by Jen Logan | Mar 10, 2025 | Parenting, Punk Rock
I have to take a minute to brag about the bravest girl I know. My daughter, Riley was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) in the fall of 2023 after months of experiencing symptoms. We took her to the pediatrician after she told us she had been getting light headed for three months every time she stood up. My kid is a little bit like me, and ignores her body when it is trying to tell her something. When we finally got her in with the nurse practitioner at our pediatrician’s office, she had no idea what to do. They drew blood which was a traumatic experience for my kid and sent us to specialists. The pediatric cardiologist performed tests and diagnosed her with POTS which is classified as an autoimmune disorder.
Both my kid and I had been reading about POTS since she told me about her symptoms and it was validating for her to get the diagnosis. What sucked most was that she had been an athletic kid, playing field hockey, lacrosse, tennis and basketball and had become unable to play due to all of the running after standing up quickly. This didn’t seem to bother her one bit since she had been juggling sports with theater for a few years by that time. Instead of being angry about her condition, she found people online that she could connect with due to their common diagnosis of POTS. Most of these people were much older than her because it does not normally present itself until late adolescence. She found a woman who wrote funny songs about POTS and used humor to cope which was perfect for my little comedian. Riley was cast in a significant role in the high school’s production as a seventh grade student that year. She knocked it out of the park her first night, but had to leave during intermission on the second night due to POTS symptoms. My heart broke for her since she loved theater so much. I thought she might quit, but she didn’t. She leaned in harder.
Over the course of the school year she struggled to focus, had vertigo daily and nausea on a regular basis. Instead of whining about it, she sat in her room, played guitar and wrote a television script, all while maintaining good grades. She jumped back into music and joined a band through Detroit School of Rock and Pop. She got on stage for the first time in a real band a little over a year after her diagnosis.
Two months later, she tried out for the school play for the second time with girls from her middle school and upper school, and boys from a partnering all boy high school. She set her heart on a role due to the fact that the character was a villain and so over the top, but completely out of her comfort zone – Mrs. Wormwood (Matilda the Musical). And she got the role. As a mother, when my kid is happy, I am happy, and she is happiest when she is around her people which are theater kids. She has been participating in theater camps and community theater since she was 6 years old and she has made friends from different schools and of all ages. I had faith that she would crush the role, no matter what, but I had no idea just how much she was willing to put herself out there.
I did not see many of the rehearsals until a few days before the performance, but I had heard her walking around the house sounding a lot like Patsy Stone. I knew she had the attitude and the accent down, but I had no idea just how much she was able to get into character until the day before the first show when she came out of her room looking like Jenny Bui had done her nails. I knew she had a few wardrobe changes but I had only seen one of the costumes. The first time I saw her in her hot pink flapper dress was after they rolled her onstage in a wheelchair. Seeing my thirteen year old daughter rolled out with a giant baby bump made me both laugh and scream. She had transformed from the little girl playing dress up with my scarves into a 30 year old woman with a smart mouth, a head full of cotton candy instead of brains, and the vocabulary of a carnival worker. “OH BLOODY HELL!!” may be her new nickname.
For the next two hours I laughed and cried, and wondered how did this child come from me. She has her dad’s talent for sure, and apparently she has my attitude of “who cares what anyone thinks”. Nothing is going to stop this kid from doing what she loves. No challenge is going to get in her way. I am so proud that she lives in her heart so much and knows that her brain and body are the materials she uses to achieve her dreams. I can’t explain how much a gift it was to me to watch my child on the same stage I stood on over 40 years ago and own it in a way I never would have had the courage to do. Thank you Riley for letting me be your mom and come along for this ride. You are a shining star and I will forever be your biggest cheerleader.
