A few years ago, I stumbled onto a book written by one of my musical idols. The concept was something that I knew I would relate; being a punk-philosophied individual now adjusting to the new role of fatherhood. The book was “Punk Rock Dad” by Jim Lindberg the former lead singer of Pennywise. For the punk-uneducated, Pennywise is a working class band from Hermosa Beach, California and have been around for over 20 years. And as most bands of this vintage, they have struggled with the rigorous touring, a lack of finances, substances, authority figures, failures, and now…old age.

Lindberg’s book really resonated with me coming from the skate community. We were misunderstood and hated and trying to determine our identity. Now we’re growing up and have children we need to teach respect and compassion to. I couldn’t put the book down. It outlined the challenges of being an individual within a broken system that you despised, having children in a world that was flawed, and now becoming part of that system you once fought to change. Jim’s intimate description of his emotional awakenings weren’t at all that different from what I’ve felt having Son #1.

About eight months ago, I heard the book’s concept was going to be expanded into a documentary call "The Other F Word." Jim would be the main source of executive production but it would touch some of my adolescent idols who are now middle aged adults with families and lives. It was their story of going from the one ‘F’ word to the new ‘F’ word; Fatherhood. I’ve been waiting months for the Seattle screening. And on November 18th, I was able to have my excitement and anticipation fulfilled.

I wanted to make sure I moderated my expectations of the film. After all, films based on books are typically nowhere near as satisfying. Moreover, this wasn’t necessarily a re-creation of the book; it adopted the concept of punk growing up. The film opens up pretty fluffy mostly documenting the chronicles of the subject fathers in their early years performing and why they got into punk music. Most had somewhat self destructive tendencies and absent parents. The punk community presented them a family that understood them. After all, at the very core of our existence, we all want to be accepted. I wanted to hear more about the inner most feelings of how the metamorphosis has been challenging but empowering and painful. It took seemingly too long to get into it.

But gradually, the film drops into the candid and revealing feelings of these musicians/fathers. Be warned, sometimes it’s inarticulate and profane. But in other moments it’s incredibly revealing and tearful. The interestingly poignant observations from this film weren’t necessarily the revealing moments on screen between father and child but were the raw emotions being described by the dad despite the lack of articulation. At one point of the film, you wonder about the sanity of Duane Peters of US Bombs fame. Driving in his beat up old van he looks lost, degenerate, and is barely understandable.

Later in the film, he breaks away from the saturated drug induced euphoria in a strangely focused moment. Talking about his son Chess, he re-creates in vivid detail the day his son was killed in a car accident. Through the slurs and transgressions, you can envision how difficult it was to see his son’s car tore in two with no body left to identify. The harsh reality of his lost son drives him to a suicide mission. He awkwardly revisits the fumbling for his gun and one drug induced fit later he has the firearm in his mouth. In his description of the moment you can feel life slip away through his tears. And before he pulls the trigger, his other two boys find him and save him from himself. Rebounding, he has found peace in what’s left. Life.

In an equally moving moment, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers provides a contradiction of the popular perception of a punk musician. Coming from a family that wasn’t there for him, he’s solely focused on being there for his daughter no matter where in the world he is. And in what may be one of the most revealing comments of the film, he remarks how he didn’t give his children life. Between the joyful tears of appreciating, he murmurs it was his children who gave him life and focus.

At the center of the film is Lindberg, who finds himself torn between the pressures of the band, making a living and being a father to his three daughters. As his priorities are turning, we see him abruptly leave a worldwide tour in progress without informing his bandmates. He flies back to Hermosa Beach to attend the father-daughter dance with his middle daughter who has never had her father to herself. He recognizes that this daughter really needs his undivided focus. During filming, he quits Pennywise so he’ll no longer miss those milestones; birthdays, first days of school, and dances are more important than the next show in Denmark or Japan.

The film was what I had hoped; an intimate portrait of the misunderstood youth now grown and maturing into fathers. It asks what happens when a generation's ultimate anti-authoritarians -- punk rockers -- become society's ultimate authorities – dads. We're all growing and trying to find our identity and our way. I didn't come from a broken home. I wasn't abused. I was a suburban white kid like so many others. And because it was so homogeneous, I struggled with finding my identity and needed to escape to something different. I found skateboarding and punk rock. I felt accepted and part of something that shared my natural interest in questioning and fighting the status quo.



