Bitter/Sweet

There are other judges available, but I'd say words failed playwright Tracy Letts when he could only muster up, "it's bittersweet."

Thus, was his verbal reaction to winning a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his play, "August: Osage Country." But what did he feel inside for the success of the play that was also the Broadway acting debut [Earlier: Father Fictions] of his dad, Dennis, who passed away in February, shortly after leaving the case.?

Actually, what does any child really feel when he or she wants to share joys or sorrows with the man who isn't there? And what can a father do about it?

Probably not too surprisingly, two very different legacies for children are created by a man of science and man of religion. But what joins them is that they are both creations the children can share ... and when they do a little bit of dad will always be with them.

Billy Graham, nearing the end of his life, created a model and context for daughter Ruth. Having lived a country music song — experiencing three failed marriages and her children's drug abuse struggles and teen pregnancy — she is now following in her father's ministry, traveling the country and preaching. She carries her dad's words in her heart ("We all live under grace and do the best we can.") and answers questions about her father in every church to which she takes her show.

A much less religious legacy is being created by Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor with pancreatic cancer who is devoting his remaining time to making movies for and playing with children Dylan, 6; Logan, 4; and Chloe, nearly 2 — in addition to being a bemused spectator as the lecture he created for them but gave to the CM community becomes a viral blockbuster. [Earlier: Death Be Not]. The hour-plus video, a lecture on life entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, was his attempt to speak directly to his kids when they're older and he won't be there every day to provide the wisdom and comfort they'll seek.

A lot of words from everyone, but, ultimately, between father and child it's actions: words fail.

** Say enough to support your actions; and do enough to prove your words. **

Stop Acting Like a Complete Idiot

Lyndsey Buckingham, 21, (female and therefore not Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham) would — if she could — say to her dad, "... if you have any love for me and my brother then stop acting like a complete idiot." In this case daddy is a pretend British lord who was shipped off to the States for passport fraud and, since being released from prison, is ignoring his children.

Coincidentally, another "fictional" dad is also being taken to task. To pad Dr. Seuss's original Horton and the Who adventures into something screen length (ostensibly the No. 1 money making movie) and $10 popcorn bucket-worthy, screenwriters have added a subplot to an elephant saving a world. Now, the Mayor of Whoville ignores 96 daughters to make nice-nice with sole sonny-boy. At least one dad is near apoplectic at the slight to [his] daughters.

And speaking of stupid dads — as if that is even close to an accurate description — we must stop in to say WHAT ARE YOU THINKING to Oz Pop John Deaves, 61, who is on his second child with his 39-year-old daughter.

So, yes, it is important that father's pay heed to their children and that they not slight their double-x chromosome offspring. BUT attention is not the same as insanity.

** "You are so annoying, daddy," say Thing 1 and 2. If only they knew .... And hopefully they never will." **

Stamp Daddy

What does a son follow in when a dad has left no footprints?

Therein the puzzle facing Alexander Volkov, son of Sergei — who is the focus of this week's objet d'eBay. The 34 year old cosmonaut son will enter space sixteen years after his father made the trip — going up a citizen of the Soviet Union and returning to earth as a Russian, although still the pride of Donetsk, which issued this philatelic mashup in 1998 to celebrate his 50th birthday.

Father Volkov was up in space three times, a "Hero of the Soviet Union," and the son has no stated plan to outdo him: "“I just want to perform as well as my father, because there are things that he has done that nobody has been able to copy.”

But the 34-year-old "boy"will accomplish at least one thing his cosmonaut father couldn't. The current flight plan is for him to return to earth with Richard Garriott — wealthy video gaming space tourist — and son of Owen, a U.S. Skylab and space shuttle astronaut in the 1970s-80s.

Could the sons earn stamps as well?

** "I can lick pa, but he's a stamp, of course." **

Atmospheric Pressure

No secret that delusional behaviour and fatherhood often marry. But is there a cause and effect?

Can you find the link between Matthew McConaughey believing that becoming a father will make him sexier and Max Baer Jr. ("Jethro Bodine") ready to duke it out over his fighter father's legacy and why, while being filmed by his son, artist Isaiah Zagar decided to reveal his affair to his wife?

Something in all of that helps explain the father-child bond, but what it is ...? So far, just a missing link.

