[Image via Flickr]
Tags: dad magazine, dads love churchill, halloween, jaya saxena, matt lubchansky, winston churchill
[Image via Flickr]
Tags: dad magazine, dads love churchill, halloween, jaya saxena, matt lubchansky, winston churchill
THAT LOOKS LIKE MY DAD!!!
perfect as always. <3 u,sassy fierce cover dad.
My dad gets SO INTO Halloween. Low-cost, but high-concept. I think my all-time favorite was the Christmas tree: tiny ornaments in his beard, a spire tied to the top of his head, and a borrowed Walkman with mini speakers in his pockets playing Christmas carols. Dads!
My dad and I got really into Halloween when I was a kid. One year we spooked up our front porch: spiders and cobwebs, bats, and newspaper-stuffed “dead bodies” lying on the wood box and sitting on the rocking chair. But the piece de resistance was when he rigged up the doorbell to connect to a recording of scary Vincent Price laughter (from Thriller, of course, this was circa 1984). We terrified a number of little kids out of their minds that year. It was the best.
I agree with Dad’s assessment of the smoke dectectors.
There’s a reason we call it the bacon alarm.
Mine is routinely set off by the steam from the shower. Get it together, smoke detector, god.
My dad has never dressed up for anything and loathes the ‘americanisation of halloween in the uk’. He’ll spend half an hour ranting about it if you give him even half an opportunity.
“It used to be enough that you had a party for the kids where they put on a black dress from a charity shop and some green face paint and you bobbed for apples but now it’s this huge *thing* and the local kids throw flour at our house. I don’t understand, *daughter*. Why can’t they just go get high and have unprotected sex, like we used to?”
– isn’t that how you got me, dad?
“Yes! And look how you turned out. Do you still go out clubbing for Halloween? I remember when you got dressed up as a slutty sailor-scout in that PVC dress when you were 15.”
– yeah. And you let me go to a nightclub.
“I figured it was better to let you go and know where you were and make sure you had money to get home safely than have you sneaking out.”
Haha, best dad ever.
“Bathrobe or pajama set: what would Churchill wear?”
I know this! Churchill’s wartime pajama set is on display at Blenheim Palace. They’re kind of formal pajamas that he would wear in case he was pulled out of bed in the middle of the night to deal with a crisis.
Haha, thank god my dad was never the Prime Minister, he wore filthy wifebeater singlets and NO underwear until we bought him nightshirts and basically forced him to wear them
The fact that Churchill’s pajamas are on display somewhere has made my day.
None of this really describes my dad, whose magazine would bear headlines like The Dictionary in the Living Room: A Conversational Staple and Of Course I’m Wearing Three Layers, It’s Christly COLD in Here! and Etymology of Common Phrases: I Don’t Know but I Like to Guess!
But it’s still enough to pluck the strings of how deeply I miss him, years after he died. You’ve been in my dreams all week, Dad, just on the sidelines chatting and nodding. It’s good to see you, even if it’s only in my sleep.
I thought only my dad did the dictionary in the living room thing! He and my mother bought themselves the full umpteen volume OED as a wedding gift (the nerditude runs deep in my family) and it gets frequent use.
I’m sorry for your loss. He sounds like a great dad.
Aww, that’s so nice! I think I would have gotten along with your dad.
My dad was into woodworking and he made a beautiful dictionary stand for our living room. I have it in my house now (as my parents are both decesased). Cheers for the sweet memory of word-nerd Dads.
My dad’s second headline would be You’re Cold? Go Put on a Sweater, Don’t You Touch That Thermostat, Young Lady, but otherwise, spot on.
I miss my dad so much too, and it’s only been 2 months since we lost him. Hoping to see him in my dreams sometime soon.
It’s rare that I dream of my father at all, let alone so many nights in a row, and it makes me tremendously happy, if somewhat more prone to tears than usual.
I’ve said it before, but it can’t be said too much: I’m so sorry for your loss, and I hope you’re taking good loving care of yourself. You deserve it, and it sounds like your dad would want that for you.
“There’s A Reason The TV Volume Goes To Eleven And It’s Certainly Not Because I’m Slowly Going Deaf But Let’s Watch Football at That Level Anyway”, as inspired by my father’s visit last night.
I only remember my dad ever wearing a costume once, and that was when our whole family was dressed like bunnies – hats with bunny ears, onesies, fluffy tails. There were four of us kids (four kids in four years), so I guess they were breeding like rabbits.
