Have a knuckle-cracking Christmas

"Winter break" provides family units with such a prolonged period of intense togetherness, it's a wonder we don't all kill one another.

The kids are home from school for what seems like 17 weeks. Adults who normally would be busy with work get some free days for relaxing and reveling and gaining weight together. Because it's cold outside, the whole family's under the same roof much of the time.

Everything feels a bit off. Routines are disrupted. Social calendars are full. Thoughts are scattered. The kids are antsy. People keep tripping over the dog. The TV is too loud. What's that smell?

Different energy levels bouncing around in the same space create friction. Some of us are slobs; some want to decorate the Kleenex boxes. Some see a vacation and want to go, go, go, while others see it as time for lying perfectly still. We're like cars on a busy street, all going different speeds. Bound to be a few fender benders.

All the togetherness reminds us that even the nicest people have annoying little habits that could wear on anyone, given enough exposure. Repeated sniffing, say. Clearing one's throat 2,309 times per day. If you're stuck in a house all day with a knuckle-cracker or a gum-snapper or a Twitter user, your thoughts might turn to ho-ho-homicide.

Take something as harmless as a Christmas carol. The song gets stuck in a person's mind, like a jumbo thorn, so he goes around singing it all the time. Except he doesn't really know the words, so it sounds like this: "Joy to the WORLD, la-da, la-DAH." Over and over. For two weeks. Until -- snap! -- someone makes a headline.

Minor vices, such as leaving the cap off the toothpaste or the newspaper in disarray, can be ignored for days, but eventually someone will speak up, and the new year is welcomed with fireworks.

(The Murphy's Law winter break guarantee: Whether you prefer the toilet seat up or down, it will always be the wrong way. Mention this to the others at your peril.)

As the winter days of togetherness wear on, we start to see loved ones' quirks as being intentionally annoying. We start perceiving motives.

"She knows she's doing that," he mutters. "She could stop any time. But no, she keeps doing it, because she knows it drives me crazy. She's just getting even because I--"

From the next room: "What's that, dear?"

"Nothing!"

But it's not nothing. It's the beginning. Pretty soon, the couple is locked in an escalating passive-aggressive loop: If she's going to crack her gum, he thinks, then I can pop my knuckles and sniffle as much as I want. She counters with an impressive symphony of tuneless whistling, trying to drown out his honking nose. Which, naturally, forces him to play Neil Young on the stereo, because she HATES that reedy voice. So she runs the vacuum cleaner. He gets a wrench and removes the toilet seat altogether and--

Whoa, whoa. Take a deep breath there, partner. It's always like this at winter break. It'll be fine once we get out of the house, and we're all exposed to smaller doses of our mutual foibles.

The adults go back to work, where our nervous habits can annoy our colleagues instead of our relatives. The kids go back to school and annoy their teachers. The dog gets some rest.

Soon, we're back in our well-worn ruts. Ready for another year.

Together.

Guitar Heroes and tin ears

Here’s what the future of music sounds like: Clackity-clackity-clack. Clack-clack. Clackclackclackclackclack.

That’s the sound of Guitar Hero, a video game that lets any nimrod pretend to be a rock star. Guitar Hero and its many evolutions and variations have taken the nation by storm.

For those of you blessed enough to be unfamiliar with Guitar Hero, here’s how it works: The player uses a “controller” shaped like an electric guitar to “play” along with a cartoon band on the video screen. The screen shows different colors for different notes. The colors match five colored buttons up in the fret area of the controller guitar. At the other end of the guitar is a little plastic lever that must be clacked up and down, as if it were the pick used by the player to pluck the strings.

See, there aren’t any actual strings. “Playing” the “guitar” is a matter of pushing the correct buttons with one hand and clacking that lever with the other, as fast as the rock song blaring from the game requires.

Guitar Hero is huge at our house. Our teen-age sons both enjoy the game, and their friends come over to our house to “jam.”

Our sons know to keep the volume turned down on the songs, especially if Crazy Dad is trying to “work,” but there’s no volume control for that clacking noise. What I get -- through closed doors, through walls -- is the merest mumble of some familiar rock song and the clackity-clack-clack-clack of teen-age frenzy. Around the clacking clock.

