Rapping Rhapsodic on Bohemian Rhapsody with my Bonne Homme

Roon switched schools this week, moving from a parochial school to public, thereby losing his uniform, meaning I had to buy him new clothes.

I thought it was telling that when we went to the store, he didn't care about what pants we bought as long as they were jeans. But he took a long time to pick out three t-shirts. See if you can detect a theme here. The shirts displayed the following pop memes: The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. He topped them off with an AC/DC cap.

I have to say he's starting off well in his musical snobbery. Those are all good bands and he really does listen to them. He recently started paying attention to my iTunes and put together a playlist labeled "Good Music" (to distinguish it from the baffling crap I usually listen to). I pulled some songs off of it to make him a morning mix tape. Check it out:

1. "Mr. Blue Sky," by Electric Light Orchestra


2. "Park & Beans," by Weezer


3. "Bohemian Rhapsody," by Queen


4. "Dracula from Houston," by the Butthole Surfers


5. "Storm in a Teacup," by the Red Hot Chili Peppers


6. "Science Fiction Double Feature," punked out by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes


7. "Death of a Martian," by Red Hot Chili Peppers


8. "Black Times Bad Times," by Led Zeppelin


9. "More Than a Feeling," by Boston

At first I thought this was a further extension of his newfound rock snobbery but I realized it wasn't really about the music so much as it was about self definition. Roon wanted to define himself to his new school as a rocker, and he wanted to establish his musical taste right off the bat not to lord his 1970s playlist cred over anyone else, but to let them know where his head is at.

This may seem like over intellectualizing t-shirts but it's a completely valid effort on his part to adopt a new uniform: the cobbled-together non-uniform of the Boheme. I don't know how much of that need to define himself played into his decision to switch schools, but it mattered a lot that on his first day in the cradle of public knowledge he was representing Pink Floyd, a band he equates with stellar musicianship, individuality, and intellectualism.

Pink Floyd is his second choice, however, after Queen. If he'd had a Queen shirt, he'd probably never take it off, hoping that their operatic falsetto rock cred would somehow seep into his skin along with dirt, taco sauce, and diet coke stains.

His transition to public school marks a loss for me in one regard--quality time.

I get to spend a lot of time with my spawn because I work at home. But driving them to school has always been important to me because for the eight minutes we had together in the car, remarkable conversations would occur.

The other day we rocked to school under the auspicious and noble refrains of Bohemian Rhapsody, singing at top volume, until Roon killed the song to ask questions about it, to talk about complex rock & roll, Freddy Mercury, gay rock stars, and the song itself.

It's easy to think that the tent-pole conversations are what matters--the sex talk, the dope talk, the Bischon Frieze talk. But I don't buy it. I think it's the sum total of all these little seemingly inconsequential talks--the argument about what 'scaramouch' actually means--that ultimately make up a longer, broader, and permanent body of discussion in the mind of our children that transmits the concepts we truly believe. It teaches them our real philosophy and assists them in building their own.

Now that my daughter is gone so much, I hardly ever get to talk to her except to ask her to please stop singing in the shower at midnight. We quip in passing and she's obviously witty as hell and, like her mom, [My Attorney], a brain on legs. But I don't get much conversation time.

Now that Roon will be walking to school I'm losing face time with him as well. Of course, he'll be walking in the door every day at 3:30 demanding food. It's not like I won't see him. But there's something about the drive time. All you have is driving and talking. At home there's laundry, living room, lunch, dishes, dog walking, laundry, homework, house cleaning, laundry and sometimes laundry. I won't have that brief break where I have nothing to do but drive, that time when we talk about those things that matter. Like gay rock stars.

Gay is the New Dude

An unscientific poll of grade school boys in northwest Chicago shows a disturbing trend toward a new epithet that is entirely inappropriate: instead of 'stupid', they say 'gay'.

For instance: when my father would play me, say, a Roger Miller song when I was ten, I'd say "Dad, that song is stupid." Today, when I play, say, King Crimson, Roon says "Dad, that song is gay."

Where the hell do they get this language? Who says stuff like that? I mean using an entire subculture's sexual proclivity as an epithet is totally gay.

Oh.

Ok, so they get it from, um, us.  Surely they didn't make up the word and surely they didn't decide to use it as an interlocutory substitute for "unacceptable" without a little modeling. (And by modeling I mean behavioral modeling, not runways.) I know you think I'm talking about parents but I'm not. I'm talking about comedians.

Every single comedian doing a gay impersonation drops the prancing fey bomb and impersonates the very same gay guy from 1987 who idolized Kate Bush and wore his button down shirts like halter tops. We all know that guy didn't rep the gay community even then, but today it's so far off the mark it's like thinking Amos & Andy are hip.

Today's gay is indistinguishable from today's not so gay. They have earned their place in the status quo by becoming so typical and every-day that there's not even any drama in coming out anymore. I expect parents will be throwing coming out parties with the same indifference as sweet sixteens. And as much as I'd like to follow my comedic instincts and make a Cotillion joke, I just can't. Not because it's not politically correct, but because it's just not funny. Why? Because gay is boring. Big yawn.

But the poofy queen has become such a stock character in sitcoms and stand-up that comedians just can't give it up. They keep swishing across the stage in a parody of a person that hardly exists anymore and truthfully, I wonder if the slang logic of ten year-olds is picking up on this.

When they say 'gay' they actually mean 'boring' or 'stupid' and so in that respect, they're dead on. Maybe this isn't indicative of intolerance but of sophisticated linguistic theory at work. Maybe they're all micro Chomskyites and we're really behind the language curve here, like finding out phat means awesome, a linguistic shift that has a perfectly intact logic but didn't trickle down to the elders until it was already passe.

I distrust political correctness, but I insist on linguistic integrity and I'm leaning toward an appreciation for the 'gay' epithet coming from these tiny Stevie Pinkers. The big swishy gay is as dead as E. Aaron Presley and impersonating either of them is as lame as the current GOP. It is, in a word, stupid. Kids know this instinctively and they're language reflects it. To think otherwise is to promote a belief that children are not sophisticated users of language, and that's, in a word, gay.