Put any and all all thoughts of M. Night Shyamalan's ghastly adaptation of the excellent and popular Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon series out of your mind. The TV show was terrific: exciting, funny, beautifully drawn and well-written - in a world where quality action-oriented 'toons for older kids are scarce (or worse, merely infomercials for the toys they're based upon), it remains one of the best. The folks at Nickolodeon are bringing the world of The Last Airbender back: Legend of Korra starts this fall, and if the trailer's any indication, we may have another classic on our hands. The kid's gonna geek out when he sees this: I sure as hell did.
I'll be honest: I'm a fan of Michael Bay. His movies are ridiculous, loud, seizure-inducing, misogynistic cash-stuffed trash, but you get what you pay for. When I shell out $50 for tickets and popcorn, I expect to see giant robots smash the bejesus out of anything and everything they can get their mitts on. And twice now, Michael Bay has not let me down (although I will freely admit that I had no idea what the hell Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was about. Who were the Fallen? Why did they want revenge? Does it even matter?) I'd heard the buzz about the third movie: that it was better than the second, possibly the best in the series. Which is a bar set so low a dachshund could jump over it, but still. Perhaps the new movie wouldn't be just two and a hours of eye-fucking.
And the boy is, of course, a HUGE Transformers fan. He's got a bin full of them, has seen the first two movies a few times, watches the new cartoon version every Saturday morning, and for weeks he's been hounding me: "Dad, is the new Transformers movie out yet? Can we see it? Can we?"
This is the time of year when the dadbloggers push out their obligatory posts about What Father's Day Means To Them. I will freely admit to not giving much of a shit about Father's Day. Perhaps I'm numbed by the avalanche of PR pitches in the DadCentric Inbox (really, Robert Verdi? Scented candles?) and the sheer number of Father's Day Giveaways taking place around the Internets. But this is a dadblog, and so I feel like I need to post something about Father's Day, even though I feel like the holiday itself has become an excuse for the kind of self-congratulatory wanking that most of us who live in the real world despise. Luckily, I came across a great interview with comedian Louis C.K.; in it, he pretty much sums up what I feel about fatherhood in general and Father's Day in particular:
Slate: In an episode from the first season of Louie, a single mom your character meets at a PTA meeting tells you, "Just by showing up, you're father of the year." Do you think you have more freedom to talk about being a dad because there are fewer expectations placed on fathers in general?
Louis C.K.: It's funny—in life, those roles have all changed. There's a lot of fathers who take care of their kids, there's a lot of mothers who have careers. But in culture, those roles are still the same. When I take my kids out for dinner or lunch, people smile at us. A waitress said to my kids the other day, "Isn't that nice that you're getting to have a little lunch with your daddy?" And I was insulted by it, because I'm like, I'm fucking taking them to lunch, and then I'm taking them home, and then I'm feeding them and doing their homework with them and putting them to bed. She's like, Oh, this is special time with daddy. Well, no, this is boring time with daddy, the same as everything.
If I do something for my kids, I get a medal, because most fathers don't. If a mother makes a tremendous effort for her kids and does incredible things, no one gives a shit, because she's a mom, and that's what she's supposed to do. It's like giving a bus driver a medal for driving straight ahead. Nobody's interested. And that's really not fair, but it is the way it is.
For me, that's it in a nutshell. At this point in my life, fatherhood's that old pair of running shoes; I love wearing 'em, they're a bit banged up but comfy as hell, and unlike a new pair of shoes I don't really feel the need to show everyone how great they are. Am I a good dad? Most of the time, I suppose; you should ask my kids, when they're in their mid-30's and have some sense of how the world really works. Do I need a holiday, or societal recognition? It's nice, I guess, but you know what would be great? If the kids would just pick up the damn wet Cheerios when they drop them on the tile floor, because when the milk dries it's like frigging Super Glue and I need to chisel that shit off with a hammer and a butterknife.
Oh, of course they're not, but we love a good inflammatory headline as much as the next guy. Over at Man of The House, ballots are being cast for The World's Best TV Dad. The list of nominees is a virtual Who's Who of television fathers, spanning a few decades.
We watch a lot of TV, of course, and a while back we broached the topic of Best TV Dads ourselves; among our choices were Sons of Anarchy's Jax Teller, Californication's Hank Moody, 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan, and of course Mad Men's Don Draper. Since then, a few new dads have popped up on the tube. Coach Eric Taylor (Friday Night Lights) is an easy choice for TV's best dad. Modern Family pulls off a neat trick: it features one of the most stereotypical Idiot Dads ever to disgrace the small screen - Phil Dunphy - right alongside one of the most interesting (and funny) TV dads out there, Jay Pritchett. And this year brought us a couple others worthy of mention. Game of Thrones patriarch Ned Stark has the unenviable task of keeping a kingdom from falling into civil war while raising six kids. And in the season finale of Justified, deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens found out that he's about to become a daddy, even as he served as a father figure to a teenaged girl who'd lost her dad to a ruthless crime boss.
So take a few minutes and cast your vote. And regardless of who wins, we can all agree that Peter Griffin is no Homer Simpson. (And where's Bill Adama on that bracket?)
Recent Comments