DadCentric

Dom? Mad? Fother? Mather? I'm Confused.

Well, it was bound to happen. Science has finally reached the point where what was once inconceivable will soon be reality. I refer, of course, to the Wachowskis' Speed Racer, coming to theaters this summer. How dope does that look!?

Also, apparently there's a pregnant guy.

This has caused quite a stir in the Dad-O-Sphere. Greg's take on Thomas Beattie is erudite, succinct, and delivered with sensitivity and tact. The Sun's take on him? Well. Also, they totally stole my thunder - I was all set to riff on the almost completely forgotten Schwartzenegger flick Junior, but no point in doing that now. Wait - is that Emma Thompson? Holy shit! It is! Always a surprise when a renowned actor slums it.

Anyway, back to the pregnant dad: I think I can speak for a great many fathers when I say that Thomas Beattie is a  brave guy, sharing his story with the world, and carrying out his desire to give birth. Yes, brave in the sense that he certainly knew, going into it, that he'd be dealing with bigotry and ostracism from narrow-minded folk. But, much more than that, HE'S PREGNANT. Can you name one dad who, after spending nine months with his achy, nauseous, itchy, hormonal, emotional, hairy-where-there-once-was-smoothness, thought "yeah, I'd like to try that! Where do I sign up?" Oh, and once you hit that nine month mark you have to have the baby surgically removed (well, I suppose that's better than passing the kid through either of the two available exit routes. You thought passing that kidneystone hurt? Try pissing out a 10 pound baby!)  Fuck. That. Shit. I am waaaay too much of a pussy to be a biological mom.  And, dads who are reading this, admit it - so are you. Look in the mirror, look deep into your eyes, into the window of your souls, and say this: "May God strike me down if I'm lying - I would like to get pregnant. Because along with the constant back pain, there's a good chance that I'll develop a hemorrhoid the size of a Titleist."  Yeah, I thought so.

Thucydides said that "the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it." So, Thomas Beattie, we at DadCentric salute your courage. All that, plus you have to go to your own baby shower? You deserve the Congressional Medal of Honor, dude.

A Celebration of The Life of Mr. Big Dubya, On This, The Occasion Of His Passing

By now, most of you will have heard that we've lost one of our best and brightest. Mr. Big Dubya, known to his lovely wife and beautiful children as "Warren" and "Father" respectively, known to his friends as Mr. Big Dubya, known to the Pennsylvania legal system as "Paul Murchison", and known to his bookie as "that guy that lost $59,920 on Destination Alpo in the fifth race at Santa Anita", has, sadly, left the confines of this mortal coil. He was 40 years old. Our friendship is, of course, well documented. I remember it well, that fateful day when we first crossed paths. That game of mumblety-peg, the likes of which the people of Lisbon had never seen. The thinly veiled insult (for the record, I do enjoy a good Imitation Krab Salad, as do a great many learned men). Pistols at dawn on the field of honor. That fateful misfire, and the good laugh that followed. Thus was our friendship forged. We shared a bond that few will ever know - him saving my life during that fateful day on the Edmund Fitzgerald, me giving him the last of my Wint-O-Green Breath Savers that one time. Sadly, I'll never get that Breath Saver back. Because, really, $1.00 a pack? Who am I, Croesus?

Mr. Big Dubya was a man of action, not words. Here was a man who every year made the pilgrimage to Salt Lake City to visit the grave of his idol, Wilfred Brimley. (Being informed, years later, that Mr. Brimley was not in fact dead would have broken a lesser man; Mr. Big Dubya took it in stride, and continued to make the trek, a testament to the man's tenacity.) Here was a man who took his duties as an astronaut seriously, and yet never failed to make the men and women of Mission Control laugh, even on the most difficult of missions, with his unique variations on the time-honored "fart in a spacesuit" theme. Running with the bulls through the streets of Pamplona, tracking the yeti across the treacherous slopes of the Himalayas, hunting U-boats in his makeshift patrol boat off the Cuban shores (an act of courage that would later be immortalized in a classic song by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton) - this was a life well lived.

