It's official. My oldest, Rafael, is an R.E.M. fan. Those of you who have known me since college understand the pageantry (or life's rich pageantry ) of this moment. I became an R.E.M. fan senior year in high school when my best friend Eric introduced me to Murmur. He was a serious fan, knew every lyric to every song and sprinkled them in every letter he sent me during my college and after college years. I believe he stalked Michael Stipe for a while because he sent me a picture taken a few feet away from Michael Stipe planting a tree.

I lucked out sophomore year and got a terrific roommate, Amy, who was as committed to 80s New Wave as I was. We christened our dorm room "What Noisy Cats are We" and to this day I still have that sign. That year my buddy Sue and I camped out in front of the arena to get R.E.M. tickets. We had no idea how we were going to pull that off, but most of my crazy ideas are dependent on the kindness of strangers. In this case, it was the Sigma Chi house who set up a makeshift apartment on the lawn complete with beds, couches, coffee tables and house plants. Thanks to their drunk ingenuity, we made it through the night. The resulting tickets placed me at the feet of Mike Mills. During the chorus of "I am Superman", he looked right at me!

That just so happens to be the song that started it all for Rafael-an unanticipated bonus from her Superman identity phase. She also loves "It's the End of the World as We Know It" from Chicken Little and "Shinny Happy People" from R.E.M.'s guest appearance on Sesame Street. {And, yes, watching Michael Stipe dance with muppets, I almost cried- see CryBaby}

So, what does all this mean? That I am not my mother. After all, isn't that the goal? People say all the time that being a parent you will eventually sound like your parents. I don't care if I sound like my parents, I just don't want to dance like my parents. My mother, despite her delusional self-assessment, is a bad dancer. She scoots from foot to foot and makes a clicking noise with her tongue to the off beat of the music. My dad drank until he got silly enough to dance which meant clapping a lot and biting his lower lip. He had the cool factor to pull if off, just barely. I blame their bad dancing on their musical tastes. My mother's musical tastes, the tastes that she tried to impose on me and my sister were abysmal. The albums we listened to on our Titanic sized stereo were Englebert Humperdink, Peter, Paul and Mary and Tom Jones. I was very grateful when the BeeGees came along.

Because of my musically impaired upbringing, I was actually concerned in college, and had many late night drunken conversations with my pals about what our future kids would listen to. I didn't want Robert Smith to be my child's Englebert Humperdink. But what I didn't foresee was that people like me would enter the world of children's programming and infuse the best music of the 80s into animated films. I would like to thank them, for me and all of my "art fags" friends, as we called ourselves, for creating that common thread to weave our families' musical quilts. There is nothing better than hearing my 3 1/2 year old shout "Leonard Bernstein!" Right? Right!