There are going to be some incredible movies coming out this summer.
After a piss-poor showing in 2005 (okay, there were three good ones: Kong, Return of the Sith, and Narnia) there are a whole ton coming out this summer. I am a huge Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer fan and so here are a few they are doing, and a couple of others that are on my list of movies to see.
Click on each picture to see the trailer!
This was Eric after we shaved his head.
Damn, he is creepy, but don't worry, it will grow back in a few days!
How did he ever end up with Jo?
I was scanning through my blog recently and I decided that I simply do not post enough pictures of the kids, or anything else for that matter. I am really into digital photography, and we just got a new camera, so you would think that I would be better at it...and I am not.
Maybe that should be my New Year's resolution for this blog. I will promise to post more pictures.
We just got took these pics of the kids recently with our new camera!
Enjoy!
This one was cute, although Jack seems to wonder what the heck is going on...
For those of you with kids that are Jack's age, you should check out what he is sitting in. It is called a 'Bumbo' chair, and you can buy them online. They are supposed to develop kids muscles, because it forces them to sit upright in the correct position. Since we got it as a gift, Jack's world has expanded significantly, and he has gotten a lot stronger!
Naomi made out like a bandit during Christmas. We had to get her back to her mother's on Christmas Eve, so we opened her presents early. As you can see, she had a blast!
The little man checking things out...
She is so cute you just want to squeeze her!
Sitting with Nana in his new sweatshirt.
Ths was one of my favorite pictures. This was Naomi saying thank you to Stephanie for her gifts. It was totally spontaneous, and un-prompted by anyone. Very cute!
He got this new teething ring for Christmas, and it lights up when he chews on it. For some reason he is infatuated with it.
This one is great because it shows how much detail our new camera can get.
I thought this was so cute that I had to post it.
It is a photo I took of one of my beautiful daughter's drawings. She has really taken an interest in crafts and drawing recently because we converted the old TV room into a craft room for Stephanie. Naomi has her own little table in there, and all her coloring pens and books are in there, too.
As for the drawing, that is her on the left, and Jack in the middle. Steph is on the right, and she gave it to me, and said, "Here dad, this is your family!". How friggin' cute is that ??!!! It was nice to see something like that come from her. 
With that said, the scale is completely off, the people look retarded, and there is no way Steph's hair is that long! Ridiculous.
Steph and I took the plunge and bought Madison (our niece) a new cell phone for Xmas, which apparently puts her on an even keel with about 60% of her 9 year old class mates!
Damn, when I was 9 they didn't even have cell phones! I wonder what the equivalent was back then? Maybe it would be your parents telling you they splashed out for seatbelts in their car!!
Boxing Day is a public holiday observed in many Commonwealth countries on 26 December. In many European countries it is also a holiday, called St Stephen's Day or the Second Day of Christmas. Depending on its origin, it may have traditionally been strictly defined as the first weekday after Christmas [1]. However over the past few decades, Boxing Day has been almost universally accepted as the 26th of December [2], although its associated public holiday may fall on a different day.
In Commonwealth countries, any fixed-date holidays falling on Saturday or Sunday are often observed on the next weekday, so if Boxing Day falls on a Saturday then Monday 28 December is a public holiday; while, if Christmas Day is a Saturday then both Monday 27 December and Tuesday 28 December will be public holidays. In the government holiday listings of the United Kingdom for 2004, the bank holiday in lieu of Boxing Day was observed on Monday 27 December, before the holiday in lieu of Christmas Day on Tuesday 28 December.
Origins
There is great dispute over the true origins of Boxing Day. The more common stories include:
Centuries ago, merchants would present their servants food and fruits as a form of Yuletide tip. Naturally, the gifts of food and fruit were packed in boxes, hence the term "Boxing Day".
In feudal times, Christmas was a reason for a gathering of extended families. All the serfs would gather their families in the manor of their lord, which makes it easier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christmas parties on December 25, the lord of the estate would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would get a box full of such goods the day after Christmas. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obligated to supply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Boxing Day.
In Britain many years ago, it was common practice for the servants to carry boxes to their employers when they arrive for their day's work on the day after Christmas (December 26). Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts. This can be compared with the modern day concept of Christmas bonuses. The servants carried boxes for the coins, hence the name Boxing Day.
In churches, it was tradition to open the church's donation box on Christmas day, and the money in the donation box were to be distributed to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day. In this case, the "box" in "Boxing Day" comes from that one gigantic lockbox in which the donations were left.
In Britain because many servants had to work for their employers on Christmas day they would instead open their presents (ie. boxes) the next day, which therefore became known as boxing day.
Marxist historians find evidence for "perpetuation of class difference" theory in what superficially seems to be Boxing Day's one direction of giving--i.e. from the rich lords to the poor croppers. They are right in observing that equality and respect are only found if there is a proper exchange of gifts. Looking only at quantifiable material value, they are right in finding inequality between the lords and peasants and justified in seeing reactionary and class-repressive origins for Boxing Day.
