This is a photo of my dad from last Christmas when my sister and I were home. I know I can always count on her for doing shit like taking photographs with her phone because in my mind, I am still using a rotary phone, checking my pager, and using a dot matrix printer.
This past Sunday was father's day, and I failed to call my old man, so I decided that I would dedicate this blog post to how awesome my dad is, and how much more awesome he is than your dad. SUCK IT EVERYONE ELSE'S DAD!!! I'm J/K you guys. Dads are awesome for reals.
My parents are both nerds, but differently. While my mom was reading us Mythology books, and learning us real good about the Civil War, my dad was indulging OUR inner nerd and letting us chillax with all of his dinosaur books. My favorite book was the one that, through pages and pages of awesome illustrations, mapped out the evolution of beasts that once roamed the planet, and it looks a little like this. AWESOME!!! I still love that book's greasy guts. My sister and I were encouraged by our dad to embrace our nerdiness, and even though it took a while for us to realize that we're still way cooler and more interesting than most girls we know, we're not afraid now to let the nerd flag fly. Just this afternoon, I was meeting with some friends about a gallery project I'm going to be working on, and we were eating this backyard smoked jerky, and I was all, "This looks like that shit Luke was eating when he crashed into the Dagobah swamp." What? Nerd. Alert.
My dad's accomplishments with his children are many, and they include, letting us listen to hilariously tragic folk music which, as a young Gaga in training, I loved. He taught us about music, taught me how to play guitar, taught us about the badasses of science fiction cinema and literature, and ultimately, these few things taught us how to roll with any kind of person we came in contact with which, as I have found in most every place I find myself these days, is an amazingly valuable skill. Talking to everyone and making them feel like you're actually paying attention to their boring asses at their boring ass parties is a skill I can attribute to my father. THANKS DAD for teaching me how to transport my mind to another dimension while looking like I'm totally interested! It's harder than you all think. J/K. It's totally E-Z! Watch for it the next time you're boring me.
My dad also, as I am sure most girl's fathers did, stuck it out through my annoying Tori Amos and dirty rock chick phases. He handled it when I turned thirteen and felt like leveling every building I walked into and out of. If I could give you an image of what it was like inside of my head when I was thirteen-eighteen, I would say, just pick any image of any explosion from ANY Die Hard movie, and there you have it kids. Shit was gittin' oh so real up in there. I was in my room constantly playing Siamese Dream over and over again, marrying Billy Corgan in my mind, lighting black candles and pretending to call the corners. Shit, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was written FOR ME! I was the queen of mopey shit and writing in my diary about boys. It was just one episode of My So Called Life after another. I was like, so totally Angela Chase minus Jared Catalano, and that dead angel chick.
The best part about parents, and I imagine the best part about being a parent, is that your renegade asshole teenagers will one day grow up to be intelligent well-spoken humans who make all the years of teenage fuckery worth it. I may still listen to Tori Amos when I'm alone, and I may have a "moment" everytime I'm in a car and "1979" comes on, but let's never do any of that again please.
My dad is awesome on so many levels and whenever I am home, and we get into serious conversations about anything, nerdy or otherwise, it makes me proud to tell people about my family, or have them meet my family.
I hope you had the bomb Father's Day dad, and I hope you did some grillaxing and some drinking of fine single malts. Thanks for reading my blog, and for supporting every avenue I have pursued in my young life. I appreciate having you as my dad errrrryday of my lifes!
XOXO
Betsy
