Look at that face. Poor homeless thing is miserable...
By now, I’m sure you are all aware of the blogosphere’s outcry against Gwen, the homeless American Girl doll.
If not, than essentially what you need to know is that Gwen’s deadbeat dad left her and her mom to live in their car. She meets a girl named Chrissy, who enjoys keeping the bullies from picking on Gwen’s sad plight.
Let's go, Squaddies!
Before my wife and I started having kids, I imagined some day in the distant future, bouncing my son or daughter (or both!) on my knee and trying to figure out how to introduce them to the wonderful comic book characters I knew as a child. The movies are too adult and the cartoons I watched as a kid are just plain old.
I started buying toys. Then, there was a line from Marvel called ‘Spiderman and Friends‘. These featured little kid versions of my favorite Marvel heroes. I snatched up everything from teethers to board books to action figures and vehicles, anticipating the demise of the current Super Hero trend.
Al Roker and Deborah Roberts will join Elmo in talking to kids about these tough economic times. Photo by Gil Vaknin from sesameworkshop.org
In a previous blog post, ‘We’ve Heard the Talk of Wall Street and Main Street, But Who’ll Help Sesame Street?’ I talked about how the Sesame Workshop was laying off some of it’s staff as a result of these dismal economic times. Wednesday night, the Street takes to Prime-Time to help children understand what parents already know.
A brief explanation of the new Adult-Friendly Children’s Book feature: No doubt everyone loves Dr. Seuss, but there’s only so much Green Eggs and Ham that one adult can mentally consume. Here I will highlight the children’s books that I feel are just as note-worthy. And maybe just a bit more off the beaten path…
It’s no secret that I hate Neil Gaiman. He continuously pumps out great work, and I hate him for it. ‘Crazy Hair‘ is another such work. I brought it home to my nearly three year old, and she made me read it. Twice. This was after I read it to myself a couple of times.
Every once in a while, a movie comes along, beats you over the head and changes your life.
I personally have had a few movie moments like that. Some of those were in animated films. But I don’t think any of them affected me quite like Disney/Pixar’s ‘Up‘.
I’ve been a Pixar fan since practically the beginning of the studio, when I saw their short ‘Luxo, Jr.‘ in a presentation called ‘Beyond the Mind’s Eye‘ on PBS. My first post on this blog was ‘Wall-E Restored My Faith In Pixar‘. Needless to say I was excited about ‘Up’, I just didn’t realize how excited I should be.
The air smelled of stale pages and small children. The teenagers jostling in to the room reminded me of the wildebeasts that make short work of Mufasa, leaving Simba fatherless. I shed a tear for my daughter Calli and my unborn son. They will never know what it is like to have a father. My oldest, Kat, had betrayed them. She had led me to this pack of wolves, this den of geeky jockularity. I stood before them, notes quivering in my hand.
I was going to teach comic books to teenagers.
Kirby help me.
Recently, through the magic of social networking, I came across an organization called the Comicbook Artist’s Guild. They are an organization of comic book professionals and beginners that get together for the sheer love of comics.
Their first anthology comic: Iconic, will be formally released at the MoCCA fest in New York City, being held June 6 and 7, but they were nice enough to let me peer inside it’s pages beforehand so that I can tell you a little bit about it.
Click here to buy your very own copy of Iconic!
OK, it’s probably a little early for this blog to go into ‘reruns’, but when I originally posted this, I didn’t feel that it got the traffic that it deserved. Fatherhood Friday is always my biggest traffic day, but I posted this one late. So in an effort to rectify that, I am posting here again, ‘We’ve Heard the Talk of Wall Street and Main Street, but Who’ll Help Sesame Street?’
Obviously, this is near and dear to me, and I apologize to those who have already read this. I promise a brand new Fatherhood Friday post will be posted next Friday.
The sisters relate to each other...
As a Daddy Blogger, I find myself in a unique situation: I have a 15 year old step-daughter and a two year old daughter. I feel that this gives me a different perspective. I came into Kat’s life when she was four years old, so I missed the diapers and the slow development of her language skills. I’ve watched her grow up and marveled at her dreams and the decisions that she’s made. Even though I’ve had those eleven years of being a Daddy, with Calli it feels like I’m a brand new Daddy. Now I get the diapers and laugh at the way she reasons out words. Bunnies are ‘hoppies’ for instance. Doggies are ‘goggies’. With a new baby boy on the way in August, that’ll be a whole new world, as now I’m so used to girls, what do I do?
We like to occasionally visit our local thrift store in order to maybe snatch some nifty schwag at a bargain. My wife generally migrates toward the clothing and I head for the media: books, CDs, movies…
Today’s visit to the thrift store resulted in my finding an album I had no idea existed, but I’m so glad I scooped it up!
‘Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music From Vintage Disney Films‘ is just that: a compilation of various artists adding their own spin on Disney film music. The artists on this album are unlike anything I’ve ever seen with Disney music.