But recent trends in historical criticism find that such theories fail to consider several non-material realities. They concede that, by definition, the rich give and the poor receive gifts of material value. But this does not mean that the poor gave nothing. Such historians insist that there are different types of poverty and note that one doesn't have to look far into the various remnants of western folk cultures to perceive a symbiotic interdependence at play between rich and poor during festivals and holidays and to observe a range of non-material goods and services which the peasantry freely gave to the lords.
The poor have always cultivated and, when so inclined, shared the wealth and talents that they do possess. They would regale their lords with humor, minstrelsy, and folk-dancing if he would but provide the wine. On the visual spectrum, although the bishops and the lords might pay for the stones and employ the masons, it is a drab church on Christmas that has no peasantry to decorate it with garlands and to fill it with the bright-eyes and ruddy-faces of children. It is they and not the lords who would decorate the public spaces and trees of the village. It is the materially poor who have the non-material creativity to find beauty in pine cones and holly-berries, strings of beads, and lighted candles.
Any observer of Christmas will grant that popular carols, woven garlands, merry dance, and childrens' choirs are indeed things of value perhaps financed by but surely not provided by lords who spent their labor in the pursuit of material wealth, their leisure in the consumption of it, escaped their ordinary time by participating in and appreciating the warmth and vigor of the lives of the peasants who enjoyed the heterotopia of festal times in such pursuits as drinking and feasting which were denied to their ferial lives.
Commonwealth Observance
Boxing Day in the UK is traditionally a day for sporting activity, originally fox hunting, but in modern times football and horseracing.
In Canada, and indeed any other country that celebrates it, Boxing Day is also observed as a public holiday, and is a day when stores sell their excess Christmas inventory at significantly reduced prices. Boxing Day has become so important for retailers that they often extend it into a "Boxing Week". This occurs similarly in Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia, the cricket Test match starting on December 26 is called the Boxing Day Test Match, and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before the largest crowd of the summer. In Sydney, the annual Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race, one of the biggest and most prestigious ocean racing events in the world, begins on this day, as the yachts depart Sydney Harbour before many thousands of spectators around the harbour and in spectator boats.
In South Africa, the 26th is also observed as a public holiday. Although officially the day is known as the Day of Goodwill, it is also often referred to as Boxing Day by local English speakers. It is common for a cricket test match, played against a visiting international team, to start on this day.
The 2005 Boxing Day Test match is being played in Australia between Australia and touring South Africa.
European Observance
In Austria, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden, the 26th is known as the Second day of Christmas ("der zweite Weihnachtstag" in Germany, Annandag Jul — "the day after Christmas" — in Sweden) and is also a public holiday. In Ireland, the holiday is known as St Stephen's Day, or Wren's Day; in Austria it is called Stefanita and in Finland tapaninpäivä which also mean "St. Stephen's Day"; in Wales, it is known as Gŵyl San Steffan (St. Stephen's Holiday). In Catalonia, this day is known as Sant Esteve, Catalan for St. Stephen. A practice known as Hunt the Wren is still practiced by some in the Isle of Man, where people thrash out wrens from hedgerows. Traditionally they were killed and their feathers presented to households for good luck.
North American Observance
In the United States (where the term "Boxing Day" is not used and is in fact unfamiliar to most) and Canada, Boxing Day is the day when many retail stores sell their products at discounted rates. This results in huge lineups at retailers. Stores have these sales to clear out old inventory for the next year. Many products have a mail-in rebate to be used, a tactic used by manufacturers to clear their inventory. This trend is also increasingly occuring in the UK (despite it being a public holiday).
Well, Xmas was fantastic! We all had a raving good time and plenty of food and drinks were consumed by all!
Tom and Pat arrived on the 24th which was nice, just in time to see Naomi for a few hours before I had to take her back to her mother's. That was good timing. I was worried they were not going to get to see her.
We did Xmas on Xmas Eve for Nimmer which was fun. I am pretty much a traditionalist when it comes to when the pressies get opened, but obviously in this case it was okay to do them a day early. She made out like a bandit, which when you are a kid that is really all Christmas is about right? At her age (5), she is so into the Santa thing and everything that goes along with it. Very cute. Heartbreaking to have to take her back, but next year we will get her on Christmas Eve through until the next year.
The actual day went well with everyone enjoying themselves. It was nice because Eric and Jo came around and so we had everyone at our house again for Christmas. Steph out-did herself once again with the turkey. She cooks that thing so well that she is almost a pro at it. I was worried that the turkey wasn't going to be enough as it was only 12lbs, but we had a whole other ham aswell which I didn't notice until it was time to eat. The meal was topped off with bread sauce which Steph made from scratch, and for the first time since I have lived in the States I had a proper Christmas pudding, WITH Brandy Butter for desert! How cool is that. It bought back so many memories while I was eating. It was really cool.
Anyway, Santa also got us a new Nikon D50 digital camera. He spent some extra money and got the two lens kit and some other accessories, which mean that you will be seeing some much better quality photos on this blog from now on...starting right now!
This was a good one when they all got dressed up to go over to Tim and Misty's house! Not sure why they got all dolled up, but they looked good nonetheless.
