Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 376

Saturday morning cartoons are no more. A sad day for someone whose 27 year friendship may have been predicated on a Saturday morning cartoon theme song.

For the first time in 50-plus years, you won’t find a block of animation on broadcast this morning. Saturday morning cartoons are over. It’s the end of an era.

I’m a little sad.

Saturday morning cartoons were a staple for me growing up. Shows like  Super Friends and The Smurfs kept me entertained for hours.

  

It was also one of my only opportunities to see commercials for products like sugary cereals and new toy lines. With parents hell bent on store brand Cheerios and hand-me-down Gobots, just watching commercials for Sugar Smacks and Transformers was thrilling. 

  

Just as important, Saturday morning cartoons taught me patience.

If I wanted to watch a new cartoon, I had to wait one full week. Immediate gratification was not possible to children of my generation like it is for my own children today. 

My favorite Saturday morning cartoon of all time was Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears. It’s a little odd since the show first aired in 1985, when I was fourteen years old, but I was apparently still watching Saturday morning cartoons at the time. And I fell in love with this show.

The Gummi Bears became an even more important part of my life two years later when I went to work for McDonald’s. I met my best friend of the last 27 years while working the drive-thru, handing Egg McMuffins and coffee to customers through the window. It was on a Saturday morning shift that Bengi and I admitted our mutual love for the show and discovered that we both knew the theme song to the show by heart. 

We were likely to eventually become friends anyway. Though he and I see each other as very different people today, a person who has known Bengi for a long time and recently got to know me said that she has never met two people more alike.

It makes sense. After 27 years, we tend to see our differences more clearly than the similarities which probably drew us together in the first place. 

Still, for a couple of teenage boys, discovering that we had something in common as odd and eclectic as Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears probably helped cement the friendship quite a bit.

I can still remember singing that song together in the drive-thru like it was yesterday. 

I can still sing the song by heart today.

There can only be one explanation for a Republican campaign ad as sexist and stupid as this.

I suspect that the Republican Party has been infiltrated by some undercover Democratic strategists who have convinced them that stupid, sexist political ads are effective. 

There can be no other explanation for the existence of this political ad (and others  like it, which are exactly the same except with different Republican candidate’s names). No right minded (or right leaning) person could watch this commercial and not see it as offensive and inane.

Right?    

Is it wrong for me to find this Wallkill Mighty Mites clip nearly as entertaining as the Patriots victory over the Bengals?

The New England Patriots 43-17 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday night was the highlight of my weekend, and it gave my students reason to celebrate.

I’m never in a good mood on Monday if the Patriots have lost.

But a close send in terms of football highlights from the weekend was the Wallkill Mighty Mites attempt to crash through a banner as they took the field on Saturday.

I’ve watched it half a dozen times already. It doesn’t get old.

Hot Buzz About Books and Book Clubs

I’ll be speaking on the panel below alongside RJ Julia Bookseller’s President Roxanne Coady and Books on the Nightstand hosts Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness.

If you’re a reader and a book lover, you should come. Before I joined the panel onstage, Elysha and I attended this event for years.

It will be fun. I promise.

No one wants to see your photos of the sunrise or the sunset.

On Saturday morning, I posted the following to Facebook:

At 6:38 this morning the sky turned an orange that I have never seen before. It was as if it was on fire. The whole world was bathed in an eerily beautiful orange glow. It lasted for less than ten minutes. I took my son outside to watch. Only people who rise before the sun know the full range of the sky’s colors.

I posted a shorter but similar comment to Twitter.

The post received a large response on social media, including a question, asked about a dozen times.

Why didn’t I capture the moment with a photograph?

Two reasons:

1. Photographs of sunsets and sunrises never adequately capture the majesty of the moment. Frankly, they’re boring. While I am certain that many sunsets and sunrises are stunning and perhaps even breathtaking, if I’m not there, it looks like all the other sunsets and sunrises that I’ve ever seen captured on film

Photography never does them justice.

 

And there are a million of the photographs taken everyday and posted to social media, making them seem even less majestic. They are akin to elementary school poems about the snow or dogs. I’ve read a million of them over the course of my teaching career, and even the excellent ones are marginalized by sheer volume.

So I don’t take photographs of sunsets and sunrises and post them to social media. Nor should you.

2. Had I taken the time to photograph the sky on Saturday morning, I would’ve missed some of the majesty of the moment. In less than ten minutes, the sky has transformed from singular and spectacular to ordinary and expected. I spent every moment soaking it in. Enjoying it with my son. Committing the moment to memory.

Not sticking an iPhone in between me and it in order to take a photograph that would never do it justice.

Let’s put an end to the Miss America pageant by making anyone who watches it feel small and stupid and uninformed.

John Oliver’s takedown of the Miss America pageant on HBO’s Last Week Tonight was brilliant. The Miss America pageant is admittedly an easy target, but Oliver’s segment is both surgical and hilarious.

I could not stop laughing.

The Miss America pageant and all its bastard step children are like moldering, vestigial organs that should have been excised from the cultural landscape long ago.

Here’s the first step: STOP WATCHING THE GODDAMN THING.

Though the audience for the Miss America pageant was down 22% from last year, it still drew almost 10 million viewer and garnered its best rating in ten years in the category of adults ages 18 to 49 years old.

Who are these people?

Except I know who these people are. At least some of them. I watched friends tweet about the show while watching it. I heard colleagues talking about the show the next day. At least two people asked me if I watched.

I did not watch. Nor should you.

It will be a long time before pageant contestants are no longer willing to be objectified on national television for a chance at fame and profit. 

