Big, dumb, and tone deaf. I'm so glad I was unconscious for all of this.

I love the Emperor's New Groove, and one of my favorite characters is Kronk. When we first meet Kronk on screen he is sneaking and singing. Kuzco narrates, "Oh, he's doing his own theme music? Big, dumb and tone deaf. I am so glad I was unconscious for all of this."

I like to point out to my kids what a superior mother they have. If I don't point it out, they don't notice. So when I clean the viruses off their computers, I say, "Other people's mothers don't clean up viruses." Or when I fix the car, I say, "Other people's mothers don't fix cars." (Other people's mothers don't have to)

Imagine my surprise when BoBo says, out of the blue, "Other people's mothers sing to their kids." Yes BoBo, I know that. "No," she says, "Other people's mothers change the words to songs and sing them about their kids." Surprise. It's not just me. We are all tempted to do our own theme music -- whether it was my dad singing "Have I told you Lately That I Love You," or me singing "A BoBo a Flea and Three Blind Mice sat on the curbside shooting dice" (boom boom -- ain't it great to do the dishes?) big dumb and tone deaf keeps me happy. I do think, in my defense, my genes go a little further than the average sing-to-the-kids.

Judea is angry at me. She's a senior in college and she just completed a documentary on the Native punk band Blackfire. When she was pitching the idea, she said, "They recorded one of the lost Woody Guthry songs." Says home schooled college boy, "Who's Woody Guthry?" This Land Is Your Land. Every heard of it? "Nope." Judea, then, is used to the idea that not everyone knows the folk songs she was raised on. 

You've never heard of Wanda the Waitress? We sing the chorus all the time. "I'm tired. I'm pooped. I wanna go home. I'm achin'. I'm sore. Won't you leave me alone." That's why Judea's mad at me. She just found out my sisters wrote that song. So of course nobody's heard of it.

But her day will come. Her brother JoJo just wrote a song that all the kids sing. And one day her children will angrily retort, "What? Uncle Joseph wrote that? I thought it was a real song!"

And it is a real song. It's the songtrack to our lives.





P.S. Judea -- who is a professional college student -- has just pointed out the irony in this video. I think she is inferring we put too much work into it.