Yikes!
Welcome to the club, sweetie! You look as great as you ever did, and I love you as much as ever ! You're just old....that's all!
We had an inpromptu party for Steph on her birthday (23rd) which was fun. Only a few people showed due to Christmas, and we wanted it to be low key anyway, so here are some pics from the party!
Santa...Big Pimpin'...
Mindy Looking Good!
Go Stephanie, It's your birthday!
Joann and Eric showed up which was great!
Mindy and her daughter, Hannah
Mike and his son, Braeden
He's dead....just like the folks he killed.
It's easy to repent when you are faced with death. What about before you were captured, and put on death row you sick bastard.
Great article by my good friend, Kenny about differing views. Freedom of speech is only okay if you agree with the noise makers I guess...
I thought this was pretty interesting. Now, I know there are a lot of people who read this who have opinions about the President, and most of them are not complimentary. Sure, he maybe not be the President with the highest IQ but he was elected. (Let's not even go into the "was he really elected" debate here!).
You probably know that I am not very 'political' at all. I mean, I think how you view politics is very simple...it is a personal choice, and that is based on how you yourself are doing. Not everything that a sitting preseident does affects people.
Example: his views on the death penalty. I mean, come on, who does that really affect? Not me. If I am ever in the situation where I need to be worried about it, then I will be, but until then I won't be.
Education affects me, but I know friends who never want kids who could give a crap about it, and that seems fair enough.
Global warming...okay...that one is important, and it affects me (or at least my two kids).
Maybe when I think about politics I tend to give the leaders of the world a secnd chance if they need it. I personally think it was the right decision to go into Iraq. Not because there were/weren't WMD, but because people were oppressed and there was a real threat to the Middle East. Saddam Hussein is on trial now for the murders of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of people in his 27 year reign. Was that not reason enough to go in? So there weren't any WMDs? So what?
So it comes to this...I read this article and thought it was intersting. Thought I would share it.
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What if Bush is right about Iraq?
What if the Middle East changed forever and no one noticed? It may have already happened. Early indications from Thursday's parliamentary elections in Iraq suggest that huge numbers of Iraqi citizens went to the polls, possibly as many as 11 million. If these numbers are accurate, turnout levels in Iraq reached more than 70 percent, at least ten percent higher than American voting levels in the 2004 presidential election. In other words, the overwhelming majority of Iraqi citizens came out to vote despite the threat of getting killed while doing so.
All of which raises an interesting question: What if George W. Bush's rhetoric about democracy -- about how all people, innately, yearn for freedom and representative government -- turns out to be true? What if Bush is right about Iraq?
It's a possibility few in the press have even considered. There's a consensus among the media that the war was a mistake from the beginning and that Bush's handling of it has been inept. I share that view. As a result -- and also because Iraq stories get terrible ratings - Thursday's elections were all but ignored in cable news and under-covered in print. It will take months to know if this was a good editorial decision. If the elections turn out to represent a peaceful lull between outbreaks of violence and chaos, the scant coverage will be justified. But if this turns out to be the point at which Iraq begins to get its act together, we'll have underplayed a huge story.
Which is true? I'm not sure, though I had a long e-mail exchange about it today with a reporter friend of mine. He's a conservative who, partly based on what he saw first-hand in Iraq, has become violently disenchanted with the Bush administration's handling of the war. Here's how he concluded his last e-mail: "If Bush ends up being right about Iraq, it will be through luck and accident and God's grace, not through any skillful calculation of his own. Success there will make him a great president the way Powerball makes crackheads rich: they have the money to show for it, but they're not fooling anyone."
I tend to think my friend is right. But it almost doesn't matter. A disaster in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. Pray for success, no matter who's responsible for it.
We had a great weekend. Just basically enjoyed each other's company. We watched Dukes of Hazzard on DVD (it was cute, but I am glad I didn't pay to watch it in the theater) and then we also watched Bewitched, which was another movie I thought i would hate, but it turned out okay.
I can't wait until Wednesday, when KING KONG comes out. It is going to be an awesome movie! We watched a little thing on the Animal Planet called "Animal Icons: King Kong" and how he has been portrayed throughout the movie industry. It was amazing to see how many times the movie theme has been done. Peter Jackson's version though is going to be phenomenal....
Click here to watch the trailer!
The World Cup Draw was made today...and England got lucky.
The US did not!
Click
here for the full table!
My dad wasn't a soccer fan at all. He was very big on the rugby, and I kind of fell into soccer by default. I went to boarding school at age 11 and they didn't offer rugby, so I got into 'football'.
Most of my friends at that time grew up hearing stories from their soccer-fan fathers telling them about this wizard who used to play for Manchester United during the 60's called George best.
Well, I never got a chance to see him obviously, but over the years of me playing the game, I got to see highlights on TV of him, and what he could do with a ball. He is widely regarded as the best player ever to come out of Great Britain, and is often touted as one of the top 5 players to ever play the game, being mentioned with greats like Pele, Maradona, Cryuff, and Eusebio.
