Tag Archives: family

When life gives you lemons

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Today, a random stranger pulled a knife on me and my daughter.

Don’t be alarmed now, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, but it was scary. Let me explain.

It’s the last week of my summer vacation. Today, I decided to pick up my daughter at her job in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. My car was double-parked across the street. She came out, jumped into my car, and I drove off. I made a U-turn at the corner to go in the other direction. Just then, a cyclist came careening towards my car like a bat out of hell and barely hit me. I was shocked and concerned that he got injured. I looked outside my car window and saw the cyclist did not get touched. He stopped his bike and looked at me with an angry face. He had a vengeful look in his face. He jumped back on his bike and began cycling towards my car. I drove up towards the traffic light on the next block. He pumped his bike as fast as possible to catch up to my car. At the next corner, he jumped off of his bike, had a look of fury in his face, and reached for something hidden in his pocket. Thinking it was a gun, I immediately applied my foot to the gas pedal to have my car speed off, but the crosswalk was already blocked. He pulled out a six-inch knife, held it in the air, and rushed towards my car tire on the passenger side. He quickly plunged the knife into the tire which completely blew out the tire. Not knowing what to do next, I decided to drive my car, blown tire and all, to the next block and pulled it over to the curb where it would be away from traffic.

Instead of panicking, I decided to be as levelheaded and proactive as possible. My daughter and I were okay, after all. At the urging of a witness, I called the police and filed a report. I then called AAA to help get my tire changed. When the police arrived, I described what had happened and what the suspect looked like. The police asked me to go in their patrol car to help them search for the suspect. I told my daughter to stay behind and wait for the AAA mechanic to come by.

We did not find the suspect during our search, but the police did issue a warrant for his arrest. It is now on record that this individual did such a thing to my car, which can only be a good thing now that it’s on record.

I used this ordeal as a lesson for my daughter. She learned that as citizens of this great city we live in, we have the right to call the police when the situation arises and that there’s a value in having a AAA membership. She also learned that when bad things happen, it’s best to keep a level head.

As soon as I got home, I visited a tire shop and had the punctured tire replaced. I plan on waking up tomorrow morning forgetting that this whole ordeal happened so that I can continue enjoying the rest of my summer vacation.

Life gave us lemons today. The lemonade I made was in the lessons that my daughter learned by being proactive when bad things happen.

I will be your father figure

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When she was in high school, my daughter created a unique art project where she made a graphic map of the people in her life with descriptions of what each of them meant to her. For my description, she wrote, “He’s such a dad”. At first, I was baffled by what she meant, but upon reflection, I realized that it meant that I was everything that a father should be. This made me think about the various acting projects that I was involved in through the years and how I often ended up playing a father in a number of them due to me appearing as the stereotypical dad. As someone who strives to be the best dad that I can be, I was proud to be typecast as a father figure. The following are several film projects that I’ve been in where I played various degrees of ‘dadness’.

Father’s Day Acting Class (2009) – A comedic approach to fatherhood about an acting class tailored to dads who need to convincingly feign delight at the crappy gift that their child just gave them for Father’s Day. Look for my daughter Emma featured at the 1:35 mark.

Maggie (2012) – A dramatic film short produced by an NYU film student for their Sights & Sounds Directing class. This was a dramatic one showing a father’s loss of his child. It was filmed on a snowy day in the dead of winter.

AT&T Commercial (2012) – Catch me portraying the Dad with my real son Hunter at the 26-second mark. Did I appear to be truly concerned about my son’s ‘broken’ arm, or was it just acting?

Miracle Drug (2012) – This music video was filmed by an NYU student as a requirement for his Tisch summer program assignment. It was one of the most heart-wrenching ‘Dad’ films that I’ve worked on.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2013) – I portrayed a father to this young man in a scene in the theatrical production. Throughout filming, he called me ‘Dad’ and I had to remind myself that he was my son that day.

