Dad Magazine: January 2015 Edition

by Jaya Saxena and Matt Lubchansky · January 21, 2015

dadmagjan15

Photo credit: Sam Rubenfeld

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110 Comments

  1. aravisthequeen +78

    I must object to the purchase price as my dad would never pay $3.99 for a magazine. Subscription only please and only if the subscription cost is less than one dollar per issue.

    1. osutein +80

      Hey now, there’s a $5 gift certificate to Chili’s in select issues. DADMAG practically pays for itself… in sizzling tex-mex fajitas that is.

    2. threatqualitypress +21

      A good deal for dads would be a subscription bundle, where you could buy the subscription to this magazine as well as subscriptions to other magazines that you might be interested in at a discounted rate.

      1. Marty +21

        Or buy one, get two Dad Mag subscriptions free, which is how I have a Smithsonian subscription.

        1. amygriz +29

          Wait…I just started getting Smithsonian apropos of nothing. Are you saying that someone’s Dad gifted me a subscripsh?

          1. LeastBittern +17

            I envision a casual acquaintance, overwhelmed with free Smithsonians, going through their address book looking for people who might enjoy reading about our nations museums.

            OR the same person, only not an acquaintance, going through the phonebook and settling on your doubtless delightful name.

          2. beka +5

            I was literally LITERALLY just staring at the computer wondering who would like a Smithsonian subscription, as when I renew mine, I can gift another for $6!

            So naturally, I gave one to my DAD, whose name is Marty…
            Are you my dad? If so, you are going to be getting double issues this year.

  2. ramina +21

    OLD CARS, that is definitely a My Dad thing. He had a poster of the history of the Corvette hanging up in his office, and when he brought it home post-retirement he hung it back up – but there are no models on the poster past the 80s, as that’s when he got the poster.

    Ask me about the ’86 Grand National sitting in our garage! Or not.

    1. mandarinmarie +26

      There could be a whole car issue! The first car you had, why your child should buy your car instead of getting a new one (just me?), how much of a waste it is to pay someone to change your oil/brakes/whatever, how much of a waste it is to fly instead of road trip, tires, gas mileage, why can’t people drive stick anymore, THE LIST GOES ON.

      1. evieskye +26

        My dad kept a tiny notebook in the car to figure gas mileage and make entries every time he’d fill up. And I have one in my car now.

        1. TheRenleigh +7

          Are you my sibling? (No, you can’t be, because neither of mine would put their own tiny gas book into their car.)

        3. hawthorn_tree +2

          Was your dad shocked every time you struggled with mental division to figure out the gas mileage when he filled up?

          1. evieskye +7

            Yep. (and cheers for calculators on phones). He was so worried about my math skills (rightfully so) that he bought me a tip card for my wallet so I wouldn’t stiff any waitstaff by accident.

        4. cleoreads +5

          Mine too. I was so shocked when I moved out and discovered that my roommate did not follow this system for her car.

          Someone called in to Car Talk ages ago to complain about her dad making her fill out this Stupid Little Book to calculate gas mileage. Don’t remember if the car guys were pro little book or not.

      2. ramina +15

        That last point is precisely why my father taught me to drive stick! All of my personal vehicles since I’ve gotten my license have been stick and I’m so glad for that knowledge.

        DADS: DOIN’ IT RIGHT

      3. elsajeni +23

        My dad is on a “Why my child should buy a new car and give me her old one” kick at the moment. (Typical car usage in my family: mom buys new car, dad takes mom’s old car, dad’s old car gets donated. He doesn’t want to take my mom’s current car when she decides to replace it because “the seats are uncomfortable”; however, as A Dad, he also cannot justify buying a replacement car for himself unless his old car is actively on fire. So he’s coming after mine.)

        1. mandarinmarie +4

          I just replaced the 2000 Mazda Protege that my parents got when I was in high school and then convinced me to buy after college.

        2. aqueousmedium +16

          Donated cars! My dad has been known to go to the auction when he donates a car and come home quietly chuffed when his car went for quadruple the price of all the beaters on the block because of his mad commitment to maintenance of 30 year old vehicles. So very Dad.