Well, George liked to live it up a little, which led to his early retirement (age 28) and his ultimate death at age 59 from liver failure, after battling the bottle for many, many years. He was wildly known as the Fifth Beatle for his long locks and flowing style.
He was famously quoted as saying, "I spent a lot of money on booze, women, and fast cars...and the rest I just squandered". Well that was George. My sister, Emma, got me his book 'Blessed' for Christmas a while ago and it was a great read, but I came away feeling sorry for a man that had wasted soooo much talent. Oh well.
Anyway, there are thousands of tributes all over the web and I don't want to get lost in the shuffle, but I would ask that you take a moment and click here to see the soccer highlights of one of the greatest of all time.
For a detailed description of his life, and demise, click here.
Okay, so as with most folks that we know, Christmas is all about the kids this year. Totally!! This is how it should be, too !! We have Naomi from the 16th to the 24th, and so we are going to have plenty of time to really chill out and enjoy everyone's company.
Presents for the kdis will be overflowing as usual, and we'll make sure we have everyone else covered also. Isn't it funny, how Christmas becomes so much about what you get everyone else! I don't mean that in a money sense, or a 'keeping up with the Jones' sense, but rather making sure that you have really expressed to everyone else what they meant o you by getting them something thoughtful that means a lot to them. That is the fun of gift giving.
The downside of making sure you have everyone else covered is that you sometimes forget, figuratively, the person you care about more than anything in this world...your spouse. Obviously Steph and I haven't forgotten each other this year, but we decided that rather than 'surprise' each other with something, we would come up with ONE gift that we both want, that we could just share! Well, this weekend, while at the mall, we found that gift !
We are getting a Nikon D50 digital camera for each other.
We currently have 3 (yes, count them....THREE!) digital cameras at home. Why the hell would we need another? Well, none of our cameras actually give us what we truly want. We have one that does great video, one that takes great quick pics that is small and compact, and a third that we don't really use, but it will take average pics also. What we are really lacking is the ability to take fantastic photos of the kids growing up, the dogs, the sporting events, each other, and everything else that we want to, with the capabilities of getting it done right.
We went into Shutterbug in the mall and shopped around, and the Nikon rep happened to be there. Obviously they were biased towards their own product, but the D50 is phenomenal. It is being offered right now as part of a package deal where you get lenses and extra stuff for free.
It comes with a 18-55mm zoom lens...
...as well as the bigger better lens (55 - 200mm) for things further away like at sporting events etc!
Don't get me wrong...it isn't cheap, but we think it is an investment that is comepletely worth whatever we would spend on it. We have been taking pictures of Jack and naomi like crazy with our existing cameras, but realistically we need something that can kick some ass when we want it to. They rep was explaining it to Steph also which is important to me. Not being funny, but I would say 95% of all our photos of the kids do not have me in them!! Why? Because I am the one taking the pictures. Steph obviously gets the camera thing, but if we have something more point-and-shoot, versus having to mess with everything before the shot, she is more likely to take photos. She was actually more excited than I was I think!
Without sounding too nerdy, you can read all about the camera here.
Anyway, as soon as I get it I will take smoe pictures and let you all see what fantastic photgraphers we have become.
So this weekend was a good weekend!
We took the kids (I love the way that sounds!!) to the mall to go and do the annual Christmas photogrpahs. It was really cool. Naomi is getting such a big girl, and she looked beautiful in her dress that we buoght her for the pics. We got Jack a santa outfit which he looked so adorable in! I would post pics here, but they are for our Christmas cards so I don’t want to spoil the surprise for anyone yet!
We went to the Picture People which was nice. Our photographer was pretty cool, but she wasn't the most animated of people. She was just getting on her shift too, so she couldn't blame it on tiredness. The trick was obviously to get Jack to look at the camera and crack a smile, which he did, but poor old Naomi had to sit there with a perm-a-grin on, so that when Jack did smile for half a second, we would have her ready too, and could take the picture. They came out beautifully though. It was a great time but, without being a downer, it did make me realize once again, how much I miss having Naomi around all the time. I wish we could go with the "kids" all the time. It is a lesson any parent who gets 'tired of their kids' should go through. Try not being able to have them.
So anyway, after the pictures we wandered around the mall for a few hours while they were being developed, and of course, we ran into Santa's Grotto! He closed at 5pm, and it was 4:45pm, so with Naomi grinning from ear to ear, we got in line and waited. The line went pretty quickly, and when we got to the red ropes, and were allowed in, Naomi took off on a full sprint to get to Snata. She dove up on his lap and began reeling off a list of what she wanted for Christmas!! It was soooo cute. Of course, we decided we had to get a photo of them sitting on his lap (yes, Jack, too) and so I will post that one also for you to see. They were both in their outfits for Christmas and it was really cute!
Malls are crazy, but there is something about the crowds, the insanity, and the whole Christmas spirit that just made them, on this day, so much fun!
Well, I have been gone for a while recently. I can't believe how much I have slacked off typing away on my little blog. Maybe it is because my workload has quadrupled in the last month, my stress level has tripled, my commute has doubled and my paycheck has remained the same!
