Otto Scungy

Selling Buicks in a Toyota

Vomit is the litmus test for the depths of one’s love. I think John Donne said that somewhere between ‘Death Be Not Proud,’ and ‘The Flea.’ My son tested me with the christening of my car a few days ago, and each bodily fluid that our progeny sends our way makes us stronger.

It’s taken me a few days to commit the moment to posterity because, well, it’s fucking gross, and I am a wimp of the first order. Give me fictional Stuart Gordon and Takashi Miike all day long, but make a stifled “urp!” in your throat, and I am checking myself for signs of nausea.

I knew I passed a serious test of fatherhood when I made it through the ten-minute car ride home with the windows doing a weak ass job of wafting the smell down the freeway and my son doing a valiant but equally weak ass attempt to dab stomach contents off his face.

But, I steeled myself, put on my big boy pants, and cleaned my kid and the car. Let me tell you, little people are much easier to clean than automobile interiors. I didn’t have to triple swipe a washcloth inside any human crevices to make sure there were no wayward chunks of breakfast baking in the sun.

My son felt bad about having choofed in the car, which in turn made me feel bad. It was just a minor bout of car-sickness, but it was potent enough. I kept my calm through the whole experience, but I still had to massage some feelings. I had a New Years Eve date once who punctuated the evening with a much larger display of gastric volume, and, come to think of it, I handled that one pretty well, too. We’ll chalk that teachable moment up to the benefits of club drinks and drugs in your 20s.

Moms are made of tougher stuff, so please don’t feel excluded when I say to my fellow dads, cheers to you who have caught chunks in your hands, on your lap, in your car, in your bed, on the sofa, in your hair, on the dog, in your home, or in public. You have a battle scar that cannot be removed with lasers or grafts.

Keep your head high and your lunch down.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Plop, plop, fizz, fizz

Stand by me, and hold my hair.

A bucket for monsieur (you have been warned)

It’s ok, honey.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

One Lemonade, Please!

My son can’t hold together a continuous storyline with his action figures for shit, but boy does that kid have a thing or two to teach me about business.

My wife and I had, in our picturesque vision of parenthood, promised to help my son with a lemonade stand this summer. A few weeks ago, we paid up. We got him outfitted with two pitchers of lemonade, a table, some chairs, a sign, coolers full of ice, a fan, some tunes, and some sunglasses. My boy went to work. With his arse parked in a too-big-for-him sized chair and his visor, my son showed me what’s what about patience, market demand, and giving back.

It took a while for people to get rolling around the neighborhood, but once they did, he had them in his clutches. My wife and I sat and helped with keeping change straight and hoofing the ice chest. Until people started trickling in to shop his wares, he was content to sit in the sunshine and listen to our carefully selected, bubbly music.

We convinced my son to only charge what people wanted to pay, and people apparently wanted to pay about a buck each, some paying more. As my dad says, people like choice. He made about thirty dollars, and he donated half to the state wildlife center (they have, after all, taken in our donations of baby birds, opossum, and squirrels). My wife and I promised to match whatever he donated, so we may have at least paid for the food for our animal refugees.

I never had a lemonade stand as a kid. In fact, I don’t remember any money-making enterprise other than trying to sell toys to neighbors. I never understood why they wouldn’t buy my discarded shit. I am proud to have helped my son with his lemonade stand, no matter how profitable. I am proud of his patience, a virtue from which he regularly lapses. I am proud that he donated half of his money to a cause of his choosing. I think I can ride this happy feeling for a while, and, if I apply myself, even employ his sales practices in my own work.

Thank you, son.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Let’s make lots of money!

I like cold beverages

This Duck Song is an earworm

I’m a happy miser!

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Happy Day of Fathers

My wife, my son, and I went to see Incredibles 2 a couple of days ago. I was primed to be all on board with the themes of family, appreciation for our connubial counterparts, and our children living up to responsibility. It was all there, and it was good. But, what I wasn’t quite ready for was the emotional power of a movie trailer and a short film before the movie.

We don’t go to the movies that often, so maybe it was the majesty of being in a theater that had me ready to be moved by whatever was projected on the big screen, but damn if that Christopher Robin preview didn’t have me in tears. All grown up with a job, a family, and a stuffy air of responsibility that leaves little room for play and imagination? Fuck that! Not on Winnie the Pooh’s watch!

