A Dad of Daughters on the Twilight Phenomenon

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Thursday, November 19 2009 23:49 Written by Joe Schatz

On the eve of New Moon, I have been inspired to voice my opinion on the Twilight series as it pertains to a dad (a stay-at-home dad at that) raising three daughters. This post is one of a series of posts from other dad bloggers as part of The "Twilight" Dad Bloggers Experiment over at Dad Blogs. First, let me begin by saying my daughters are young (9, 7, 4) and they have not seen the movie nor read the books in the Twilight series. As far as censoring what my daughters see, we don’t let them read books that aren’t age appropriate or see movies and TV shows that contain subject matter that is of PG-13 or greater in nature. As they grow up the question will be, what is my role as a dad in guiding them through the possible pitfalls that the teenage years present? Is Twilight one of those possible pitfalls?

My wife and I saw the movie and many of our neighbors (mostly moms and one teenage girl) have read the book. What we have learned about the series over the last several months is that Twilight has its good points and bad points as well. Overall, the message is of dark, vampiric/werewolf teenage love. The themes include the feeling of being an outsider as a girl and the awkwardness of the teenage years. More disturbingly, one of the bigger messages is that a unsuccessful and abusive relationship are OK.

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Tyra Show Update

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Thursday, November 12 2009 23:53 Written by Joe Schatz

So, a long awaited Tyra update.  A lot of people have been asking what it was like? Two words—nerve racking. Not simple walking on stage and seeing the audience, not just waiting for hours in a green room—the entire experience.

Tuesday before the Wednesday Taping

Tuesday, the day before our trip to NY City, I waited for my book to arrive. I needed the book for the appearance on the show and I was promised it was on its way and at my post office the day before. The only problem—when the mail came the book did not. I was bookless and freaking out. I had promised the Tyra Show a book and I didn’t have it. After hours of tense conversations with my publisher and my local post office I found out that the publisher inexplicably shipped the book to the wrong address—a non-existent one at that. So, the day I was expecting my book was actually the day it was returning back to the printer. I was told there was a chance the book could be shipped overnight, priority to the show’s studio, but it was a long shot.

After running chess club at my daughter’s school and taking the kids to twenty different activities I came home to find out that option 2, overnighting the book, wasn’t a possibility either. One more option was to print a copy of the cover via Kinkos and have it slipped over a similar sized book. I ran that option by the Tyra Show and they said, thankfully, that if I send them a jpeg of the cover they could run with that instead. Score! This was around 9:00pm Tuesday evening and we were about to leave around 6:30am the next morning for New York. I was super relieved—that is until the next morning.

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