DadCentric

Legoland: The DadCentric Review

Conundrum: what does one do when nice marketing folks offer you a day at a big amusement park, complete with a behind the scenes tour AND a free breakfast, in the hopes that you'll write nice things about their park on your blog...and you really don't have a whole lot of nice things to say about the big amusement park, and you feel sorta bad about that?

You hold your nose and write on.

Friday we got the VIP treatment at Legoland. Backstory: we live about 10 miles away from Legoland, and prior to Friday we'd never been. Simple logic behind that, really: Lucas is Spacially Aware, and having a big amusement park ten minutes from one's house means "Can we go to Legoland? Can we go to Legoland? Can we go to Legoland?" on a daily basis. My friend and UpTake colleague Kim Prince did some wheeling and dealing, and lo, there we were, with a few other bloggers at the Legoland entrance, bright and early, ready to partake in some Danish plastic brick-themed excitement.

Dadalogues #2: Yelling At Kids

Dadalogues 2 from BH Jesus on Vimeo.

Memory: Is it live or is it Memorex?

Memory is a very tricky thing. What we remember and define as a memory is purely subjective. Are the events we recall actually those we have experienced in their exact detail or are they merely a series of connected images our minds have stitched together and labeled a memory? (and Warren's head goes boom!) No worries, dear reader, this is not a treatise on the persistence of memory, just a set up for the rest.

The reason I ask all this is that what I consider to be my first "real" memory revolves around an event that took place 40 years ago. A seminal event in our nation's history, in mankind's history, three men were strapped to a Saturn V rocket, hurtled at break-neck speeds into space and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" on their way to the moon. According to the "baby book" my mother kept, I was obsessed with the astronauts and their missions. I told anyone who would listen that I wanted to be an astronaut and go to the moon when I grew up. That's why my memory of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon's surface and experiencing that "magnificent desolation" seems so real to me. I can see the grainy black and white images flicker across the screen of the Magnavox television that sat in the living room, but unless my parents kept me up well after my bedtime (which is certainly possible) this memory may not be entirely real. It's entirely possible that it's a complete fabrication. However, I like to think it is not.

DadCinema: A Brief Overview

You may or may not have read about the upcoming release of World's Greatest Dad — a pitch-black comedy directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (who once upon a time gave us the terrifyingly brilliant Shakes the Clown, aka "The Citizen Kane of Alcoholic Clown Movies") and starring Robin Williams as the title Dad, whose awful son... well, let's just say that if you do a little research, you'll quickly discover just how dark this comedy is. To say I'm excited about it is a profound understatement.

In any case, reading about this movie got me to thinking about other "Dad" films. Where are they, and what do they have to teach us? With that in mind, DadCentric bravely presents a brief overview of  DadCinema. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

School's Been Blown to Pieces

Time is a funny thing.  It's also a real bitch.  It flies.  It claims to be on your side.  You can't catch it in a bottle.  Bandits. 

Time has many faces (I think I just made a clock joke).  Time is doing the bird.  Everybody! Whawk! Hallelujah! Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh!

Seriously, this getting old is a bunch of bullcrap.

My high school reunion is this weekend.  Twenty. Fucking. Years.  I know, I look great.

Twenty years?  Who does that?  I'm very confident in the fact that the 10th was just a few years ago.  I remember it clearly.  It was like high school but drunker.  I wore a tie. There was dancing.  I specifically remember dancing.

Flash forward and I'm married with children and Al Bundy is becoming less and less funny.  Not that he was ever that funny to begin with.  I do love me some Sinatra though.

Dear Winners, Now With Books!

Remember that contest we had back in June? The one with the dads and the stories and the books and the stuff? 

No? Seriously? What are you people, on dope?

Trust me, it happened and people entered and people won and it was good.

In fact, these are the people that won:

It Took A Village

Dudes pee standing up, okay? That’s just part of the deal. With few exceptions, we relieve ourselves with our two feet planted on the ground.

I know, I know, it doesn’t get much more profound than that, but Jason pays us by the consonant for this shit, so continue I must, super-cala-fragi-listic-expee-ala-docious?

A while back, Black Hockey Jesus asked the rest of us DCD’s to submit unto him a memory of our own fathers, all of which he assembled into a nice Friday-before-Father’s-Day post. Reading them all at the time, I felt a little weird about being the only guy whose entry was not particularly warm, happy, or otherwise positive. Like that one scary clown in a car full of funny clowns, I felt like the standout, throwing a depressing damper on an otherwise pleasant post with my WAH-WAH-MY-DADDY-ABANDONED-ME-WAH-WAH-WAH rehash.

Actually, that’s a crappy simile. There’s never just one scary clown in that car.

Yes, we’re getting back to the peeing-standing-up thing.

DC On The Radio - Sorta.

Hi all - Jason here. Since I own this site I can repost whatever I want whenever I want; with great power comes great responsibility, so I usually don't abuse that right. HOWEVER: 

You may know that I've appeared as a guest twice on NuPoppa Radio. Apparently, I passed some sort of Top Secret Audition; the show's founder and host Doug Zanger asked me if I'd like to be the new co-host, and of course I said yes. In my best Casey Kasem voice. 

I do have a background in radio. That background consisted of approximately two late night stints at San Diego State's KCR; my friend Matt and I filled in for our friend Brian, who I think was studying for a test or writing a paper or whatever it was that responsible college students did back then. Our comedic stylings consisted of Cop In, Cop Out (we'd call our local 7-11 and ask if there was a cop hanging around trying to use his badge to score some free Slurpee action; of course, when we called and the guy working the register said "no", we didn't really have much of a bit); we also played some music (I distinctly recall playing some Flying Burrito Brothers and Fishbone). Then MTV was invented and we were all out of jobs. DAMN YOU J.J. JACKSON. (I'm aware that I was in college in the early 90's, some 10 years after MTV was invented, but I still blame the MTV people - I also think that they assassinated Art Bell and replaced him with a computerized simulacrum, but I have no actual proof - yet.)

So tomorrow marks my debut as Co-Host; our guest will be Dad Gone Mad himself, Danny Evans. He'll be talking about his new book, and all sorts of other fun stuff. By the way, tomorrow, Thursday July 16th, also marks the day that man first set foot on the Moon. One small step, one giant leap. Coincidence? Hardly.

Tune in by going here, 11:00 A.M. PST, tomorrow.

Emphasize the Positive

We'd been dancing around the topic for weeks.  Whenever Cheeky was in the room and the conversation slipped towards housing and pre-schools, we'd catch ourselves and say, "Ixnay on the Austinay."  We didn't know how Cheeky was going to take the news that we were moving, leaving the only world she's ever known and all her little friends behind.  So we kept putting it off.  And putting it off.

Finally, I saw an opportunity, and, swallowing a boulder-sized lump in my throat, sat her down. 

"Cheeky, remember how Daddy went to Austin a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah!  You were in Austin and Mommy took me to Grandma's house and I went swimming."

"Right.  Well, Daddy went there to look for a job.  I looked and looked and finally found one, and Mommy and Daddy decided that we should all move to Austin together."

"Move to Austin?"

Small Change

His voice, so much smaller than his overgrown 7-year-old body, stabs my ear like an X-Acto knife.

"Dad," he says, "can I have a nickel or a quarter?"