Shoe (and not you) Blues

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?

Shoe Enough

In almost any situation, the insanity of women and their shoes should not be supported. But to every rule there is an exception and so it is that fatherhood trumps enabling female looniness and (very often) male torture. And so, WD salutes Steve Madden, 51, convicted fraud, whoracious shoe pimp, but father of 16-month-old twins, son Jack and daughter Stevie. His business is growing, his life apparently on track and two kids predestined to walk in their father's shoes as they grow.

** With children comes humility, perhaps saving SM from foot-in-mouth disease that has plagued him in the past. **

Anything Ginger Rogers Can Do ... and Faster

Low sparks of high heeled dads lit the St. Louis sky as radio station Y98 raced dads in heels against each other for a Hannah Montana concert four-ticket prize. Proving once again either the lengths fathers will go to for their children or that transvestite dads are more plentiful and energetic than one would have thought.

** Unless, of course, these men were using a child as a beard, racing to win the tickets for themselves. **