I'm Ready for my Close Up

During Halloween I was stuck in the back of Party City waiting for my daughter to try on her "Shame Daddy" costume. They make room for all the costumes by shoving everything unhalloweenic into the back aisle which is how I discovered my newest parenting tool: the air horn.

This is a father's dream toy and I don't know how I've gone so long without one.

Having trouble waking your little princess? FRONK!

Everybody talking at once during Robot Chicken? FRONK!

Skimpy shirt violation by girlteen? FRONK!

[My Attorney] may shoot me any day now as she does not see the intrinsic humor in quietly opening the bathroom door and FRONKING! her shower.

Still, all the FRONKING! in the world won't make my daughter move out of mosey mode. She could shuffle down hill. On skates. So we found ourselves stuck in the Chicago rush hour traffic we usually just barely miss. She has her make up kit in her hand and she's clicking it like a nervous Lehman Brothers loan officer. I keep suggesting she go ahead and put on her make-up but she declines with a mumble, staring out the window like a thorazine test dummy.

I'm scanning through FM looking for music that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the eyes from exhausted hope for good radio in Chicago. Every station is playing suck: bad ardent 80s synth pop, bad 80s repetitive Irish pop, easy listening, polka. Each three seconds of sampled music makes my daughter roll her eyes so hard I think she's going to affect the rotation of the earth itself. Finally something with the correct alchemy of beat and lyrics pops out of the speakers and it's like awakenings, she snaps out of it and starts putting on her makeup and I realize, she was just waiting for her theme music.

And I want to FRONK! so bad because I think this is a violation of her path to total cooldom. I think it should go the other way around and she should apply her makeup according to whatever music is playing, not wait for her current sonic obsession. So if country comes up, she should lay it on thick and blue with ruby red nautical level red hull plaster on her lips. Or if it's classical then just some burnt sienna and no sun for a week. Or if its goth, then bury your head in a vat of chalk.

While she's applying her lip lacquer, "No One Knows," by Queens of the Stone Age, comes on and together we lunge for the volume knob to crank it to a level you can use to mine cadmium, and I realize we share a musical helix of considerable worth. We rocket down North Ave hair rocking to Queens with all the gleeful pomp and indignity of Garth and Wayne. Then "Take Me to Funky Town," comes on and the ironic perfection of it's just too much for us and we go robot disco at the stop light in full view of beautiful people in Escalades on their cellphones. We don't care. It's "Funky Town," for the love of Christ: ironic retro disco fealty must be paid.

I realize that we share distressingly similar sick limits. We both laugh--hysterically--at that robot chicken promo when the gummy bear gets its foot stuck in a bear trap. I mean, H Y S T E R I C A L L Y.  And that's great. I know that for the rest of our life, our intrinsic taste in psychotic twisted humor and heavy metal will keep us from going nuts all at the same time. In the long run, it'll be cheaper.