Trailer Trash

Alright, another installation of shameless self-promotion. This is my latest video editing project: producing a fake movie trailer. We were given a bunch of raw footage from the movie Saturday Night Fever and challenged to transform it into a trailer promoting a completely different film. My submission? I present to you Becoming Father Vinnie.

A Little Adult Time

Tomorrow Diane and I are going to take a little midweek respite from the organized chaos that is our lives to enjoy a little one-on-one adult time. It's OK. You can think dirty here. I can't wait, and not just for the dirty part either. We're heading up to Phoenix to see Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, of Once fame, on their The Swell Season concert tour at the Orpheum Theater tomorrow night. Once was one of those movies that stuck with me for days, and I found myself constantly humming or singing Falling Slowly, this year's Academy Award winning song. When I found out they were coming in concert, I jumped at the chance to get tickets. I'm stoked.

We're going to spend the night in Phoenix, sans children, and after the concert the sky's the limit. Perhaps we'll go out and have a few drinks, do a little salsa dancing, sing some karaoke, and generally party 'till the cows come home. Yeah right. In reality, we'll check into our hotel room and fall asleep watching Leno. We're becoming old souls in our not-so-old age. Oh well, at least we're getting away.

Enjoy the clip!

Bad Dreams

This is the interaction I had with Kyra last night at around 9:30. She does this all the time where she wakes up crying, we take her to the bathroom, she pees, we get her back to bed and coax her back to sleep. And she never remembers any of it. It's kinda freaky.

"What's wrong?"

Kyra, sitting up in bed, holding her stomach, rocking back and forth and crying: "I want you to be in my poster."

"What?"

"I want you to be in my poster."

"You want me to be in your poster?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because then I'll know you're OK and I'll feel better."

"OK. I'll be in your poster."

"Thank you, Daddy."

And with that she settled into her pillow and immediately began snoring. I covered her and crept out of her room, happy to know that in her eyes I am poster-worthy. I also slept with my door locked.

Grounded

I crossed into a new frontier of parenthood earlier this week when I dug deep into the archives of disciplinary action and plucked up this gem: "KAILEY, YOU'RE GROUNDED!" Up until now, grounding had no effect seeing as how Kailey had nowhere to go or no one to play with on the block. But now that the girls have discovered a friend down the street, grounding is back in play!

We've had a rough time getting through to Kailey that hitting is not an acceptable form of venting her frustration. The girls get into an argument, Kyra doesn't do what Kailey wants her to do, Kailey whacks her a good one, and I lose my frickin' mind...for the millionth time. I've tried just about everything to curb this behavior, including letting Kyra hit her back (moronic, I know).

This happened, again, on Sunday afternoon...in the van. I should have known better. I usually don't let them sit together in the same row for this very reason, but they had been getting along really well, prompting my momentary lapse of sanity. As we were driving they started arguing because Kyra wouldn't play Kailey's game. I pulled up to a stop light and told Kailey to get in the back row, and as she did, whap, she slapped Kyra in the head. I watched her do it in the rear view mirror. I summoned the strength within to postpone my breakdown until I was at least able to pull the van off to the side of the road. Then I lost my mind. Right there. In the van.

"WHAT DO WE SAY ABOUT HITTING!"

"No hitting."

"THEN WHY DID YOU HIT HER!"

"Because she wouldn't play with me."

"WRONG! TRY AGAIN!"

"I wanted her to play a game and she was mean."

"WRONG! TRY AGAIN!"

I could see people slowing down and reaching for their cell phones while trying to decipher my license plate number.

"WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN KYRA DOES SOMETHING YOU DON'T LIKE?"

"Use my words?"

"WHICH MEANS?"

"Tell you or Mommy?"

Yes, we've been through all of this before. Then I said it:

"KAILEY, YOU'RE GROUNDED. THERE WILL BE NO PLAYING OUTSIDE WITH YOUR FRIENDS, NO TV, AND NO TREATS FOR ONE WEEK!"

