No matter how cool you are, or how many hoodies you own, parenthood is a pretty big deal. Sometimes it overcomes people in such a way that they feel compelled to make absurd analogies, such as “parenthood is like making a record,” a tidy nugget of wisdom for you to sew onto your next throw pillow courtesy of soon-to-be dad Pete Wentz. “You’re going to mix it for 18 years,” he adds, further digging his own grave.
As a purveyor of lazy and convenient rhetorical devices, I can by no means cast stones at Mr. Wentz. Nor do I think his simile was extraordinarily out of line. But you can’t just let a person get away with comparing parenthood to producing an album. As a society, we must police each others’ use of language to ensure that our discourse does not devolve into one ever-more-confusing metaphor after another, which is why I’ve compiled the following rather obnoxious–but necessary–list of all the ways parenthood is not like making a record.
• Babies don’t have knobs that control their sound levels.
• There’s hopefully no cocaine involved in raising a child.
• Kids cost more money than they bring in. (Though I suppose the same is true for many albums these days.)
• Vocoders frighten young children.
• No second takes.
• Timbaland can’t come in during the tough teenage years to help out with the parenting process.
• When it’s all said and done, you can’t tour your child around to huge arenas and make millions off of over-priced t-shirts. Unless you’re Billy Ray Cyrus.
Luckily Wentz does at least seem to have a good grasp on the realistic side of parenthood, too:
The Fall Out Boy bassist also revealed his new ambitions involve simply being a father and said he wants to “live in the suburbs and hang out with my kid.”
Do I smell a VH1 Celebreality show in the making? God, I hope not.
Pete Wentz says parenthood ‘is like making a record’ [NME]
Pete Wentz: ‘I’m Becoming My Dad’ [People]
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: In this analogy, what’s a vocoder? A ziplock baggie of goldfish?
In the case of sage parental musings coming from Pete Wentz, I’m hearing a lot more “Tools” and a lot less “Pro” which is a remarkable departure from the last Fall Out Boy album.
try the
There are no concept babies or going through a prog baby stage.
I thought Wentz would just wait for Wes Eisold to have a kid and then just steal it.
@janine: Maybe a Baby Gap credit card?
If he makes babies like he makes records, Ashlee should be sterilized.
Let’s hope it’s nothing like this:
[blogs.villagevoice.com]
Eh, he’s just gonna be a warrior in the Parental Loudness Wars.
Unfortunately, you don’t need to sign a baby-making contract in order to hurl your babies into an unsuspecting world. Which means you don’t have to have anything resembling parenting talent ((or mild sex appeal and a Vocoder) in order to make babies.
You also can’t lose your baby-making contract if your babies continually suck. Which is sort of a shame.
@encyclopediablack: Just wait.
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: Excellence.