I went to the usually very funny and faux-informative Adult Ed lecture series last night (in the bar that sort of banned strollers OMG). A couple of my friends were reading from their war books about murder and manhunts. They were good but not very funny at all, but the final presenter was Ken Freedman, station manager at the really quite awesome WFMU. He brought out a series of the kind of arcane recordings that has few people listening but everyone liking his station.

The theme: Hyperpatriotic hit singles

The best song: An Open Letter to My Teenage Son (1967) by a very different type of radio DJ, Victor Lundberg. It’s a stentorian warning to a son who wants to know whether it’s right to burn his Vietnam draft card.

The best lines:

“I would remind you that your mother will love you no matter what you do. Because she is a woman.”

“If you decide to burn your draft card, then burn your birth certificate at the same time. Because from that moment, I have no son.”

Ouch.

This was actually a top ten single, sold a million records and won a Grammy. Freedman also tracked down a couple songs that were released in response to Lundberg: one from the Southie-voiced Robert Tamlin is on WFMU’s blog here.

In the meantime, rest assures that my children will be hearing this a lot over the next 40 or so years: “Your mother will love you no matter what you do. Because she is a woman.”

At some point in JP’s infanthood I started referring to alcohol as “Daddy Juice.” I don’t remember exactly when, but it seems likely that it was pretty early on, probably when he was old enough to reach for my glass of beer/wine/sangria, and for me to pull it away, saying, “Now, now. Not for you, boy. That’s Daddy Juice.” Ha! Hilarious!

Then he got old enough to start repeating it, which he does, and so do I, and it’s one of the incredibly, undeniably cute things we do together as a father and son. Joking about alcohol–now that’s comedy!

This past weekend I went over to Matt’s house for a barbecue. We were having a wonderful time in his little garden space until Sasha pushed her grubby paws out for Matt’s glass of white Zinfandel (he’s that classy) and Matt pulled it away, saying, yes, that’s right: “Now, now, Sasha. Not for you. That’s Daddy Juice.”

Forget the fact that Matt is stealing my kid-schtick. If that doesn’t bother him, then it doesn’t bother me. But for the first time I got to hear just how ridiculous that saying is. Daddy Juice? I won’t go into the variable ways in which that phrase can be categorized as kinda weird, other than to say, when you think about it, should Dad really be drinking Daddy Juice? Admit it, you were thinking it too.

What’s more, it begs the question, why use the phrase at all? Neither JP nor Sasha have any more negative context for the terms “wine,” or “beer,” or “bathtub gin,” than they do Daddy Juice. For whatever reason Matt and I think it’s fine to drink in front of our child, fine to buy liquor while accompanied by our child (and don’t those wine store folks find it amusing when I refer to their product as Daddy Juice when JP dashes a bottle of 1986 Chateau Margaux to the floor?), but it isn’t fine to say the word booze?

Fatherhood: an excuse to be cheesy.

Get out of that bed!

Last night the girlfriend and I took a tour of the hospital where she is going to deliver the baby. Rather than bore you with my thoughts about how different it was doing this the second time around, how nervous the other first-time parents seemed, how much of an old pro I felt myself to be, I will instead pass along a little advice from Esquire magazine on how not to behave while your woman is undergoing the most painful experience of her life.

Most of these are fairly obvious: Don’t ask the doctor about the mother’s breasts. That’s rude, folks! Don’t break any vital medical equipment. That’s dangerous for baby and mother! Let the mother have an epidural if she wants one. Do you want a divorce or something?

All in all, it’s fairly amusing, particularly as they get quotes from actual doctors (not ones who slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night). Of course, from the jaded perspective of a biprocreator, I couldn’t be bothered to laugh. You newbies out there will be amused.

Did you know Playboy has a blog? Did you care? I mean, the men’s magazine hasn’t been relevant in either the pornographic world or the literary world for at least a decade, so when Hef’s crew launched The Smoking Jacket (recently? a while back? who knows?) no one really noticed.

But yesterday, the blog published “How to Use Your Two-Year-Old Child As a Drug Mule,” by the beautifully pseudonymic Deadbeat Dad, and I, at least, was thrilled. Not because I’m planning to, as the article suggests, hide my stash at the bottom of a canister of formula. No, I’m just happy that there are other dads out there with as warped a view of parenthood as we have here on Dadwagon. (Yes, it’s all about us. Surprised?) And his advice is useful: dump the bong and get a one-hitter; don’t drive stoned; and “Get as high as possible before any recital or school performance.”

More importantly, as he puts it, being a deadbeat dad is a:

state of mind, of suspended adolescence, rather, the inability to recognize the importance and responsibility that fatherhood was supposed to bestow. But it’s really more than that. In today’s child-centric, Baby Mozart universe, where our whole lives have been oriented around the supreme happiness of our little geniuses, being a Deadbeat Dad is a profoundly political act, a protest of the highest order, a statement of fact: “No, actually, I won’t get my act together.”

It’s a tough stance, and not for the faint of heart, as being a Deadbeat Dad is a little like being a bull rider. At some point, that 600-pound bull (no, I’m not calling your wife fat, I’m just making a point) is going to throw you off and gore you with its horns—i.e. words like “marriage counseling” and “trial separation.” See, then you’ve gone too far.

The key is balance, my friend, the ability to dance mid-air, to continue to do what you please without awaking the giant. Over the next few months I’m going to be giving you, dear reader, a road map to Deadbeatness. The how, what and where of being a full-time freak along with being a full-time parent. These are not mutually exclusive things in my world. Along the way, like Fight Club, you may find fellow travelers, but it’s usually a lonely road. Being a Deadbeat Dad is not easy. No one sets out to be the weirdest guy at the school picnic, or tries to take it two or seven steps too far at the Father’s Day barbecue. Hey, we’re just wired that way.

Of course, the best thing about Deadbeat Dad is that when you get tired of his stoner ravings, you can go look at pictures of boobies. They’re just one click away.