My son watched the tears welling in my and my wife’s faces. We fought most of them back, but he knew. Oh, he knew. The heart strings weren’t done being manipulated by deft, film maker hands, though. There was a Pixar short that might not get too much repeat watch time at home but was so good. The short film, Bao, used metaphor to explain the difficulty of raising, protecting, and allowing the natural process of nest leaving of our kids. The dad is not present through most of the story, but he shows up at the end with a sweet act of heart in mending the fence between his wife and son. None of the themes were wasted on me.

This little vignette brought the waterworks. My son kept looking back and forth between me and my wife like he just noticed our matching Gucci Mane ice cream face tattoos. I could have left the theater then and felt all the catharsis I needed from a movie. It stuck in my mind in a perfect Father’s Day message that rivaled any heavy-handed spirit of Christmas pandering that we eat up around the holiday season.

To all my fellow dads, to you I say be as silly as you want to be, be content in your need for quiet, be patient with yourself as you work through fatherhood and you-hood, and be gentle with yourself while you decipher the parts of your preceding generation of dads. Some parts will work; some won’t. Hell, I really feel for my dad’s generation having to live up to their dads’ generation that was called the impossible-to-beat “Greatest Generation.” I’m grateful for my Gen X blessing and curse of our receptivity to messages delivered via a screen. Keep the good vibes coming!

Thank you for your unique dad-ness!

Happy Father’s Day!

Otto Scungy

A presentation for tired dads

“I want my cake!”

This clip makes me want to cry. This is my favorite movie dad!

Together Forever by Foxy Shazam

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

SPOILER ALERT: Let’s Talk About Antasay

If you are a kid and you’re reading this, shame on you! Really, though. Stop reading now and go outside and play or read a book.

Ok, moms and dads, since it’s Memorial Day, and there shouldn’t be any red flags, I need to talk about how we fuck our kids up with Santa Claus. This guy seems to be the source of the biggest, most easily accepted, and most soul crushing cryptozoological phenomenon in the last thousand years. This jolly, red creation is a force of both joy and crippling disappointment, so why do we do it?

As a dad of an almost seven-year-old, I have had to dodge the landmines of my son’s classmates with older siblings telling their peers that there is no Santa. My wife and I have had to practice spurious logic in explaining the synchronous presence of Santas at the mall, in front of grocery stores, at school events, at Christmas festivals, on T.V., and pretty much everywhere you look starting around Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy. I’m a fan of the vintage style Saint Nicholas, myself. I just know that I’m perpetuating a lie that will inevitably destroy my credibility with my son.

I remember that first Christmas after I found out that there was no such thing as Santa, and I remember having to keep up the ruse for my younger brother, thinking, “You poor, poor bastard. If you only knew what is coming.” My brother is much more emotionally reserved than I am, so he seemed to take it on the chin way better than I did. Santa would be my argument winner for any religious teachings that have followed since. I’m not saying that religion has no merit, because I believe in the Big ‘Ol Clockmaker and the power of faith and prayer, but you’d better not pee dogma on my leg and tell me it’s raining because I have worked through the Santa thing.

As someone who has committed to keeping the faith in the potential shattering of faith, I have to admit that I love it. I enjoy seeing the joy on my son’s face on Christmas morning. I love it when my wife writes a reply letter from Santa and puts it in the mailbox for my son to read. I even like the attempt to get him to see the man with the bag at the mall (still no dice, there). So, am I putting me and my son through psychological boot camp for my own enjoyment? Well, maybe a little.

Santa is fun, but damn it if I don’t get a knot in my belly when I think about that inevitable talk. I’d much rather explain the mysteries of death, where babies come from, or why no one but you, the doctor, or, in a pickle, your parents should ever touch your privates (he’ll figure out the joys of a simple tug job on his own). Maybe Santa is our cultural reminder of the sour and the sweet. Maybe Santa sets us up to be able to handle feeling crestfallen when we learn our parents love us but are fallible humans, institutions are only as good as our active involvement, and that people might just disappoint us (thanks a fucking lot, Bill Cosby). Perhaps Santa is the problem that we’re supposed to reconcile to help us come around to understanding the spirit of Christmas. I just wish it didn’t have to hurt my kid.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Happy Life Day! May the… awe, fuck it.

I want to believe.

Remember the empty threat of no presents for Christmas?

As good an explanation as any…

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

There Will Be Blood

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that kids will probably freak the fuck out if they see a parent bleeding. There’s also a pretty good chance that, within the larger group of kids who will freak the fuck out when they see a parent bleeding, there is a subset that will also freak the fuck out if they see a parent faint. I can’t say that I’ve done scientific due diligence here, but I have made close observations in one, unplanned case.