A wise man once said that it's better to burn than fade away; he also said "unda gleeben glauben globen", or some such, and though I have no idea what either of those two things mean, they seem fitting. Farewell, Mr. Big Dubya. 40 years on this earth was far too short a time. Unless you were a dog. Then, fuck, dude. You'd have been a really old dog. (ETA 5/4/07 6:50 a.m.: my intern has informed me that Mr. Big Dubya is actually not dead, but celebrating his 40th birthday. We apologize for the error.)

DadMomCentric

As you may have heard by now, men having babies is all the rage.  It was only a matter of time before science quit worrying about such frivolous pursuits as cures for AIDS and cancer and concentrated on the real (relationship) killer of our time, pregnancy.

Women have unfairly had to do all of the hard work in regard to developing, and in my case, creating, new life.  Then they have been obligated to follow the process with 18-80 years of worrying and creative criticism, while men get off with, well, getting off.  Men have felt really guilty about this for a long time.

That is why we here at DadCentric have decided to bridge the gap.  We are opening ourselves up to you, the readers, to help us make amends.  One of our writers will undergo the proper procedure(s) to become fertile.  Which one?  That's where you come in.  Vote in the comments below.

There are links in the sidebar.  Check everyone out and decide which dad is man enough to get knocked up.  All it takes is your vote, a dash of science and 7 lemoncillos.  Anal sex is optional.

Dad O' The Week: Genuine

Must be the season: I'm sick (head cold), and the end of the year is nigh, a scant ten weeks until 2007. In daddy terms, this means that moving forward every single weekend is booked - parties, visits from relatives and friends, trips to visit parents, nonstop action. Hence the lack of material. New dads out there, be warned: things don't let up for a while. I'm told that life's frenetic pace downshifts to 4th somewhere around the kid's 18th birthday. That'll be nice.

Not that I'm complaining (well, as I just realized that I'll be 55 when the kid turns 18, I may have a small complaint, but I'll save that for a future post. Unless someone can offer me assurance that at that age I'll be driving a flying car and getting a foot massage from my robot maid while watching my son play quarterback for USC on my giant hologram projection device). Most of us generally lead sitcom-flavored lives; every once in a while, we get a Very Special Episode, but for the most part things go...well, if not swimmingly, at least dog-paddlingly. A few of you may know Jim, from The Blogfathers and The Best of Blogs Awards and his own site, Genuine. He's one of the more gracious and gregarious bloggers out there, and I was shocked and deeply saddened to read his account of the turn his life has taken.

One of the unexpected pleasures of being a dadblogger is the camaraderie I've found among my peers. While I may not agree with all of them, and have gotten into some heated debates with some, I get the sense that there's a bond between dads that transcends our differences. So when one of our own takes a tumble, I'd like to think that the rest of us are out there to offer a hand, even if it's a virtuablogospherical one. Please drop by Jim's site and wish him well.

El Padre Libre!

One thing that always pisses me off is the declaration of any given celebrity to be a "great" father.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I don't disparage the celebrities themselves.  I'm sure many of them ARE great parents.

If anything, I blame the tabloids and celebrity publications for feeding the frenzy by continuing to annually publish lists of "Best Dad" polls.  The most  recent incarnation of such a poll just declared that Brad Pitt was Father of the Year. 

In declaring Mr. Pitt this year's honorary winner,  Life + Style editor in chief DEBRA BIRNBAUM decided Pitt was this year's (06) top dad, stating, "He even skipped the Cannes Film Festival in anticipation of Shiloh's birth!" 

Wow!  Talk about the ultimate parenting sacrifice!  Missing Cannes?  Are you fucking kidding me? 

I bring this all up because I was watching an old episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on my DVR the other day and caught the actor Jack Black talking about the recent birth of his son.  While watching him talk about his love of fatherhood, I realized once again why I've always loved Jack Black.  What other celebrity father would go on TV and say the following...

"I already love him and I've only known him for 4 days. It's automatic love.  Totally awesome!"

