A Quiet Evening At Home

Family

Last night started out as more or less a typical night at Chez Omir. I was taking in the events of the day on the computer before I went to bed. My daughter was out in the living room watching cartoons with the Queen of the Universe. My wife had gone up to bed already (not typical, but she'd had a long day).

About 8:30 or so my daughter wandered into the computer room to check her mail on Mom's computer, and said she was getting ready to pack it in too.

"Don't go to bed yet," I told her. "I have something I wanted you to hear."

I'd been listening to Doctor Demento on the way home from work, and last week he had a couple of songs I thought my daughter would like. So I fired up xmms, hunted up last Saturday's broadcast, and played a Steve Goodie song for her called "Rowling Must Deliver," sung to the tune of "Proud Mary" ("rolling on the river"). She likes Harry Potter and though Creedence Clearwater was a few years before her time, she recognized the song and got a laugh out of it.

I skipped the next song (a Rolling Stones parody about George Lucas that was OK but not all that) and went on to the song after that, a parody of Bowling For Soup's "1985" about how Grandma's stuck in 1955. "Dean Martin, Chuck Berry, that Tutti-Frutti fairy, and Elvis, Bill Haley, no 50 Cent or P. Diddy . . . "

About then my granddaughter wandered into the room and started laughing. "That is so wrong!" she exclaimed, which is high praise from her when it comes to comedy. "Can we hear it again?" 1985 is in the rotation at Radio Disney, although strangely they never play the bit about how the heroine "was gonna shake her ass on the hood of Whitesnake's car," so she knows the song.

So then we went on a field day. We played 1955 again. We played Whimsical Will's account of a private trip through Willie Wonka's factory, done in the style of the late Dickie Goodman where the narrative is interspersed with clips from various songs. "Who else is coming along?" "Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and way before Nirvana" from the aforementioned 1985. We did Steve Goodie's take on Charlie Bucket, done to the tune of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." (The munchkin does not get to hear the original for a few years.) We did the Happy Schnapps Combo's "No, I Don't Wanna Do That." We played the Hampsterdance remix. We played Akon's version of Mr. Lonely -- another big favorite with the Radio Disney crowd, but again there are parts they don't get to hear. Then I played her the original Bobby Vinton version.

We just had a good time for a couple of hours sharing music we liked.

I consider it my duty to pass this stuff on to the younger generation. When my daughter was about 14 I found out she was listening to Metallica. There are probably parents who would have gone ballistic that she was listening to Masters of Puppets. Me, I went out to the mall and got her copies of Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin IV. I told her "If you're going to listen to metal, at least you're going to know what the good stuff sounds like." I think she's a better person for it.