For your listening pleasure: Loud from Matilda the Musical
by Jen Logan | Feb 15, 2025 | Being Awesome, Punk Rock
I had the most amusing conversation with a man in the parking lot of a strip mall last week. I was walking out of Michael’s carrying a bag of crafts I probably don’t need and a black and white checkered pot when a man approached me in the parking lot with his hands full of electronics. “Where’s the UPS store?” he asked as he propped up what looked like a stereo on his knee. I must have looked like I had all the answers in the world with my Misfits hoodie and reading glasses perched on top of my unwashed hair. “There isn’t a UPS store in this plaza.” I said as I walked closer to my car. “Well why did Google maps send me here then?” he asked. Clearly this man DID think I had all the answers in the world, so I told him “I don’t know. Probably the same reason it’s now calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about.” to which he replied “Oh come on, it is the Gulf of America!” At that point I knew I was dealing with an asshat so I told him “there are three UPS stores around here. I’m sure you can figure it out smart guy” and got in my car. I watched him waddle back to his truck with his hands full and try to open the door with one hand while balancing the load with his other arm. I was reminded of something my mom has said – “you can’t fix stupid” and I agree, but sometimes you can play with it.
I have been approached in parking lots multiple times by people asking for directions and I always stop and help them, because they normally begin with something like “excuse me” or “sorry to bother you”. I have also stopped in parking lots to help people who couldn’t load their groceries into their car due to a disability, or taken a cart back to the return when I saw a woman with a baby was trying to decide if she could leave the child alone for those ten seconds because I have been there too. I like to think that my judge of character is pretty spot on and it was in this case. My guess is this guy was trying to make an Amazon return and Google maps was sending him to the Kohl’s where there is an Amazon drop off. Who knows, he may still be driving around, stopping random strangers and demanding they fix his problem, or maybe he called his wife at home and asked for her to help. Not my monkeys, not my circus. I did get a really cool planter out of the trip and a little amusement as well. You really can’t fix stupid.
**Of course I was listening to some fabulous female punk rock while I drove away from Mr. directionally challenged. Check out VIAL if you haven’t already.**
by Jen Logan | Feb 8, 2025 | Life, Punk Rock
I’m beginning to think some character traits skip a generation. My grandmother used to make up words for things and I do that pretty frequently. Although she used words like “crunkles” to describe crumbs on her clothes and I tend to say things like “son of a seabiscuit” when trying not to swear in front of small children. We both called underwear “bunders” and I am sure she had some made up words for vagina since I only heard her ever call a penis a “jaholacker”.
My Dad and my daughter have a lot more similarities than my grandma and I ever did, but mislabeling things is definitely one of them. My dad called my husband to come over and help him install a “toilet topper” last week and my husband thought he needed help with the top of the toilet tank until they talked a little more and he realized it was the term my dad used for the cabinet that went above the toilet. Six months ago my daughter had asked to borrow a suit jacket and called it a suit topper. We have since called all blazers and suit jackets just that. She picks up a lot of weird little things from him, like eating unidentified food found in a couch cushion or using knives with no cutting board, but the vocabulary she picks up has to be my favorite. Those two are certainly cut from the same cloth.
*I wrote this while listening to some good old fashioned truth speakers – RATM.
by Jen Logan | Jan 25, 2025 | Being Awesome, Life, Punk Rock
This has been a hard week. Since the inauguration on Monday the majority of my therapy clients have been struggling with increased depression and anxiety, afraid for their future and the future of our country. Although working in mental health has been the most rewarding career I have had in my life, weeks like these can be challenging.
It doesn’t help that I wanted to see the news coverage of the inauguration events and as I watched, my daughter walked in while our newly elected president was speaking about his predecessor like a schoolyard bully behind the podium. In the three minutes that she watched he had said he was going to bring down the prices of everything and then talked about placing tariffs on products and my thirteen year old said “wait, he said he’s lowering the cost of goods but is setting up tariffs. Won’t that make the cost of goods go up?” I’m simultaneously proud of my daughter for her grasp of economics and horrified that she is watching the president stand before an audience and spit out words that his actions clearly contradict. I’m happy to say I turned it off before Elon Musk sieg heiled the audience. Don’t even get me started about that little demonstration where the world’s richest man tried to blame the media for misrepresenting him while hate groups spread the clip announcing their new hero. If his intention was not in fact a to make a racist gesture, why not just say so instead of igniting the flames of speculation? It’s probably a little harder to deny once you look up countless antisemitic statements he has made in the past.
