DadCentric

Loss

Please stop by Tony's when you have a chance. I'm sure that the Webers and the Vitale family will appreciate the support.

Despite Our Political Differences, We All Love The Waffle House

Ok, things got a bit heated yesterday. But sometimes, an epochal event happens that unites all Americans, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. I think we can all agree that this is the greatest thing we'll see all week. Sorry, Barack.

DadCentric Throws The Full Weight of Our Mighty Influence Behind Barack Obama

An analogy: let's say your town has no restaurants. One day, you and your neighbors get together and vote on which restaurant will be allowed to set up shop in your neighborhood. Applebee's wins by the tiniest of margins. Ok, you think. Normally, I'd rather eat the ass out of a dead rhinoceros than eat at Applebee's, but I'll make do. Eight years go by, and you and 79% of your fellow townspeople are pretty fucking sick of Applebee's. Christ, how much Nacho Cheese Smothered Chicken Fried Steak can one eat? Clearly, it's time to make a change. The senior leadership at Applebee's, not wanting to relinquish their stranglehold on your tastebuds (the ones that haven't been seared away from years of Onion Loaf and Rhubarb Creme Pie), tries to convince you that they are actually the agents of change. They propose bringing on a new manager. Problem is, despite the new manager's background (his character was forged in the ghastly crucible of a Denny's kitchen, and the horror he encountered there has greatly influenced his worldview), IT'S STILL FUCKING APPLEBEE'S.

Judging by the number of people who claim to be John McCain's "friend" and the number of friends John McCain claims to have, it's hard to make a case against a man who is apparently more popular than Jesus, the Beatles, and Slim Whitman. An affable, straight-talkin' guy, McCain has shown time and again that he's not your typical GOP stooge. He steers clear of the corrupt sleezebags that permeate the Republican Party, and avoids lobbyists like the plague. He walks the walk when it comes to not fucking around with campaign finance regulations. His experience as a war hero (I thought heroes did stuff like this and this and this; doesn't getting shot down and taken prisoner make you more of a, I dunno, war victim?) profoundly affected his views on the treatment of enemy combatants and the use of torture. And his embrace of other cultures and women. Yes, the guy's a Maverick. He's one of us, the Average Americans. He's beholden to no one.

Despite all of this, we'd lose a great deal of street cred if we were to endorse McCain. See, we here at DadCentric represent a sorely disenfranchised group of Americans, Dads Who Give A Shit About Their Kids. As such, we're generally opposed to things like war and being a dumbfuck Luddite. Also, we'd kind of like to have some sort of health care system that works. Finally, to ironically paraphrase Dennis Miller: John McCain will be 72 on Inauguration Day. A 72-year-old man with access to The Button? Fuck, our grandparents are that age and we don't let them have the remote control to the TV!

So with this in mind, we proudly support (well, most of us, anyway. At least Whit and I do.) Barack Obama in his bid to become our next President. God bless you all, God bless our troops, God bless the United States of America, and fuck Applebee's.

(ETA 8/28/08 1:20 PST: Regarding comments. I'm a fairly easy-going dude, but I am also a Godless Pinko Commie Liberal, and will delete lameass comments/ban trolls. If you don't agree with this post, cool, I'm sure that you're a nice person and after the election we'll all grab a beer together, etc. Keep it civil, concise, and above all interesting, and if this is the first time you've visited this site I highly, HIGHLY recommend that you go through the archives to get a sense of what we're all about. The WTF? Category is a good place to start.)

Because Daddy's a Shepherd, That's Why

My morning routine is not a particularly easy one, but it is at least reliable in its difficulty. I know which points in the morning usually push my eldest's buttons, when he's going to drag ass, and when I need to gently cattle-prod him along so as to keep the whole operation from coming to a complete and total stop. I know that he will always want to climb into his carseat by himself, and that any attempt to lift him into the seat will be met with the resistance of a thousand armies. I know that the left turn onto the freeway will be met by angry howls that I am going the wrong way, and that all reminders that we went this way yesterday, the day before, and every other day will be met with vehement denials.