Now where did you go when you grow up? I feel like this film spoke to the misunderstood creative subset of my generation. And while we all had dissimilar upbringing, we share in a belief of changing the world. I think about it a lot now. I’m still idealistically driven but I'm learning how to be a better father every day. It’s not perfect and has flaws but I focus on what my children need to be emotionally successful in their lives. It’s the examples of hard work, being idealistic and being educated to fight for what you believe in. I don't want them to settle but do want them to push themselves, their beliefs, and ways of thinking.

These are punk rock values and are what inspired this blog. These are the lessons of strength and how it’s OK to feel pain and cry then feel joy and laugh.


A lot of people you cross paths with will always ask what you do for a living and gauge how successful are you. Folks will talk about how their job is their calling and may even rub their success, or lack thereof, in your face. They're missing the point; they're missing what it is to be alive. I was at the emotional bottom when Son #1 was born almost seven years ago. And while we may have brought him into this world, he kept me IN this world. He kept me living with a simple thing called hope and that old punk rock concept of changing the world.

I remember being young and wanting to set the world on fire with my ideals. I wanted to change the world. And now what I’m starting to realize is that I can change the world, I can make an influential difference on a system. The way I can change it is by raising better children.

There’s awkwardness and uncertainty that comes with growing up. You feel clumsy, uncoordinated, anxiety ridden and sometimes ugly (depending on your style preferences). And in a strange dichotomy of existence, this happens while we are children, and it reappears once we grow into adulthood. I guess there’s really no beginning or end to the tumultuous path of growth. It’s just buried at times while we’re preoccupied with other aspects of life.

And while it would be easy to blame other factors on this struggle to grow, we’re at the helm of the ship navigating through these stormy times. Even as a child, we’re on the journey. It just isn’t as cerebral as it is now. Take Son #2 for example. Here’s a kid that can be purely angelic depending on how the wind blows through his hair. And on other days, being in the same room as him while he melts down like Chernobyl can be one of the most disturbing moments of your life with no terminal ending in sight.

And while painful to be a part of, especially when other witnesses in the room think your child must have some sort of flaming rod up his ass, imagine for a moment that you’re short of three years old. You can’t effectively communicate these new volatile feelings because you know a limited set of vocabulary and are now becoming aware of your existence and the inadequacy of your speech.

Of course you would be pissed the hell off too. But that doesn’t make it any more palatable as a parent.

Son #2 and I don’t spend even close to the same amount of time together as Son #1 and I did at this age. Could be the context of life, could be the fact that I’m jaded by the horror stories I’ve heard about his behavior and attitude from wife. She’s had the unique and enjoyable ‘opportunity’ to be at ground zero with Son #2 in some of his most colorful of dispositions. So the horrors of Son #2 melt downs have become somewhat legendary. And with legend comes self fulfilling prophecy. I hear the stories, feel the pain and embarrassment, and know I won’t be tolerant of it so I choose to not put myself in those positions.

So, I’m afraid to take him places and this feeds the cycle of spending limited time together. In August, I took both boys to the Museum of Flight. I almost didn’t take Son #2 because it was near lunch time. And because he’s on a hunger strike against lunch and having low blood sugar turns him into an angry honey badger, I kind of felt that this was the recipe for a catastrophic failure on the order of a star imploding in outer space. The funny thing is that the reputation far exceeds the reality. Results in public with Son #2 are generally quite pleasing as long as he gets to sit in the shopping cart, get a pretzel and a slurpee, carry toys that won’t be purchased and not wear a jacket in the rain. The heightened awareness is the awkwardness we get to experience as a parent just waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop with our high maintenance kids.


You’d think I’d get it; and I do. I’m pretty high maintenance. I get a little worked up over things. Now, I’m not so stubborn that I need to ride in a shopping cart and have pretzel fed to me. I suppose I just hate the fact that I get it. We’re pretty similar. I’m learning to be more tolerant with the outbursts and finding out that it’s only a phase and the payoff in getting is super rewarding.

Playing together is becoming more imaginative and I actually get to be involved. Before, I would sit and watch, not participate, and wait for guidance which would never come. Some of that was due to me being apprehensive and not knowing how to manage his ordered style of play. And some of it was him telling me not to touch his toys. But now, there’s the guidance like, “Dad, you use Tow Mater and I use Ightning.” (That’s Lightning for people who can’t speak Son #2’s incomprehensible dialect) But more importantly, there’s the joy of cooperative play and imagination where we both enjoy creating our story.


Conversations are becoming more fun too. While some things are indiscernible, other stories and diatribes are quite colorfully driven with irrelevance and poor grammar. Some of his latest blurbs of incoherence include the following. And truly comprehend the lunacy of the talk, I have added context around how things were said:

While wearing toy-protective goggles so innocently called ‘swim goggles,’ Son #2 ran laps around the living room of our home making splashing noises. After one not-so-unique lap, he places a cup to his ear and utters, “I hear the ocean!” then continues to run/swim.

