DadCentric

The Joys Of Dadblogging

 Last week my son got home from school and told me he had a project he needed to work on.

It was to create a timeline of his life.

But you couldn't include things like "my little brother was born" or "started elementary school." The key points on the timeline had to be specific to him. We sat around trying to think of some stuff when it occurred to me to turn to the computer.

This January I will celebrate seven years as a dad blogger, so it made perfect sense to consult my blog.

We found a big gap between his birth and age 4, but once we got to him to that age the timeline was rife with fodder for entries.

There was the time he got his first black eye and the time he broke his collarbone (4 clearly was an eventful year). He looked at me and said, "I don't want it to all be bad stuff, Dad." So we began searching my blog for the good times.

We discovered gems like his first soccer game just before he turned five as well as the time he caught the mighty conch at the beach when he was six.

The memories made me giddy.

For years I always questioned why I blogged. It's not like I have a shit ton of fans, nor do I make any money off of it. And it took me probably a year or more before I even outed myself as a dad blogger. I came to the conclusion years ago that the primary reason I blogged was for myself. It's that simple. It's a journal of my life and I never really cared if any one ever read it. As my boys started to age, there was more and more to add yet less and less time to write about their accomplishments, their personal highs and lows.

But being able to look back on their lives like this gave me a feeling of euphoria. It made me realize that it's not about a fan base or income generated but about the preservation of my family through words and photos.

A 21st Century virtual scrapbook.

Looking back through my archives also gave me a renewed interest in the world of blogging. Even more so now, post-burglary, where I suddenly had a laptop stolen with almost a decade's worth of kid photos on it. 

What else could we uncover on my blog?

Well, seven was a good year as he learned to ollie on his skateboard and started his own punk rock band with his little brother. He also played his first and only season of football in the year of seven-going-on-eight.

Age nine, as you can see by his timeline, was apparently the age he learned to "chill" and at ten his budding rap career both started and ended. 

He's currently eleven-years-old.

And I need to get back to blogging...

 

 

#OccupyBabble!

So this is happening. 

Now, here's the funny part:

We're holding steady at #9, by the way. (FULL DISCLOSURE: we nominated ourselves, because hey, why not? DadaRocks did!) Now, to be fair, Babble does have 3 actual dadbloggers (along with that Single Dad Laughing guy, who we believe is some sort of celestial being/Matrix Agent, at least after reading his descriptions of himself) on the payroll. And a bunch of us did receive a blast email in June from Babble, saying that they're "doing a big feature on dad blogs* to coincide w/the launch of a Dad section...date TBD". In any case, if Babble is a true parenting site, and not just a site for moms (although...y'know, if ESPN devoted 90% of its coverage to football, wouldn't that make it a football channel, not a "sports" channel?) then they should be stoked to see the other 50% of the parenting equation represented on their contest.

*yeah, we're under no illusion that we'll get a mention in that big dad blog feature after these shenanigans.

UPDATE (10/21/11)!

 

Bronies Are Passionate, Creepy

I've been watching, with some interest, the Bronie flame war that's erupted over at SD Momfia. Way back in June, my wife Beth wrote that post about Bronies - adult males who are rabid fans of My Little Pony - and how they're sort of, well, creepy. Since then, the Brony herd (I'm assuming that's what the collective is called?) has been piling it on, maybe protesting a bit too much about their whole deal and the greatness that is MLP. Here are some of the best comments:

Commenter "Marrik": "That man isn’t the head bronie. bronies are not lead by one individual so there is no leader at all."

Commenter "Brotaku": "...these little ponies are cute and small and sweet, and somewhere in our male minds, buried below the repressed feelings and pointless displays of masculinty, is an instinct to protect the cute, the small, the helpless. To prove my point ask any brony how he felt when Gilda made Fluttershy cry."

Commenter "Relictus": "I like the characters, and it’s a pleasant diversion from the real world of rampant unemployment and a faltering economy. Plus, you learn a little something about friendship every episode. I don’t really have friends – but ponies won’t judge me."

Commenter "Aiden Raccoon": "Oh come on. I’m in the furry community and, while true, furries find plenty of fap material, MLP is NOT one of them."

So, I don't see what the big deal is here, other than, you know, the whole "adults turning a cartoon show aimed at my four-year-old daughter into a fucking lifestyle choice" thing. Also, Hitler.

