DadCentric

Friendship 2.0: A Case for the Likes of Facebook

The capacity for friendship knows no bounds. I'm basing this on an overflowing Facebook wall and the actions of my children. Mostly the children.

We have moved plenty of times over the years and with each new adventure comes new hellos and sad goodbyes. However, the kids, thanks to technology and long distance calls available in every other pocket, have managed to maintain relationships where previous generations watched them fade from freckled faces onto pencil and paper, then into the fog and forever.

As a boy we never moved. I lived in the same house from my earliest memory until I left for college, but that didn't keep others from the come and the go, and when they went they were often lost to the years and sometimes forgotten.

Then social media came along, and now we are all liking so many updates passing for status. Still, there was a lull, a gap, between real goodbyes and virtual friend requests that taught such things as loss, acceptance, and other matters of the tender heart. Some claimed that this was important.

I entertained the thought, albeit briefly as I have real things to worry about, that the current generation was losing the lessons that the sweet sorrow of parting inflicted. After all, what is a hug goodbye when followed immediately by chats and Club Penguin?

And then I found these notes that I had jotted down when we moved a few years ago:

"What do you think it will be like?" he asked. "Do you think there will be kids our age?  Do you think there will be games?"

"I like to think that's the way they do it there," said his brother.

"Will there be teams and last kids picked? I don't want to be the last kid picked."

"I'll be on your team," said one brother to the other.

"What will happen to our friends here? And the treehouse? Does it all disappear?"

"Close your eyes," he answered, and then waited for his brother to do so. "Did they disappear?"

"Maybe."

"Well, then they might," he said.

"Everything will still be here," said their mother, "but we'll be there instead."

"I just don't know," one of them replied.

"We'll keep in touch," said the other. "You'll see."


Then we moved and everything was still where it was and where it is, except that we moved once more, and we have left a trail of friendships behind us.

It has been a year since we moved to where we are now, and we are in no hurry to wander again. But we can't stop others, and so it was that tears were shed and hugs were held long past awkward until our new neighbors became our old and they moved across the country to where the beach faces the opposite direction.

They, like those we have left behind, are still part of our daily routine of texts, chats, and thumbs of approval. The kids keep in touch, because they can, and that is all they know. It is the best part of parting, the bandage on tender hearts, and it so much better than learning lessons. Friendships should not hinge on details like distance, and life is too short for unwanted goodbyes.

Joining The Xbox Nation, Part Three

As the title would suggest, this is the third in what looks to be an ongoing exploration of my new life as a member of the Xbox Nation. You can read Part Two here.

The problem with promising PR/Marketing folks that you'll review kid-related things for them within a certain timeframe is that there are kids involved. I'd told my daughter a couple of weeks ago that we'd play Kinectimals: Now With Bears together. Immediately upon doing so she entered what we parents of four-year-old hellion redheads call "a phase", which is a nice way of saying that she had the mood swings of a Gremlin 'round midnight. The Xbox Threat was made early, and adhered to: act up, and no Kinectimals for you. Needless to say, there was plenty of acting up.

This was bad news for the PR person, but good news for me, as I'd picked up a used copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Hooray, sloth and killing!

Soberlink Is Like LoJack For Your Drunk Teenagers

Wanna hear my favorite teenaged drinking story? Of course you do. So: high school, my senior year, I'm one of the few people in my circle of friends who has his "own" car. (It was a used Pontiac Phoenix, paid for by my dad - I was responsible for gas, and not wrapping it around a tree.) The plan for that evening was to go to the hockey game between my school and our cross-town rival; we'd have beer, of course (one of the guys' dads held fairly liberal views on teenaged male beer consumption, and provided us with a twelver of Moosehead, our beer of choice - this was Anchorage, Alaska, and we felt the need to support the economy of our Canadian neighbors). We'd drink a few in the parking lot before heading in to the game. Now, lest you think I was a complete delinquent, we brought a bag of chips, and I was limiting myself to one beer, since I was the driver. We pounded the beers in the parking lot, and I made sure that all of the bottles were disposed of - didn't want to leave any evidence, of course.

The next morning, my dad took the car out to run an errand. When he came back, his expression was stern. I felt a tinge of panic: did I do something to the car? He asked but one question: "Were you guys drinking last night?" The panic threatened to boil over. He suspects something! But we got rid of the evidence! The bottles were gone! I made sure of it!

