Tonight during hoops, Curtis had some new found knowledge of Lady Gaga to share, so thanks to Jamie for that. Here is Curtis' unfiltered, unsolicited take on Lady Gaga. I did not fact check this so...I guess he is right.

"I didn't like Lady GaGa until I went bowling. Her first hit was "Just Dance". She is older than Taylor Swift. Taylor is 21. Taylor Swift is actually her first album. Lady GaGa put out albums when she was 23, and 24, and 25. Her name is Stephanie Germanatta. She will put out another album when she is 27. She can do like....one a year or something like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books come out like once a year. She has an inappropriate video named Judas, and wears bad outfits in the video, so I shouldn't watch it but, I don't think there's swears in the video, though. I should just watch the hits, right? You should watch "Born This Way", dad" . It's on demand, you know"

Greg, Dad
Curtis


      This blog entry takes me back to the entry titled “7:28 is not 7:30” and reminds me about Curtis’ need for stability and predictability. At the beginning of this summer, Curtis wanted to me to choose to do the same thing every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so that he would know what would happen each week. While I have cut him a lot of slack this summer, I was not willing to give him predictable adventures. In July, the Portland Red Claws started a summer kid’s concert series, which I have brought Curtis to every week. This past Thursday the weather report was grim so I decided we would do something other than a summer kids concert. Curtis is a busy kid and if there is something to do in the Greater Portland area for kids we have already done it. I looked outside our usual scope and saw that the Maine Aquarium had re-opened so I texted Laura about it before heading over. Curtis naturally did not want to go because it was something new and not the Thursday kid’s concert.

      After convincing Curtis to go, we hopped in the car for the hour and a half trip. I had been hiding my Lady Gaga CD's from Curtis because I agree she is not exactly the most age appropriate role model for him and I don’t quite know how to explain an unexplainable woman to someone who wants concrete answers. I do not know why she wore a meat dress and I do not know why she arrived at the Grammy's in a golden egg. The first thing out of his mouth when we got in the car was “Did you find the Born This Way album yet?” With Curtis it is all about a give and take balance, he had given and agreed to go to the aquarium, it was not my turn to give a little and let him listen to Lady Gaga. He wanted to look at the liner notes while we listened so I gave a quick look at the pictures and agreed. I found out she uses the word b**** once in that album and once in The Fame Monster album pretty quickly. Curtis wanted to know about every song and if there were videos. I answered and told him which ones had videos and that her videos were generally inappropriate for children. “Why?” “Because she wears inappropriate outfits.” “Why like what?” “They are just bad and you don’t need to see them.” “Well I’m going to look them up when my parents aren’t around and I’ll decide if they are inappropriate.”

        Curtis then wanted to know if her first name was Lady and her second name was Gaga. I told him no, that was her stage name, another difficult concept to explain to him, and that I knew her first name was Stephanie. Liner notes in hand he found her full name. Curtis likes to know how old people were when different things happened. “I don’t know,” isn’t an acceptable answer. I told him she was 25 now so he asked if the other CDs came out when she was 23 and 24. At this point I was winding around narrow coastal roads I was unfamiliar with so my answers to his inquires generally became “Yes.” At most times I try not to just agree with him because the world is full of “I don’t knows”, but in this situation he was already anxious about the aquarium so I relented and agreed that Lady Gaga was 23 when her first CD came out and that she would put out another when she was 27. It is interesting to see that Curtis, who likes concrete facts, regurgitated this information with his own spin, slightly different from the “facts” I gave him.

Jamie, Home Support