There's more news out about Jack White's impending fatherhood. Turns out the hot model wife of the man behind the White Stripes, Karen Elson, will give birth to an extremely white, unstriped infant sometime this spring. This, according to Kurt Loder's crack team of reporters at MTV News. Given the fact that we're moving to Detroit next year and I'm planning to be a SAHD, I have a few months to plot a way to get in on playdates with Jack and Karen and their inevitably strangely-named son or daughter. Can you picture the nursery that kid is going to have?

I can just imagine ringing the doorbell at Jack White's Detroit mansion and having him answer the door pale and creepy like a cross between Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka and Gary Oldman's Dracula. He'd lead Juniper and I into the depths of his turreted castle, providing dry, docent-like commentary such as, "Ty Cobb once held Negro-dwarf-tossing contests in the parlour with Honus Wagner," before opening the gigantic red-and-white striped door to the nursery. It will take at least a minute before all the wonderment sets in: a herd of taxidermed zebras and ten foot peppermint lollipops and candycanes and that moppet from Jerry Maguire riding around on a cheerful orangutan wearing a nehru suit and a gigantic animatronic lego-block Jack that takes requests for any of the songs from White Blood Cells while playing behind him on a twelve-foot screen is hilarious home-video footage Jack has taken of Meg stumbling around with a bottle of Jack Daniels in her grip.

And that's just the foyer of the nursery. The next room would be completely pillowed and upholstered to look like a giant Piet Mondrian painting and contain a full-sized reproduction of Patsy Cline's tour bus filled with Mariachi musicians from Mexicantown playing old Blind Willie McTell, Leadbelly, and Stooges songs like lullabies. "No fun, my babe, no fun. . ." they'll sing while a troupe of tiny, cute mechanical owls like Bubo from Clash Of the Titans whirl above our heads. Do you think Jack will push a bugaboo? Hell no, he'll have some eighteenth century Prussian carriage modified to be pulled around Detroit by miniature ponies whipped by a surly dwarf who looks like Erich von Stroheim with an eyepatch.

Now you see why I have to come up with a plan. I know Eminem lives in Detroit and he's got a kid or two too but I'm sure his house just looks like anything you'd see on Cribs. Jack White's house, on the other hand, would probably make the set of Lidsville look like an Art Van showroom.

But seriously, I would be pretty excited to go bjorn to bjorn with Jack White at the Eastern Market some day. We've enjoyed his music. When Wood and I lived in Ann Arbor we used to go to White Stripes shows back when Jack was just a muscley frat boy with a puka-shell necklace who loved the blues. In 1999 we saw them play at the Detroit Institute of Art in the Diego Rivera mural room for $1.00. It was "family night at the DIA" and there were all kinds of buttoned-up conservative types there with their elementary-aged kids and all of Jack's many nieces and nephews were running around among the ironic-t-shirted hipsters. Is there a more kid-friendly serious rock band out there today? Who needs the Wiggles when you have songs like "Apple Blossom" and "We're Going To Be Friends" and "My doorbell"? A few years ago, Jack White even let himself be interviewed by a five-year old kid named Lucas who believed "that Jack White is 10 years old and making up those songs for him and his friends." My favorite excerpts:

Lucas: I was listening to "Little Room" and I was thinking that in a little room you can have your favorite stuff and your good friends but in a bigger room you can have more stuff but more people will be in it too and you can't know them all and some of the are probably in the big room only because it is big and they think they're suppose to be there just because the room is big.
Jack White:I think you're absolutely right about the big room. You're a pretty smart kid. It took me years to figure that out.

. . .
Lucas: Where did you get your red shoes?
Jack White: I got the red shoes from a fan of the band.
Lucas: Are you mad at the color blue?
Jack White: I don't hate the color blue...
Lucas: Do you have to wear good clothes on Easter?
Jack White: Actually, I wore a blue suit on Easter. . .


. . .
Lucas: If "there is no true love". . .how did you "fall in love with a girl"?
Jack White: You'll find out when you get older. If I told you now it would spoil it.


Now that's a celebrity whose baby I can get excited about.