DadWagon Q&A: Doug Moe is a Bad Dad

Doug Moe is quite a few things: a comedian, a blogger, a Brooklynite, and the father of a girl who, creepily enough, is almost EXACTLY the same age as my own daughter. He’s also got a well-reviewed one-man show called Doug Moe is a Bad Dad playing on Feb. 15 (that’s this Wednesday night) at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater at 8pm. Buy tickets or, if you are not in New York, just pay a visit to his very funny blog, Man Versus Child. Doug was kind enough to stop by DadWagon for a Q&A.

Nathan: First off: What makes you think you have any idea about being a bad dad? There are lots of REALLY bad dads out there. The bar is high.

Doug:  That is true.  There are a lot of really bad dads out there.  I’m merely claiming that I am one of them. Actually, my show is much more about the FEAR of being a bad dad…whether I am or not.

Nathan: Seems like if you can avoid murdering your kids’ mom and then blowing them and yourself up, you’re doing pretty well (or is it too soon to joke about Powell?)

Doug: Yes, there is a point at which there’s no denying that you are a bad dad; probably Murder/Blowing Up Your Family is beyond that point. Most of us never get to THAT point, but when you’re in a music class singing “Wheels on the Bus” and you REALLY don’t want to be…I think even then you might think: “I’m a bad person, I should be better at this…”

Nathan:  Goodness. I have been there, too. [Editors note: who fucking hasn’t?] Do dads really have to do that crap to be good parents?

Doug:  That’s what we’re told and what I try to do in my show is talk about that fear… like every little misstep will ruin your child.  And then I also think that so much “bad” stuff can be justified.  So like you say, “Well watching Dora again isn’t really good parenting…but THEN AGAIN she did learn the proper use of the word “calculate” from Pinkie Dinkie Doo…”

Nathan: Aha. Now you’re at the heart of why we wanted to talk to you. If there’s a theme on DadWagon… actually, there is no theme. But I wish there were, and I wish it had something to do with figuring out why parenting got so oppressive and what we can do about it.

Doug:  haha. Yes.

Nathan: Is the proper response to go full Mad Men as a father, and just drink and work like the old days?

Doug:  That seems to be working out for Don Draper, so probably. But then again… I think one of the things that can be tough now as dads is that there’s been this shift to us being maybe more involved or at least feeling like we SHOULD be more involved, but the template for HOW to be involved is still very much the “Mom” template and maybe there’s no difference, but there shouldn’t be an automatic assumption that dads will do parenting like moms! Boy, that sounded REALLY INTENSE.

Nathan: Revolution!

Doug:  Yes!  Overthrow the moms and …. oh shit…COME BACK MOMS! I have one part in my show (I know it probably seems like I’m trying to plug my show, but this is how I talk) that is about how the Disney Princesses are TOO SEXY and goes into that OUTRAGE. But in the show, the outrage over the sexiness shifts into being sort of turned on by them. It’s wrong and (hopefully) funny.  But there is this sense out there that if you GOD FORBID let your kid play with a princess doll or a pink lego that they will become unempowered for life or something.

Nathan:  Which [princess are you into]? Ariel? Cinderella?

Doug:  Oh all of them. Cinderella because she’s not afraid to get a little dirty and cleans up good. Ariel because of the clam shell bikini.

Nathan: Noted. I hear you about playing with dolls, etc.: the stakes feel so high with everything. We used to get into huge fights with my mother-in-law about how she let the kids watch too much TV. What if it all doesn’t matter, or at least not that much?

Doug:  Haha, oh man.  I think we all do that. I grew up watching a ton of tv. So you can justify it like, “I turned out okay”. But you also read the article that says, no TV before they are 12 years old or whatever.

Nathan: I hate that article

Doug: In my childbirth class… ya know the one that you have to watch the weird videos from the 80’s about the cooperative child birthing practices of the Norwegians or whatever… my teacher there said one really helpful thing. She said “Parenting is more about long-term consistency”. And I repeat that to myself every time I am letting my daughter watch Dora again. As long as IN THE LONG RUN she hasn’t really watched too much Dora, we’re fine (and she probably won’t even LIKE Dora when she’s a grownup, so it’ll all even out).

Nathan: Yes, be consistent. What if my consistent is: I consistently read the Times to find out which new survey is telling me I’m doing it all wrong and I need to change everything or else my child will kill hookers at truck stops for the next forty years?

Doug:  Yes, that is a problem. Don’t do THAT. That specific thing.

Nathan:  How has the show been going? Do you find it’s more moms than dads (I think our blog readership is—hi moms!) in the audience? Or is a real Man Show crowd?

Doug:  It’s been going great!  I’ve been running it since the tail end of August. It’s hard for me to judge if more moms/dads…there’s been a lot of parents there but it’s not a Man Show kind of show really.  Because it’s at the UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre), it’s got a lot of comedy nerds there.

Nathan:  They have sex and children too.

Doug: Nerds definitely have sex. Part of what’s been fun about the show is that parents have come up to me and been like, “oh man, that one thing is so true” but also comedy nerds and hipsters who probably still hate babies have also liked it. You don’t have to be a parent to relate to it, I don’t think. Even if you’re not worried you’re a bad dad, you can worry that you’re bad at something.  Like if you are from Bushwick, you can worry that you are a Bad Barrista. I say this as a true dependent on Good Baristas. I’m just saying:  “Baristas:  Buck up!”

