Most mornings I wake up my older son by barging into his bedroom and playing Stairway To Heaven. Badly.
I never really cared for STH. I never cared enough about it to loathe it, either. I caution my Intertunnel friends that becoming completely, monomaniacally interested in persons and things you dislike will make you crazy, and make you seem so to others, to the detriment of your original cause. Remember the words of the prophet Lebowski: You’re not wrong, Walter; you’re just an ***hole.
Anyhow, I made my son learn it, and I learned it at the same time to make sure he did. It’s a terrific running joke at our house. He’s a proper teenager, and always asleep when he’s not lying around. He opens one eye and glares at me most satisfactorily while I hack away at it. He used to hate it for its own sake, but now he hates to hear me do it because it’s irritating to hear me slog through it, as he can bang it out effortlessly.
I promise not to get any better at it, son.
9 Responses
Ahh, lovable warfare between Father and Son. Glad to see nothing has change in family dynamics since my days of eye twitching and sleepless nights thanks to me three Son's. One day, not long you will go out to dinner with that young man who will then be married with children. You will marvel at his conversation filled with him shaking his head talking about his kids and you can then smile broadly and see that the torch has been passed! Enjoy each moment with them. Time moves so quickly for a parent.
It is a Dad's privilege and responsibility to recycle old pop culture motifs and little riffs upon his kids.
For what it's worth — and I will be the first to acknowledge that a laugh or two may not be worth the trouble of slogging through the post — I spontaneously discovered one morning that Stairway to Heaven is the key to the world enigma: The Piper's Calling You to Join Him On the Stairway to Help. Who knew?
I caution my Intertunnel friends …
They aren't listening.
Hi Bob- You are the liveliest prose writer I know. It's never a slog.
BTW, you have the least intelligent trolls I can picture that can still fog an intellectual mirror.
I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before, but I followed your links to Wikipedia. And…
Dear lord, Bob, your CV is amazingly outre. Interplanetary. Extraordinary. I thought my resume was out there, but if anyone can give me a run for my stranieri money, it's you.
Lawdy, lawdy, an award from "Astronomical Union's Committee for Small Body Nomenclature." I cannot believe that's not the name of a Frank Zappa cover band.
Yet.
Free Bird!
Space history. Near earth objects. Led Zepp. No apologies. That's how I roll.
I always get a chuckle or two out of how classically trained guys phrase a rock song. Kinda like Swanson getting super duper French Chef du jour to create a TV dinner.
Wish I could do that, though.
The Other Andy
http://www.smokingtoaster.com
I happen to like the Rodrigo Y Gabriella acoustic guitar cover version of "Stairway to Heaven."