"He's a barfer.  Just like his daddy.  But he smells so damn good!  The barfs are like a little perfume.  The turds are like a delicious custard.  It's all just so good.  Really, the little things are the best."

"I'm doing all the things that I can do.  I do the diaper changing. Really, there's only two things.  There's the cleaning the ass and then the making sure he gets the foods from the boobies.  Otherwise, I just give the lovings.  The lovings.  The burpings.  It's pretty simple. I give him lovings.  That's my main job."

Jack Black...you're my kind of dude.  Let Brad Pitt, Heath Ledger & Ryan Phillippe have their public accolades from fluffy trash magazines.  You're a real dad and, for that, you're our DadCentric Dad of the Week!

Dad O' The Week: Jack Bristow

Tonight, we say farewell to one of our own. A dad for the ages, he's worn many hats in his day - father, husband, faithful employee of Credit Dauphin, coldblooded spy/assassin/torturer. Here is a man who speaks five languages, holds multiple degrees (physics, engineering, linguistics, cryptology), worked for his old CIA buddy who in reality was his evil genius archenemy, was married to an undercover KGB agent, had a daughter that he sent to a sleeper agent school when she was five, found out his wife was actually a KGB agent and eventually killed her, then found out it wasn't her but a clone created with the technology created by a 15th century mystic/scientist and was greatly relieved because he was still kinda crushin' on her, found out that the real ex-wife had an affair with and a daughter by his evil genius archenemy, hooked up with his not-dead wife's evil sister, killed her, went back to work for his evil genius archenemy after his evil genius archenemy apparently turned good but then continued to spy on good-formerly-evil genius archenemy, and along the way defused numerous ultimate weapons, infiltrated numerous impregnable enemy strongholds, killed a shitload of unpleasant people in nasty ways, and still had to be told what a "spork" was by his IT guy.

So long, Jack. If that is your real name.

Dad O' The Week: A.J. Jacobs

Chances are good that A.J. Jacobs has forgotten more stuff than you or I will ever know. His thoroughly enjoyable book The Know-It-All details his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica, all 44 million words of it. I won't spoil the ending - of his book, anyway. The Encyclopedia ends with zywiec. A.J.'s current project: he's spending his days obeying the Bible as literally as possible, and putting it all down on papyrus scrolls. A.J. is also the Editor at Large for Esquire magazine, and is a dad to boot.

The Know-It-All starts with a line that's familiar to many new dads: "I used to be smart." Reading – at least reading books that aren't seven pages long, printed on cardboard, with a talking train as protagonist – often takes a backseat to other, more pressing matters. With your son Jasper in the picture, are you still reading as much as before?

Not quite so much. My son was given about 42 baby encyclopedias, so  sometimes we read those all the way from Anteater to Zebra. Which is probably healthier than reading the Britannica, which goes from a-ak (a type of East Asian music) to zywiec (a Polish town known for its beer). In my spare time, I’m reading different versions of the Bible for my new book.

There's an interesting dynamic in the book between you and your father. Was it hard to be so candid when describing your relationship with him?

Definitely, it was a little tough. I wrote about him in the F chapter, for Freud, since there was a lot of Oedipal stuff going on there. He started to read the encyclopedia when I was a kid, but only made it up to the B’s, around ‘boomerang.’ I wanted to connect with him (and compete with him, I guess), so that was a big motiviation for me reading the encyclopedia. Also, we’re both absurdly repressed, so expressing emotions is hard enough, let alone expressing them in front of someone who's browsing books in Barnes & Noble.

Another aspect of the book that I enjoyed was your (for lack of a better word) affection for the EB. There's a sense today that print encyclopedias are a thing of the past, thanks to the Internet. Is the printed reference book obsolete? And are you worried that Jasper might one day opt to read Wikipedia in it's entirety?

