Rating: 
Summary: Stand-Up Comedy Schtick about Marriage and Fatherhood
Review: Mr. Dale Alderman has written a series of humorous monologues that are the sort you would expect to hear on the comedy club circuit from someone who looks like a normal out-of-shape, middle-aged sports-loving and pretty-woman-ogling guy. Much of the humor depends on your having the author present or seeing a photograph of him. Since the book lacks such a photograph, about half of the book comes across as a rant trying to be funny . . . but pressing a little too hard.Half of the book, however, is delicious in its evocation of what it?s really like to raise two young sons. Since my first two children were sons, those parts really resonated. If the book had only focused on raising those two boys, I would have found the book to be a five-star effort. The rants seem more restrained . . . and tempered by love and understanding . . . when the subject is his sons. I highly recommend these sections. If you have young sons (or had young sons at one time) and stick to these sections, you will probably be delighted with the book: I'll Only Be Gone for a Few Minutes I Should Wear a Cup Ya Better Get This Potty Started Vacations Will Never Be the Same SuperChildren of the Corn The Farmer Cuts the Cheese Happy Father's Day Don't Hit Your Brother with a Stick Strike Three, Strike Four, Strike Five Mine Is Bigger Than Yours Business Travel Sucks Boys and Girls Are Different--Duh You're Just Going to Feel a Little Pressure The School Field Trip I'll Have the Prime Rib with a Side Order of Valium Dad, Can I Ask You a Question? I'm Bored A Letter to My Sons If you decide you like this book, however, make me one promise -- Don't send a copy to any of my children. I may not become a grandfather if you do!
Rating: 
Summary: Down home funny and culturally astute
Review: Okay, as you know, with the advent of Internet publishing houses, the price of vanity publishing has dropped precipitously so now every Tom, Dick and Sally can unleash their memoirs-cum-novels, whatever, on an innocent world and only be out a few grand. So I get a lot of people wanting to send me their opuses. I usually ignore them, but sometimes I bite the bullet and say okay send it, and head for cover. Usually the book is so self-indulgent, so poorly edited, so irrelevant to anybody but the artiste himself, that I rarely get past the second page. Dale Alderman's Being a Dad: The Stuff No One Told Me is different. It's like bending down (for the sake of the exercise) to pick up a penny only to discovered that it's a $10 gold piece (worth several hundred dollars in today's money). I mean, Alderman, for all his low-brow feigning is one very funny, sharp-eyed, socially aware kind of guy. In fact, this is the funniest book I've read in years. Guys making six-figures a pop aren't half as funny. I mean, I have brown stains on my Superdad T-shirt from spurting coffee as I read it. Look, I don't know the guy. He's from Chantilly, Virginia and hangs out in places like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina--I mean, would I go THERE? Not only that but he watches wrestling smackdown on TV and get supersized regularly at McDonald's. Heck, he even has loogie spitting contests with his kids. So, I'm not going to review this in the usual way. Nobody is going to believe how funny this book is anyway, no matter what I tell them. What I'm going to do is give Big Dale some career advice. First, send the pieces out to some fancy mags, the New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, the Paris Review, etc., and just keep sending them. Sure, you'll get rejection after rejection, but sooner or later somebody assistant to the assistant editor is going to actually read one of your tales and is going splatter their cappuccino all over the other manuscripts from laughing and will have to fuss up. This Alderman (yeah, right) is one funny dude even if he thinks that Chuck E. Cheese is high cuisine or that he has videotaped every Baywatch episode ever made or that he has nightmares about Roseanne Barr in a thong. And bingo! some intrepid editor after many, many conferences and much soul-searching is going to get his nerve up and publish one of these. And people are going to love it. And then some Ivy League editor from Random House or Simon and Schuster is going to come hat in hand to iuniverse (how embarrassing) and say, "Uh, look, I know we aren't on speaking terms, but I got a hundred grand that says you'd like to sell me the rights to Hick Alderman's scatological meanderings." Meanwhile, couch potato dad, YOU are on the phone with some New York and Hollywood types who want to do lunch and turn the book into a TV sit-com pilot, and you've got three agents and an indie film producer on hold. Second, when they ask you to water down the...ah, too vividly expressed potty-training jokes and upgrade the strip mall mentality, don't let it happen; but DO put the Barbie Princess Birthday Party piece ("Boys and Girls Are Different--Duh") as the first chapter in the revised edition. It's a painful story, you'll recall, in which asparagus and a tofu birthday cake were served, all in pink, I believe, causing your son Chase, struck with horror amidst all those girls, to whisper in your ear, "Dad, they're aliens! We need to call the Men in Black." What you want to emphasize (for the literary journals) is the biting wit of your socially conscious critique of mid- and low-brow American culture of the early 21st century, which shows up nicely in this piece. Viz: "Have you ever noticed no one talks about [Barbie's boyfriend] Ken's profession?" Although Barbie has had "so many careers, Flight Attendant, Rock Star, Model, Financial Advisor, Chemical Engineer, Nuclear Physicist, Astronaut..." nobody knows that Ken "was a CPA in Arthur Anderson's Houston Office." Furthermore, "Ken doesn't like to talk about how his long-term relationship with Barbie ended. Some people say Barbie had a number of unresolved 'issues' because Ken isn't anatomically correct." The second chapter in the book should be the one on your shrunken underpants. You know, you're at Macy's buying some new "briefs" (ha, ha, ha) that you can actually get into, and you realize you're stuck with the "extra large" variety with "the fine print on the package" reading, "May also be used to sail a 28-foot boat." Third, all the stuff about kids vomiting and you having to change diapers, and Chase sleeping with his police car toy and Logan licking the trash can at Disney World and his Mommy having to tell him, "Yes, I am wearing underpants. No, you cannot see them." Keep it. Keep it all no matter what the money guys say. And all that "Yes, Dear" stuff you have to do with Starla (your wife's name, God love her, you know, the one who refers to you as "Jerkwad"), keep that too. They love that sort of thing on TV. Makes you look like a big, loveable, domesticated Teddy Bear. Finally, whatever you do, NEVER but NEVER let your kids see this. Burn all copies before they get to be teenagers. If any of their friends ever read a word of this, both Chase and Logan will die of egregious shame and will hate you for the rest of your mortal life and all through the hereafter as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny and personal book for dads
Review: The author of "Being a Dad" struck a chord by doing two very simple things: he made a funny book and he made it in a way that it's very easy to relate to. From the very first page the stories will make you laugh so hard, you will see yourself forced to explain your wife what is wrong with you! By the same token, each of the chapters is no more than 4 pages (the approximate attention span you will be able to devote to any reading the first few years after having a baby), and the topics covered in them are not farfetched, but very close to home, making it very easy for new dads to relate to them. All in all, this is not a book on "advice" for new dads, but rather some great and fun reading that will provide you with some very much needed relief during some of those first few sleep-deprived nights the first years of your kids. Most definitely check it out, laugh out loud too and relax when you learn that you are not alone. ;) Disclaimer: I was provided with a reviewing copy of the book by the publisher.
Rating:
Summary: funny&On point from start to finish
Review: this is the kind of Book where you find yourself nodding your head going yep I can relate to that or this.the book deals with family Life&structure in a very real sense but also find Humor in details that come along.this is a Trip Out Book but Highly Well Written&also Makes you Laugh&Nod that you can totally relate.Much Props to the Author.
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