Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 118

Why I didn’t love The Lion King

My family and I went to see The Lion King on Broadway,

I didn’t love it.

I know… I’m such a jerk. It’s an utterly beloved show. The audience roared in applause as the curtain closed to end the show.

But no. I didn’t love it.

Here’s my problem with The Lion King musical:

It’s Hamlet. It’s clearly modeled after Hamlet and in many ways honors many of Shakespeare’s plot points. All of this is fine. Interesting, even. But in this version of Shakespeare’s classic, the character of Hamlet, played by Simba, is rewarded at the end of the story by becoming king. He’s rewarded even though he, like Hamlet, takes almost no action on his own behalf throughout the story. Like Hamlet, he dithers his time away, choosing a worry-free life over accountability, confrontation, obligation, and love. His victory is completely and utterly unearned.

Shakespeare rightfully ends his version of Hamlet with the deaths of Hamlet, his mother, Ophelia (the woman he loves), and many others.

Shakespeare understands that uncertainty and inaction can only lead to disaster. If you dither, you die.

In The Lion King, a previously irrelevant, all-knowing baboon arrives on the scene to literally hit Simba on the head with a stick and remind him that he’s supposed to be king. Then the baboon conjures the ghost of Simba’s murdered father to remind him, too.

That’s it. A knock on the head and the appearance of a ghost, and the story is essentially over. Simba must now kill Scar to end the show, except even this isn’t done by Simba. Instead, Scar betrays Simba one final time, takes a swing at him, and falls off a cliff.

Hyenas eat Scar instead, thus ensuring that Simba will do almost nothing at all of meaning for this entire musical.

Simba faces no test. He’s not forced to face a fork in the road. He does not agonize between between Hakuna Matata (a problem-free life absent any acknowledgement of the past) and the responsibility that comes with his royal birthright. No philosophical epiphany. No self discovered moment of realization. Simba’s hero’s journey is quite literally a nagging baboon and a ghostly reminder from the grave.

Protagonists are supposed to take action on their own behalf. They are supposed to be making decisions that determine their fate. They’re supposed to be faced with impossible choices. Simba does none of this.

This is my primary complaint with The Lion King. It’s a glaring, onerous, obvious problem in need of fixing.

But there’s more.

Shakespeare also opens Hamlet with Hamlet’s father already dead, which tightens the story considerably and adds a glorious surprise when we learn that his uncle killed his father. By including Simba’s father’s death in the musical, it divides the show into two very distinct parts:

Before Pumbaa and Timon (not funny) and after Pumbaa and Timon (broadly funny).

Prior to Mufasa’s death, the show is rarely funny. After his death, we meet a warthog and a meerkat who are nothing but funny.

In addition to all of this, Zazu, the king’s counselor, who is probably the best character in the show, is almost entirely absent from the second act because of this before Pumbaaa and Timon and after Pumba and Timon structure.

Once you have a funny warthog and meerkat, there is no room for the funny bird.

None of this is good. It creates two tonally different acts and makes it feel like two different stories. Audiences don’t want two stories sewn together in the middle. They want the story to feel like a whole, with the characters we meet early on playing a role throughout. Not disappearing for enormous lengths of time.

Also, Scar attempts to have sex with Nala, who is the same age as Simba, meaning she’s old enough to be Scar’s daughter. This is creepy and weird but most importantly, utterly unnecessary. His attempted rape (and that is exactly what it is) sends Nala into the wilderness, where she finds Simba, but her home is dying. Food and water are scarce. There are plenty of other reasons for her to be wandering into the jungle without the threat of creepy, forced sex being one of them.

The music was wonderful (though at least three songs were entirely disconnected from the plot) and the costuming and special effects were spectacular. The performances were brilliant, and the theater is beautiful.

But the story is a mess. A deeply, dysfunctional mess. Utterly and easily correctable, but at the moment, a mess.

The Lion King is the third longest running show in Broadway history. A quarter century and counting. It’s been seen and loved by hundreds of millions of people. I’m laying waste to something that people – my own family included – adore.

I know this. I also know I’m absolutely correct about my criticism. The story is a mess. It can and should be fixed.

It’s tough to be at the tip of the spear, saying something that most will oppose. I know this.