There’s absolutely a sense that the printed encyclopedias are going the way of typewriters and iceboxes and Ricky Martin . The main markets right now are: Libraries, schools, and guys who get book contracts to read the entire EB. Which is kind of a shame. Because there’s something nice about those printed leatherette volumes. The explorer Ernest Shackleton took an entire set of the Britannica with him to Antarctica and ended up using it for kindling. Try doing that with the Internet. And Jasper might have a tough time with the Wikipedia – I hope they give him a big advance.

Your impending fatherhood played a role in the book. Did you find any good parenting advice or stories in the EB?

Well, it did make me feel better about my parenting skills, such as they are. There are a shocking number of fathers who killed their sons, from Ivan the Terrible to King Arthur to various Greek Gods. So compared to them, I’m doing pretty good.

Your current project has you living Biblically. How is this affecting your role as a father?

The Bible says we should talk to our kids about the 10 Commandments, so I’m doing that as much as I can. I tell Jasper not to covet his neighbor’s miniature ukelele or Dora the Explorer backpack. I’m not sure it’s sinking in.
The Bible is also quite pro-corporal punishment, which is something I haven’t been able to bring myself to do.

You're working on the script for the film version of The Know-It-All. (I have a couple of suggestions: get Michael Bay to direct. Montages, explosions, Aerosmith songs, maybe make it a buddy picture - team you up with a middle-aged EB editor on the verge of retirement, and he can keep saying "I'm gettin' too old for this shit!" as you do battle with ninjas. Or get Baz Luhrmann and do a musical/rock opera - call it Brittanica! ). Who would be your pick to portray you?

I love your ideas. Come on board as a producer! Or at least make a cameo as Scandinavian architect Hugo Aalto, the first person to appear in the encyclopedia. As for who I’d pick, I’ll be happy with anyone. I swear. Just as long as it makes it to the screen. I’ll take Armin Mueller-Stahl.

Dad O' The Week - Neal Pollack

First, put on a Depends and go here.

Making the transition from America's Greatest Living Writer to America's Most Beloved Father Figure would be a tall order for most mortals. Not Neal Pollack. Author of Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Rock Novel, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, a shitload of great articles, essays, and other works, and the forthcoming memoir Alternadad (due this fall), his writings about being a dad are brutally funny and brutally honest. Neal took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few of my questions. And yes, I'm comfortable enough with my own sexuality to admit that I have a hetero man-crush on him.

I'll be honest – the last time I interviewed someone "for reals", I was a senior in high school, co-editor of our school paper, and my subject was our varsity football coach (nice man, wore velour shirts every day, as I recall). So I figured I oughta do some research so as not to come off looking like a complete hack. Going through The Maelstrom's archives, I was struck by your 12/31/05 post, which featured a bit of hate mail sent by a "fan" who is apparently upset that you've opted to write about your life as a dad. Are you worried that you're going to lose those readers who are still looking for America's Greatest Living Writer?

It's my hope that anyone who likes my work will evolve (or devolve) along with me, but I can't speak for people's tastes. I'll probably lose a few readers, but I think I'll gain a lot more.

You're a relatively new Los Angeleno. My wife's from the Valley so we spend lots of time there. L.A. has its pollution, traffic nightmares, high crime, a huge chunk of the population living below the poverty line, and a seething undercurrent of racial and socio-economic tension. On the other hand, the shawarma is fantastic. Did you have any concerns about raising Elijah there?

What you say about L.A. is true. But L.A. is also a great place to raise a kid. Elijah loves it here. We have family memberships at the Aquarium Of The Pacific in Long Beach, at the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena, and at the L.A. Zoo. Griffith Park, 10 minutes from our house, features pony rides, three separate trains for kids, a toy-train museum, and a carousel that Walt Disney designed as a precursor to Disneyland rides. My kid doesn't even know Disneyland exists yet, and I plan to keep it that way as long as possible, but when he does discover the Magic Kingdom, that will be another tasty treat for him. And I haven't even mentioned the beach yet. Or Dodger Stadium. As far as Elijah is concerned, L.A. is a place where he can ride ponies, pet stingrays, serve meals at a "bug restaurant," and watch sea lions through binoculars from a Malibu promontory. The hungry coyotes, seven-car pileups, drive-bys, and coming catastrophic earthquake don't occur to him. Also, he goes to a great preschool. Besides, Beck grew up in L.A. Beck is still pretty cool, isn't he?

