Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 347

A brilliant app idea that I'm giving away for free. Take it. Make it. I'll be your first customer.

Here's my vision:

I'm driving down Starr Boulevard in some tiny town in Somewhereville, USA. I come to a traffic light and stop. I remove my phone, click on the app, and instantly, I am transmitted information about the name of this street.

Why Starr?Why the double R?Is the street named after a person, and if so, who was it and what did he or she do to deserve the honor of a street name?

I've considered writing a book that explains all of the street names for a random town in the United States. My hometown, perhaps. 

Here's the one problem about my app (and probably my book idea):

I may be the only person in the world who is intensely curious about this topic and desperately wants this information. 

So it might not be quite as profitable as you were hoping.

If I ruled the world, here are 11 laws that I would immediately enact.

If I were ruler of the world, I would immediately enact the following laws in order to improve the quality of life for all of mankind:

1. Drivers who pull their cars alongside each other in the middle of the road and roll down their windows in order to chat (thus blocking the road for sane people) shall have their licenses revoked for a period of no less than 5 years. Get out of the damn car if you wish to speak to someone.

2. If a public building has two or more exterior doors, all such doors shall be accessible and open at all times. If a patron walks into a door expecting it to open and finds it locked, the business in question shall pay the patron a fee of $50,000. If said patron bashes his or her head on the door in the process (a feat I have accomplished several times), ownership of the business shall immediately be transferred to the bloody-nosed patron. Why install double doors if one of them is always locked?

3. Anyone wearing an article of clothing containing a brand name or any assemblage of words on the seat of his or her pants shall be required to remain seated for the rest of his or her natural life. This is the stupidest fashion trend ever.

4. Any parent who dresses or allows his or her child to dress in pants or shorts that contain a brand name or any assemblage of words on the seat of the child's pants shall immediately be removed from the home for psychiatric examination. Finding oneself staring at the butt of a twelve-year old in order to confirm that the word plastered across her butt is in fact “Juicy” is unnerving to say the least. What in God’s name are these parents thinking?

Side note: If I really had my way on all things, I would remove brand names from all clothing items and accessories, since the inclusion of these brand names are merely indicators of the approximate cost of the item and serve no useful purpose other than to advertise for the clothing company while making people who require such validation momentarily happy about their otherwise vacuous souls. 

5. It is hereby forbidden to congratulate a friend on the purchase of a vehicle if that friend exceeds the age of eighteen.  When the purchase of an automobile becomes congratulatory-worthy, priorities must be re-examined immediately.   

6. When going to the gym, one must drive to an open parking spot and park your car immediately. No more occupying the middle-of-the-aisle, directional flashing, minivan lunatics (its always a minivan) waiting for that prime spot ten feet from the doors. It’s the gym. Walk a little bit. Get some freakin' exercise.    

7. It is no longer permissible to refer to any article of clothing as “fun.” You sound ridiculous. 

8. If more than half of your social media posts pertain to your latest fitness or nutritional regime, you are hereby banished to Google+ for a period of no less than one year.  

9. Selfie sticks are immediately banned. It's bad enough that future archaeologists may judge our society based upon things like The Bachelor, Antonin Scalia, and hipsters who wear slouchy winter hats in the summer. We cannot allow the selfie stick to also define us. 

In fairness, Disney World Theme Parks have already banned these ridiculous and culturally embarrassing items, so I'm not the first to suggest this.

10. Movie theaters must be equipped with cellular jamming technology, effectively disabling the phones of every person within the theater at the onset of the film.

11. People who pay by check at the grocery store must take a mandatory class on the safe and effective use of debit and credit cards before being allowed to eat any of the groceries that they have purchased. 

THE GREATEST APP RECOMMENDATION OF ALL TIME: Wakie

 

Brace yourselves for the greatest app recommendation that you may ever receive:

Wakie, the world's first social alarm clock. 

The new app, available on iPhone and Android, replaces the generic alarm clock with a friendly wake-up call from a stranger somewhere around the globe.

Simply sign up, submit your phone number and register as either a “Sleepy” or a “Wakie” – depending on whether you want to do the waking or be woken up. Then set an alarm for the time you want to get out of bed, and within five minutes either side of the time requested, a stranger – who may be on the other side of the world  – will call with a morning message.

Since I began using this app last month, I have been awakened by a child in Germany, a woman in Essex, England, an Australian farmer, an Irish mother, and others in the US and abroad. Sometimes it's a five second call and sometimes it's a five minute conversation.

Either way, it's amazing. 

Admittedly, it's a little challenging to use if you have a spouse in bed who is intent on sleeping past 4:30 AM. When the Wakie alarm fires off, I must launch myself from the bed and flee to the bathroom in order to conduct my conversation, so I don't use it everyday. 