Simba, however, does not. He’s most assuredly at the back of the spear, waiting for a baboon to knock him on the head and save the day.

People called me a moron and other rotten things

I wrote a post about my drive thru conundrum a couple days ago. It received an enormous response. Readers were thoughtful, clever, insightful, amusing, and even helpful.

Then I received an email from a reader asking if I was okay. She noticed that a few of the comments about the post on social media were less than kind. Someone called me a moron. Another accused me of wasting their time. Another said, not so nicely, that I was overthinking things.

I hadn’t seen these little trolls set up shop on my social media, but I went back and found them and a couple more.

Yes, even in a simple post about the moral dilemma of cutting the drive thru line, a handful of folks found a way to be unkind.

This really bothers me. Not for me, of course. I’ve written and published a blog post every single day for more than 19 years. I’ve seen my share of rotten comments from presumably rotten people. I’m also a slightly public figure, so I occasionally receive emails and other forms of communication containing vitriol and stupidity.

As a published authors, I’ve also had to deal with my share of negative reviews. Click on any of my books on any online retailer, you’ll see these reviews. Every one of my books is blessedly reviewed very well by the vast majority of readers, but there are people who don’t love my work and let the world know.

Also, after our lawsuit won the day at the Supreme Court, forcing Donald Trump to unblock me on Twitter, my name was published in the New York Times and many other places, leading to a flood of negativity from MAGA enthusiasts that I still occasionally receive today.

I was also victimized by a small, lowly band of anonymous cowards who tried to take away my livelihood through deliberate manipulation, purposeful mischaracterization, and public defamation.

As a result of all of these experiences, it doesn’t bother me when someone calls me a moron or refers to my work as a waste of time or otherwise sends cruelty in my direction, for a few reasons:

People who attack me are always less happy than me, so I am undoubtedly, joyfully winning.The ratio of kindness to cruelty in my world is easily 20 to one. You may call me a moron, but two dozen others expressed kindness, thoughtfulness, appreciation, and sincere engagement with my ideas. You’re a speck of negativity in an ocean of kindness and decency.These unkind comments would almost never be spoken if we were standing beside each other in real life. People find a lot of courage and even more stupidity when responding online.I am steel. It’ll take more than the blathering of an internet troll to even give me pause.

Here’s why it bothers me:

Someone wrote to me, concerned that my feelings might’ve been hurt, which probably means her feelings would’ve been hurt had she been attacked like me. Even after seeing the overflow of kindness about the post, she zeroed in on the handful of unkind comments and worried about me because of it.

What are the chances that she will be willing to take a chance and publish an idea of her own in the future after seeing and worrying about me?

I worry that we lose meaningful, powerful, insightful voices because of this unnecessary negativity. I worry that when you call someone a moron on the internet for posing a moral conundrum, you silence someone who may have wanted to express their own idea with the world but are now fearful of the response.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t times when harsh criticism isn’t warranted. When I express an idea that offends you, by all means fire away. If I posit a theory that strikes you as offensive or stupid or insensitive, let me have it. If I take a position that runs counter to every fiber of your being, tell me so. If necessary, use strong language.

I certainly let politicians and other public figures know how I feel often. I sometimes use strong, incendiary language when doing so. But if you’re attacking LGBTQ rights or espousing bigotry or threatening democracy, strong language is sometimes necessary.

But when I ask a question about how to handle a simple, every day problem, and your response is cruelty, I worry that your unnecessary troll village will deter others from expressing themselves in the future. When readers see an honest, innocuous question about the world responded to with name calling and cruelty, I worry that it silences their own voice.

Not everyone is steel. Few people have experienced the amount of negative feedback that I have over the years. Unless you’re writing and publishing every day (and once sued the President of the United States), it’s unlikely that you’ve learned to ignore and even laugh at online trolls.

But we should still hear from you. We want to hear from you. We may need to hear from you.

You may need us to hear you.

I can’t promise that expressing your ideas with the world won’t attract trolls. I can’t promise a world free of negativity. But I can promise you that these little monsters are few and far between and that their comments are meaningless. Small, stupid statements made by small, stupid people.

Nothing like the thoughts I hope you’ll share with the world.

On parenting duty

I was out with Clara and Charlie, happily making our way through the world, when someone I know stopped me and asked where Elysha was.

