What would be a great gift for a baby who will never know his biological father? Why a father who bakes, of course. An even better gift? Two fathers who bake. That is the great fortune of Caleb St. Germain-Donnelly, adopted five days after birth by the co-owners of the Cranston, R.I., Little Falls Bakery & Café. As father Jeff told the Providence Journal, "“He’s just happy."
Shannon Lee is taking her father, Bruce, where he never went before even though she hasn't seen him since he died when she was four.
The San Francisco-born martial arts legend passed in 1973, leaving Shannon and son Brandon — who died while filming The Crow. Unwelcome in mainland China during his lifetime, in part thanks to daughter Shannon's deal-making wizardry, the "Little Dragon" is having statues and theme parks erected in his honor as China pursues new opportunities in making money and "hay" from his life.
Demand Media prides itself on creating online crap people clamor for. Within that empire are hallmarky style cartoons from FlowGo to tell dad — in someone else's words — how much you care for and think about him. Samples to yank at saccharin heart strings include:
Does such treacle bring in lots of pennies one click at a time? If you even thought of forwarding one or searching for "just the right one" then you have your answer.
It is practically divine wisdom that suggests fathers should have more than one child just in case ... but maybe some should just stop at one.
In the case of possibility-thinker Rev. Robert H. Schuller — who took his ministry from a rented drive-in movie theater to a ego-stroking, echo-echoing glass megachurch — two daughters and a son has given him the cushion he needed. He first tapped son Robert A. to take on running his multi-million dollar megachurch biz, but A. had to tap out and find himself a less stressful gig. "Baby" daughter (born 14 years after her her older sister, 11 after her brother) Carol Schuller Milner ruled herself out of supporting pops by hanging in infamous homes and writing ill-received (i.e., not creationistic enough) plays of the creation.
So the Bobster has done what perhaps he should have done all along [Earlier: Not Just Games]: he turns all the reins over to oldest daughter Sheila C. Schuller Coleman as his Crystal Cathedral ministry bleeds money and hemorrhages corporate infrastructure. In the spirit of the ministry (and big-selling pos-thought author
In a wonderful story going nowhere — actually just round and round &jmdash; Graham Rahal will race in the Indianapolis 500 for his father's Rahal Letterman Racing. The older Rahal, Bobby, claimed the Indy championship in 1986. The son's previous two years at Indy have resulted in 31st and 33rd place finishes. However, he wasn't racing for his pop (or co-owner Dave Letterman, who has yet to announce his racing intentions for son Harry Joseph, age 7). Anyone (except perhaps pops) think third time's the charm?
Undercover Boss is mostly predictable fantasy, with the guy who is in charge of a company getting a bit of comeuppance as he pretends to be one of the guys on what passes these days as reality on tv. He gains insight into his corporation; the company gets great advertising on a highly rated show; and viewers get a chance to belittle the big guy, while also seeing him more as one of them.
So, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, wasted hour ... until now. In the recent Michael Rubin episode, the CEO of outsourced online shopping sites, has to face employees who clearly care about their kids. He might truly love his three-year-old girl, but his megahour work weeks certainly don't make that clear. He needs insights into his family life. Maybe he really should go on "Undercover Dad"?
Too bad. It's just too easy to blame the father for his notoriety when a child of fame struggles, yet that's the story you'll often read. Today's examples: Alexa Ray (daughter of pop Hall of Famer Billy) Joel and Mark (son of infamous scammer Bernie) Madoff.
The lady of the news OD'd on some homeopathic remedies without having yet gotten her singing career into second gear and was rushed to the hospital surrounded by comparisons to her very succesful father, who had tried killing himself age 21 — that is, he did it earlier and probably better than she. Of course, it is true that if she weren't the daughter of the spotlight nobody except the local paper's police blotter would even note that a girl who didn't seem to be going anywhere and had just broken up with her boyfriend had a mishap.
The boy we're supposed to feel sorry for is a 40-something-year-old man who while he was on top was the personable, hypochondrical, mood-swinging, arrogant son of a very wealthy man -- who gave him much from the stolen sums. Now, he is unemployable by other firms as a result of what his father did (with some help) and hasn't yet come up with a business idea of his own.
Is it all dad's fault? Wouldn't it be nice if the stories could be written differently, perhaps letting the kids have a little more of their hands in their own shame?
There's the old saw to "lead, follow or get out of the way," but that's not quite how it works with the son-father dynamic. In most cases, sons can only choose to follow — as in the case of Bill Fisher, son of Gap Founder Don Fisher and newly appointed to his late father's seat on the company board — or let go — as Ted Kennedy Jr. has chosen to do with regard to the election for his late father's Senate seat.
In the LOL-crime of the century, adidas won't let Michael Jordan's son step into his shoes. Jordan senior is branded with sneak-maker Nike, while college frosh Marcus is being paid (sorry, scholarshipped) to play basketball for the University of Central Florida, which takes money to make sure all its hoopsters play with three stripes, no swoosh, on their feet.
