Dadventures

[dadventures]

"Me and my family went drifting along on a cloud until the cloud exploded and we fell on the concrete and broke our heads." The story started off swell, but ended tragically. No superfluous words. I think we might have a writer on our hands.

[dadventures]

10 Father's Day Gifts That Don't Suck

Getting gifts for dad can be really tough. You probably don't know where to start, and you might be going to some lame ass website that is suggesting you get things like golf ball cuff links, or a Newton's cradle for his desk. Stop. Stop it now. Here is a list of 10 gifts that kick ass. Share em.

1. A Pocket Knife - Every guy needs to carry a pocket knife. If you are a dad, the need is double. Whittling, cutting rope, opening bags, getting the right peel off a lemon for a good cocktail. The pocket knife is indispensable. I carry this guy from BestMadeCo. American made, heavy enough to matter, and beautiful.

2. Cast Iron Deep Skillet - Have you ever fried your own chicken? Or made some golden brown corn bread? Cooked up an fresh catch with some lemon and fresh herbs from the garden? It is awesome to have a single go to skillet for this, and the stuff from Le Creuset is friggin' awesome. Sure you can find some cheaper ones out there, but these are also beautiful. Get 'em at Williams Sonoma. Red is my favorite.

3. A Beautiful Book & Story - Ok, you can go to Amazon and buy just about any book for your Kindle, or some crappy 50th printing of a famous story. And sure, the story holds up regardless of the medium, but why not have that story in a beautiful hand crafted binding? The Folio Society makes books that you'll hand down to your kids (good thing we're buying for a dad here). I mean, just look at this copy of On The Origin of Species.

4. Hand Crafted Tools - Ok, so there are a lot of tools at your local HomeDepot or Lowe's or whatever. Chances are they are going to get the job done, but there isn't any elegance in them. They aren't tools like your granddad used to have, and certainly won't be around for a generation. So why not spend a little more to get something hand crafted and crazy useful? Bridge City Tool Works makes American Made tools in small batches and they are brilliant. Look at this thing. NO POWER NEEDED.

5. Hats - Seriously, dads get to wear whatever hats they want. We've paid our dues and now we get to walk around in something we, and our kids, think is cool. I discovered these folks in Boston last year and finally went and shelled out some cast to get a bad ass hat. I think my wife likes it.

6. Chemex - Coffee is life. Coffee matters. You can keep making crappy coffee in your auto-drip or pod machine, but it is never going to be as good as this. Add a good plate grinder, a scale, and some good coffee and every morning is amazing.

7. Knife Classes - You think you know how to handle a knife in the kitchen, but chances are pretty good you have no idea. Even dads, who know just about everything about everything, don't always know how to handle a knife in the kitchen, let alone sharpen a knife properly. Every city has a knife class available to the public in a retail store or a culinary school. In DC we're lucky enough to have the crew at Culinaerie.

8. Pencils - Notes, marginalia, sketches, epic drum solos, all start with a pencil. The legendary Palomino Blackwing 602 is like writing with butter. I've got them at my office, home, bag, night stand. Make sure to pick up a sharpener too.

9. Comics - I've got boxes and boxes of comics, but even with a decent amount of disposable income buying new comics gets too rich for my blood quickly. Marvel Unlimited is nearly every Marvel title ever on your iPad or on the web. $10 a month of $99 a year gets you an all you can eat buffet of X-Men, Hulk, Iron Man, and every other Marvel title you can imagine. I've even found some great titles for my kid.

10. Walkabout - Sometimes, you just have to get out into the wild. Sometimes, it is pretty awesome to get dropped off in the middle of nowhere with little more than the shirt on your back and 7, 14, or 28 days to find your way back. Boulder Outdoor Survival School is an amazing crew of guides that will take you through the wilderness, help you find food, water, and something amazing inside yourself. The wild is filled with more gifts than you can imagine, this link gives you access to all of them.

Alright. So that's the list. There are ton of other things I could have thrown in here, and most of them included bacon or whiskey, but I don't need to tell you about those do I?

