Fame

My Thoughts on the Canning Family Crisis

Rachel Canning – it’s a name everyone in America seems to know by heart already; though less than a week ago none of us knew a thing about her. In a matter of hours that changed and over the following days her name, her father Sean and her mother Elizabeth, have been cast into the spotlight in a way they all probably wish they hadn’t. Believe me, I know what they’re going through. Within the milliseconds it takes social media to work it’s magic, your life is dragged out for everyone on the planet to see. They delve into the deepest corners of your private life, dig up anything they can get their hands on that might be considered newsworthy, and every he-said/she-said that your family has ever been involved in is now a national headline and used to evaluate you from couches and computer screens across the world. Again, … Read the rest…

How Stupid Does Hollywood Think We Are?

I’m making this blog post as a supplemental supporting document to the Media page I created earlier on the website. For those of you who want to know why it’s critically important that you know what you’re signing when you deal with television, take a look at some of the crap contained in the most recent “Appearance Release” sent to me last week by a TV show that wanted us to participate. In the last month we’ve received release requests from the Discovery Channel, the Ricki Lake Show, and the Steve Harvey Show. (Sorry dear wife, still no interest from Ellen DeGeneres.) I’ve learned enough over this last year to know the TV show hosts don’t know diddly about what goes on behind the scenes with their production companies, but in this instance… c’mon. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Steve Harvey, and I can’t think in good … Read the rest…

6 Months, Life Changes

I’m going to start referring to time in BY and AY terms before long. Before Youtube/After YouTube. Who ever could imagine something like a YouTube video would change someone’s life like it has our lives around here. It certainly happens every day all across the world. One individual or another posts something on YouTube that changes their lives forever. I just never thought I’d meet anyone affected in such a way; much less become one of “those” people. lol Well, today it’s official. I’ve been drafted! The editors and staff over at ParentingTodaysKids.com reached out to me awhile back and asked me to consider being a regular columnist. I thought about it for a long time, talked to my wife about it, my friends about it, and I’ve decided to take them up on their offer. I have a lot of people that choose to read what I write, for … Read the rest…

Fan Pages

Ok, so wow, I have fan pages on Facebook. Talk about things I never thought would happen in a million years and THAT is one of them. I’m writing this to explain my actions on Facebook recently where I asked a bunch of supporters to  help me take down some of these fan pages. Some people don’t understand why, and I’m sure the fans themselves probably don’t understand why, so I thought it needed clarification. Without making this a fifteen page blog post, here are the main reasons: 1) Not everyone out there is smart enough to know these aren’t really me. Yes, I’ve actually had people “friend” me there and then ask me in real-life why I never responded to them about something, only to find out it wasn’t me they were talking to anyway. 2) I don’t have time to constantly troll myself, jumping from page to page, … Read the rest…

Friday 10 PM – ABC’s 20/20. Don’t Miss It

It seems I’m destined to be in the news again, though this time hopefully the story will be more complete and less full of controversy and I’ll be in like-minded company… maybe. A few weeks ago a film crew and producers from ABC’s  20/20 came to visit; spending two and a half days to film some b-roll of my family, inundate us with interview questions, and see and what our normal lives are like, how we interact as a family, and what our views are on parenting, traumatic YouTube events aside. This Friday at 10 PM on ABC, the episode will air on television. I just got my glimpse of the footage myself, so like you, I’ll be watching with interest to see how it all turned out.   Previous ABC Coverage This won’t be our first coverage on ABC, but hopefully will be the one to finally move forward … Read the rest…

NBC Today Show – TV Schedule

Ok, I’ve got the info for those of you who are interested in watching the Today Show interview tomorrow. We’ve been bounced all over NYC today and had the opportunity to meet with the producers, etc. I don’t have a lot of time to blog right this moment, but I did want to take the time to share with you what’s going on so you could watch if you wanted to. TV Schedule: The schedule is shown at the actual time here in the US, regardless of the time zone. So if it’s 7:30 AM Eastern, then it will be on NBC west coast at 7:30 AM pacific too. Get it? No need to figure what time it airs in your area. Date: 3/7/2012 (almost 1 month to the day since it all happened) Channel: NBC/ NBC HD Online: NBC is taking questions online for viewers who want to ask … Read the rest…

Time for an Update

Wow… it’s been almost a month and the turn of events our lives have taken were never something we imagined possible only a few short weeks ago. If you’d have told any of us in my family that we’d be known world-wide for something, we would never have believed you. It’s just not something that happens to normal people. Looks like we were wrong about that, I guess. Right after all this happened to us, we were bombarded with media requests, talk show requests, and interview requests on every available medium imaginable. Almost overnight, my daughter and I were tweeted about, Facebooked about, blogged about, written about, and more. We, or more specifically, I, was loved, hated, admired, despised, raised onto a pedestal (way undeserving), and kicked while I was down. We’ve dealt with everything from malicious users posting our home address on the Internet to telephone stalkers, to North … Read the rest…

Response to ABC Network

This is my response to ABC’s newest list of quesitons regarding the video post. Thanks again to ABC Network for sending them!

1.)Your video has been viewed millions of times, was it your intention for it to garner so much attention or was it meant to be shared on a smaller scale?

It was meant for two audiences:

First, it was meant for the Facebook friends she has her own age that thought “Hey, that’s so cool that you stood up to your parent’s that way. That’s awesome!” I wanted them to know in no uncertain terms that she didn’t get away with it.

Read the rest…

Response to Dr. Phil

Two days ago, the NBC Today show with Matt Lauer hosted Dr. Phil via satellite for an interview to gather his response to the YouTube video I’d posted about my daughter, Hannah. To be fair to Dr. Phil, I kind of asked for it. Two days earlier I posted the following on Facebook:

Dr. Phil: You've GOT to have taken a running jump way outside the bounds of sanity 
if you think I'd subject my family to your show. You've called almost EVERY day
and you're now trying to track down my wife at work? Dude... NO. I can save you
the studio expense of flying us out there. Your version is "I'm an
uneducated over-aggressive father who doesn't understand how to raise my kids
and you think my daughter simply MUST require years of intensive therapy for
being subjected to such torture as losing her laptop."
She doesn't need therapy, but she would by the time you finished with her!

Having had the chance to reflect on it a few days, I’ve decided that wasn’t the smartest thing to have said to a national media presence with the education and fan-base Dr. Phil has. Nevertheless, I seem to be learning repeatedly something I’ve been telling people forever; once it’s on Facebook, you can’t take it back. In my defense, people on national television have entire panels of people who are paid to stop them and say “No, you absolutely shouldn’t say that.” I am sans that particular advantage, so I’m just doing the best I can to muddle through.

Read the rest…

Media Response to WSOC-TV: Charlotte, NC

This is a repost of my response to WSOC-TV in Charlotte NC. To see the original post, complete with all the comments, click here.

To Jason Rice from WSOC TV here in Charlotte:
Thanks for addressing your questions in email and thanks for understanding that it took me a couple of hours to get a response together to them. Here are the answers:

1. What is it like knowing that 26.5 million people (as of Friday afternoon) have watched your video?

Answer: It’s still surreal to me and to my family. I had a guy today in the McDonalds drive thru line toss me a thumbs-up from across the parking lot. We have received letters from almost every country on the planet. It’s crazy. I just don’t understand it. A few people have stopped me in the mall or in public as far as 200 miles from home this past week to say hi. Others snap pictures when they think we’re not looking. The online response though… it’s been simply amazing. I had no intention for this to happen and no idea that it possibly could.

Read the rest…

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