Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 503

Your North Face is a your coat, moron.

Could someone please explain to me how the brand name North Face has come to replace the word coat for some people?

I hear adults and my students say things like, “Let me just grab my North Face” or “I forgot my North Face on the playground.”

Do these people also refer to their refrigerators as their Whirlpool and their underwear as their Fruit of the Loom?

“You’re North Face?” I always ask. “Do you mean your coat?”

I hardly think that North Face has achieved the level of market dominance necessary to allow it to replace the word coat like the brand name Xerox once stood in place of the word photocopy.

I suspect brand snobbery at work here, and I don’t like it.

I chose not to become a professional cuddler

My list of careers is long.

Elementary school teacher
Author
Wedding DJ
Minister
Professional speaker
Life coach

My list of careers that I am seeking to make happen include:

Professional best man (I have had three serious inquiries thus far)Professional double date companion
Grave site visitor

I recently posted a list of future careers that I am interested in pursuing, and in addition to those, I’m also interested in launching an efficiency consulting firm. I’m confident that I can improve the efficiency and productivity of almost anyone if you give me a week.

My interests are wide and varied. I collect jobs like some people collect antiques.

As a result, for an extremely brief but shameful moment, I also considered the career of a professional cuddler, an option that I became aware of after reading about it in TIME.

Graduate student Jacqueline Samuel has turned the act of cuddling into a business. In June, the 29-year-old launched the Snuggery, a company that allows clients to cuddle with her for $60 an hour.

Thankfully, the idea of professional cuddling did not last long, for a number of reasons.

First, I suspect that my wife might be opposed to this particular career choice.

Second, $60 an hour did not sound like enough money to make the effort  worth my time.

But most important, the job sounds incredibly boring. Simply holding a person for a solid hour? If I was allowed to read a book or listen to a podcast while cuddling, it might be worthy of my time and hold my interest, but holding some sorry sack for an hour without any other distraction?

No thank you.

I’m in complete agreement with Johnny Rotten

“The only thing you have in life is life. I don’t care if both legs fall off and there’s only one eyeball left. I want life!” – John Lydon (Johnny Rotten)

I would not be surprised to learn that Johnny Rotten was the survivor of a near-death experience.

The perfect apron for those who support vegetables by not eating them.

I’ve written my hope that one day we discover that plants are actually sentient beings capable of thought and feelings.

I’ve cited research that indicates that plants can see and smell and are capable of evading enemies and determining friend from foe.

Apparently I am not the only person with these thoughts.

I want this apron.  

One percent of stupidity

As of today, this video has been viewed more than three million times.

It’s been liked by more than 41,000 viewers.

It contains not an ounce of political rhetoric. Not a smidgen of partisan positioning. There is no talk of party or platform or policy. 

It is simply a recording of the President of the United States telling a group of volunteers that he is confident that they will do great things in the future. And yes, for a moment, while expressing his pride for the people in the room, the President has tears in his eyes.

It’s a moving speech, but what I am most interested is the 641 jackasses who disliked the video. These people amount to .0002 percent of the total number of views that the video received and (not ironically) .01 percent of the people who have chosen to rate the video.

The one percent raises its ugly head again. 

It’s hard to imagine how sad and petty and angry and implacably partisan a person must be to actively and purposefully dislike something like this.

They must have been so annoyed with the reelection of the President.

That makes me so happy.

My honesty about my stupidity is the direct result of the enormity of my source material

I spent a weekend in Santa Cruz recently while on book tour. I was taking part in a literary retreat in which I had the opportunity to speak both formally and informally with readers, authors, booksellers librarians and audiobook narrators. Some of these people have heard me speak before at previous events and were kind enough to listen to some of my stories again.  

Throughout the weekend, readers, booksellers and even authors commented on how honest I am. Following a talk to a group of 20-30 readers, for example, no less than six audience members approached me and expressed appreciation for my honesty in varying degrees.

At dinner the previous night an author expressed appreciation for my honesty after I shared a story about a time in high school when I was especially cruel to a teacher.

