05 May

Dad and Buried Posted in Giveaway 16 comments

Review and Giveaway: Dino Construction Company

If you ask my toddler to list his favorite things on earth, after he says Mommy and Frozen and “cracker parties” and Grandma and probably mutters a few gibberish words and mentions his lovey and then cries and screams for a little while and then maybe says some foods like bacon and pizza, I’ll bet he’ll finally announce that it’s “trains!”

But then, if you ask for his favorite things besides trains, he’ll say “baseball!” And after that, after you’ve spent a few more fruitless minutes trying to get him to respond the way you want him to respond so your stupid intro to your stupid blog post will fall into place, you’ll give up and grab a beer. And that’s when he’ll go off and play with his trucks and pretend he’s a dinosaur because he loves those things too even if he refused to cooperate.

In fact, he might even go play with his trucks and pretend to be a dinosaur at the same time, because now he can, with the Dino Construction Company!

02 May

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline 2 comments

School of Block

When I was a kid, The Karate Kid was one of my favorite movies. If I’m totally honest, it still is. I see it listed in the channel guide and there’s no way I’m not watching the tournament.

Growing up, I was so enamored with the uplifting tale of Daniel LaRusso’s war against the neo-Nazi community of Southern California that my parents thought I might want to take karate classes. And I would have, if I hadn’t been so terrified of landing in a Cobra Kai-type school with a Vietnam-traumatized sensei who would force me to be racist and do push-ups on my knuckles.

Come on, I was like eight years old. Which I thought was a little young for martial arts. Except almost 30 years later, my son is taking them, and he’s three.

The Most Interested Man in the World

One of the joys of being an adult is the ability to make your own decisions. To decide what you want to do, how you want to spend your time, and who you want to spend it with.

And then you have kids, and pretty much all of your autonomy goes out the window.

Thankfully, and startlingly, one of the side-effects of becoming a parent is that you change – you don’t have to change everything, not if you don’t want to, but you will inevitably change, at least a little. Your lifestyle will shift and your priorities will be re-ordered and, suddenly, the people you most want to spend your time with are your kids, and the things you want to do are what they want to do.

Most of the time.

17 Mar

Dad and Buried Posted in Drinking 2 comments

The Winter Soldier

My family is the victim of poor planning.

Like everyone else, we participate in the standard holiday season that begins in November and ends in January.Unlike everyone else, we also have a few more holidays thrown into that fall/winter zone. And I.m not talking about All Saints’ Day or Pitchers and Catchers day.

My wife’s birthday is in early November. My son’s birthday is in mid-September and happens to land on the day before our wedding anniversary, and my own birthday hits just a week before that, although, let’s be honest, my birthday is meaningless. Throw in my wife’s beloved Halloween and the Hallmark hell of Valentine’s Day, and from September until mid-February my life is a calendar-choked spending spree of forced romance and legitimately meaningful milestones that leaves me both physically and financially spent.

Like I said, poor planning. And this long winter is just making it worse.

“The (Baby) Weight”

As a youngster, I used to enjoy writing “Weird Al”-style song parodies. I wrote one that changed the title of one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons to “Muppet Rabies”. I told a story about a classmate who appeared on “Teen Jeopardy” by re-purposing the tune of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”. At a friend’s request, I once wrote something bashing Derek Jeter and jammed it inside an Eminem song.

As I grew older, I occasionally found a new outlet for this supreme waste of time.

A few years ago, I helped my wife alter some lyrics to the song “Razzle Dazzle” so she could perform it at her company’s talent show (don’t ask). And just last year I whipped up a “Paradise City” parody that referenced Pope Benedict’s abrupt retirement and posted it on Twitter. It’s been retweeted 1,314 times and is easily my most popular tweet, even though I’ve written several about potty training.

I just can’t seem to stop writing the stupid parodies, and yet I’ve never written one about my son (unless you include the one where I sing his name to the tune of the “CHiPs” theme song). Until now. I apologize in advance for wasting your time.

Read more about “The (Baby) Weight” …

Dad and Buried

Tag: movies

Review and Giveaway: Dino Construction Company

Like this:

School of Block

Like this:

The Most Interested Man in the World

Like this:

The Winter Soldier

Like this:

“The (Baby) Weight”

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: