Hi Podcast! I'm Dad.

Its time to discuss the elephant in the room. The glowing cathode ray tube (or LED or Plasma screen) of moving pictures that parents trust their kids to watch and in turn watch their kids. The famous third parent of the modern age, the TV and its slanderous and hurtful depictions of fathers through the years. In reality how often can media depict a father as a bumbling ball of idiocy before children start to believe dads are certified 100% grade A dumb-asses. All i know is we grew up watching these dumb ass dad and it makes you wonder how much those depictions affected us in the end. So in conclusion....... wont some one think of the children and their TV soaked eyeballs.

Welcome to the Maze of Masculinity: do you go left, right, forward, backward, up or down? Truth is, no one knows the right direction. Men have been trying to navigate their way through this maze since the beginning of time, and if you're a dad don't worry there's a whole subsection of the maze specifically for you known as the Dungeon of Dad-ness. The problem with the maze is we're all stuck in here, and most of us don't realize it. Everyone's trying to find out what it means to be a man using advice from others in the maze, but we all just wind up being the blind leading the blind. Spoiler alert, your two faithful hosts here are in the maze too so don't expect a path to the exit from us. Just maybe though, we can help map out these cantankerous corridors a bit so that one day someone will find the exit and let the rest of mankind know how to get there.

....Well that umm...... that got kind of dark there, but i think it took us to an interesting place we can learn from. With that said episode 6 Part 1 is in our rear view and this spaceship is taking off without looking back to take us to Episode 6 part 2. Were on the look out for new type of geometry to fit our new thoughts on expectations into, new ways to arrange the expectations we have and finding ways to fit those oddly shaped unexpected aspects of life into our accepted paradigm. All this to say that having seen the dark side of expectations lets emerge into a more hopeful part of the conversation and learn to accept the unexpected in ourselves and our children.

"Parents just don't understand", "Kids these days with their music and tv" and many other phrases we have all heard countless times. Bridging the gap between generations and more specifically between parents and children is hard. Throw in entire media cultures that seem alien and mutually exclusive to both parties and your asking for misunderstanding. "Man, I sure do love Space Jam, LeBron was great in the movie". "LeBron? don't you mean Michael Jordan?!" etc. etc. etc.

But what if instead of letting the cultural divide, divide us from relating with our children and parents we instead use our media experiences to form lasting memories and shared cultural touchstones. Today we jump into this topic and try to see if this path is viable based on our own experiences. whether or not it works at least we will have the memories, right?