Happy Father's Day!

[dadventures]

Marvel Unlimited killer deal. $.99 for 75 years of comics.

All you can eat comics for .99 cents? Yes please. Even though you are probably not headed to SXSW this year you can still take advantage of at least one of the benefits. Marvel is running a promotion lets you buy access to a massive trove of over 15,000 titles for one month for .99 cents. Normally a monthly subscription costs $9.99, and is a pretty good deal all on its own.

Now, this is probably more awesome for dads and kids somewhere over the age of 10, but there are several titles in here for younger kids. My 5 (almost 6) year old has a choice of these titles he can read on his own:

+ Hulk and Power Pack

+ Avengers and Power Pack Assemble

+ Ironman and Power Pack

+ Spider Man and Power Pack

The Marvel Adventures series below skirts the age limit and I often read through them before I read them to the boy. Some of the scenes are intense, and they are a little more violent than the Power Pack series.

+ Marvel Adventures Spiderman

+ Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four

+ Marvel Adventures Super Heroes

+ Marvel Adventures Avengers

+ Marvel Adventures Iron Man

There are probably more titles out there, and of course you should always read through an issue (twist my arm) before you turn your kid loose on any comic book.

Here are the things to remember for this deal.

+ The offer with this code (SXSW99) lasts through March 14, but as far as I can tell you are buying a one month subscription.

+ The renewal is automatic, so set a reminder in whatever calendar you use to make a decision about canceling the subscription before your 30 days are up. $9.99 a month is the cost of 2 comics, maybe 3, so despite the limited kids selection (and keeping in mind that it will grow), I think it is worth while.

+ The promotion code field is not in the purchase workflow, so make sure you click the “Apply it now” button in the right column, or you are going to be charged the full price. You can see a screen grab of what I mean here.

+ This offer is good for the web version, iOS app, and Google Play app. Unfortunately there is no Kindle Fire app, and the navigation from that browser is pretty lame.

We’ve been using the iOS version on an iPad all morning, and the navigation could use a lot of work. The books that are not optimized for panel by panel transitions should be viewed as single page screens. You’ll know which ones those are once you get in there. However, we’re pretty happy about the experience overall.

If you find other titles you think are appropriate for younger audiences, leave us a comment on our Facebook page here.

[dadventures]

The Haze of Being Caged

My favorite author, John Steinbeck, wrote in The Log from the Sea of Cotez that a scientist in a lab who observes a fish specimen in a jar sees something altogether different from the creature that once breathed. Despite the count of spines, and length of body being the same, there is little resemblance to a living creature. He went into the Sea of Cortez, he says, to feel the fish strike the fishing line, to see it fighting to live, to smell it and to taste it too. He notes that both men serve to give us a complete picture of the specimen. In recent weeks our little family has ventured to the zoo and to an aquarium, and as I walked around and looked into the cages and faces of so many creatures I felt ashamed to be in the space. I don't know what sort of memory fish hold. Perhaps they are completely content to swim in circles all day with no memory as some have suggested, but I doubt it. Certainly those animals we've placed in higher orders, lions, turtles, apes, and birds are not content. It does't take an expert to look into their cages and see their hazy eyes staring into a wall or at the sky and know that something is wrong. At the National Zoo we saw Kavi the lion pull a large fallen branch from the water and we cheered this great beast when he was able to bring it up over the edge of the concrete pool onto his little patch of savanna. Our own spell was broken when the branch fell down a small flight of concrete steps leading to the keepers observation room.

We went too, to the Aquarium in Boston and saw beautiful cuttle fish effortlessly change colors and patterns (a true moment of wonder that left my son and I both open mouthed with amazement), and Moray eels the color of moss (that I've only ever seen in a redwood forest of the Pacific Northwest) and long as a man flash past us in a massive tank. Within those walls we gaped with all the other tourists at the penguins who stared blankly and unmoving at nothing while standing in front of a sprinkler for what I don’t know.