Posterous: Summer Means SPF - Sharing Privacy Factor

I am not the Family Photographer, for a couple of reasons. First, I take horrible pictures; my attempts to pass off pictures of the tops of my kids' heads as "art" have met with resistance. Second, I'm a bit reluctant to post family photos on The Internets. There's the obvious reason (namely, creepy people who like to collect photos for their own nefarious purposes), and one that I hadn't really thought about until people actually started reading my blog - creepy businesses who like to collect photos for their own nefarious purposes. A few of my blogging friends have had personal photos lifted from their sites and posted on other monetized websites without permission or compensation, and that's why I used to save those pictures for Facebook. But even Facebook isn't 100% secure: like many paid writers, I use it to publicize my online writing, and thus total strangers as well as Friends can get access to my personal pictures. Now, I know Facebook says that you can make your pictures 100% secure, but like many of you I see the constant flow of articles on techy websites about ways that Facebook is trying to work around your privacy settings and it makes me slightly twitchy. 

The folks at Posterous reached out to me (FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a sponsored post, meaning that I got paid to endorse the product, which I do, because I like what it does) about their sharing platform. Posterous allows you to post all kinds of stuff: photos, links, musings, diatribes, and the nice thing about it is that it's simple. And that includes the privacy settings. You can make everything public, or you can make your stuff visable only to Posterous subscribers, or you can password-protect everything and keep out the riffraff. It's easy to set up a page, and the post-via-email function makes it great for busy folks who don't have time to deal with uploads and Albums. Subscribers to your page can opt for an email notification when you post something new; nothing revolutionary, of course, but if you're looking to build a social network of friends and family around your Posterous page, it's a good feature. 

And maybe that's why I like Posterous, and plan on doing more with it. While Facebook is nice, like many of us bloggers who unexpectedly found ourselves in a small spotlight, it's nice to have some exclusive, Members Only Internet space. I take comfort in the fact that when I do end posting blurry, tilted pictures of my kids with their eyes half-closed, I'll actually know the people who'll be making fun of me.

When Technology and Alcohol Collide

Looking for a last-minute Father's Day gift for a dad who has an iPhone4 and a thirst for life?

Then watch this special video blog in which I review the Be A Headcase bottle/can opener case while drinking beer on my back porch.

A lot of beer.

 

Disclosure: The reviewer received no compensation for this review beyond one free Be A Headcase bottle/can opener case and the buzz received from drinking all the beer he opened during filming. The iPhone4 belongs to the reviewer's wife and he had to give it back to her under penalty of no nookie. No beer companies compensated DadCentric or the reviewer for their products appearing on screen or disappearing down the reviewer's gullet, but if they were smart they'd start trying to work some deals with us for product sponsorship and, if need be, AA sponsorship. The woman in the beer wench outfit was also not compensated for her appearance in this video nor was she ever hit on, via Twitter, by U.S. Rep Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

Your Move, Safari

Ok, the guy's not a dadblogger per se, but we'll take it.

 

Oh, and if you haven't seen the other great Google Chrome ad - about the It Gets Better campaign - it's a doozy.

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.

 

Up: The 1960's Live-Action Premake!

Like Pixar's Up? Like old movies? Well then.

 

(Via The AV Club.)

The Unsustainable Cuteness Bubble and Resulting Photography Glut

It should have been the happiest day of my parenting career.  I had just been tapped by Jason, the Don of DadCentric, to enter the inner circle of the most powerful group blog in the dad-o-sphere.  I was a made man.  The future was spread out before me in a pastiche of Scorcese-esque images: luxurious homes and automobiles, custom-made suits, diamond-encrusted chinchillas for my wife, and a small but swanky apartment for my brassy, psychotic mistress. And of course, only the best boarding schools for my 19 month-old twin girls.

But before plowing ahead with my new life, I had to get my proverbial house in order.  There were bills to pay, travel plans to be shuffled, long-time acquaintances to be snubbed, and tracks to be covered.  Fortunately, my wife takes care of all that shit.  All I needed to do was to back up the data on my iPhone.      

I had bought the phone back in August and blah blah blah boring blah exchanged phone blah blah didn't bother backing it up blah blah boring. So I plugged the phone into my ancient MacBook, and absentmindedly clicked on an option in the dropdown window that had the word "restore" in it, which, my wife later told me (repeatedly because I'm a slow learner), is a code word for "destroy everything you hold dear." 

How To Fold A Fitted Sheet

Fitted sheets are evil and if the alternative wasn't worse, I'd say that they should be rounded up and burned, every last one of them, because several studies have indicated that trying to fold a fitted sheet is the leading cause of death for fathers between the age of 19 and 65. I don't give a shit who you are. You may be the most well-rounded Modern Father on the planet - the Justin Timberlake of Committed Dads! - but you can't fold a fitted sheet. Yeah, you think you can, but you can't. Not like this lady. She's a linen-folding mutant (The Sheetress! Lady Threadcount!) who could teach a class at the Xavier Academy. Witness a miracle. This is like Doug Henning making a life-sized origami Harley-Davidson Fat Boy. Only better.

 

(via www.kottke.org)