While unlikely to draw the same headlines, a few other prominent kid-following-in-dad's-footsteps fights are under way. Chris Brubeck, 57, is struggling to get folks in the classic music world to pay attention to jazz and vice versa ... as well as trying to get everyone to accept he and brothers Darius and Dan as musicians with their own work instead of just the kids of "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo" daddy Dave, 88. Beau Biden has returned from war — the Delaware attorney general serves as a reservist in Iraq — and is apparently now fighting about whether or not to fight for his dad (VP Joe's) former senate seat. [Earlier: Veep Daddies]
And then there is Shannon Lee, who lost father Bruce when he was 32 and she was four. Her battle is for his "legacy." Well, maybe not his legacy, more like the $5 to $10 million you can snatch by licensing his image rather than let it being poorly marketed or just used by folks who don't pay the one's who own the iconography of a d(e)ad man.
Can we get sneaker deals all around?
Admittedly it's only daddy intuition that says so, but we got scr**ed by Liberty Mutual.
To peddle a few more policies they are promoting a survey maligning fathers as worser steerers than mothers. The survey comes up with results like
"Moms are more likely than Dads to follow precautions to protect their teen while on the road, such as asking that their teen call them when they reach their driving destination (89 percent of Moms vs. 79 percent of Dads)..."as if demanding a call was the same as protecting a kid. And it relies on self-reporting without taking into account the greater likelihood of a man bragging about screwing up something when the outcome doesn't cause a problem. It seems to offer no controls about who drives when or how much and, as reported, seems about as statistically valid as an online poll discussing Michael Lohan and Jon Gosselin as BFFs.
Probably father Richard should have known better — suppose everyone did it? — than to let daughter Clementine Lee, 10, open her own lemonade stand in NYC's Central Park. However, she had a dream and he indulged her by helping bake the chocolate chip cookies and mix the drink. Unfortunately, after grossing under $10, they were hit with a $50 ticket by park police for selling without a license.
Although the ticket was voided (after the farce became public fodder), there is still something about this that leaves the taste of backward engineering, making lemons from lemonade with the help of a father. Clementine says she is not completely fazed and is ready to go back out with her pitcher.
Which calls to mind the question of what happens with a dad bringing lemons from lemonade. We have the undetermined fate of Ms. Lee. And on one hand we have Newsweek reporter Tony Dokoupil, who had an Edenic life until 10 when his father's drug dealing bust crushed the family, which he eventually overcame to a more interesting (and safer) place in life. On the other hand there's Nebraskan John Golden, whose dad got him smoking pot at 4 and who only now —at age 37 and with 11 more years to serve at a maximum security prison — is beginning to figure out how he might do better with his own four kids.
So no real answers to the questions of lemons and lemonade, but if we were building a brand, Golden Lemonade would be the most likely name, but in real life we have to say the most likely bet is on Lee's Lemons.
Recognizing that boys like toys, Sony is feeding their new products to daddy bloggers — alas, not this one — in the hopes of picking up some solid viral verbiage.
It does need to be noted that dads are not a fan of every toy, so a breastfeeding-ready doll, for example, is not likely a papablogger fave, even for those typers with daughters (or particularly curious sons), or even most male biology teachers. Also worth mentioning in that not every dad toy succeeds, as demonstrated by the sad fate of Chris Kumar PVE toycompany: it started out as a way for him to follow in his late father's footsteps, but has ended up in bankruptcy court . And as one papa toy company goes down, another starts up. Lafayette's (La.) Chris Hume begins his toys for boys (and girls) company with a top that draws.
So, the fathers and toys dreams live on. No word yet whether Sony has stolen the idea for an electronic version they can feed the blogging pops corps.
Working father to son can be a dream, as exhibited by the five father-son mutual fund company teams the Wall Street Journal profiled. They talk together, like each other and each seems more successful than the previous.
But not every father and son is ready to work together. A good example are the Jimmy Crews, Sr. at age 64 and Jr. at 41. Over a meat slicer, and an eviction and probably a few other slights and slanders the Crews gents got into a gun fight at the Olustee (Fla.) corral. According to the Baker County: "As the two men were being arrested, the elder Crews told police he would not be calling them the next time. He continued to make threats from the detention center. ...'Y’all are gonna have one hell of a gun fight,' Jimmy Crews Sr. said. 'Next time y’all come, there will be a corpse.' "
Not good for business.
And then there is the middle ground. The MacGrubers, for example, have some issues complicating their workplace that probable should have been worked out better:
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.
Obviously, take care of dad should be the numero uno guiding principle for children and decisions should be easy. Life, unfortunately, just doesn't work out that way.
Not everyone may get the chance, like Peru congresswoman Keiko Fukimoro, to pardon pop — controversial former dictatorial prez Alberto Fujimoro — and save him from prison time. That is, you don't always get to be a hero.
