J&K+8 - K = A Better Idea

Assuming all the paparazzi-media brouhaha over TLC's Jon and Kate Plus 8 is true and the Gosselins [Earlier: Ultimate Fictional (Fathering) Championship] are goners, marriage-wise, "Could it soon be just Kate Plus 8?" is still not an acceptable lede. As noted more than once a particularly memorable episode of "real life" for the family of eight showed wife Kate criticizing no-prize Jon for breathing.

Is there any way American can be asked to vote to kick her off the reality island and have father OctoJon take care of the twins and sextuplets? If by chance any of the five daughters comes forward years from now to claim a parent was really the Zodiac killer who terrorized the San Francisco area years ago, for example, is there anyone who doesn't believe that she would be fingering Kate? (She is certainly the more annoying one in the eyes of Thing 2, a big J&K+8 fan.)

Hopefully, joint custody can be worked out — or whatever is best for the 8 — but the automatic assumption (and even after seeing her on television and knowing that she spends most of her time promoting herself through books and speeches?!) that the mom automatically should get the kids is somewhere between insulting to dads and just plain stupid.

Daddies, Daughters, Danger and Love

It's all about the danger. Swimming. War. Even dancing.

Imagine how wonderful it would be to hear your daughter say, ""This week, it's all about my dad." Those are the words of Coral Rebana, 10, whose dad returned from his third tour in Iraq in time to surprise her as a date for her first dance, a Montana daddy-daughter gala.

Consider how wonderful it is for Longmont (Colo.) daddy David Holt whose daughter Emily, 9, crowed to a reporter, "… [father-daughter synchronized swimming] is really awesome, because — well, you just have the chance to show off to the other dads what your dad can do."

No guts, no glory. Or maybe it's just all about the love.

Delivering a New Constituency

Daddy Pothole, former New York senator Al D'Amato, has done it again. [Earlier: Senator Doer] The 71 current and former fixitforaprice maven announced he has once again generated life, presumably a girl to match boy he had less than two years ago with his wife, 43, and as an addition to his four grown children, 14 grandchildren and the various warnings about older dads.

Tale Tellers

A recent father's report on his 9-year-old shooting his first turkey is odd in how much he presumes he knows about what his son thinks — as well as apparently thinking he knows what the turkeys were thinking as well. It seems unlikely that when the son tells the story he will be quite as focused on the buying stuff aspect of the story or that he will remember quite as much of his dad forcing him to shoot.

Conversely, how different would be the story told by the father who died a few days after taking his son to one last basketball game than the way it is framed by his son. No doubt dad was happy, but you have to believe his sense of regret at what he would miss, as well as the racking physical pain at a time of joy would change the tenor of the story as well.

Part of what makes the father-child relationship so complex is how each person can claim the story as their own. For instance, when Anoushka Shankar discusses touring with her Sitar-master father Ravi, the less attractive aspects of him ignoring her half sister (singer Nora Jones) are turned into a story of how she embraces her entire family. If the father were to tell the same tale, he would probably agree on the joy he gets from being on tour with his daughter, but any details he might include about his "other" daughter would likely be painted in tones of self- justification or as a story of discovered-love.

The takeaway, I suppose, is that the truth of the father-child relationship all depends on who tells the tale.

Promises, Promises

One day there'll be a son's story of emerging from the worldwide shadow cast by his father. That, not necessarily this week's objet d'eBay despite its title, is The Promise of a Future. The 1968 album is by South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, whose sounds and fight against aparthheid have touched the world. The movie-to-be, if internet snippets can be believed, is by his only son, Selema Mabena ("Sal") Masekela, an American distant in time and space enough to natter on about celebrity gossip and the winter X games.

It will be interesting to see how the son treats the father — who is currently promoting Phola, his 35th album, with nary a mention of his son. It will certainly be kinder than that of essayist Joe Queenan, whose excoriates his abusive, alcoholic father in his just released memoir Closing Time. [Earlier: Write Good and Evil, Not the Middle] However, given how little notice Masekela the elder takes of his son, and how unusual it is that a man with so much to give and numerous marriages has had but one child, the unique story of this particularly distant relationship is truly a promise awaiting fulfillment.

Billion Dollar Bonds

Every father wants an exceptional child. Exceptionalism, however, comes at a price. In his new book, "Showing Up For Life," Bill Gates Sr. details the price he paid (as well as some of the satisfactions) for some of that exceptionalism.

