A Rant in Which I Go All Tipper Gore on You

I am seriously dismayed by my nine year-old daughter's sudden interest in pop music. Because although the accessible sound and beat draw children like Miss M in, the R-rated lyrics are for mature audiences only. That is, if by "mature" you mean adults who like their lyrics lewd, stupid, and crude.

Take Tik Tok, a major 2009 hit by Ke$ha (gotta love the dollar sign) playing regularly on Star 102.1 in Knoxville:

"Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy

Grab my glasses I'm out the door I'm gonna hit this city

Before I leave brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack

'cause when I leave for the night I ain't comin' back

. . .

I'm talking about everybody gettin' crunk

Boys tryin' to touch my junk

Gonna slap 'em if he be gettin' too drunk."

Right. Turns out Miss M's older cousins introduced her to this song over Christmas break. Naturally, she loves it, and I understand--the music itself is fun to dance to and sounds like something a nine year-old should like. But the lyrics? GAH. And guess what? Miss M knows all of them. BY HEART. She even sings them in that atonal nasal rap way. I mean, we're talking total emulation here. I don't know how much she understands--in fact, I'm so far past the age of cool I had to resort to Urban Dictionary to figure some of it out myself--but the message from that awesome song on Star 102.1? By the pretty girl in the video with the wild hair you maybe want to grow up and be like?

Is about getting drunk.

Here's another winner by the aforesaid Ke$ha: Blah Blah Blah, also playing on Star 102.1 and in the local bowling alley where we recently attended a child's birthday party:

"I don't really care where you live at
Just turn around, boy, let me hit that
Don't be a little bitch with your chit chat
Just show me where your d**k’s at

* * *

Boy, come on give me rock stuff
Come put a little love in my glove bag
I wanna dance with no pants on
Meet me in the back with the Jack and the jukebox."

Luckily, Ke$ha of the embedded dollar sign is talking so fast in Blah Blah Blah she's hard to understand. Because I don't even want to go there with Miss M.

Then there's former-burlesque-dancer-turned-pop-star Lady Gaga with her infectious Poker Face, in which she describes "bluffin' with her muffin" and sings "when it's love, if it's not rough it isn't fun." Oh yeah. I'll get him hot, show him what I've got. Even though we don't play this music for her at home or in the car, nine year-old Miss M also knows this song for some reason. I'm not saying there isn't a place for this kind of expression, but does it have to be on prime time radio? Wrapped in a sugar-coated beat that makes it appealing to third graders?

Yes, this music does present an opportunity for me to address . . . issues with Miss M, and I'm certainly going to redirect and encourage her to listen to less toxic choices. But I'm peeved that I didn't catch on earlier, or really, that I had to catch on at all. I mean, why is this R-rated music playing on the radio or even available to young kids in the first place? Pop culture--which is ubiquitous, and to its credit, can sometimes be really, really fun--has become seriously crude. I know my generation had Madonna's Like a Virgin, and Prince certainly was no pop angel, but we're talking a whole new level here. And that adult language and imagery is out there every day, playing on the radio and at kid venues, so children will pick it up.

I'll get him hot, show him what I've got.

This is not what I want my nine year-old daughter thinking about.

Who Has Time for Homework?

We don't. Lucky for us, the 500Jerk kids don't have much homework yet. Because this semester? We are seriously over-committed.

To wit:

Monday: drama club, girls on the run, soccer practice, sewing
Tuesday: brownies (bi-weekly)
Wednesday: girls on the run, soccer practice, sewing
Thursday: chess club, soccer practice, piano lesson
Friday: DEEP BREATH
Saturday: soccer games, occasional sewing lesson
Sunday: DEEP BREATH

Despite the above, I am currently plotting some way to fit in swim lessons. We appear to have open slots on both Fridays and Sundays, right? But what about art? And what about all that time we waste sleeping? Having dinner? Taking baths?

We just need to get our priorities straight.

UGA Valentine's Day

I'm on a quest to see the state universities of the South, so we convinced friends to join us on a Valentine's Day weekend trip to Athens to check out the University of Georgia.

For a cultural reference, we had the kids listen to REM and the B-52s all the way down from Knoxville ("I'm headed down the Atlanta Highway . . . Love Shack, bayaybeee . . ."). Unbelievably, SOME people slept through this important anthropological teaching moment and were promptly punished by having their hair tied up in ridiculous top knots:



Our first stop in Athens was The Grit, a vegetarian icon in a building apparently owned by Michael Stipe. The peeps were tired, but The Grit's strawberry cake was so good that moods improved rapidly.

We walked around downtown Athens and took in the sights. Unlike Knoxville, Athens is a planned college town and has a lot more land to house the university and its student population. The university itself is well-kept and has a number of modern buildings. It's a pretty attractive campus. Overall, Georgia seems to be devoting more money to its flagship state school than Tennessee.

Aside from the campus, Athens has cute shops, music stores, and of course, lots and lots of bars.

