Episode 032: Not Safe For Life

This week’s episode covers the following stories on 8BitDad.com for the week leading up to June 5th, 2012: Good On You: JCPenny Features Same-Sex Fathers in Ad / Book Review: Darth Vader And Son / Deaf 2-Year-Old Boy Hears His Mother’s Voice For The Very First Time / Beta Dad – Ruining Daddy Blogging

There comes a time in every future Sith Lord’s life when the Queen wants to bang out a couple of kids before she dies. This is true for Anakin Skywalker who *spoiler alert* is bestowed the honor of “Lord Vader” by Darth Sidious. Darth Vader And Son captures the adorable reality of what life would have been like for Darth Vader as a single working father, in Episode III.V… before Episode IV: A New Hope.

Kids can be brutally honest. They can also remind you how old you are and how the music you love is terribly lame. This has been happening for generations so don’t feel too bad that your kids won’t ever fully appreciate Every Rose Has It’s Thorn or anything.

Noisey is slowly becoming one of my favorite channels on YouTube, simply because of the “You Review” bits where kids spout off opinions on music. It’s one of those “F*CK, I wish I had thought of that” pieces of entertainment you just can’t bypass on a rainy day.

Episode 020: Deal With It

This week’s episode covers the following stories on 8bitdad.com for the week leading up to March 6th, 2012: PQotW: How Do You Protect Your Kids From Bullying? / Anti-Smoking Ad With Father Controversial For Bottle-Feeding / Fallout: Huggies – Truth In Advertising / App Review (and Code Giveaway!): Baby Pic for iPhone / Fatherhood On the Go, Part 1: Welcome to the Adventure

Being a Nintendo fan for the better part of my 31 years, I’ve known frustration. I’ve been through the gauntlet on NES games, tasted the satisfaction of SNES, felt the burn of multiplayer party games on the N64, GameCube and Wii, and gone it alone on all the handhelds – GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, DS and DSi to name a few. But the 3DS brings a new mix of all those things – frustration, satisfaction, multiplayer fun and portable distraction. So is the story of Mario Kart 7 – a game that has flaws, sure, but is a whole lot of fun – and championed-in a very important 3DS update.

That update included the ability to join friends’ games via the friends list – a vital function of the friends list initially left out. As well, players met through Mario Kart now show up in your Mii Plaza. But these things aren’t as important as the gameplay in Mario Kart 7. After all, it doesn’t matter if you can join a friend’s game if you’re not interested in doing so. It’s good news then, that Mario Kart 7 is loads of fun, despite some quirks and problems, and it’s a really fun game to play with your kids for all of the obvious reasons.The gameplay in Mario Kart 7 is, at its most basic, the same thing you always expect from a Mario Kart franchise game: you race, you shoot stuff at each other, you win, you lose. And if we just took MK7 straight based on that, I’d still be on-board for a near-perfect score. Just fair warning.

Ask any typical father the kind of breakfast he enjoys cooking for his kids and pancakes will come up in the conversation. Let’s be honest – pancakes are awesome. First of all, they’re cake that you eat for breakfast. And actually, there’s no second point – they’re cake you eat for breakfast!

But most people make the same old blah pancakes for their kids – big circles, smaller circles. And if you really want to look like a hero in front of your kids, you make the old Mickey Mouse pancake – one big circle, two smaller circle ears. WTG, bro. Well, Jim Belosic’s got you beat. I mean, unless you’ve made The Golden Gate Bridge out of pancake, then maybe you’re on his level. Oh, you haven’t? Then shut your hole and read the review of his new book, “OMG Pancakes!”

Look, let’s not muddle up the main point with facts: the Löopa Gyro Bowl isn’t perfect. Yes, it’s dishwasher-safe. It’s BPA-free. It’s (according to their website) “virtually indestructible.” That means, as far as I know, that you can’t destroy it in virtual reality worlds like Second Life. The Gyro Bowl is a whole lot of great things, I guess. But unfortunately, it also looks like a toy and a challenge for kids. The minute some punk kid (read: your kid) sees that the inner-bowl rotates 360 degrees in every direction, the kid is most-definitely going to try to spill whatever’s in the bowl. Adults, believe it or not, will try to spill whatever’s in the bowl too.

Last week I went to our school’s Fall open house with my big guy. We did the running tour of the school, fighting the crowds through the classroom, the gym, the art room, the music room, the gym again, and finally the lunch room. Why did we end up back in the gym? Well, that’s where they were doing the Scholastic book fair, of course! It was a portrait of chaos. A few dozen parents were getting whipped around the aisles, dragged along by a swarm of hyper kiddos.

I didn’t get sucked in right away. I cut a deal early. “One book, any book…you pick,” I told my little dude. He was jumping in place, but he heard me. Thank goodness. When I cut him loose, he did exactly what I hoped he’d do – he dashed right for the Star Wars shelf. He shocked me when he came right back holding Star Wars ABC, the book you see in the title image. Apparently he already knew what he wanted me to get. By this point, I suspected the school had toured the kids through the book sale earlier in the day. It was either that or he just liked the robots on the cover.

I wanted to make sure he was sure of his choice, so I took him through all the aisles. “Do you want that one? What about this one?” It was no use; he was locked in to his choice. It turns out that the book he picked is an amazing book that I recommend to anyone with young readers. Let me tell you why you should hand over some of your hard-earned cash to George Lucas, the guy who’s about to squeeze another victory lap out of films that he made around 30 years ago (ho-lee whaaaa?).