No, seriously, it has been really crazy at work these last few weeks, but every day when I get home I put it into perspective and see my baby boy just giggling at me and basically being an angel.
Great news on the custody battle thing! My ex FINALLY signed the paperwork that she agreed to sign in April, and I went to sign too, and we took it down to the judge to confirm. I now have to wait a few weeks before getting a actual copy to take before child services to get my ridiculous amount of child support lowered nearly 25%. I have always said, it has never been about money, but having this little extra income will count all the time. Every little penny helps. It also equates to not having to pay support for nearly SEVEN months, as I have been overpaying so much, as she lied about her income and daycare costs etc.
Steph got herself a new car. Well, it is new to us, but it is a used '85 Jeep Wagoneer. It is immaculate on the outside, and just needs a few things doing on the inside, other than that it is in really good shape. Steph has always wanted one, and it is a great 4x4 vehicle, so that is reassuring as the snow is on its way I am sure.
I have lost contact with some freinds recently which has been a bit of a bummer. K & D dropped off the radar recently, and we have called a few times, but nothing in return. Hope you guys are okay if you are reading this. N & H are the same, but they have a two month old excuse so that makes some sense. I do miss just hanging out though, especially now that we have a cool recreational room for people to enjoy!
Thanks giving was great. Tom and Pat came up and surprised us which was nice. They disappeared to Eric and Jos for most of the time, and we are trying to keep it very low key. Family is cool when everyone is together, but I think (know) that Jo applies more pressure about them staying with her when they come up there than we do, and I think Steph's parents don't want to ruffle any feathers. Jo can be a bit like that, but it's fine. We just keep the pressure off. They know they can stay with us too, but if they are getting heat about it, it isn't a big deal.
Speaking of family, I am not sure what we are doing for Xmas. Tom and Pat are coming up again, and we are 'scheduled' to have it at Jo's house, but then they informed us that they are racnig off to Tim and Misty's for lunch or something, so we are not sure if we are going to drive all the way to St. Helens just for an hour and then have to leave again. Seems like a waste. Maybe we will offer to do it at our house. Ahhhh.....good times. We don't want to make it a pain for anyone, and that includes ourselves.
Playing poker over at Mike and Mindy's house.
Sa-weet. I hope I win.
I hope it is strip poker. Wait. Maybe not.
After years of campaigning, fathers' rights are finally being taken seriously by the politicians. But how much of it is down to the high-profile antics of Batman and Robin? Simon Hattenstone meets the men behind the movement
Saturday October 29, 2005
The Guardian - For Original Story Click Here
In June this year, newspapers reported a split in the pressure group Fathers 4 Justice. The split was as comical as it was inevitable. The breakaway group announced that it was to be known as Real Fathers for Justice, apparently oblivious to the IRA connotation. It soon found itself on the defensive, having to explain that it had no intention of resorting to bombing campaigns in its attempt to gain greater contact rights for fathers separated from their children.
Perhaps, for old-time campaigners such as Jim Parton at Families Need Fathers, the astonishing thing was that the split was deemed newsworthy in the first place. FNF had spent 30 years trying to flog stories to newspapers - about the unfairness of the family court system, dads denied access, dads in despair - with little luck. They were widely regarded as whingers, bad dads, dodgy reactionaries who wanted to strip women of their rights. In short, fathers were not sexy.
Then along came Matt O'Connor and F4J. O'Connor's group was as loud and brash as he was. The marketing/design executive had been a member of Families Need Fathers, and had decided there was little point in whispering about fathers' plights. F4J members would be prepared to go to prison for their cause. They would demand attention rather than plead for it.
And so they did.
Over the past three years, they have shouted the odds from a Buckingham Palace window ledge, from Westminster - where they flour-bombed the prime minister, from York Minster, Tower Bridge, the London Eye. Before long, every F4J stunt became national - then international - news. Time magazine ran a cover story on F4J and, suddenly, the then children's minister, Margaret Hodge, wanted to be seen on Newsnight with O'Connor debating the F4J proposal of 50-50 contact as the norm.
Jim Parton looked on in amazement. "We'd had three decades of failure, we were unfashionable and demoralised and there was so much infighting. Then Matt O'Connor started F4J and, no question, made a big impact. At times I've been very envious. My telephone stopped ringing. I wasn't getting gigs on 5 Live or Breakfast News any more."
Parton says that part of the problem was that his organisation had been marginalised by the liberal establishment. "What we were doing was seen as politically incorrect among the Polly Toynbees of this world. Look, if you've been excluded from seeing your child you get angry. We all had issues with a woman, and in some cases people generalised that to women more broadly. But 96% of our guys are just normal. Our drive is not misogyny, it is love for our children."
Parton got involved with FNF in 1992 after he split up with his Japanese wife. "There was no trouble over access for 10 years, but I wanted more. I didn't see why I should walk on eggshells to see my own son, with whom I got on incredibly well. I didn't see why I should have to return him at 6pm and get a solicitor's letter if he was five minutes late." Eventually, he says, his wife returned to Japan and refused all access to his son, who is now 18.
