The Father of All Weekly Features

It’s June and since self-obsession runs rampant here at Transformer Generation Dad the whole month is all about Father’s Day.  The build up, the celebration and the afterglow take up all thirty glorious summer days.  We say summer days even though the solstice isn’t until twenty days into the month, but who needs to be that precise?

Must…resist…precision.

Anyway, this week’s features begin celebrating dads by naming our top five favorite comic book fathers.

5. Odin – The All-Father practices tough love to be sure, but ultimately he teaches his son Thor how to be worthy of the power he possesses.  Add in the gift of one kick ass hammer and the adoption of one of his sworn enemy’s runt children and the gruff, one-eyed, bearded old coot seems like a big softy.

4. Magneto – I know we all might say it, but how many of you would be willing to wage a full scale war with the human race in order to protect the future of your kids?

3. Reed Richards – You can’t by your kids’ love, but if you are the one and only Mr. Fantastic inventing super awesome gadgets and allowing them to travel throughout the galaxy might be a way to bribe love out of them.

2. Jor-El – Scientist and savior of his only son.  He even provided his boy with the ultimate tree house so that he had somewhere to escape with his thoughts (and nudie magazines…they don’t show that part in the comic books).

1. Rick Grimes – When the chips are down and the mindless hordes are advancing, the true mettle of a father is tested.  Through loss of limbs as well as countless friends, family members and acquaintances, Rick has stayed focused on the two fundamental principles of fatherhood.  Protect your son and cultivate his ability to slaughter zombies.

This week’s cool-ass thing you will never own is Jabba’s sail barge.  No large body of water nearby?  No problem.  Grab the drinks, the band and the droids and glide above the sand as you entertain your guests (at least the ones you don’t throw into the sarlacc pit) in style.

This week’s sign you are a nerd is that your primary means of social interaction is to play games…literally, not metaphorically.  Be it role-playing, video or board, you ignore stereotypes and spend your evenings on a regular basis delving into the imaginary world of games.  Anything that coaxes you out of that shell and causes you to interact with other people can’t be that nerdy.

This week’s nemesis is late sunsets.  I can’t tell you how may times I have already uttered the phrase, “Crap! It’s what time?” as I was supposed to be somewhere half an hour before.

This week’s lesson learned is to angle tent spikes away from the base of the tent.  Should you slant them toward the tent, that decent gust of wind will help to pull them free form the ground then the ensuing rain will be all up inside that dry haven of yours, rendering the whole set up useless.  The bigger the tent, the more time it takes to dry that bad boy out.

This week’s analysis seeks to further understand the role we dads play as garbage disposals at the dinner table:

F represents the amount of food in ounces you will end up eating off your children’s plate at a given meal.  Take the number of children you have (c ) and multiply that by the quality of the restaurant you are dining (q) in on a 1-10 scale, because everyone knows the better the restaurant, the less kids will like it.  Then divide that product by the sum of the average age of your children (a) and the number of hours it will take for you to arrive home after dinner (t).  If you’re planning on catching a movie with the family after dinner, I wouldn’t recommend bagging up those crab cakes and leaving them in the car.  Might as well just choke them down now.

Finally, this week’s Star Wars quote is, “I can’t get involved.  I have work to do.”

Transformer Generation Dad hopes your June is shaping up to be awesome and that you have already begun your plans for Father’s Day.  Mostly because it makes us feel less selfish if other people are doing it too.