Episode 011: To Humility And Beyond

This week’s episode covers the following stories on 8bitdad.com for the week of December 13th, 2011: PQotW: What Song Reminds You of Your Dad?; Dyrk Daniels Talks To 8BitDad About His World Renowned “Baby Meets Tiger” Photo; 8BitDad Adds Onto Shawn Bean’s “One Dad, Two Boys, One CD Slot”; Media Touts Anonymous Kmart Family Holiday Heros; Justin Bieber Addresses Dads: Bad Move, Bro

Vikki Larson takes on the topics of divorced fathers and public perception on The Good Men Project. Have you ever noticed that married fathers get credit and praise, while divorced fathers are looked at as if there’s something wrong and creepy about them?

“The divorced father who shows up for his kids in meaningful and obvious ways, such as taking a daughter to a midday, midweek ballet class,” Larson says, “is still considered odd.”

Larson’s article is omg-level comprehensive – with stats about single dads and all sorts of related results from studies. Larson contends that mothers, who beg for the men in their lives to be involved with their children, need to stop demonizing the men they see who are in fact being great fathers. Larson also mentions that the perceptions need to change that all divorced men are “womanizers, cheaters and dead-beat dads.”

Check out the GMP article sauced below for a great article about the sort of cause-and-effect that divorced fathers deal with when continuing their roles as involved parents.

Kind of a late report on this news item, so let’s just call it one of those “in case you missed it” stories. I found this at KTLA.com, which you should totally check out, especially if you’re into effed up stories like “Murdered Woman Hidden Under Pile of Christmas Presents” and “Woman Caught Making Meth At Walmart.” Seriously, what’s the deal with Californians?

Anyway, this story takes place in sunny, breezy Monterey, CA, where a disgruntled football dad is alleged to have begun verbally harassing his son’s football coach on the practice field. This isn’t actually extraordinary news in today’s modern American culture of “hyper-parenting,” and everyone has probably seen a parent going berserk and shouting at a referee or coach on the sports field.

What does make this an extraordinary event is how football dad Raynald Adams escalated this confrontation to “S#1T-got-real” levels of insanity by brandishing a taped-up ax handle and going to town on the junior varsity coaches ribs. He continued until school employees were able to physically remove him from his swinging.

The article says that Adams was arrested on “suspicion” of assault with a deadly weapon (of course), battery on a school official (definitely), possession of a dangerous weapon (yep), possession a weapon on school grounds (right), and being on school grounds without registering (hold on, WTF? Are you allowed to bring so-called “registered” weapons onto campus??).

You can check out the sauce for more details (of which there are scarce few), or feel free to click onto the next thing you were doing – as soon as you get done facepalming over this football dad.

Dyrk Daniels captures an unusual moment between a Golden Bengal Tiger and a baby girl.

While I’m away from my daughter at work, there are times when I feel just like this Golden Bengal Tiger – caught behind a barrier of responsibilities and my daughter where only I’m fortunate enough to spend 2/3 of my day during the week. Of course the days I feel like mauling my daughter are only armed with smooches.

The Daily Mail was first to jump on this 2009 photo with an article posted on October 31st, 2011 – proving photography diamonds in the proverbial-internet-rough may be lost but never forgotten. Likewise, we totally jumped on it a month and a half after the Daily Mail – to be fair we only have Zach to fall back on as the content monster around these parts of 8BitDad.

I did manage to get in touch with photographer, Dyrk Daniels, who captured the amazing photo between Taj, the 370-pound Golden Bengal Tiger, and a little girl at the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah, Washington State. He has two children and Mr. Daniels was awesome enough to accept my request and answer a few of my fatherhood-related questions for this 8BitDad exclusive.

Since shopping and buying gifts for the holidays have become so integrated into society’s year-end habitual consumer machine, it’s only natural to follow suit and give into the shopping holiday spirit. As parents, we will do anything for our kids to make the holiday that much more enchanting and special. I know this because my 15-month-old daughter is the first grandchild on both sides of the family, so yah – she’s pretty damn enamored with Christmas.

However, there are some giving folks who have taken to the streets, or Omaha Kmarts to be more specific, to make Christmas special for random families. I like this. I think people like this as well – hopefully not too much.

If I lived in Omaha and found out about this you bet your jolly sweet ass I’d be running out the door to a Kmart, look for a suitor, and put sh*t on layaway.

Interesting fact: Behemoth retailers Target nor Walmart offer layaway. Sears does, but the parent company, Sears Holdings Corporation owns both Kmart and Sears.

I just hope this isn’t an ingenious marketing ploy by Kmart to entice shoppers into a family game of “Santa Chance” – if it is revealed as such, I swear to some f*ckin’ jolly fat dude that I will post a video of myself giving a standing ovation in front of Kmart as an update to this article.

Until then, I’ll just keep believing in humanity.

A young 13-year-old girl, Clarisse Kambire, bent over in a cotton field pictured above in my Photoshop 2-minute masterpiece, caught my attention as a father. When I hear about a child labor scandal involving a national corporation as large as Limited Brands, who owns Victoria’s Secret, and physically see photos of a young girl being forced to work and read a little of her daily life – I automatically go into rage mode.

If you’re a decent person, you’d hopefully generate empathy too with a question like, “What if that was my daughter/son?”. And damn that’s a scary thought as I safely sit in a comfortable chair behind an awesome computer.

As a U.S. citizen and sometimes consumer, I hate to say it but I’m not surprised at this story. It’d be nice to see products like this sh*t made in the USA and sold for 1/2 the price – but that will never happen. The sad fact is the Third World competes to survive off America while America focuses on profit, looking for world bargains, slowly drowning the middle class with corporation’s lust for greed. In 2006, Hanes was found to have exploited children in Bangladesh.

So now that Victoria has finally been exposed, their PR department has found themselves smack dap in the middle of a media sh*t-storm, stiff-arming all accusations of forced child labor so far. There’s no mistake that this is still happening, there’s no doubt it will continue to happen, but right now it’s happening in Burkina Faso.

Big ups to Bloomberg News for uncovering this story, spending more than six weeks reporting in Burkina Faso, including interviewing Clarisse, her family, neighbors and leaders in her village.

This week’s Podcast Question of the Week is about music:

What song reminds you of your dad?

We just talked yesterday about kid’s music. But what song comes on and makes you think of your dad?

Music is a powerful thing, and our brains are the best soundtrack-gatherers. Most people probably don’t think consciously that a particular song or artist reminds them of their father – but whether it’s a song their dad hummed when they were little, or a particular artist that dad always listened to in the car, people know. What song or artist reminds you of your dad?

We want to know! Leave your answer in the comments here and we’ll read some of your answers on our podcast, Sunday, 12/18.

Episode 010: Bonfire Of The Sanities

This week’s episode covers the following stories on 8bitdad.com for the week of December 6th, 2011: Would You Rather Your Teen Be Friendless or Too Popular?; Study: Fat Dad-Sperm, Fat Kids; Gay Tween Lies To Internet: A Dad’s Response; Rad Dads Make ‘Legend of Zelda’ Music Video; Solomon Metalwala Custody Battle Heats Up; Worst Handwritten Note Ever By A Dad