Usually taking care of dad these works out to be something a bit more difficult to manage, like defriending him on Facebook — because he doesn't understand when you say you're engaged there but really are not — or you have to cease his consulting contract with your company, that is fire him (for the second time in recent years) because business has been dropping off.
What are needed is one set of guiding principles, words from a wise father that will bring comfort and wisdom in all circumstances:
This morning's peace was shattered by Thing 1 raising a rumpus, unable to accept that someone (i.e., WD) might think that a polite request did not guarantee receipt ... there was also the matter of what was being asked for
So daughters complicate a father's life. A given. However, it is also worth noting — at least for some points of context — that dads can complicate daughters' lives as well from acts done out of kindness or a sense of duty. Elisa Wilson, daughter of famed investor Mario Gabelli is now being subject to unwanted scrutiny of her life thanks to her dad sticking her on the board of his publicly traded investment company. So dad has arranged for a meganormous paycheck and ginormous headaches.
Perhaps Wilson should have given a call to Elizabeth Murdoch before accepting the post. Murdoch was tapped by pop Rupert to join the board of his News Corp, but she turned him down, seeing immediately how being helped to step towards taking over her father's company could severly damage her current activities.
Of course, neither Wilson nor Murdoch have the problems of poor Meghan McCain. Her dad felt the call to run for president. And now she's not happy with her sex life.
So is the lesson here to remember to not even think about doing something nice for your daughters or your country,because it will most likely backfire on them ... and you?
Researchers from North Carolina State and Maryland universities are trumpeting findings that girls are drawn into their fathers business by about 13 to 20 percent more than in the past. The academics don't seem exactly sure why, but suggest it has something to do with daughters listening to their dads blathering on — even when they don't seem to be paying attention.
Hypothetically, a daughter following in her father's footsteps seems wonderful. Still, there are situations .... For example, accountant Celia Hewlett-Ola recently took over her father's practice, a part-time gig she picked up upon the passing of Charlesworth Hewlett, who died last month at the age of 73. Unfortunately, she may not have listened closely enough to what he had to say about his clients. Ms. H-O, whose father included disgraced Ponziist Allen Stanford and his multi-billion dollar international operations among his clients despite being pretty much a momless pop organization, is now a bit enmeshed in a sticky wicket thanks to listening to dear-old-dad wax rhapsodic on the magic of figures and figuring. In no tribute to her dad, Ms. H-O says she really has no idea what's gone wrong, describing it all as "a complete surprise."
Perhaps the researches should begin a followup to determine whether — given this fab news — girls need to listen more carefully or fathers must speak more carefully.
It might be worth considering when founding a business what it will take for the business to succeed enough to live in the family and beyond even your child's lifetime. It's not quite as easy as you might think.
For example, if one is to believe Lake Placid's Bill Hurley — co-owner and manager of the 100-year-old Hurley Bros. fuel supply company — all it takes is loyalty to customers and employees to explain how he got the biz from his father, who got it from his dad, who inherited it from his pop. And we could also say the same for Art Rooney Jr. who has done okay for himself with the Pittsburgh Steelers (likely Super Bowl XLIII champs) franchise that came to him from Sr., who founded it in 1933 with $5000 in winnings from the nag-go-round.
But there is something more than loyalty to consider. Harold Nicholson was loyal to his customer, the Russian Federation. And he was more than loyal to his employee, son Nathaniel. Yet, sadly, it appears that the family biz needs at least a little more than that as Nicholson père was supposed to be working exclusively for the CIA and the feds seem to think Nicholson fils should have known better than to take money for passing info to and from his incarcerated dad.
Thusly, does a family business collapse. And so we are back to square two in the search for dads can best exploit their entrepreneurial natures.
While usually it is the father or child who creates the storyline, sometimes observers (i.e., the media) take a snapshot and then create one of their own.
In the news today, for example, is the tale of how Brad Pitt has created a worldwide movement — from Australia to Norway — for men to become involved with their children. We also have the male penguin couple who are being used to save the children of a penguin pair who have not proven themselves adequate in the egg-taking-care-of department. And, finally, there is the media reporting that Mark and Andrew Madoff, sons of Bernie the bilker, were uninvolved in their papa's perfidy.
Now Brad seems to like playing dad, but the original goal was clearly to git with Angie, not lead a movement. As for the penguins, they may have had biological urges to take care of eggs (penguin fathers nest over the eggs laid by the moms), but it strains the bounds of anthropomorphism to cast the story in the light that somehow the penguins are really little gay men in tuxedos and webbed feet. And while the Madoff boys have so far turned up clean, they have long profited from dad's drive; were the major players at the firm; and so far seem to know everything about everything at the firm ... except what their dad did with $50 billion and how they might go about paying back friends, family and clients.
But at least for today, the popular story line about certain dads and their kids continues to diverge from the likely truth. Let's see what turns up tomorrow.
