DADWAGON

Normally, we here at Dadwagon HQ don’t give a shit what you think. Just keep reading and clicking, reading and clicking, and we’ll all stay happy while the nickels roll in.

But sometime this week we realized there were no nickels rolling in. WTF?!? Dadwagon scientists devised elaborate, potentially universe-ending experiments to find out why; then they quit when they realized we couldn’t afford to pay them. Clearly, drastic measures were in order.

First, we brought in a ringer—the honorable Alex Smith, who agreed to be paid in “For promotional use only” CDs in exchange for giving us his thoughts on garbage for dinner, pop songs promoting substandard parenting, and life in the crotch of NYU.

When that didn’t work, we bent over and took it from the Xbox Kinect Joy, which threw fistfulls of rupees at Theodore as he waxed nostalgic over train and car rides with his kids.

When that also still didn— Oh, wait, that worked. But still, we wanted to make this site more, you know, engaging. More sticky. More “OMG, I have to click on this and this and this and then check back in later to see if/how other people clicked too!” And so we solicited your opinion.

When Nathan wondered whether he should have a third child, he put it to a vote. When we worried we’d lost your trust by selling out, we asked you if, uh, we’d sold out. When we wondered whether to keep or abort our fetus, we asked for your input. (Wait, that wasn’t us?) Alex asked you (if implicitly) why children’s music makes him homicidal. And when we couldn’t think of anything better to post, we invited you to speculate as to why.

Actually, Theodore didn’t poll a damn thing this week. When he was thinking of quitting his job, he made up his own damn mind. When he wondered about why he’d had kids, he didn’t care to hear your opinions. And when he faced the prospect of a grandmother bearing videogame gifts for the kiddies, he didn’t ask you if it was a good or bad idea. Because he doesn’t care.

We don’t particularly care whether you have a good weekend or a bad one, so make it a good one. And tune back in Monday to see how we’re fucking up Thanksgiving for our families. Till then, let us know:

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“Daddy, can I put on some music?”

Before I can answer, Charlotte, my 6-year-old, has already pushed play on the living room stereo and my long-suffering speakers start emitting a shrill and all-too-familiar series of staccato parps that cause my brow to furrow, my eyes to squint and my temples to throb. Once again, a particularly keening rendition of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” fills the apartment like a car alarm. I bite my tongue and quell my urge to bellow like the farcical, stentorian-voiced sitcom dad, as I know it’ll only hurt my daughter’s feelings and make my wife angry. I retire to the comparatively quiet confines of the kitchen and consider opening a beer.

To suggest that I have a deep aversion to conventional children’s music is an exercise in heroic understatement, but somehow our household has managed to amass some of the most egregious examples of same. What’s especially torturous for me about this, however, is that I am something of an incorrigibly snobby music geek of the most opinionated order. Prone to huffy dismissal, esoteric allusion and windy rumination about arguably significant albums and justifiably forgotten punk bands from eons past, I cut my teeth scouring a network of long-since-vanished New York City record stores and irreparably damaging my hearing at scores of high-volume rock shows in my distant youth. While the rest of the world has embraced the liberation of digital technology, I still devote a vast swathe of our apartment to my slavishly alphabetized compact disc collection and have an equally unwieldy array of vinyl LPs languishing in a very expensive mini-storage facility downtown. After decades of unsolicitedly bestowing meticulously composed mix tapes and lording my musical opinions over my near and dear, I am now paying the price for being an insufferable know-it-all. That I must now withstand tireless airings of cloyingly insipid children’s music is surely karmic retribution at its harshest point.

When my kids were born—well, really, it began when my wife was first pregnant—it became abundantly clear that my days of cranking the loud stuff were over for a while. No more high-volume sessions of Venom, Black Flag and Einsturzende Neubauten. I relegated my fervent music-listening to my walks to and from work (already a bad idea, given the piercing tinnitus in my right ear after years and years of systematically idiotic disregard for volume limitation) and kept things whisper-quiet in the house. When the kids were tiny, it was the same deal. But as they grew, gradually the household started playing music again. Though inarguably twee, Now The Day is Over, a “collection of standards, traditional and originals sung as lullabies” by mellow indie-folksters the Innocence Mission, became a particular favorite. I could deal with that stuff, but in time, our collection of children’s music discs stated to pile up, and not all of them were as tastefully executed.

Almost overnight, some of the most unspeakable sonic offal known to man came regularly pumping out of my stereo like processed poop out of a sewage-treatment plant. It started off innocuously enough. First came the obligatory copy of Free to Be You and Me, but then discs by Laurie Berkner, the Wiggles, Raffi and their vile ilk started muscling in on shelves previously ruled by volumes of discs by the Stranglers, Nick Cave and Motorhead. It was horrifying.

