How cool are your parents?

By comparison, my Mom is as cool as the first Velvet Underground record.

My mom is one day older than my dad and they started going out when they were 17. She is too cool to be hip and abandoned hipness by the time she was 21 because "that's just what you did, before people could be hippies, and I just missed out on that."

So erm no, theyre not cool. But I love them dearly anyway, the old nerds.

me too! my mom is so much like marge (personality/temperament/mannerisms, not appearance lol), its scary.

They are YELLOW and cuddly?

When Marge is being daggy and does stuff like that "every Simpson dance now! Duh! Duhn duhn duhn dun DUH!" with her silly daggy dance I'm all "Argh thats mum". She would totally be the "hi sweetie! Its me! Mom!" if she was my teacher (not that she ever was)

I've never quite got over my Mum phoning me up in a state of high excitement a few years ago to go on about the new Mogwai album. The fact that I was watching Neighbours whilst drinking a nice cup of tea at the time did nothing to help.

My Dad's pretty cool, in a very low key way. he likes to make stuff, and keep himself to himself.

They are not divorced or separated.

My Dad flirted with blues and jazz in the 50s. He played ice hockey. His two favourite songs in the 70s were "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" by Ian Dury & the Blockheads and "Love is in the Air" by John Paul Young (a song I later discovered was very popular with other people's dads, for some reason or other)

And the first film my Mum and my Dad went to see together, in Glasgow in the early 50s, was a Fellini film!

Spookily, I have every reason to believe it was La Strada at the Cosmo!

I am delighted to report that my parents have no interest in being "cool", only in being themselves. I wouldn't want them any other way.

In terms of superficial "coolness" - well, my dad is still into music and computers and is on The Well so he's probably closer to the ILX concept of "cool". My mum has become more conservative in dress and taste and no longer really bothers with pop culture. However, I have a lot of respect for her individualism, (especially with regards to her battles with her church's bishops.) I think that's genuinely cool.

My mom was a math teacher who joined the Army reserves after she married my dad and became a housewife. Her odd jobs since my birth have included doing other people's tax returns at H&R Block and bookkeeping for Habitat for Humanity. She thought Al Gore was hot and now she does charity walks all the time. She listens to Mary Chapin Carpenter, k.d. lang's yoga album and shops almost exclusively at LL Bean and Lands' End.

You make the call!

my mother is nuts.

Mum keeps telling me how great Katie Melua and the Ladies' Detective Agency books are. She is obviously finding great intellectual stimulation in her degree course because she never shuts up about bronze age farming.

But it doesn't matter because one loves ones parents, doesn't one?

my dad was in the airforce and has a great photo album of pics of he and his military buddies high, hanging around in their underwear, with their philipino girlfriends. I think he was considered cool back then, but after marrying my mother got considerably nerdier. he LOVES CELINE DION -- LOVES HER! he also LOVES elton john and CHER. he also has a ginormous black van that looks like a drug dealers car that he calls "big fella"

SO YEAH, NOT R4EALLY

My mother is a vocalist who sings everywhere she goes, particularly in stairwells because she likes the echo; she's totally unembarassable. She made my clothes and cooked our meals from scratch my entire life. She's BRILLIANT with children, all her natural intelligence lies in cultivating others and she's unbelieveably good at it.

My dad is a soft-spoken mechanical engineer with, as far as I can tell, little-to-no inner life, who can tell what's wrong with a car by leaning over the hood and listening. He has renovated and repaired every single system and appliance in our house, not to mention built & refinished all the woodwork, and will fabricate parts out of scrap metal if he can't find what he needs for a repair. He used to race motocross & still rides motorcycles with never an accident in 30+ years.

My mum is quite new age, into feng shui and meditating to whale noises and stuff.

i love(d) him, but seriously - wtf happened there?

my mum always preferred cliff over mick'n'keef, played carpenters and barry manilow records way loud in the car, and loves will ferrell movies and coldplay. my dad would make mixtapes for the car that veered quesaily from heuy lewis and the news to 'whole lotta love' (with the psyche freakout excised because, as dad would always turn from the steering wheel to say, "your mum hates that bit"). their first date was a who show. my dad thrilled to the trashing of gear, my mum thought it was "a terrible waste".

My mum was never much of a pop fan but I've taught her well over the years. Now she's a sax playing 61 year old. I haven't been able to persuade her to skronk yet. I took her to see Sons & Daughters doing an instore in HMV recently - she liked em.

