me crazy!  But should it?  What's wrong with making formerly dangerous things safe for our children?  I don't know, but it seems like a slippery slope to me.

Do you remember that TV service a few years ago that was going to take out all the sex, violence, and swearing from classic movies and show "family versions" to you on your TV.  Everyone cried censorship, and they were right about that.  But when they play movies on network TV they often dub over bad words, or takes whole scenes out.  They've been doing that for years.  Then I hear that the Tea Party in Tennessee wants to change the history books that we use to teach our children and remove references to slavery in them.  What!?  You can't change history, you can only learn from it!

I am not a revisionist.  In art, history, or music I am a staunch supporter of unaltered truth.  I believe that if you think something is not appropriate for your children, then you should not expose your children to it.  I like my kids songs irreverent, and I like my history as factual as one can get it.  I know that we don't just let kids run outside and play anymore because we are afraid they will be stolen away, but can't we at least let them sing "ain't" once in a while?

The Standard Force

We finally got a new car.  Well, not a new new car, but we did sell the old broken one and picked up a less old, less broken one.  The new car is a little different from the ex-vehicle.  For one thing it has all of its mirrors intact.  Also, the seat belts work and it is not missing all of its hubcaps.  But the biggest difference is probably the standard transmission.

The first car I ever had was a standard and I do know how to drive one, but on the other hand I've been driving an automatic for the last ten years.  I'm a little rusty.  I have only stalled out in traffic once this week, with a long line of cars behind me, but the ride is not as smooth as it could be.  I'm getting there.  I just need to get my groove back.

Now, I am a rule follower.  Yes, I am also a rule-bender, semantics aficionado, and fast-talking son of a gun, but in general I like to have a hard set of rules or instructions to follow.  What this means is that I spent the first couple of drives trying to figure out the exact proper speeds at which to change gears.  Where was that magic spot where third gear wanted to jump in?  20?  25?  23?  At exactly what point of clutch deployment should I start to hit the gas?  What were the rules of this car?

This worked out okay, but of course all of these variables are dependent on large numbers of other variables.  What is the angle of incline of the road I am driving on?  What is the weather like?  How many people are in the car?  Why was the sad cebu sad?  You get the idea.

What I discovered is that the best way to ensure a smooth ride in the car is to use the force.  I'm not talking about the stupid midichlorians force.  I'm talking about the real force that Obi-Wan talks about.  He says "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.... A Jedi can feel the force flowing through him."  That's the kind of force I'm talking about.  The feeling kind.

Do you remember when Luke was trying to fight that little floating Bakugan with his lightsaber?  It kept zapping him, but when he put the blindfold on he was able to use the Force to deflect the little guy.  This would later serve him well when he decided to fire blindly on the death star using nothing more than feelings.  Well, feelings and a proton torpedo.

Driving a standard is very similar.  After all of the calculating and observing, I finally found that the best way to drive was not to keep an eye on the tachometer or the speedometer, but rather to just feel the car.  Just by listening and feeling and using the force, I could easily tell when the right moment to shift was, and the ride became lot smoother.  I was in the zone.  I could drive this car, no problem!

And then I would get snapped out of it by a screaming child, or something on the radio, or some jerk cutting me off.  But once you do it enough times, it's easy to get back to that place.  This is the story of how I learned to stop worrying and just use the Force.  But I do keep my eyes open, just in case.

How to Be Happier

Simone and I read a study once that said that throughout a wide variety of tests they had only found one surefire way to increase happiness.  I'll give you a hint, it didn't include making more money.  It didn't even include spending more time with friends and family or achieving your goals.  According to this study, the only thing that made any measurable difference in the happiness levels of its subjects was keeping what they called a gratitude journal.

Apparently, if you write down 3-5 things every day that you are grateful for, eventually you will get into the habit of actually being grateful for things, and being grateful for what you have makes you happy.  It doesn't mean you don't still have goals and hopes and dreams, it just means that while you work for those things, you are also enjoying the journey.

