Bunchland

A look back at the month when dads took over Bunchland

We declared October Superdad Month here at Bunchland, in light of last month’s guest editor, Christopher Shulgan and his recently-released book Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs and Fatherhood. And you know what? It was fun having some dudes around Bunchland HQ. We spend so much time emitting high-pitched squeals over pictures of puppies and gossiping about last night’s episode of Glee that it was refreshing to get some male perspective.

Chris wrestled with the question of whether or not to buy his 4-year-old son a Wii during Videogame Week, and also looked at the portrayal of dads in pop culture. We were also treated to posts from “hip-hop pop” Dalton Higgins, author of Fatherhood 4.0. Dalton blogged about hip-hop music videos inspired by fatherhood.

Here’s are all of the posts penned by pops last month, in case you missed any of them.  Read more...

Guest writer Dalton Higgins shares hip-hop music videos inspired by fatherhood

In the realm of pop culture pops -  with a hip-hop twist – who really appear to support their seedlings, Will Smith stands tall above the rest. Pre-Willow Smith hoopla, Will was cranking out songs and accompanying videos with all kinds of parent-friendly subject matter.

Genuine hip-hop heads remember Will Smith when he was considered a credible rapper amongst the rapperati.

Then once the acting gigs started pouring in (think The Fresh Prince of Bel-air, Six Degrees of Separation), it was all about the happy raps.

I don’t mind the less hardcore, more happy cheeseball raps. It’s the daddy in me. It happens when you get old(er), softer and most definitely chubbier.

There’s hardcore pro-poppa rap, and then there’s softcore. I anoint Will Smith the King of Softcore Rap. Here, he flips a beautiful Bill Withers sample and celebrates Hip Hop Poppahood, in all its Fatherhood 4.0‘ian glory.  Read more...

My twice-a-month parenting column for Eye Weekly posted today…

I was talking to an old friend about the unwrapped Dentyne gum pieces my kids got last Halloween, when the offer came: “Why don’t you trick-or-treat with the kids up in our neighbourhood?”

Which bugged me. I’d been in the midst of complaining that too few homes in my area gave out candy. Last year, I took the kids out — my son dressed as a jogger, my daughter as Max from Where the Wild Things Are — and conducted a six-block loop. Barely a third of the homes we passed yielded candy — not a great batting average. Turns out my neighbourhood sucks for Halloween. More…

Christopher Shulgan is Bunchland’s guest editor for the month of October and the author of Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs and Fatherhood.

Photo by Carlos Osorio.

So like seemingly every other writer in Toronto, I’ve been reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and last night around 1:30 a.m., I finished it. Was it the masterpiece it was hailed as in this review by the New York Times? Naw, I don’t think so. Its excellence follows an upward curve; it starts rough, then gets steadily more captivating until the concluding pages are approaching brilliant. But there was too much backstory for me—too much going back in the narrative and recounting past events, “He had done this,” “She had done that,” rather than recounting events as they happened—”He did this, she did that.” Recounting backstory is always less captivating than chronicling story, if only because, by recounting the past from the point of view of a future narrator, we have a clue to the end; that is, that the narrator remains alive to tell us the events we’re following. Nevertheless I thought it a fascinating depiction of a North American family, one with some problems I found particularly disturbing—and which may disturb other Bunchland readers, as well.  Read more...

Guest writer Dalton Higgins shares a different fatherhood-inspired hip-hop video each day this week

Some of the greatest art, music and cinema of our times contains curse words, profanities, vulgarity, from Scarface to Jay-Z. My daughter recently informed that me that there are certain cuss words that have become are all the rage in her school. She is not at all a fan of this activity, but it’s around her daily. “WTF” has become hugely popular apparently.

The reason I mention this is because in the canon of rap and punk classics there are a whole whack of timeless anthems that I might’ve listened to (loudly) at some point in time, whose critiques on racism, sexism and George W. Bush still stand the test of time. But now I refuse to play them in my household. Does my 4-year-old Solomon need to hear the F word or take in Hollywood’s weekly gore fest? Probably not. It’s not tremendously enlightening stuff, really, outside of the fact that teens and adults absolutely love to watch things being mangled, burned and blown up. Old-school rapper Heavy D penned this brilliant song titled “Don’t Curse” which challenged great rappers like Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap to compose a rhyme for this song without uttering any swear words.  Read more...

The New York Times magazine ran a really thought-provoking essay in a special issue on empowering women yesterday. By Lisa Belkin, author of the paper’s Motherlode parenting blog, the piece (linked here) argues that women’s careers won’t achieve equality with men until men assume equal responsibility in the family, for parenting roles.

“That women are not yet equal in the workplace is largely a result of the fact that they are not equal at home,” writes Belkin in a related blog post. “And that last gap will not close until our policies and expectations change for men.”

So you know the conflict, right? My parents introduced my kid to Nintendo Wii. He’s become obsessed with Mario Kart. I talked to experts about introducing kids to virtual entertainments; one that suggested yes, go for it, and then one that was just plain scary. Before I came to any decision, I was still mulling things over. I tend to do that, I mull things over for ages, I’m in a perpetual state of mull.

Facebook helped me procrastinate from making a decision. I posted on my wall one of the earlier Bunch Family posts under the headline, Should I buy my 4-year-old a Wii? Old friends weighed in, and the result was an experiment in communal parenting; the social network as advice maven. Only one friend voted against. The rest, most of whom had kids who were older than mine, suggested I go for it. “We’ve had a lot of family fun with ours,” said Amy Logan Holmes, the impresario of Open Book Toronto. “Especially the dorky bowling game.”