My son, much like his father, runs high on the sensitivity scale. We were riding a pretty positive wave while my wife was out of town this weekend, and I felt like I could at least place in the top ten of a Fun-Dad-Of-The-Year pageant. We were two dudes living the life: playing board games, watching movies, pleasantly doing chores around the house, laughing, playing catch, and feeling the gift of warm spring sunshine. That is, until I decided to make friends with a stray tomcat.

Our family is an animal friendly one, and sometimes animal friendly people take some unwise risks. Our oldest cat, who still has some metaphorical balls if not actual balls, is more bluster when it comes to fighting. In his advanced age, he will acquiesce to neighborhood cats if a good holler doesn’t work. I tend to forget that, and I did so when I saw him sitting with an un-neutered, gray tomcat. The strange cat meowed a friendly kind of meow to me from under a bench on our front porch. I decided to make a new animal friend by trying to scratch him under his chin. Acting from a cornered position and seeing a giant, bald human reaching for him, he decided to tear me a new asshole.

The cat placed my new asshole on my hand, and probably hit a vein on one of my knuckles. The result was a bloodbath that put a slight damper on our otherwise nice weekend. I ran to the sink, freaking out, and my son followed suit when he saw my bloody, new-assholed hand. Now, I’m what you might call a “fainter.” As being one of these “fainters,” I staggered to a clear spot on the living room floor to make way for a good faint. Well, my son, not being accustomed to his dad in full-on faint mode, mistook the slow ebb of consciousness as my soul leaving the earthly plane. Yep, he freaked the fuck out.

This wasn’t the first time I have passed out (ask my phlebotomists) or got hurt by trying to make an animal friend (I got my face hurt trying to give a cat a hug, once), and it certainly won’t be the last. All in all, the rest of the weekend was good, my wife gave me a good talking to when she got home on Sunday, and I have an appointment to get antibiotics. Maybe I toughened my son a little. Maybe I took one for the team to teach a life lesson that might spare him his own bloody, fainty experiences. Probably, though, I just added to the litany of stories in the book of Dumb Shit My Dad Did. C’est la vie.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Animals (not humans) fainting

“I ain’t got time to bleed.” Well, maybe I do.

\m/

C’st La Vie

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Taking the Piss

I can’t speak for most dads, but I like to think that I’m not alone in having a rich mental life, where I bond with my son while dispensing wisdom to a receptive young mind. Usually, what I imagine is like T.V. super dad pontificating, but what comes out is frat boy level stupid. Sometimes, though, there’s a magical spark in all our Animal House shenanigans.

It’s nice when a generational bond comes in the form of a shared cultural phenomenon like Star Wars. Since Brian Posehn already claimed anything I could share about a father and his progeny sharing a Star Wars experience, I’ll just say that I will forever appreciate looking over at my son, his tiny face aglow with cinema lights and geek blossoms sprouting, and enjoying adventures of a galaxy far, far away and the toys spawned from those adventures. Since I can’t wax on about that experience, I’ll just muse over how nice it was to take a walk in one of our state parks and pee outside.

While he is six years old and still holds humbler, more affordable expectations for spring break, my wife and I took him to a state park during this year’s break. It wasn’t South Padre Island, but I think he had a good time. This particular state park has swampy lakes, birds galore, and free-range alligators. My wife and I enjoy that kind of thing, and we want to instill the same appreciation in our son. This is also the place where I proposed to my wife, so it holds a special place in my heart greater than most outdoorsy spots.

Our walk was nice, and my son was all on board as our nature tour guide. He pointed out birds, gators, bugs, and cool sticks. We were a happy family, surrounded by quiet nature whenever we could get away from other, much louder families. This happy day was forever cemented in the dad-son memory book when my son and I rushed ahead on a walking trail and pissed on a mature tree as nature intended us to do. What it is about two dudes peeing that makes them laugh then stare in Zen bliss? Why is it best outside? There’s probably a name for it in some psychology journal.

I don’t know why it was so much fun to take a leak outside. My wife could only shake her head and say that she wished we would have gotten ourselves more out of the way to do that. She’s probably right; we probably should have thought out our peeing around. I like to think that somewhere between my wife’s explanations of feathers and foliage and my epiphanies of serendipitous opportunities to take a whiz lies a happy balance. That balance is the brain capacity mixed with the bawdy fun of the nerdy Tri Lambs of Adams College. Yes, my wife is right. No, we should not have marred our nature walk by peeing on the trail. But, we had fun.

