Matthew Dicks's Blog

I had a third person inquire about hiring me as a professional best man this week. Unlike the first two, this potential client lives within the United States but on the west coast, making it impossible to serve the duties of the office faithfully.

When I first proposed the idea of a professional best man less than a year ago, I never thought for a moment that someone might take me up on my offer.

Now I’ve had three people serious about hiring me.

It’s another reminder of the importance of putting yourself out there.

Barbara Walters had this to say about the recent TIME magazine cover: 

“This is such a guilt trip for working women.”

Is it naïve of me to suggest that Barbara recall the words of the great Eleanor Roosevelt:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Here’s an idea I’m considering:

Write a blog that examines the youth baseball culture in my town and/or  neighboring towns, with specific emphasis on assessing and critiquing the coaching style and the overall effectiveness and efficacy of the adults involved.

It’s recently come to my attention that although most of the coaches and parent volunteers involved in these organized baseball leagues are skillful at their jobs, a small percentage of coaches should not be working with young people. These are the coaches who take their team’s win-loss record personally and treat this childhood game as if it were their own version of professional ball. They are the screamers and the demeanors, the men who believe that a child will hit a ball more frequently and farther if he or she is made to feel rotten about each and every strike out.   

It occurred to me that parents might want to know who these coaches are. They may want to know which coach berates his players on a regular basis and which coach circumvents the league rules in order to play only his best players in the playoffs.

Apparently there are also a number of backroom deals taking place at the beginning of each season that allows for certain teams to be stocked with the league’s best players year after year while other teams are comprised almost exclusively of less inexperienced, less effective ballplayers.   

Not only would this be good information for parents to possess before deciding if their child should join a league or team, but I would love the opportunity to explore the motives behind a man who is willing to manipulate the system in order to ensure that his team of twelve-year old boys competes for the championship each year.

I’d also very much like to expose these jerks for who they really are.

But is this something that parents would bother to read before deciding upon leagues and teams?

While I’m at it, I might also want to address the behavior of umpires working in these leagues, at least if the umpire in the video below in any indication of the kind of men umpiring Little League games. If it were my son who had just struck out and been greeted by this umpire’s third strike call, it would’ve taken all my self control to not walk over to home plate and punch the guy in the face.

My three-year old daughter, Clara, and her younger friend, Ella were playing upstairs while the adults were chatting downstairs. I was sitting at the top of the staircase, listening to ensure that neither of the kids jumped out a window or set their underwear on fire.

My daughter asked Ella to take off her shoes so she could jump on the bed with her.

“My mommy said I have to leave my shoes on,” Ella said.

“But your mommy isn’t here,” Clara replied. “You can take them off.”

I couldn’t believe it. Mt daughter was attempting to corrupt someone younger then her.

I was both horrified and a little proud of my little girl in that moment.

I’m not sure where this bit of dialogue originates. I saw it posted on Twitter and immediately fell in love with it.

It encapsulates an enormous part of my life philosophy perfectly:

“Life is too short,” she complained, “I want more.”

He grinned, “Wake up earlier.

I have always secretly hoped that someday we would discover that plants are just as sentient as animals, and as a result, all the ethical vegans of the world would be forced to come to terms with the fact that when it comes to food, they are no less murderous than cow and chicken eating people like me.

With the remarkable discovery that plants have a sense of smell, we have taken an enormous step in that sentient direction.

Brace yourself, my vegan friends, We may soon discover that plants are capable of playing chess and debating the merits of a Parliamentary government.

As I kissed my daughter goodnight and exited the bedroom, my wife offered to sing her customary song before following me downstairs.

“No, Mommy,” Clara said. “No song. Let’s talk.”

“You want to talk?” Elysha asked, unsure if she had heard correctly.

“Talk to me for a while, Mommy,” my three year old requested.

Did my daughter just take her first tiny step toward womanhood?

  

Is it wrong for me to assume that anyone who is still using a tanning bed on a regular basis, after all the evidence linking tanning to skin cancer, is clearly plagued by issues related to poor self esteem, feelings of worthlessness and a lack of self concept?

Is there any other reason why a reasonably intelligent person would risk skin cancer in order artificially darken his or her skin tone?

Mind you, these are not people who fail to reapply sun screen after two hours in the sun or forget to wear a sun hat to the beach. These aren’t even people who forget the apply sunscreen altogether. This is not a case of carelessness or laziness.

These are people who pay money to purposefully fry their skin under concentrated UV lamps because they believe that others will think better of them, or they will think better of themselves, if their skin is darker than their natural skin tone.

It sounds insane. Doesn’t it?

In discussing this with my wife, she compared the dangers of tanning to that of smoking, and while I agree that both carry great risk, I think there is an important difference between the two:

Though smoking is exceptionally dangerous for your health, cigarettes are also highly addictive. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. Yes, smoking is a stupid thing to do, but quitting the habit can be exceedingly difficult.

Quitting tanning is as simple as deciding that your natural skin color is acceptable and that you need not to be browner than most in order to feel good about yourself.

This is not a case of addiction. It’s simply a case of placing one’s vanity ahead of one’s health.

It’s sad and stupid. Right?

I’ve heard a lot about hate reading and hate watching over the past week.

In case you aren’t familiar with the terms, hate reading is the idea that a reader can despise a book and everything it stands for but still find pleasure in reading it all the way through.

Please note that this is very different from reading a book that you expected to love but did not. Hate reading is actively choosing to read a book that you expect to despise under the premise that you will enjoy hating it.

For example, I know several people who have told me that they are reading 50 SHADES OF GRAY for this very reason.

The same concept has been applied to television as well. This week, for example, Slate’s Stephen Metcalf acknowledged that he has been watching The Bachelor for years and explained that it is his hate watch.

I have been thinking about the concept of hate reading and hate watching and have arrived at a conclusion. Specifically, if you are in the business of hate reading or hate watching, I believe that you probably fall into one of two categories:

You are utilizing the concept of hate reading or hate watching to conveniently explain your consumption of content that you genuinely enjoy but consider beneath your typical standards of good taste. It is a dishonest and hypocritical attempt to mitigate any potential embarrassment over the pleasure that one is garnering from what he or she has deemed low brow content.
You have far too much free time on your hands. If you have hours to spend reading or watching content that you knowingly despise, you should seriously reconsider the way in which you are utilizing the precious minutes of your life. With all the great literature and film in this world, it strikes me as idiotic to spend even a minute consuming content that you know you will hate.

Despite my position on hate watching, my wife and I  inadvertently hate watched a show this week called America’s Got Talent. Before switching over to Mad Men on the DVR, we caught about 45 seconds of the show, which turned out to be about 35 seconds longer than we should have given this piece of trash. We watched a troop of mimes and a guitarist get booed off the stage by an exceedingly angry audience and immediately felt like we needed to take a shower.

But it left me wondering how anyone could spend even a minute hate watching something with so much great film and television available, especially now that it’s possible to watch almost any television program or film ever produced from the comfort of your couch, and with the touch of a button.

I simply cannot accept that someone would read page after page or watch episode after episode of content that they loathe without also thinking that choice either utterly stupid or a pathetic attempt to mitigate embarrassment over something they love but feel they shouldn’t.

Either admit that you genuinely enjoy The Bachelor, Stephen Metcalf, or acknowledge that your life is so empty of meaningful pursuits that you have the kind of time on your hands to watch a television show that you genuinely despise.

Two days ago my daughter took a rather hard lined (and hilarious) approach to the animals in her book while putting them to bed.

Just one day later, her position had eased considerably.