BACK TO ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE FIERY BLOCKROCKIN' BEATS, DUCHESS.

My daughter loves Franz Ferdinand.

For you history buffs who aren't up on the state of early 21st century rock & roll, the Franz Ferdinand I am referring to is the nattily dressed Mercury Prize-winning Scottish dance-punk quartet who has crafted a series of angular pop nuggets over the last decade, the most superlative in my daughter's opinion being "This Fire."

(Not the Archduke Franz whose assassination provided an excuse back in 1914 for a bunch of countries to go to war and fight over a few acres of land)

Nobody in my life currently has made Mae West's timeless truism more true: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!”

(see below)



Last year, I bought a mobile speaker system aptly titled "The Blockrocker," which makes it possible to easily play loud music wherever we are at, such as fast food parking lots, skate parks, and tops of mountains. It's Bluetooth-enabled, which basically means it can connect to any wireless device it's paired with, such as a phone, iPod, computer, etc. It has become an essential ingredient in day-to-day living, providing soundtrack on demand.

I'm not particularly concerned with whether our kids are technologically-savvy; those things are kind of inevitable. I'd rather them learn how to track down earthworms, climb trees, and do calculus first. But they pick stuff up fast, like how to snipe music playback devices and figure out how to play the same song over and over and over

and over

and over

and over.

And over, and over again. Like "This Fire." Which really is a fantastic song with an insanely catchy chorus, but the trajectory of my relationship with it has gone from:

Like to Love to Weariness to Total Fatigue to Almost Hate to Acceptance...

...and now I'm almost starting to Like it again, but I'm not sure where things go from here. I do know that my dad - my daughter's grandpa's (Lee Long) single greatest attribute is an ability to take something that's sort of funny, and through brute repetition, force it to be funny over time. Blunt-force repetition is such an underrated aspect of humor. Tell the same C+ joke enough times and it finally gets to funny is a guiding mantra.

This situation is beyond humor. At any given point, Becca or I will hear the familiar opening bars, and soon, two children appearing from the twilight zone with music device in hand, face-busting grins and affected nonchalance as the song plays through for the 87th time that week.

I try so hard to be angry, but sometimes the combination of an overplayed greatest song ever in tandem with the brazen dancestep trickery of a Thomasina Sawyer is too much to keep a straight face. When you can't beat 'em (as in defeat 'em), might as well beat 'em (as in blockrockin' dance moves and chorus song-a-long). Rock on.
____

Franz Ferdinand
This Fire
Franz Ferdinand

2004