    2. cleoreads +9

      In my family, it’s “don’t ask my mom about the 1960s Alpha Romeo sitting in the garage”. It hasn’t run since before I was born (in 1969) but my dad refuses to get rid of it, because, you know, he’s going to fix it one day.

  3. mbculver +43

    Snow tires! Such a Dad thing to hold a roundtable about. I know all about snow tires and the merits and drawbacks of four-wheel drive, thanks to my dad (and his endless succession of Subaru station wagons).

    1. sagerenee +17

      Snowtires! Many conversations were had in college about what weekend I was coming home to get the snow tires put on my car.
      Important stuff people!

      1. beachlass +37

        There’s so much to talk about with regard to snow tires. Tread. Different rubber. Preferred changing times. Two sets of rims?

        I’m looking forward to the Dad Magazine article about tire pressure, the importance of checking guests’ tire pressure when visiting, and having a drawer of spare air pressure gauges to give to adult children whose tire pressure is not up to par.

        1. mandarinmarie +35

          My dad would like to see your air pressure obsession and raise it by having an air compressor in the garage that he can fire up real quick.

          1. beachlass +20

            I thought air compressors were standard issue in Dad garages?

            Along with a generator, so you can still run the air compressor/whatever if the power is out.

          2. Herberta +17

            My FIL actually gave us a giant air compressor one year for Christmas. Money saved by us not having to use gas station air: probably about $3. My dad, on the other hand, confuses it with a pressure washer and asks when we’re finally going to clean the dirt off our fence with it. Dads.

          3. winterbymorning +27

            My coworker told us that he gave his wife a snowblower for Christmas because she kept criticizing the way he shoveled out their driveway/front path. He genuinely thought that she would appreciate the opportunity to clear the snow properly with her very own snowblower. He was baffled that she was displeased with his thoughtful gift.

          1. beachlass +3

            Why…. don’t I own one of those? Then I wouldn’t need my reading glasses when filling my tires?

        3. sausagedog +16

          I just bought myself an air compressor with a digital pressure gauge and automatic shutoff. It is truly amazing. I can use it in the warmth of my garage instead of fiddling with an analog gauge in the freezing cold at the gas station, where I would have had to pay a whopping $0.50 for air. For air!!

        4. LeastBittern +42

          Once our work truck got a flat tire, and the bolts were machine tightened; we called Triple A and explained. Because I have such a mellifluous voice they sent a guy with a slightly shittier lug wrench than the one we had already failed with. He was cursing and complaining and tearing through his vehicle when a truck full of dads pulled up. They listened to us explain the problem, got a impact wrench out of their truck, started up the air compressor they had in the back, took off the tire in about fifteen seconds, slapped us on the back for knowing exactly what was wrong, and were gone before the tow truck driver had noticed they were there. We got to pretend we’d taken the tire off on our own. IT WAS AMAZING. DADS.

          1. sausagedog +30

            This is the best story and I hope that those dads were just cruising the highways, looking for car problems to fix. A roving band of helpful dads.

          2. LeastBittern +22

            I actually ended up working with them like six years later – I wrote down the name on the side of their truck so I could call their company and say how nice they were, because I assumed they were roving mechanics, and then they weren’t in any of the area phone books, so it was A MYSTERY.

            But they are three-four brothers who own a powerline maintenance company – they mow and clip trees that are interfering with transmission lines, and they work all over the state. I was doing environmental monitoring of powerline maintainers, we ended up on the same job, I told them the story, they laughed, they explained that the compressor is to spray down the mower to keep from transporting noxious weed seeds, and then I looked at pictures of their kids and heard stories for the rest of the week from whoever wasn’t mowing. Dads, you guys. Dads.

    2. osutein +61

      I hope the roundtable features one extremely uncomfortable Florida Dad, who keeps nodding his head and then trying to interject something about how his cousin has an airboat in the Everglades.

      1. projectbeks +11

        My dad can sit with your dad. He lives in the southwest, and while he is very knowledgeable about driving many different types of vehicles (really!), snow tires are new-fangled things. But you can bet he’d memorize what all the other dads said to use the information later.

        1. osutein +19

          “Triple polymer, high friction treads. Yeah, yeah, this is good stuff. Keep it coming.”