I don't know if this is true, and goodness knows you can't believe everything you read online, but it did make a lot of sense to me, and so we incorporated this into Ruby's bedtime routine.  When it's time to get ready ready for bed, first we give her her medicine, then she brushes her teeth and gets into her jammies.  Once she is under the covers we read stories.  Usually we do a couple of short books, but we have been getting into chapter books lately too (we are currently in the midst of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Once the stories are over we turn out the lights and ask Ruby three questions.  First we ask her "What was your favorite thing you did today?" to which she invariably replies school, except on weekends of course.  Then we ask her "What was your favorite thing you ate today?"  She always thinks hard about this one, trying to remember all the foods of the day, and we get answers as varied as "cake" and "broccoli."  Finally we ask her "What was your favorite thing that you saw today?" and although it wasn't necessarily intended as such, she always answers this question with a list of people that she was happy to see.  Mommy, Daddy, and Edward always make the list (and the cats too) and then depending on who she saw that day, she might say her teacher at school or her friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, or grandparents.

I don't know if these questions have helped Ruby to be happy or grateful, but she certainly is those things, and I like to think that we have at least a small part to play in how she views the world.  I hope that as she gets older, she keeps in the habit of remembering the good parts of every day.  Even on the worst day of your life, there had to be something nice that you ate, or saw, or did.  And does this really increase happiness?  I couldn't say.  But as far as attitudes go, I think you could do worse than gratitude.

Romance vs. Comedy

I admit it.  I enjoy a good romantic comedy.  There's no shame in that, right?  But, I mean, not the romance part obviously.  I like the comedy parts!  They are funny!  That other stuff is lame.

Last night we rented a great romantic comedy with a terrible title.  "What's Your Number?" was the newest flick in the Redbox, and since movies were free at the Redbox yesterday I snapped it up.  I have to tell you, it was really funny.  I LOL'd multiple times.  But when it came to the romantic bits, I kind of just ignored them.

The thing about romantic comedies is that the "romantic" half of them is going to be cliche.  You know that going in.  There was no doubt in my mind when I sat down that the two main characters were going meet in a cute way, slowly fall in love, have some sort of falling out, and then wind up together at the end.  That's how it works.  When the on-screen couple had their fight, I rolled my eyes and felt nothing, even as their characters moped about on screen, because I knew that they were getting back together.  There were no emotional stakes at all.

But I was not watching the movie for emotional stakes.  I was watching for the jokes.  The romantic comedies that I do not enjoy, are the ones with nothing at all new to say, and that play at stale gender stereotypes without bringing any sort of new point of view to the table.  There are tons of those, and they are bad romantic comedies.  You may recall from the first paragraph that I enjoy a good romantic comedy, not a bad one.  They may be few and far between, but if you can hang some interesting characters and some great jokes on the framework of the traditional romantic arc, then you've got a movie that I will probably enjoy watching.

Of course I know there are people out there who like the romantic parts better.  People who want to see people falling and love and getting together over and over again.  That's fine.  I don't need to see that, but it's okay if you do.  And as long as I'm laughing hard enough, I won't even notice you crying two seats over.

Please Pull Over So I Can Explain

Okay, so I was driving home last night and I pulled onto the interstate a few exits north of my house.  I got on in a small section in which the speed limit is 55 mph, though almost all of the interstate highways in Vermont have 65 mph limits.  Wanting to go fast, but also not wanting to get a ticket, I assumed a speed of around 63 mph and went over to the left lane to pass all of those 55 mph slowpokes.

As I was doing this a big truck came roaring up behind me, apparently wanting to drive faster than 63 mph, but by this time there were several cars to my right and no good place for me to merge over, so I drove for about 4 miles with this guy up my tailpipe.  When I got the chance, I did move right, and he passed me.  However, about half a mile later the speed limit returned to its usual setting of 65 mph, so I increased my speed to about 72.  I got back into the left lane where I immediately encountered Mr. Truck, who I guess wanted to drive 68 at all times regardless of the speed limit.

I felt a little bad pulling up behind this guy who had been trying to pass me for miles and had only recently gotten ahead, but on the other hand I was a little annoyed that he wanted to exceed the speed limit by 15 a few minutes ago, but now that I wanted to go faster, he wanted to exceed the speed limit by 3.  I kept a safe distance, but he seemed to be annoyed by me, and when he finally did go over to the right lane, I passed him, and he came roaring up behind me again, now back up my tailpipe with his brights on.

