DadCentric

Black Hockey DadCentric Reviews: Taken

So because you're a Dad or maybe married to a Dad or in some way familiar with and adoring of Fatherhood, you understand that we never get to movies unless they're too colorful and stupid and heartwarming. We rent movies. So our reviews are tardy. That's the way it goes. Movie theaters are for irresponsible single people who don't understand commitment. They just do whatever they want whenever they want all the time with no one chiming in on their every single decision or thought. Idiots.

So anyway, when I was in the video store with my wife, I grabbed a movie called Taken and checked out the box. Liam Neeson was holding a gun looking kinda tough and somber. I doubted the whole movie immediately. Liam Neeson got completely wasted by Darth Maul, the least capable Sith. How could I buy him as a tough somber guy with a gun?

But then I noticed, just beneath and bigger than the title, it said: "I will find you I will kill you" and that's how you market a goddamn movie. My review is after the jump.

I sit in the darkness and say the Law

Tomorrow afternoon, my wife is leaving me. Granted, in theory it's only temporary - she's visiting a friend in Manhattan for the weekend - but realistically I can't be certain that she'll ever return. As the Bible says, how can you keep them on the farm once they've seen the big city? The fact that we don't live on a farm is irrelevant: it's what the Bible says, and you don't fuck with the Bible.

Subsequently, I've determined that much as Mike Brady had to figure out how to make due with his three youngsters after wife #1 did whatever wife #1 did to remove herself from the picture, I need to start making plans for post-wife life. It's going to be something of an adjustment for all who remain in Castle TwoBusy, but I have little doubt that with some teamwork, a few laughs and the common understand that my word is now law, this will be a delightful time for the fruits of my (and, going forward, only my) loins.

I shall be the Sayer of the Law.

Richard Dreyfus Would Have Stood His Ground

"It smells like piss in here," I said as I eyed the cat, waiting to see if he'd flinch with guilt.

No flinch.  He was close to getting two.

I glared at him anyway.  Damn cat.  Regardless of what he thinks, spending your nights licking your stuff while sitting in the bathroom sink is not acceptable behavior.  Or so I've been told.

Besides, he nearly scared the bejesus out of me and if anyone needs their bejesus intact it's me.  I ain't livin' right.

So it stunk in the bathroom and I questioned my wife about it. 

"I live with three boys.  Of course it smells like pee."

"A) I'm a man, baby.  And 2) I didn't say pee.  Pee is a light tinkle. Pee is an April shower.  Pee is cute.  Statues pee in birdbaths."

She had already left the room.

The Kids' Movie Jerk

So I know WALL-E came out way the hell back in 2008, but a quick stroll through the DadCentric archives of posts marked with the tag of “Film” or "Movies" (which differ from one another in that movies aspire to mere entertainment, whereas films actually seek to make aaaaart and actually fail in this mission if they provide any significant entertainment beyond leaving the viewer depressed, confused, pained, bored, or angry that they’ll never get those 90 -  212 minutes back) shows me that there exist no posts on this particular dadblog related to WALL-E.

WALL-E currently stands as my eldest son’s favorite movie. I don’t know if WALL-E knows yet that it will eventually be replaced as my son’s favorite movie many times over, or if that is a heartbreak yet to come. I would think WALL-E, even as young as it is, would have already experienced this betrayal from any number of young people, and would know that it’s only in store for more of it, that it is destined to be a temporary favorite. Perhaps it is satisfied merely being loved, even if its status as a child’s favorite is so fleeting.

I’m not going to bother with much in the way of synopsis because if you’re reading this, you’re likely a parent, and if your kids are young enough, you’ve already seen it. Perhaps more than once! And a lengthy synopsis at this juncture would only serve to further thin the shoestring hold I currently have on your attention span. Suffice it to say that it’s a film about a future where the Earth is fucked, and humans did the fucking. It’s a film about a humanity that has long since abandoned the Earth for greener galaxies because it’s unfit to support any life other than roaches and robots. There are robots of every kind, be they cute, scary, OCD, purpose-driven, all designed and manufactured to take care of our every human whim. It’s a nightmare scenario of corporate power gone all wrong. It’s a film about people at their worst and their best, about snapping out of complacence and doing something.

