Songs That Didn't Make the Top 20

I am hard at work at the “Top 20 Rock/Pop Songs for Kids” list, which involves me locking my children in a room, playing music and saying “Do you like this?” many many times (and saying things like “How the hell can you not like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit?’”). I expect to have that posted soon (I have 20 songs but there are other candidates to try). But I want to flag some songs that are definitively NOT on the top 20 list.

Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones: I thought they’d be into the “woo hoo”’s, but my son informed me that this was “not rock and roll. It is Jungle music.”

Loser – Beck. I tried this one, getting them to put the L symbol with their thumb and forefinger on their foreheads and everything. They just were not into saying “so why don’t you kill me.” Self-preservation instincts apparently out-muscle the ability to enjoy self-expressed irony, at least through age 8.

Anything by 7 Seconds or Fugazi - My kids reject Straight Edge music. No black X's on hands are in their future, apparently.

But the real purpose of this post is:

Puff the Magic Dragon – Various Hippies. Knowing that you’ll have to give up something you love may be something that’s going to happen to you in life. I get that. But that doesn’t mean its fun to sing about, and it certainly isn’t fun for kids. If I released a song titled “Sex might be fun now, but in a few years, when you’re old, sex will become rarer and not nearly as much fun and eventually it will be awful,” then no one would expect a hit. When it wasn’t a hit, I couldn’t say “but it’s about sex!” So why do people think kids will like Puff, which might as well be titled “Kids! You Know How You Like to Imagine Things? Well, When you Get Old, You Will Desert Your Imaginary Friends, Such as Puff the Magic Dragon, and Those Imaginary Friends Will Cry!” What the fuck? Was their next song “Santa Is a Fake! In 4 years you Will Learn This!”

So the entire theme here is ridiculous and inappropriate, but then there are the details. What the fuck is “Honah Lee”? Why is Puff all psyched about being given strings and sealing wax? I know, I know, HAHA the song’s about pot. Puff is apparently building a bong or something. But seriously, this song was not written in 1740 when presents like that might’ve somehow been cool. This is addle-brained hippie nostalgia for something I’m not sure they understand.

Go and read the freakin’ lyrics to this song and tell me that this song has any place on a kids’ album. The claim to this being a kids’ song is that its mellow (which hippies think kids like, but kids don’t actually like… mellow makes kids tired, which their parents like, but kids really don’t) and that there is a dragon in it. But it’s not a very cool dragon. It doesn’t breathe fire or kill or fight anybody, so it might as well be a mule or something (ok, ability to transform into a boat is a little bit cool, but only a very tiny bit). And just because there’s sex in my proposed song above doesn’t make it a Barry White standard.

My kids don’t like this song and I don’t blame them one bit.

Top Financial Realization of the New Father

A lot of wives out there do the billpaying in households these days but for the fathers that still have responsibility for making sure everything gets paid, there is one unexpected financial realization that you will have during the first year you have children (it’s not “kids are expensive”: that’s the expected financial realization), and its this:

Holy fucking shit, health insurance actually matters

Guys in their twenties float along blissfully. Those is Washington may be oh-so-concerned about their lack of insurance, but most (like m back them), actually personally go to the Doctor about every 3 years. Why pay several thousands of dollars (or even ten thousand these days) for the privilege. Now it is very clear to me. These little people are going to the Doctor all the fucking time; and that’s to say nothing about wives getting doctoring for their ladyparts.

I used to think that old people were just whining (like they normally do about the weather and shit like that) when they complained about health insurance, but with explanations of benefits, deductibles, co-pays, flexible spending debit cards, prescription coverage, dental vision. I mean, Jesus Christ it’s a pain in the ass to keep track of.

So if you're an expecting father, get ready. You’re going to have to learn about it.

Shifts in "Guy Rules" in Fatherhood

It is very well possible that the entire purpose of family life is to destroy male friendships. Male friendships are just too much fun, there’s often very little baggage attached to them. Women are jealous, they’ve conspired over the years to create this value system that causes male friendships to be slowly but surely destroyed between first date and the man’s retirement (at retirement men are allowed to have friends again because their wives are sick of them and want them out of their fucking house).