Gates, father of Microsoft Bill G. Jr., explains how he had to learn to let go of his son, and not just because of the family famous water-thrown-in-the-face-during-dinner incident. By about 13 the proto-billionaire was on his own intellectually and sometimes physically as well. The key to the relationship they have today, however, was making sure a bond of trust and love continued. That bond may not be as much as the one between the father and his daughter who bit the cops who arrested him or of son Thomas and alleged serial killer Drew Peterson as the son explains his mom's death with, "accidents happen" while insisting his father is "the world's greatest dad." However, the bond between the Gates is certainly on display in happier circumstances as the father, 83, has worked for his son for 10-plus years, guiding the philanthropic efforts he is now handing over to his "retired" child.

Maybe it is the father, not the son, who is really exceptional?

Cutie Pie

Cute.



What else to say?

Why'd They Off Dad? Or Did They?

There's a Youtube-inspired rumor of a dad-son thriller coming this summer. The promo makes it seem as if it will be the tale of a son who learns about himself by learning about his dad. However, there is something odd about the video:



Maybe this is only the rough cut for the trailer for "The Sins of The Father," ostensibly the Summer 2009 release — oddly there is no movie mention on IMDB or RottenTomatoes — of a potential blockbuster about a son searching for the truth about the death of his mobbed up dad.

Of course, if there is no movie, then the mystery of the boys behing this and their dads only deepens.

Dad's a Babe (Actually, The Babe)

Even though it is a newspaper interview, you can almost hear the wonder in her voice as an adopted daughter marvels still at her father. "He could get away with things nobody else could," says Julia Ruth, the nonagenarian daughter of the famous Babe, King of Swat. (Although her daddy will always be a Yankee, she's come so side with the Red Sox Nation.)

"I wanted Daddy to hit a home run every time he was up, and I loved to see him trot around the bases. One time he hit one over the wall, and another Yankee who was on first just flew around the bases because he wasn’t sure it was going out. And when Daddy got back to the dugout, he said, 'Hey kid, when I hit a home run you don’t need to run.' "

That adulation is what every father is after. It goes beyond reality and means that even though Babe Ruth might never have made it to the big leagues or thrived in the modern game — poverty stricken in Baltimore, overweight, undisciplined and living a life that would have given a field day to blogs and gossip mags — his daughter still believes that 100 home runs a season would have been nothing for daddy.

Not every father can be The Babe to his child, but then I Admire My Father suggests he doesn't have to be in order to create the same level of love and adoration.

Low Man

Thing Two is a great shopper and horrible buyer. WD too, except when something has to be purchased as was just the case with T2 needing a dress for an event.

Off we trundled to Loehmann's — is it called that because it is not a place for men or because "High Woman's" doesn't sound couturey? — only for me to discover the need for a course for dads or daughters or both on how to shop together. No tension when we shopped individually. No sale either.

If only we had decided to scale Kilamanjaro together to raise money for a cancer kid, or jointly to trot through the Boston Marathan path or even to start a band then perhaps there would only be smiles in the daddy-daughter future.

But none of those simple challenges will be part of our present or future together time. Like rats in a textile maze, we are doomed to yell across racks and racks of schmattes, a father and daughter bonding in off-price purgatory.

Today's New Dads Get What They Need

The surprised new dad. The unprepared new father. BORING!

This week's objet d'eBay, a 1947 ad for the Rexall pharmacy chain, takes advantage of the cliches unprepared and clueless father who can't even imagine he could end up with a girl much less all the other challenges (and joys) he is really in for. What could he possibly know about being a father?

It is definitely time to update that ad. Times are changing and pops are prepared. They know what they want and need. If there is any doubt, consider the Lisbon, Conn., crime spree of dads targetting only the baby food aisle. Down to business, boys. No tennis racquets, stuffed animals or kooky expressions required. As the Rolling Stones (now fathers, even grandfathers themselves) once sang:

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

Rock on new dads.

The Sparking and Misfiring Daddy Brain

According to a recent study, becoming a father starts sparking certain "paternal circuits" and make for a better problem solver as The Daddy Brain clicks on. Not to take anything away from the researchers, but can it really be that TDB is how teen(y) dad Levi Johnston ends up on tv shows and in a cat fight with his daughter's grandfather [Earlier: Age of InNoSense and Unmarried Teen(Dad) Smackdown] , as well as how a man with normally abnormally low testosterone convinces himself that continue to slather cream on his arms is testimony to how much he loves his daughters.