Baby brother, by the way, is totally chill through all of this. It's all I can do to ask "why can't you be more like your brother?" That's supposedly bad. They did a study. It's on the internet.

But before either of those obstacles are met, we also have to get through the morning toy selection. The kids stay with their grandparents during the day, and their house is well stocked with toys. Still, eldest feels the need to select an item from his home stash to bring along nearly every day. Thing is, the selected toy is always forgotten in the car upon arrival at the Grandparent's house. Always. That is, until today, when the selected toy was actually a pair of tiny sheep that do absolutely nothing. They do not move, they do not make sound, they're just hard plastic sheep meant to act as accessories for a train set or some such. I'd been at work maybe ten minutes when my wife called from her office to tell me that eldest was having a fit because he forgot his sheep.

"I told him that the sheep had to go to work with daddy."

"Why did the sheep have to go to work with daddy?"

"They just did."

To provide proof of my need for sheeply assistance, I was asked to submit photographs of the sheep in action. These were emailed to the grandparents in hopes that all toy-related anguish would be soothed. Yay for camera phones and obliging co-workers.

After work, I went to pick the boys up. I made sure to bring the sheep home with me. I handed them to eldest, foolishly expecting him to light up at the sight of the objects whose absence had caused such distress that very morning. It was more like "cool, where's mom?"

 

Extreme Daddy

"Daddy?  Can you show me pictures of you flipping your bike?"

"WTF is she talking about?" I thought to myself as the rancid morning breath from my sweet little girl's mouth abruptly awakened me from a very peaceful night's sleep.  "Huh?" I asked.  "I want to see pictures of you flipping your bike," she replies.

Ohhhhhhh...now I remember....

Yesterday at CPK my daughter sat where she could see the big plasma screen TV over the bar area.  They were showing the X-Games BMX competion.  A couple of guys were really throwing down the tricks and my daughter asked me if I could "do that".  That, of course, was some sort of freakish double back-flip with a contorted spin, a cross-up and a flair where the dude was able to disassemble his bike and put it back together before landing in the transition of a monster 15ft quarterpipe.  Blindfolded.

"No, baby, Daddy can't do that," I said.

You see, at the young age of 34 years, I took up BMX street riding.  (Don't ask.)  Actually, I became somewhat adept at it in the four years I focused on it.  I had all the grinds down, could bunny hop over construction barricades and even did a stairwell or two.  Hell, the eleven year-olds in the crew I ran with thought I was pretty dope.  Anyway, I gave it up in 2004 to focus on surfing, but, I still have one of my bikes in the garage and she's seen me break it out a couple of times.  I can't do shit on it anymore, but, to a 4 year-old, Daddy jumping over a tennis ball must still be an exciting feat, right?  So, she equated the over-the-top madness she was watching to the piddly crap she's seen me do the few times she's seen me on my bike.

"Anymore, Lu.  Daddy doesn't do those tricks anymore," was the contribution from my wife to the brief discussion.  (What were you doing, woman?)

"Why you not flip your bike anymore, Daddy?"

"Um...I just stopped riding it, honey.  I like to surf now."

"Did you cry when you did your tricks?"

"Nope.  I didn't cry.  Hey, I have some pictures of some tricks I did that I can show you."

"I wanna see!"

And then the course of the family dinner derailed the conversation and the subject never really came back up.  That is, until this morning at O'dark-thirty.  It's really cute that this is the first thing on her mind in the morning and she ran in to the room all excited [although I really, really need to stick a box of Tic Tacs on her nightstand].  She really admires me, I guess.  But, Daddy don't flip his bike, kid.  Never have.  Never will.  Luckily, what I did have was just as good in her mind as the ridiculousness she was witnessing the night before [thank God!].  She loved the pictures and I'm sooooo glad she gave no indication that she was less-than-impressed.  I'm golden.  A 2ft curb or a 15ft quarterpipe.  Who cares? Until she develops better spacial perceptions and can judge distances, her Daddy is an X-Games hero.