It's official. I've become my parents. I threw the car in gear and got the heck out of Dodge before the police could arrive. We completed our errands and returned home where Kailey's punishment commenced.

I've since come to wonder who grounding punishes more, the kid or the adult. TV and playing outside gets the kids out of your hair for a period of time. Taking it away means you have to entertain your kids (like that's a bad thing). Kailey fought her punishment at first, acting all mad and pouty at me, but she eventually embraced her fate and the two of us were actually able to enjoy some one on one time while Kyra played outside with friends. Whether it will end her hitting habit remains to be seen. And I'm still waiting to see if the police are going to show up at my door.

She's Got the Bug

"We've got to practice my song because the talent show auditions are next week!" It was Monday night and Kyra was in a mild panic. And that mild panic was about to transform into major panic.

"No, Sweetie, talent show auditions are this week. They're Wednesday afternoon."

Cue the breakdown. Fortunately, the two of us had already worked on a song for Kyra's birthday, so we already had a tune in the can. Meltdown averted. As you can probably tell, Kyra is our passionate performer. It's one thing to do karaoke in your family room, but quite another to get up the nerve to take your act to the next level: performing before your peers. I was proud of her drive and initiative, so we practiced. I told her that I could record the guitar track for her audition, but she looked at me with a pouty face and said, "But I want you to play for me." Remember all that crap I wrote about being the "co-keeper of the dream"? Time to put up or shut up.

Auditions were yesterday after school. I worked the morning shift, which allowed me to attend, but meant that I had been up since 3:30 in the morning. I'm not using it as an excuse...I'm just saying. I arrived at school to pick up the girls, and Kailey led us to the classroom where the auditions were being held. It was packed full of kids and a few parents. I didn't see any other parents lugging around guitars. I was hoping there would be a sheet posted with audition times, but no such luck. We would have to wait around until Kyra's name was called, and that could be a very long time. Fortunately, they sent all the kids who were playing instruments to another room to audition. We stuck around to watch a few of the acts...two girls with a gymnastics routine, two older boys cracking each other up with terrible jokes (What's the difference between a teacher and a train? The teacher says 'don't chew gum', but the train says 'choo, choo, choo'!), and two girls singing a duet...before someone noticed my guitar and sent us to audition with the instrumentalists, even though Kyra was singing. I didn't complain though. We probably cut our wait time down from an hour to ten minutes.

We arrived in the music room which was considerably less crowded with only about fifteen students waiting to audition. Much better. We listened to four auditions, all of which brought back memories as students played clarinet, flute, and saxophone arrangements of the very same tunes I learned at that age. Then the teacher turned to us. "And we have a guitar here?" she asked. Sharp as a tack, that one.

"Yeah, I'll be accompanying my daughter today."

"Great! And what song are you going to be singing today, Kyra?"

"I Miss You."

And with that, we were off. Kyra, did a fantastic job. She wasn't singing as loud or performing as animated as she had practiced, but that was understandable. This was her first audition, she was singing to a room full of strangers, and, oh yeah, she's seven. I watched her as I played, and my heart overflowed as she worked her way confidently through the song. I saw flashes of fame and fortune in her future, and it all started right here.

Then came the key change. Now I don't know if I was too focused on Kyra, too focused on my visions of grandeur, or if I was just plain tired, but I blanked...I couldn't remember the chords in the key change. I could feel the panic building from within, so I just stopped playing and collected myself for a moment. In the meantime, I thought Kyra's eyes were going to take over her head. I regained my bearings, gave her a cue in, and we finished the song to a modest applause, visions of grandeur blown to smithereens. Who knows, maybe I'm subconsciously trying to sabotage my daughter's music career.

I packed up my guitar and as we walked out to the car, Kyra, channeling her inner diva, stopped me. "Daddy," she deadpanned, "If we get picked, you're really going to have to practice."

She's so ready for Hollywood.