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" Long before he became a father, Hank Azaria was badgering his friends with questions about fatherhood. Not that he loved kids, or even particularly liked being around them. He was just obsessed with what it was like to have them. &amp;quot;I was driving everybody crazy,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;d be like, &amp;#039;What&amp;#039;s wrong with you? Who gives a shit?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; He started filming his interrogations, with friends like Mike Myers, Bryan Cranston, and Kevin Bacon, with an eye toward making a documentary. But then, midway through, Azaria\u2014best known for voicing Chief Wiggum, Moe, Apu, and other Simpsons characters\u2014got some news. His girlfriend (now wife) announced she was pregnant. &amp;quot;So it went from &amp;#039;Should I have kids?&amp;#039; to &amp;#039;Now what the fuck do I do?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; he says. The result\u2014besides Azaria&amp;#039;s son, Hal\u2014is the new web series, Fatherhood. It&amp;#039;s a great show, though maybe not for the reasons Azaria, had hoped. The main thing we learn is that celebrities are terrible at giving meaningful advice, and that it&amp;#039;s fun watching them try. &amp;quot;The phases will drive you up the fucking wall,&amp;quot; says Bacon. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ll be like, &amp;#039;I cannot take the, whatever it is, the colicky phase, the diaper phase.&amp;#039; And they keep going\u2026 they pass... this too shall pass.&amp;quot;  That&amp;#039;s not selective quoting, either. Myers says having a kid is like falling in love every day. Cranston says you discover a love unlike anything you&amp;#039;ve felt before, but also a fear. Only Tim Robbins\u2014who points out that children aren&amp;#039;t evil, merely insane\u2014spares us the platitudes. I could do better than that, I kept thinking as I watched the show. I&amp;#039;m a father of a five-year-old, after all. Then I started to think, Hey, I will do better than that. Here, then: my better parenting tips for Hank Azaria. 1. HYGIENE A few months into shooting his series, Azaria discovered, on the same day his dog died, that his girlfriend was pregnant. Viewers of the show are witness to the very moment of discovery, as a stunned Azaria is handed the pregnancy test stick. Advice: First of all, avoid handling pregnancy test sticks, due to the fact that people tend to pee on them. Second, bodily waste is going to start being an issue. Between the baby&amp;#039;s birth and second birthday, you will leave the house on at least one occasion unaware that there is human excrement on your trousers. So don&amp;#039;t make matters worse from the get-go.  2. WORRY Azaria&amp;#039;s son had to be delivered by C-section ten weeks early, and was dangerously underweight. Luckily, the boy is now fine. &amp;quot;That was enough worry for a lifetime,&amp;quot; Azaria says. &amp;quot;If I could go back in time and talk to me five years ago, I&amp;#039;d say, &amp;#039;You&amp;#039;ll be so grateful that your kid is healthy, you&amp;#039;ll put up with anything.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Advice: Don&amp;#039;t kid yourself. You will never stop worrying about your kid. In fact, you will become adept at concocting ever more imaginative ways for him to meet his end. This will become a kind of involuntary hobby, conducted mainly in the dead of night while your child is choking quietly in his bed. The only thing to do is to write these terrible thoughts down, then try to sell them to Eli Roth. 3. CODDLING &amp;quot;When I see my kid get rejected in the playground,&amp;quot; Azaria says, &amp;quot;I have to lie down for a week.&amp;quot;Healso admits to a failure to discipline his child at appropriate moments, and to being too easily cajoled into playing when all he wants to do is look at his iPhone. He says his own father wasn&amp;#039;t a particularly enthusiastic parent, and fears he may have swung too far the other way, with the praise and indulgence. Advice: Coddling is a funny word. Say it: coddling. But it&amp;#039;s not so funny when you&amp;#039;re doing it to your child. It&amp;#039;s okay to imply from time to time that your child is somewhat lacking in the looks and intelligence departments. It&amp;#039;s also vital to let him know you are a figure of authority. Of course, the days when we could go three rounds of bare-knuckle boxing with a naughty child are over, so discipline should be imposed by way of calm negotiation. Tell children, say, that for every pea left on their plate, they lose a little piece of your love. 4. INADEQUACY Azaria is finally coming to terms with the idea that there is no such thing as a perfect father. &amp;quot;Like anything, parenting takes practice; sometimes you have to break a few eggs,&amp;quot; he says. He goes on to stress that he doesn&amp;#039;t mean it&amp;#039;s okay to allow your kids to get, you know, smashed\u2014merely that &amp;quot;a big part of this is about not trying too hard to do everything right.&amp;quot; Advice: Mistakes are inevitable. You will pick your child up from school one day and arrive home to discover you&amp;#039;ve picked up the wrong child. You will finally buy him the scorpion he wants for his birthday. And, because of the sheer number of details involved in child-rearing, you will forget things. Is 105 degrees the right temperature for a baby&amp;#039;s bottle, or the point in a fever when you should rush him to the hospital? Who knows?  5. LIFESTYLE CHANGES &amp;quot;Kevin Bacon talked about how people would always say, &amp;#039;Your life is going to change,&amp;#039; and that pissed him off, because he liked his life. Well, so did I.&amp;quot; Among some of the things Azaria misses now that he&amp;#039;s a father: &amp;quot;We used to lie in bed and watch golf and have sex and take naps.&amp;quot; Advice: Yes, we miss out on the golf, sex, and naps, but this can be replaced by other invigorating pastimes\u2014like feverish, teary-eyed yearning for golf, sex, and naps. More troubling, perhaps, is the fact that the lifetime of work we&amp;#039;ve put into trying to be cool is suddenly wasted. Try walking along the street with spring in your step and an unsightly smear on your pants. Can&amp;#039;t be done. Move on. Fatherhood premiered on January 15, on AOL On and mom.me. A new episode goes live every Wednesday through March. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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