See Dick. Run. Run As Fast As You Can Because He's Batshit Crazy.

Kid's literature has, we can all agree, come a long way. Anyone else remember those "Dick and Jane" kiddie books written way back in the 50's? Filmmaker Run Wrake does, and apparently they messed him up but good. (This video contains some weird shit, and I almost didn't post it, but it's just so freakish that how could I not? So you've been warned.)

(Fucking YouTube. The link might not work, so if it doesn't you can maybe see it here.)

Blended. No Rocks. No Salt.

We’re one of those families.  You know…the blended type.  Our nine year-old daughter has one father, two Dads, one mother, two Moms [now], three grandmothers, a sister, two dogs, two sets of mutually exclusive friends, a couple of homes and a fucking shitload of cousins.  It’s a little dynamic, a little confusing, but, becoming way more common these days.  According to this completely random website that I have not researched in the very least, but, must assume is accurate since it is on the internet, at least one-third of all children in the U.S. are expected to live in a stepfamily before they reach age 18. 

So, when we received the invitation to attend her Father's marriage that took place this past weekend, we didn't even flinch.  OK...maybe a little.  This blended family stuff keeps you on your toes while simultaneously requiring that you don't step on someone else's.  If you think about it one way, I was invited to my wife's ex's wedding.  Think about that.  This guy spent several years boning my wife and now I'm to drive to Santa Barbara to deliver him a present that I still haven't bought yet.  OK, I admit that's a bit of a stretch and is certainly not the frame of mind in which I attended the wedding.  In fact, our attendance didn't even have anything to do with my wife's ex or his new [and fabulous] wife.  We were there for the daughter that we all share.

We had discussed the wedding and our attendance many times with my stepdaughter's Father and how it was a given that we would be there based on our collective read of our shared daughter.  I'll admit that it was a little weird for us watching the barefoot, beach sand ceremony include our daughter who was "beginning her new family" - according to the nuptials - with no mention of her existing family that includes her Mother, her sister and I.  I mean, her Mother aside, I've been in her life since she was 1.5 years old and we've all lived under the same roof as a family for 5 years now.  So, it was an effort NOT to feel a bit shunned as the wedding guests celebrated her new family with nary a hint of acknowledgment of the fine job we've been doing all along.  Yeah, I'd be lying if I said we didn't both get a little possessive at that moment.  Most of those folks don't know us - or more specifically, ME - from Adam.  And I think that bothered me a bit.  There was no pat-on-the-back for a continued job well-done or, honestly, no welcome outside a couple of key players like her Father, his family and bride.  Of course I realize this was a wedding - NOT OURS - and our role there was as a show of support for our daughter and nothing else.  So, I'm not trying to make this all about ME or us; don't get me wrong.  It was just emotional.

But that's all part of this blended family thing.  There are sooooo many intricacies, dynamics, and emotions to navigate.  When it's all said and done, though, what really matters is that our daughter has the fucking corner on LOVE.  Two sets of parents that love her equally?  There are some kids out there whose reality is barely a quarter of that.  That fact made guzzling tons of Stella on my wife's ex's dime a little easier to swallow.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: DadCentric: The Review

I didn't hate it.

We first saw a preview for Darth Lucas' latest infomercial a couple of months ago, and every day since Lucas (my kid, not George) has been asking me the same question: "Dad, is today the day we go see Clone Wars?" The kid is a Star Wars fiend at the tender age of four; he's already worked out the plotlines for Episodes 7 through 32. I shit you not - Episode 29, for instance (spoiler alert) involves Darth Vader turning yellow (literally - "Dad, Darth Vader's suit and his eyes turn yellow and the Clone Troopers are scared of him but Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca fight him and then he turns GREEN!"). Episode 14 involves "the Boba Fetts and the Jedis fighting the Battle Droids and the Ewoks". He's seen Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 at least two times each. We haven't let him watch Revenge of The Sith; watching Anakin kill a bunch of kids and subsequently get burned to a crisp is probably not good for a preschooler. Then again, neither was exposing him to Jar Jar Binks, but to his credit, Lucas (my kid, not George) really didn't seem to like Episode 1. Lucas (George, not my kid) - a four year old boy didn't like The Phantom Menace. Failed, you have.