I tried to stem the tide by introducing my kids to a few selections that didn’t make me want to destroy the earth. I snuck the Beatles into regular rotation (always a safe bet). My wife seemed to get them hooked on a few Crosby, Stills & Nash songs (notably—and somewhat inexplicably—“Southern Cross”). In short order, we couldn’t go anywhere in the car without piercing entreaties from the backseat for repeated spins of same. I tried a few other suggestions, but few made the cut.

The struggle continues. As of right now, beyond the CSN track (which I now never need to hear again), the only non-children’s songs my kids will actively tolerate are “Octopus’ Garden” by the Beatles, “Young Folks” by Peter, Bjorn & John (my 4-year-old is convinced the song is about “the number 4” for some reason) and “Start Wearing Purple” by Gogol Bordello, if only because it’s giddily inane.

I shouldn’t complain. I know it’s only a matter of time before the teen pop infiltrates the house, at which point I’ll probably be thankful for my damaged hearing.

Because we’re creeping up on 1) the one-year anniversary of Tiger Woods’s libidinal meltdown and 2) the weekend after Michael Vick absolutely chain-choked the Redskins on national TV, I’ve been thinking a bit about the ongoing rehabilitation of both of these men. They’re taking two very different paths, and one of them is succeeding, the other failing.

First, a word about Vick. TheGrio had a somewhat breathless take on whether Vick’s comeback was the “stuff of legend” yet. What it didn’t seem to want to address is whether “comeback” is even the right word. Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, wrongly convicted of murder? That was a comeback. Mike Williams, the humble receiver tearing up the NFC West for the Seahawks after having been beat down, overweight, and out of football entirely for two years? That is a comeback.

Vick playing incredibly well after having been out of the league for a prison sentence is not a comeback so much as a great PR move. “Comeback” evokes a certain emotional warmth, a communal will for someone to overcome obstacles. I don’t sense that here. Is anyone saying to themselves, “Wow, that’s great. I can murder dogs and in the end people will still love me?” We watch Vick—and maybe even root for him—because he’s a great athlete doing lovely athletic things. But who is rooting for him as a person?

Still, Vick is playing a lot and saying next to nothing. He gets to hide behind Eagles PR and repeat your basic “the past is in the past” mantra. And then he gets on the field and blinds everyone with his mojo.

Tiger, on the other hand, is not playing well at all. And I’ve never gotten the sense (as someone who was at Stanford while he was still a wraithlike, whispered-about undergrad there) that he’s ever thought much of us mere mortals. Which makes his veritable gabfest a little painful to watch. There is his new Twitter appearance. (“Yep, it’s me. I think I like this twitter thing. You guys are awesome. Thanks for all the love.”) And his radio interviews, with confessional gems like “I can’t get better as a player if I don’t get better as a person.” Then came the Newsweek Op-Ed he wrote:

I’m learning that some victories can mean smiles, not trophies, and that life’s most ordinary events can bring joy. Giving my son, Charlie, a bath, for example, beats chipping another bucket of balls.

It’s all a little frothy, and completely useless in rehabbing him as long as he stays off the leaderboards.

Let me honor the outrage at Vick, though, with a quote from Bill Plaschke in a fine column about Vick’s victims.

Some believe that because Vick served his time in prison, he should be beyond reproach for his former actions. Many others believe that cruelty to animals isn’t something somebody does, it’s something somebody is.

Essentially, an ex-convict is dominating America’s most popular sport while victims of his previous crime continue to live with the brutality of that crime, and has that ever happened before?

But in the end, that doesn’t matter. Not because the athletes in question are callow and exploitative, but because the fans are. I just want to watch some cool shit: a long putt under pressure, a juke to the first down marker. Just as I don’t really want to watch retired players do whatever it is they do (unless they’re color-commenting on people who are currently doing cool shit), I don’t have any use for a golfer who is in touch with himself but can’t hit a drive straight. To expect these guys to be upright citizens, to think that had anything to do with why we watch them, is to misunderstand how fans work. We watch them when they’re good and discard them when they’re not.

So if Tiger Woods really wants his fans back, the sad answer is that Vick is doing it right. Stop asking forgiveness. Stop giving Charlie a bath, and go hit some balls.

Wait, is it still morning? No, it’s afternoon now, technically. And still nothing new here on Dadwagon. That’s because one of two things has happened:

1. We have solved all problems related to fatherhood. Our children are angels who do our bidding without hesitation, our wives have finally admitted we are capable of managing the household, and society at large has deemed our efforts not only manly but worthy of state sponsorship. We are now out drinking beers (paid for by President Obama) in celebration.

2. We are all utterly mired in child poo. Literally up to our waists in waste. Unable to type, nagged at by our wives, and struggling to get some actual, paid work done in the meantime. Meanwhile, we look ahead to the weekend and the blessedly light week of Thanksgiving, and ignore our blogging duties.

Which do you think it is?

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