DadCentric

This Is A Trailer For The Lego Breaking Bad Videogame That Sadly Will Never Be

So someone decided to make a fake Lego Breaking Bad videogame trailer. Meth may be bad, but America is still great.

 

By Such Swift Currents

"It's like fireworks," she said. A bright, sharp pop and crackle echoed through the night. Then another, and another. Her eyes, her sister's eyes, broad and open and wholly focused on the screen, waiting for the burst of glittering, shimmering lights that seven years had taught them always accompanied these sounds — that moment of pure, shuddering wonder when great streams of sudden, glorious color would fill the sky and give proof to the promise of magic.

But we knew. We knew. And for a moment, as we paused and breathed deep, we allowed that illusion to live: that this was a world of fireworks, of vivid dreams of twisting rainbows falling like rain through soft darkness. And then there were more - whipcrack echoes, whistling through the air, clear and unmistakable even through the filter of a dozen miles and a shifting camera struggling for focus, bringing us to the edge of the moment as it unfolded across the screen - and the time for illusion was gone. "No, sweetie," my wife said gently. "Those are gunshots."

It had been two hours since we'd willfully walled off the world, coccooning ourselves in the quiet, simple solace of dinner and a movie at home. Two hours of losing ourselves in another place and another time: another set of men and women frantically racing against the clock and the odds and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, taking arms against a sea of troubles as if, by opposing, they might bring them to a just and righteous end. After such a long and strange day, with the city and surrounding towns locked down and immobilized, the crawl of updates telling us minute-by-minute of the frantic search weaving its way through Watertown and Cambridge, along the banks of the warming Charles and across to Allston and Brighton and beyond, the frenzied rush of cruisers and squad cars and busloads of officers plated in thick armor and bright weaponry, and the copters circling overhead and the wait, stretching impossibly far across the bridge of hours — the opportunity to escape into film was irresistible: to gaze through the looking glass into a dream of life where heroics inspire, resolution is possible and villainy...

What's At The End Of The Road

I have a thing about the end of the world, namely that I believe in it. Worse still, I’m sure it will happen in my lifetime. According to a life-expectancy quiz I took this week, I should make it to age 77 assuming nothing random happens to me like choking on a marshmallow or being hit by a flaming meteor (which we all know could totally happen).  In any case, simple math dictates I’ve got 37 good years ahead of me. This is plenty time for either A, the Democrats to confiscate all of our guns and force us into same-sex marriages thus leaving us defenseless against a Chinese invasion or B, the Republicans take control and plunge 98% of America into extreme poverty after funding a pork barrel project that results in a zombie army, hence setting the stage for a World War Z.

Truthfully speaking, my beliefs on the earth’s demise are aligned with the events prophesied in the book of Revelations which are totally plausible according to a Discovery Channel special and Kirk Cameron. Nutty, I know, but a guy’s got to believe in something, and besides, what’s the harm? If I’m wrong you all get to come back to this post and tell me, “I told you so” in the comments.

Lest you think I’m about to go on a religious tear, allow me to put your mind at ease. I’m not. Unlike the crazies that manage to end up on FOX and Friends, I actually respect other people’s beliefs because who’s to say I’m 100% right. This reminds me of a joke.

If You Give a Dad a Tortilla Chip ...

Some of us dads have princess issues. OK, one of us REALLY has issues.

But when it comes to nacho cheesy snack food, we can all agree on this.

DISCLAIMER: This video is a finalist in the Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" ad contest. Neither maker Frito-Lay nor its parent, Pepsi, compensated DadCentric or the post's author in any way. How rude!

A Louis CK Charlie Brown Christmas

Everything's amazing and Charlie Brown's not happy.

 

Eliminate PBS? That's Not Very Neighborly.

We normally stay out of politics, but given the kerfluffle over one candidate's desire to eliminate government funding for PBS, we thought we'd share this video. We think this Rogers guy makes a pretty good case.

 

You Should Use Dove Men + Care Stuff Because Steven McMichael Does And He Is A Professional Badass.

The title of this post should clue you in: it's sponsored by the good folks at Dove Men+Care, who still sponsor our posts despite (or, we suspect, because of) our wanton use of profanity and crass approach to discussing their products. A few weeks back, the good folks at Dove Men+Care asked if I'd like to fire a fire questions at Steven McMichael. Who is Steven McMichael, you ask? Steven McMichael has what may well be the coolest job on the planet: he is an on-screen combat/stunt coordinator. In other words, he does fight scenes for movies, training actors and actresses to do spin kicks and use broadswords and dodge bullets. A retired Marine, he has been in the action movie business for 12 years. Dude was Hugh Jackman's stunt double in the first X-Men flick, y'all.

 

Hugh Jackman: clearly not as badass as his stunt double, Steven McMichael

 

Like I said: coolest job ever. Right now he's working on a small art house movie about short people, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its sequel, The Hobbit; The Desolation of Smaug. I asked Steven a few questions about his job and how he stays in shape, and yes, nerds, I got some info on those Hobbit flicks.

