Surprise Party

We rode up on a block party and decided to check it out. They claimed to be an organization saving kids and the community, but as far as I could tell it was mainly hot dogs (free) and loudly DJ'd hip hop.

I expected some mothers to extract their pre-K kids from the dance floor when I heard the lyrics Yung Breezy was dishing out, but no. There were four-year-olds who were mouthing along with the words and doing explicit, accurate dance pantomimes to go with those words.

It was deeply disturbing, but I'm the guy who used to play the Dead Kennedys for his first-grade daughter on the way to piano lessons. How f-bombs and explicit sexual references are going to save a generation of children is a bit out of my grasp, but maybe I'm a hypocrite and cultural bigot. A few years back on a road trip with my kids and my Dad, Dad pushed stop on the CD player and asked me, in all seriousness, why I played that kind of garbage for my children.

The garbage in question included Utah Phillips (though it may have been Tim Wilson in that specific moment), but this question came from the one who used to sing me to and my brother to sleep, still in diapers, with the Wreck of the Old '97 and the Hobo's Lullaby.

So maybe I'm just too bourgeois to see Lil Wayne is the heir apparent to Pete Seeger.