 

 

 

Stranger in a Strange Land? Poppycock!

While I've never really felt out of place at any of the three BlogHers I've attended, at 2011's installment in San Diego, I felt even more at home than I have at previous ones, as I knew I'd have several fellow DadCentric writers present, along with Doug French and his uncanny ability to work, "We're launching Dad 2.0 next March!" into any conversation, panel, or rallying cry.

Plus, I knew I'd know at least 5% of the 3000 women there, including one in the Old Testament sense, as I finally talked Mrs. Muskrat into making the trek. 

Despite the above, I was stopped Saturday afternoon by a woman after the "humor blogging" session with the folowing:

Her:  Hi, I'm -- (I forgot her name).  Were you in the humor blogging session?
Me:  I was!  Wasn't I humorous?
Her:  So, I have a question.
Me:  Okay.
Her:  How did you get here?
Me:  I had over 100,000 sky miles.  Plus a bunch of Marriott points.  We--
Her:  No.  I mean, do they just LET YOU IN?
Me:  I may be from Georgia, but I know when to wear shirts and shoes.  I even remembered my lanyard!
Her:  I mean, I'd heard males were allowed to come to BlogHer; I just didn't...
Me:  When you say "males," I look for the breeding Labradors.  What the f--
Her:  No...I mean.  So...you just came to BlogHer?
Me:  Yes.  I bought a ticket.  Via THE INTERNET.  Like I did for Mom 2.0 and the last two BlogHers!
Her:  Oh.  Why?
Me:  I have their little ad tower on my personal blog, and I like these people.  Writers are fun!
Her:  Oh!  I get it.  Men are coming for the same reasons women come to this conference!
Me:  Yes!  Can I interest you in a Twitter follow?

And so began another beautiful friendship via the world wide web.

Two Rides Home: A BlogHer11 Recap, More or Less

Photo by Backpacking Dad

Back in April, a few of us DadCentricians went to New Orleans to represent the patriarchy at a little shindig called the Mom2.0 Summit.  I wrote a recap of that experience here, and if you read it, you may remember that I was very excited to have met a bunch of my imaginary friends in real life, spoken on a panel, and talked about blogging nonstop for 3 days.

While Mom2.0 Summit is no mere Tupperware party, the annual BlogHer conference is what I like to call the Mother Of All Mommyblogging Conferences, or MOAMC, and this year it drew somewhere around 3,000 attendees.

This year, BlogHer was held in San Diego, America's Finest City (fact!), where three of us DadCentricians (the boss, The Didactic Pirate, and me) happen to live.  So it was a no-brainer that I would attend.  And I did.  We three dudes from the Daygo (that's what gangsta dads call San Diego) met up with Two Busy, Whit, and TheMuskrat, and kind of did the same thing we did in New Orleans.  Except we weren't on any panels.  And some of the guys brought their wives.  (To a mommyblogging conference!  Imagine!) And instead of bunking with a bunch of grubby dadbloggers after the nightly debauchery that's standard for all mommyblogging conferences, I went home to my family.  So, as I was saying, the experience was almost nothing like Mom2.0 Summit.

I believe that The Muskrat will soon be contributing a recap that will focus on the poignant and inspirational experiences of the conference, so I would simply like to share a couple memorable interactions I had with some fellow dadbloggers while riding home after the evening's activities.

DadCentric Acquires The Muskrat, Looks To Make A Playoff Run

We've added a power hitter to the rotation: The Muskrat, who brings the lumber every time he blogs. A few of us have had the pleasure of hanging with him in Real Life, and he's an all-around great guy who threatens to bring some much-needed class to the joint. If you haven't read his stuff, please go to his blog (the aptly named "The Muskrat") and do so. We at DadCentric are pleased to continue to bring you some of the finest dad writers on the Internet, and we look forward to whatever bloggy awesomeness The Muskrat has to offer. 

 

The 5 Most Important Things I Learned at the Mom 2.0 Summit

Since Whit gave such a great recap of the Mom 2.0 Summit, I'll dispense with the background information and charge directly to the meat of the matter, which will be of especial interest to you bloggers out there who missed it: the most important insights I gleaned during this, my first blogging conference.