And yes, it’s a kid’s film, and one that adults can dig on, whether they act their age or not.

The first time we watched WALL-E, I loved it. This was in spite of the fact that there are any number of  issues with it that, if present in more “grown-up sci-fi”, would have every dungeon master, ComiCon attendee, Klingon speaker, lightsaber craftsman, fan fiction author, and Summer Glau drooler-over racing to their keyboard to register their DISGUST with the filmmakers’ ineptitude. This stuff occurred to me at the time, but it didn’t bother me in the least. It’s a kid’s movie, and a great one at that. It tells a fantastic story, it looks great, has a wonderful message, and manages to do a hell of a lot with minimal dialogue, a true achievement considering that most kid’s movies seem to follow the throw-enough-shit-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to dialogue. Not to mention the fact that it’s a nice introduction to science fiction for the wee’uns. I figured I didn’t need to go getting my boxers all in a wad over a few relatively unimportant details, especially if they’re the boxers with the little tigers all over them because it’d be a shame to mess those up.

The thing is, I’ve seen the movie a few more times since that initial viewing. And some of these details are, well, they’re starting to get to me. I’ve tried to fight it, to ignore it, to pretend they don’t bug me, but they’re still out there, throwing pebbles at the window of my brain and urging my inner asshole to come out and play. So if you don’t mind me getting all ComicBook Guy on WALL-E’s ass, I present to you my list of Stuff Wrong With WALL-E I Should Get Over, or SWWWISGO for short.

• Stuff all works way too well, and presumably has been for some 700 years, and all without much in the way of human intervention. Sorry, but I’m pretty sure that ship would be a floating graveyard waiting for a pack of Reavers to come along and salvage it.
• Fuel - what’s that ship running on? In fact, what is any of it running on? Where does the food come from? If we humans had to leave Earth because we trashed the place, then it stands to reason that we weren’t so great at reducing, reusing, or recycling. I find it hard to believe that we’d figure all this stuff out in space fast enough to keep the race alive.
• WALL-E takes a ride in space on the outside of the space ship. He’d have frozen up solid.
• Shouldn’t there be some human remains here and there on the planet? No way did they get everybody on that one space ship. They left some people behind, presumably those who couldn’t pay the fare for a multi-generational pass.
• Robots, most of them anyway, already have human emotional functions at the beginning of the film. They love, they worry, they get angry, they get uptight, they connive. We’re supposed to just take this as a given with no explanation for how they got that way.
• Where are those kids coming from? Given that the humans here can’t even stand up on their own, I doubt they’re getting made in the conventional way. I can only assume that there are other robots on that ship that never make an appearance onscreen.

Man, it feels good to get that off my chest, even if it does mean I have to reveal my inner asshole to you all. Maybe next week I’ll post about drinking the last beer in your fridge or taking the last cup of coffee without making more.

CroutonBoy and Cheeky...on a Routine Expedition...

I have a girl.

I'm not just referring to her biology.  I mean she is most definitely a girl. 

Dresses.  Flowers.  Ponies.  All that shit.

I'm thrilled that I have a girl.  Ecstatic.  She is the light of my universe, and I have a boundless, all-encompassing love for her. 

But she's a girl.  And that has its limitations.

I have long lamented my inability to shape her from birth into a cute but geeky kid.  Even though I knew she's be into some girly things, I'd always tried to sneak in something a little more to my taste, whether it was an Operation Ivy onesie or Bugs Bunny cartoons in the morning.  But she resists.  If it's not pink and pretty she could care less.  I can't even get her to fucking wear jeans.