While FNF is quick to acknowledge the achievements of F4J, it is less generous about another rival group, Fathers Direct. Parton suggests conspiratorially that it could almost have been a spoiler. "Patricia Hewitt was at the centre of their core funding - it came from the Department of Trade and Industry." Why would the government have bothered to set up a spoiler organisation?
"Well, if there's a respected, well-funded fathers' organisation, the media would turn to them rather than us."
Jack O'Sullivan, co-founder of Fathers Direct, says this is untrue. For starters, the funding came from the Home Office. Second, Fathers Direct never saw itself as in competition with groups that focused on separated fathers. "The key thing to understanding the fathers' movement in Britain is that it is actually a huge social change. Forget organisations, the fathers' movement is millions of men living their lives in a different way to their own fathers. The organisations are peripheral to that." He bombards me with data to prove his point.
"In a typical family, men are doing one third of childcare of the under-fives. Longitudinal studies over 35 years show the key impact fathers have on children's lives: better educational achievement when dad's involved and better social skills, lower rates of criminality, improved mental health for kids who have a close relationship with the father. Girls who have a good relationship with their father are more likely to make a successful life-long relationship with men."
O'Sullivan talks about the need to make alliances with any number of organisations - women's groups, children's charities, the Equal Opportunities Commission. So have they made an alliance with F4J? "No," he says tersely. "Fathers Direct would not be an ally of F4J. We have two objections. First, their style of campaigning fractures the alliance for change." What does that mean? "The key alliance isn't of men together, it's of men, women and children. F4J has expressed the pain of separated partners, but because it has allowed itself to be seen as an angry movement against women, it has alienated potential allies."
The second objection, O'Sullivan says, is that Fathers Direct believes F4J's legislative programme is flawed. "They want to enshrine fathers' rights [to contact with their children] in law. We think the law is fine, the problem is it's not being put into practice. The law says, after separation the best interests of the child should be served, and the state is demonstrably failing children after separation. So the system doesn't work, but the answer isn't enshrined in fathers' rights."
But it is F4J that captured the public imagination. Parton is delighted that F4J has moved fathers' rights up the political agenda, but is also slightly bitter. "They have accelerated the process of reform. Now something is going through in the children's bill that will make enforcement of contact orders work better. But it's pathetic that politicians only start to listen when men dress in superhero costumes."
The better known that F4J became, the closer the media scrutinised its members, notably O'Connor. They soon found dirt to dish. It was revealed that O'Connor had a drink problem and had been a bad husband - something he now freely admits. "I was a lousy husband, absolutely diabolical. I had a penchant for women, for hell-raising, for cocktail bars. I was totally selfish." It's typical O'Connor that, even when saying how appalling his excesses were, it sounds like a boast. After he split up with his wife Sophie, he says he had eight women on the go at one time.
He has not always been reliable about his facts. In the first article O'Connor wrote for the London Evening Standard about F4J in 2003, he claimed that 40% of dads who apply for access every year are denied. In fact, only 713 fathers were refused contact with their children in 2001, while 55,000 were granted it (although many were granted limited contact that they were unhappy with). Other revelations were even more damaging - there were F4J members with restraining orders against them, with convictions for domestic violence, men who had not bothered to see their children even in their allotted contact time.
After larging it in London, O'Connor now lives in a 13th-century cottage in rural Suffolk. At times, he says, running F4J is like running the Samaritans - desperate men phone him through the night. He talks about his sacrifice and pain, the time and money he has put into F4J. What seems to have hurt him most in the F4J civil war is the allegation that he has siphoned off the organisation's money for his own personal gain. "Nothing could be further from the truth. I have - hello - my own design company, and it's very successful thank you very much." If it is so thankless, why does he stick with F4J? He says he is desperate to see the law changed so that fathers get 50-50 access, and admits he does rather enjoy the attention, the notoriety, it brings him.
O'Connor says it was inevitable that F4J would have problematic members. "It is a fucking bitterly corrosive experience and it twists you and it fucks you up and profoundly changes you. I was lucky 'cos I had closure and found peace outside the court system." O'Connor is now on good terms with his ex-wife, has access to his children and has a new girlfriend who is expecting his third child.
Why has he made so many enemies within the group? "There's a huge amount of envy," he says. "Some of the men are jealous that I have access to my children." And then there is his autocratic style of leadership. "I am a total dictator. But in the way that Wellington was a dictator or Churchill was. You've got to have authority and discipline."
As with so many dictators, his problem has been dissent in the ranks. The rebels claimed that F4J had become lazy and conservative, so they quit to form a group that was true to the original ideal.
Meanwhile, O'Connor claimed that the behaviour of some of his members had been intolerable, and that they had been purged from the group. Certainly, F4J has been at the centre of a number of negative news stories. Allegations of racism and misogyny were made against a coordinator of one home counties branch of F4J - O'Connor later expelled him from the group. It was also revealed that members Jason Hatch (the original Batman) and David Pyke had accepted £500 from a woman called Ruth George after promising to publicise her fight over a medical complaint - though she has since been paid back by O'Connor.
