DadCentric

Hooray for Holiday Travel!

We here at DadCentric hope all of you have a very safe and happy Thanksgiving. And if you're traveling today or tomorrow, well, enjoy:

Dojo Rock

We have been pwned:

The Toddler Show

Today, my wife and I passed through yet another first in our lives as parents by attending the Thanksgiving program at our 3 year old’s school. I must confess here that prior to parenthood, I quite dreaded the idea of the school program. Any depiction of one in a movie or T.V. show always made me cringe. How could anyone possibly stand to watch a parade of munchkins dressed as trees, rocks, birds, and pumpkins toddle their way through songs about joy and happiness and all the beauty of the world, all the while surrounded by camera wielding parents intent on capturing every single solitary moment of this pivotal event in their children’s lives? Sure, their little out of tune melodies are cute, and it’s kind of adorable watching them all try to say in sync with the clapping and the little dance motions, and okay, it’s pretty funny when one of the kids just wanders off cluelessly, only to be herded back by some uber-patient caregiver. But how much of this can any one person really take?

Well, I don’t have the formula quite worked out, but based on today’s experience, such an event can remain enjoyable for approximately 30 minutes if the following conditions are met:

• One or more of the performers is yours.
• There is food waiting for you after it’s all over.
• It helps if the food includes pie. Mmm, pie.

I’m sure that the presence of beer would probably improve the numbers substantially, but nobody listens to me. Anyway, my son’s class came on as the opening act. There was singing, clapping, and funny hats, but my little guy preferred to be the stoic one, standing stock still, uttering not a single lyric. Perhaps he’ll grow up to play bass.

After that came the older kids. I think half the fun of the whole thing was watching the teachers direct all this chaos out onto the stage. The cast immediately dropped by several members when they stepped out onto the boards, saw the size of the crowd, and ran screaming for their parents. The remaining players worked their way through a medley of songs about turkeys and…um…turkeys. Yeah, I think all of the songs were about turkeys. Oh, and being thankful for stuff. Like turkey.

So lesson learned here. The little kid school program is not nearly as painful as I’ve been imagining it to be all these years. The high school musical, on the other hand, I am still certain is torture.

This Is What Passes for Fun at Our House on Saturday Nights

Boots with the fur.

When Poke Comes to Puke

Thing 1 has just finished throwing up on me. Again. Not a vintage "shouldn't have ate all those Gummi worms and drank that funny smelling milk" upchuck, mind you. Just a simple panic puke.

For the past six years, I've had to give the girl a weekly injection of methotrexate, an old school chemo drug also used for treating autoimmune diseases like Thing 1's juvenile dermatomyositis. This sunshine-yellow liquid of healing comes with the typical eight pages of whip-out-the-microscope-to-read-'em warnings, such as "if comes in contact with skin, wash immediately and pray you keep the limb," and the usual suspects of side effects -- the most common one, of course, being nausea.

At first, there wasn't an issue. But as the dosage grew, it would take just a small push of the med into her system before I'd be witnessing a detailed regurgitation of everything she had consumed in the last eight hours. ("Honey, chew your Goldfish. Don't swallow them whole. Save that for the real McCoy in college.") After a while, I deduced the drug wasn't the cause. The moment of clarity came when she once heaved merely at my chipper pronouncement of "time for your shot!"

Someday, I told myself, bearing the sticky, foul brunt of her anxiety would be a small price to pay for remission. Meanwhile, I hold fast to the notion that some are born great, some achieve greatness and some, like me, have bits of semi-digested mac 'n' cheese thrust upon them.

Anyway, a short time ago, we were in Claire's, purveyor of craptastic accessories and the only place in our local mall that pierces ears. Thing 1's BFF has been talking about putting holes in her lobes for months, so naturally, my little girl was chomping at the bling to also mutilate herself.

While My Love finished the paperwork, Thing 1 sat on my lap waiting for the punch out … growing visibly nervous and weepy with each passing second.

"What's the problem," I said. "You're an old pro at this. You've had more needle sticks than a George Bush voodoo doll at a Venezuelan political rally."

Then, I spotted a look in her face that was a little too familiar.

"You're not gonna lose it are you?" I said. "I mean, all the blood draws, IVs and shots you've gotten from doctors and nurses over the years, you've never thrown up when ANY of them poked you. I'm the lone exception."

"Dad-deeeee."

"Get it out of your mind right now. I reserve the right to maintain my unique status in your history of spewing. You're not going to start to spread the vomit love."