And the princesses....don't even get me started on the princesses....

But something miraculous happened yesterday.  My daughter discovered Land of the Lost.

The Sci-Fi Channel was airing an all-day marathon. I turned it on as a whim, curious to see how it had aged (the answer: very poorly)  But Cheeky caught a glimpse of it and stopped dead in her tracks, as if gazing upon a burning bush and hearing the voice of God.

She watched it for two hours straight.  Then she asked for more.  A single tear streaked down my cheek.  A tear of joy.

OK, let's acknowledge something:  the show was terrible.  The dinosaurs are defanged puppets.  The sets look like they were hand built in somebody's basement.  The acting and writing is atrocious.  And in the brief time I watched it with Cheeky the characters met a Confederate prospector, a morally ambigous balloonist, and what appeared to be an alien made out of Christmas lights.  

The appeal to Cheeky is an utter mystery to me.  Does she relate to Holly, who has pony-tail braids just like Cheeky? (hmmm...did we do that subconsciously?)  Is she fascinated by how Will managed to wear a blue shirt for the entire first season, then inexplicably appears with a brown one (with a vest!) in season two?  Is she, like us, wondering why Marshall spun into the distance within the pylon, only to be awkwardly replaced by Uncle Jack, without even a salary dispute or allegations of Pakuni abuse?

It doesn't matter.   I had the lunchbox.  Now, maybe Cheeky will, too.  It's a happy, happy day.

"Jon & Kate Plus 8" Must Die

Rooting for divorce, especially when children are involved, is not something I would normally advocate. But frankly, that has long been my position regarding Jon and Kate Gosselin, stars of the Jon & Kate Plus 8, the "reality" show that follows to these parents of twins (now 8) who then had sextuplets (now 5).

My opinion, formed on the occasional episode I'd catch my daughter watching or tidbit I'd find online, was based on a simple premise:

Kate is a bossy, overbearing shrew of legendary proportion (updated with fancier clothes and a revised version of Posh Spice's old 'do) and Jon, no matter how wimpy you may think he is, didn't deserve to put up with her constant verbal abuse and on-camera humiliation. I'd have felt the same way if the roles were reversed.

After watching the premiere of Jon & Kate Plus Eight's new season Monday night, in which the two are definitely estranged and hinting at a permanent split amid a party to celebrate the sextuplets' birthday, my opinion has changed.

DadCentric Review: The 2009 Ford Flex Limited

DISCLAIMER: The folks at the Ford Motor Company lent me a Ford Flex for a period of three days. The car was a standard model given out to reviewers and thus did not come with a nondescript aluminum briefcase stuffed with $5,000 in unmarked, non-sequential bills. The opinions - key word! OPINIONS! - here are the author's own and do not necessarily represent the views of DadCentric. Although they kind of do, since the author owns the site. Also, that picture to the left is of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, which, face it, is the first thing you thought of when you first laid eyes on the Ford Flex.

A few weeks ago, the nice people from the Ford Motor Company dropped off a shiny new 2009 Ford Flex in my driveway. As part of a massive campaign targeting High Profile Bloggers, I would be driving the thing around, to see if it was worthy of a coveted DadCentric endorsement. 

A couple of things about me and cars: I am not a Car Person. I know very little about how they work, and terms like "oversteer" and "limited slip differential" are lost on me. I generally think sports cars are for guys who are trying to compensate for lack of hair/penile size; that said, I do own a 2006 Audi A4 2.0T Quattro (which is a "sports sedan", meaning that with some axle grease and a massive shoehorn you can barely fit two kids and their carseats in back). I prefer functionality over flash, which is why my other car is a 2002 Nissan Xterra - it hauls kids, dog, and surfboards with ease. Finally, minivans suck - they are a shining example of the fact that nearly all parenting products are created with only one half of the parenting equation - Mom - in mind. For that reason alone I refuse to buy one. (Example: the sliding doors. This is a Mom Thing. Moms think they're amazingly helpful, because it makes it easy to get the kids in the car, especially in the tight confines of packed school/mall parking lots. Dads think that the Duke boys did just fine going through the General Lee's windows and our kids should be able to do the same. The only van any self-respecting dad should want is this one.)