Okay, I get it.  You think I am being a jerk, driving slow, then as soon as you pass me I speed up and pass you back.  But it's not true!  I was just trying to adjust my speed based on the posted limit!  If only I could somehow communicate this fact to you!  Could you just pull over real quick and I will explain to you that I bear you no ill will and am only trying to drive somewhat normally?

The problem is, I have no way to get a message to Mr. Truck.  When we drive, we are in an isolated little bubble with no method of communication with the vehicles around us.  What a terrible state of affairs!  Yes, we all have cell phones, and judging from what I've seen, most of us spend all of our driving time talking on them, but not to the people around us.  How much nicer it would be if cars were like starships.

What we need is a way to hail passing cars and trucks, Star Trek style.  We could open a hailing frequency and discuss stuff with the other motorists.  Everyone's car phone number could be their license plate number!  Sure, you might get a bunch of people calling you to say that you are a sucky driver, but just like in Star Trek, you could always ignore those calls.  If we're all going to call people while we're driving anyway, it might be more helpful to be calling the guy in front of you, asking if he plans to drive 20 mph under the speed limit the whole way, or to mention that his blinker has been on for the past 3 exits.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that every car would need a communications officer, but I'm sure with bluetooth and telepathy that something could be worked out.  And I know that you are also thinking that all of the calls will be filled with angry expletive-ridden shouting sessions by road raged psychopaths, and that all we will be doing is hitting the "ignore" button all day long.  But here's what I think about that.  I think half of the reason we have so much road rage, and why people act like such jerks on the road, is that we are mostly anonymous out there.  We can zip down and cut off a whole line of cars to get to the off ramp precisely because they are not really people to us, but faceless cars who are blocking our way, and besides, what are they going to do about it?  But if every time we did something on the road, the other drivers could call us up and ask why, maybe we would think twice before making surprise illegal left turns from the right lane.  And maybe if the guy who cut us off called us up to apologize and explain that he is from New Jersey and so does not understand that left turns cannot be made by turning right first, we might not be quite so angry.

Auto manufacturers, the ball is in your court.  Hailing frequencies open!

Gender Assumptions

My default setting is male. If something is of uncertain, or undefined gender, I unconsciously make it male. When I was a kid, if a toy wasn't pink and had no bows or lace on it, in my mind it was masculine. Animals in nature, pets, heck, probably clouds and rocks too. I always made them make if the choice was up to me.

This wasn't something I ever really thought about, or even really noticed, because as I said, it was really all in my subconscious. But then I began to notice that Ruby makes everything female.

Her toys are probably an equal mix of male and female targeted items, and I must confess that I have accidentally assigned many of them a male gender, but even some of the toys with masculine names she will refer to as "she." Ruby also enjoys helping me play my Wii games. She solves puzzles with me and looks for items and secrets when I play. Currently I am in the midst of "Skyward Sword," and Ruby thinks that all of the characters in the game are female. Most of the characters are quite clearly male, (although with anime style rendering I could forgive some confusion) and yet Ruby always says things like "Go talk to that lady again," and "Did you find her fun wheel yet?"

I assumed that it was a gender thing, and that boys must make things male and girls make them female, but when I asked my wife about it last night, she said she often defaulted to male as well. So does society cause us to lean maleward, or is it different for different people? Is society changing? Is Ruby heralding a new societal norm in which being female is as valued (or more valued) than being male? That would be nice, but I am working with a very small sample group here. Do any of you tend to assume gender heavily in one direction or the other? Have you ever thought about why? I'd love to hear more thoughts on this!

My Favorite Song

I am a musician.  Perhaps this explains why people are always asking me what my favorite song is.  Or perhaps people ask everyone that and I am not special, but it always stands out in my mind, because I don't really have a favorite song, but I have always felt that I should.

There used to be a definite answer, or at least an answer or two.  When I was in high school and somebody asked me what my favorite song was, I could confidently reply either "Anna Begins" by Counting Crows, or "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" from the Muppet Movie.  Those are definitely two of my favorite songs, but now that I am no longer in high school it has gotten a little more complicated.

I actually think that the more experience you have in a subject, the less you are able to have a definite favorite, at least in a broad sense.  If you have only read twenty books, it is probably fairly easy to say which one is your favorite.  Even if you have read a hundred books it might be possible, but if you are an avid reader of multiple genres, how could you hope to compare the best non-fiction autobiography you've ever read to the best sword and sandals fantasy epic?