Tonight, my son, bored with the haze of Netflix shows (only two 20 minute shows, I swear) closed the computer and came to me and asked if we could go out for dinner. Not for the special meal he said, just to get out of the house. Three steps outside of the door and suddenly his body was alive with motion and sound, and his brain followed soon. Skipping, singing, asking questions, and creating worlds from all the things around us.

I didn’t know before these past weeks that I was opposed to zoos or curiosities of the sort, but I suppose I am after all. Perhaps we’d be well served to remember that the earthworm tugging with all his might to re-bury himself, or the skink dashing for cover in the rocks, or the frog sunken in the mud hoping he will not be seen, all in our back yard are grand enough and maybe grander for our kids than the lion who stares blankly into the concrete pool.

[dadventures]

Thrift Store Tales #1: Go Fly A Kite

When I was a kid my parents would occasionally buy kites for my brother and me. More often than not we got these kites on days that we went to the beach, where wind was a guarantee. The kites were always the cheap plastic triangle shaped kind with a crossbar and big bloodshot eyes. And flames, I'm pretty sure there were flames. My noting that they were cheap plastic kites is not a complaint, 9 times out of 10 they'd end up flying away somewhere over the Galveston seawall back onto the roof of some sand colored salt sticky hotel that faced the bay. So it was with good reason that we never got the fancy box kites made of parachute silk or the ones with two strings that allowed one, presumably, to make it dive and dart in the wind. I remember keeping the kites close, on a short lead, and my dad coming over and encouraging me to go higher. He would pay out the line so fast the cardboard spindle blurred, and I cringed at the thought of the rope burn it might inflict on his hands. My dad worked with his hands, and they were so calloused, looking back now, he could have grabbed that line and it would have only scratched the surface. Flying those kites, I knew total joy and anticipation at the same time. I dared not imagine how high they could go, it seemed impossible to ever get them back from so far away, and worried that any moment, the gulf wind would gust and snap the cotton line. Only, when it did snap, it was never as bad as all that, and my brother and I would watch them disappear over the horizon, then return to digging up periwinkles and hermit crabs.

In my adult years I have looked, flushed with happiness, at kites on shelves of various stores, but always balked at the cost. I was compelled, finally, to buy a fancy kite a few years ago, only to have it immediately dive to the top of an ancient oak tree, lost for good. For a couple of years, when playing in the park with my son, I would catch myself looking up into that tree to see if was still there. Often I realized other parents and kids were following my eyes up, wondering what I was looking at.

Our Sunday pilgrimage to the local thrift store in the last couple of weeks has yielded not one or two of these “fancy” kites, but four. I bought all of them for $.90 each. I bought them all, because there is little as sad as flying a kite alone. This Sunday our little family trio, dog in tow, ventured down to a local waterfront park with our bag full of kites.

There is something almost magical and laughter inducing in watching an unattended kite on the ground catch a breeze and lift itself from the grass. As if it wanted to fly. This is doubly true when the kites have been discarded to a donation bin and stuffed into the miscellaneous pile in a dusty thrift store.

With little hesitation the first kite was in the air, my son gleefully running with it in tow. We struggled, without much frustration and instead a great deal of laughter, to raise two more and only succeeded with one after half an hour.

The curious came eventually. Seagulls crying at the strange cousin with the colorful tail hovering and not begging for food scraps. Then the ravens, in lazy circles above and below looking on with curiosity and very likely plotting, as is their nature, some trickery on this new neighbor. A boy came from the playground and asked my son if he could take a turn, and my son gladly gave the spool over and ran off to the slide. The joy in the boy's face was electric. Teeth bared in an ear to ear smile and eyes wide as saucers he kept repeating “I'm flying a kite!”. I asked for the spool back so that I might work the thing to a higher altitude, but the boy’s grip was iron and he didn't seem to hear me ask. Later another boy, fighting with his brother over a lost ball came running over and asked for a turn, and I obliged, and within a matter of moments the quarrel was over as they watched and held the kite.