The coolest thing my folks have done recently is refuse to stand up for God Save the Queen at my graduation. My friend's Tory dad was outraged.

That's the kind of person she is.

i can't dislike him he's so lost and disenchanted, he just don't admit it to himself

idk as bad as a raging alf garnett sounds, at least you have something to kick against

pity all of those kids of repressively tolerant boomer cunts who want to listen to the doors and smoke dope with them

i think tbh it is more some observations about his attitude to us as kids that i see replayed, slightly distorted, with the grandkids, and that rankle cos of their claimed status as real love, like

also gosh venting has real therapeutic benefit sometimes

and the secret fear/recognition that some of those failings are working deep in my own psyche, barely recognised

my dad likes Social Distortion, Wilco, old jazz musicians like Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, Miles Davis, Coltrane, and Freddie Hubbard. my mom digs Bjork and Rachel's and Public Enemy and Freakwater.

― gear (gear), Friday, October 7, 2005 6:09 AM (6 years ago)

this is just horrific

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Friday, August 31, 2012 3:12 PM (8 minutes ago)

i know rite, it should always be "social FUCKING distortion".

I kind of got a bit upset (embarrassingly so) after one too many drinks catching up with my brothers and sisters earlier this summer. My little bro, who is a bit of a show-off at the best of times admittedly, was boasting about his casual/friendly relationship with our (divorced for ten years) parents. It was the kind of stuff, y'know "I can't believe you wouldn't smoke in front of mum - I've smoked fags with her before; and dad too". As the oldest of four, and years after I left home, I still have a hard time treating my folks as much else other than strict authority figures. I was supposed to set the example for my siblings and as such I always ensured that any teenage drinking, smoking or general miscreantism was kept well hidden from my folks. We had a "don't ask, don't tell" thing going on, so if I came home pie-eyed and stinking from a night out, I'd make my excuses and go upstairs. I've hardly ever been drunk in front of them. It's a strange dynamic. By the time my youngest brothers and sisters were teenagers my parents had divorced and they were given a lot more leeway when it came to, well, everything. I certainly don't envy them for having had to have grown up in such a difficult time, but I do sometimes wish I could be a little more genuine and relaxed around my parents in the way that they are now.

My parents are genuine, decent people, dad's a bit of a curmedgeon but nothing major, mum is too easy to bow to "this is the way it's always been", but that's the worst I could say about them. My dad was a Tory councillor when I was a kid, which i find difficult to reconcile with the fact that his dad worked in a factory making steel tools in Sheffield. They're a million miles from cool and thank fuck for that.

Neither of my parents have a jot of interest in any art/culture, my dad prob last listened to a record willingly in about 1990, and that's not an exaggeration.

My mum likes v v v low background music.

They both liked the shawshank redemption I think but films are largely the same.

Mum reads maeve binchy, dad only reads the papers.

They watch sport and the news, mum might watch downton abbey sometimes. She used to bring me to the theatre as a kid but unsure if that was just cos I liked it. She seemed to have an interest tho.

I sometimes think its be nice to have more shared interests but it also would be weird, they're both more than 30 years older than me.

So no, not in any sense are they cool.

Dad has good stories about his younger days on the piss and stuff and is great if you have your (male) friends around.

I'm on a phone, forgive the typos.

As far as "cool" is concerned, the last album my dad bought was "Get Close" by the Pretenders or maybe "Diva" by Annie Lennox. He stopped listening to music about the same time I started. My Mum's taste is largely geared towards French chanteurs like Joe Dassin and stuff, which I kinda like. Her parents (my grandparents) were huge fans of jazz, Motown and all sorts of music - I prefer cool grandparents to cool parents.

my Dad has spent the last 6 months trying to play every Rush song on the piano he's cool as fuck

dad cool

my parents were (and my mom still is) uncool in the best possible way: smart, bookish, progressive, a bit nerdy, curious about art & culture but not particularly hip. i admire that, tbh. seems to reflect a fairly healthy set of priorities.

My parents are rednecks. Draw your own conclusions.

this four year old boy sat next to me on a bench in Griffith Park. he started picking his nose and he had a john coltrane tshirt on and a brian jones haircut. His mom, in front of us ordering a coffee, was an actress but I couldn't place her and it was frustrating -- looked like Maura Tierney or Carla Bruni. She asked him if he wanted a certain kind of food for lunch and he said demanded that she not order anything -- he was full -- and she said "but you haven't had enough protein today!" His dad appeared to be a Paul Rudd character.