All men understand as early as high school that their girlfriends are going to nudge out the guyfriends. Women are unfortunately trained by the culture that this is a good and necessary thing. I mean, compare the number of romantic comedies out there that are based upon the premise of the women getting the guy away from his ape-like friends and getting him to grow up to those painting the woman as the bad influence. It’s pretty much all of romantic comedydum vs. Saving Silverman. Of course, girlfriends having to come up with ways to nudge out the guyfriends is 50% of the reason high school boys get laid, so complaining about this impulse, even in retrospect, feels ungrateful. So we live with it.

What many men don’t realize, though, is how their own children will conspire with their wives in this way to destroy their male friendships.

Take sporting events. You may have, like many men before you, had a general rule about getting to sporting events like baseball or football games on time, paying attention to the action while there and staying until their very end, regardless of the score. You may have even actively mocked the “Dodgeresque” fans that arrived in the 3rd inning, or those that never sat back down after the 7th inning stretch in order to “beat traffic.”

When you bring kids to the game, all these, and many other, rules are out the window. Instead, you get there when you can. You must stop watching the game for multiple bathroom breaks and cotton candy breaks. Be ready to pay attention to about a third of the game. Half if you’re lucky. And that’s for the innings that you’re actually there for.

Because at some point in the game, the whining of the kids will commence. The first whine signals the 15-20 minute warning (10 if your child is particularly skillful; 5 for the ADD set). Whining kids effect men’s ears differently. We aren’t attuned to it and it causes immediate pain. Other people’s whining kids are doubly damaging (remember, men are supposed to hate other people’s kids). In this situation, the first thing that will happen is, in an effort to stop the whining, the whinerfather will focus inwardly on his kids for about one minute. This will end the whining temporarily, but one father will inevitably begin telling a story to the other (and 2 ½ hours into a game, it probably isn’t one of the guy’s best stories or it wouldn’t have been saved for the 7th inning, and, really, if it is a story told by a father who has as little of a life as you have, how good can the story really be anyway? (see how I’m rationalizing … my wife has already won ... she won YEARS ago)), and the child will start whining over the story, and the father will realize “I like this guy, but I’m now straining and pretending this squirming creature isn't making these awful noises for the purpose of hearing a barely average story. This just ain’t fun any more.” The first time this happens, you'll stay until the end as a matter of principle anyway. The second time, the "no leaving early" rule goes out the window.

Getting carryout is another area of shifting guy rules. Inevitably you will end up at your new “family friends’ house” (because you were smart enough not to go out for dinner) and you will order pizza or Chinese food or something and a crucial time will arise. It will be the Time To Go Pickup the Carryout Order. You may not have known, but this is a very important time. Indeed, a new guy rule that you have to learn is “all of the fathers go together to pick up the food” (corollary: unless there is a very good sporting event on: then one guy’s job is to prepare a one minute summary of the action on the field that the other guy misses).

This rule has two purposes. The first is that a group of fathers’ goals when at each others houses is to get as far away from the kids as possible. This is why fathers say “come see my new tools in the basement.” They don’t give a damn about the tools. They just know that no wives or children want to hang out in a dark, damp stank basement, so no one will follow them down there.

But the second reason for the “everyone in the car to get carryout” rule is because men in family friend situations know that they have to try to pay more than their fair share of the bill and at minimum must pay their fair share. As a male, once you are married, whether or not you get into heaven mostly depends upon whether you’ve tried to overpay group carryout bills enough. It’s in Corinthians somewhere. And all men know that if one or two guys pick up the food by themselves, you create an unequal bargaining position. It’s like the other guys will have snuck missiles into your personal Cuba. They’ll never let you know how much the tab really was. And then you will have to use non-guy-approved payment methods, like giving the money to the wife, which is pretty much a concession that you're a loser, or, even worse, hiding money under books or napkins or shit nice that. If you’re doing such wimpy things like this, you might as well just stick the cash down the other guy’s pants. And then your wife will want to know why you didn’t pay your fair share, and the next time you see the other guy he’ll give you the “I bought your wife dinner last time” look, which is really kind of like him making out with her if you think about it. So you pretty much have to get into that carryout pickup car

(although for the big sporting event exception, a male truce is implied and cannot be broken; the guy that is the less intense fan has to go get the food; ties mean that the host father gets in the car).