After some time we had two kites up successfully, and the air was filled with boys happily screaming and chasing the dog and running with kites on tow. And when the rain threatened to come everyone pitched in and brought the kites back to their bags, noisily but gently. My wife and I, rosy cheeked and nosed laughed more in those two hours than we had in weeks.

So much happiness in a piece of cloth and string, eager to leave the Earth, and dance a little on a gust of wind.

[dadventures]

Comics For Kids

I picked up my first comics in high-school. I can't remember if it was Uncanny X-Men or Wolverine. I collected for a decade, then stopped because I barely had money for groceries. Over 10 years later, when I was 35 or so I started buying comics again and it was awesome. Comics were way more expensive than I remembered, but at this point in my life I was, and still am, making good enough money not to worry too much about it.

My wife and I also had our first kid about the same time, and I could not wait to get him into comics. Around the age of 3 1/2 I took him to his first Free Comic Book day. And so began my adventure into comics for kids.

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I'm going to take a quick sidebar here to say that until I had a kid, I never knew how screwed up so many comics actually are. They way they talk about women, or freedom, or courage, or masculinity is all kinds of messed up. Not all of them, mind you. But that is a post for another day.

+++

Anyway, I was really glad to find some amazing titles out there starting with his first book Owly. From there we went on to Johnny Boo and a couple of other small titles. I wanted so badly for him to get to know my comic characters, but they just weren't out there. Superman, Batman, X-Men, Flash, all of those guys were on the grown up shelves where we dared not venture lest we get an eye full of cleavage, blood, guns, and hyper-masculine bodies. Then one day we found Superman Family Adventures, and SuperPets, and My Little Pony, and Tiny Titans. It was awesome.

Hands down, Superman Family Adventures was his favorite. It was a regular thing for us to go to Big Planet Comics on Sunday to pick up the latest issue. Even his mom got sucked in and would sit on the floor of the comic shop and read to him while I visited the grown up section.

We'd walk out with $50 or $75 worth of comics every other week.

Then one day, Superman Family Adventures was gone. “They stopped printing it,” said the guy at the counter. My son was crushed.

I did some digging and discovered this recent story from Gene Yang about a response from a DC Comic exec who he was trying to pitch a kid comic to,

“You think this is gonna be for kids? Stop, stop. We don't publish comics for kids. We publish comics for 45-year olds. If you want to do comics for kids, you can do 'Scooby-Doo.”

I've got a bit of a newsflash for that guy, 45-year olds have kids. And 45-year olds have disposable income. Lots of it.

Here's a dirty little secret, I WANT to get my kid hooked on comics. I think they made me a more creative and imaginative kid, and they exposed me to worlds my teachers frowned down upon. They gave me more universes than I could count, and taught me good solid story telling of hero and heartbreak, love and adventure. I'm going to spend so much money and time buying my kid comics and reading with him that the guys at Big Planet will know our names for years.

Cutting out my kid from access to Superman, a cornerstone of comics, is just a stupid move, and I hope DC Comics sees that soon.

Last month we went to the Baltimore ComicCon and we found Art Baltazar, the writer and artist for the now defunct Superman Family Adventures signing books and promoting his new title.

“Hey, you see that guy over there? He is the one who writes and draws Superman Family Adventures. Those stories and that art, they come from his brain. He makes all of that stuff up and writes it down, and then we go buy it and read it at home!” My son looked wide eyed as we approached Art. Art asked who my son's favorite character was and he replied “Superman, of course!” ”Mine too! I always wanted to draw Superman and I finally got to do it. But they stopped the comic. But hey, at least I can still draw him for you!”

And he did. Thanks Art. Keep writing those comics for kids, and I’ll keep buying them.

If you've got a kid and want to start them on comics, talk to your local comic book shop. They'll know where to get you started and will order what you need if they don't have it in store. Or tweet me @dadmcmad and I'll do my best to get you on your way.

[dadventures]

T-Ball Time

I usually spend hours every weekend playing Lego with my son. We both get a little obsessive about whatever we’re working on, and time just flies by. Part of that ritual, much to my wife’s dismay, is hitting the thrift store for Lego nearly every weekend. More on that in another post.