1. Conferences are where you connect with the Big Players in the Industry.  Wow.  I met so many movers and--yes--shakers, as well.  These are the people who make parent-blogging the multi-thousand dollar business it is.  I was privileged to meet CEOs and CFOs of marketing and advertising organizations.  We talked about monetization, SEO, brand-building, and a lot of other really important things that I don't understand at all.  Then we exchanged business cards.  Theirs were printed on much higher quality paper than mine, and weren't softened by pocket sweat.
2. Being a daddyblogger at a conference full of mommybloggers makes you an automatic rockstar.  In my case, Sting. As a feminist, I'm fervently opposed to being fawned over by mommybloggers.  It's degrading to everyone involved.  How hollow it is to be given undue attention simply because you are among a group of maybe twenty men perceived as a sensitive, artistic, and yet roguish at a gathering of 3500 women.  Women amped up by a rare weekend away from their kids, a fleshly realization of their online camaraderie, and piles of shiny swag.  For a fella, the attention can be daunting.  The constant dinner invitations, "where you at?" tweets, photo ops, and unsolicited hugs.  Objectification goes both ways, ladies.  
3. It's really difficult to stay completely sober for any length of time in New Orleans. It's almost as if they want you to drink a lot.  You can enjoy adult beverages as you walk down the street, and there are no rules about when bars or liquor stores should shut down.   Some sub-headings I would include if I were better at formatting: 1) I thought I had stopped liking bourbon a long time ago; but it turns out that I was just drinking bad bourbon. 2) The much maligned and widely banned sports drink/hobo wine called Four Loko is in fact the very nectar of the gods, gushed forth from the fountain of youth, and replete with rejuvenating electrolytes.  3) You will never be alone in a bar at dawn in New Orleans.
4. Meeting your imaginary friends In Real Life is way better than just meeting regular people.  What are the chances that you would meet some schmo off the street and have days worth of conversations and ideas to share?  Slim, right?  But as geeky as it sounds, all the folks I met that I "knew" from our blog/facebook/twitter interactions exceeded my expectations of how they would be in real life.  With one exception: I never would have guessed that Whit Honea would be the kind of sadist that would torture a sentimental drunk who is separated from his family for the first time, and known to be sappy about dogs, by showing him pictures of his own recently deceased dog being hugged by his adorable children and causing said drunk to weep openly in a bar/laundromat at 7:00 a.m.  So not cool.
5. The stars are aligned for the ascendancy of the daddyblogger!  This time for real.  The folks that brought us Mom 2.0, in collaboration with fast-talking New York schmoozer Doug French (Laid Off Dad), are cooking up a for-real daddyblogging conference that will go down in the spring of 2012, called the Dad 2.O Summit.  This will finally put us on the map!  Our relevance in the marketplace of ideas will be acknowledged!  Our influence on the purchasing habits of American families will be recognized!  Our voice in the conversation about the future of the family structure will be heard!  At the very least, we'll get to hang out together in a cool city and get lots of free AXE products and boner pills.  And Four Loko.

 

This is how they serve it at the Ritz

 

I didn't really take many pictures at the conference, so I just added this random shot of Sting and a fan

 

 

 
 

     

 

 

 

 

A Buzzerbeater From Downtown: Farewell to Free Darko

I don't really like to talk about blogging on this here site; we're dads and we talking about life through the Dad Filter, and most dads don't blog, and non-bloggers don't particularly care about the goings-on in the blogosphere. But I'd be remiss if I didn't have a few words for one of my all-time favorite blogs, Free Darko.

Today is the site's last day. Way back when DadCentric first launched, there weren't a whole lot of group dad blogs out there - in fact, I'm pretty sure there weren't any. (Historians, feel free to correct me.) I saw what the guys at Free Darko were doing - creating smart, funny, insightful, offbeat and above all unique content about basketball in general and the NBA in particular. Saying the site was a basketball blog is like saying Moby-Dick is a book about a pissed-off whale. Truth be told, I wanted DadCentric to be the Free Darko of the dad-blog-o-sphere. Free Darko showed me the importance of Voice, and has been one of the very few sites that's influenced and inspired me. The site will be sorely missed. Do yourself a favor, even you hate sports: go there and explore the archives. The bench is deep.