It reminds me of those laboratory tests where mice or chimps repeatedly push a lever to get a treat. A teen-age boy apparently will clack a lever for hours on end, even if the only treat is being able to call his best friend “loser.”

The irony at our house is that both our sons actually play musical instruments. They can read music and pick out songs by ear and all that jazz. But, for amusement, they’d rather clack away at Guitar Hero.

I’m sure it takes skill and determination to succeed at the games, but clacking that lever is not the same as playing the song on a real guitar. I fear we’re creating an entire generation of youngsters who think they’re musicians because they can play Guitar Hero.

Eye-hand coordination is not the same as musical talent. I can type fast as a fiend, but that doesn’t mean I can play the piano.

Given the speed of technological advance, how long before real guitars come with buttons and clackers rather than strings? You’ll no longer need talent to be a rock musician; all you’ll need are fingers.

Virtual music by virtual musicians, virtually all the time until parents virtually tear off their own ears. That’s the future of rock ‘n’ roll.

Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky to clack.

Singing the parenting blues

The dramas of the ancient Greeks often featured a chorus that stood off to one side, commenting on the actions of the lead players, bemoaning mistakes and foretelling disasters.

This chorus parallels the modern lifestyle known as “parenting.”

We parents watch from the sidelines as our children make boneheaded decisions and rush headlong into dangerous situations, and all we can do is sing out warnings. The children are the stars of the show, and they’ll make their own mistakes, no matter how loudly we parents sing the blues.

Many of these songs are standards, the same ones our parents sang to us: “Go to Sleep, Little Baby” and “Don’t Put That in Your Mouth” and “What Do You Mean (You’ve Lost Your Shoes)?”

Others are situation-specific: “No Monsters Under the Bed” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand (When We Cross the Street)” and “O, Brother, Where Art Thou Sister’s Barbies?”

Then there are the novelty tunes, the unintentionally comic songs blurted in the heat of the moment: “Don’t Pet That End of the Dog” or “Three Coins Up Your Nostril” and “That’s Not a Helmet, That’s a Bra.”

Some parental laments make no sense. I’ll never forget, when I was about 12, as I worked up my courage to swing on a rope into the local swimming hole, my mother sang out: “If You Swing Off There and Kill Yourself, Don’t Come Crying to Me.”

We parents change our tunes as the children grow older. When they’re babies, we coo lullabyes and delight in their grossest activities and sing their praises for having a full set of toes. Our hit parade consists of “My Baby’s Cuter than Yours” and “Cry Me a River“ and “Spit-up Rag” and “Ooh, That Smell.”

When they reach the toddler stage and go mobile, the warnings begin in earnest: “Don’t Go Out of the Backyard, Dear, With Anyone Else But Me” and “Put That Down, It’s Nasty” and “Electric Shocks Are No Fun” and “(On Everything) Germs, Germs, Germs.”

Then it’s off to kindergarten, and we parents moan all the louder because the children are out of sight, and we hope our many admonitions echo inside their darling heads. Many songs of this era come in the form of questions or pleas: “Did You Go?” and “One More Bite?” and “Oh, Dirty Boy (the Bath, the Bath is Calling)” and that old favorite, “Hurry Up, We’re Late, It Doesn’t Matter If You Have Your Superman Underwear.”

The school years reinforce the notion that we parents have less control over our offspring all the time. “If Johnny Jumped Off a Cliff,” we sing, and “Don’t Bite the Teacher” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Arm?” and “A Lost Lunchbox and a Pink Consternation.”

The parental chorus grows frantic in the teen years, as we try to squeeze last-minute warnings into unheeding ears: “This Ain’t No Party” and “You Call that Music?” and “Get a Job” and “One Tattoo’s Too Many For Me.”

Finally, the kids leave the nest (“Bye-bye, Birdie”) and strike off on their own (“Save Your Knowledge for College” or “You’re in the Army Now”), and we parents can finally stop singing and sit in the wings, quietly worrying instead.

One day, our children will have kids of their own, and they’ll start singing the parenting blues themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I plan to say, “Don’t come crying to me.”

Plugged

We've become a nation of nerds.

The average American now spends more time using media devices -- TV, radio, iPods, cell phones, computers -- than any other waking activity, according to a new study.

