Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Modern Day Mix Tape

Now that my kids are getting to the age (Kamryn in particular) where I have actual memories of myself at that age, I think it's interesting to compare our likes, dislikes, toys, habits, etc.  In a lot of ways, Kamryn and Rory have pretty much the same things I did.  The biggest exception is of course, technology, but even with all the tablets, smart phones, video games and the like, we still mostly rely on the basics at our house.  Kamryn loves workbooks, coloring books, dressing up, and playing games like Candyland and Hungry Hungry Hippos. 

However, there are two major technological advances that my kids have benefited from.  The first, without question, is the DVR.  As most people know, young kids are creatures of habit.  There was a show on PBS when Kamryn was about 18 mos called Big Comfy Couch.  It was a dumb show, but there was one episode that she absolutely loved.  The comfy couch girl would smell some shoes and make an overly dramatic gesture while yelling "stinky feet!".  Kamryn would fall into huge fits of laughter.  It would have made it worth going through the torture of watching the show just to see her laugh like that for a few seconds.  Enter the DVR and I'm fast forwarding to that part, stopping and rewinding just to see that reaction again and again. 

Yeah, we had the VCR, which really wasn't all bad, just a bit cumbersome, not to mention all the rewinding.  My God!  The rewinding!  The biggest disadvantage to the VCR was relying on someone else to record a show for your or trying to set it up to record automatically.  No matter how many times I set the timer up myself with success, there was always a level of uncertainty until I was actually watching what I intended to record.  Did I have the tv on channel 3?  Was the VCR on channel 3 or the channel I needed to record?  Did I change the time to PM?  Was it on LP or SLP?  Did I hit the tv/video button?

I had asked my mom to record Young Guns for me in 8th grade.  It was a free HBO weekend and this was my only shot at getting it recorded.  It was a Sunday night and I started the recording, but it was ending at about 11:00 so I would be in bed when it was over.  The next day when I got home from school, I found my tape, threw it in the VCR and started watching my most favorite movie.  Then at 1 hour and 40 minutes in - right at the scene where Charlie solicits a hooker to "just hold him", the screen went blank.  I fast forwarded, rewound, fast forwarded again to nothing but static.  Later, when my mom came home, she told me she got tired and turned it off when she went to bed.  Like it was acceptable to not record the last 20 minutes of a movie.  It didn't really matter - I still watched it over and over.

Now that this is turning into the longest post ever, I haven't even gotten to the real purpose behind it.  The Almighty Mix Tape.  Remember recording songs off the radio?  You would sit at the ready, one finger on play one on record waiting for the damn DJ to shut his/her trap so you could get at least a little of the intro of your song recorded.  One of my not proudest moments was of me recording myself singing an Elvis song.  All I had was the record and I wanted it on a cassette.  That seemed like the most logical way to achieve my goal. 

I was telling Kamryn how lucky she was that she can listen to any song at any time she wants.  Since that has always been the case for her, she can't imagine a world where that didn't exist...and because she's 5.  In honor of my rendition of Any Way You Want Me by Elvis that I recorded almost 30 years ago, here is Rory and his version of the chorus of Adele's, Someone Like You.
I'm thinking of making an entire montage of Rory singing.  The other song he sings a lot is LMFAO's Party Rock.  He's also been known to throw out some Pitbull every once and awhile.  And as he likes to say, "That's awesome sauce!"

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