DadCentric's Best Dadblogger Of All Time Ever Contest!

"Best Of" contests are a tricky thing. Some say that only experts should be the judges, that the public simply lacks the necessary gifts of discernment and good taste required to determine which chef, author, writer, director, or star should be nominated for a Grand Prize. Others say that the culture determines the artist's value, and that popularity should count for something. One can make a convincing case for either argument: Jersey Shore never won an Emmy, but then again, Titanic got a Best Picture Oscar. 

We've watched with great interest over the past several days as dads have competed for votes at Circle of Mom's Top 25 Dadbloggers contest. Sadly, DadCentric was not nominated. We're bummed, because getting recognition from a mom-focused site that clearly holds dads in high regard and is not using an easily gamed contest as linkbait is something that any self-respecting blogger strives for. Sadder still, our intern has informed us that we could have easily nominated ourselves, thanks to the contest's Self-Nomination Button. THIS IS WHY WE GIVE YOU FREE M&M'S IN LIEU OF PAY, STUPID INTERN.

So, in the spirit of healthy competition, the cornerstone upon which Western democracy rests, we've decided to put on our own Best Dadblogger Contest. Top Ten? Top 25? Eh. Too complicated. Like Conner MacLeod, we believe that there can be only one. Because honestly, who gives a shit who the 24th Best Dadblogger is? Certainly not the Big Brands, who are poised to hurl stacks of cash, "review copies" of the latest Blu-ray releases, and bags upon bags of sweet delicious M&M's at the dadbloggers who win contests like these. And rather than muck things up with a disjointed nomination process, we're going to keep it simple. None of this "Fill Out A Form And Place Our Badge On Your Site" nonsense.

We'll settle this in the Comments section, like men. If you're a dadblogger, nominate yourself in the Comments below. Don't email your friends to do it, don't Tweet to your followers that oh, there's a really awesome Best Dadblogger Contest going on at DadCentric and boy wouldn't it be cool if someone were to nominate me. Tell us why you think - nay, why you KNOW - you're the best Dadblogger in the Dad-blog-o-sphere. The winner will receive the recognition and prestige that comes along with being named DadCentric's Best Dadblogger Of All Time Ever. And you'll get this awesome trophy:

We'll announce the winner on April 1st.

DadCentric Goes To SXSW

Well, sorta. A couple of the DadCentricians (The Holmes and Croutonboy) are Austinites, so they don't really count. I'll be attending SXSWi (that's "South By Southwest Interactive", the part of the gargantuan festival that deals with blogs and social media and The Internets) as a presenter/moderator, alongside my boss at Man of The House, the honorable Craig Heimbuch. The title of our presentation: "Are We Not Men? Reaching New American Dads". Here's the breakdown:

Men's media has changed tremendously- almost as much as men and dads have. Today's dads are active in every aspect of the household, from parenting to chores, and yet, they are largely overlooked as readers and consumers. New American Dads are thirsty for knowledge and a community that speaks their common language - that of the real man. The new language of men helps Jacks of all trades learn how to be better at all of them, retain their essential masculinity and perform well in a new paradigm of family, work and self. Traditional media outlets - those that espouse the virtues of supposedly manly interests ($10,000 suits, rare scotch and women, women, women) are missing an opportunity to serve this emerging male marked. In order to speak 'Dad,' media must speak to the realities of his life, his priorities, responsibilities, aspirations and, above all else, be useful. The growing online media directed at the New American Dad understands that service journalism - that which seeks to inform as well as entertain - is the next evolution in the daddy blogger. Blogs have their place, but in order to effect change in men's media, online resources must engage the reader in a conversation, one in which the consumer walks away feeling better informed than they had before engaging the site. Service journalism - how-tos, how it works and best-of lists - have practical applications in readers' lives, thus engendering loyalty and creating conversations with a long overlooked population, while developing an audience for whom older media models based on supposed aspiration and stereotype have little meaningful impact. Speak to dads in their language, encourage them to speak back, teach them something they can use and entertain them - this is the next evolution of men's media.

Pretty heady stuff, no? If you're attending SXSWi, pop on in and join the conversation. More details about the presentation can be found here, along with my ridiculously self-important bio and heavily photoshopped headshot. Regarding the question "are we not men?", here's your answer.