stay-at-home dork, or, stay at home, dork

I was driving back from The Hold Steady show at the Crystal Ballroom Sunday night when I remembered something: it was the last night of the free, live and local PDX Pop Now festival. I had wanted to attend, but between a 3-year old's birthday party, a public transportation run to redeem a free Jamba Juice coupon with my daughters, and a weekend-long compost-spreading project (thanks to my wife -- but I watched the kids), I didn't make it to the festival. Suddenly, I thought about changing that. I wanted to sleep, as I'd be waking up in six hours. Plus, I didn't really know where Rotture, the home of the festival, was located, other than in the beautiful, sunny, industrial part of southeast Portland Then again, how could I turn down a stellar lineup of free music? I decided that I would turn a few times and if I bumped into the action, then it was meant to be. So I turned right and then right again and noticed a crowd burgeoning hipsters congregating in the street.

I walked into the high-ceiling dwelling of the show. It's sparse and warehouse-like there. The only real decorations were the members of the audience, who were all seemingly under 23 and all wearing something that was color coordinated with their tattoos. Then there was me, a 36-year old, part-time, stay-at-home dad who hasn't been clothes shopping since Ricky Martin was still culturally relevant. I slipped into the back of the crowd to watch Norfolk and Western and hoped that no one would notice that I didn't belong there.

Then, I looked over to my left to see a 19-ish young woman dancing without worries, in an Elaine Benes sort of way. Again, it was dark, but it looked like she was wearing a denim-ized version of an early 1900s farm dress straight out of Laura Ingalls Wilder's closet. She didn't acknowledge me -- or even see me -- but she made me feel welcome. That's when I remembered what I was wearing: the "Good art won't match your sofa" T-shirt that I bought 15 years ago and often wore to concerts in the nineties. The combination of my feeling of being an outsider and that T-shirt made me remember the Sleater-Kinney piece that I wrote in 2002 and posted yesterday. Six years later, I'm now a father of two daughters, 4, and 2, and between two part-time jobs, I'm a part-time stay-at-home dad.

What hasn't changed since 2002 is my addiction to music. I still toggle back and forth between being completely comfortable when I'm listening to indie rock at home or at work, yet I stick out like a Hannah Montana fan at a Henry Rollins spoken word show when I'm at a concert. Can I, a dorky stay-at-home dad, keep up with the the latest music without ignoring my daughters? Is indie rock worth sacrificing sleep for? Will my daughters ever prefer my music over my wife's mid-nineties folk/country library? Will the Replacements ever get back together? The answers are all no, at least for now. But the stay-at-home dork, if he can tolerate himself, is out to change that one yes answer at a time. Well, except for the Replacements part. It won't happen. And shouldn't happen at this point.