** Dad pressure. All all around and pushing down. **

Who Loves Prez Daddy More?

Maybe it is all part of a plan. A misguided plan, but a masterful one nonetheless.

Perhaps George H.W. Bush has deliberately transformed — if you will believe the early reports of Oliver Stone's coming biofictivepic &mash; from drunken embarrassment cursing his father's success to to presidential embarrassment whose "leadership" encourages the nation to pine for the days of his father? That he is smart enough and dedicated enough to his father to do what he has done is a much more acceptable explanation than (for example) to blame a democracy that elected him.

It is also a lovelier consideration of the president father-child relationship than offered by another KOP (kid of POTUS), Chelsea Clinton, who in addition to opining that the world will offer a sigh of relief when Bush 43 steps down, has been dissing dad at the expense of possible prez mom.

** Anger issues focused on father? Anyone? **

Double "O" Dads

Should a dad bring his work home or create separate worlds. Such is the premise of the just announced NBC show, "My Own Worst Enemy," starring Christian Slater — real life daddy with an ex-wife to Jaden Zach Haddon-Slater, 9, and and Eliana Sophia Slater, 5 — and set to debut with the Fall 2008 season. Slater will live two half lives (international spy and suburban dad) in one body and whether either will be a quality father will undoubtedly be determined by the Nielsen families.

For a look at what happens in real life, consider Oded Gur-Arie's "The Champagne Spy," a documentary about his father, Ze'ev, an Israeli spy who was gone from the family for months at a time living the high life pretense of an ex-Nazi in Egypt. he was doing something bigger than one family ... and his son got a movie out of it. But, on balance, what's a father to do?

** Every child imagines their father with a secret life, but usually only for a positive impact on his or her own life. **

It's Your Legacy, Idiot

The Daily Mail offers an extraordinary lede to its roundup of current events in the life of Formula One Racing boss Max Mosley. Geoffrey Levy's article begins by explaining that the favored son of Nazi era-relic Oswald Mosley, would be now simply a standup comics punchline, merely a "foolish and rather depraved man" — he is on tape performing some Nazi-costumed S and a bit of M with prostitutes — if it weren't for his father's legacy.

Quite a legacy he now leaves for sons Alexander, 37, and Patrick, 35, and perhaps grandchildren as well.

Wouldn't the world be richer, but the news less entertaining if there was a law — or commonsense just ruled — and every dad had to ask a simple question and then defend his answer before doing anything: what will it mean for my kids?

Fathers need to be fathers. Nicely phrased by U.S. Prez candidate Barack Obama addressing a slightly different problem than Mosley's (and quoted by the Boston Herald's Joe Fitzgerald in a piece on "the daddy issue"): “We have too many children in poverty in this country and don’t tell me it doesn’t have a little to do with the fact that we got too many daddies not acting like daddies. Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception. "

Daddies acting like daddies. You would think it would already be an evolutionary and genetic mandate, something like breathing in order for the species to survive.

** It's the present and the legacy, stupid. **

Faster, Daddy, Catch Them ... Now Me

Every kid wants dad to go faster. They trust their father to protect even as he is takes them to speed's hairy edge: "Can't this car go faster? ...Look that boat is passing us! ... Catch him daddy!"

Of course, not every child is on the downside of retirement age when s/he gets revved up about the speeding papa. But not ever child is Fred Miller, whose father, Gordon, is apace to drive a car and boat 100 mph (separately, not combined — or worse — at the same time) in order to celebrate his 100th birthday.

But, as with all things, kids do eventually grow up. (Thing 1, still a few years away from piloting her own vehicles into — and hopefully out of — danger, is grabbing at the gear shift; Thing 2 isn't ready even to move to the front seat, but is eager to pick out the mammoth four wheelers she will steer through suburbia.) One of the rites of that inevitability is the defeat in one or more things of the man who they so easily trusted with their safety.

But that guy, dad, doesn't always offer a victory. Sometimes he won't be beaten or the child exhibits a talent the father never developed. Other times, as in the case of funny car drivers John Force and daughter Ashley [Earlier: Car Culture], he just doesn't show up.

** It is a mystery of time that it doesn' t matter how fast or slow a father goes, children still grow up too quickly. **