Thanks for the memories, kiddo.

Pissing in the Wind

There’s trouble with The Trees!

This is what I think about me and my son, but we’re really just peeing on things.

This is a side project from Dethklok’s Murderface. This has one of my favorite lines from any song ever, “Now what are you all doin’ on a Saturday night?
I’d rather be sleepin’ than gettin’ in a fight.”

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

I Want to Raise a Sensitive Dude

I want my son to be a sensitive guy. Since he’s six years old, cries when he hurts his parents’ feelings, has a battalion of stuffed animals, and is an only child, I feel pretty good so far. But, wouldn’t you know it that Valentine’s Day week would go and be one of many flies to come in the ointment of happy society. I mean that as every bit as gross as it sounds.

My son is a thoughtful kid, and he likes to make people crafty mementoes. Since Valentine’s Day is all about giving cute cards, and he had already obsessed through cutting, gluing, coloring, and stickering one for me and his mom, he thought he’d make one for his current school bestie. I told him that it was a nice idea; however, my right eye started twitching when I saw him coloring a heart. A concept that keeps coming up in my life reared its warty noggin: cognitive dissonance. I’m not ready for too deep of a sex talk, and if my son already knows that he’s gay, I want to support him. But, if he isn’t gay, I want him to know that social mores kind of steer dudes away from giving heart and rainbow valentines to one another. If both said fellows find those kinds of gifts acceptable, then one or both can heart it up.

I convinced my son to make a card with an animal on it, and he drew a frog. I only know that it was a frog because he told me so. But hey, I did what I thought was my part in saving him face. When we got to school, he saw his friend near the front door, and he gave his friend the card and a big hug. The other boy allowed my son to hug him, but he didn’t exactly return the gesture. Maybe it was because his dad was with him.

I felt a twinge of sadness at the whole affair, but I had a little consolation that I powered through an uncomfortable talk with my son about a social quirk regarding boys and their insecurities. I know he’s only six, and I know that there is plenty of projection on my part that makes this whole thing more complicated. Shit, they’re only in first grade. We’ll still have hearts, rainbows, unicorns, and hugs and kisses as long as my son is comfortable with them, and I hope that he stays sensitive. I just want to help with as many of the emotional bruises as I can. If he’s going to be a hugger, and God love the huggers, I want him to be one that doesn’t make people too uncomfortable. Maybe I need some toughening up.

While I was writing this, my son told my wife about the day’s evils committed in school. Apparently, one boy got in a lot of trouble for calling another young lad a pussy. First graders, man. I’d better get on my game face.

Watch the clips below, and you boys hug it out.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

The Shawshank Redemption ending. Spoiler alert! I want to cry just thinking about this.

Bill and Ted addressing male affection

The Fox and the Hound trailer

The Smiths – The Headmaster Ritual

The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry

Happy Father’s Day

A toast to you, dads and dad figures. This comes the day after Father’s Day by design. I respect your day of dad-ness and all the enjoyment you deserve. In fact, you deserve more than one day, but let’s take the day with gratitude. You do not always display the greatness that lies within, but it is there, waiting for an opportunity to shine to the world.

You have hidden strength that you hone in secret, crushing full garbage to more compact, manageable garbage. That shows thrift, by the way.

Should a challenger come to test your dexterity, you can draw on your reserves, comb in nimble fingers, to deftly give a show of Track and Field arcade tapping. Those are your quarters on top. You always have next!

Some may challenge your memory, citing omitted grocery store items and forgotten birthdays. Ha! Can those doubters recall Dead Ted, Potty Scotty, Windy Winston or Barfin’ Barbara? You can pull Garbage Pail Kids’ names with no effort, and what have they?

Yes, you dads of perfectly ripe vintage don’t just remember when this was all just fields, but you also remember trekking through that field to rent The Three Amigos from The Movie Shack three times that one summer.

Fly your dad banner and relax, Dads. I will honor you even after that special day.

Here’s to you, Dad.

Happy Father’s Day!