Oh, and bulldogs. Everywhere.

REM references abound.

We had a great dinner at The Last Resort Grill. It was Valentine's Day, so all the Georgia kids were on dates dressed in their finest, and it made for good people-watching. The next morning we had a fantastic breakfast at Athens's Big City Bread Bakery, where we sampled the mini-cheesecakes, biscuits, cookies, and various breads in the name of "market research" for our restaurateur friends.


I love market research. It has no calories. Being work and all.

Then we headed to Stone Mountain, Georgia, a truly weird stony outcrop northwest of Atlanta.


I'm not a fan of Stone Mountain--after seeing the rock and learning about the town's role in Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, what else is there to do?--but there was an indoor pool, an exercise room, a gigantic outdoor chess set, and tubing, so the kids had fun. Mostly, I just waited Stone Mountain out. I never know what to do at resorts, and the one at Stone Mountain is particularly uninteresting.

The next day we headed to Atlanta. Of course, we HAD to check out the gut-wrenching chili dogs at The Varsity. Onion rings, mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Although we had planned a quick visit to the Atlanta Aquarium, I was shocked--SHOCKED--at the prohibitively expensive entrance fees for both the Atlanta Aquarium and the nearby Coca-Cola Museum. The 500Jerk family did a quick cost-benefit anlaysis and decided we would rather shop than pay Coca-Cola for the pleasure of brainwashing us any further.

That being said, Boy Wonder did get a Coca-Cola football.

On our way back home, we stopped at Green Life in Chattanooga, the world's best grocery store. Poor Boy Wonder had a stomach bug by then, but was a good sport about it (note to future self: never feed chili dogs to queasy kids).

Overall, it was a fun trip.

Next up, the University of Mississippi.

Miss M Sunday Stream of Consciousness

I don't know what to say. What am I supposed to say? I can't wait until Dad comes back. Where did he fly to again? Timmy and I were playing a hula hoop game again. And I won. Yesterday I had two friends over. Um. Hmmm. We had pancakes for breakfast this morning. I'm going to buy nail polish with my allowance. I don't like coffee, and I'm sewing a bag with my mom's friend, Sarah. Sarah is awesome. She has three kids--Leah, Reed, and Ethan. These are my favorite polka dot tights.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maddie. She was awesome. And she got her flip flops all dirty. And then she got really, really sad, because she loved those flip flops. Oh, and she was an awesome hula-hooper. And she only liked mandarin oranges. Not fresh oranges. Her mom said she was weird. She had two dogs named Tucker and Posy. Posy was afraid of ducks. And Tucker didn't get along with Posy. And she had a little brother. His name was Timmy. He was a weirdo. She went to Costa Rica for her spring break. She held monkeys and had fun. And her Dad was in New York. Am I doing good so far? And her mom had orange pajamas. They were awesome. And she had a friend named Hadly. And she loved to sew. And she loved dogs. ALL kinds of dogs. Except for the mean ones. Did I already say that she loved to sew? And she loved the sound of typing. She loved to iron. And she had this nice soft blue blanket she got for her seventh birthday. Her little brother loved Legos. And she had four chickens, now three. And her brother broke her clay chickens. And she loved to play the ukelele. Where is this story? It's in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was good at everything. She loved math. She played the piano. And she had TONS of cousins--she liked one named Laura especially. She wakes up one morning, and everything is gone. So then, she had no food, no water, so she dies. Oh, and her name WASN'T Maddie. Her name was Maddie's Secret Twin.

The End.

Talking to Tweens and Maniac Magee

In hopes of keeping communication lines open with my rapidly maturing nine year-old daughter, I've started reading Talking to Tweens, by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer. I like the practical advice she includes in the book, and the helpful developmental information on the "middle child" stage.

But the fun reading in the 500Jerk household currently centers on Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee. All of a sudden, Boy Wonder is captured--spellbound--by nightly reading.

Despite evidence to the contrary, he may take after his mother after all.

Boy Wonder's 15 Minutes of Fame

Winter's coming to an end in these East Tennessee parts, but Boy Wonder had a momentary brush with fame last month when the Knoxville News Sentinel printed a giant version of this snow-related photo of him on its front page.

He's looking unusually pensive, probably because standing in line for a sled forces you to stand still, at least momentarily. Standing still is NOT Boy Wonder's natural state. Generally speaking, he is a running, jumping, flying Legos around the room, hula-hooping, wrestling the dog to the ground kind of kid. I'm pretty sure he's thinking, "Ten more seconds until I explode. Ten more seconds until I . . . nine. NINE more seconds until I explode. . . . "

But maybe it's, "This orange sled is going to be a whole lot better than a cookie tray. A WHOLE lot better than a garbage can lid. I love orange. No matter what my Mom says."

Or maybe it's, "Did I forget to put underwear on again? AGAIN? What will people think? Hmph. Who cares. No one can see it anyway."