So, The Clone Wars. The movie, as you may have heard, isn't really a movie - it's the first three episodes of the animated TV series that kicks off this fall. The plot, such as it is, involves Count Dooku and Jabba the Hutt's uncle Big Gay Ziro's (more on him in a second) scheme to kidnap Jabba the Hutt's baby (yeah), thus forcing the Republic to...uh...something something trade routes? Anakin gets a sidekick, a Padawan with Erykah Badu hair named Ahsoka; there are lightsaber fights, space battles, ground battles, and lots and lots of screen wipes. The kids in the audience ate it up. I spent large chunks of time studying my watch.

For those of us that recall that moment, waaaaaaay back in 1977, when we sat in a dark theater and watched as that massive Star Destroyer first rumbled across the screen - the closest that many of us would ever get to a religious experience - the new movie can only disappoint. There are a few moments that shine - the vertical battle on the planet Teth kicks ass, and the Clone Troopers themselves get a little personality injected into them. But the clunky dialogue (it ain't Star Wars: Episode 2.5: My Dinner with Darth Andre, that's for sure) and the staggeringly tasteless Truman Capote-esque caricature that is Ziro the Hutt make it a bit of a drag for grownups.

But you know, maybe that's our problem. Look, I'm as big a Star Wars geek as they come (the next time Beth tells me that we have to do laundry and I whine "But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!" I'm going to get served with divorce papers). But let's face it - it's been 25 years since Return of the Jedi hit the big screen. We view Star Wars through the rose-colored glasses of sentimentality; we think of The Empire Strikes Back as high art, rather than just a damn good sequel that had many of the same problem as the first flick (Lando's "Hello...what have we here?" when he lays eyes on Leia is laughably, awfully bad, in the writing as well as the delivery). We set the bar with the expectations of our 10-year-old selves, and we are inevitably disappointed when George Lucas delivers movies that are aimed at, well, 10-year-olds.  That's no excuse for mediocrity, though, and that's the bottom line here - there's some cool stuff to look at, and my kid loved it, but ultimately it's as hollow as Utapau.

50 Marathons In 50 Days In 50 States WTF?

When my wife was pregnant with Lucy, I got pregnant too. It wasn't because of nachos either. It was due to absolute sympathetic love. Me & my wife are like 1 big love Being and our bellies swelled like one belly. I shot up to 230, plus I quit smoking when Lucy was born, which kicked my big ass up to 240.

Something had to give. I bought a treadmill and started walking, but when you're walking you can still pound some chicken wings, so I started running. I ran my ass down to 2 hundo and I was hooked on running.

Running has provided me with some of my proudest accomplishments, as well as my most crushing senses of being a loser. For instance, out of the 3 marathons I've completed, I had to walk (limp) the last few miles for 2 of them, and I was so pissed. I wanted to choke those 19-year-old girls galloping past me to the finish line. It was the pony-tails, those bouncy little happy pony-tails. One marathon was completed in 5 hours, 6 minutes, and the other was 4 hours, 51 minutes. Lame. Another time I entered a 100 mile race and dropped out after 42 miles. Destroyed. And one time I was doing a 50 mile race, and my wife was working at the 25 mile turnaround. When I saw her cute little ass with her clipboard, I couldn't dream of clicking off another 25. I just chilled with her, feeling like a failure.