When 1,500 terrorists were released back onto the street I started looking up names. Can we get some kind of registry for these guys like the sex offender registry? I’m guessing since the man who let them out is trying to ignore the fact that they are violent criminals, and turn them into victims makes me think this is not gong to be something that happens. We used to have our government keeping an eye on terrorist groups like the proud boys and oath keepers, but now they are being pardoned by our president and sent home as heroes. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with our country? The man who is in charge of the Pentagon has a giant racist tattoo on his chest, has been fired from multiple jobs for financial mismanagement and showing up to work drunk, has a history of violence against women, and served in the army reserve, but is somehow qualified to run our military.
I’m watching executive orders roll out and trying to remind myself that these are the same kinds of promises I get from my daughter when she promises to clean her bathroom or empty the dishwasher. Apparently the government can now say there are two sexes when we all know that just isn’t the case. I had to laugh when I saw Caitlin Jenner’s congratulations to the president. I wonder what she’ll think when people start calling her Bruce and forcing her to use the men’s room at restaurants. I would like to keep the MAGAs out of my public restrooms since they seem to be awfully concerned about my genitals. Next time I see a woman in the public restroom at the mall with her little red hat I’m going to ask that security makes sure she is a woman first before letting her in.
I have to wonder what kind of president orders the Constitution of the United States of America to be removed from the White House website and sends ICE with CIA agents to an elementary school to scare small children. He’s already attaching strings to federal relief funds to help with the wildfires because their governor has different political views, and trying to remove the 14th Amendment from the Constitution. Can you imagine if a liberal president took office and issued an order that contradicted the 2nd Amendment? He’s been screaming “FAKE NEWS” forever and I kind of have to agree with him at this point after multiple interviews have gone on the air with all of his false claims being unchecked. I remember having parental warnings for “mature content” on television as a kid and I think at this point they should probably be on the news channels. I stopped watching anything Donny was on when he made fun of a handicapped reporter, and it’s viewed in my house pretty infrequently, but I’m afraid to have my kid see it at my parents’ house where Fox News is a household staple. I have a vivid memory of going to a Christmas party where I saw my racist grandfather and joking we could rile him up by telling him I had a black boyfriend. The thought of telling my kid to do the same thing but with a girlfriend breaks my heart.
I’m seeing a lot of posts about learning who your neighbors are, and I can tell you I am doing just that. We have the kind of patriots around the corner with a flagpole in their front yard where the flag was never at half mast after Jimmy Carter’s death, and I can see deer heads through the window so I’ll be sure to see if they were just pardoned and released from a federal prison. I was thinking about putting a flagpole in our front yard to fly a pride flag because I think you could see it from the freeway, but my husband thinks it might be a wasted effort since the view isn’t as clear as I think it is. My thought is we’ll not know until we try it, so maybe that will be a good summer project.
I have turned off the news for the sake of my own sanity, but still stay plugged in to NPR and Politico. I have a new book to read and am listening to lots of punk rock music while writing client notes so at least the weekend should be good!