I told the person that she was off on some other adventure, at which point the person said, “So you’re on parenting duty. Huh?”

I explained to the person that I have been on parenting duty every single day for more than 13 years.

I also explained to the person that although Elysha was not with us, she, too, was still on parenting duty.

We’ve both been on parenting duty, I said, since the moment we discovered that Elysha was pregnant.

The job doesn’t stop simply because my children are no longer in my line of sight. Regardless of where I am or what I am doing, I am on parenting duty.

Perhaps there are some off-the-clock parents in this world, but Elysha and I are not them.

Drive thru conundrum

Here’s my constant conundrum:

I arrive at the McDonald’s drive-thru. It’s a tandem drive-thru, meaning two speakers. Two lines.

The line to the left has three cars. The line to the right is empty. Either the people waiting in the left line don’t know about the speaker on the right or don’t care enough to pay attention.

What do I do?

Pull forward to the empty speaker, cutting ahead of at least two of those cars in the process?

Or do I shift from drive to park, exit my car, and approach the waiting cars? Tap on their window and point to the empty speaker? When they look confused, shout, “There’s another speaker! Over there!” in that terrible, slow way we speak to non-English speakers, as if speaking at half speed will increase their understanding of the language.

And risk scaring the hell out of the people listening to traffic on the threes and classic rock while doing so.

Also, if I choose this clearly insane course of action, I’ll be repeating it at least once per week, because this happens all the time.

The only logical choice to to drive ahead to the empty speaker and cut ahead of those three cars. Right?

If I get behind the three cars on the left, then the next car will undoubtedly cut ahead of all of us, and justifiably so. There is an empty speaker and clear signage on both the pavement and hanging above indicating its presence. I’d be happy to allow the people in front of me to order their food and drink first, but I’m not going to allow someone who arrives after me to cut ahead of me simply because some people haven’t figured out how the drive thru works.

Still, I feel rotten about it every time. My only solace is hoping that by seeing me pull ahead to the empty speaker, the morons in the other line will bear witness to the error of their ways and know better next time.

And not want to murder me.

But here’s my deepest, most unspeakable fear:

What if the person in the third car in line knows about the second speaker but purposefully avoided it, not wanting to cut anyone. What if that person made the same calculations as me and chose to wait, knowing full well that they would likely be cut by some monster like me?

What if that person is an angel – a ridiculous, stupid, utterly unlikeable angel – and I’m a devil?

I know I only have one choice in this unfortunate scenario. I know what needs to be done. I guess I’m not looking for a suggestion on how to act but begging for forgiveness for choosing the only path that makes sense. I need your voice in my ear, saying, “Go ahead, Matt. Nothing wrong with cutting ahead of these people. They had exactly the same opportunity that you have, but for some reason, they failed to see it or take it. Maybe, thanks to your wisdom and insight, they’ll learn from their mistake and to better next time.”

That is what I need.

Twitch for Writing?

One of my corporate clients had an idea:

Live stream my writing process.

While working on the chapter of a book, a magazine column, or a blog post, live stream the image of my laptop’s screen and side-by-side video of me, talking to viewers about some of my thoughts and decisions as I write.

She compares the idea to Twitch, an exceptionally popular platform that allows viewers to watch people play video games.

She thinks people would be interested in watching a professional writer and author work.

She thinks that people might even be willing to pay for access to that content.

I’m not so sure.

Admittedly, I would probably pay to watch a successful author or one of my favorite authors work.

More importantly, if I had never published a novel or landed a columnist job, I think I would’ve been very interested to watch a professional work.

But that’s me… a person who has written every single day of his life since November 1988 without missing a day.

A person who has written and published a blog post for more than 19 years without missing a single day.

I might be the exception and not the rule.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Opinions?

How to sleep better

Here was the craziest thing about my not-so-recent colonoscopy:

I could not stay awake, even before they put me to sleep.

After climbing onto the gurney and being covered by a warm blanket, I was left alone for about ten minutes. When the nurse arrived to administer an IV and ask lots of questions, I was asleep.

She awoke me, and we proceeded.

When she left, I was alone for another ten minutes. When the anesthesiologist arrived to review my medical history, I was asleep again. He had to wake me up before proceeding.