It seems that parenthood doesn't seem to kick off the same thing in each man's brain, or set him on the same source. Perhaps the best way to get answers to what happens when a man fathers is to go to the source, The Daddy Brain itself, for answers.

A Tour for "That's My Job"

As far as googlesearching goes, there is nothing remotely Jewish about Conway Twitty. Yet, it is hard not to think of schmaltz on corn pone while listening to "That's My Job" and fighting back at least a small tear. The twist at the end of the lyrics when the son makes his father's chorus his own is enough to turn even the hardest soul a little verklempt.

Twitty wanted to be Elvis and managed to do okay without going down that road. He has been gone over 15 years, but the good intentions of his song do live on ... in various stylings:

Thats My Job

In addition to the videos, his four children have finally stopped fighting with his third widow (the one that was none of their mother) and have produced Conway Twitty: The Man, The Music, The Legend, The Musical, which they have also made their story and put on tour of mid-sized theaters and fairgrounds. No doubt they would like you to think, in the paraphrased words of their father: "Everything [they] do is because of [him]/to keep [him] safe with [them].

Dad, the Familiar

A son wants to break free of a dad and become "an artist." Hmmm. Somehow that plot sounds vaguely familiar.

That familiarity to some, however, in no way means it's not a completely new and compelling idea for others. So, in the spirit of The Jazz Singer — the first talkie, with a plot of a Jewish kid who just wants to sing and has to escape his (physically) tyrannical father — comes "All About Dad." AAD tells the tale of a 2Gen Vietnamese immigrant who has to escape his (socially) tyrannical pop so he can make a movie.

Have we run out of ideas? Father Knows Best is coming back as a feature. [Earlier: What Would Bob Say?] And for playing another always in rerun dad (that let him make pudding commercial and got him some work as a book author pretending to be a family expert) Bill Cosby continues to receive acclaim.

Admittedly, dads have been around for a while. Still, it is hard to believe there is nothing new to say about them.

Sometimes We Feel for the Fatherless Child

Good news for one man is probably bad news for one child. North Carolinian Charles Moody was notified that he had passed (i.e., flunked, in his case) the paternity test and was "99.9 percent" likely to be the father of an old girlfriend's child. The actual results, included with the letter, indicated he was not the father; a bureaucratic button pusher had pushed the wrong button.

However, at least from the conscientiousness with which he went about taking the test and responding to his letter, it is impossible not to think the fatherless child would have been the much better for Mr. Moody's influence. Yes, there are the studies that kids who don't know fathers — 25 percent of Walesians, for example — grow up with a leg down. And it is true that too much dad — as in the tween-porn pic, "17 Again" about a dad who is suddenly very much in his kids' space — is truly, 2mchdd.

Moody, at least from the brief description, seems like a man who keeps his distance but handles his responsibilities. At least one kid could really and truly use that.

VeTWOvius

Thing One was thwarted this morning throughout the wake-up to drop-off-at-school time. Almost.

She looked for a fight upon awakening, while eating and then tried to pick one with T2 while we sat and waited for the final outfit iteration to take shape. It was not until the actual moment of pulling to the curb in front of the school that she found her moment. She yelled because we didn't pull into the parking lot and save (approximately) 37 steps to the entrance.

It is wrong to hire hit men to off your daughter when she doesn't dress like you want. And no matter how crowded the car or how little you might want to hear from them, stuffing your kids in the trunk is also a bit too faux pas. Still, being subject to an eruption while doing what the rules require does give one a bit more sympathy for the dads who lose their senses and have to rely on someone, anyone, to find them.

Watching Pops

Oprah brings dad-o-nine Larry Shine [Earlier: The Home Body] to the forefront with today's show. He'll be featured in Unconventional, Unforgettable Dads along with a writing pop getting help from 1000s of women he only knows online and a dad in stars, stripes and fatigues.

For those who prefer their U,U dads documentaried rather than TVed, "In a Dream" has just opened. Jeremiah Zagar set out to capture a little bit of the background to his father's work. Instead, he filmed Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar offering himself in the words and images that captured the high- and lowlights of a fractured life and gave himself a picture of his dad he never imagined before.

