Thursday, October 1, 2015

Loving 21 Pilots makes me a whore


Yes, I'm a whore and this song is infectious. So, don't sleep with anyone until you get it cleared up.

On those morning when I drive the girls to school, we usually listen to the local indie station (KWSS stream) for the Rockin’ Royale, playing a little game wherein listeners vote for songs that the station might put into rotation. Not that they have a rotation per se, other than anything that might be spinning when I tune in – Tito Puente, 80s New Wave, Rockabilly, I even heard Aerosmith, one night – none of which has ever made me punch a button and say, “Oh, that’s total shit!”

When it’s time for Rockin’ Royale, I’m usually jockeying lanes from the HOV to the exit. No small task, the number of moronic maneuvers I encounter usually determines how I’m going to feel about the first song. If it seriously rocks, it usually gets my vote. If it sounds like Tove Lo, I’ll give the next song a chance. Even if that song sucks much less, I’ll still go for the notorious reset (enough reset votes and neither song repeats the next day), saving my thumbs up for no less than tear the shit up.

Too cool for school, EC sits in back, always (as if she’s one of my Uber passengers), “I wasn’t listening,” she’ll usually mumble or, if she’s feeling social, “I dunno, they both were lame,” then sulk because I pulled her from her vacation in EC Land. Frank, my gender-fluid younger daughter (she wants to go by a make’s name), always rides shotgun and casts a vote. Once she’s decided, I tell the phone to call the station, see if we called it when Rockin’ Royale returns in the morning. If we get on the air, we get to hear a few seconds of what everyone else is hearing due to the delay that protects listeners from foul mouths and feral minds.

Beef Vegan, the MC of the TMI morning show and joined by a bunch of random people joining him in the booth, takes the calls and gabs it up with the voters. When we get to talk to him, we’re known as “Hipster Dad and Hipster Daughter” (I haven’t asked Frank how she feels about that, since becoming a she-male… um, probably not that). Sometimes it’s her on the air, confident, laconic, not there to chit chat with Beef but to place the votes, the clipped diction of Tumblr. Frank doesn’t so much laugh as LOL a lot.

Fair enough. I WTF quite a bit.

Yesterday, I seriously thought Frank had been bitten by a spider. There was an eruption of shrieking, screaming and crying, someone jumping around and bumping into furniture. By the time I stumbled to the scene, Frank was on EC’s bed, showing off her phone. Apparently Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy had tweeted her. Frank’s world had suddenly become complete, free Cheez-Its and Dr. Pepper for life.

Frank is at that age where she needs to develop an almost obsessive attachment to something that annoys me. The thing is, that thing is mostly inoffensive, I don’t hate FOB (“Uma Thurman” was actually kind of clever and catchy). In fact, I’ve been to no less than two FOB shows this year and at no time did it feel like people were holding me down and jamming screwdrivers into my ears. With that aside, she hasn’t asked for any weird pets or started a meth lab in her closet.

Frank will have to step up this rebellion thing if she intends to drive me crazy.

In the meantime, one thing we all agree on (except LoML, whose taste in music is not to be trusted) is that we all like 21 Pilots. Both EC and Frank will pull up the 21 Pilots folder when I’m not in charge. And when I pick up the pod to find that folder playing, I’m inclined to keep the jams going (as the kids say).


I thought raising teenage girls was supposed to be harder than this. 

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