Debates rage across the spectra of parenting blogs: to spank or not to spank, to homeschool or not to homeschool, to breastfeed or not to breastfeed. People get pretty uptight and judgmental about this stuff, especially when it comes to bloggers who paint a realistic picture of parenting; why do you suppose that is?

I think all parents, myself included, feel insecure about their status. It comes naturally with parenthood, particularly contemporary parenthood, which is rootless and often far away from family support. Because parenthood can be isolating, and because the internet is there, people lash out defensively. It's sad, actually, because now more than ever, families need to present a united front, differences about discipline or nutrition aside. When I was growing up, a middle-class American family was more or less guaranteed a reasonably good eduction for the kids, an affordable house in a safe neighborhood, and doctor visits that didn't send you into bankruptcy. That's not the case anymore. If we all focused our energy on the stuff that mattered, and not on attacking people because they attachment parent (or because they don't), then I think we'd be a lot better off.  I'm not calling for some sort of political movement, but I wish families realized that they have a great common interest as a political class.

How did you prepare yourself for Elijah's birth? What were you reading, watching, and/or injesting?

At the time, I was writing Never Mind The Pollacks, so I was reading a lot of crappy rock criticism. I was also in a noir phase, devouring lots of Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, Chester Himes, David Goodis, and other great novelists of the noir era. As far as watching, it was the usual mix of professional baseball and HBO series on DVD. Also, that was the time when we were still watching reality TV. Hard to believe that seemed fresh to us, but it did. And as for ingesting, well, I'm not much of a drinker, but my penchant for marijuana consumption is well-advertised. Having a pregnant wife did nothing to change that. I also had one weekend in New York where I consumed more than marijuana, but I bumped my head on an overhang and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling all night, grinding my teeth. So it was back to the vaporizer for me.

I'm geeking out over Alternadad. Given that parenting blogs and literature are almost exclusively written by and for mothers, were there any challenges in getting a book deal?

Not once I wrote the proposal. Parenting books can sometimes sell a lot of copies, and I guess I have a semi-fresh take on the subject. However, my agent had to draw and quarter me in order to get me to write Alternadad. My other project was a novel making fun of historical novels about New York. There were some funny bits, to be sure, but it was mostly crap. When Chris Elliot beats you to the literary punch, you know it's time to change topic. And I'm glad I did. Writing about being a dad as been almost as much fun as being a dad itself.

Tragically, my only musical memory from my toddler years was Peter, Paul and Mary's album Peter, Paul and Mommy. Happily, my kid loves Kings of Leon, NWA and the Pixies, so no genetic harm done. What were you listening to when you were three?

My father owned one record: The Army Marching Band playing And The Caissons Go Rolling Along. Also, there were a lot of original Broadway cast recordings around, and a Beach Boys record or two. There was also a copy of Let It Bleed, but it never left its wrapping, to the point where, when I opened it upon the eve of going to college, I found a 20-year-old Rolling Stones poster, which I then proceeded to destroy by sticking it to my dorm-room wall with masking tape. So to answer your question: I wasn't listening to anything, and it took me 30 years to catch up.

Clearly your child is destined for greatness. Is Elijah the next Basketball Jesus, the next Alex Chilton, or – dare I suggest it – the next Neal Pollack?

My parents say that because I'm such a goddamn freak that my son will end up being a "Republican engineer," as though that nonsense phrase is going to mean anything during the age of the global-warming-produced giant spiders that will rule the earth by the time Elijah is an adult. If for some reason that apocalyptic scenario doesn't come to pass, I think that he'll end up being some kind of weirdo. There's a girl in Elijah's preschool class who says she wants to start a band with him. Nothing would make me happier, and Elijah is also showing some interest in basketball over all other sports. But he says that when he grows up he wants to be "the man who feeds the polar bears and the stinky penguins." That would be fine with me. In fact, I'll love him no matter what he becomes. If he's happy, I'm happy. And I mean that with all my heart.

