I've Got The Music In Me....

I love music. All kinds of music, and I always have. People who are around me when I have my Ipod on “shuffle” are driven nuts, as we go from AC/DC to Dean Martin to Ray Charles to Dr. Dre to Garth Brooks to Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods to.... well, you get the picture. And I am very fortunate because I married a women who loves music just as much as I do. It used to be that if we ever had a fire the first thing to grab was the photo albums. Now, it’s the IPods.

And then there are the kids. The kids too are big music lovers, but their tastes tend to veer away from ours. Well, at least the Boy. Blake is a big hard rock/metal fan, and while we share our appreciation of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, even those bands don’t register with Blake anywhere near the level they do with me. Madison is a different story. Being an eleven year-old girl she’s into Hannah Montana and High School Musical, but Madison is also a huge country music fan. Where did that come from?

Look, I don’t have a problem with country music. Country music was huge in our house when I was growing up. My dad wasn’t a huge music fan, but when he did listen to music, it was always country. And every Saturday afternoon we watched The Porter Waggoner Show, and then on Sunday afternoon it was Hee-Haw. But how did my daughter get hooked on country? To be honest, I have absolutely no idea.

If there was ever any disappointment with regards to my kid’s musical taste, it is the fact that I have had little luck in influencing their tastes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to control what my kids listen to, I’m merely trying to expand their tastes. I’ve pretty much given up on Blake, but with Maddie I’ve had more luck, mainly because I’m the one driving the car (and controlling the radio).

And then, on Christmas morning, everything changed. Madison got the one thing she really, really wanted for Christmas: Guitar Hero III. For those of you unfamiliar with Guitar Hero, it is a video game for your system (in our case, a PlayStation II) in which the game controller has been replace with a guitar shaped controller. In the game you play classic rock songs on your guitar. And apparently, as you play the song, you gain a whole new appreciation for the classics. My daughter now knows all the words to “Slow Ride” by Foghat, and even Blake has been caught humming “Smoke on the Water”.

And then today, I noticed that I hadn’t seen my daughter for awhile. She wasn't in the sun room playing Guitar Hero. She wasn’t in the backyard on her trampoline, nor was she in her room. Finally, I found her on the computer in our bedroom. “What are you doing?” I asker her. “Downloading Cheap Trick videos on YouTube,” She responded. I have never been so proud. Excuse me, I have something in my eye…….

Speaking of having something in your eye, yesterday The New York Giants defeated the favored Dallas Cowboys yesterday. And at the press conference after the game, Terrell Owens, the Cowboys oft-cocky receiver came very, very close to breaking down. His lip was quivering, and I’m sure that behind his sunglasses his eyes were welling up. On the bright side, Owens is now the frontrunner in the Nevada primaries.


"Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed." -- Albert Einstein

“Replace the word ‘world’ with ‘Clintons’” – Bob Peters