The two "celebrations" will be very different. While neither will answer for everyman whether to turn their video lens on a father or let his children turn theirs on him, they are both clear in their warning: when you look closely at dads, they're never what they first appear.

Many take the opportunity of Easter to look skyward, toward a heavenly father. However, few have the same sort of ability to pinpoint whether they should look for advice than nine children of three fathers.

This week's objet d'eBay is the blueprint of The International Space Station, current home to the 19th expedition and fathers. Gennady Padalka is a Russian cosmonaut, current commander and dad to three girls; NASA flight engineers Michael Barratt has two girls and three boys; and Koichi Wakata is the Japanese chichi of a 10-year-old boy. And if their kids want to know whether they are during the occasional IP call from space all they have to do is alternate taking a look at the blueprint and using their imagination as they stare beyond the ozone.

Law, Science and Fatherhood in Spurts and Fits

An anonymous Australian has a wonderful take on fatherhood: "I believe there is more to being a father than just donated sperm. The man who nurtures and raises the offspring is their true father."

The reason the AA was given the attention and is speaking out is based on his role as the biological father (sperm donor) for at least seven girls and five boys and the way laws are being changed regarding the "father's" legal status. AA is concerned about privacy, but there are other issues in play for fathers as well.

The momma of dead Texan Nikolas Colton Evans has decided to harvest sperm to give herself some grandchildren with his DNA. She says it is because that prior to dying in a street brawl, the 21-year-old always wanted to be a father of three. She wants to honor that memory even though, "This is probably going to bankrupt me and I will do whatever I can to make it happen."

Certainly, she will bring forth a much less comfortable father's day than awaits a leukemia survivor whose sperm gained its majority (21 years) in the deep freeze. North Carolinian Chris Biblis, 38 and free of cancer for 20 years, now has his first child, a baby girl.

In the most complicated of cases the father doesn't seem to be involved at all and might well not even know what problems he has caused. A 13-year-old mentally retarded girl from Pennsylvania has just been given the judicial okay to sue a New York sperm bank. Her challenge is likely the result of an inheritance through the father's DNA and the legal theory is that the sperm bank should have known.

All of which adds different layers to the onion skin wrapping fatherhood, but doesn't necessarily make it any easier for the Hallmark copywriters to come up with the most appropriate father's day card.

Courtiers

While a father's day in court is often not a happy one, recently there have been a few high points.

There's the decision from Ontario in AGL vs. KBD, which followed up the previous decision to give a father more access to his kids with a $35,000 fine against the mom for getting in the way of the father. There was also the Michigan case deciding a father whose girlfriend gave away their baby would be given the right to raise his now 5-year-old.

And, presumably coming up shortly, is a favorable decision to bail out a father-of-ten, Oklahoma baptist preacher Keith Burkhart, from the charges that he is also a deadbeat dad owing $75,000 for fleeing responsibility for three children 1,000 miles away. Burkhart says he has never met the kids and that the Pennsylvania court pursuing him is really looking for a man with the same name, but a different social security number and birthday.

It may not be much, but in tough times it is important to grab at every sliver of good news.

Action Men

Dads take action. Usually it's what they do best for their children, what their kids rely on.

How best to deal with failing grades and a 10,000 text message month? Cheyenne, Wyo., father Gregg Christopherson smashed the phone to bits after receiving the $4,756.25 tab — he and his presumably equally technologically innocent wife thought they had disabled the feature. As for his daughter, her texts are zilch and her grades are back up: "I felt really bad, and I have learned my lesson," says the 13-year-old.

What to do when authorities don't act responsibly towards your kids? You take action on your own as did an anonymous Australian dad who found his sons within his first week in Sweden (the mother had been declared a fugitive in both countries after fleeing with the 10- and 11-year-old) when the police there had said for six months it couldn't be done. Equally ambitious, two fathers of soldiers killed by "friendly fire," fought through the Army's red tape barricades to find some peace by discovering the truth of what really happened to their sons.

And what to do to set a good example for your children? You treat everyone equally and try to make the world a better place, even if the results turn out to be those faced by Jonathon Moscone who is spending a lifetime trying to reconstruct for himself and others his martyred father, the former San Francisco mayor George Moscone.

Act. Act well. Act for the good. Act for your kids.