Coast to coast, we're "plugged in" to music and news and text messages and Internet shopping. We still read newspapers and books and magazines, but way too much of our time is devoted to television and our beloved electronic gizmos.

"As a society, we are consumers of media," said researcher Robert Papper of Ball State University's Center for Media Design. "The average person spends about nine hours a day using some type of media."

Papper and his cohorts spent several months shadowing 400 people in Indianapolis and Muncie, IN, where Ball State is located. The researchers recorded information every 15 seconds on what media the subjects were using. All told, they studied 5,000 hours of media use.

Here are some of their findings:

--About 30 percent of the observed waking day was spent with media as the sole activity, and 39 percent was spent with media while involved in some other activity. Only 20.8 percent of the day was spent solely on something called "work."

--In any given hour, no less than 30 percent of those studied were "engaged in some way with television, and in some hours of the day that figure rose to 70 percent."

--About 30 percent of all media time is spent using more than one medium at a time.

--Women do more media multi-tasking than men. Papper told the New York Post that men seek media contact of "short duration and instant gratification" while women are interested in "longer, more thoughtful" interaction. So, it's just like sex. Proof once again that "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Calgon."

--The average American spends four hours a day watching television and three hours a day using a computer.

As a casual observer, I would now like to say: Great Googly-moogly! Nine hours a day? We spend more time "consuming media" than we do sleeping? Are you kidding me?

Four hours a day of TV, and there's still nothing good on? Three hours a day on a computer? Does that count all the time spent waiting on reboots?

Imagine how much crap we're stuffing into our brains every day. No wonder we can't remember where we left our car keys. We're too busy processing the latest update on Britney Spears. And listening to an MP3 song we don't remember downloading. And turning away telemarketers. And waiting for the computer to finish displaying its annoying pop-up ads.

It's All Input All the Time here in America. If we're not on the phone, watching TV and surfing the 'Net, all at once, then we might miss something.

We stay indoors, filtering the wider world through a haze of electronics. When we do leave the house, we block out extraneous sounds by blasting music into our heads via "ear buds." We sort through our e-mail in coffee shops. We check our voice-mail in movie theaters. Apparently, some of us cannot drive without talking on cell phones.

Media consumption is the true "Revenge of the Nerds." The nerds didn't recruit us into their pocket-protector cult. They just designed neato gadgets, and we all willingly joined their ranks.

Take this job and sing it

When I learned the country band Lonestar had a hit song called "Mr. Mom," my first reaction was: Hey, those guys are working my side of the street.

I've been milking the Mr. Mom work-at-home routine for years. Who do these upstarts think they are, suddenly jumping on the househusband bandwagon and getting rich off of it?

Then I began to see the error of my ways. I've been writing 600-word newspaper columns about being a middle-aged man who deals with kids and stains and housework and plumbing emergencies. That's not what consumers want. They want country songs!

And what's the secret to a hit country song? Lyrics that are easily encapsulated in one snappy catch-phrase: "Take this job and shove it." "Achy-breaky heart." "Honky-tonk heroes." "Boot scootin' boogie."

(That last one always makes me think of a cowboy who stepped in something, but never mind.)

If I want to make my Mr. Mom theme finally pay off, what I need are country song titles that will capture the public's imagination and sell a jillion copies. Doesn't matter that I can't sing or play an instrument. The snappy title's the main marketing tool here. If one of them catches Nashville's attention, I can always write a song to go under it.

Here are some of the country song titles I'm working on:

