Father Knows Best-ish

Every father has an olde tyme-y thing that they like. Something that their children find endearing, yet beguilingly dated. For my dad, it was Old Time Radio. If you're curious to know what that is, simply imagine a time when every single person in America sat down in front of their radio to listen to ripping yarns spun about superheroes, gritty cops and middle aged ex-vaudevillians emphasizing their punch-lines with puns that were dated in 1940.

It's a pretty endearing genre of entertainment, and I specifically remember every weekend taking a car trip with Dad where you literally couldn't speak because he wanted to listen to a cassette tape of "The Shadow". Now this wasn't a "hey, shut up" type of "couldn't speak", it was a car full of 5 people (3 kids, a mom and a dad) sitting in abject silence; hanging on the every word of this completely antiquated, almost cringe-worthy form of entertainment...and you know what? I loved every minute of it.

How can you not look back fondly at things your dad loved? Does it really matter what it actually might have been? I mean, seriously, if my dad had a hankerin' for watching Hitler's famous Reichstag speech in December of 1941...I would fucking love Hitler's famous Reichstag speech in December of 1941. Why? Because my dad's...my dad. Admit it: there was something your father loved that other people might consider odd or dated, but you consider the jewel of your childhood.

I look back on this because I might potentially at some point maybe be a father in the extraordinarily distant future. I had a meta moment the other day while watching Channel 4's delicious 1990s sitcom "Father Ted" (brought to you by the same folks as "The IT Crowd"). There was a shoddy set which was shot crappy video, peppered with what one might call "dated 90s references". Yes, one day I will watch shows like that, shows like "The Young Ones", "Blackadder", and "Fawlty Towers" in front of my children. They will watch, mouth potentially agape, and realize that their daddy is into really old stuff that no one watches or even talks about anymore.

I mean, those aforementioned shows are dated in 2010...what are my love-children going to think in whatever year it will be when I actually have children (I'm bargaining on the 22nd century)? I hope they look at it with the same reverence that I looked at my Dad's Olde Time Radio. I'll be their dad, after all.

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