Episode 044: So, 2012 Was Great

This week’s episode covers some of the awesome stories written by other fathers around the internets for the week leading up to February 5th, 2013: Being A Father Makes You Better At Your Job / Does Being A Stay-At-Home Dad Make One “Emasculated”? No. Now Stop Asking, Please

Check out the audio only version of this episode above.

If you’re looking for a couple of quick dad-laughs, check out Parenting.com‘s webseries “Lords of the Playground“. Done in 30-second clips, the series features actors Matt Servitto and Jason Kravitz, who you’ve seen before on television.

The two play fathers on a playdate at the park, which isn’t far from their at-home roles as fathers. They both say that their kids are a source of inspiration for “Lords of the Playground”.

We’ve done a lot of shows over the past year. We’ve dedicated our time every week to try and make some informative and entertaining episodes for the digital fatherhood community. The videos we’ve been making have been pretty long and indigestible for most people, including us; even we don’t want to look at ourselves for more than a few minutes at a time. So we’re cutting our episodes into topic-based videos that will be around 5 minutes each.

Our new goal is to do two of these 5-minute videos per week. We’re asking for your support and we hope that you like what we do.

Mike Massé, talented musician and Louis CK stunt double, is from Utah and has a flawless voice. He’s been recording some really solid performances at Salt Lake City’s Pie Pizzeria and uploading those videos to his YouTube channel. He’s been doing this for a couple of years now, where each video gets an average of 100-200k hits (my personal favorites, which give me chills, are the Radiohead covers). As a musician, I can respect the amount of talent it takes to perform a good song live and do it flawlessly.

His most recent solo performance is quite possibly the most important one he has done and will ever do.

Before the music even starts, the video begins with a heart-wrenching intro where Mike briefly explains his 1-year-old son’s condition. On July 5th, 2012, his 11-month-old son, Noah, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Two weeks later he recorded this video.

It’s a powerful and simple introduction that emotionally resonates in your soul as you hear the audible pain of his speaking voice. His two-camera performance of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” is beautifully haunting. Check it out and download the song to donate.

Remember Sean Phillips? He made a baby beatboxing video that went viral a while back. Naturally, we saw it and noticed it was also featured on our BFF Jeanne Sager’s Cafe Mom article. We liked it, it was cute. However, some internet moms had to destroy the fact that a 7-month-old baby (at the time) could not actually beatbox.

*ascii facepalm*

Anyways, 1-year-old Jonah is back with some fresh beats! Clearly, he has stepped out of his comfort zone by venturing into the vast realm of baby breakbeat, upping the complexity of rhythm.

Check out the video after the hip hop, hippie to the hippie, the hip, hip a hop, and you don’t stop a rock it to the bang… just… click “To be continued” below if you’re not seeing the full story.

You may have recently seen on – yawn – every other website, a video of a little girl having the cutest little lightsaber fight with her dad. It’s cute, it’s ultra cool a father is playing with Star Wars stuff with his daughter, and we love it. But we also noticed something…and when we noticed it, we nerdgasmed.

The dad in the video, Brad Lewis, is a Texas native, who grew up on a ranch and knew when he saw Star Wars that he wanted to be a part of that universe. Years later, he’s had a 15 year career in the video game industry, and currently works at BioWare, as a senior VFX artist. He and his wife Katie have one child – Samantha – the baby Jedi you’ve seen in the viral video.

That viral video and a Q&A are after the jump.