On a short drive to his grandparents’ house, we quickly passed by a rather small murky pond. Son #2 announces his observation in an authoritative matter, “Alligators in the pond!” Eager to learn more and understand how this conclusion was reach we ask how he knows. And without pause or moment of introspection he retorts, “I heard them splash.” But it doesn’t end there. He continues to explain, “Dolphins too. I heard them splash.” I think we may need to discuss hunting and escaping with our youngest.

Son #2 also likes to weigh with his opinion on food products. On another trip to his grandparents’ house, a small field which once had several large turkeys is now noticeably empty. Spoken like a true Pilgrim, he tells us, “The turkeys are gone. They’re now in turkey sandwiches!” He must have an penchant for fowl. Unlike his older brother, he’s firmly cognizant of the correlation between chickens which cluck and those that have been deep fried. In what can only be described as a Neanderthal-like commentary, Son #2 advised his mother on his poultry philosophy by saying, “I eat those chickens up like this, chomp chomp chomp.”


So life is awkward for both of us. But the comedy along the way makes up for the anxiety that is prematurely cast on life. He’s learning to be a passionate little boy and express himself. I’m learning to be his uncomfortably awkward and involved father.

My writing has been victimized over the last few months due to having an inordinate amount of time spent on other shit. Being so busy has been a concern and is festering like a boil on the ass of my creativity. As I reviewed past entries for inspiration I realized I was coming up on my 100th entry. I thought to myself, “Self, this has to be a big one.” And then after deliberation with myself which could in fact be considered a moderate level of insanity, I concluded that the rule sets of the modern world ‘define’ milestones like this to be big and in need of a parade and a marching band. So in an effort to go against the grain, I won’t make this a ‘big’ entry.

To be honest, I really don’t know what I intended on discussing in this entry. But as I began to write, I started thinking about creativity. This blog has become my medium for letting go. So maybe, writing has taken place of drawing and dissecting music has taken place of writing it. Not that I’m a great novelist, or even a mediocre music connoisseur, but I do find emotional value in creating and communicating, whether that be in visual, verbal, or aural form. So my outward thinking here is that in my ‘chapter,’ I’m less of a visual artist and more philosophically possessed.

In this instance, music is the topic and my yard stick of growth. That’s not saying, ‘Well I used to listen to gangsta rap in suburbia trying to be a thug and now I listen to Celine Dion and have a dozen kids so I am TOTALLY grown up.’ You’re not grown up if you listen to Celine Dion, you’re just misguided. With adulthood, your ears literally and metaphorically grow and are more open to new sounds. That’s the easy definition. While you may be listening to a more open cross section, I believe that there’s still a subset of music that played a central role in your growth, maturation, and development. You always gravitate back it. That’s the more nebulous definition. Taylor Swift or some other pitiful pop star may be what you tap your toe to while you commute to work; you’re still listening to the substance of your life on your MP3 player later in the day.

If I had to compartmentalize the chapters in my life for measurement, I’d have six buckets: 1. The Youthful-Exuberant years. 2. The Adolescent-Angst years. 3. The Confused-Young-Adult-College-Student years. 4. The New-in-the-Workplace years. 5. The City-of-Angels years. 6. The Adult-Sized-Kid-Now-a-Father years. Unfortunately, I would eliminate buckets 1, 3, and 4. While important, their weighting on the emotional scale is less than buckets 2, 5, and 6. These three remaining buckets, I grew and learned the most about who I was. And hypothetically consistent, I was largely creative in these stages. What I really think back on is how I felt in those stages. The confusion, fear, and helplessness stand out in boxes 2 and 5.

And now in box 6, I find a musical gravitational pull back to boxes 2 and 5. Not so much to relive those years but to reassuringly remind me of the climbing process. I never want to forget how fragile I was and that’s the fabric of my existence. So the ‘chapter’ I exist within now is most obviously box 6. And while I’m ‘happy’ or whatever it’s called, I sometimes wish for a connection back to those years to capture that inspiration out of desperation. Enter the music that lends to the gravitational pull. Maybe I’m not as visually creative as I used to be, but I hope that my introspection in written form paints the picture of growth and travel up a long flight of stairs. With any luck, I can impart the process and its value on Son #1 and #2. I hope I convey to them how important it is to ‘feel’ and not be ashamed to communicate it. There’s peace to you can find in music.