He was not happy about being in costume.
My parents threw legendary raging Halloween parties before I was born, the costume contest prizes being “a lid of pot” or “a lid of acid”. Somewhere there are pictures of my mom and dad in nude bodystockings with maple leaves tacked on at the appropriate areas. I’ve never been able to compete with that level of dedication.
My parents used to go to someone else’s fabulous Halloween parties, before I was born/when I was quite little. My mom recollects them sometimes- I’m pretty sure my dad went as Joey Ramone one year.
My parents once threw a Sound of Music party and my dad went as the Baroness. Red velvet slinky dress; powdered wig. It was amazing.
OMG your dad!
No, there’s a whole subset of Dads* who keep the dictionary in the living room, ideally on the bottom shelf of the table near their favorite chair for quick and easy reference. In fact, in my family, we finally had to make a rule that the dictionary was not to be kept in the living room so we wouldn’t just start reading aloud from it apropo of nothing.
It’s rare that I dream of my father at all, let alone so many nights in a row, and it makes me tremendously happy, if somewhat more prone to tears than usual. I’ve said it before, but it can’t be said too much: I’m so sorry for your loss, and I hope you’re taking good loving care of yourself. You deserve it, and it sounds like your dad would want that for you.
*Or non-Dads for that matter. I had to put the thesaurus away to protect my partner’s patience.
Something about the cover photo reminds me of the picture my dad showed me last night but absolutely REFUSED to let me have a copy of, it was so amazing.
he went on a cross-country motorcycle trip over the summer to the national parks out west and when he was in Bryce Canyon or somewhere like that, he used the timer on his camera to take a photo of himself on his bike, but from a lowish angle, with the canyon in the background. It is so amazing. It’s like a motorcycle pin-up calendar photo. But of course my dad is nearly 60 and out of shape and very dad-like and so on.
Also, I think that’s the closest he’s been to a costume in forever, and all his biking leathers aren’t really a costume, they’re just common sense when you’re at high altitudes with rocks and dust everywhere.
I think this is a dad bucket list thing- get a motorcycle, go west. My dad has done the same thing for a couple of years and though he complains every summer about how much his butt hurts, he keeps taking random bike trips with his cousin.
quite possibly!
my dad had a motorcycle in the 70s and actually rode it cross-country when he and his dad moved from Chicago to Florida to set up house for his mom and brothers to join them. he did the trip three times I think? (the second and third were to visit his girlfriend back in Illinois) he gave it up when he married my mom and got a Barracuda instead. and then he traded his muscle car in for a family sedan when she got pregnant with me. (and then when i was old enough to drive, he got a Mustang to share with me. and then when I moved out of the house, he got a Harley again)
I was annoyed that he didn’t take me on the trip, tbh. It’s something we always talked about doing when I was a teenager and we had an RV that we took around the eastern states. But maybe next summer for my 30th birthday, he’ll take me to the Smoky Mountains for a long weekend. I put the bug into his head, and I really want to explore the caverns and stuff near there, that we never did when passing through Chattanooga when I was little.
Dads are obviously the best, always.
But here is what I want to call out: I can tell DAD MAGAZINE is really hitting the big time because of how the cat ear cuts into the title. Shit’s getting straight-up Condé Nast around here! Nicely done, Jaya and Matt.
Dads are obviously the best, always.
But here is what I want to call out: I can tell DAD MAGAZINE is really hitting the big time because of how the cat ear cuts into the title. Shit's getting straight-up Condé Nast around here! Nicely done, Jaya and Matt.
My dad and I got really into Halloween when I was a kid. One year we spooked up our front porch: spiders and cobwebs, bats, and newspaper-stuffed "dead bodies" lying on the wood box and sitting on the rocking chair. But the piece de resistance was when he rigged up the doorbell to connect to a recording of scary Vincent Price laughter (from Thriller, of course, this was circa 1984). We terrified a number of little kids out of their minds that year. It was the best.
My dad's second headline would be You're Cold? Go Put on a Sweater, Don't You Touch That Thermostat, Young Lady, but otherwise, spot on.
I miss my dad so much too, and it's only been 2 months since we lost him. Hoping to see him in my dreams sometime soon.
It's rare that I dream of my father at all, let alone so many nights in a row, and it makes me tremendously happy, if somewhat more prone to tears than usual.
I've said it before, but it can't be said too much: I'm so sorry for your loss, and I hope you're taking good loving care of yourself. You deserve it, and it sounds like your dad would want that for you.