David Vienna's Blog, page 190

American Sniper

American Sniper

GPOY

GPOY

Copyright Issue?

Wyatt: I have a new story idea.

Me: Great! What is it?

Wyatt: A guy goes up into space and gets frozen or something and he's up there for a long time and when he comes back to Earth everything's changed because it's the future.

Boone: That's just like Buck Rogers. Is you character called Buck Rogers?

Wyatt: No.

Boone: What's he called?

Wyatt: ...Steve.

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be A Cool Dad

chrissystockton:

I aspire to wear a baby sling around a music festival and get praise heaped on me for how progressive I am. I wanna take paternity leave but still sleep through the night while my spouse gets up with the newborn and then go back to work and joke about how “women are so amazing I could never do that” with my cool job work buddies. I want to take my kids out for ice cream on a Saturday night to “give mom a break” and have the waitress think I’m dad of the year.

I want to wear flannel and listen to Ryan Adams and be a shitty parent basically.

I want to have the confidence to be a completely inept parent who is totally okay LOL-ing publicly about it. I want to assume all the boring details of my daily life are handled by my partner, who also brings income into the household budget (because, yay, money). I’ll let him do most of the parenting work because he’s probably better at it and I’ll just mess it up if I try.

I’m all about low key treating my partner like an indentured servant. But in a chill way that’s approved of by my peers.

Every woman wonders if she can ‘have it all’, but cool dads have already proved that you can — as long as you’re okay with being aggressively mediocre at most of it. They have the career, the marriage and the adoring family, but without all the pesky upkeep. Cool dads are the American dream and I want in.

I understand that a ton of moms on Facebook post jokes or memes comparing the hard parenting work they do with the barely competent work of their male spouses, about how those men get praise for the most minimal of effort. The posts always generate a lot of “Tell me about it!” comments from their friends. 

Oh, now that’s comedy, right? Wrong. It’s an unfair stereotype based on that person’s own narrow experience with what is clearly a drop-dead shitty partner.

Let me tell you about what a father is really like:

I get my boys up and dressed every day.
I make them breakfast every day.
While they’re eating breakfast, I make their lunches every day.
I make their dinner every day.
I take them to school, to practice, to activities.
I rush home from work to pick them up from school.
I clean their cuts when the fall.
I help them with their homework.
I make sure their library book is in their backpack the day they’re due.
I take them to the doctor when they’re sick.
I read to them every night.
I console them when they have nightmares.
I cry when they feel pain.
I laugh when they make a joke, even if it’s not really funny.
I live my life to make their lives the best they can be.

Basically, I parent.

I don’t win parental victories every day. But, I try. No one has ever called me “dad of the year” for doing any of it. If they did, I’d say, “No, I’m not. I’m just a dad,” because I’m not doing it for praise. And I don’t treat my wife like an indentured servant because I can’t do all of this without her strength and partnership.

That guy who wrote the article that drew your ire, he’s not representative of the whole. He’s a goddamn idiot who was playing into the same stereotype as the moms I mentioned above. It’s cliché, it’s stupid, and it’s an easy joke that has no substance.

And I’ve never worn a baby in a sling at a music festival. I don’t have time for music festivals because I’m a fucking father.

Plus, Ryan Adams sucks.

We’re at track practice and Wyatt (in the lead in this pic) just...

We’re at track practice and Wyatt (in the lead in this pic) just came up to me and told me he needs sunlight to regain his strength.

Guys…

…my son is Superman.

Being a good parent will physiologically destroy you, new research confirms

Being a good parent will physiologically destroy you, new research confirms:

Interesting find from a study out of Northwestern University. Here’s the breakdown…

Good News: Empathetic parents raise physically and emotionally resilient kids.

Bad News: Those parents are fucked.

I’m sick for the third time since the New Year.Everything sucks and there is no God.

I’m sick for the third time since the New Year.

Everything sucks and there is no God.

improvisingfatherhood:I was using a public bathroom and my 3-year-old was with me in the stall. He...

improvisingfatherhood:

I was using a public bathroom and my 3-year-old was with me in the stall. He looked at me and said, “why do you have that cool penis?”