"Dad-deeeee!"

"Oh, would you stop it," My Love said, returning from the cash register. "Don't encourage her."

"I'm not encouraging. I'm against her throwing up -- 100 percent! Puking is solely within my domain as official shot giver of our household. She shan't spread the wealth upon underpaid hourly mall personnel."

Our ear specialist for the day, Sh'kira-taqueria (not her real name but an incredible simulation) did her best to calm Thing 1 as she disinfected my 8-year-old's ears. She had at least a dozen visible piercings and claimed the oowie was over instantaneously.

Then sure enough, she brought what looked like a staple gun up to Thing 1's right ear and SNAP -- it was done.

"See, nuh-thiiiiiiing," Sh'kira-taqueria said before moving over to the next ear and SNAP -- mission accomplished.

My little girl had sparkly pink-and-white flower studs in her ears.

And breakfast still in her stomach.

My streak lives on.

Boots

See these? These are the Boot version of Crocs. Now, a word about Crocs. They should not be worn by adults unless they are in either the Gutter Cleaning or Fish Gutting Industries. For kids, they are the perfect shoe. Why? Dogshit. Kids' shoes are dogshit magnets. You could be taking your kid for a hike across the stark crystalline emptiness of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica or across the vast desolate wastelands of the Gobi Desert or up the slopes of Olympus Mons on friggin' Mars and he/she will step in dogshit. It's axiomatic. Wither goeth kids shoes, there lieth dogshit. Solution: Crocs. Step in shit? Hose 'em off. Try doing that with those $150 Air Jordans or Bruno Maglis or whatever the hell the kids are wearing these days. Anyway, Crocs, Boot Version, here:

So the Croc Boots. Not the first footwear item that one thinks of when one considers a shoe to buy for the boy who lives in a city where the average temperature is 70 and about 6 inches of rain falls in any given year. But Lucas' best buddy Tate has a pair, and naturally Lucas wanted 'em. Not surprisingly, they were on sale for $16 so we got them. It's rained here twice this year already, you know. We almost got an inch. They might actually be useful.

At dinner tonight, the conversation turned to fashion. "Tate has a tanktop just like me", Lucas announced, pointing down at his well-worn wifebeater. (Question for the group: at what point, if ever, does one use the term "wifebeater", in reference to the classic tight ribbed tanktop favored by Kid Rock and Tony Soprano, in front of one's kids?) "You know what you should do", I said. "You and Tate should go to the mall with Mom and Tate's Mom, and you should wear just your tanktop and your shorts and your Blue Croc Boots."

I was clearly on to something. "YEAH!", Lucas exclaimed. "We could wear our tanktops and our boots and we could bring our swords and we could walk around and say to the ladies - 'Hey, ladies! We are Cool Men! And....we're FANCY!'"

Those boots? Worth their weight in gold.

Bring It, Kid.

Bless her little heart, our littlest is trying her damnedest to be funny.  Since she started Pre-K I guess she's developed this need to be a comedian.  Perhaps she's already feeling the pressure to climb the socialite ladder and feels a good joke thrown in to an otherwise dull 2.5 hours of song, art and juice is just the ticket to rise above the proverbial cream of the smelly-little-kid crop.  Her weapon of choice:  knock-knock jokes.  She loves them.  She's undeniably horrible at them, but, she loves them.  So periodically she'll run her latest and greatest jokes through us in an attempt to hone her material - which is typically a futile endeavor.  We're left patronizing her with forced laughs while quietly wondering in the backs of our minds if she is indeed as smart as we wish she was [or something like that]. 

However, I gotta hand it to her.  The other night she busted up the dinner table with this gem as she told it to one of our dinner guests:

"Wanna hear a joke?"

Sure.

"Knock-knock." 

Who's there?

"F."

F?  F who?

"F You!"

Pure comedy gold.

Special Guest Dad: Paul Nyhan

Pick up your local paper, and chances are that at least once a week you'll see an article about parenting. And of course it'll be written by someone other than a father. But if you're a dad living in Seattle, not only do you get a government-paid-for Starbucks ration, the opportunity to hire Alice in Chains to play your kid's birthday party, and an unbridled all-consuming hatred for Clay Bennett and David Stern, you get DadSeattle. DadSeattle is brought to you by the forward-thinking folks at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Contributing to the P-I and DadSeattle is Paul Nyhan, who's a three-time dad and a great writer to boot. He writes the P-I's Working Dad blog, and here's his latest. It's well worth your time and I'm not just saying that because I'm quoted in the piece, unless you're my parents because they're so proud of me that I'm in the newspapers.