At this point, I would have to narrow down the field a bit in order to choose a favorite.  For one thing, what do you mean by song?  Is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" a song?  Do opera arias count?  Or are we only talking pop music?  And how on Earth could I ever compare "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison to "A te o cara" by Bellini?  No, I would have to separate the songs into categories.

But even the broad categories may be too broad.  I couldn't just divide into pop and classical.  I would need to probably pick my favorite French aria and my favorite German aria.  I would need to pick my favorite ska song and my favorite country song.  And even favorites come and go.  For about a year in college I listened to "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind at least once a day, and sometimes more.  It was clearly my "favorite" song of the moment, and it will always hold a special place in my heart, but there is always another song to take its place in the repeat button of my heart.

So is my favorite song the one that I am currently obsessed with, or a song that has lasted for years as a top iPod pick?  Or is my favorite song the one that has touched my heart the deepest, even if I don't listen to it all that often?  According to my iTunes, "Shake It" by Metro Station is my favorite song.  I do like that song, and often rocked out to it on repeat in the car, maybe more than other recent songs, but I hardly even listen to it anymore, and if asked what my favorite song was it would not spring to mind.

In conclusion, I have no idea what my favorite song is.  Heck, I couldn't even tell you what my favorite Billy Joel song is!  They are all so good!  I wish I did have a favorite song, so I didn't feel like an idiot every time someone asked me about it.  But maybe it's better to love too many songs too much.  There are so many songs that have meant so much to me throughout my life, and choosing my favorite feels like trying to pick my favorite child.  I love them all differently.  I even love terrible songs because of what they meant to me, like all the times my brother and I played our cassette tape of "Informer" by Snow as kids.  Ah, memories.

So I cannot tell you what my favorite song is.  But I can tell you what my least favorite song is, hands down.  The stupid Titanic song by Celine Dion.  If I could wipe one song from history, that would definitely be it, no questions asked. 

Are Our Brains Being Rewired Against Classical Music Concerts?

When I worked at Chorus America, I spent a lot of time around choruses and talking to them about their pressing issues.  I have sung in more choruses than I can count (not true, I am just too lazy to count them), and there are a few issues that spring eternal.  One issue was the lack of young people singing in choruses.  Everyone felt that if they didn't get some new younger people into their choruses that eventually the organization would die out.  That never concerned me though, because they have had that problem for decades.  Young people are often too busy with starting careers and families to put in that kind of time and effort, but once the kids are a little older and their schedules are more stable, the people that want to sing in a chorus will find one. 

The biggest problem always seemed to be concert attendance, and this was by no means limited to the choral groups.  Orchestras, opera companies, recitals, and most classical music has seen dwindling attendance (even though we don't really want to talk about it in public), and we wanted to know why.  One could blame the economy, as almost all artistic endeavors have seen fewer butts in seats, classical or not, but I wonder if there is a deeper, more troubling force at work here.

I have read article after article on how technology is rewiring our brains.  We actually think differently now than we used to even twenty to fifty years ago.  We are constant multitaskers and information comes at us fast and frequent.  Taking it slow?  People bring their laptops and cell phones on vacations with them, because slowing down doesn't mean actually slowing down anymore, it means doing fast and constant things that we want to do, rather than what other people want us to do.  Kids have a harder time focusing in school.  People are texting at the movies.  Laptops are used while watching television, now encouraged by the "interactive" shows.  Even the shows themselves display moving station logos and commercials for other programs on the bottom of the screen during the actual program.  Standing in line?  No problem.  I have Angry Birds.

So what does this mean for classical music?  Well, the thing about classical music is that it is, in its very nature, old.  In a culture when we are attracted to the new and the updated, classical music presents a look to the past.  People spend a great deal of money and effort trying to recreate the piece exactly as it was originally performed.  We use period instruments.  We write books and volumes on how to interpret specific sections of well known pieces.  There are "standards" of practice that we follow, and one thing we don't do is "update" the music.  Playing a Mozart piano concerto on a synthesizer would be akin to staging a civil war reenactment with machine guns.  But there is a very small section of the public that is interested in civil war reenactments, except as a once or twice curiosity bucket-list kind of thing, and I wonder if people feel the same way about classical concerts.