Let Her Go (2014) – After portraying the ‘Dad’ in the Miracle Drug music video, I wanted to create something entirely on my own featuring me and my own daughter Emma. I loved Passenger’s Let Her Go and I wanted to use that touching song for a music video. After a fresh snowfall in the Staten Island Greenbelt, I knew that I had to take advantage of the snowy backdrop that would make a father’s temporary loss of his daughter even more dramatic. My friend, runner, and fellow actor Mark Vogt filmed most of the scenes.

Edge of Eighteen (2018) – When my daughter was a little girl, I knew that one day she would grow up to become a woman. The song, ‘Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon’ kept on playing in my head through the years as she grew. I told myself back then that when she reached adulthood, I would use that song to show her transition from a child to an adult. The inevitability of her becoming a woman emotionally affected me and filming a music video about this transition helped me artistically cope with this change. The beginning scenes where I was featured in were filmed by my brother Aaron.

It’s been fun portraying a father to both fake kids and my real kids. I look forward to working in more productions where I can portray a dad. And when I’m old and grey, I may graduate into playing the stereotypical granddad.

That moment when I was the coolest dad in the world

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This is not my car, but rather a representation of how hopeless I felt when my car was stuck on a hill in the middle of a snowstorm at night with two teenagers under my charge.

Two weeks ago, my son and I and another student who attends his college were caught in a harrowing situation. I was driving up a steep hill toward his college in the middle of a snowstorm (yes, I still question that decision). As we passed just inches away from a car that had just crashed into a roadside barrier due to the weather, I was determined to make it up a hill that seemed to go on forever. Suddenly, as the incline grew even steeper, my car would not go any further and the wheels started skidding in the freshly-fallen snow. My car was now stuck on a steep hill in the middle of a snowstorm at night. I tried to turn it around, which I did, but then two of the wheels on the passenger side got stuck in a drainage ditch at the edge of the road. I reasoned that driving half of the car in the ditch would prevent it from flying out of control down the hill, so I tried to drive the car down the hill with the wheels following along the length of the ditch. My car then got dangerously close to the car that had already crashed. I knew that I had to get myself out of that situation. I asked the boys to leave the car and stay on a safe part of the road, for if something terrible happened while I was driving, I would be the only casualty. I then pumped the gas and the car started flying up the hill in the ditch backward, but would not leave the ditch. The snow was so slippery that the rotating tires on my car were literally burning rubber.  I tried desperately several times to get the car out of the ditch, but to no avail. I then noticed yet another car speed out of control going down the hill. That car then got stuck on the opposite side of the road. The driver came out of his car and did not know what to do. As the driver, my son, and the boy all looked at me sitting in the driver’s seat of my car, I knew that it was time for me to prove myself and to somehow get out of this mess. I kept on pumping more gas and burning more rubber as I desperately turned the steering wheel with hopes of freeing the two wheels that were stuck in the ditch. Finally, through my persistence, the car freed itself from the ditch. But now, it was sitting on a steep snow-covered hill and on the verge of sliding down the incline. Being a skier, I decided that my best maneuver would be to treat my car like a pair of skis. To ski down a very steep hill, I learned to ski perpendicular to the slope while descending it in small increments. I can control the speed of descent this way. I turned the wheels so that they would be perpendicular to the hill, then I applied my foot to the gas with just enough pressure to push the car forward for a few inches as the crunching snow slowed the car down each time. I had to repeat this procedure many times and each time I did that, the car slowly slid down the hill in a zigzag pattern. Finally, I approached the other car that had crashed. With only a few inches of clearance, I was able to miraculously maneuver my car around the other vehicle. After that, I had only 100 or so more yards to get my car to the bottom of the hill and onto a flat road. I asked the boys to direct me to the bottom of the hill as I continued “skiing” in a zigzag pattern with my car. Finally, I made it to the bottom of the hill without incident and then the boys jumped back into the car.

As we drove back to the hotel together in disbelief and with high emotions after what we had just been through, multiple feelings entered my mind; feelings of relief and accomplishment knowing that my quick-witted decisions and persistence helped to avert something very bad from happening.

Over dinner that night, my teenage son told me something that became the epitome of me as a parent; “Dad, I was amazed by what you did”. Just for that one moment, at least to him, I knew that I was the coolest dad in the world.