by Jen Logan | Jul 13, 2023 | Being Awesome, Punk Rock
Multiple day music festivals are more common than crop tops on pre-teens these days, but when I was a young music fan, there was no such thing. The first time I went to a show with more than three bands and one stage was Lollapalooza in 1991. My memories are limited, but include being among the 100 people actually stoked to see Henry Rollins before breakfast and a girl getting hit in the head with a lime and barfing next to me on a blanket. I do remember that Butthole Surfers and Jane’s Addiction both played and had stellar sets. From there, I went on to many more Lollapaloozas, Warped Tours and Tibetan Freedom Concerts (thanks Aunt Sue). Multiple Day music festivals became one of the highlights of my summers and sometimes whole years. Somewhere along the line I got too old or too lame to spend three days in the sun trying to soak up boob sweat while keeping my hair from gluing itself to my face. I’m going to blame this on my husband since the last festival I attended was Milwaukee Metalfest a few years before we got married where a guy in my party stole King Diamond’s hat and wore it in the van on the way home. Granted, I was working at that show manning a merch booth and babysitting a bunch of drunk musicians, so that could have been why I quit going to festivals, but it took until my daughter was 5 to get back to one. My little punk rock girl went to her first true festival to see one band play – The Interrupters at Warped Tour 2016.
I had been trying to get my husband to take me to Punk Rock Bowling since my kiddo’s first punk show, but his idea of a good vacation does not include standing in the sun with sweaty dudes, while avoiding drunk 20 year old girls spilling beer on our shoes for three days. Sometimes I have to ask – who did I marry?!? When I saw the lineup for 2023 and knew we weren’t going to see the Interrupters in Detroit this year I talked him into getting tickets since I knew it was the one band that would get him to go. So we jumped on a plane with a suitcase full of band Ts and Chuck Taylors to stay in the most degenerate buttcrack of the US in Downtown Las Vegas. You heard me, not the strip, the old, lawless, anything goes, Freemont Street, Las Vegas.
We arrived at the Golden Nugget just in time to see some showgirls try to get a skinny kid with a pink mohawk to take some photos with them and a man who looked like he just crawled out of a sewer get dragged out of the casino across the street. My daughter had her first viewing of a homeless man on PCP getting talked down by the police on the street, roving bachelorette party girls with glowing dick highball glasses and boas, and the entire cast of Chippendales dancers all in one evening. We had a lot of nice chats that night about how the police were doing good work at handling hard situations, how people make money dancing half naked, how bad choices and bad luck sometimes come together in a perfect storm and people end up asking for money in the streets, and how half our country is worried about something so innocent as drag queens reading books to their kids. We also got to see an old punk smoking weed outside of our hotel and being a dick to a nice family walking by, and I had to point out that even old punks can be assholes. We’re not all perfect.
But on to the music… Day one highlights were seeing the Interrupters and Bad Religion. I also got to see Fishbone whom I have not seen in 25 years and Me First & the Gimme Gimmes who are both hilarious and talented. Although we didn’t get as close to the stage as I would normally get, we were able to get up close and personal with Greg Gaffin earlier in the day while he was doing book signings and we were picking up merch that I pre-ordered. I have to say, for me watching the Interrupters is always amazing but watching my kid see them from her first time as a five year old with only about 20 people watching to now with a huge crowd singing all of their songs along with them is one of my favorite things to watch. She no longer lets me film her singing along like she did at five years old, but I did manage to get a stealthy little clip which I promised not to share with anyone publicly ever. My kid has grown up with this band as they have grown, so they will always be something special for me.
Day two was a later start for us since we didn’t care about seeing most of the early line up, so we swam with sharks at the hotel pool for a bit before doing some damage at the vendor booths and food trucks. I’m pretty sure my husband ate his body weight in dumplings and my kid drank about 400 watermelon slushies while I bought a few more band Ts and punk rock crew socks. We did manage to catch Face to Face, GBH, the Damned and of course Rancid. I’m pretty sure my kid has a crush on Tim Armstrong and she never even saw him in his prime. The girl has good taste though. He is a talented musician, artist and all around good human for doing all he does to help young bands grow and keep punk rock alive. The kids got so excited up front that they caved in the barricade and Rancid had to take a break while security got it fixed. The good thing about this is we got to do a little single along acoustic with Tim and make friends with our neighbors in the crowd, who were all fun and respectful of each other. My daughter and an intoxicated 30 year old made fast friends singing and dancing all night. There was even a little mini punk rocker in the pit with his dad having fun. This was also the night that we stopped by the Punk Rock Saves Lives booth to chat about their organization. They were swabbing people to donate bone marrow, which I am already on the list for, but it was great to learn more about their organization and how they help in their community. Mental health is one of their platforms and as a mental health professional, working with adolescents struggling with self-esteem, peer pressure, drug and alcohol exposure, social media and hormones, I wanted to hear how they are helping. They are a great organization, making positive changes in communities, and I couldn’t agree more with the statement that punk rock saves lives. It saved mine for sure.