Otto Scungy

Track & Field

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

The Three Amigos

A Letter to My Son: Watch Your Ass Out There, Kid

Son, you probably won’t remember too much about this day, and I would love for your soon to be waning memories of Kindergarten to be happy ones. Oh, they certainly are happy, but there is a dark side. That dark side lives hidden from your sight, just beneath your back. You performed for your first end-of-school pageant this evening. You sang with your group, and everyone oohed and aahed at the smallest kids singing about their America. You had practiced so hard, and your mom and I were so proud of you. When you were through, a teacher led you to where we were sitting, and you sat in my lap. You had breadsticks for lunch (c’mon, cafeteria), and you also had the resulting vapors. You accidentally (I have to, in my heart, believe it was accidental) farted in my lap. I whispered in my dad whisper, “Don’t you do that again. Hold it until we get outside, or go to the bathroom.” My work was done. I could feel you doing clenching exercises throughout the rest of the show. Good job, my man!

When the pageant was over we got up slowly because we are a wait-until-the-crowd-leaves kind of people. I was feeling good in the nice slacks I had worn. After all, nice man pants make a man feel good. I noticed, to my horror, that, when I got up, I had left a rather obvious, humidity-beaded line of ass sweat in the chair. My mind raced through options: sit down and wait? sit down and surreptitiously scoot back and forth to wipe the ass sweat with dryer ass parts? get a paper towel and wipe the chair off? I did none of those, but shamefully walked away. I felt bad when teachers started taking the chairs away. I hoped beyond hope that the butt sweat had dried or that no one remembered who was sitting in that chair or that, if they did remember people from the general vicinity, that they would think it was your mom or the other, larger-assed lady who was sitting near me.

We are taught to judge not, son. Your five-year-old, accidental farts were innocent enough, but know that those farts are harbingers of future embarrassments that will be caused by your ass. You will fart near people and try to outpace it, you will make weird reverse fart sounds that are unstoppable, you will have more than one moment where you are uncertain if you should just go wipe your butt or not, and you will leave a gross ass-sweat pool in a chair. We are a proud people, son, but we should not be so proud. God bless your mom, and God bless the woman who will tolerate your nasty ass, too. I love you, son.

Sincerely,

Dad

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Man Pons

Mr. Ass Theme Song

Da Butt by EU

RJD and a Father’s Pride

Perhaps it’s because I recently started reading The Bible (more on that later, to be sure), or maybe it’s because I have been spending more time with my own dad, but I feel super charged with sentimentality lately. Twice in the past few weeks, our family has been doing family stuff when my son quieted everyone because a Dio song started playing. I must say that in both instances, a tear welled up, filled with the essence that only makes tears of emotion, and lodged itself in the corner of my eye. They were strong tears, tears of appreciation, tears of pride, tears that are made of the desert rains that quench the eyes of fathers who are taught to keep their eyes dry of tears responding to pain or emotion. Those arid eyes are only dry as long as they have not been inspired by the power of witnessing their child’s birth, by watching The Green Mile, by experiencing a kidney stone, or by witnessing their child shush people so that they can throw horns in reverence to “Rainbow in the Dark.”

When my son shut us down to hear “Holy Diver,” and all was quiet save for magnificent 80s keyboard and guitar, an image formed in my mind. I was taken to a scene of crags and mist. A throne was perched atop a pillar of stone. A man, diminutive yet mighty, kind of like if Yoda and Carla from Cheers had a kid, stood in front of the throne. Far below, on our earthly plane, someone rolled a critical hit, and the man raised a fist in acknowledgement of the mighty blow. He nodded his head to someone reaching the final credits after having watched each of the Lord of the Rings movies in succession. He gave a pointed index finger of power each time an adventuring party formed a Heaven and Hell era tribute band. The man stopped his gestures of favor to the devout and fixed his gaze earthward. He focused on a single spot, a keep deep in the suburbs. A family joined in feast stopped their communal repast at the raised palm of a small child. A powerful, mystical wind could be heard. The boy gave a hushed request for silence, and he issued a terse explanation with simply, “Holy Diver.” The man in the mountain smiled a knowing smile, sat himself upon his throne, and gave the highest of all blessings in his might, the ward against the Malocchio, the sign of love and power, the extended index and small fingers forming the horns of the elect.

Back on Earth, the family was entranced by the magic sounds, the boy nodded to the meter, and the matriarch shook her head. The scene was only interrupted by a sincere and motherly, “You dorks.” For my son and the future daughters and sons of my son, I thank you, Ronnie James Dio. May your might be felt for ages to come.

Have a good day!

Otto Scungy

Holy Diver

Heaven and Hell

Dungeons & Dragons commercial