Nathan: Last question: who are your role models in talking about parenting: comedians, authors, musicians? Was there anyone that took inspiration from in making this show?

Doug:  hmmm…good question…the rest of those questions, not so much…I kid.

Nathan: And listen, if the answer is DadWagon, don’t be shy. I don’t blush easy.

Doug:  Ya know, I had great parents so clearly them. AND DADWAGON. Pretty much an even split.

Nathan: Awesome. End interview there.

Bad Dads We Love: Super commenters edition


Okay, I know it’s best never to respond to negative comments, and I won’t. Instead, I think I will run this comment in its entirety, which was written in response to a post I wrote in July about my ex-wife and my current nanny:

Sorry. Your ex wife is in the right here.

If you’re leaving her child alone with another person to watch him, she has an absolute right to judge — since you seem to be rather immature and short-sighted — the quality of the person who wil be assuming control of him.

Do you know what can happen in just a few short minutes when you have a child under your care? Is your nanny for the second child capable of caring for an infant and a toddler both?

Let your wife make that decision. If you can’t care for your own two without outside help (and nice digs at the inlaws who gave you FREE child support for years, btw), then absolutely the more mature parent should step in and see for herself.

Just please: no third Baby Momma for you, eh fella? Jokes aside about using the new one to pick up chicks, you seem verrrry immature for a man, and right now, those kids need to come before your inner kid.

Glad that the first family you created understands that. They are stuck with you now, via the boy. (ps. Did your wife agree to have her new lesbian relationship splattered across the pages of the NYT? If not, nice job on invading your son’s private life like that, for the sake of your “who am I???” writing career.

ps. Marry first, then make the babies. Who exactly is paying for their birth costs, the government (via the unwed mothers fund)?

Grow up and take a bit of responsibility man. It’s not just about you, despite your special, superior Jewish genetics.

Oh hell, I will make one tiny response: My genes are not superior because they are Jewish. The genes of MY CHILDREN are superior because they are evenly mixed between Jewish and Asian DNA strands. Specificity, ladies and gentlemen, specificity.

Last: my daughter, Ellie, was planned. It was my marriage that happened spontaneously.

Bad Dads We Love: McDonald’s Edition

So, I took JP up to Yankee stadium last night for his first professional ballgame, and we got there early. We were meeting up with my uncle, who had the tickets, and we were waiting outside of the stadium. At about 6pm. Outside of a McDonald’s. Which sells Happy Meals.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I have nothing in particular against McDonald’s, other than the food tastes bad, they are an evil commercial enterprise bent on a Matrix-like domination of the universe, and I’m a pretentious Yuppie who only serves his kid artisanal farina. But I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to not feed JP chain fast food. It’s just that living in New York makes it easier to avoid. Not every corner in Brooklyn is a home of the Whopper or whatnot, which is not to say that a slice of pizza is any healthier.

That said, JP has been talking up the virtues of the Happy Meal of late. I don’t really know where he got it from. I’ve never bought him one, and he says his mother hasn’t either. Perhaps it’s a genetic attraction, similar to his innate ability to be aware of and play Angry Birds despite the fact that I don’t own a smartphone.

So, with time to kill, and JP asking for food, and the golden arches throbbing and gleaming like the Orgasmotron from Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” I caved. I bought him a Happy Meal. And JP was very happy and very quiet, when he wasn’t telling me all about the Kung Fu Panda 2 toy that came with his boxed meal.

Fries weren’t bad.

Bad Dads We Love: on not discussing OBL

I was listening to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s remarks from the 9/11 site this morning on the radio, where he announced the official opening of the National September 11th Memorial.

The baby was spraying the room with her sweet potatoes and JP was busily constructing something arcane from Star Wars Legos. This passage caught my attention, though, despite the fact that I hadn’t had coffee yet:

“Already, there is a generation of children growing up who were too young to understand what happened on 9/11 – and they may be too young to understand what the news of Bin Laden’s death means. But it is our obligation in building the museum to ensure that the story of 9/11 is never forgotten.”

Fair enough, and well-spoken, at least for this great city’s typically taciturn Hizzoner. But does that mean I have to discuss these events with my children? Obviously not with Ellie–she’s too young. But JP might be made to understand. So far I’ve decided not to. What good will it do? He will come to fear the world on his own, thank you very much, and he will also learn to fear parts of it through me (“if you cross the street with out looking you will be hit by a car”). But the Big Fears, the abstract ones? Do I really have a parental responsibility to explain those things to him? I truly don’t know, although my instincts tell me no.

No one in my family died on 9/11, thankfully. But my father lives in near the site of the attack, and his office was in the World Financial Center, which is across the street and was heavily damaged. Luckily, he was in New Jersey for work on 9/11. He was, however, in the Twin Towers in 1993 during the first attack. He walked out of the building with the rest of the people, scared, coughing, and bewildered. For him the Big Fear is a small one, too (he was also in Atlanta in 1996 when the Olympics were bombed–coincidence?).

I remember as a kid being pretty well convinced that I would die in a nuclear bomb attack. That was a representation of the time and the final remnants of Cold War paranoia. I also remember distinctly noticing that belief disappear. Just like that. One day it seemed reasonable to think the Soviet Union was going to blow me up, and the next day it didn’t.

I don’t entirely know where I’m going with this post, I’m afraid. Bad things exist in the world, and our children must be prepared to confront them, or at the very least, learn ways to live with them. Just not yet.