The Home Body

Perhaps the world has been screwed up from the beginning. Maybe men are better at staying home and minding the kids and women are supposed to go off to hunt and gather?

Except for the guilt they both feel, one British couple recently wrote up how well the economic downturn that sent dad into redundancy and mum off to win the family's bread seemed to be working out. (Not surprisingly, the kids have reversed to with their daughter missing having the misses do her hair and their son delighted at the opportunity to bounce all day off the man of the house.)

And then there are supermen — like rhyme dad Larry Shine, single father of nine — who both work and take full care of his children.

Given the ability to create life in a test tube, there have often been jokes about whether men are necessary, but the idea that men can handle it all does give one pause: are scientists also working on procreation possibilities that could make women unnecessary as the next evolutionary step?

Rescue Dad

Don't look closely and the only thing Rescue Me — the Denis Leary TV star-turn as a scarred NYC firefighter — doesn't seem to be about is fatherhood. There are ghosts and infidelity and the ripping off of scabs before they have hardened into emotional scars and man-humor and anger ... lots of anger. But you can't get away from fatherhood and the fifth season begins with the funeral for Leary's TV dad, who died at a baseball game last season just as father and son seemed to be finding peace in their very troubled relationship.

Not surprisingly for the show, Leary's Tommy Gavin character hasn't been the best father. Turning his head for the moment it took for his son to be hit by a drunk driver while riding a bike in the street was one of the least of the mistakes he made, but then a show about a self-hating cauldron of anger never promised an "Eight Is Enough" papa or done-to-death sit-com-dad-as-doofus.

For all the poison that Tommy Gavin has spewed, the one thing that can't be said is that he doesn't love his kids (and in real life Leary seems to have a pretty good relationship with son Jack). In a nutshell, Rescue Me is about a man who's kidnapped his kids, cried for and over them and let them cause him to careen further and faster in the crazy lane. His choices might not be the best, but AT LEAST NOT YET he hasn't tried selling any of them into marriage (and wouldn't that make for an interesting plot twist).

Put that way, maybe the show really is at heart just an episodic tale of the love between father and children?

Share the Pain

What ties fathers around the world together — on the good days — are the joys of fatherhood. But, more often we share the pain.

Now it might be for a good cause, as with the seven men's men from Burnley (U.K.) who hot waxed their legs clean for charity. (At least they were smart enough not to go for a Brazilian!). And it might not be their fault, as with the gentlemen featured in "Fatherhood: Six Men, One City," a documentary created at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Social Work department. Or it might just be in fiction, as aptly described by Pulitzer winner Leonard Pitts Jr. in like Mo Johnson, racing against the onset of Alzheimer's to know his son in the new novel "Before I Forget."

Whatever the pain, the key to remember on one's darkest days is that the pain can be lived through; it is and can be shared.

Long Gone with the Wind

Do good things, be at most a bit player in your kids' lives. Such is the cruel twist of fate for most dads, at lest as exemplified with this week's objet d'eBay, a Gerald O'Hara figurine.

O'Hara, of course, is the Irish-dandy turned confederate plantation owner of the little read (by dads) or rarely seen (by dads) chick-lit/pic masterpiece, "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. And he is also the charming gent responsible for the sunnier, less strident side of his well-remembered daughter Scarlett, who inherits the Tara plantation following his death-fall from the back of a horse.

Note to dad: you may start off as the king on the back of a horse, but, eventually, you'll get knocked off ...



In any case, the doll serves as a reminder of the average father's fate, while also raising the question of how and where little girls form their images of what dads do ... and the extent that their fathers should be worried.

Dreams and the Day-to-Day

Assuming you want to play, who makes the best father: 1) the man who achieves his grand ambitions; 2) the man who brings shame to himself; 3) the man who fully lives withing his modest means and dreams?

Every circumstance is different, but the great man does not appear to top man on the dad totem pole, at least based on Allegra Huston's Love Child. Her father, Hollywood legend John Huston, gave her everything and nothing at all except a resentment she keeps under control in her memoir.

Preferable to the great man as dad appears to be the once-great man. That at least is the story told from the day-to-day of Manan Sharma, an up and coming cricketer whose father Ajay, an Indian bowler of great promise, was banned from competition for alleged match-fixing. That shame gave him options he never would have had if he had continued as a sports idol. As the father told The Indian Express, "Had I been playing, I couldn’t have given him that much attention."