I want to be very clear about where I am going with this though.  It's not the music.  The music is timeless, and people still love the music.  We listen to it in our cars as we are driving.  We put it on while we make dinner.  The melodies from centuries past show up in movies, car commercials, and pop music videos.  But it is all multi-tasked listening.  What I am talking about is the experience of going to a theater or a concert hall, and sitting quietly for multiple hours and doing nothing but listen to a piece of music.  I wonder if it is not a matter of taste, but now rather a matter of brain chemistry.

If our brains are really changing, what can we do about it?  Is the classical music industry destined to just die a slow death?  We certainly have our supporters, and they are a fierce and vocal bunch, but they do seem to be in a shrinking minority these days.  At the concert I just sang in Carnegie Hall, we performed Carmina Burana, and during the performance they displayed projections behind us.  A giant eyeball appeared and looked at the audience.  Lazy color lines drifted across the wall as we sang.  It became a multimedia event.  The conductor was excited, because he told us that in the original score, Orff had written that glowing lanterns should be used during performances, and here we were, using our modern glowing lanterns.  That is certainly one way to engage the audience on a second, visual level.  And many opera companies do "updated" versions of shows, setting them in modern times, or filling them with gangsters, hippies, and other unexpected populations.  Is this pandering, or the salvation of an art form?

In some ways I would set opera apart from this discussion because, while it has its own problems, opera has always been about multitasking.  The combination of orchestral music, singing, dancing, sets, lights, special effects, costumes, etc. has been there from them beginning, and has evolved over the years into something that ought to keep people's attention away from Words With Friends for at least an hour or two.  But what about a concert opera?  What about a choral concert?  What about an orchestra concert?  What if it's not a choice anymore, but simply how our brain functions?  What if we can't help but be bored, or at least long for some distraction halfway through a long, but beautiful piece of music?  In this case, perhaps there is good reason for concern.  The older generation that supports the arts also tend to be less addicted to technology, but when the torch passes to a new generation, will they take it up this time?  Or will they be too busy watching YouTube videos while driving?  I don't have the answers, but maybe I finally found one of the right questions.

The Life and Times of Claudia Devilfish

Shortly after my wife and I were married, we had what we called the month of the three "C"s.  In that month, we acquired a cat, a car, and a computer.  The computer was replaced years ago, the cat is still around here somewhere, but the car we sold yesterday.  And if you asked me if I was happy or sad about that, I would not be able to tell you.

When we got the car, it came with a Christian fish symbol stuck to the back of it, but the weird thing about it was that the head was pointing to the right. Generally those fish are pointing left, as if the fish is swimming toward the viewer. The only other fish we have seen with the heads swimming away from you are the Darwin fish with the feet. This led us to the conclusion that the fish on the back of our car was not a good Christian fish at all, but rather the exact opposite of such a thing. A devil fish. Now, back at this point in time my wife was babysitting in the afternoons, and she mentioned to her young charge that we hadn't named our new car yet, and the kid she was babysitting told her to name it Claudia. I have no idea why, but as we had no better ideas, Claudia Devilfish was born.

Claudia tried to be a good car, but she seemed to attract problems from the get-go.  There was the time that the police came to our door to tell us that some drunk guy had driven into every car in our parking lot, including ours.  Thank you, drunk guy's insurance.  There were the mysterious vanishing hubcaps.  Thank you, local hoodlums.  There was the short little pole that I drove into, leaving its mark that remains to this day.  Thank you, stupid self.

On the one hand, that car has been nothing but trouble.  We've replaced the brakes more than once.  The transmission is fairly new, since we had to replace that as well.  Even the engine is not the original engine.  We had to replace the windshield after it cracked, as well as the whole front end after the drunk guy incident.  I have blown countless tires, and even ruined one of the actual wheels.  The passenger's side mirror randomly exploded while we were driving down the highway one day.  The driver's seat belt doesn't buckle.  The windshield washer fluid no longer sprays.  Depending on the wind, one of the headlights may or may not work.  The gas cap has to be pried open with a key in order to fill the tank.  In short, the car is a disaster and I can't believe we've kept it this long.

On the other hand, we've had the car for over eight years.  This car took me back and forth to grad school every day for two years.  We brought the cat and the computer home in it.  The car carried both of our children home from the hospital after they were born.  It has safely ferried us back and forth from DC and Baltimore to Vermont for dozens of holidays.  I was sitting in that car the day I found out that my grandmother had died.    There are so many memories, and so much life wrapped up in that hunk of metal that it might as well be a member of the family.