        2. LeastBittern +18

          My aunt’s second husband is a mechanic. My father’s family is a trifle snooty, so there was a bit of jerkdom about her marrying an EXTREMELY nice man when her first husband was a lawyer. My dad is the… I was going to say black sheep, but I think I’m going to call him the “dad sheep”, because when he met the second husband, there was an awkward pause, and then my dad was like “HELLO YES HOW DOES A CARBURETOR ACTUALLY WORK, TELL ME YOUR SECRETS.” and they talked about car repair for three hours. And then two more hours the next day. How can you hang out with someone who knows hella and not steal all of their knowledge for yourself?

      2. mbculver +29

        “Yeah, I remember that time in the winter of ’87 when I was coming down Mt. Washington in 90-mile-an-hour winds. There was six inches of ice on the road and I kept drifting sideways. If I hadn’t had those Nokians on the Blazer, I’d have gone right over the edge.”

        “Once I saw an alligator eating a python!”

        1. AblativeAbsolut +9

          I just want to point out that your hypothetical snow tire-loving dad sounds an awful lot like my New England born and raised mom, who had no fewer than four Blazers before they stopped making them (and accused the garage of sabotage when they told her that her perfectly maintained last one wasn’t safe to drive anymore), and who won’t even consider buying snow tires that aren’t Nokians.

          1. LeastBittern +7

            All of the cute boys in my high school drove Blazers, we called them the “Blazer Crew” and now the brand is indelibly welded in my brain to cute boys who become firefighters and EMTs.

            Blazers.

  4. Girl Named Jack +56

    The second-happiest day of my dad’s life was when I asked him for snow tires for Christmas one year.

    The happiest day was this past fall, when I had my all-seasons switched to my snows before the first storm AND without him having to remind me.

  5. ksek +80

    Does Dad Magazine offer a one-time-fee Lifetime Subscription? (Rolling Stone offers this if you have been a subscriber for 30 or more years. Source: the 39 years worth of Rolling Stone in my dad’s basement.) (He’s reads them cover-to-cover in order, by the way. He’s a bit behind – last time I visited, he was reading one with Tupac and Zach de la Rocha on the cover.)

    1. mandarinmarie +35

      That’s amazing. When I was a kid, my parents’ room had an unfinished room off of it that was supposed to be a master bath that was actually just filled with stacks of National Geographics dating back to the 60s. They were at least child height, I probably could have been buried in there.

      When we were about to move, my dad finally gave his collection to the library so he could finish the bathroom before selling and my mom implemented a strict one-shelf-of-Nat-Geo rule in the new house, so every time a new issue comes in an old one goes out.

      One year my sister and I pooled our money to get him a CD rom set of every National Geographic ever and I thought it was the greatest gift in history but he never installed it. Not worth it without the stacks on stacks of magazine paper, I guess.

      1. ksek +24

        Dads are very confused about technology! My dad was still using a 3.5″ floppy to back-up his database of the 45s in his collection *well* into the years where he was paying extra to have a floppy drive installed into his new computers. I bought him a USB drive as part of his Christmas gift one year. A full year later, I saw it unopened and asked why he hadn’t been using it. He shrugged and said “I thought it was some kinda mp3 thing.”

        1. catoclock +49

          My dad once butt-dialed my mom’s cell phone and then answered it and was really confused that no one was there.

    2. tragicallyludicrous +12

      My parents have a never-ending subscription to Rolling Stone that they think they get from buying concert tickets. They never pay for it, and yet, it keeps coming.

      1. ksek +10

        I think my dad paid a one-time $200 fee or something like that to get it indefinitely (which was almost 10 years ago, so he’s gotten his money’s worth by now, probably). However, it also comes to the incorrect name (correct last name, wrong first name), so I’m figuring they’ll never be able to prove when he dies and it’ll probably just keep going to my parents’ house foreverrrrr.

      1. GreenGrasses +17

        Is there a way for those of us who are one step away from technological Dad-dom? (AKA I don’t have twitter.)

  7. foxinthe_snow +231

    This afternoon while eating lunch my dad turned to ‘The Big Bang Theory’ on TV, thinking it was going to be a show about the actual Big Bang Theory. He stared at the TV for a few minutes then said quietly, ‘This is not what I had hoped.’ and handed me the remote.