Which brings me to the Ford Flex. The Flex looks like a Mini Cooper that had accidentally driven into Bruce Banner's Gamma Ray Chamber, gotten zapped with the Hulkafying Gamma Rays, and then got pissed off when the people at the McDonald's drive-through forgot to supersize its McRib Value Meal. (Photo comparison: Mini. Flex. White roofs kick ass.) It's a beast of a car, with room for six people and their dog, or at least two 6 to 9 foot long surfboards (I eyeballed this - I don't think the good people at Ford would have wanted their Flex returned smelling of surf wax.) I suspected that the Flex might be the Holy Grail of Dadmobiles - a family car designed with BOTH parents in mind; functional, and not a complete embarrassment to drive. To test this hypothesis, Beth and I put the Flex through a grueling series of road tests.

Black Hockey DadCentric Reviews: Being A DadCentric Writer

I am a major blogger for a major blog collective of major Dads. As a result of being so fucking major, I get major emails. Like, more emails than you could ever possibly read in a day. In fact, I delete every 3rd one just to get through them, and those are inevitably from people who end up whining about how I'm too major to say hello. Fuck those people. They are minor. I'm in the big leagues, son. The majors. And when I wade through my mountain of major emails, guess what question I get asked the most. They always ask me: "Black Hockey Jesus! What's it like to write for DadCentric?" Well meet me after the jump. I'm about to fucking tell you.

Ask DadCentric: Do You Act Your Age?

Welcome to another installment in our venerable Ask DadCentric! series. This week's question comes from me, who has been dealing with his own (I turn 40 in nine days - yippee skippy!) and his loved ones' mortality as of late. I came across a post by our old friend MetroDad; following a trip to The Hamptons, he realized how much he hates Twitter (understandable if one does not use it as a marketing tool to help drive traffic to one's various writing endeavors so that one's kids can eat) and declares that "forty year old dads should just not be on Twitter" (which is a relief - I can Tweet away for a few more days, then join MetroDad in The Hamptons, where we can both yell at the damn kids who keep playing on Alec Baldwin's lawn.) Twitter aside, as an almost 40-year-old, I've become painfully aware of the chorus of voices, peers and friends and total strangers, who repeat the same tired refrain: "Act your age...act your age..." Yes, despite my long-haired tattooed backwards-baseball-cap wearing appearance, I do the grown-up stuff ("retiring" from a 10-year career as a well-paid technical recruiter to build a new career as a writer and social media consultant while raising two great kids). I also own (and regularly make use of) 4 surfboards and a skateboard, decided to start playing rugby at 37 (of course, my right knee decided to quit playing rugby at 37.25), and never fail to laugh at shit like this.

Clearly I don't act my age. (And yes, I'm absolutely OK with that. I fully intend to go Into That Good Night riding fakie and giving the goat.) So I posed the question to my fellow DadCentricians: do you feel the need to "act your age"? If so, why? If not, why not? Here are their answers...

I don't know what I was supposed to learn from this, but I'm not happy about it.

It's funny. I listen to music... strike that: I listen to a lot of music. It's kind of an obsession, really. I buy CDs compulsively. Order them online, have them shipped to my home, download them onto iTunes and then load them into my car stereo. Drive around. Listen. Absorb. Hope to be moved.

And maybe this is just a function of the kind(s) of music I listen to... but while there's staggering volumes of content across the 15,000+ songs I currently have loaded on my computer that applies in all ways, shapes and sizes to my life - both as I experience it during waking hours and what hides within the echoing recesses of my skull - there are only 15 songs with the word "father" in them.