But if rationale Americans can come together and agree that this organization and its television show should no longer be supported by the general public, the Miss America pageant could be brought to an end sooner than later.

Let’s do this.

Don’t watch next year. If you hear of friends or relatives who watched, shame them. Make them feel small and stupid and uninformed.

Or show them John Oliver’s segment. Not only will they thank you for the laughs, but perhaps they will come away never wanting to watch the damn thing again. 

How could they not?

I have never used an em dash. I don’t even know how to make an em dash. But you can still find them in my books.

Noreen Malone of Slate argues against the em dash.

The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don’t you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won’t be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that’s not yet complete? Strunk and White—who must always be mentioned in articles such as this one—counsel against overusing the dash as well: “Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate.”  Who are we, we modern writers, to pass judgment—and with such shocking frequency—on these more simple forms of punctuation—the workmanlike comma, the stalwart colon, the taken-for-granted period?

I’ve written five novels. Two memoirs. Dozens of short stories. Thousands of blog posts.  Countless pieces for newspapers, magazines, websites, and the like.

I have never used an em dash. Not once. Honestly, I don’t even know how to make an em dash. I’d have to Google it.

I agree with Malone. A period has almost always suffices. Occasionally a comma. Sometimes a set of parentheses.

This is not to say that you won’t find an em dash in my novels, because you will, dear reader. They are few and far between, but if you have the time to search, a handful of em dashes can be found.

But please know that when you do, it was placed there by an editor who felt that it served the story better than my original choice of punctuation.

Like I said, I don’t even know what combination of keys produces such a thing.

Beautiful wife. Scolded boy. Molded in plastic.

My wife posted this to Facebook today. It was too good not to share here.
____________________________

I just overheard Charlie in the other room saying, “Sit down! Time out!” I went in and found these Playmobils set up on the floor.

You don’t have to be a child psychologist to analyze this one.

(At least he chose the most glamorous of all the Playmobil mommies…)

This is what happens when you work in the industry for 17 years.

I am working at a wedding tonight as the DJ.

Amongst the many people here, I have worked as the DJ at the weddings of:

The woman in charge of the reception hall (2002)
The photographer (2004)
Two of the couples who are attending as guests (2009, 2013)

I also served as the minister for the photographer’s wedding.

The world is getting smaller by the minute.

A man shouted at me. Swore at me. My response was not appropriate. Unfortunately.

I pulled alongside the gas pump and shifted my car into park. There was another gas pump just ahead of me, but there was a yellow plastic bag around the pump handle, indicating that the pump was not functioning.

I began pumping gas.

The man in the pickup truck parked behind me had pulled into the station at the same time as me. He glared at me through his windshield. I could feel his glare on the back of my head. A moment later, he stepped out of his truck and inquired as to why I had not pulled ahead to the next pump.

His inquiry was shouted at me. It contained profanity. The man was angry.

I remained calm. This is one of the things I do best. These moments are made for me. I said, “Today is your lucky day.”

“Why?” the man asked, still shouting.

“The pump up front is broken,” I said, motioning to the yellow bag on the pump handle. “That’s why I didn’t pull forward. And you just learned not to start a conversation by shouting at someone and swearing, or you might look like an idiot. Your lucky day.”

The man shouted some more. Swore some more. Climbed back into his truck. Backed up. Drove to the pumps on the opposite side of the station.

This should’ve been the highlight of my day, but even before my wife expressed with disapproval for my actions, citing the possibility, however unlikely, the the man could’ve shot, stabbed, or run me over with his truck for being a wise ass, I felt the unease in my bones. 

Ten years ago, this moment would’ve been the highlight of my day. Maybe my week.

But I, too, knew about the possibility of escalation as I was spouting off to the man. Maybe not instantly, but soon enough. As I fired off my clever and self-satisfied quip, I thought about my family. I saw their faces in my mind.

The thrill-seeking instigator that my mother called me for much of her life reveled in my quick-witted retort.

The sober, more calculating father and husband recognized my actions as unnecessary and possibly dangerous. The chances of genuine danger were exceptionally low. People may say otherwise, but these are people who extrapolate sensational news stories and assume the world is going to hell and a hand basket.

In truth, violent crime rates (and crime rates in general) are lower today than ever before.

But when you have a wife and two children (not to mention a crippling fear of death), even exceptionally low probabilities are best avoided.

My first novel, Something Missing, is about an exceptional and benevolent burglar who doesn’t want to end his life of crime simply because he’s so good at it. He takes pride in his work. He wonders if he might be the best burglar on the planet.

It’s incredibly hard to quit something that you are so naturally inclined.

I’m at my best in these moments of confrontation. My tendency to remain calm regardless of the circumstances, combined with my ability to rapidly formulate retorts and my willingness to hit below the belt make me highly effective in these scenarios.

Allowing a stupid man shout and swear at me for not pulling ahead at a gas station without firing back seems ridiculous to me. Cowardly. Neutered.

Shakespeare said that discretion is the better part of valor, but what is often forgotten is that these words are uttered by Falstaff, who is pretending to be dead lest he find himself risking his life in battle.

Falstaff is saying that the best part of courage is caution, which Shakespeare meant to be a joke. Truly courageous people may be cautious, but caution is not the most important characteristic of courage.

Discretion is not the better part of valor. Discretion is boring. Discretion stinks.

I prefer King Henry’s battle cry instead:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger. . .

Then again, King Henry was trying to inspire his soldiers during their invasion of France. An idiot at the gas station may not compare well to an intercontinental war between Europe’s two greatest powers.