However, at least from a daughter's tribute, the greatest dad is the one of least means who keeps himself and his life under control and devoted to others. Even on the computer you can almost feel the tears of love and longing that stain the page as a loving lady, Californian Kim Anderson, memorializes lost father Edward Garfalo with: "I’ve tried to pick up where he left off as best I can. Every letter I write is for him. I’m a daughter who loves and misses her dad and wants to continue honoring him in some small way. This is for you, Dad. I know you’re looking down and smiling at seeing your name in print again. I love you."

The jury is coming in with its verdict.

Honor Whose Father

Even though it's for a good cause, there are opportunities missed when celebrations are held to celebrate celebrities for their celebritiness. And so, while it is nice to know we should save the date (June 18) for the 68th Annual "Father of the Year" Awards, which will benefit Save the Children, it does feel like an important moment is being missed.

Duke bball coach Mike Krzyzewski, U.S. General David Petraeus, ABC newsie George Stephanopoulos, really richie Jonathan M. Tisch, race car driver Al Unser Sr. and Peerless Clothing prez Ronald Wurtzburger are all either or both wealthy and famous. However, does that really make them "Fathers of the Year? (Or is the point of "naming" them" on press releases and seating them at a dais just to sell tickets and raise money for a good cause?) Off hand, I am pretty sure that Al Under Sr. sired a Jr., but I am not as sure what the remainder of the group have done for their sons and/or daughters. Actually, my guess would be that they are all pretty busy, traveling often, and maybe aren't actually spending that much time with their kids. They can well be doing the best they can and better than most fathers, but does that really make them "father of the year" material?

What exactly are the standards? REALLY, that's like saying Clay Aiken is a "spectacular" father: a guy who flies in once in a while to hold his kid is highly unlikely to merit spectacularness at the daddy role. [Earlier: No Mo' Fakin' Aiken]

My vote for a seat at the table — at least for today and probably tomorrow as well — is Canada's Paul Ceretti, who is hanging in there with his 6-year-old twin autistic daughters and fighting alongside (not against) his ex-wife to make sure his daughters keep getting all possible funding to help them.

Let's see the famous fathers match that sort of commitment before we anoint them.

Sunshines and Meadow

Just as Sunshine Cleaning is opening, with Alan Arkin as the knockabout loser dad in a cosmic sense reprising his role in Little Miss Sunshine — in which he played the knockabout loser (and eventually corpse) grandpa — we get the inspiration for his next role as a knockabout loser father convenience store robber.

Kittitas County (Wash.) sheriff's office folks seem to have a pretty strong feeling that Robert Daniel Webb (cap L LOSER) is on the lam after prematurely engaging in the traditional spring rite of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day (Apr. 23 is the date circled on the office calendar). Webb's 9-year-old daughter was enrobed in a pink coat as he held up an ampm convenience store. The "daring" father-daughter duo — and certainly you can almost already see Arkin and his Little Miss co-star Abigail Brennan in their strikingly unpimped Corolla ride) snatched the $200 and are making tracks heading east, although if they quickly turned south they still might be able to make it to a Hollywood screenwriter before the police get them.

Did I forget the punch line? Webb's daughter's name is Meadow, which seems like a pretty obvious cue for an actor who has just played in two Sunshine movies.

HEY, Arkin, father of actors Adam and Matthew and famous as well for his 1969 Popi (see below) , are you listening here? It's Kismet calling about your career.

Same, Same Old Story? Don't Think So.

According to numerous folks (men, usually and white and "older") Youtubing their internal Cat (Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam), "It's always been the same, same old story ... from the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen ...."



But it's really not the same. Dads are always getting up to new stories, although there might be the same disconnect between what a child wants and what the "heroic" dad actually gives him or her.

For example, jailed spy Harold Nicholson [Earlier: Giving Them the Business] thought he was passing on great streams of money to his family. Unfortunately, his kids wanted a bit of love and the son seems to be destined to receive at least a bit of jail time for accepting his father's "love."

And Mahmoud Sayrafiezadeh was no doubt convinced he was passing along a better world to his son, Said, when he took off when his son was only 9 months old. But the better world never came, just material for a great new memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, that details anything but "the same old story," even as the son could not talk to his dad — except in retrospect and by virtue of this book.