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Shaq Makes Surprise Appearance During First Grade Class’ Video Chat

By Mark Chalifoux
Shaq Crashes Video Chat
(YouTube/Making Movies Jealous)

We’re entering a new era of remote learning for kids, which will be interesting, to say the least.

But this is a brave new world we’re living in, so you have to approach it with a measure of understanding and unpredictability. Like, maybe your first-grader will be in a video chat with his class, and the session will be interrupted by an NBA legend.

Yup, Shaquille O’Neal, decided to surprise everyone in the online classroom by popping in to say and encourage students to be good and listen to their parents.

It was a surprise even the teacher wasn’t expecting. And it’s not too long into the video before some of the parents realize what’s happening, and jump on the video to confirm it.

Apparently, Shaq is friends with the family of one student, so he decided to hop into the class to surprise everyone.

As kids transition to online learning, there will be hurdles for everyone to clear. But, hey, you might also run into a Shaq along the way.

But sadly he’s no longer growing out his hair.

Skydiver’s Lost Prosthetic Leg is Returned by a Local Farmer

By Yael Meshulam
Skydiver’s Lost Prosthetic Leg is Returned by a Local Farmer
(Facebook/Chris Marckres)

There’s a lot to think about (read: worry about) when going skydiving. Is your parachute going to open, or did you somehow accidentally grab a random backpack instead? Did you eat too much beforehand? Are all of your limbs going to stay attached while you’re flailing around in free fall? For most of us, maybe that last one is nothing more than a flash of irrational panic as your brain scans through every horrible possibility while coming to terms with the fact that you’re about to jump out of a moving plane. But for Chris Marckres of Vermont, being a double amputee meant that he was just slightly more likely than the rest of us to lose track of a limb mid-air. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened during his very first jump last Saturday.

Marckres was tandem skydiving, which means he was safely strapped to an instructor to ensure that his first jump went (mostly) as planned. Even the most experienced instructor probably wouldn’t have imagined that one of Chris’s prosthetic legs would have detached during the jump – in fact, Chris himself didn’t even realize that his leg was missing until he landed.

Prosthetics are expensive and take time to replace, so with fading hope, Chris put out a social media post explaining his peculiar predicament in the hopes that someone might stumble upon his missing leg. In a shocking turn of events, a farmer named Joe Marszalkowski messaged Chris with some incredible news – the missing leg had been found, New Balance sneaker and all.

In a Facebook post, Chris shared his good fortune. The post read, “Just got a message from Joe Marszalkowski that he found my leg. 9500 foot drop and it’s 100% intact. I can not even begin thank everyone enough that has been involved with the search. You all have shown me there are still so many good people. Thank you all again, especially Joe.”

Chris Leg
(Facebook/Chris Marckres)

Nobody was more surprised than Chris that, against all odds, his leg had been safely recovered. “About the time Joe messaged me saying he had located my prosthetic, I had been coming to terms with the fact it was most likely not going to be found,” Chris told The Dad. “I was beyond excited to have it returned, and equally surprised it wasn’t damaged at all.”

After seeing Chris’s post on Facebook, Joe discovered the lonely leg in his soybean field. Fortunately, he had diligently kept an eye out – had any machine come in contact with it, the leg surely would have been destroyed.

This experience hasn’t turned Chris off of skydiving. In fact, he told The Dad that he anticipates completing more jumps in the future. And if anything like this ever happens again, the people on social media are always willing to lend a hand – or in this case, a leg.

Ben Stiller, Jon Cryer Auditioned for a Very Different Back to the Future

By Mike Julianelle
Alternate Back to the Future
(Universal Pictures)

Near-miss casting decisions are a fascinating experiment in alternative history. What if Tom Selleck had been able to get away from Magnum P.I. and play Indiana Jones? What if Robert Redford had starred in the Graduate? What if Eric Stoltz had played Marty McFly.

Well, Stoltz actually did play Marty McFly for about three weeks, before the people behind Back to the Future realized it wasn’t working and Michael J. Fox stepped in.

Turns out that Stoltz wasn’t the only future star to miss out on one of the biggest movies of the 80s. The 35th anniversary of Robert Zemeckis’s time-travel-sci-fi comedy is approaching, and with it comes a Blu-Ray box set complete with deleted scenes and auditions from a variety of well-known actors, including Jon Cryer (Pretty in Pink, and Two and a Half Men) and Ben Stiller (of half of the biggest comedies of the past 20 years.

Amblin Road, a website dedicated to Steven Spielberg (who produced BttF), tweeted out the news about the box set and those auditions.

Stiller responded, having apparently forgotten about his audition, which came a few years before he broke out on Fox with The Ben Stiller Show.