Last week my wife signed up my boy for t-ball, and on our weekly adventure to the thrift store today we scored a glove, ball, and t-ball bat. We played Lego for all of 15 minutes when he asked to play ball instead. On a perfect DC afternoon we walked a block away to our local park and had the baseball/football field to ourselves. Even the mosquitoes stayed away. We played ball for almost two hours. He closed the afternoon laughing up a storm, “Dad, you never run that much!”

I fear we may have found that my favorite American pastime, may be my son’s new favorite pastime. My wife and my waistline will probably be thankful for it.

Play ball!

[dadventures]

On a shopping trip today my kid convinced my wife to purchase a ninja costume for him. He made good use of it this afternoon, sneaking from shadow to shadow, and under tables and up door frames. A pair of cheap plastic nun-chucks came with the costume and we were horsing around with them. I remembered this video and showed it to him. As he watched, eyes wide and hands twitching, I was trying to decide whether to tell him it was an ad and CGI, or whether to just let him believe that Bruce Lee was capable of beating these guys at table tennis with a pair of nun-chucks. Afterwords we moved on to playing our own game of ninja vs. dad and I totally forgot about it. 30 minutes later I heard him ask my wife if she would throw a ball at him so he could practice hitting it back with the nun-chucks. I think I'm just going to let him believe this was real. Who knows how far he'll take it?

[dadventures]

School Brain

Last week was my boy's first week of school. With it comes all the joys and terrors of school. Bullies, the desire for a teacher's approval, navigating the dynamics of groups who know one another already, and that other little thing we are meant to be doing while we learn these things...learning.

My boy is working really hard at it. I think, right now, he's working really hard at it because he really wants to learn, not because we tell him he has to. We don't, and we certainly don't feel that way either. Much.

Tonight he couldn't get to sleep. This boy who is usually dead to the world by 7:30 was still awake and moving about at 9 p.m. I went to his room to see what was keeping him up, because he has a couple of bug bites we're watching closely.

“Homework,” he said. Oh, man. So soon.

I dug a little deeper and he was concerned that he learned to write his name with an uppercase R instead of a lower case r, and his teacher is trying to get him to learn the latter.

“I just keep forgetting, and I'm not very good at it.”

We worked through it, and I promised we'd practice in the morning. Then he told me how his brain is just full of all of this school stuff and he can't find sleep in there. He said he was thinking about his name, and his numbers, and his brain was rattling around. I know the feeling, and have known it since I was a kid. I've not yet forgotten what it was like to lay there awake, thinking about how I would tackle a problem the next day at school. I remember so well because it keeps me awake today.

“What about fun?" I asked.

“It is too deep for me to get to. I keep bumping into school stuff.”

I asked him to quickly think of something fun, and he replied “Ice cream!” without skipping a beat. I pointed out that he had something fun to think about right there. He said, “Yeah, but ice cream and candy are always the first layer on top of everything. The layer is really skinny though.” I was blown away by this insight.

”So what is deeper. Where is the deeper fun? Is that playing Lego? Or video games?” I asked.

He smiled and gave me a sly look and said “No, it's wrestling with you!” But, he said, it is just too hard to break all those school things to get deep enough to get to the wrestling part deep in his brain.

In a moment I had an idea, and told him to wait a minute. I took a handful of marbles and put them in a glass and came back to his room. I asked him if this glass full of marbles was like his brain. His eyes lit up and he said “Yes! And that big blue one is numbers. And that big yellow one is my name.” I pointed to a white marble at the very bottom and said, “And is that wrestling with me?”

“Yes. And you see? All that stuff is in the way. And I can't break them.” He jammed his hand in the glass to touch the white marble, but his hand didn't fit, and the marbles just kept rolling over each other anyway.

“You can't force your way down there, mijo,” I said. “But I have a way of getting down there. Watch.” I took his glass of water and slowly poured water into the glass. He lit up and said, “Hey, that was easy!”