I tell myself that it was just a car, but it was our car, and maybe that means something.  We may have outgrown it, but I'm glad that we didn't just scrap it.  Claudia is starting a new life now, with a new owner that will love her despite her 200,000 + miles.  Claudia, if you are out there, and you have somehow gained sentience and learned to read in the last 24 hours, we miss you, and we hope you're happy, wherever the road may take you.

Poop in the Pool

As you know, I have recently joined a gym.  As you also know, it is far too expensive to actually use the gym, due to the fact that I have small children that I am not allowed to balance on the handlebars of my exercise bicycle, and so am required to pay money for their care.  I had been to the gym exactly twice.  Once, when I was not allowed in due to my boots, and once for my fitness consultation.  Now I have been three times, because we decided to take the family swimming.

If I don't want to pay for expensive gym childcare, but I still want to use my membership, the obvious solution is to do things at the gym that my children can do also, especially since it is free.  My kids love to swim, so we bundled up one Saturday morning and braved the icy winds and snowy streets on our way to a tropical diversion.

There are three water features at the gym.  The first is a big old adult lap pool, and it was full of big old adults swimming back and forth, from one end of the pool to the other.  Very boring.  The second feature is the kids' pool, which contains water that is much warmer than the lap pool (hopefully not due to unexpected fluids) and tons of children and their parents.  Finally, over in the corner, is the hot tub, which has a no kids allowed policy.  Sadly, there is also a big sign that prohibits parents from "supervising their children from the jacuzzi."  There goes my brilliant plan.

The kids' pool was where it was at, and we even saw one of Ruby's friends from school there, so in we went, splashing around and having a great time.  Unfortunately, it did not last more than ten or twenty minutes.  Before we knew it we heard whistling and shouting and everyone seemed to be exiting the pool.  "Clear the pool!" I heard from the staff, so we climbed out with everyone else.  Someone passing by mentioned that there was "contamination" in the pool and it had to be cleaned.  I wasn't sure what they meant by contamination, until I saw it float by.

I'm not entirely sure how one fully cleans poop out of a pool.  I suppose there are so many chemicals in there that they could just scoop it out and be done with it, although if it were my pool, I would drain all the water and scrub the living, well, you know, out of it.  That didn't seem possible though, so I would guess they just threw in some extra chemicals, but I couldn't say for sure.  What I could say for sure is that we were not going back into that pool, so we showered repeatedly and headed for home.

So far it's going great at the gym.  I expect to be at my goal weight in no time, thanks to all that running I did after I saw the contamination and my sudden loss of appetite.

But I Really Only Wanted the Sandwich...

Yesterday marked my Carnegie Hall debut.  Yes, it was as a ringer in a high school chorus, but we are not focusing on that right now.  The point is, I sang on stage at Carnegie Hall.  For some of you though, yesterday may have been about a different special event.  I am talking, of course, about National Weatherperson's Day.  Okay, no just kidding, I was talking about the Super Bowl.

You may recall that I spent last Super Bowl desperately running around town looking for a party, or at the very least a working television.  It is my personal tradition to watch the game, with or without friends, make a gigantic sandwich, and enjoy the commercials (and sometimes part of the game).  This year, it just wasn't possible.

They tried to be reasonable.  The concert was at 3, and we were out by 5.  Plenty of time for most of the people to get home, or to find a bar anyway.  Nobody was going to miss the game because of this concert.  Unless you lived in Vermont and had to be home for Monday morning.  In that case, it was going to be extremely difficult.

I spent from 5:30 to 7:15 sitting at Penn Station waiting for train.  Then, from 7:15 to 9:45 I rode said train to Albany.  From there it was a three hour drive home (or so) and I finished my trip at 1 am, exhausted, and Super Bowl free.

Now, I had plenty of offers of assistance.  My mother offered to DVR the game for me to I could see all the commercials.  Others suggested the DVR route as well.  And if the commercials were really all I wanted, they are all available online anyway.  But I don't actually care that much about the commercials.  And I would never DVR a football game of any kind, just to sit through it later.  What I crave is the excitement of a shared national moment.  I want to be a part of something bigger!  But really, I only wanted the sandwich.

