Teaching a Daddy Class

Wow, two posts back to back. Crazy, right? I wanted to talk about this online class I’m teaching for new Dads. April 9th it starts and goes once a week for four weeks. And if you can’t make the live times obviously you can listen to them later. It’s the internet. You can do whatever you want.

Here’s the page: http://www.entheosacademy.com/courses/Pacify-Me

When the company approached me my initial reaction was... No. This feels like self-help scammy nonsense and I don’t want to be a part of it. It’s only $100 bucks but only $50 if you register early. Still, I wasn’t sold.

But then they said something that changed my mind. They said the most important thing is to get the information out there, and if people can’t afford the tuition they can take the class for free. With no upsell on timeshares or Amway products.

Then it started sounding good to me. Honestly, I want people to be good Dads. When I was about to become a father, I had no idea what I was doing, and no one to talk to about it. That’s why I wrote my book, Pacify Me. And that’s why I’m doing this class, and I’ll be answering questions directly from the students. (I almost said audience) Getting my jobs confused…

Am I a parenting expert like Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears? Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is that guys (and gals) need dude to dude or dude to lady honesty about what it’s going to be like to have a child, and how your life is going to change. And personally, I think that information is invaluable. You can always buy books or talk to your doctors about the practical and medical stuff.

So sure, I want people to pay for the class but I agree with the Entheos Academy--it’s more important to get the information out there. If you need it, I want you to have it.

So see you in class. Someone please bring me a jpeg of an apple.

Pacify Me Book Update

First off, I'd like to thank all the Bloggers for their support and help getting the word out. You guys all rock.

http://wheelsonthebus.wordpress.com/
http://www.babyonbored.blogspot.com/
http://www.mommywantsvodka.com/
http://notnani.blogspot.com/
http://ourmilkmoney.com/

With more to come! Want to get in on the action? Have a blog or a website with (ahem) some modest traffic and want to review the book? Let me know. E-mail me (click the Monty Python image on the right) and I'll see if I can make some arrangements.

Also, if you want a book SIGNED AND PERSONALIZED you can buy it from Comedy Film Nerds.

www.comedyfilmnerds.com/mancini_pacifyme

You can have it made out to whoever you want, and whatever you come up with it won't be weirder than anything that's already been submitted from "World's Best Dad", "Worst Dad Ever" to "The Lone Horseman of the Apocalypse" Be creative!

Thank you, Internet.

PS The Blogger Spellcheck didn't recognize the word "Bloggers". Nice.

My Book PACIFY ME is out now!

It was quite a day for me on Tuesday. My book, PACIFY ME, A HANDBOOK FOR THE FREAKED OUT NEW DAD came out. May 12th, the release date. So I put Griffin in the car and drove to Borders Books. I had to see it for myself.

I walked in and immediately looked at the new released. Surely it would be in the center, right? Non-fiction? Check. OK, not there.

So I started looking around for myself. There were no employees with all the cutbacks everyone is making. It was a two floor Borders and I think there was only one person per floor, and they looked annoyed. Like me.

Finally I asked someone who looked like they were trying to avoid me where the parenting section was. I found it and looked for my book. Nope. OK, time to look for help. Let’s see: no one, no one, no one, a tumbleweed, OK, a bored girl stocking a shelf. Great. She looked up the book and found it. She brought me to the parenting section and looked. It wasn’t there. She looked perplexed. “Maybe it’s in the back,” she said and went into “the back” to look for it.

She may have gone into “the back” but she didn’t “come back”. I waited and waited and Griffin was getting fidgety. So I went to the bargain books and found a kids book with big alien faces and googly eyes. 10 moth old heaven. He loved it so I brought it to the register to pay for it.
There was a long line. When I say long, I mean there was one person in front of me that seemed to be reading the dictionary to the one cashier on duty. Well, if the girl was lost in the “back” that only left one other employee to run the rest of the store. So I had to wait. Impatiently. Finally when this idiot in front of me finished his two hour transaction, and as I was about to check out, the lost back room stock girl found me. She held my book in her hands. She said to me “It was under a lot of crates. I had to really dig to find it.”

Great. My book was buried, and not even in the part of the store with the actual customers. But then I was already in line and this girl did go to a lot of effort to get the book. So I felt a bit guilty. So… I bought the book. Yes, I ended up paying full price for my own book. It was a weird feeling. It filled me with a mix of pride and stupidity.

Now, the publisher told me release dates for books are not like movies. In fact, my release date was moved up so the bookstores could have time to get the book out and on a father’s day display-- WEEKS later. Unless of course you’re Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling. Then release dates are kinda like movies. And I think this is a good thing. Slowly, books are getting outmuscled by movies, television, the internet, and video games. So when there is a big event for a book being released it’s awesome because it reminds everyone that hey, books are cool, cheap, and the best entertainment for your brain. Come on back. They miss you. Oh, and if you don’t see MY book on the shelf, please ask for it. I’m sure it’s in the building somewhere.