When he left, I was alone for an uncertain amount of time – 20-30 minutes, I think – before the nurse arrived to roll me into the room where the procedure would take place.

She found me asleep. She awoke me, and we were off.

In the room where the procedure was to take place, I fell asleep again. A nurse had to awaken me so she could put me back to sleep. She commented that she never had to awaken a patient before administering the medicine that would put the patient back to sleep.

“You really like to sleep,” one of the nurses said. “Huh?”

“No,” I said. “I actually hate sleep.”

Determined to spend as little time in bed as humanly possible, I have spent years training my body and mind to fall asleep in bed almost instantly. I do this at home. I do this in hotels. I do this almost anywhere when I want to take a ten minute nap, which is often.

And I can apparently do this just as easily while prepping for a colonoscopy.

Climb into bed, close my eyes, and within a minute, I am almost always fast asleep.

I accomplish this in two ways:

Rigorous adherence to strategies that promote sleepMeditation

Some of the strategies that promote sleep include:

Never watching TV or screens of any kind in bedNever reading in bedAvoiding food three hours before bedMaintaining relatively consistent sleep times, regardless of the day or time of yearPlaying white noise as I sleepRecognizing where I hold my tension (my jaw and hands) and releasing that tension as soon as I lie downNever using a snooze alarm after awakening

Daily exercise is also enormously helpful when it comes to sleep.

All of these strategies and more – discussed in my new book Someday Is Today (available wherever you get books) and approved of by scientists who study sleep – have helped me teach my body and mind that the bed is only for sleeping, so once I am lying down, I can fall asleep almost instantly.

Elysha can attest:

After placing my head upon the pillow, I am almost always asleep within a minute or two.

Even better, I often wake up without an alarm. By keeping my sleep time consistent, my mind and body naturally awakens around the same time every day, which is the absolute best way to start your day:

Not with the jolt of an alarm and an unnatural snapping of the sleep cycle but naturally via the chemicals that your brain releases, telling you to open your eyes.

Meditation came much later, but it has helped by teaching me to empty my mind completely. All thoughts, worries, and nagging concerns are wiped clean very easily after years of practice, allowing me to drift off without any stray thoughts slowing me down.

As a result, I fall asleep if I’m lying down in a bed. It’s almost unavoidable. I can also fall asleep in almost any location, in almost any position, in less than a minute. Five minute naps in the middle of my day are not uncommon for me and are incredibly refreshing. I put my head down on my desk, empty my mind, and I’m almost immediately asleep.

When I awaken five or ten minutes later, I feel great.

All that said, I really do hate to sleep. I loathe my body’s need for it. I’m almost never tired when I climb into bed at night, and I’m often angry about the necessary interruption to my day.

But if I can’t avoid sleep, I can at least attempt to master it. Reduce the amount of time spent in bed by sleeping as efficiently as possible. Making the most of every minute lying prone in bed rather than spending that time tossing, turning, waking up throughout the night, or not being able to fall asleep quickly.

It’s true that I sleep less than most people. Five to six hours a night is normal, but I can sleep also a lot less if I’m performing in New York or spending a night in Foxboro at a football game.

But the difference is that I spend almost every minute of my 5-6 hours sleeping. While many people claim to need 7, 8, or 9 hours of sleep to feel refreshed, I often find after asking a few questions that some almost never spend 7, 8, or 9 hours asleep.

They are instead referring to time spent in bed. Not time spent actually asleep.

If you try to maximize your actual sleep, you may find yourself spending less time in bed but feeling even more refreshed.

My persistent sleepwalking is admittedly less than ideal, but this problem has plagued me since childhood and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. I often awaken in places other than my bed, but even though I may be eating a bowel of cereal, engaged in a conversation with Elysha, getting dressed for work, or sitting on the couch, watching a blank TV screen, my mind is still asleep, getting the rest it needs, even if some other part of my brain is running my body ragged.

But other than these occasional nocturnal adventures, sleep is something I can do with ease.

Even in the midst of a colonoscopy prep.

Even just before I will be put to sleep for a medical procedure.

This is not to imply that sleeping is simple for everyone. Some people suffer from significant struggles with sleep. But I work with many people on improving the quality and productivity of their day, and one of my first suggestions is to improve the quality of their sleep.