But those morning that I do are joyous.

Sometimes it's a person reading an early morning greeting.

Other times it's a person intent on knowing where I live and what I do for a living. 

The other day, a man from the United States ask, "So? You awake?" When I told him I was, he said, "Then get moving! You'll be dead before you know it!"

That man understood my soul.

I've had conversations with people in England, Italy, Germany, Australia, and all over the United States. It's been amazing. 

A couple weeks ago I ended up in a conversation with a woman in Oregon who learned that I am an author and pre-ordered my upcoming novel (which you should all do, too).

Forget your alarm clock. Mindless beeps and buzzes are for losers. Give Wakie a try. Make your first interaction of the day a mysterious, interesting, unexpected, and perhaps even profitable one.  

Some fun facts are just facts

Sorry, LEGO. This fact is not fun in any way. 

There are so many things wrong with this sign.

The capitalization of Do and Not is terrible. Of course. I despise random and inaccurate capitalization.

The lack of punctuation is forgivable but still annoying as hell. 

But it's the existence of the sign that bothers me the most. Why taint a perfectly good table with a sign asking patrons not to move it and the adjacent furniture? It's as if the table only exists for the sign asking that it not be moved. 

Why have a table at all?

I would submit that a collection of poorly appointed furniture is far more egregious than this plastic and paper monstrosity. 

Naked clog fighting. Let me say that again: NAKED CLOG FIGHTING.

This existed. It was real. 

You're welcome. 

“From such beginnings sprang the combat sport of clog fighting, or ‘purring’ as it was known in Lancashire. An illegal sport, purring involved two men kicking each other until one admitted defeat or blood was drawn. Sometimes the men were naked, and there was also a variation in which the men would sit on either side of a large barrel, their feet dangling inside, and kick each other inside the barrel. Often people would gamble upon the outcome. Grudges could be settled this way – the Lancashire phrase “Ah’ll gi thi some clog toe pie” could easily lead to a purring match, and some very sore shins.”

— http://mentalfloss.com/uk/history/295...

A restroom puzzle: How exactly is this configuration of toilets supposed to work?

Could someone please explain the restroom configuration to me?

 

I stepped into the restroom, wondering if I should lock the door. I planned on using one of the urinals, so should I have left the door unlocked in the event another man entered, wanting use of the other urinal?

That seemed to make sense, but what if the man entering requiring the use of the toilet? Presumably he would not drop trou while I was standing there, which means he would have to stand by and wait. This would quickly become awkward as he watched me go about my business, standing ideally in the corner. In order to break the tension, maybe he would attempt some small talk, at which point he and I would probably have preferred that he be waiting outside the room.

And what if three or more men entered the restroom? Even if all of them required use of the urinal, the room is small. Things would get tight rather quickly.

It took me a moment to decide, but in the end, I opted to lock the door, keeping the restroom to myself.

Just me, three inexplicable toilets, and a lot of questions about what kind of rationale went into the design of this ridiculous restroom. 

Watching "Jaws" while floating in a murky pond at night helps explain why storytelling continues to gain in popularity

I'm often asked why storytelling has become so popular. Why do 500 or more people wrap around the block in hopes of getting inside a bookstore that can only hold 300 people in order to hear ten strangers tell stories. 

There are a few reasons, but this photo speaks to one of them:

Storytelling is ephemeral. You have to be there or you have missed it forever.

Storytelling is appointment-viewing in an age when entertainment is available at any time and anywhere. We record television on DVRs so we can watch the shows when we want. We stream movies on our tablets and phones with the touch of a button. We carry access to millions of songs in our pockets at all times.

Nothing is primal or precious anymore because we can see and listen to our favorite forms of media at anytime, anywhere.    

Storytelling is a singular event. Every time a storyteller takes the stage to perform, it's an important and not-to-be-missed moment because it will never happen this way again. 

Just like watching an outdoor screening of "Jaws" on a big screen while floating with hundreds of other people in inner tubes in a murky pond at night.

These things don't happen everyday.  

The Alamo Drafthouse, in honor of the film's 40th anniversary, hosted an outdoor screening of the film alongside a man-made lake at the Texas Ski Ranch, located between Austin and San Antonio.

I missed this singular moment in time. I missed my opportunity to watch this classic film in a way that it has never been watched before. 

I have missed it forever.

This is one of the reasons - and probably not even the most important reason - why storytelling continues to gain in popularity. It's a must see event that is lost to you forever if you're not willing to line up around the block an hour or two before the show in hopes of finding space against a wall or between two bookshelves in order to hear the stories told onstage.