I’ve heard this sentiment before, but for whatever reason, it was out in full force during this particular weekend.

The problem was that it made no sense to me. I also spent the weekend listening to authors speak both formally and informally, and I found each one of them to be remarkably candid and honest. I was captivated by their stories, their descriptions of the the writing process and their willingness to share the struggles and setbacks that they experienced on the road to publication.

I was impressed with each and every one, and not once did I think of them as disingenuous or insincere.

On Saturday night, after my final talk of the weekend, another person who had read my books and heard me speak before approached and once again complimented me on my honesty. 

I couldn’t help it. I had to ask:

“What do you mean by honesty? I’ve listened to all these authors speak all weekend long, and they all sound honest to me?”

“They are,” the person explained. “They’re all wonderful. You’re just not afraid to tell us how stupid you are.”

As much as this comment did not initially sit well with me at first, it made sense after some reflection and brought these comments regarding my honesty into a clear light. 

It’s not that I am more willing to admit how stupid I am. It’s just that I do more stupid things than most people and therefore have more that I can admit to.

Girl on horse

I grew up on the back of a horse.

Until my parents divorced when I was about nine years old, our home and our lives were centered around the many horses that my father owned, boarded and trained.

In fact, the horses were partly the cause for my parent’s divorce.

My father loved them, and my mother did not. My father was willing to incur the inordinate expenses associated with owning horses and my mother was not. Horses became a dividing line between my mother and father, and while it was more than the horses that broke them apart, they played a role.

Nevertheless, horses were everything to me.   

I competed in horse shows with my father.

I mucked stalls, brushed coats and loaded hay into the barn’s loft. 

I was bitten, kicked and stomped on by horses, sometimes accidentally and many times on purpose. 

A horse once bolted into the back fields while I desperately clung to its back, absent any saddle or reins. It was a harrowing ride that I will never forget, because of my fear of falling as well as my awareness that no one was chasing after us.

The horse eventually brought me back home about an hour later when he became thirsty.

Stories like that fill my early childhood.

So when my friend sent me these images of my daughter on the back of a horse for the very first time, I was both elated to learn that she was brave enough to climb aboard and a little saddened that I was attending a literary festival in in Brattleboro, Vermont festival at the time and was not there to witness it for myself. 

We cannot always be there when our children take their first steps, but this is one that I wish I had seen.

 

Bloomingdale’s sucks. Whole Foods does not.

On Tuesday my wife was in Bloomingdales in Manhattan, attempting to make a purchase, when our debit card was declined. It turns out that the bank put a hold on the card because of possibly fraudulent activity. When the card was processed as a credit card, it went through fine, but if it was processed as a debit card, it was declined.  

The woman at the register in Bloomingdales was impatient and impolite to my wife, making her feel as if she was trying to pass off a stolen credit card.

She was too kind and forgiving to mention this to anyone, but I am not as kind and not nearly so forgiving.

Contrast that experience to the following day, when this happened, written in my wife’s own words: 

This afternoon I was at Whole Foods picking up some groceries. Before checking out I went to buy a latte and discovered that my credit card wasn’t working. I knew it shouldn’t be the case so I stepped to the side to call the bank. I was on with the bank for quite some time, and the bank employee kept telling me it should be fixed and to try it again, but each time to no avail.

I had Charlie in his carrier and a carriage full of groceries that I knew I was going to have to leave at the market soon. It was snowing and I had to pick Clara up from preschool. At this point a Whole Foods employee came over and asked if I had any more shopping to do. I said that I was also going to get a rotisserie chicken. She walked away and returned with two chickens and asked which one I would prefer. Then she began bagging up my groceries.

I was still talking to the bank so it took me a minute to realize what she was doing. When I looked up she said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got this for you.”

I said, “Wait, what? You are giving these to me?”

She answered that she was, and of course I got all teary told her she didn’t need to do that. She said, “It’s no problem. It’s snowing. We’ve got it.”

So there you go. Some pretty awesome kindness from Whole Foods.

You can be sure I’ll be making a nice donation to their charity next time I check out.