Better sleep might mean less time in bed and more time for yourself.

They often agree with the concept, yet they continue to watch television in bed, play games and watch videos on their phone while in bed, read in bed, and do things like sleep later on the weekends and eat just before bed.

All of this is terrible for sleep. Enormous impediments to quality sleep, the ability to take naps during the day, and a reduction of time spent in bed.

They want to improve the quality of their sleep, but they don’t want to do the things required to improve the quality of their sleep.

As with all things, the how is easy, but the want often gets in the way.

9 questions to strengthen your relationship

A piece in the New York Times offered 7 questions to strengthen your relationship. The suggestion was to sit down with your partner and answer each question together.

It’s a fine list.

I admittedly thought the question about monogamy was a little strange. There’s nothing wrong with deciding that monogamy isn’t right for your relationship anymore (or never was), but using a New York Times list to reveal your changing feelings about monogamy seems a little abrupt.

I also think the question, “Who takes out the garbage now?” dodges the real question that needs to be asked.

As I said, it’s a fine list, but given that I wrote an entire novel in list form, I couldn’t resist writing my own, far better list.

I originally wrote about 25 questions for my list over the course of three weeks, then I whittled it down to just 9, keeping the best and forgetting the rest (as all great list makers should do).

I purposely left off any questions about parenting and children because many couples don’t have kids, and those that do have children of varying ages, which would change the questions considerably. Instead, I’ve tried to address possible parenting issues with other questions on the list.

I’ve also retained one item from the New York Times list because it’s too good to pass up.

The list is designed so that one person in the relationship asks the other all 9 questions, then the positions are reversed.

If you use my list, I’d love to hear how it goes. I haven’t conducted any formal trials of my list, and Elysha and I haven’t used the list (she doesn’t even know that the list exists until she reads it like you), so any feedback would be welcomed.

Matthew Dicks’s  9 questions to strengthen your relationship:

What aren’t you doing that you really wish you were doing?Do you think work and chores are shared fairly in our relationship?Is there a subject that makes you uncomfortable to talk about with me?What are three of your favorite things about me?What are three of our favorite things to do together?Do you think we should be having more sex, less sex, better sex, or exactly the same sex?Do we feel the same way about our finances?What is something worrying you that you haven’t told me about yet?What is one small thing that I could do to make you feel happier?

A sign from Docusign

I was standing in the tee box of the eighth hole at Tunxis Country – the green course – in Farmington, CT. It was a beautiful summer morning of golf with my friends, Tom and Rob. As we waited for the group ahead of us to clear the green, I took out my phone for the first time in the round to check on the world.

A second later, I groaned.

Tom asked what was wrong, and I explained that my inbox had been flooded with contracts to sign via DocuSign. Admittedly, signing a contract online isn’t difficult, but clients had been flooding me all week with contracts, non-disclosures, and the like, and I was sick of seeing DocuSign emails in my inbox.

“But at least I own shares in DocuSign,” I said. “Every time I sign one of these damn things, I feel like I’m making money.”

Rob laughed.

Three holes later, Tom sliced his tee shot right and into the trees. As I went left in the direction of my ball, Tom went right to search for his ball. A few minutes later, we were both putting to finish the hole.

As we walked off the green and headed to the twelfth hole, Tom walked over to me and said, “You’re not going to believe this. When I was looking for my ball, I found this.”

He held out his hand to show me a golf ball, stamped with DocuSign.

At time point in the past, DocuSign, a San Fransisco-based company with no offices in Connecticut, hosted a golf tournament for its employees or customers and stamped balls to commemorate the occasion. Someone in that tournament placed a ball in their bag, and at some point in the future, played a round of golf at Tunxis Country Club. On the eleventh hole, they, too, sliced a tee shot into the woods and could not find the ball, leaving it behind amidst the trees and leaves.

Days, weeks, months, or years later, I had a conversation about DocuSign with my friends while standing in a tee box. Three holes later, Tom hit his ball to the same spot in the woods as that unknown golfer somewhere in the past and found the ball.

I am not a religious person. I describe myself as a reluctant atheist who wishes he could believe in a higher power. Not the monster described in the Old Testament of the Bible, of course, but perhaps some more benevolent, all-knowing being, along with a blissful afterlife filled with cheeseburgers, books,  and the New England Patriots.