"What I find really morally abhorrent is when people start stealing shit, and when people start taking money off pensioners," O'Connor says, "and when people are racist and misogynist, and then you go, 'You know what? Fucking take it.' Honestly, if I thought the whole organisation was like that ... " But he does not believe the whole organisation is like that, and is convinced the split will allow F4J to reposition itself. "Politically, the useful thing that has happened is we can say the nasty guys are out. Now what I need to do is enforce the integrity of what we're about after the purge."
Jim Parton of Families Need Fathers says: "Matt's been made to look respectable by Real FforJ, and every terrorist wants to turn statesman."
O'Connor agrees with that assessment. "I am doing a bit of Gerry Adams stuff, yeah. I'm trying to clean up my act and get my people under control." For O'Connor the time has come to slip out of the superhero outfits and into suits to meet with politicians.
Exactly, says Jeff Skinner, spokesman for Real FforJ. "I think old F4J has gone soft." He asks why F4J were so quiet when the general election was held, then he provides his own answer - they have sold out.
"Hopefully, we can learn from mistakes they made and become a stronger group by not making the same errors twice. We would hope over a short period of time that we would swallow the old group up."
How many members of Real FforJ are there? "Oh, it's very difficult to put a number on it," Skinner says sheepishly. "The honest answer is hardly any because we've just launched a membership drive."
The fathers' movement is facing a crunch time. While F4J undoubtedly seized the headlines, what has it actually achieved? Attitudes may have shifted, politicians are listening, but the only substantial legal change for fathers has been the right to six months' paternity leave - which was never on F4J's agenda in the first place. Over the past few months, there have been various actions (invading the Big Brother studio, scaling Westminster, marching through London with beds to campaign for overnight staying contact between children and fathers after separation) but the stunts seem stale. Meanwhile, almost imperceptibly, Jack O'Sullivan's woolly New Labourish fathering ideals have become mainstream.
Back in Suffolk, O'Connor is talking about the future. He is sure that post-purge, F4J is on the verge of achieving political credibility and a change in the law. But he does not see F4J as a lifelong project. He is talking about establishing a new political party and a possible alliance with the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, a campaigning hero of his, and the Countryside Alliance. "What I want to do is create something where we're defending people's basic civil liberties. Protecting liberties of the people in this country with a written constitution. Our way of life is under attack."
And then there is the autobiography, and the movie of his life. He isn't joking. He has just sold his life story to Buena Vista for a biopic. This, he says, will hopefully be his reward for all the hours he has put into F4J.
Skinner at Real FforJ says O'Connor has been talking about the biopic for years. "It's no secret that he always wanted to sell his story for a film, and it would make a fantastic film." But he doubts whether it is going to happen in the immediate future. "The only way you can sell it as a film is if you've got a happy ending; if you achieve what you set out to achieve. And Matt O'Connor hasn't managed to do that. He hasn't managed to get the law changed."
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So, I just finished reading my friend Betsy's blog and she had a really good post on there about making time for other people in your life, and letting them know how much they mean to you.
Well, it seems like forever since my really good friends and I hung out recently. Now, I have to be fair and say a decent amount of that time has to be attributed to a certain 4 month old boy, but I need to be better about just hanging out.
With that said, we are not getting the response that we used to get from people about hanging out either. Reading between the lines, I would say that people think that because you have a kid that you must WANT some time alone. They are of course correct, but with that goes also the need for adult interaction, too.
We went out with one of my work vendors the other night. He is from England, and a good bloke, and his wife is really pleasant and the four of us get along great. They have a six year old boy who had a sitter, but we brought jack along. Jack was perfectly well behaved, and a great kid. We went to an Indian place that neither couple had been to before and the whole experience was very pleasant. We were talking during dinner and actually came to realize that it was the first actual restaurant dinner we had been out to since Jack was born! Four months!! Of course, that doesn't count the odd jaunt to Baja Fresh or something like that, but it was so weird to suddenly realize that we were not getting out as much as we used to.
Like I was previously mentioning, we have several friends who don't come round as often either. Family commitments, children, injuries (!!) are all part of it, but we need to make a concerted effort to hang out more. I have created a 'guy' room now in the house which will has a pool table, a dart board, TV's and such. It is in the old garage so it is colder, but also has the ability to be rougher, and hence an ideal place for guys to hang out. We have the old couch etc in there and it will serve very well in the summer. As soon as I get a heater out there too it will be really nice!
Tomorrow, we are hanging out with Ryan and Kimber, too. They just got back from their honeymoon in Italy and we are going to see some pics of that which will be cool. Not sure where we are going, but it will have to be kid-friendly. Either way, that will be another opportunity just to get out and about.
So anyway, for those of you reading who used to hang out....we have a kid...not a disease!! Come on round. We miss you. Either that or we are just going to start crashing your place!!
One day a father gets out of work and on his way home he remembers that its his daughter's birthday.