--"Stuck at Home, Sweet Darlin', While You Work"
--"Honky Tonk Soccer Daddy"
--"My Home Office Sure Is Empty Without You"
--"I Feel Like a (Washer)Woman"
--"Sadder than a Winter Coat in the Grade School Lost-and-Found"
--"Lookin' For Gloves in All the Wrong Places"
--"I Got Swingin' Doors, a Toolbox and a Casserole"
--"Oh, Little Baby, Why Won't You Let Me Sleep?"
--"Cold, Cold Leftovers"
--"I Do Paperwork After Midnight"
--"Come Back, Sweetheart, and Take These Children Away"
--"Another Saturday Night and I'm Watchin' Barney"
--"You Can't Get Grape Jelly Out of Rayon, Darlin'"
--"Achy-Breaky Shake 'n' Bakey"
--"Can't Chase Women While Wearin' an Apron"
--"If I Had a Hammer (I'd Break My Thumb With It)"
--"In the Poorhouse Now"
--"The Toilet Overflowed and Washed My Sanity Away"
--"A Man of Constant Borrow," from the hit movie, "O Brother, Where Art That Money I Loaned You?"
--"That's Not Lipstick, I Swear. It's Crayola"
--"Your Cheatin' Lawyer"
--"I Can't Change, Baby, But That Diaper's Got To"
--"Tumblin' Dustbunnies"
--"We're Cookin' Tonight, Sweet Mama, 'Cause We Can't Afford No Fast Food"
--"Nothing Wrong with You a Little Salve Wouldn't Fix"
--"Vacuumin' For Your Love"
--"Broken Dreams and Smart-Aleck Teens"
--"Can't Spruce Up the Place While I Pine Over You"
--"Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Work in Cubicles"
--"I'll Kiss It and Make It Better"
--"Real Cowboys Don't Wear Sweatpants"
--"The Kids Pushed Me (In Front of that Train)"
--"Rednecks, White Socks and Clean Underwear"
--"Computer Reboot Boogie"
--"If You've Got the Money, Honey, I'll Work at Home"

Rockin' the hood

Draft of a note to be delivered to every household on our block:

Dear neighbors,

We're terribly sorry, but our 14-year-old son has taken up the electric guitar.

We recognize that our quiet neighborhood may never be the same. But we believe music education is important to a child's development, and we more or less forced him to choose an instrument.

Naturally, he selected the electric guitar. It's the weapon of choice in the culture wars exemplified by his favorite music.

This kid rocks around-the-clock to bands so loud and aggressive, his room sounds like a busy afternoon in Baghdad. Not only does he enjoy contemporary acts of thunder-and-screaming, but he's very much into punk music recorded before he was born, acts such as the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols.

He already dressed the part of a punk rocker, complete with studded belts and black sneakers and a jacket covered in safety pins. His room usually looks like the aftermath of a post-concert party. And, rock music is the only way to explain why he wears his hair that way. All he needed to complete the image was a guitar.

So, as an early Christmas gift, he got a gold-colored knock-off of the famed Fender Stratocaster, an amplifier and a year of weekly music lessons.

Along with this bounty, we gave him specific instructions to keep the amp turned down low. We carefully police his in-home performances for high decibel levels, but we're not always here and we won't be surprised if, one day, we come home to find he's blown all the windows out of the house with one overamped power chord.

For this, let us apologize in advance. We only hope this amplified attack doesn't take out your windows, too. Or your ability to hear.

You, our neighbors, have been very understanding in the past. You never said a word when our younger son started playing the piano. You sat mum through those warm summer nights when the windows were open and he played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" a record 937 times in a row.

But a piano's no electric guitar. While a piano can be loud, particularly in the hands of an excitable 11-year-old, it can't reach down the street and poke out the ears of unwary passers-by like a fully cranked-up guitar.

In our defense, it could've been worse. Our older son could've settled upon a band instrument instead of his golden guitar. The trumpet, say, or a honking saxophone. At least, with an electric guitar, there's always the option of pulling his plug if the noise becomes unbearable. Try that with a trumpet sometime.

Of course, with a budding guitarist and a keyboard player in the house, there's the possibility the boys will put aside their usual differences and form a "garage band." Should this tragedy occur, we will alert you to the rehearsals ahead of time, so you can make plans to go somewhere quieter, such as a monster truck rally.

If the "music" emanating from our house ever becomes too much to tolerate, we ask that you don't call the police. Please contact us instead. Just stop by the house and let us know.

We promise we'll take your objections in the neighborly way they're intended, and we will sheepishly take remedial action.

Assuming we can hear you ringing the doorbell.

With our sincere regrets,

The Brewers

(Editor's note: Nearly five years after this column first appeared, our older son not only still plays the guitar, he's thinking about majoring in music. He's into a more acoustic, Grateful Dead sort of sound now, better for begging spare change.)

Soothing the savage beasts

No matter how much we love our children, all parents need a break now and then.

At times, the kids drive us a little crazy. Too much togetherness, too much chatter, too many demands cause wear-and-tear on the old psyche. If the parent doesn't get a pause in the action, the parent's brain can snap like an overstretched rubber band.