Children's Songs That Are Actually Good

A week or two ago I received an e-mail from my good friend Swan Dancin'.  He was looking for some kid's songs because he was about to become a father himself, but he had some very specific requirements.  The first, of course, was that they are songs that kids will like.  There's no point in singing songs to your child if your child will hate them.  The second requirement was that the songs be excellent in and of themselves.  This means Barney is out, as well as a lot of Elmo.  No, these had to be songs that even adults would find some musical merit in.  The last requirement was that they be reasonably easy to sing and play.  As much as kids dig "Flight of the Bumblebee," that's not what we're looking for here.

Swan gave me his list of what he had already thought of, which gave me a good idea of the direction in which he wanted to head, and I sent him back some of my own ideas as well.  Since then I have had even more excellent ideas to share, and I figured that maybe all of you parents out there had some ideas as well.  Please feel free to share in the comments, so we can give Swan a ton of music to learn over the next several months (and years).

Swan's List
This Land is Your Land
Rainbow Connection
Puff the Magic Dragon
If I Had a Hammer
Yellow Submarine
I Got You Babe
If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out
Rock Around the Clock
Shake Rattle & Roll

So what we have here is where I would have gone anyway.  Folk songs, classic early rock and roll, and obviously The Muppets.  Here is what I sent back to Swan:

My List
The Muppets - Rainbow Connection is perfect, I agreed with him, and it would be a crime to not look into old episodes of The Muppet Show for inspiration here.  The show is a perfect example of, at the very least, songs that fit the first two requirements.  They filled the program with excellent songs that would appeal to kids, such as "Lullaby of Broadway," "The Banana Boat Song," "Crocodile Rock," and "Happy Days are Here Again," as well as originals like "Bein' Green."  You can always count on The Muppets to be appealing to both adults and children.

More Beatles - "Yellow Submarine" is a perfect choice, but so is "Octopus' Garden," "Drive My Car," and "Blackbird."  Maybe stay away from "Revolution #9" for a while though...

More Oldies - Ah, the golden era of Rock 'n' Roll, when everything was more innocent, or at least could pass as innocent when played for children.  Songs that kids love from that age gone by are things like "Splish Splash," "Rockin' Robin" and "Blue Moon."

Tumblebee, by Laura Viers - One of my other friends, Never Troublin', gave us this excellent album of classic folk tunes for children.  The songs are easy to play, fun to sing, and are good for grown-ups as well.  She plays familiar favorites like "Jamaican Farewell" and "All the Pretty Little Horses," as well as some old stuff I had never heard before that I'm glad to have found, such as "Jack Can I Ride," and "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O," which I know a different version of simply called "Froggy Went a Courtin'" but hers is a lot more exciting!

So that's what I told him, but the more I think about it, the more songs I think of.  Here's a quick list of a few more that I've rememered:

My New List
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Candy Man
At the Hop
Chattanooga Choo Choo
Here Comes the Sun
With A Little Help From My Friends
Fun Fun Fun
Surfin' Safari (I know Surfin' USA is better, but it is also a lot harder!)
Hippopotamus Rock (and many other things by Rosenshontz)
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
The Bare Necessities
Everybody Wants to Be a Cat
Shenandoah
Michael Row the Boat Ashore

And lots more of course!  I'm going to keep thinking, but let me know which ones I've missed, or which ones are your favorites, either from having kids, or from being a kid yourself!  So much great music, so little time!

6 More Weeks of What the Heck

Punxsutawney Phil came out of his hole today, and wouldn't you know it, the sun was out and he saw his shadow, terrifying the little thing so badly that he ran right back into his hole, signifying six more weeks of winter.  Of course he didn't acutally run back into his hole, having just been poked and prodded by the media to get him out of the hole in the first place.  And by poked and prodded I mean physically yanked and held aloft.

Why they need him to come out in order to see if the sun is shining is beyond me, but I guess that's just how they do it down there, although honestly, with all the camera flashes going off, I think poor Phil would have seen his shadow in the middle of a blizzard.  But the important thing is that he saw his shadow there on the hallowed grounds of Gobbler's Knob, which I would make a joke about, but cannot, as this is a family blog.