Jon Cryer, who made his name in 80s teen comedies before having a hugely successful run on Two and a Half Men, also chimed in about his audition, which apparently also wasn’t great:

Cryer also divulged some info about the original script of the movie, it originally opened with Marty playing something different with his guitar and closed differently too. It also didn’t yet feature the iconic DeLorean but did feature a sequence that Spielberg later repurposed, to much notoriety, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Dad Shares 14-Yr-Old’s Comics and the Internet Loves Them

By Yael Meshulam
Dad Shares 14-Year-Old’s Comics and the Internet Loves Them
(Instagram/jakes_door_comics)

It’s a proud moment for parents when kids develop a passion for their hobbies and work hard to improve their skills. Hanging their pictures around the house or sharing poems with family and friends is a great way to encourage and support them, but it’s not often that thousands of strangers also take an active role in cheering on a kid’s creativity. When 14-year-old Jake started drawing impressive and hysterical comics on the whiteboard on his bedroom door every night, Jake’s dad David thought that others might enjoy them too. David began sharing Jake’s comics online, and anyone who has ever thrown content into the abyss that is the internet knows it’s not easy to win over the self-proclaimed content connoisseurs – but Jake’s comics clearly struck a chord.

With nearly 15,000 Instagram followers and counting, Jake’s comics are a hit. The 14-year-old initially used his whiteboard to share a “word of the day” with his family, but soon grew tired of searching for interesting vocabulary. Jake’s whiteboard soon became a place for doodles and comics, which caught his dad’s attention. These comics were not the scribbles and questionable jokes one might expect from a teen – they were delightfully funny, impressively drawn, and highly entertaining.

Jake told Bored Panda about the origins of his Instagram page. He recalled, “My dad took pictures of them, and once we got around 50, my dad asked for permission to put them on an Instagram page. I was reluctant at first, but I gave my dad the green light to put the comics up. The page got 10,000 followers in two days, and I drew comics on the whiteboard more frequently. And that’s how it all began!”

The comics are entirely products of Jake’s active imagination, and while the drawing process is quick, the ideas themselves take time to develop. Jake explains, “I’ll have an idea for a comic, think, ‘Hey that’s actually a good idea,’ and write it down on a sticky note for future use.”

Jake’s dad has posted over 150 of his comics so far, and his daily drawings are added frequently. Check out Jake’s Instagram for his full catalog of work, and enjoy some of our favorites below!

On wishful thinking

Jake comic 3
(Instagram/jakes_door_comics)

Finding loopholes

Jake comic 2
(Instagram/jakes_door_comics)

Incredible advertising

Jake Comic 1
(Instagram/jakes_door_comics)

And questionable decisions

Jake comic 4
(Instagram/jakes_door_comics)

Netflix Has a New Jurassic World Animated Show and Unsurprisingly, Dinos Escape

By Mark Chalifoux
Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous
(YouTube/Netflix)

The Jurassic World movies, much like its predecessors, may not be the easiest entry point for kids into dinosaurs. But Netflix is producing a new animated show aimed for the younger demographic that’s premiering this fall. “Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous” drops in mid-September but we have a trailer now. That trailer is…pretty badass, actually.

So maybe not aimed for the littlest of kids, as even the trailer seems pretty intense. But if you have tweens, this could be right up their alley. According to the Netflix release, JW:CC will follow a group of “six teenagers chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime experience at a new adventure camp on the opposite side of Isla Nublar.” And natch, because it’s Jurassic World, the dinosaurs that were very controlled became less so, and take over.

The formula may be a little standard but guess what, it’s worked for a whole bunch of movies so far, so there’s no reason it can’t work here. Let’s all forget the obvious shortcomings of the parents who would send their kids to an “adventure camp” that is not only full of dinosaurs, but that has also never been run before and only has a total of six attendees (so many red flags there you have to really hate your kids to ignore them).

Netflix is planning for 8 episodes of Camp Cretaceous and, supposedly, they are aimed at ages of all users. The show is set during the same time period as the Jurassic World movie and it marks the first TV series in the Jurassic franchise.

Father Figures: Best Dada

By Mike Julianelle

“My husband has been such an amazing source of support through our pregnancy and the first three months with our son.

Things haven’t been the easiest for us. Don’t get me wrong, lots of people have it worse, but I’m a big believer that one persons problems do not negate another’s.

After a miscarriage, we were lucky to get pregnant again after a few months. He helped me so much with all my anxiety during that first trimester. Then, I was on bed-rest for the last 7 weeks of my pregnancy and ultimately induced at 37 weeks due to gestational hypertension.

My husband did everything for me during that time and never complained. When our son was born at the start of this pandemic, knowing he was the only support person I could have in the hospital, he really stepped up and woke up with me for every feeding, washed pump parts, and got me cookies from the cafeteria whenever I asked.

He’s helped with everything from day 1. Just this week I tested positive for Covid-19 after going back to work in a high risk environment. Going back to work was hard enough, but this has been my biggest nightmare come true with a three-month-old at home. Thankfully, my husband tested negative and he has been doing everything to care for our little man and me as safely as possible.

I feel so blessed to have him to get through these hard times together, and as much as I hate having to social distance from my own family, it’s been a joy to see them bond even more during this time. He’s an amazing husband and the best ‘Dada’ our little man could ever have.”

