|
 |
 |
Here are the 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
“Fogust Groove” is a mixtape I made of a bunch of yacht rock and blue-eyed soul I played for my kids while we were driving around the coast of California last week. I first heard these songs as a kid listening to my mom’s car radio tuned to “Sunny 95” (94.7 FM) out of Columbus, Ohio, so this mix is a bit of, in the words of the poet, “his nostalgic tale.” You can listen to the mix on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube. Here’s a video of me making the mixtape:
When your family ends up grooving on the same seemingly-random thing I think it’s fun to trace things back to answer the question “How did I get here?” What happened was: we watched the Bob’s Burgers episode that includes the song “Lifting Up The Skirt of the Night,” which is obviously a homage to Michael McDonald, so I played them “I Keep Forgettin’” and “What A Fool Believes,” then some songs McDonald did backing vocals on, like “Ride Like the Wind” and “Peg.” Pretty soon we were watching Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, Michael McDonald Live on Soundstage, and clips of Steely Dan!
Anything can be the start of a learning experience if you meet kids where they are: When we were on the Embarcadero and driving around the Bay Area, they got to see with their own eyes how Bob’s Burger’s is set in New Jersey, but actually looks like San Francisco. (We also got to see a bunch of locations from Hitchcock pizza night hit Vertigo!)
“You can just choose to believe that most kids are fine and they have a lot to teach you. That’s actually a much more fruitful, more engaging way of thinking about the world than it is thinking the kids are all stupid, like they need to be taught, they need to be corralled, they need to be kept under control.” Earlier this summer online lit mag The Rumpus was rebooted by Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman, so it was my pleasure to be interviewed in one of the new issues about kids, creativity and middle age.