In moments like these, when the coincidence seems too improbable to believe, three things always happen to me:

I wonder if this is a sign from God. Is a higher power trying to speak to me through this golf ball?  Then I become annoyed because Moses got a burning bush and a set of tablets. Noah received the most improbable weather forecast of all time, then it came true. God was speaking to the figures in the Bible all the time. Appearing before them in corporeal form. All God offers me is a DocuSign golf ball?We are living in a computer simulation, which is far more likely – even probable – than you probably realize, and moments like these are obvious glitches in the code, representing proof that we are digital and not organic. In these moments, I always assure our programming overlords that it’s fine. No need to delete me. I’m happy to exist in any way that I can.This is another opportunity to celebrate my own religion, established three years ago and currently consisting of four members. It’s called Coincidentalism. It’s a religion founded on the belief that coincidences are extraordinary, astounding, and seemingly impossible, yet they happen all the time and are incredible, beautiful, and worthy of celebration and awe. But they are also simply coincidences. Not signs from a higher power.

All three of these thoughts passed through me as I asked Tom if I could keep the ball. He somewhat reluctantly handed it over, knowing full well about the internal turmoil that these moments cause me.

I’ve been thinking about that damn ball ever since. More than you would probably believe.

In honor of this astounding coincidence, I decided to commemorate the occasion, as both a memorial of the moment and a reminder that the world is a wondrous and mysterious place.

It shall sit on my shelf for all time.

Or until some astounding coincidence upends its position in some unforeseen and glorious way.

Cold beverages in coffee shops

I don’t drink coffee. I’ve never even tasted the stuff.

I think my life has been simpler and happier as a result.

But knowing full well how people obsess over coffee, I’m more than willing to take full advantage of this obsession in any way I can, which is why I’m a Starbucks shareholder.

If I’m never going to drink coffee, I might as well profit from everyone else who drinks it.

But here’s a fact you might not know:

Cold drinks make up 80 percent of Starbucks sales.

Dunkin Donuts also sells more cold beverages than hot.

Speaking of a love for cold coffee, if you’ve never had the pleasure of watching the news report on the 2016 fire inside a Dunkin Donuts in Shamokin, PA, please take two minutes and enjoy. It’s the last minute of the story that most people find especially entertaining, but I think the whole damn this is hilarious.

Also, it’s real. The first time I saw it, I was sure it was a spoof of some kind. But no, everything about the story is authentic.

 

iPad versus notebook

Earlier in the week, Elysha, the kids, and I went to dinner at The Olive Garden. We took our seat, scanned the menu, then quickly asked to move to a different table.

Seated behind us was a couple with a small boy – presumably their son. He was holding an iPad in his small hands, watching a video with the volume up while his parents chatted and ate.

It was upsetting to me, but it’s even more upsetting to Elysha, who is teaching kindergarten these days. She’s keenly aware that some of the children who enter her classroom for the first time have been doing things like this for years, thus making the transition to an environment where listening, talking, focusing, and playing – absent any screens or continuous forms of entertainment and distraction – especially hard on the kids.

Hard on her, too. Hard on all kindergarten teachers, I suspect.

And I know – all too well – how difficult small children can be in restaurants. We had our share of challenges with our children when they were little, too, and they aren’t always so easy even today. But we never handed our children a screen while seated at a restaurant or at any meal. Maybe a book or crayons or even a small toy when they were very little, but never a screen, and especially not a screen playing a movie that everyone in the restaurant could hear.

Honestly, I can’t imagine what these parents were thinking.

Contrast this with the boy I met last night at The Mount in Lenox, MA.

I was performing a solo show, telling stories about adventures in parking lots, dance clubs, campgrounds, Thanksgiving Day dinners, and MIT. Seated in the audience was a seven year old boy and his father. The boy sat quietly and listened to my hour-long performance, and when I was finished, his father introduced himself and showed me how the boy had been taking notes about some of the things he heard during my performance.

Simply remaining quiet and attentive for the entire performance was impressive.

Taking notes during the performance was even better. Truly astounding.

We need more of this in the world today. A lot more.

My former principal and friend, Plato Karafelis, used to tell parents, “You pay now, or you pay later.”

Truer words have never been spoken.