He pulls over to a toy store and asks the salesperson, "How much is the Barbie on the display window?"
The Salesperson answers, "Which one? We have:
Work Out Barbie for $19.95
Shopping Barbie for $19.95
Beach Barbie for $19.95
Dicso Barbie for $19.95
Divorced Barbie for $265.95
The amazed father asks, "What? Why is the Divorced Barbie $265.95 and the others only $19.95?" The salesperson annoyingly answers:
"Sir....Divorced Barbie comes with:
Ken's Car,
Ken's House,
Ken's Boat,
Ken's Furniture,
Ken's Computer and....
One of Ken's friends."
Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Work has been insane, truly!
We have a lot of high profile shoe launches going on right now and there are a lot of stokes in the fire, so to speak. Good news though, I got confirmation today that Ajay, one of my old Hollywood friends, is leaving Wilsonville to come to adidas! How cool is that! He will be the Communications Manager for Soccer, which is going to be huge as the world cup is happening next June/July.
In other news, my team, Manchester United, handed Chelsea it's first loss in 40 games by beating them 1-0 at Old Trafford. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, we should hang out more, as you obviously don't know me !!
I thought this was a superb article. I would like to share it with those who read this...
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Boys will be boys; women should let them
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
KATHLEEN PARKER
"So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?"
Columnist Maureen Dowd posed those questions in Sunday's New York Times Magazine in an essay adapted from her forthcoming book, Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide.
Entertaining as usual, Dowd explored her premise ”that many women end up unmarried and childless because they're successful” by reviewing women's evolution since her college days, which happen to have coincided with my own. We both came of age as women's lib was being midwifed into the culture by a generation of women who felt enslaved by homemaking and childbearing.
Now, in the span of a generation, all that business about equality apparently isn't so appealing to a younger generation of women, who are ever-inventive as they seek old ways to attract new men. Dowd writes:
"Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry . . . with elaborate schemes designed to allow the deluded creatures (men) to think they are the hunters."
Dowd, herself unmarried and childless, wonders whether being smart and successful explains her status. She observes that men would rather marry women who are younger and more malleable, i.e. less successful and perhaps not so very bright.
No one vets the culture with a keener eye than Dowd. Her identification of trends ”especially the perverse evolution of liberated women from Birkenstock-wearing intellectuals into poledancing sluts” is dead-on. But while she sees women clearly as they search for identity in a gender-shifting culture, she doesn't seem to know much about men.
Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because they're smart and successful. More likely they've turned away because the feminist movement that encouraged women to be smart and successful also encouraged them to be hostile and demeaning to men.
Whatever was wrong, men did it. During the past 30 years, they've been variously characterized as male chauvinist pigs, deadbeat dads or knuckle-dragging abusers who beat their wives on Super Bowl Sunday. At the same time women wanted men to be wage-earners, they also wanted them to act like girlfriends: to time their contractions, feed and diaper the baby, and go antiquing.
And then, when whatshisname inevitably lapsed into guy-ness, women wanted him to disappear. If children were involved, women got custody and men got an invoice. The eradication of men and fathers from children's lives has been feminisms most despicable accomplishment. Half of all children will sleep tonight in a home where their father does not live.
Did we really think men wouldn't mind?
Meanwhile, when we're not bashing men, we're diminishing manhood. Look around at entertainment and other cultural signposts and you see a feminized culture that prefers sanitized men ”hairless, coiffed, buffed and, if possible, gay. Men don't know whether to be "metrosexuals" getting pedicures, or "groomzillas" obsessing about wedding favors, or the latest, "ubersexuals" yes to the coif, no to androgyny.
As far as I can tell, real men don't have a problem with smart, successful women. But they do mind being castrated. It's a guy thing. They do mind being told in so many ways that they are superfluous.
Even now, the latest book to fuel the feminist flames of male alienation is Peggy Drexler's lesbian guide to guilt-free narcissism, Raising Boys Without Men. Is it possible to raise boys without men? Sure. Is it right? You may find your answer by imagining a male-authored book titled: Raising Girls Without Women.
Returning to Dowd's original question, yes, the feminist movement was a hoax inasmuch as it told only half the story. As even feminist matriarch Betty Friedan eventually noted, feminism failed to recognize that even smart, successful women also want to be mothers. It's called nature. Social engineering can no more change that fact than mechanical engineering can change the laws of physics.
Many of those women who declined to join the modern feminist movement learned the rest of the story by becoming mothers themselves and, in many cases, by raising boys who were born innocent and undeserving of women's hostilities.
I would never insist that women have to have children to be fully female. Some women aren't mother material, and some men don't deserve the children they sire. But something vital and poignant happens when one's own interests become secondary to the more compelling needs of children.
You grow up. In the process of sacrificing your infant-self for the real baby, you stop obsessing and fixating on the looking glass. Instead, you focus your energies on trying to raise healthy boys and girls to become smart, successful men and women.
In the jungle, one hopes, they will find each other.
Kathleen Parker writes for The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.
Here are picks of our recent trip to Sacramento.
As you can see, Jack was in fine form...
