Go Ask Daddy about organs, occupations, and The Hoody 🚜

What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich like me? Has he taken any time to show you what you need to live?

What a way to follow up nostalgia – with more nostalgia.

After bringing back the 6 Words post on Monday, I’m digging out the Go Ask Daddy feature that used to be a fixture here. What’s next – terrariums and mustaches?

I keep a list of questions my kids have asked for – oh, the past couple of decades – and try to answer them every week.

Expect both the sacred and the profane. Or something about football rules or the human gut. It’s all fair game when it comes to Go Ask Daddy.

Tooting Our Own Horns, in 6 Words

You don’t have to be a star, baby, to be in my show. (Snowtrooper jubilation at Mill Mountain Park, Roanoke, Va.

Sometimes, you just have to represent.

Yourself, that is. None of this ‘aw shucks’ stuff. No, “no one reads my blog. I just mess around with words” business. It’s not usual fare for a blogger to boast (or is it?), so this month’s challenge proved … challenging to most.

I compile a post called 6 Words. Ernest Hemingway inspired it when he said any story can be told in six words. I ask bloggers, friends, strangers, and a few strange blogger friends to respond to a prompt every month.

October is National Self-Promotion Month. In six words, tell us something good about your blog. 

🌶️ Go Ask Daddy About Spicy Commercials, Reserved Parking and the Home of the Demon Deacs

I think I remember you from my teenage years …

Long before Kesha and Jennifer Lawrence, way back on the timeline before Ingrid Michaelson and Laura Linney, in a time Hope Solo, Sue Bird and Paula Creamer were just youth-league cuties … there was the MCI girl.

Guys, this is Jean Louisa Kelly.

Her cute but creepy ad for the soon-defunct MCI became all sortsa Dream Weaver for me.  She resurfaced in Mr. Holland’s Opus, as star-dreaming Rowena Morgan in 1995. In 2000, you could see her in Yes, Dear, married to a dude even dweebier than yours truly.

I thought she’d disappeared after that feeble TV show.

Then I watched 1,000 to 1: The Cory Weissman Story. I resisted, invoking my “No Movies That Star Kids From Disney Shows” clause. But … Cory’s mom looked, so sweetly familiar. The curls were now straight; her lipstick less pow than fire-engine red.

Go Ask Daddy About Cinematic Symbolism, Steve Martin Stunts and Retail/Dining options for Dec. 31

Do you know where that water’s been, brother?

NPR just made rain kind of gross.

A show promo pointed out that water we drink today has passed through the kidneys of a brontosaurus. Japanese freestyle swimmer Shigeo Arai probably swam through it in the 1936 Olympics.

It might have lived in a water pitcher on the set of the Dominican telenovela Tropico, too. I try not to think of that, but it’s true. Water’s the original repurposed thing.

Sure, rain’s kind of nasty, but it’s also beautifully poetic. It made up puddles my girls stomped in walking into the grocery store with dad. It helped soil uniforms – school and soccer – and locked in stories and memories and history.

🎧 Go Ask Daddy About Joint Noise, TV Tech and What Happens When You Set a Stopwatch with The Good Book

I call this one, Distortion. Camdyn’s Coca-cola glass, though, also makes me thirsty.

I won’t divulge individual names right now.

Consider all three girls implicated, though. The injuries they’ve suffered number in triple digits. The injuries they’ve suffered have only a few been serious. The injuries they’ve suffered occurred at the hands of – their other sisters. Well, mostly.

Some are self-inflicted.

One kid suffered a hyper-extended elbow climbing into a cardboard box. One bruised a cheekbone opening a car door. One burned her hand when she touched a stove burner I just turned off. (These are all one kid. And she blames me for the last one.)

Go Ask Daddy about baby multiples, mustache machinations and the trappings of a finicky existence

You gotta be joking …

This week has given me new news to hate and reminders of old news that I still hate.

So extensive is my disdain for the decision to suspend USWNT goalkeeper Hope Solo for six months – and terminate her contract – that I rattled off a topper to this week’s Go Ask Daddy in defense.

I started to bang out a list of people who deserve harsh words more than Hopey.

I got to 35, and saw the word count bulge to 600+ – and I hadn’t even gotten to my kids’ questions! I contained all the vitriol, and will continue the thought for Monday’s post. You’ve been warned.

Go Ask Daddy About Oafs, Sponge Years and Celebrity Breakups

“Laterz, Barack. Let’s kick it again sometime.”

“How in the world was I ever a student?”

In the midst of a work post, the utter stubbiness of my attention span – and ability to comprehend anything not about food, soccer or Star Wars – couldn’t be ignored. “They didn’t have as much stuff for you to learn back then,” Grace piped up.

“And they didn’t have all the ways we could learn stuff back then.”

Immediately I saw myself in my sabre-toothed tiger jumper, all Paleolithic-like in a schoolhouse like the ones on Little House on the Prairie. Oh, these kids.

Go Ask Daddy About Prehistoric Throwbacks, Swoony Celebs and Good Guys on Teams We Love to Hate

Conquering the BGR daily special in Gaithersburg, Md. – EJP

The good old days – amirite?

I might act curmudgeonly at times, but really, I can roll with the punches. I finally got a smartphone, remember? I fully embraced Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and gave Fuller House a puncher’s chance (Hi Kimmy.) Agile, that’s what I am.

Still, there’s stuff I miss. Stuff I wish I could bring back.

Like, Summer Sanders. Toys in the bottom of cereal boxes. Ice cream in baseball caps at the ballpark that don’t set you back $8. Cookie Monster, in his full glory. The original Electric Company. The Gameboy. Trading football cards with Tandy Dillen at lunch.

🤠 Go Ask Daddy About Adventurous Couples, Early Mornings, and Pleasant Pachyderms

Checking out the floral action outside the Smithsonian in Washington. – EP photo

Ever just … shut down your brain?

It can be done in many ways. Meditation’s my favorite. I’m stellar at switching off my brain, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me as a man, a father, or a Colorado Rockies fan. Once, I came to after a mediation session to find my friends staring at me.

“I want a brownie,” I muttered. [Watch Reese on Malcolm in the Middle zone out below]

Yeah, I get all enlightened, go Zen AF to my eyebrows, and what do I ask for? Not world peace, not eternal life or immortal knowledge – I want baked goods. I’m also prolific at powering down the gray matter at bedtime. Today’s worries can wait until tomorrow.

Go Ask Daddy About Ancient Sports, Front Range Stores and Brain Training

photo credit: “SIIIIIR… why…” via photopin (license)

There’s not a lot of Bo in my girls’ games.

By Bo, I mean Bo Jackson, the super athlete who got dudes started on two sports back in the 1990s. For my girls, the year’s split into two seasons: Soccer season, and count-your-wounds-and-fight-with-each-other-until-soccer-season-starts-again season.

That’s fine with me.

Other families transition into basketball after fall soccer. Can you imagine? After tournament drama, come sit in a gym and listen to sneaker squeak hell. Marie played an intramural basketball game once. I’d pay anything to be able to go back and see it.