Glow sticks are the perfect way to keep your child safe… while still making an indirect comment about the state of the music industry.

Hello, Barry? It’s Irene. No, don’t “Irene who” me, Barry, it’s your ex-wife Irene. Yeah, THAT Irene, exactly. The one raising your kid. Your kid who is currently trying to shave a bald spot into the top of her head so that she can go trick-or-treating as “a raver who didn’t know when to quit.”

Barry, I don’t care how many times you turned down Pitchfork when they begged you to write for them, this is our daughter! And maybe you see a pack of twenty four 4” Glow Sticks as some post-ironic way to make a statement about why Nirvana is more important than Kanye West or something… no, Barry, that wasn’t an invitation to start explaining things to me because I don’t care. What I care about is keeping our daughter safe on Halloween, and that’s why I bought these glow sticks in the first place!

They’re easy to activate, and they all have lanyards and a hanger so I can tie them to her jacket or just let her hold them, and then I can see her from the other side of the lawn. I figured they might also be fun for slumber parties and- Barry, look, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter that Lady Gaga is just following the imagery previously laid out by David Bowie, nobody cares about that, Barry. Do you know what your daughter wanted to be two weeks ago? A fairy princess! And then you took her to that record fair and she comes home talking about, hang on, what did you say, darling? Oh, right, thank you, she said she wants to “explore a KLF-like deconstruction of the concept of past-its-prime Detroit Techno in an era when sampling has rendered genre obsolete.” Yes, I fully believe that YOU don’t see anything wrong with that idea, Barry, but she’s eight! EIGHT! For her, twenty four glow sticks shouldn’t be deconstructing anything! They should just be plain and simple fun!

Look, seriously, I. Do. Not. Care what Lester Bangs would have said about this. Just tell your daughter you think it’s okay that she wants to dress up like a fairy princess and let her have a Halloween without losing all her friends. No, Barry, it doesn’t matter how you justify it to yourself as a critic. Put on a copy of Lionheart or something. Just get it done, okay? Okay, thank you. I’ll bring her by after dinner so you can talk. We’ll see you then, Barry. Goodbye.

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