The First Slight Swerving of the Heart

From the desk in my home office I have a clean line to the bathroom.  I know: location, location, location.  It's pretty awesome.

It was from my desk that I first noticed the orange glow emitting from the restroom.  It danced and it swayed with its bright amber shadow and it moved like a memory as it crept towards the door.

There is a candle in the bathroom.  It had been lit only moments before as a gesture of common courtesy to my fellow man.  It was lit and then left unattended, remembered but for the fragrance of autumn that lingered from it and the flicker of light that stayed the corner of my eye.

The boys are used to it.  They don't bother the flame and therefore the flame doesn't bother them.  I have instilled within them a fear to curb their wonder.  Or so I thought.

I sat at my desk sipping from a glass packed with too much ice and typing something that must have seemed important at the time.  I sat there as the comfort found in a constant waver of candlelight became staggered and chaotic and noticeably less comforting.  I listened as my call went unanswered.

Somewhere in a moment it clicks.  Possibilities are entertained.  Scenarios are played out.  Thoughts come to mind and they are for the worse.  It happens in but a moment, but a moment is all that it needs.

I rushed into the bathroom to my find my son standing above the fire, a flame of tissue in his hand and a look of terror so frozen upon his face that even the heat against his body could not make it melt.  I knocked the torch from his hand and moved him through the doorway.  The flames were high, but luckily they were contained within the metal of the wastebasket and I was able to control them fully with several pitchers of water poured from a bathtub toy- a pelican with a handle and, luckily, a wide, deep beak.

Then there were questions and explanations, tears and hugs and a demanding need for tissue, despite it being crisp and frail.  We stood together, our family, in a bathroom filled with smoke like steam and a scared, sick boy explaining how cold it had been a lifetime ago, that moment he had decided that his tissue paper could stand to be just a little bit warmer.

Who will play me in the remake of DadCentric?

When does a movie's status deem a remake verboten? Why do we never hear that someone has the gall to "revision" The Godfather? Chinatown? Citizen Kane? Porky's? Oh, wait. I bring this up after reading, in utter disbelief mind you, that Will Smith - the Fresh Prince - will produce a remake of the 80s classic, The Karate Kid. The Karate Kid! Wax on, wax off...Get 'im a body bag!...Sweep the leg! Yes, that Karate Kid. And to top it all off, they're not even asking Ralph "Daniel-san" Macchio to reprise his role - which I'm sure he could with his eternally boyish good looks even at 47. No, that role will go to...Jaden Smith? Wha-? Ok, what the hell is wrong with Hollywood now?

Don't get me wrong - I'm ok with some updates, remakes, whatever you want to call them. Sometimes they were just needed; the right writers/actors/producers get together and you get something good - Ocean's 11 comes to mind: pretty good Sinatra vehicle; better Clooney/Pitt/Damon version. But, honestly, who holds the original dear? My father wasn't decrying the remake. I think my generation (and younger ones) latch on to movies in a much different way than older ones. They become seminal moments in our lifetimes; cultural landmarks we share collectively - for better or for worse. We memorize them. We quote them. We refer to them in every facet of our lives. And we feel violated when our memories are revised. I realize it's trivial - believe me - but at the same time ask yourself, how would you feel if they remade Monty Python and the Holy Grail, say, with an inferior cast of SNLers? Or when Lucas retools his DVD releases hoping you don't notice. Yeah, thought so.

So, I get pissed about this because there are some that I want to share with my kids some day. Ralph Macchio will always be Daniel-san. Much like he will always be Johnny. I don't want my kids to ask me what I thought of Jayden James Federline in Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Abigail Breslin in Sixteen Candles.

Here's some of what's rumored to be out there so you can be suitably outraged. I know some might work, but others? Not so much:

The Last Starfighter
Escape from New York - best lead character name in Snake Pliskin
Meatballs - brilliant Bill Murray summer camp frolic
The Evil Dead - Sam Raimi and Bruce "The Chin" Campbell cult classic
Conan the Barbarian - Ah-nold will not be back "to hear the lamentation of the women"
Friday the 13th
Nightmare on Elm Street
Hellraiser
Tron
Clash of the Titans - pre-LA Law Harry Hamlin goes mythic
The Warriors...The Warriors!
Footloose - Jump back!