Customer loyalty is not a difficult thing to earn.

For years, I have been critical of Whole Foods for their outrageous prices, limited selection, and the sheer weight of preciousness and pretension that the company and their clientele exudes. It’s a store that sells some of the best pizza in town, and yet they will not sell me a Diet Coke to go along with my pizza. Instead, I am forced to purchase a soda-like product that tastes as if it was extracted from the bark of a tree (and probably was).

It’s stupid.

Not deigning to sell otherwise ubiquitous items like Diet Coke or batteries only forces customers into the inane (and exceedingly popular) process of shopping at multiple grocery stores, which only serves to waste time and money.

And it makes you seem like a bunch of self-righteous foodie bustards in the process.

But after they way they treated my wife yesterday, I will be decidedly less vocal about my opposition to Whole Foods. I love their pizza but am not a fan of their business model, but the company employs good people who know how to take care of customers in need, and for that reason, I will give them the credit they deserve. 

Well done, Whole Foods. Thank you for taking care of my wife in such grand fashion.

Save the date

The Clowns, the rock opera written by Andy Mayo and myself, continues its march to Broadway with a weekend production at the Playhouse on Park in West Hartford, CT on January 4, 5 and 6.

This will be staged workshop, meaning actors, directors and writers will spend two weeks perfecting the show (if that’s possible) prior to the weekend performances. We will be in New York City in early December to cast the show and working hard on revising it until then.

Tickets are not yet on sale, but I will let you know when they are.

Hope to see you at the show!

My fictional relationships with women

I’ve had three serious but fictional relationships with women in my life.

Each one was more serious than the last.

My first began in elementary school with Annette Funicello. Annette appeared in the beach blanket bingo movies that preceded Creature Double Feature on Chanel 56 on Saturday mornings. I took one look at her and instantly fell in love. When Annette was singing, I believed with all my heart that she was singing to me.

I was eight years old at the time, so what the hell did I know.

Though passionate and sincere, my torrid affair with Annette Funicello came to an end with my discovery of Laura Ingalls Wilder, first through the Little House of the Prairie television series and then through her books. Though I was somewhat aware (though in constant denial) that Laura Ingalls Wilder was both married and dead, the feelings that I had with this woman, thanks to Melissa Gilbert and especially her books, were not to be deterred. While Annette was more of a fling, I had a genuine love affair with Laura Ingalls Wilder that lasted longer than I would care to admit.

It was especially fitting that the last time I saw my mother alive, we watched Little House on the Prairie together. It was like bringing an old friend to her bedside one last time.

After Laura, it was a long time before I engaged in another fictional relationship. This makes sense, of course, because in that time, I grew up and became an adult.

My adulthood also makes it admittedly disturbing that there is one more fictional relationship on my list.  

I was in my early thirties at the time, living on my own following my divorce from my ex-wife. It was an odd time in my life, both pleasantly and tragically absent of companionship, and in this strange space, I fell in love with a woman named Jaye on the tragically short-lived but extraordinary television show Wonderfalls.

Until I met my wife, I had never met a more perfect woman than Jaye Tyler (fictional women tend to be surprisingly perfect), and the Friday evenings that we spent together came to mean a great deal to me. There were nights, in fact, when I told me friends that I could not meet them until after 10:00, because I had a 9:30 date with Jaye.

“Record the damn show,” one of my friends once said.

“I can’t do that to Jaye,” I said, and I meant it. For the briefest moment of time, I became convinced that I could be happy dating this fictional television character every Friday night.

And I was.

Eventually I began dating in real life, probably because Fox began changing the show’s time slot, and I could see that the end was near. Wonderfalls only aired a total of four episodes before being canceled despite outstanding reviews from critics, but I purchased the full season on DVD as soon as it was available and have since shared the show with my wife and several friends.

Everyone who watches Wonderfalls loves the show. They cite its clever, quirky plot and cast of unique and compelling characters, but I suspect that it’s Jaye that they love the most.

For about a month of my life, she was the one who I loved the most as well.