Why I choose to write in McDonald's

Two old, Italian guys are sitting in a booth beside me at McDonald's. 

FIRST GUY:  Leo, where were you? I thought you were going to take me to Avon today.

SECOND GUY:  I was. But then I got into my car and fell asleep.

FIRST GUY (with complete sincerity):  God. Damn. I hate when that happens.

This is why I choose to write my novels here, in this glorious fast food restaurant on the edge of the highway, and not in a Starbucks or some similarly upscale, fair trade, recovered railroad tie, jazz-infused coffee establishment.

There is a diversity and oddity and texture in this place that I adore. As I scan the room, I see white people and brown people. English speakers and possibly-Spanish-but-I'm-not-quite-sure speakers. Business folk and working class folk. The young and old. The very young and the very old. Singletons and couples and families. Packs of teenagers. The happy and the exhausted.  

Sitting to my immediate left is a UPS driver, head hanging low, eating a Big Mac and reading a book. He is young, thin, and black. To my right, a teenage girl with a streak of blue hair pecks away at her phone while her friend stares blankly at her like a goldfish. Directly across from me, standing in line, a woman rocks an infant in her arms while a man - perhaps her husband - orders food from a Latino teenage girl. A couple minutes ago a middle aged man in a suit and a paunch walked by my table, yapping about PE ratios to someone on his phone. An older, McDonald's employee pushes a broom off to my right.

It is a level of diversity rarely encountered in this increasingly gentrified world. 

Most of the time, I write in my home. I do not require a outside locale to ply by trade. I am not a writer be claims to need a coffee shop and cappuccino and John Mayer to write. I must not engage in public displays of writing in order to feel like a real author. The dining room table and my bottle of water does me just fine.

But occasionally my children make it difficult to write, or I need a change of scenery. This often results in a trip to the library, but it also brings me here, to this molded plastic booth and this angular, plastic table, where I can sit amongst a splash of humanity and listen and watch diversity scrape against diversity.  

If I want to sit amongst upper middle class white people, with their $6 coffees, Apple computers, high end strollers, and first world problems, I will take my work to Starbucks or its indie equivalent. It won't nourish my soul or inspire my work, but I'm admittedly more likely to find an available power outlet and a slightly more comfortable chair.    

But more often than not, you will find me here, sitting amongst the masses, armed with a Diet Coke, a small bag of French fries, and a smile. I may have a pair of headphones covering my ears, white noise or Pandora's Springsteen station drowning out the the world. 

But I'm just as likely to be headphone free, listening to two old, Italian guys navigate life in their sunset years, wondering how I might use their struggle and friendship and unintended hilarity in one of my stories someday.

You don't get stuff this good at a place like Starbucks.

Sticks & Stones made it to the stage! I could not have done it alone.

On Sunday, I had the joy of watching my latest musical, Sticks & Stones, performed at a summer camp in central Connecticut. It's the story of a group of middle school students coming to terms with the parts of their bodies and the parts of their lives that they like least. 

As a novelist and columnist, I almost never have the opportunity to watch readers consume my work. People tend to not enjoy having someone stare at them as they read.

At least my wife doesn't like it. She doesn't like it at all. Presumably other people would feel the same. 

But with plays and musicals, I have the opportunity to sit amongst my consumers, listening for the laughs and watching the tears, and I was lucky enough to see and hear both on Sunday.

I say that it was my latest musical, but in truth, none of this would be possible without my writing partner, Andy Mayo. Andy writes all of the music for our shows and is the driving force behind getting them written and performed onstage. He pokes and prods and cajoles me to finish the project. He sets deadlines that I ignore and establishes goals that I am useless in achieving.

Andy basically drags me through the process, kicking and screaming, and I'm only truly happy when I see the work onstage in the hands of actors.  

Nothing that we've ever written would've seen the light of day without Andy/  

Our first collaboration, The Clowns, is a rock opera that has been produced at The Playhouse on Park in 2013 and has been considered by festivals and other theaters since then.  We are hoping to see it on a larger stage someday. It deserves more attention. 

Our second was Caught in the Middle, a show written for tweens that was performed at this same summer camp last year and has recently been picked up by a local children's theater for a traveling tour throughout Connecticut.

Hopefully something similar or even better will happen with Sticks & Stones.

This journey into writing for the theater - which began in 2007 - has been a great lesson for me on the importance of a good partner in creative endeavors such as these. Though I could never imagine writing a book or a column or even a blog post with a partner (but not without my agent or editor), I could never writing a musical without someone like Andy supplying the music and lyrics, and most importantly, the drive and the passion.

Choose your partners wisely (though in truth, Andy chose me). They can take you far.