Day three was a lot of me dragging my family around to see bands they didn’t care about seeing, like L7 and Agnostic Front until Dropkick Murphys played and brought the house down. I did get to show my daughter the difference between a punk rock pit that’s fun and safe and a hardcore pit full of dudes with anger issues that she should avoid getting close to during Agnostic Front’s set. I had not seen Dropkick Murphys live, and they blew me away. Ken Casey is a force to be reconned with and the band is full of talent from bagpipes to strings. Ken does a lot of talking between songs which I love and we learned that he was going to be a special ed teacher before punk rock sucked him in full time. We were lucky enough to get a view of some of the artwork being auctioned off by their Claddagh Fund earlier in the day and he shared that over $14,000 was raised to help addicts make their way to treatment centers that weekend. You gotta love that a bunch of people passed up the beer tent to buy art and help someone in need. Another great example of punk rock saving lives.
I was surprised at how well my kid held up over the four days in Vegas. She didn’t complain much or get herself worked into a little anxious ball like she tends to do with new things. She rolled with the punches and had a good time. She met new weirdos who accepted her with open arms, with all her awkward tweeness, and she danced and sang along with abandon. I expect in a few years I’ll have to drag her out of the pit when it’s time to leave, but I was happy she wanted to hang out with us and that she still stole my shoes to wear herself instead of being embarrassed by them. She even asked if we could come back next year. I told her as long as the Interrupters are playing….
**It took me over a month to write this because in that month we lost a cat, gained a cat and sold our house. It’s been a month, but I’ve been listening to a lot of punk rock to keep me sane – mostly this:
by Jen Logan | Sep 14, 2022 | Being Awesome, Punk Rock
My mom took my kid shopping a month ago and tried to buy her a Bob Marley sweatshirt. My daughter thought about it for a second and said she couldn’t wear it since she couldn’t name three Bob Marley songs. Some parents have rules about playing with matches and screen time. We have rules about what bands you can sport on your chest. Most of my daughter’s band shirts have either come directly from concerts or from me and I have always only bought her shirts of bands she actually knows well. This goes back to her first band T at age two. At the time she liked three bands so I had the choice between Black Flag, Devo and Sublime. She attended her first concert at age three and picked up a Vampire Weekend tank top that she still have stuffed in a drawer somewhere, and she has had at least a half dozen shirts from her favorite band, the Interrupters who she has seen every time they have come through Detroit. I distinctly remember her walking through the gates at Disney World and the age of three wearing a KISS shirt and schooling the attendant when he questioned her knowledge of the band. And that guy is exactly why she has to know and love a band before she can wear their merch.
I have come to realize I may have created a monster. Within the first two days of school she had questioned each of her friends about band shirts they were wearing. Only one of the girls (a Green Day fan) could name three songs from the bands they advertised on their chests. After the first day of field hockey practice she jumped in the car and proclaimed a girl on the team was wearing a Rolling Stones shirt and she knew the girl didn’t even know who the band was. It made sense to me after seeing an advertisement for a trendy store that sells old punk band shirts on their website. I had to explain to my kiddo that she might see a variety of classmates walking around in Pink Floyd shirts because they liked the logo. I told her that she can’t get in everyone’s face yelling “name three songs!!” or her friends will think she’s an asshole. She responded with “well, you do that” and I think we both see that I proved my point…
*Listening to a music snob while writing about a music snob might be music snobbery at it’s finest…
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