His mom, I swear, is in this group of actresses that's, like, Lauren Graham, Tierney, Catherine Keener -- she's played Steve Carrell's or Jim Carrey's love interest in something, I'm sure.

My dad's brother was a speed freak in a St. Louis psychedelic band, so naturally my dad hasn't listened to music since about 1973.

my dad booked Yes at his college "before they sold out" as he says

Maybe he meant yknow that partic show

My general take on my parents' coolness (ie, they rule) remains as above. But I'd like to venture that my dad is cool right now for this reason:

http://www.montereyherald.com/prepsports/ci_23222158/mtal-track-field-championships-catalina-girls-win-league

aww thats sweet

my parents are uncool but i like them

Just found out my dad died on Friday after a long battle with throat cancer. My mum put the phone down on me earlier for trying make humour of the situation - despite being divorced for 30 + years she had been visiting him recently and forgiven him to some extent for what he was. But tonight we have been laughing about what a selfish and insufferable prick he was. And a famous incident where he walked in on some serious class a drug abuse and denounced me as a "glue sniffer"!

sympathies as far as you want em, man

am wondering nkw about mookies dads house

Thanks D, but nah - I was genuinely upset when my paternal grandma died, but not that tosser at all.

I am that cool parent. Though that claim admittedly is somewhat blown out of the water by the sandwiching of Lady Antebellum between Fela Kuti and Kendrick Lamar on my iPod. I'm sorry, I like 'Need You Now' (and some other tracks)!

Well I think this is cool! So: I randomly discovered the other day that as part of a wider oral history project on Carmel, California, the folks behind the project interviewed someone with history in the town back to when he was a small kid -- my dad! It's an hour long, on camera (the preview image is just that), and hey, some might find it interesting! At the least check out the opening story where he talks about trick or treating at Robinson Jeffers's Tor House as a kid with his friend Ned -- and yes, that's who I'm named after.

https://vimeo.com/1008221100

for a hot minute my dad was kinda cool. He picked up Chet Baker and his first wife in the late 50's at the airport, to play a show at Humboldt State Univ where my dad was involved in the jazz club. He drove them around to look at rural property, which Chet had expressed an interest in. He also picked up Dave Brubeck as well

My poor parents were already raising me and my three siblings on a pittance before "The Birth of the Cool" was released, so they never had much of a chance to level up.

My dad was really in to Dylan’s “Self Portrait” and had no idea of its reputation. He used to sing “get you a copper kettle” to my mom before I was born. I feel like that epitomizes my dad’s coolness level.

I was jamming on some Ramsey Lewis recently and he mentioned going to see him when he was in college at NC State. That actually shocked me bc his interest in black music and jazz has always been near zero.

He also voted for Trump twice which is extremely not cool

That’s neat, Ned. I need to do that with my folks before it’s too late

I love that he was happy with the renovation of the house his dad built. We recently renovated our house which was owned by the same family for over 60 years. I would love for the three sisters (who were raised there and sold it to us) to say something similar

My dad claimed that, while working as a young waiter in a Hamburg bar frequented by many actors, he was once propositioned by a Fassbinder regular (sadly I have forgotten which one).

He also lead a student strike for his class at age 13, taking to the streets shouting "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!" to protest the war in Vietnam. I always get this mental image of some govt agent breathlessly informing Johnson "Mr President Mr President the high schoolers in Hamburg have come out against the war!"

I think my mum's biggest claim to coolness is that when she handed in her thesis on Immanuel Kant her supervisor was "well I didn't really get any of that but I'm assuming it's good".

So long as they keep their mouths shut about politics, mine are pretty damn cool, still mixing drinks and traveling and shopping for the latest clothes and in good health and making mordant observations about people.

My dad claimed that, while working as a young waiter in a Hamburg bar frequented by many actors, he was once propositioned by a Fassbinder regular (sadly I have forgotten which one).

Hoping it was Hanna Schygulla.

Haha no, def a dude. Exact gambit was "wanna blow me in the bathroom later on?". Dad politely declined.

Hm. I don't think of my parents as cool, but they've won their lives and their intersections with the 20th century are... interesting?

My father was born at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during (and because of) the Manhattan Project. So we're already at the nexus of secrecy, explosions, and of unseen long-term radioactivity.

There is a character in John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic who shares my name - the character is that of my great-uncle.

Unfortunately my father is a fabulist and not to be trusted on any aspect of family history. He will calmly mix bullshit in with verifiable facts, in a way that is impossible to untangle.