In the middle of the ceremony there was a shout from the crowd, as some young gentlemen called out to the officiants, "It already feels like spring!"  My interrupting little friend, you have a point.  It has felt like spring for a lot of this winter, so if we're getting six more weeks of this, then what happens when actual spring arrives?  Will it turn to summer in April, or have winter and spring just traded places and we will get three feet of snow in May?

I know that there are people out there who doubt that global warming exists, and to you people I say, there is something wrong with you.  Perhaps you have faulty heat sensors in your bodies, and if someone turned off all the cold water in your shower as a joke you would calmly stand there, blissfully unaware of your boiling skin.  Maybe you are stubborn, and don't want to admit things that are obvious to everyone else on the planet.  Or perhaps you are just in denial.  Look, I don't want all human life on the planet to die out any more than you do!  But we have to face the facts.  Punxsutawney Phil needs us to face the facts.

The real question is not whether our weather patterns are changing (because they are), but whether or not we humans have anything to do with it.  I mean, weather patterns have been changing and evolving for billions of years (or, if you don't believe in global warming, thousands of years), and they are doing so again, rather dramatically it would seem.  But is it our fault?

Honestly, I don't know.  But if you told me that I was getting so fat that I was going to die soon, and it might be genetic, or it might be the four Big Macs I ate every day, I would probably give up the cheeseburgers, just to be on the safe side.  So if there is even a remote chance that we humans are causing this "weirding of weather" with our pollution and corporate greed run wild, then I say we ought to stop it for a while and see what happens.  Right?  What good is a thriving economy with no planet to live on?  We have a responsibilty as a people to at least try something to save ourselves, even if it doesn't work and it was never our fault to begin with.  Otherwise, all of our winters up north will be 60 degrees and rainy.  And Punxsutawney Phil does not like that.

P.S.  It also does not look like he likes being yanked out of his hole in front of thousands of people, but that's more of a PETA issue.

In My Humanity I Have Grown Bored With Paradise

I am spending this week in New York again, preparing for a concert at Carnegie Hall.  You may recall that I worked with Carnegie Hall a few months ago on a recording project in which I sang the choral tenor lines from Carmina Burana for a learning track that they were sending out to students.  The students are part of the "Carmine Burana Choral Project," in which local students from all over the five boroughs are brought together for an amazing opportunity to sing at Carnegie Hall.  I spent a day recording my parts, and thought that was the end of it.

As it turns out, and those of you who were in high school chorus might remember this, a very small percentage of the high school choral singers are male.  Therefore, I guess for balance, Carnegie Hall has decided to hire some ringers for the concert, and since they know I know the piece, I am one of eight men being brought in to participate as well.

It is a funny thing, being in high school chorus again.  Over and over again I have experienced a series of "Oh yeah" moments, when something would happen that reminded me of my own years at choral festivals and the daily rehearsals at school.  The warm-ups, the arms stretching, the talk about homework, all of it so familiar, and yet so foreign to me at this point.  But the thing that surprised me most was the awe.

I was seated next to, as you might have guessed, some high school students, and there was one moment, during the vocal warm-up, that one of the kids next to me just said in amazement, "Beautiful."  We were listening to the sopranos and altos hold two pitches of a chord after the men had dropped out, and this kid was in awe of that sound.  Human voices joined together in perfect harmony, their sound pure and the room alive with youthful energy.  And I did not notice any of this.

I hear that sound all the time.  I go to church choir rehearsals.  I go to opera chorus rehearsals.  I sing in concerts and recitals and shows and productions.  It's my job.  When I hear the women singing in the background, I think, "Good, I have a minute of vocal break before I have to sing again."  But I can't help it.  I am too used to that sound.  It is all too familiar to me, and while I still enjoy music of course, maybe a bit of the magic is gone.

But for a few seconds last evening, I got it back.  I remembered how much I loved to just listen to different voice parts sing warm-ups.  I remembered how incredibly amazing it was the first time I participated in a choral festival and heard all of those voices together.  Powerful.  Strong.  Beautiful.  I remembered the chills that had previously run over my body, just from hearing a choral phrase sung so purely, and so correctly.  High school me was sitting in the rehearsal last night, just for a moment, and then it was gone.  Then it was just me, singing Carmina Burana again for the one billionth time.  And it's still one of my favorite pieces, and I still get chills sometimes from listening to it, or singing it, but they're not the same kind of chills as I got the first time.