Dad O' The Week: Jon Armstrong

Jon Armstrong is a Blogger's Blogger: his site Blurbomat is part daddyblog, part socio-political forum, part pop culture observatory, part photo gallery, part diary. Jon lives and works in Salt Lake City. He's a dad to one daughter and one dog, and is married to Heather, who, as it turns out, also has a blog. Jon recently sat down with me and answered a few questions. Well, not really. I emailed the questions to him and he emailed the answers back. I'm assuming he was sitting down. But he may not have been.

Leta - snowboarder or skier?

I'd love it if she were a snowboarder. I wonder if she'll even want to try, given the strong aversion to winter clothing that both she and her mother exhibit.

You're not shy about letting conservative Utah know how you feel. Yet it's pretty clear that there's a lot you like about living in Salt Lake City. Are you worried that Leta's going to come home from school one day and announce that she's joined the John Birch Society?

Not really. I think parents influence their children to a point. My father was very conservative, but we had very lively political discussions at the dinner table. I think because I was one of the younger kids in my family, my older siblings helped to shape my politics. Our neighborhood skews more liberal and by the time Leta is old enough to care, it may be a non-issue. I'd be more shocked if she said she wanted to join a church. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Your recent posts about your struggles with getting health insurance sparked a lot of comments and brought out the inevitable trolls. Have you ever gotten to the point where you wanted to cut out comments altogether?

Actually, the worst comment day was the day we put up the ads on dooce.com. The insurance conversation was really helpful and while it got a little crazy, the Brokeback Mountain/gay stuff was even worse. Having a registration system combined with a trust system helps greatly.

Now that you've ditched the corporate world, how has your experience as a dad changed?

Anybody who stays home with kids is a saint. Period. I've grown much closer to Leta, and been able to experience some amazing moments in her development. I think that's pretty rare for a parent in our two-income country. I think that in some ways, I've stepped up the discipline, but I've also stepped up the diaper duty. I'm exhausted at the end of the day. But it's a good kind of exhausted. Instead of The Man making me stressed out, I just pass out from trying to keep up with Leta.

What's the absolute stupidest parenting tip you've gotten?

That is such a loaded question. I'm claiming the fifth!

Fair enough. How about the flip side of that question: what's the best parenting tip you've received?

Blurbomat covers a lot of bases - personal, political, pop culture, tech, and you're handy with a camera. Is there anything that you refuse to write about?

There are things I won't write about. I think having some boundaries is good. Although you wouldn't know it from my wife's site. :-) She's a good counter to my uptight ways.

There are, at last count, a gazillion mommyblogs out there, yet very few dads opt to share their experience with The Internets. Why do you think that is?

Men aren't big on self-expression? Most men don't stay at home with their kids? Men are archetypically lame communicators? If it's not one of those three, I'm guessing that it might have to do with how women multi-task. Women are about 6000% more efficient with their time around kids than men are. Without fail, every women I've seen with kids and a task list will complete the tasks well before the men do.

Granted, this is all a big generalization, but I think it's time for men to realize that women kick our asses in the time management/children arena.

You've also lived in L.A. Which city's NBA team's name makes the least sense?

It's really a tie between the Lakers and the Jazz. How's that for diplomacy?

The best parenting tip, and the hardest: Have a schedule and be consistent. It's very difficult to tell family and friends that we're leaving the party at 6:30pm. But Leta has been a great sleeper from about four months on. When I hear parents tell me their children won't go to bed before 10 or 11 at night, I'm very grateful that we chose a hard, but now satisfying path to make sure we always put Leta to bed at the same time, every night and did so from a young age. It's made a huge difference in our quality of life as a family.

Dad O' The Week: Raising Chooks

David is a self-described Brit living in Munich ("Try not to mention the war!" Sorry, but I'm an American who loves "Fawlty Towers" and to me the phrase "Brit living in Munich" is what we in the biz call a "hanging curveball"), with three kids. If you like droll, David brings it.