His Vietnam War stories usually end with him outnumbered, armed only with a banana. Useless. Especially when one finds out, from others, what actually happened.

To be continued.

Some years ago I bought a mandolin because I'd been watching too much Jools Holland. Long story.

My mother emailed me to point out that her father played the mandolin, which I didn't know.

My mother and her brothers had played fairs around Missouri as a novelty child folk trio (guitar, fiddle, mando). They did "Wreck of the Old 97."

Anyway the part I did not know was about Mel Bay. For a long time if an American child knew how to play an instrument (guitar, harmonica, banjo) it was partly because of Mel Bay.

Anyway it turns out my grandfather played mandolin in a duo with Mel, and he shows up in a Bay biography; I think I once had a copy.

Epilog: My father, it turns out, had been a medic.

From there is another story for another time.

My dad isn't really cool, he is an old folkie who tends to re-tell jokes / anecdotes we've all heard before, but he's still a genuinely lovely guy who just naturally charms everyone. I made a Desert Island Discs with him recently for his birthday - https://www.mixcloud.com/centuries_of_sound/mark-errington-desert-island-discs/

He is right this moment undergoing heart surgery, it's as low-risk as heart surgery gets (a valve replacement) but I am still unable to focus on anything else until I get word from my stepmother that he's ok.

YMP, if you can't fabulize about your origins, what can you fabulize?

Excellent point, Alfred.

That said, a long-dead grandfather (I never met either of mine) is also a safe place to gather a lot of colorful anecdotes.

My maternal grandfather died so young and so tragically that he naturally attracts mythologizing. No idea if any of this is true but:

He is said to have had an idle fantasy of running a newspaper, so he... bought one. A very small one in a very small town. You could do that in the 30s: a failing newspaper could be sold at auction for like a dollar.* And one person could be owner/editor/publisher and be home for supper.

He rode a horse to work, with a dog running alongside it. The dog slept under the desk. One time he was reporting on union corruption, and some hard men came to the office to threaten him out of running the story. The dog woke up and startled them out of it.

This is the fellow who played the mandolin with Mel Bay; he worked in public relations for Magic Chef before joining the Navy.

In Philadelphia he bought a house built of schist (you know, the metamorphic rock) and taught his children to tell people (very primly) that they lived in a schist house.

It's way too late to verify or disprove; there's no reason not to embellish the stories.

Camaraderie, hope you hear from your stepmother soon! That DID thing sounds lovely, will give a listen.

Thanks Daniel, he is awake now and seems to have gone well.

I made a mix of some of my dad's faves once, after he had passed, unlikely to feature anything that's a revelation to ILXors but hey

https://www.mixcloud.com/Reifferschizzle/songs-from-my-father/

Oh damn, for some reason I thought this one only about dads. Sorry mom.

My mom is kind of crazy but def awesome. She’s the type that talks before she thinks which leads to some batshit conversations. She’s always been liberal but so disconnected from the news and politics that she relies on my dad which was a bad idea. That was until George Floyd was murdered. It fucked her up. She’s always been religious but she left the church she attended with my dad and found one doing community work, especially when it came to supporting the black community. She helped start a book club where they would read the anti-racist books that were coming out at the time due to the rampant police violence. When a teacher in the area was almost fired for teaching Ta-Nahisi Coates’ “between the world and me” my mom showed up to support her. Turns out TNC showed up too. My mom chatted with him and wound being mentioned in his most recent book.

Most importantly she spent a career teaching disabled kids and gave all she had to it. Even after she retired she would have former students out to the house to entertain them. She has a very big heart which is cool as shit imo

Oh damn, for some reason I thought this one only about dads. Sorry mom.

My mom is kind of crazy but def awesome. She’s the type that talks before she thinks which leads to some batshit conversations. She’s always been liberal but so disconnected from the news and politics that she relies on my dad which was a bad idea. That was until George Floyd was murdered. It fucked her up. She’s always been religious but she left the church she attended with my dad and found one doing community work, especially when it came to supporting the black community. She helped start a book club where they would read the anti-racist books that were coming out at the time due to the rampant police violence. When a teacher in the area was almost fired for teaching Ta-Nahisi Coates’ “between the world and me” my mom showed up to support her. Turns out TNC showed up too. My mom chatted with him and wound being mentioned in his most recent book.

Most importantly she spent a career teaching disabled kids and gave all she had to it. Even after she retired she would have former students out to the house to entertain them. She has a very big heart which is cool as shit imo