Peace, and Music, on Earth

This sounds so cool! I wish I played a musical instrument with any skill or passion.

I’m looking forward to the result. Should be cool.

Parental Musical Child Prodigy Throwdown

A generation ago, Chinese parents would’ve bragged to one another over mah jongg games about how little Harvard can play Rachmaninoff. Single-handedly. After just one year of Suzuki piano. At the age of 4.

Ever the competitive spirit among parents reigns. It’s no longer just a Chinese thing. Here’s how we do it new school: my kid’s musical taste is more sophisticated/hipper/eclectic than thou.

/eyeroll.

And yet, I’m just as guilty. It is a point of pride that my son knows the words to and can sing a cappella Jon Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.”

Goofy Dancing

My sunny child loves this video:

I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s a candy commercial. I think I’ll just let him vibe on the “We are the world” feel a little bit longer, you know? Because his heart is innocent and pure like that.

Whirling Dervish of Exasperation

Day Two of Bore Your Child At Home, wherein he is sick enough to not go to school, but well enough to get underfoot and drive you nuts at home.

The Unreliable Narrator has had a mystery fever that had him sweating and mumbling at night. I’d go to touch his forehead and a few inches away from his skin I could feel the heat radiating from him–his arms, his head, his torso. I’d have to dose him with tylenol so he could rest comfortably and to bring the fever down. (My overactive worried-mom imagination has him burning up valuable brain cells and emerging from this fever 20 IQ points lower. Either him, or me… dumber from lack of sleep.) I’d get cold wet towels and drape him with them.

Vote Obama by TISA

When this years-long primary gets on my nerves, I hit YouTube and see what the latest Obama viral video brings. I happen to love the goofy affection peeps with their iMovie or Final Cut Pro lavish on their home videos. These are like mix-tapes/tributes to the guy we’re all working to make the next president of the United States…small ways we entertain and inspire each other when the going seems too long, boring, or divisive.

What I love about this video, besides its lo-fi ’70s-esque psychedelic “rays” emanating from everywhere, is the flashes of LA I see in every other scene. Chungking Road in Chinatown, represent! Capitol Records building, Hollywood Boulevard, in tha house! Weird crossroads sculpture thingy at the corner of La Brea and Sunset, I love you! Even the shots of Beverly Hills are endearing in this context. (But only in this context.)

H/T to The Root.

Onion Skin

Not the thick fleshy layer, but the tissue in between. Sometimes I feel I am made of that membrane. I could rip apart in an instant. Because I read a story how the junta in Myanmar is standing in the way of helping their own people after the terrible cyclone that flattened their country–their own people!–and I want to scream.

Or when I read about the children lost in the earthquake in China, my heart just broke open. Yesterday I heard this story on NPR while driving to the Unreliable Narrator’s school to pick him up and bring him home, and I wept all the way there. What was unbearably sad were the snatches of Mandarin spoken by the parents that I could understand before the translator’s voice, her own voice cracking from emotion, overlapped their words.

“…so cute (hen ke ai), about ten minutes before I left for work before the earthquake happened, he called out, Mama, don’t go away (bu yao zou le), he didn’t want me to go!”

Later: “Mama zao ni lai le” (Mama’s coming to find you!)

Other words are too hard to decipher through the parents sobs. The wails of grief transcend any language, but I am undone hearing searing expressions of sorrow in my mother tongue. The reporter tells us that the little boy was found in his grandfather’s arms with his grandmother crouched behind.

When I saw the Unreliable Narrator, he seemed surprised by how tightly I hugged him.

Yes We Can Mashups

Maybe it takes the demented, sleep-deprived mind of a parent to cross memes where no memes should be crossing…but someone else besides me noticed that Barack Obama and construction dude and kiddie character Bob the Builder share a cheery, uplifting tagline: “Yes We Can!”

Or in Bob the Builder’s case, “Can we fix it? Yes, we can!”

I mean, I figure Bob would probably vote for Obama on the solar-powered sunflower farm ticket, given that you can use the seeds, stems, and flowers for all sorts of sustainable products. If only Bob were a U.S. citizen.

Tune up your casiotones, ladies and gentlemen, and check this out:

Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Rocker Moms & Schoolhouse Rock

Have you ever wondered who finds the music for tv shows like Grey’s Anatomy? Well, it’s unbelievably cool people like this parent at the Unreliable Narrator’s school. She set up a fundraiser for the school and invited all of her hippest, most “about-to-break”/already signed singer-songwriter friends to play a tiny little Hollywood venue.