Children know this, of course. They're born with an instinct that tells them when parents are at their wits' end. This instinct compels the children to take action at these times -- they become louder, clingier, needier. They glom onto the parent like barnacles onto a pier, assuming barnacles could shriek at 138 decibels, "He's TOUCHING me!"

(This instinct is the same one that kicks in whenever a parent gets an important phone call. Wondering where your children are? Pick up the phone. They'll swarm you like moths around a porch light. Shrieking moths.)

It's nearly impossible for parents to counteract this native instinct. You can calmly explain to your children that you need a few moments of quiet, but this will cause them to dance around you, screaming. You can threaten them through clenched teeth, but this will only result in unnecessary dental bills. You can try running away, only to find that they're faster than you.

But I've found one way to get a little distance from the kids -- singing. That's right, singing. If you can unclench your jaw long enough to let loose with a song, the children will go find something else to do, at least for a while.

It's not that the kids are soothed by the music. It's not that they grasp that singing is a signal for them to play elsewhere. It's not even a matter of them recognizing that you're about to snap. No, singing chases away the children because they can't stand your music. If you start belting out a golden oldie (which, to kids, is anything recorded before 1997), they'll go find someone else to annoy. Someone who won't annoy them right back by singing.

(This works best if, like me, you are a bad singer who can cause wallpaper to bubble when you try to hit the high notes. But even operatic divas could make use of this technique.)

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Parent, driven to distraction by loud, demanding children, realizes that s/he needs a few moments alone. After trying several approaches, all of which make the kids louder and more demanding, the parent starts to tightly hum a song, something classic like "My Boyfriend's Back" or "Born to be Wild."

Step 2: Children will appear puzzled at first, and smiles will dance about their jelly-stained faces. What is this sound? What could it mean? Is the parent inexplicably happy? Or, does the singing indicate the parent has finally gone insane? Parent, remembering the words now, starts running through the lyrics.

Step 3: Parent sings louder as s/he gets to the chorus. The children aren't smiling anymore. They stop whining about whatever was bugging them before and start whining something along the lines of "OK, parental unit, that's enough. You can stop singing now."

Step 4: Parent sings louder, maybe even dances around the room a little while swinging hips. Children back away, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open. The horror, the horror.

Step 5: As children beg the parent to stop, the parent sings ever louder, clapping hands rhythmically, snapping fingers, playing "air guitar," generally making a jackass of self. Children are mortified.

Step 6: As the song reaches a crescendo, the children make gagging noises, clap their hands over their ears and sprint from the room.

Step 7: Parent, still singing, peeks around corner to make sure children are gone.

Step 8: Parent, finally alone, stops singing, takes a deep breath and revels in a moment of quiet.

Repeat as necessary. You can always replace the wallpaper.

With a song in my head

As I sit down to write this, I have only one thought on my mind -- the country-and-western song, "Stand by Your Man."

The song's been playing in my brain all day. Is this my favorite song? No, it is not. Yeah, yeah, it's a classic, but I'm not that fond of country music. I'm a fan of the blues and what my kids like to call "dinosaur" rock. Does "Stand by Your Man" have some special meaning for me? No. Have I even heard it recently? No, it's been months, at least, since I last encountered it.

Why, then, is that song going round and round in my head like Muzak from Hell? I don't know. If I did, maybe I could find a way to make it stop, because it's driving me crazy.

It's one of the great unsolved mysteries of psychology why one part of our brains always seems to be playing music. If you pause right now and let your mind drift, some song will pop to the forefront of your brain. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait.

Aha, you've got it now, don't you? Some song you probably don't even like, some song you perhaps haven't heard in years. But now it's stuck in your head like a 10-penny nail, and it'll probably be there for hours. Sorry.

Our brains have some sort of default mechanism for music. If they're not fully engaged with work or parenting or television or some other travail, our brains burst into song. Next thing you know, you're wandering around the house, humming the chorus of "Love Will Keep Us Together" or something equally nauseating.

