Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 169

No more swing sets, please. Never again.

Last weekend Elysha and I saw Jagged Little Pill on Broadway, which I liked but did not love.

A couple of terribly failed scenes, a wholly unnecessary plot line, and one big sledgehammer to the head of the audience at the end of the show spoiled it for me.

The show did, however, feature one of the most thrilling moments in all of live theater for me, so it was worth the price of admission. Plus I was sitting beside Elysha, which makes every show a little more exciting.

In addition to the serious flaws in the writing of the musical, one other thing really stood out for me:

Early in the show, when two teenagers slip away for a romantic moment alone, they find themselves in a park, sitting on a swing set.

I’d like to go on the record as saying that “teenagers staring moony-eyed at each other while sitting on swings” is officially done. It’s a trope that needs to be killed forever.

No more, please.

Never again.

It’s a moment I’ve seen a million times before - in television, film, and on the stage - and it’s something that I even did myself as a teenager.

Several times.

Of all the locations where these two characters could’ve ended up, why in the world would anyone choose a location that every audience member has seen before? It’s a tragically ordinary moment - overdone and cliché - and I can’t imagine how it was allowed to stand.

Jagged Little Pill has received mixed reviews since it opened, leaning positive but not overwhelmingly so. But with some surgical revisions and a fresh take on a few scenes, I think it could be improved considerably.

They really should give me a call.

This is massive hubris, I know. Arrogance and assumption beyond compare. I’ve written one rock opera and three tween musicals in my life.

What do I know about a Broadway production?

Maybe enough to keep a damn swing set off the stage and perhaps enough to streamline a bloated plot and freshen a few scenes and really improve the show.

But again, that’s hubris and arrogance beyond compare.

But also probably right.

Thank goodness for Mommy and Daddy

I despise legacy admission practices at colleges and universities.

Frankly, I despise any practice in which a person is gifted the privilege of education, employment, or wealth simply because of who their parents happen to be.

I’m looking at you, Donald Trump Jr.

Thankfully, legacy admission practices are on the decline as colleges and universities take a serious look at whether it’s makes sense to continue programs that benefit the children of alumni while also disproportionately advantaging the wealthy.

In 2004, 58 percent of schools engaged in legacy admission practices. In 2019, that number was down to 48 percent.

The practice is more prevalent in the top 250 schools but still in decline: 

63 percent of top schools considered legacy admissions in 2004, compared to 56 percent today. 

It’s better, but it’s still terrible. The child of a Harvard graduate, for example, has a 33.9 percent chance of being admitted to Harvard, compared to just 5.9 percent of non-legacy admission.

This, in my humble opinion, is gross.

Kids who have earned their way into Harvard are blocked by kids who won the genetic lottery.

What a goddamn joke. None of us should look at Harvard in the same way again.

It won’t solve the problem of legacy admissions, but I have a proposal to at least balance the scales a teeny tiny bit. Perhaps all legacy admissions to Harvard and any other college or university should be required to wear a tee shirt during the first month of every semester that reads:

“I’m attending this prestigious school because my mommy or daddy attended this school. Maybe even one of my grandparents, too. I wasn’t accepted based upon on my own merit but because of legacy admission. What I’m trying to say is that I kind of suck. I don’t deserve to be here. But privilege is powerful, people. Large donations help, too. Do you want to be my friend?”

It’s a lot to fit on a shirt, I know.

Maybe just:

“I didn’t work as hard, and I’m not nearly as talented as the kid who didn’t get admitted to this university. Thank goodness for legacy.”

I know. Still a little long.

Simple and annoying

I spend much of Saturday walking around without a coat,. It was sunny with temperatures in the mid 40’s and a light breeze, but I had exercised earlier and was still running warm when I left the house, so no jacket or coat.

Just a tee shirt.

In the span of less than three hours, three people asked me why I wasn’t wearing a jacket.

One stranger, one acquaintance, and one friend.

None of them asked in a way that sounded worried or concerned for my wellbeing. All three sounded annoyed. Angry, even.

Curious about this odd turn of events, I repeated the experiment on Sunday - tee shirt and jeans - on an even warmer day, and once again had two people ask me why I wasn’t wearing a jacket.

Both were people who know me fairly well. Once again both seemed slightly annoyed by my bare arms and exposed torso.