  9. sausagedog +64

    A Guide to Buying a Scale Model of That Old Car You Always Wanted: One Dad’s Story

    “The real thing’s not safe, and I can Photoshop myself into pictures of this one!” – my dad

    1. evieskye +11

      Our family is weirdly into mini-versions of cars we actually own. My uncle gave me the hot wheels version of my (my first and so far only) car and I love it. Years ago the same uncle hand painted a model of my dad’s beloved Corvair to give to him. (Oh the Corvair. I still have the driver’s manual for it)

    2. cuminafterall +4

      My dad has a scale model of the first car he ever owned. It’s in a Lucite case atop of the family computer desk.

  11. paddlepickle +30

    I felt kind of bad recently because I told my dad I think it’s funny and dad-like that, despite being very tech-savvy, he still refers to the internet in his emails as the “WWWeb”. Like, “I looked that up on the WWWeb”. He looked kind of baffled and it made me sad.

  12. littlehuntingcreek +47

    We gave my FIL a cookie jar that looked just like his old Jaguar, full of his favorite hard candies and I’ve never seen a happier man. Miniature car filled with candy! Dad Bliss

  13. superineficaz +58

    Randy Bachman has a show on CBC radio because it’s Canada and of course he does, and it’s basically Dad Magazine in musical form. He and his wife just get drunk and he plays random Eric Clapton songs interspersed with his own BTO stuff and whatever his kids have told him about that week* plus sometimes a random Selena Gomez song for good measure, and in between he picks out all the chord progressions he likes on his guitar and tells stories that don’t make any sense.

    *Tal Bachman was credited for “research” last time I heard the show and I nearly died.

    2. Mike +12

      This is such a perfect description of Bachman’s show that CBC should just put it on their website.

    3. isabellebleu +15

      Haha! Great description. What makes his show, “VINYL TAP” (I kid you not) even better: he’s NOT drinking. Bachman’s a known teetotaller. That’s just pure, unadulterated Dad stuff.

    4. cleoreads +3

      I think I’ve heard this late at night on my local US public radio -I had no idea what to make of it.

    5. puzzleg +2

      It never ever occurred to me that Tal Bachman was related to Randy Bachman. My mind, it is blown.

  14. Elizabeth +51

    Any other Toasties been married to/lived with a guy for a while and over time you have started to see the signs of Dad-dom slowly emerge in him? My husband of 12 years just tried for the first time to start a conversation about whether or not we need snow tires. He was pretty jazzed about the topic. And all I could think is “What happened to the stoner and general goofball I fell in love with? Why are you turning into my father? I married you precisely because I thought you’d never want to talk about snow tires and the like and now this is happening. Humph.”

    1. Frumiosa +49

      My husband is 32 and a total Dad. First time I showed him Dad Magazine he didn’t realize what was so funny.

      1. catoclock +64

        I feel like this is the ultimate test for How Dad Are You Really? My dad is baffled by Dad Magazine and my mom thinks it’s the funniest thing in the whole world.

      2. LeftyLibrarian +6

        Tangentially related: My sister and I went to see A Mighty Wind in the theaters and were crying with laughter because we grew up listening to our dad’s folk collection. A few months later, we watched it at home with my dad. At the end we asked him what he thought. He said he liked it but didn’t get what we thought was funny.

    2. osutein +39

      I’m a new dad, but I keep finding myself sinking deeper into Daddom. Like, I got really excited about a new argyle sweater recently (it has green AND gray squares!), and when I realized what was happening, I was filled with both amusement and also profound horror. It’s like Jeff Goldblum discovering insect appendages in The Fly, but like, instead of mandibles, I find myself giggling at the “European/You’re-a-peein’!” joke.

    3. littlehuntingcreek +25

      Eventually even the most rebellious, sexy, wild man turns into a Dad. It is inevitable. It is Fate. Just look at what happened to Brad Pitt.

    4. groovealee +13

      Oh yes! My husband is 35 and we have no children. I showed him some of the fashiondads instagram photos cause I thought they were hilarious. He said, “What’s wrong with that outfit? I think I have that in my closet!” He has also started cracking Dad jokes.