Even people who have no strong connection to music report this problem. My best friend, who describes himself as "amusical," says his mind regularly slips into repeated replays of "Camptown Races," the song that gave us "Doo-dah, doo-dah." My mother, who admits she can't carry a tune in a washtub, hears "O, Tannenbaum" all the time, even when Christmas is months away. (Of course, she also concedes that, to her musically-challenged ears, every song sounds like "O, Tannenbaum.")

Imagine what it must be like for people who actually play music. Musicians, for instance. They must have a whole repertoire going in their heads all the time, probably in four-part harmony, distracting the heck out of them. How do they ever get anything done?

This mental soundtrack can cause problems in the workplace. If you go around humming or whistling or singing in your office, your co-workers eventually will snap and beat you senseless. Why? Because you're planting that song in their heads. And, unless you work for Seven Dwarves Inc., not everyone in the workplace wants to go around whistling the same tune.

Those of us who work alone have no such restraints. We can sing along all day if we wish, which means there's no getting rid of "Stand by Your Man," no matter how much we'd like it to go away.

Where do these songs come from? I blame car radios. If you listen to the radio as you're driving around, it becomes an exercise in punching buttons to escape familiar "oldies." Because it's usually the bad songs, the ones you really despise, that snag on your brain's antenna. Even if you hear only three notes of "Mandy" before you hit the button, you'll likely find yourself, days later, crooning like Barry Manilow, at least internally, and therein lies madness.

At our house, we've recognized this mental phenomenon and are learning to live with it. My wife regularly turns to me and says, "I need a new song in my head." This impels me to think up the catchiest song to inject into her brain, one that'll really make her crazy, something like "Bennie and the Jets" or "Copacabana" or "Up on Cripple Creek." She does the same to me.

This game tends to escalate, with each of us trying to top the other, until we're in an arms race of dreaded songs, a form of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Try it on your friends. Hum a few bars of some song, and you can feel confident that it'll drive them nuts for days. I recommend "Camptown Races."

Doo-dah.

Musical cares

Here's a parental axiom: Whatever music you, the parent, despise the most will be your child's absolute favorite.

Music plays a key role in the parent-child relationship. Children need a medium for rebellion, and popular music gives them the perfect way to drive parents crazy. This, of course, is one of the child's main life goals.

(Other life goals, in order, include 1) eating as much snack food as humanly possible, 2) wrecking the house, 3) sitting too close to the TV and 4) sending the parents into bankruptcy.)

To accomplish the music rebellion goal, children must discover which form of music is most abhorrent to parents. This is why parents should never, ever, let on that they consider a particular song to be an abomination. If they do, the children immediately will buy all available CDs by that particular artist and play them at top volume until the parents' ears bleed.

Say, for instance, that you consider "rap music" to be an oxymoron, and nothing annoys you more than the thump of bass and the angry ranting of misguided street youth. If your child discovers you feel this way, he will become a lifelong rap fan. And nothing short of round-the-clock earplugs will save you.

This is not a new phenomenon. Parents have railed against popular music since the advent of radio. Frank Sinatra, when he was young and skinny, sent girls into such swoons that parents wanted him banned as a health risk. Then there was Elvis Presley, whose hips were too lascivious for television and whose sex appeal turned the nation on its head, eventually leading to today's music videos, which are essentially soft porn. Next came the Beatles, who, according to parents, were less about musicianship than they were about hair.

In each of these cases, parental disapproval fanned the flames of the musicians' popularity. If Mom and Dad hate it, then it's gotta be good, right?

Each generation must up the ante. Parents who cut their teeth on rock-n-roll tend to be more accepting of the foibles of youth. Their children must find new ways to irritate, which has resulted in the "progression" of modern music through heavy metal, glam rock, disco and Britney Spears.

Baby Boomers have altered the equation. Because we refuse to grow up, many of us still listen to rock, sometimes on the same radio stations our children enjoy. This forces the children to search farther afield for rebellious music. I'm sure that, somewhere, there's a parent, an Ozzy Osbourne fan, who's slowly being driven nuts because his kids insist on listening to Chopin.

At our house, our two sons -- ages 10 and 13 (when this column first appeared) -- have gotten seriously into pop music in the past year or so. They watch MTV and VH1. They sing along with the car radio, showing that their brains -- like mine -- are storing lyrics where more important data should go. Their bedroom radios whisper all night long.

