Future Grammy Winners: KATOMAH!

Their first album cover, masterfully Photoshopped by Yours Truly. (In my artistic defense, I beg you to consider what I had to work with...)

Anyone who knows Daddy Shortbread knows that he's always harbored the dream of being a rock drummer. It comes up in conversation, oh, about 200 times a year. "Someday... I'd really like to get a drum set," he muses with a dreamy look in his eye. My usual response to this is silence. Or I ask him if he's paid the water bill yet. Sometimes I hum in a distracted manner, like I'm not really listening.. If he's really persistent, I shut him down with, "Yeah, you'll have to save that for your second wife, buster."

Imagine my surprise when my brother bought my family Wii Rock Band for Christmas, and suddenly there is a drum set in prominent residence in my not-large living room. (Brother? Hey, I'm sorry about dressing you in my big doll's clothes when you were a toddler. And for making you go get the ball when it rolled under the bushes against that brick wall with all the spiders when I knew you were afraid of spiders. Really. Um, are we cool now?)

As Daddy Shortbread unpacked the white plastic drum set with eager hands, he remarked, quite seriously I might add, "I've gone about as far as I can drumming with pencils. This will really take it to the next level for me." Then he and the girls proceeded to rock out. Loudly and with great enthusiasm.

They named their band KATOMAH, a blend of their three names. Daddy Shortbread on drums, natch. He refused to let the girls even try them out, pretending to be all fatherly, saying, "Just let me figure them out first, and then I'll be able to help you." Uh-huh.

Here we have Edith Bunker - I mean Bug, on vocals. Sorry, the wet stringy hair and massive pink bathrobe had me fooled there for a minute. She's well on her way to MTV glory; look how she's already working the camera angles.Bear was the only one who even came close to projecting any kind of rock sensibility. With her grave concentration on the music, hair that slid forward to cover one eye, and you know, actual clothes, I could almost buy that she's a rock bassist. Except for the part about her being eleven-years-old, which would definitely interfere with her being let into many of the venues that up-and-coming bands tend to play. Finally (and reluctantly), Daddy Shortbread relenquished the drum set. I had to fix him with the Guilt-Inducing Spousal Death Stare before he finally moved aside to give the girls a shot at drumming. He took over the mic and did a screamingly emo rendition of "I Think I'm Paranoid" by Garbage that had the girls playing through helpless giggles. I took a moment to make a mental inventory of how many migraine pills I have left on this prescription.
I'm just going to file this little nugget of photographic goodness away for a rainy day. I predict it will come in mighty handy some day, like when I need Daddy Shortbread to dig me a new flowerbed or haul topsoil around on a hot summer day. Or if I someday need to prove his mental instability. Hey, you never know.