I’m not sure why people would be so concerned over my choice of outwear, but I discovered something rather interesting over the course of this weekend:

I have a new and simple way to annoy people.

Huzzah.

My father's situation was hard, too

A couple weeks ago, my wife, Elysha, asked for help from her friends on Facebook. She’s been struggling with the news coming out of Washington and beyond - specifically the racist, ignorant sex offender in the White House but other things, too - and wanted to know how her friends were coping.

I had two answers to this question.

The first, and most important, is that  I constantly remind myself that Americans have faced other impossibly hard times and survived.

My father, for example, was drafted and forced to fight in Vietnam under a corrupt commender-in-chief. He came of age during a turbulent, violent time in America when 58,000 of his fellow service men and women returned home in body bags, and those who returned alive were not greeted with handshakes and ticker tape parades. He came home to a country that did not understand post traumatic-stress disorder and was in the midst of a massive economic slow down.

Unemployment rose as high as 9% following the war. Inflation was out of control. Interest rates were as high as 20% at times.

This was a difficult time in America.

This is not said to mitigate the challenges of today. Donald Trump and the spineless, power-hungry Republicans in Congress are legitimately threatening the rule of law and creating enormous personal hardship for many people. Children are placed in cages in the border. Nazis are marching in America’s streets and referred to by Trump as “very fine people.” A massive tax cut for the wealthy has pushed corporate profits to the richest Americans while the bottom 60% of Americans have seen their wages and savings fall during the Trump Presidency. The deficit is the highest it has ever been.

That’s just a few of the problems we face.

Just remember that past Americans have also faced enormous struggles and survived.

Before my father, both of my grandfathers came of age during the Great Depression, Both fought in World War II when nearly half a million American servicemen and women were killed in combat and the very survival of our nation was at stake.

My great grandfather fought in World War I, returning home to face the Great Depression.

These times that we live in have been hard, but they have been hard before. Keeping this in mind helps to remind me that this, too, shall pass.

My second answer to Elysha’s question about coping with today’s world is to take action. For me (and Elysha), it comes in several forms:

Elysha and I are members of the ACLU, supporting their actions in checking this unlawful President whenever appropriate and supporting Americans in need of legal representation.

I was a member of the Knight Foundation lawsuit that forced Trump to unblock me on Twitter. Checking Trump’s power whenever possible is something we should all do. Today I get to tweet my outrage at Trump daily, which is both cathartic and amusing for me. I also feel like it’s my duty to tweet at Trump given all the money spent on my behalf in the lawsuit.

Elysha and I are school teachers, helping children to become good American citizens everyday. We teach respect, tolerance, and nonviolence. We celebrate diversity. We teach children about the Constitution, the rule of law, and how important it is for all Americans to vote in all elections in this nation. Every one of these things - simple, American ideals - are in direct opposition to Donald Trump and his actions while in office. Helping children become engaged, informed, and energized citizens of this country is the best way to prevent the rise of an authoritarian ignoramus in the future,

Elysha and I own and operate Speak Up, an organization that brings people together to share stories and learn about each other. Our storytellers are diverse and remarkable people who share stories that promote understanding, respect, and mutual cooperation. Our storytellers are a diverse group of people from around the world who bring new perspectives to our audience. We’ve even hosted US Senator Christopher Murphy on our stage.

We attended the Women’s March at our state capital on the day after inauguration day, bringing our children along so they could see protest in action.

Doing something is important. You need not change the world. Just push on the wheel of progress with as much energy as you can muster, whether it be in the form of a political donation, a letter to a Congressperson, or a smile of support to an immigrant in your community.

Doing something, anything, will help.

I wish the news didn’t upset my wife as much as it does, but I know that she is one of many. I also know that her reaction to the news out of Washington is completely rationale given the traitorous, self-dealing racist and sex offender in the White House.

Of course she is upset. It would be crazy not to be upset.

It’s just important to remember all that has come before us and all that can do and have already done to help our country and our fellow Americans survive this challenging time in America.

Write local

An analysis of the 100 books published since 1900 that most often appeared on best-of lists found that for 61 of the 100, the book was at least partly set in a place the author lived.

Of the other 39 books, the average minimum distance between where the author once lived and where the book is set is just 73.7 miles.

This should be good news to me, even though none of my five published novels have made it on these best-of lists.