The Burgeoning Monster Art Market

The other day, my kids got bored and busted out the old Mighty Men and Monster Maker. Remember these things? It has all these plastic plates with outlines of different legs, torsos, and heads that you can mix and match into all sorts of creatures, humanoid, alien, and otherwise. You lay a piece of paper down on top of it, run a crayon back and forth over it like you’re doing a grave rubbing, then sit back and admire the abomination you’ve brought into the world. I don’t think they make the MM&MM anymore, so it’s lucky for my kids that my mom kept mine.  

So my kids are working away making their monsters and their mighty men and other ungodly variations on these themes when my eldest, who starts first grade in a couple of short weeks, stops and looks at what he’s created and announces, “I should sell these!” His tone says this idea has just hit him like an idea-laden thunderbolt and that he thinks it’s a winner. I do not doubt at all that he means what he’s saying. I don’t know where he gets it from, but this kid is all about the money. He keeps a meticulous runnning tally of his current holdings and is always looking for ways to stack his paper higher. Frankly, his Alex P. Keaton-ness freaks me out sometimes, but he seems to have a knack for the whole money thing, so short of steering him away from anything illegal or unethical, he’s free to build his little empire as he sees fit. 

To which he was now planning to add a branch for art. 

30 Days of Dads: Doug French

So for years, a bunch of us talked about doing some sort of dadblogger convention, but "talk" was about as far as we got. Then Doug French, he of Laid-Off Dad fame, got up off his ass and did something about it. Doug was the brains behind the inaugural Dad 2.0 Summit, and all who attended agreed that it was the start of something great. Here Doug talks about why the way dads are portrayed in commercials is important, and it's hard to argue with him.

Why I Do Give A Rat’s Ass What Huggies Thinks of Dads

In a previous life, I taught GMAT classes for a test-prep company. The most tedious part of the gig was grading the essays, because most of the prompts had such a binary structure. Writers had to feel This Way or That Way about a topic and list the reasons why. Which led to a lot of homogeneous mediocrity, and a really sore forehead.

Every once in a while, though, the GMAT got creative and came up with a prompt that was open to much more varied interpretation, like this:

“You can tell the ideas of a nation from its advertisements.”

This prompt has stuck in my mind for all this time because 1) it was the first one that inspired essays that were varied and truly interesting, and 2) it’s true.

If you follow dad blogs regularly (and if you don’t, this site is a great place to start), you’ve read about the mess Huggies made with its embarrassing “ultimate challenge” ads, how Kimberly-Clark reacted to the blowback by sending brand managers to the Dad 2.0 Summit, and how much less insulting the new campaign is. Wins all around, right?

Soon afterward, Jason wrote in this space that he “didn’t give a rat’s ass” about what Huggies thinks about dads. In his usual cogent, passionately detached way, he took down both the Doofus Dad and Superdad stereotypes with one skillful, cutting stroke:

One’s as irrelevant as the other …. These misrepresentations are just so much white noise, gibberish from some alien planet, broadcasts from a Bizarro Earth.

It’s good that a lot of us in our small but burgeoning dad blogosphere have the esteem to tune this crap out. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. This isn’t an alien planet. This is our Earth, which happens to be teeming with young men who are terribly confused by dissonant expectations about what manhood is.

We have to tell them that sexism goes both ways. It’s just as shitty to imply that all girls are “too pretty” to do homework as it is to say all men are dumbasses who can’t take care of a kid. And when a brand asserts either of these things, we have to call them on it. Especially now, when many seem to be listening.

We have to think about kids who aren’t as lucky as Jason’s, who watch a lot of TV and see ads like this far more than they see their fathers. Advertising is an art form (albeit one with specifically corporate goals) that is ubiquitous and universally accessible. And like any art, the best ads succeed by creating a relatable message. If one such message is that dads are idiots, and boys grow up seeing men behave like children and women like exasperated caretakers, the prophecy is doomed to fulfill itself over and over.

It’s a long--and some might say quixotic--road, because stereotypes are grounded in experience. But dads are talking, and shifting the conversation, and that encourages me. Because by the time my sons are ready to become fathers, I want the ideas of this nation to be a lot different than they are now.


--
http://about.me/dougfrench

Influence

Luckily, I don't really do drugs around my children any more.  Instead, I teach them little rhymes like "School's cool; stay in school" to keep them out of my house during daylight hours, so that if my son does one day bring home a cigar box full of weed, instead of screaming at my confused mustachioed face like the urchin above, he'll react like I would have reacted if asked such a question 25 years ago:  "Schwartz!" 

But they have seen the ill-effects of drinking.  Last week, for example, I had a Continuing Legal Education event that required attending open bar functions Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights until at least 1am.  This requirement cared little about my spawn's affinity for pre-sunrise greetings that include pointy little knees and a sensitive groin area.

My son asked, "Daddy, are you okay?  You look  sick."  He looked into my bloodshot eyes at 6am on Sunday.  I squinted to see the source of the thirty pounds spread across the lower half of my body.

I replied, "Son, you don't get to be awesome by going home early.  Come see for yourself."

I showed him this picture from my phone, taken just a few hours before:

And this picture, taken Friday night:

And suddenly he understood how to get awesome.

"You're funny when you play dress up with your friends, Daddy."

May he always think Daddy is just out playing dress up with his friends.