We talked about being like water. Rolling off the problems and worries to get to the place that makes us happy. The problems will still be there, and they can be fun to think about and try to fix, but for now, we need to sleep so our brain can grow, and make a little more room so we can get to a solution.

“But what if it keeps going down? My brain is very deep.“ he said.

“That's sleep. And it's ok. We'll learn how to make lower case “r”s tomorrow,” I said. And with that, he went to sleep.

I don't even know where that idea came from. I'm writing this down because maybe, just maybe, I need a glass of marbles at my own bedside. 

[dadventures]

When I was a kid I wanted to be an artist, and I'd draw on anything with anything. I remember pulling the tops off of ballpoint pens and blowing the ink out onto pages to use as paint. I don't really remember whether my parents bought me things like paint brushes and paints, although I'm sure they did.

My kid loves to draw and paint, too. We've saved a mountain of scraps of paper with paint and pencil and crayon scrawled all over them. Like me, he'll draw with anything he can get his hands on.

Today, we lucked out and found this Martin Every Media Easel Box kit at the local thrift store. 3 compartments of oils, acrylics, water colors, pastels, pencils, oil pastels, and a built in easel. For $1.50.

We couldn't say no, and the went to work as soon as we got home. I'll admit, I was a little giddy myself.

[dadventures]

Repairing the f*cking sink.

I spent my entire day repairing the fucking bathroom sink today. This morning I thought to myself, "today I'm going to fix the sink, mow the lawn, then maybe paint the dining room." I never left the bathroom. Now, let me just say that this was a repair that started 3 weeks ago when the sink completely stopped draining. After trying a drain tape and getting nowhere I was forced to cut open the sink drain, only to discover what was probably 40 years of filth beyond the drain line. It took a rental snake and some serious screw driver work to get the damn thing clean. For weeks now we've been using the sink in the kitchen to do all the bathroom stuff done. The boy has taken to yelling through the closed bathroom door "That sink is broken, don't use it!". Inevitably, I use it. As is custom with boys, or at the very least my boy, I was joined by my little helper. The funny thing about him, like his mother, is that they go around using their "outside" voice all the time. So he sat on the closed toilet lid firing very loud questions about the utility of every tool. This was only amplified by the discovery of the Dremmel box, which he opened and sifted through the various wheels asking "Hey papa, are you going to use this one?". After answering "no" to everyone, and explaining that I had decided not to use the Dremmel after all, he moved to inquiring about why I was on my back and why my shirt was all wet., After 15 minutes of this inquisition my brain locked up. I couldn't take or answer another question, and suddenly my wife showed up. Just in time, without any prompting, to rescue the boy before he was exposed to a string of expletives that would have made him cry. So it seems that the bathroom sink is the eternal nemesis to dads everywhere. I recall my dad's anger and frustration, and my wife remember her father's. But it is a right of passage, and I wonder if my boy will remember sitting in there with me watching me wrestle the fucking sink. I hope so.

[dadventures]

During summer break when I was a kid my mom would push my brother and I out the door as early as possible. We clocked hundreds of hours climbing trees, building bike ramps, throwing water balloons, exploring the bayou, catching frogs and crayfish, and generally doing what most parents these days would deem unsafe. We turned out mostly ok.

If you are reading this from a Mac, PC, or iPhone, you need to go buy this short book. It's 2.99, and sure it is a mostly a clever pitch for several other books and a website, but it's worth it. Do it right now. The Kindle reader app for all three of the platforms I mention is free, so there is no excuse. Just go buy it.

[dadventures]

For several years in my early adulthood, because I couldn't think of anything else I wanted for Christmas, I asked for Micro Machines Star Wars sets. They only gathered dust for nearly a decade. Each time I came to my parent's home I'd discover them again, I'd wonder what they were worth, and whether I'd ever try to sell them. This past week I went home and discovered them again, only this time I had my son with me. At 2.5 he can't really appreciate the story behind these things, but he had a hell of a good time playing with them just the same. Whatever they are worth, or could be, can't possibly compare to the amount of enjoyment we both got out of playing with them.

[dadventures]

You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes. Walter M. Schirra Sr.