Something Missing, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, and Twenty-one Truths About Love are all set in the area where I have been living for the past 25 years. Almost all of the locations are real, including the homes that many of my characters inhabit.

Unexpectedly, Milo is also set in the town where I live, though it also includes a long section of road trip to a town in North Carolina.

Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling is a nonfiction book, but it’s filled with stories set in many place, but most of them are towns where I once lived, including the town in which I live today.

The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs (and the upcoming The Other Mother) are both set in my hometown of Blackstone, Massachusetts, where I spent the first 18 years of my life. And that town is just 68 miles from where I’m currently living, meaning every one of my books would fit perfectly into this analysis.

All except for the best-of lists part.

In fact, the only book I ever wrote that was set in a fictional town was my only unpublished novel. It’s set in an invented town in Vermont.

Sadly, nobody wanted it.

This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t any good, of course. I think it’s a great story that deserved to be written and published, but unfortunately, no publisher seems to agree.

Yet.

But it’s interesting how it’s the only book that isn’t set in a town within the seemingly magical 73.7 mile limit is the one that I could not sell.

Maybe all I need to do is shift it south to Connecticut…

So many questions. A few answers, then more questions.

The world is a strange and wondrous place.

After more than 40 years on this planet, I can still find myself in places like this, waiting at a traffic light behind a truck like this with so many questions:

What exactly does a plating company do?

What the hell is passivate? Anodize? Chromate of aluminum?

Are plating companies so rare that one presumably based in Massachusetts (given the license plate) has reason to be in central Connecticut? On a Saturday? And if so, where is it going?

What is behind the door of this truck? Piles of passivate? A machine used to plate something with passivate? Something else entirely?

More importantly, how was this business born? I can’t imagine anyone dreaming of owning or running a plating company when they were growing up, so how does a business like this start? Did someone see a market opportunity and seize it? Did the company’s owner work in the plating industry and decide that he or she could do it better? Did someone take over the family business, and if so, what spurred their parent or grandparent to launch this company decades ago?

There are answers, of course. Some I could not find, but a few are available thanks to the internet.

I still can’t explain plating very well, nor do I entirely understand what passivate is. And I still don’t know what that truck contained.

But according to the website:

“Following 18 years of plating experience - plus electroplating schooling - John Wietecha started his company in 1978. From its first 3500' leased space, and with the help of Dennis Chaffee who joined the firm months later to soon become a principal, Valley Plating grew to become a major regional plater with over 750 customers in the Connecticut Valley.”

So I guessed right. John Wietecha worked in plating for almost two decades before deciding to launch a business with the help of Dennis Chaffee.

This, of course, lead me to a host of new questions:

Why did John Wietecha work in plating for 18 years? Did he stumble into the field after high school? Learn to plate in the military? Dream of plating as a little boy?

Does his work in the plating business make him happy? Did he forgo some other dream in favor of a career with more stability and profit?

And did Dennis Chaffee also love the plating industry? Or was he perhaps sitting on a pile of cash, looking to invest? Did he push aside some childhood dream in favor of assisting John Wietecha in building this business?

The world is a strange and wondrous place. After more than four decades on this planet, I find myself wondering about things like this constantly, often frustrated with the inability to answer every question that comes to my mind.

The Other Mother: cover reveal

Maybe my favorite cover for any of my books.

Available November 10, 2020.

Speak Up #86: Talia Pollock

On episode #86 of the Speak Up Storytelling podcast, Elysha Dicks and I talk storytelling!

In our follow up segment, we discuss listener comments and upcoming events. 

In our Homework for Life segment, I talk about how contrast can often serve as an effective engine for storytelling. 

Next we listen to a story by Talia Pollock.  

Amongst the many things we discuss include:

Humor

The raising of stakes throughout a story

Allowing important moments to linger 

Strategic characterizations of characters

Bending stories to fit the needs of the speaker

Next we answer a question about the cost of living a certain kind of life.   

Lastly, we each offer a recommendation.