Some of their favorites make my teeth grind together, but this has been true since they were toddlers and listening to Barney the Dinosaur or Alvin and the Chipmunks. I'm careful not to show my dismay at their musical choices -- children are like horses; they can smell fear. My tastes tend to be eclectic, and I can embrace almost any format with enthusiasm (or at least a straight face) for short periods of time.

This leaves my sons confused. How can they find music that I hate, when I seemingly like (at least some of) everything?

Oh, they've managed. I let it slip once that I cannot abide a guy named "Weird" Al Yankovic, who plays the accordion and does parodies of popular songs. I'm all for parody, but this guy's voice gives me the same chills that most people get from fingernails on a chalkboard.

Letting my sons know this was a grave parental error. My 13-year-old now loves Weird Al. He knows that, if he plays the CD long enough, Dad will be forced to go outside. This fills him with rebellious glee.

So they've got me. But it could be worse. I'll take Weird Al over Alvin and the Chipmunks any day.

(Editor's note: As our sons have gotten older and become musicians themselves, they've developed an interest in older rock. Now, our house reverberates with Led Zep, Pink Floyd, The Doors, etc. I consider this Daddy's Revenge.)

Sweeping and swinging

I'm heading to my desk to work when I detour by the stereo and put on a CD. Why not a little musical accompaniment to the work day? One of the joys of working at home is being able to listen to music, as loud as you want, while you tickle the ivories of the computer keyboard.

I choose Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, one of the new swing bands, and set it to play. Then it's off to my desk to focus, crank out some words, meet some deadlines.

About the time Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is swinging into "You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight," I find myself in the far end of the house, gathering dirty laundry, dancing about in my sock feet like an idiot. The computer screen sits blank. The laundry is getting done, sure, but how did this happen? I'm in the wrong room, doing the wrong job.

You could blame this on a genetic lack of concentration, and you might be right, but I fault the music. Wrong tempo for writing. Too lively, with all those stuttering saxophones and jumping horns. I had to get up and move, bounce around. Getting distracted by the music led me away from my desk to the laundry room and, before you know it, all over the house, searching up dirty socks.

John Milton wrote, "Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie." I don't think he was referring to housework, but the shoe fits. Certain rhythms move us. Whether it's a drumbeat stirring something primitive within us or weeping strings welling up within our chests, music affects our brains and nervous systems. This is fine if we're talking tapping your toe to the rhythm, it's something else if you're doing the conga by yourself.

The right music can actually help you focus. Studies show that studying math while listening to certain classical music improves test scores. Teens love to study with the radio blaring, though it's more likely to be Marilyn Manson than Mozart. Look around your standard office, and you'll find lots of people wearing headphones, both to give a rhythm to their day and to seal them off from ringing telephones and yammering workmates. I went to a dentist one time who let me listen to Bruce Springsteen on headphones while pumping me full of laughing gas. This was in San Francisco. Say no more.

Working alone at home, you can give your whole day a soundtrack. The trick is to match the music with the task at hand. You want something with the right tempo for your day, something not too distracting, something familiar so you can sing along when you're idle, but can tune it out when you need to concentrate.

I'm partial to the blues, and find it appropriate to many household tasks. What could be a better accompaniment to sweeping, for instance, than Muddy Waters singing "Dust My Broom?" What could make you want to bustle about the house more than the lively "Juke" by Little Walter?
But the blues are not for everybody, including my wife. She prefers country music, and I've learned to bustle to Alan Jackson or Brooks and Dunn when she's around. "King of the Road" has got some line about brooms in it, and the characters in country songs tend to make you feel good about yourself. No matter what kind of drudgery you're facing, at least your Mama hasn't been hit by a train.

Boogie woogie and rockabilly are great for rhythmic work like chopping or dusting. Slightly more up-tempo than the rate you might want to work, but why not get it over with in a hurry? Just watch your fingers with that knife.

Instrumental music seems to be good for writing. No words to distract you but your own. But CDs work better than the radio. Those classical disc jockeys with their somnolent voices can sink you right into a depression.

Here's when you know the music's just right: when the CD hisses to a stop and you realize you haven't heard it. It was playing the whole time, but your concentration was so intense, the music wasn't registering with your conscious thoughts. That's the flow, that inner stream of creativity and motivation, and it's the sweetest music of all.