This particular tagging game is new to me. Apparently it’s called 15 Movies and when you’re tagged,...

This particular tagging game is new to me. Apparently it’s called 15 Movies and when you’re tagged, like @tacosaysroar did to me, you’re supposed to list your 15 favorite films. Like Taco, I can’t list my top 15 for various reasons, the least of which are there’s more than 15 and the list is constantly changing. So like Taco, I’m altering the rules to make this not my favorite 15, but rather 15 I like within a specific genre. I chose weird and/or cult films—not my favorites of all time, just ones I like. There are plenty missing.

Anyway, here you go (in no particular order):

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension

Of course a surgeon/rock star would be the first person to successfully travel multidimensionally. Of course. Makes perfect sense. So does the fact that aliens would then raid earth for the technology. And of course, the titular hero (and surgeon and rock star) and his band (literally) of men are the only ones who can stop them. Of course.

The Reflecting Skin

This film is so fucked up, yet set in a seemingly real time and place. After seeing it, I wondered if it was someone’s biography—it’s almost too weird not to be true. Trigger warning: It involves a lot of stuff like child murder, a stillborn baby, violent suicide… it’s seriously fucked up.

Street Trash

Hobos are dying violently after drinking toxic hooch and it’s up to another hobo to save the day… I’d say it’s better than it sounds, but it’s not.

The Dark Backward

A failing comedian’s career takes off when he inexplicably grows a third arm from his back. Everything in this movie looks dirty and/or sweaty. You’ll want a shower after this one.

Dead Alive

Before he successfully oversaw the most ambitious feat in moviemaking history by filming three movies at once across an entire country, Lord Of The Rings trilogy director Peter Jackson made gross-out horror comedies in his native New Zealand. See also: Meet The Feebles.

Time Bandits

You’ve seen this. (Please, tell me you’ve seen this.) Still one of Terry Gilliam’s best films. I loved it as a kid, despite the fact that it totally fucked me up.

Brain Damage

I know this film is a clumsy metaphor for drug addiction, but it comes off as a hysterical head trip (no pun intended) thanks to the poo-like alien that talks like a gentle friend.

Eraserhead

If you haven’t seen this early offering from Twin Peaks maestro David Lynch, go now and see it. GO!

Santa Sangre

Any story that takes place at a Mexican circus can’t go well. If you’ve ever wondered what your life would be like if you mother got her arms cut off and you had to literally use your arms as hers, this film can help you.

La Jetée

Film nerds know the time travel mind-bender 12 Monkeys was based on this French film (made entirely of still photos except for one shot). For you non-Film nerds, now you know.

Bubba Ho-Tep

Elvis is still alive and friends with JFK, who is also still alive… and black. The two forgotten historic figures do battle with a mummy feeding on the residents of the nursing home where they live. Don’t ask. Just enjoy this amazing piece of cinema directed by Don Coscarelli (of Phantasm fame) and starring Bruce Campbell as The King.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Adapted from Tom Stoppard’s hilarious play (by the playwright himself), this film follows two hapless minor characters from Hamlet as they struggle with their place in the world and accidentally discover many of the laws of physics.

Videodrome

Almost any David Cronenberg film could be on this list, but this one seemed to tackle such a strange slice of the ‘80s zeitgeist and, as it turned out, kind-of predicted the reality TV craze about 20 years before it happened.

Class Of Nuke ‘Em High

This gem is from Troma Entertainment, famous for not only creating The Toxic Avenger, but also where Guardians Of The Galaxy director James Gunn learned his trade. Anyway, it features a woman giving birth to a mutant baby by literally puking it into a toilet, so… there’s that.

John Dies At The End

I caught this on Netflix one night after reading is was based on a series of weird posts from a Cracked writer. It didn’t disappoint. Plus, it’s director Don Coscarelli’s second appearance on my list. 

Okay, I’m tagging… um… @electradaddy, @blastoffbabyboy, @craniodad, @thegorydetails, and @taylorswift. The original rules are “post your favorite 15 films,” but feel free to throw those rules out like me and Taco did.

We demand changing tables in the men’s room and then we go and...

We demand changing tables in the men’s room and then we go and fuck it up.