      1. drladybusiness +14

        Also 35 and no kids, and starting to suspect my SO’s young-guy-gadget-obsession is switching over to dadness. He’s really all about our new humidifier, for instance.

    6. thebellewitch +20

      My husband recently got a shed. He also started checking out books from the library about the Eastern Front of WWII. So… yeah. Fortunately, the one that was mostly about military machinery and troop maneuvers bored him, so there may be hope yet.

    8. Alli525 +8

      One of my favorite coworkers is Such A Dad that I was shocked to discover that he (at the time) had no kids. When his wife finally fell pregnant (love that saying) I am pretty sure I made an idiot of myself gushing over how good a dad I knew he’d be.

    9. ArsenioB_Ham +24

      I posted this on another Dad Magazine a few months ago, but my 28-year-old childfree fiance recently purchased hedge trimmers just so that he could prune a neighbor’s bush that was obscuring a stop sign down our street. I was simultaneously horrorstruck and amused.

      1. chilejamie +7

        My 27-year-old childless boyfriend says “Does that come with Wi-fi?” anytime something costs more than, say, 10 bucks. It is both horrifying and adorable. He also started watching Modern Family recently, and his new hero is Phil Dunphy – the daddest of all the dads. I’m doomed.

    10. anninyn +9

      My husband is Dad Variety 4: Bargain Lover.

      He also tells dad jokes, can go on for ages about engines and science, and spends long periods of time critiquing the military tactics in TV shows and explaining how he would do better.

      When I first knew him he wore makeup, took drugs, and danced to cybergoth music.

      We do not have children, though we do have cats.

  15. RuncibleSpoon +20

    Dad Magazine! It’s a new Dad Magazine!

    My dad is so lovely and funny and such a dad. With every new issue I have this impulse to email him all of Dad Magazine (I’d compile all the images into one easy to access bulk email) but I’m pretty sure he won’t find them funny.

    I think he’s too deep dad to understand the humor inherent in a dad.

  16. winterbymorning +73

    Last week my dad called my husband on his birthday. Toward the end of their conversation my husband said, “Do you want to talk to winterbymorning?” There was a long pause and then I heard my dad say in a confused voice, “…no?…” Like, I called for the specific purpose of wishing you a happy birthday, I have accomplished that goal, how does my only daughter come into play here at all?

    1. mbculver +19

      My dad used to call our house to “say hi” at random times. If my husband or daughter answered, he’d happily talk to them for a while, then hang up. I’d find out later that he’d called, and had had a nice man talk with my husband, no need to talk to me. 🙂

  17. RockyCat +35

    Those RS “lifetime subscriptions” actually do have an expiration date – Mine is Oct. ’55, according to the mailing labels. I’m thinking that maybe Rolling Stone knows something I don’t …

    1. ksek +23

      My dad’s has a subscription end date on it – but it goes up every year! If your’s isn’t changing, then perhaps… my dad is… immortal?

  18. azure_azure +29

    My dad has been emailing my husband regular updates on the dropping price of gas in my Dad’s state. One night a few weeks ago, my husband was browsing online and said he was surprised he hadn’t heard from my dad because there was a picture of a gas station in Dad’s state selling gas for $1.99. The next morning, I had an email from my dad with the subject “Send this to [husband]”. The body of the email was a link to an article about how gas had dropped below $2 in his state. (He sent it to me, instead of my husband directly, because he was at work and didn’t have my husband’s email in his work email.)

    2. Mutantfrogs +6

      At least once a week, my dad will walk into the living room from his office, and tell me he’s just e-mailed me a video of something or other (orchestras playing disney medleys on water glasses, the band who recorded the music from O brother Where Art Thou playing live, etc), and tell me to show it to my mom.
      We all live in the same house. My mom’s sitting five feet away.

    1. keristars +3

      Folks I follow on Twitter have been using the upside down question mark at the end of sentences as a marker of sarcastic disbelief or fake surprise, and honestly I find it completely delightful.

      It’s not quite a sarcasm mark, because sometimes it’s used to indicate outright confusion in a way that a regular question mark doesn’t, similar to (?) but saving characters.

  20. LacaunaKale +7

    I’m going on a trip to Costa Rica with my Dad for his birthday. It’ll be that cover with a sloth.
    (I’ve never gone somewhere with just Dad. Could be fun, could end with my having to take to sea)

  21. notebook-keeper +33

    My dad’s New Year’s resolutions are “be more high-maintenance” and “eat more potatoes.”