But then there are the successes. I was determined to pull off a marathon in under 4 hours and when that finish clock was in my sights, it read 3:56. I was ecstatic. I sprinted in to the tune of 3:57. I never walked the whole race and I beat 4 hours. I felt like I could tackle trees and track live deer and eat them raw like some crazed primitive motherfucker. And then drag Jenna by the hair into a cave and you get the picture. And one time I entered this timed race where you just ran around a 1/4 mile loop for 6 hours (or 12 hours if you're a total nut). I ran the whole 6 hours and clicked off 33 miles. I felt like some Greek God with those kick ass wings on my sandals.

One really cool part about that race was there was only about 20 people in it and one of them was the ultramarathon pimp, Dean Karnazes. Karnazes was voted the fittest man on the planet by Men's Fitness. He's the stuff mythology is made of. He wrote a pretty sweet book called Ultramarathon Man. He was in the 12 hour race and he made it 78 miles. Plus he was totally cool. Every time he'd lap my silly ass, he'd say "Keep it up" or "Hang in there" or "Are you bleeding?".

So when Hachette Book Group asked me to review 50/50, the story of how Karnazes ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, I was all over it, because me & Dean Karnazes are like best friends. The kind of best friends who participated in the same race 2 years ago.

Anyway, when I saw the Table of Contents, I thought this book was gonna blow. He actually broke down all 50 marathons by chapter. Can you imagine a running narrative of a guy running through 50 marathons? "Then I ket running. And there were trees. I got a blister. Etc." But I need to tell you straight up that Karnazes is an excellent story teller. It's like each marathon he runs evokes different things from his past and he blends memory and the present with loads of running tips. So rather than a linear story of marathon after marathon, it's a finely crafted collage of his accomplishment, memory, and sound advice. The book is peppered with all kinds of good shit about running gear, diet tips, how to keep running when a bone shoots out your leg. Shit like that.

Actually I made up the bone thing, but I can tell you that Karnazes is at his best when he's inspring you to stay motivated through boredom and pain. Running is all about ignoring that whiny little bitch in us all that keeps muttering "Stop. My knee hurts. I'm a pussy. Let's stop and sit with your wife at the 25 mile turnaround." Dean Karnazes has those voices too, but he flips them the bird, laughs at them, and keeps on moving. Just reading his book makes you wanna leap out the door and climb a mountain or leap from car to car on a moving train. Dean Karnazes makes your balls swell to the size of oranges and floods your brain with sweet, sweet testosterone.

Get this. By the end of those 50 marathons, Dean had run 1310 miles (in 50 days! I ran 1000 miles in... 2007). His average time was 3:53:14 (4 minutes faster than my best time when I ran a marathon every day for 1 day in 1 state). Plus he clicked off a 3:00:30 on his 50th (!!!) marathon in NYC. And his schedule was such that he only got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep per night. It's just unfathomable.

Unfathomable. Which leads me to the only negative thing about the book: The Preface. The Preface is where Dean tries to tell us how average he is, what a plain old normal guy he is. Um excuse me but fuck that Dean. I've had the pleasure of dragging my ass through my 6th hour of running, having my tongue dry up & swell into a sizzler steak, seeing dead people, and wishing that a truck would run me over - only to have you trot by and chirp "Looking Good!". You're not normal, Dean. You're extraordinary. And you make us aspire to the same.

Freedom is My El Guapo

The wife and kids are gone for the weekend which opens up a plethora of possibility. Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of possibility?

Three days of beer, cheese sandwiches and masturbating with the sound on- a whole weekend of me time.

The world is suddenly my oyster.  I have freedom.  I can do things and go places.  I can sit at the bar. 

Except there are projects.  Again, and always, with the projects.  The grass needs mowing, laundry needs folding, and the playroom needs a gallon of bleach and lots of lime. 

There are drafts for fantasy football, cars to be washed, and movies to be seen in an actual theater.  There are piles of work to be done and bills to ignore.

I don't know that I can get to all of it.  Freedom is a lot of work.  Sometimes you can overplan these things.

Maybe I'll just watch the Olympics.