One of the nice things about the fact that DadWagon wasn’t around for the first 20 years or so of the Internet is that we get to post things that may not be new at all, but are new to us.
With that, let me introduce this video from 2008, from the sometimes-funny video geeks at Liquid Generation. We found this one amusing*, particularly the ending.
*yes, we know that people are born gay, not made gay by Furby. But still.
A Week on the Wagon. Such a phrase! Seems particularly close to my own life this week, as I’ve been sick since last weekend and haven’t been able to indulge in my normal pastimes, which along with binge drinking, include domestic violence, crocheting, and bestiality animal husbandry.
As such, I’ve had more time (and sobriety) to focus on the efforts of my esteemed colleagues here at DadWagon. I have a few thoughts, listed below.
Christopher. Please remember that there is something inherently wimpy manly about posting to a freaking Daddy blog. As the authors and editors of this blog, we have had to surrender our penises to the proper authorities. In that light, a post on a recount in People’s Sexiest Dad vote flat out ain’t helping. Admitting in your Tantrum post on bringing children to bars that you live in a testosterone-charged, frat-boy neighborhood did up the butch-quotient a bit. Not wanting your baby to hang with these righteous dudes dropped it once again.
Matt. There is a difference between taking your daughter to San Francisco for a reporting trip (minus the wife) and actually being a single parent. Your Tantrum, in which you decided to refute a stupid Times article by takeing it seriously (babysitters are expensive, what does family friendly mean, etc.), was equally muddled. Matt, I’d like to introduce you to someone–name is the INTERNET. Reasonable and rational is decidedly not the point.
Nathan. Slow down, bro. Forty-five posts per week only draws attention to your status as a non-earner, as you so shamelessly chronicled in your post on affluent ladies. And trying to butter me up with posts on the wonderful rudeness of New Yorkers , and your inability to properly feed your child don’t make you seem more like a normal guy. The stuff on why Curious George reminds you of Werner Herzog (with videographic evidence!) and actual reportage on gay rights, well, I like that, but frankly, your excessive posting is making us all look bad. If I wanted to work hard, I wouldn’t have become a writer. As for your Tantrum, I’m going to refer you to my comments to Christopher: real men don’t say cock.
As for me, well, granted I’m biased, but I think I really played to my strengths this week, with posts on the sex-rights of Aryans in my Tantrum, the kiddie-sports-Hitler nexus, and a hearty joke leveled at the august institution that actually pays me to work. Kudos to me for a job well done.
For those readers out there who think this analysis of Wagon might be in jest, a round of in-jokes for my good friends and co-workers–think again. I’ve never met Nathan, Matt owes me money, and Chris actually smacked me last time we had lunch.
Have a nice weekend.
I recently learned, from Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s State of the City address, that New York State has something called the Fatherhood Initiative. It’s meant to… well, that’s a little hazy. The state’s Website says it “supports the development of collaborative strategies between social services districts and community organizations to assist noncustodial parents in meeting the financial and emotional needs of their children.” Left unsaid is what kind of support that is, or what kind of strategies they are, or whether “noncustodial parents” means deadbeats or prisoners or just people who got the bad end of a divorce ruling. (There are very few things in this world that are murkier than the clotted language of the social sciences, but I’ll save that rant for the day we launch grammarwagon.com.)
But at least these folks have done something! As all DoSomethings want to do. And what they’ve done is commission a study and produce a DVD. Perceptions of Fathers in the Media: In Search of the Ideal Father tells us that sitcom dads are wiser and more accepting than real-life dads, and that we all can learn a lot from, say, The Cosby Show.
Never mind that every TV viewer with a brain in his head knows that (a) sitcom dads are traditionally portrayed as genial idiots, easily manipulated by the rest of the family; (b) sitcom families are breathtakingly cruel to one another, as you’ll quickly learn if you ever attempt to deploy a strategy you’ve seen on TV, and (c) the more off-putting the family dynamic is, the better the show.
Oh, and by the way? Dr. Huxtable may have been a sweetie, but Dr. William H. Cosby Jr. appears to have been friendly in all the wrong ways. Watch the reruns; enjoy his excellent old comedy records, sure; but maybe shy away from his moral guidance.
Governor Paterson, I think I’ve found you an easy budget cut. But if you, reader, disagree, you can order the DVD here.
If I’m crunching the numbers right, DadWagon kids are 30% Asian. Two are Hapa, two are one-quarter, and one poor DadWagon kid is absolutely not Asian at all, unless you expand Asia Minor to include Greece, which, as Xerxes learned, can be very difficult to do.
So who cares? Well, mine are the only Japanese kids, but having married into the family I did has left me with an appreciation of the beauteous oddities of Japanese culture. There’s plenty there for dads to contemplate: wine pools for kids, assless three-piece suits, the propriety of outfitting schoolboys with plush penguin backpacks.
But nobody brings the strange like Pink Tentacle. I first heard about it from Marlo M., an old friend whose ancestors come from the same town in Japan as my wife’s family. She turned me on to their collection of Meiji-era Stereoview photographs, which was awesome enough. But I just came across the Pink Tentacle Greatest Hits of 2009 list, which makes me think that maybe the Naughty Aughties weren’t so bad after all.
Number Four on the list were the 19th-Century birthing dolls pictured here. They came, apparently, in both light- and dark-skinned version (for a sense of the Japanese obsession with fair skin, consider that the doll here is the dark-skinned version). There were also meticulous fetus models from 1877, which frankly are so detailed that it makes me wonder if any of that Unit 731-style barbarism went into researching them.
The dolls are just the tip, though. Check it out: they have anatomical drawings of the sap-spitting willow witch, prints showing what to do with massive racoon-dog testicles, and the Jetsons-tastic Sanyo Ultrasonic Pod-Bath from 1970. Really, what more could you ask from the Internet?