RECOMMEDATIONS

Elysha:

Cheer on Netflix

Matt:

Calling for help in grocery stores

LINKS

Pre-order Party in my Plants: https://partyinmyplants.com/the-book/

Purchase Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling: https://amzn.to/2H3YNn3

Purchase Twenty-one Truths About Love: https://amzn.to/35Mz1xS 

Homework for Life: https://bit.ly/2f9ZPne

Matthew Dicks's website: http://www.matthewdicks.com

Matthew Dicks's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/matthewjohndicks 

Matthew Dicks's blog:
http://www.matthewdicks.com/matthewdicksblog

Subscribe to Matthew Dicks's weekly newsletter: 
http://www.matthewdicks.com/matthewdicks-subscribe

Subscribe to the Speak Up newsletter: 
http://www.matthewdicks.com/subscribe-speak-up

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http://www.matthewdicks.com/subscribe-grin-and-bare-it

A sink?

It took me way too long to solve this crossword puzzle because of the ridiculous clue for 1-across:

“A place to put dishes”

Thie sink?

Dishes are not “put” in the sink.

Dishes can be washed in a sink. Rinsed in a sink. Even scrubbed in a sink.

But “put” in a sink? No. Only savages put dishes in sinks.

Dishes are put in dishwashers. Drying racks. Cabinets. Cupboards. If they are made of paper, dishes can even be placed in the garbage can.

But the sink?

Putting a dirty dish in a sink is an act of madness. A declaration that filth is perfectly acceptable if temporarily placed within a stainless steel or composite shell. As if the promise of future scrubbing somehow mitigates the savagery of leaving a soiled dish just sitting in the same room where you prepare food and eat.

Wash the dish, damn it. We are not living in end times.

I entered “rack” for 1-across and spent the majority of the time on this puzzle trying to imagine where else a dish might be reasonable put before finally realizing what the puzzle-maker was thinking.

The sink? A place to put your dishes?

This crossword was clearly designed by a savage.

The show was good, but the restroom was amazing.

The line for the woman’s restroom was so long that it was wrapped around itself in spirals in the lower level of the Broadhurst Theater last night.

At least 100 women waiting for a single restroom.

With ten minutes before showtime, there was no way Elysha, who was at the end of the line, was going to be seated in time for the opening number.

We briefly considered sending her into the men’s room, where one woman was already sheepishly waiting for one of the two stalls. “I might just do that,” Elysha said doubtfully. “Go to your seat. I’ll meet you.”

I headed up the stairs, frustrated. This was Elysha’s Christmas gift. Front row center on the mezzanine level for Jagged Little Pill, the acclaimed musical based upon the Alanis Morissette album of the same name. Now she would miss at least the first 10 minutes while waiting for the restroom.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I spotted an usher organizing playbills on a small table. “Excuse me,” I said. “My wife won’t be able to navigate those stairs. Is there another restroom she could use on this level?”

“Of course,” the usher said and pointed to a single-use restroom designed to accommodate people with disabilities at the top of the stairs. I had walked right by it, just like every other person.

I tested the door. Unlocked. Empty. Huzzah.

Was it specifically designated for someone with a disability?

Yes.

But was it available to anyone without a disability if no person with a disability was waiting?

I think so.

I shot back downstairs. “Elysha!” I shouted. “Come with me!”

“Does he know something?” asked the woman in line behind Elysha who she had already befriended.

“He seems to know something,” she said.

Elysha exited the line, still dozens of women away from the restroom, followed closely by her new friend. As she made it to the top of the stairs, I opened the door to the empty restroom. Her eyes widened. She smiled and entered.

Her new friend took a spot on the wall beside me and fist-bumped me.

“Best husband ever,” she whispered.

A moment later, Elysha exited the restroom. I said goodbye to her new friend as she entered the restroom, and we headed for the mezzanine.

“I’ve never loved you more than I do right now,” Elysha said, which felt amazing at the time, but as I write this now, I can’t help but think…

My surprise marriage proposal at the steps of Grand Central?

Our wedding ceremony?

The birth of our children?

Our honeymoon?

All those times I navigated complex cities in the pre-GPS era without ever getting lost?

I’m kidding. I know what she meant.

But it’s a good reminder:

Saving your spouse with a little bit of quick thinking is a simple path directly to their heart.

Happily, we were seated in plenty of time. Best seats for a Broadway show ever.

Jagged Little Pill is good. Even very good at times. Not great, though. Too many ideas jammed into one show, plus three scenes that fall dreadfully flat.

I’m available for notes if the producers would like to listen. Seriously.

But the show also has one of the most thrilling musical moments in all of Broadway history for me. Truly unforgettable.

Also, I was sitting beside beautiful Elysha for every moment of the show. Beginning to end.

That’s all that really mattered.