– Alyssa Johnson

Want to share a story about fatherhood? Email [email protected]

Check out the previous editions of Father Figures here.

NASA Dads’ SpaceX Mission Was a Splashing Success

By Yael Meshulam
NASA Dads’ SpaceX Mission Was a Splashing Success
(Twitter/NASA)

If ever there was a time to take a vacation from Earth, now would be ideal. For nearly two months, astronauts and dads Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley have been soaking up the atmosphere in the International Space station after being the first astronauts in history to travel to space in a commercially-built capsule. NASA hired both Boeing and SpaceX to build spacecrafts that can transport astronauts between Earth and the International space station, and SpaceX’s first mission was a success.

Not only was SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule the first privately-built capsule NASA sent to orbit, but it was the first time since 1975 that any American space crew had utilized a water landing, otherwise known as a splashdown. NASA and SpaceX staff weren’t the only ones counting down the minutes until the Dragon Endeavour’s return.

“I’m happy you went into space, but I’m even happier that you’re coming back home,” Hurley’s son Jack told him early Sunday morning.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, Daddy, wake up! Don’t worry, you can sleep in tomorrow. Hurry home so we can go get my dog!” Behnken’s son Theo exclaimed, which just goes to show that if you promise your kid a dog, even going to space for a while isn’t going to make them forget.

On Sunday, after a 21-hour voyage from the International Space Station, the two Astronaut dads splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico. The landing went mostly as planned, with the capsule deploying four large parachutes to slow its descent to 15 miles per hour for landing. There was a small delay caused by toxic nitrogen tetroxide fumes around the exterior of the capsule, which was caused by one of the spacecraft’s fuels – fortunately, the crew was able to clean the fuel tanks without much trouble. The capsule was pulled from the water by a crane and set down on a boat nearby where staff was waiting to help the astronauts out of the spacecraft.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was thrilled by the success of the mission. He explained that the Crew Dragon endeavor signified “a new era of human spaceflight where NASA is no longer the purchaser, owner and operator of all the hardware. We are going to be a customer, one customer of many customers in a very robust commercial marketplace for human spaceflight to low Earth orbit.”

That’s one small step for dads, one giant leap for dadkind.

You’ll Relish This Limited Edition Mustard Beer Collaboration

By Mike Julianelle
Mustard Beer

Beer culture has exploded over the past decade, with countless breweries springing up, and all sorts of different varieties of beers becoming available. I had a friend who made a Habanero beer – but he took the heat out of the pepper so it just kept the flavor. It was… not my favorite, but I was impressed at his ability to turn anything into beer, even if that anything wasn’t always my favorite thing.

The people at French’s Mustard would have been impressed too, judging by the fact that they recently did something similar.

On August 1, aka National Mustard Day, the people at French’s released a beer they’d made in collaboration with Oskar Blues Brewing. And yes, it’s a mustard beer, flavored with everyone’s favorite condiment (for real, I even put mustard on my BLTs don’t @ me).

The Oskar Blues website describes the beer as “a semi-tart tropical wheat beer infused with citrus fruits to compliment French’s Classic Yellow Mustard. The flavor includes hints of key lime, lemon, tangerine and passionfruit to create a tart, refreshing match for the spice and zip of the mustard.”

Per the press release, Oskar Blues head brewer Juice Drapeau recommends pairing the ale with a “loaded hot dog on the hottest day of the year.” Perhaps while watching a baseball game from the comfort of your living room – while the games last! Of course, if you’d rather eat your mustard, French’s is also offering some recipes in which your limited edition beers can be employed, like Mustard Beer Basted Sausages with Onions.

If you’re brave enough to give it a shot, this limited edition beer is available in cans via CraftShack, or in person at select Oskar Blues Brewery taprooms in Colorado (Boulder and Longmont) and North Carolina (Brevard) while supplies last.

HBO Doc Explores Mental Health Struggles of Olympic Athletes

By Mike Julianelle
Weight of Gold Trailer
(YouTube/HBO)

The Olympics was supposed to be this August, but like so many things, COVID-19 put the kibosh on the summer games. Men and woman all over the world dedicate their lives to qualifying and performing in the Olympic Games, and now they’ll have to wait for them to resume.

They’ll surely spend the additional time training, as they’ve bee doing for years. It’s not an easy road, it requires extreme physical conditioning and intense mental stamina. For many, especially those competing in the lesser-known, less commercial sports, the Olympics are their one shot at and brush with fame. The experience takes its toll.

A new HBO documentary, The Weight of Gold, explores the mental toll the Olympics take on many of the athletes, with a focus on the red-hot spotlight they are under during the games, and the sudden darkness in which they’re left when those two weeks are over.

Featuring interviews with Olympic legends Michael Phelps, Shaun White, Bode Miller, and more, in which they discuss the depression that comes with the abrupt transition out of the spotlight, the documentary is now available on HBO and HBO Max.

Check out the trailer:

Dad Helps His Daughter With Her Tricks

By The Dad