Amon-ra St. Brown sits in the backseat, silently flipping through his iPhone and waiting for his turn to control the music. His father makes the rules, and if he's driving, which John Brown often is, then he's sure as heck going to torture the kid while he still can.
So, Foreigner's greatest hits it is.
As John directs the family's black SUV north from Anaheim to Los Angeles, he has no problem conjuring the falsetto required for "Hot Blooded."
John has been thinking about this moment for weeks, what it would feel like. Now that it is here, he tries to keep the mood light.
"USC!" he says. "Last one. ... Oh my God, this is crazy."
Move-in day for the Trojans' highly touted freshman class awaits at the end of this drive. The anticipation grows when word reaches Amon-ra, a five-star wide receiver out of Santa Ana Mater Dei High, that Julio Jones and Terrell Owens are working out at USC's practice field on this Friday morning in June. Hopefully, Amon-ra will get a chance to meet them and get some pointers.
"How old is Julio?" John inquires about the Atlanta Falcons star receiver.
Amon-ra Googles.
"29," he says.
"Antonio Brown?"
"29."
"Dez Bryant?"
"29."
"A.J. Green?"
"29."
John is on to something.
"I didn't know those guys were close to 30," he says. "They need a new wave of young wide receivers."
He has just the guys.
There's Equanimeous St. Brown, his first son, who left Notre Dame a year early this spring, only to be drafted later than expected _ the sixth round _ by the Green Bay Packers. There's Osiris St. Brown, his middle son, who just redshirted his first year at Stanford. And then there's Amon-ra.
Privately, John says Amon-ra "could play in the NFL right now." But in the car, with him in earshot, John sings a different tune.
"I'm going to request Coach (Clay) Helton put his butt at the bottom of the charts and see what he's made of," John says. "Make him fight. Sharpen the knife."
During his sons' collective ascent in the recruiting rankings _ the charts that matter most until they step on a college campus _ it has been an all-too-natural reaction to compare John Brown to another Southern California father of three basketball players. "The LaVar Ball of College Football" is a label that stuck.
John gets it. Like LaVar, he wants fame for his boys. He wants them to stand out. That's why he added the "St." to their surnames. That's why he named the first son Equanimeous _ the name John always had been so boring to him. And that's why he named Osiris and Amon-ra after Egyptian gods.
The LaVar Ball comparison makes for a catchy headline, but John Brown is his own phenomenon. Before LaVar could have imagined being the world's most notorious basketball dad, John was busy working his way out of Compton and onto the global stage as a bodybuilder. In the 1980s, a Jheri-curled John sculpted himself into a two-time "Mr. Universe" and three-time "Mr. World."
He didn't need to move his sons to Lithuania to make them worldly. He married Miriam, a native of Germany, and raised them in a bilingual household in which both parents demanded A-plusses.
"They are where they are because of John and his dedication to them," Miriam says.
This is John's first time doing what may end up being the hardest part of the job: saying good-bye after 18 years. Miriam took Equanimeous to South Bend, Ind., and Osiris to Palo Alto for their move-in days. Each time, John stayed back with Amon-ra, muting his emotions into the daily grind of their push toward greatness.
Now, it is Amon-ra's time. With the car barreling up Interstate 110, he has taken control of the music. He settles on Jason Derulo's "Colors." Amon-ra comes alive, singing and grooving to the pop beat. Like his dad, he can hit all the notes.
John doesn't like the music. But he likes that he can listen to his son sing, if only for a little longer.
"I'm going to go home," John says, "and he's not going to be there."