  22. keristars +12

    The snow tires reminded me!
    I found out a shocking thing about my dad just the other week. I forget how it came up, but suddenly he was talking about hockey and how he used to be a huge fan, and it was like the world dropped from beneath me. I’m 30 years old and never heard about him enjoying hockey in my LIFE.

    Though I guess this would explain the sweatshirt he had when I was a kid from the early 70s with the Wings(?) logo in white. eventually it fell apart and was relegated to being used as rags for RV repairs. (I always thought it was something from his days as a helicopter mechanic in the army, tbh.)

    Anyway, I guess as I grew up in Florida, his childhood in Chicago is like this huge “how can that be possible” thing that my brain never acknowledged, especially since he moved to Florida as a teen. Related to the hockey thing, I found out that he was bussed to a school that began at 10 or 11am because of the riots? which, again, earth-moving shock that my dad was related such a major history thing in a major city, not Florida. Now I’m like “what the heck else haven’t you told me about yourself”.

    1. keristars +14

      Oh, in other dad news:

      The Sunday after New Year’s, I finally went to visit so he could listen to my car’s engine and reassure me that it’s just old, and the high-pitched whining isn’t something to be worried about. Since it was sunny and warm, he said “why don’t we take a look at your a/c issue” and it was such a parent-child bonding day.

      He had printed out the PDF manual for my car related to the a/c, because the knob wasn’t shifting it to the windshield defroster, which was really dangerous in the summer rain especially. He got really into dismantling the glove box, even when I kept telling him that my own research said it was just behind the central panels, not way back closer to the engine… and then we worked as a team to dismantle the central panels, too, and I fixed the problem with some Gorilla Glue and a zip tie. Saved $75 and a trip to the mechanic, and now I can drive when it’s raining again! But he was so proud of me for sticking to my guns about the panels and then actually doing the work and figuring out a fix. It was kind of cute?

      He gave me an old ratchet wrench set as a “reward”. The whatsits are all too big for any projects he has, so he was just going to toss it. I guess it’s the thought that counts? and I don’t have any ratchet set yet…

  23. leslieellenjones +9

    Every time Dad Magazine shows up, I am more and more certain that, while I had a father, I never had a Dad. In fact, I think my father was the anti-Dad. If you put him too close to a real Dad, there would be some kind of matter/anti-matter explosion.

  24. Household_Opera +20

    I’ve lately started finding myself being startled that the 90s were 20 years ago. I am well on my way toward becoming a Dad. Someone sign me up for a bird feeder construction class!

  25. cleoreads +7

    Resolve to do that thing you said you’d do!

    That’s so my dad. I’m still kind of bitter that my dad never fixed my Princess Leia action figure. Her head fell off and my dad (rashly) offered to fix her and poor Princess Leia and her head languished on his dresser for months. (And then my mom quietly bought me a new one and all was well). Im not sure why I didn’t just play with headless Princess Leia, since I had no problem playing with armless Barbie or hand-less Wonder Woman, but I think it was the principle of it – Dad said he’d put her head back on, so I wanted her head back on.

  26. Ouzel +7

    Oh my gosh, this is my first time posting, but I just had to share what I discovered today! There is an online store, and it is called dadshats.com! It is the one-stop shop for all your dad hat needs! God bless the Toast and Dad Magazine for giving me the gift of finding *even more humor* in that than I would have otherwise.

  27. Owl Queen

    My husband is Dad Variety 4: Bargain Lover.

    He also tells dad jokes, can go on for ages about engines and science, and spends long periods of time critiquing the military tactics in TV shows and explaining how he would do better.

    When I first knew him he wore makeup, took drugs, and danced to cybergoth music.

    We do not have children, though we do have cats.

  28. beachlass

    OMG, my poor new boyfriend mentioned at family dinner that he doesn't know how to drive stick, and got SO MUCH DISBELIEVING SIDE EYE.

    And I got the "you have to fix this" look from my dad.

  29. paddlepickle

    There's a guy from my hometown with the same situation except his last name is Seamen. He also goes by Dick.