Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 527

Another super power

My wife and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary on Sunday. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

In light of our anniversary, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Today’s post was written during our honeymoon in Bermuda. __________________________________________

Elysha discovered another one of my super powers this week:

My ability to hold my breath for frightening lengths of time.

We were swimming in the pool yesterday and I was lazily doing laps underwater. Eventually I came up for breath and heard her scream, “Damn it, honey! You scared the hell out of me!”

I can really hold my breath for quite a while. Unless you are one of these guys, I probably have you beat.

Of course, this particular talent has yielded me very few results.

Occasionally I will find the opportunity to float in the pool for a long period of time, appearing drowned and dead, thus terrifying a friend or stranger (which is great fun indeed), but other than that, this super power is fairly useless.

Unless of course I find myself on a sinking submarine someday.

In that case, I will probably be able to survive about three minutes longer than the rest of the crew.

This is something I will always remember

Someday I will be a spry, energetic, exceptionally good looking old man who can still play golf surprisingly well and is still looking for a tackle football game, and when that day comes, I will thank my lucky stars that it has become so easy to capture moments like this on video.

Wedding reboot: Making friends in ways I can’t begin to imagine

My wife and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary yesterday. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

In light of our anniversary, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Today’s post was written during our honeymoon in Bermuda. __________________________________________

It’s been six days and Elysha now knows every employee at the hotel by name.

Sam
Tico
Gerald
Mildred
Candice
Sharon

And these are only the employees that I can keep track of. The funny thing is that I am never around when she learns these people’s names.

I don’t know how she does it.

Some guy who I had never seen before came up yesterday to deliver our breakfast on the porch overlooking the pool.

“Hi Tico,” she shouted as he approached.

Yesterday we were heading off to the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, a fantastic museum just outside Hamilton. As we passed another employee in the hall, she shouted, “Hi Sam!”

I swear that we’ve been together every minute of our honeymoon, and as far as I could tell, this was the first time that I’d ever seen the guy, yet it was as if she and Sam had known each other forever.

This is the same woman who once got lost exiting a restaurant even though  the front door was visible from our table.

I don’t get it.

Update:  Elysha just informed me that the correct spelling of the man’s name is not Tico but Teko.

No, the employees don’t wear name badges of any kind.

This is getting stranger by the minute.

This is getting stranger by the minute.

Plants can see! See you eat them!

I have always secretly hoped that someday we would discover that plants are just as sentient as animals, and as a result, the ethical vegans of the world would be forced to come to terms with the fact that when it comes to food, they are no less murderous than cow and chicken-eating people like me.

I wrote that paragraph back in May of this year in regards to recent findings that plants possess a sense of smell and are therefore one step closer to sentience. 

Scientists have taken another enormous step in that direction with the recent discovery that plants can see.

That’s right. There is evidence suggesting that the innocent carrot that you munched on last night was able to see before you decided to kill it.

They don’t see pictures. But they see colors, they see directions, they see intensities. But on a certain level, plants might think that we’re visually limited because plants see things that we can’t see. They see UV light and they see far red light, and we can’t see that at all. So I think we can say that plants see. It knows quite a bit, much more than we give them credit for.”

Plants can see. They can smell. We know from plants like the Venus fly trap that at least some plants possess the power of touch.

What will we discover next?

I also wrote this back in May, but it still seems especially fitting:

Brace yourself, my vegan friends, We may soon discover that plants are capable of playing chess and debating the merits of a Parliamentary government.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Sadly, tragically, lamentably not for everyone

After 28 years at the AMC Harvard Square theater, the Rocky Horror Picture Show will move its weekly midnight screenings of  to the AMC Loews Boston Common 19 theater, with shows starting Saturday, Aug. 4.

Though I am sad to see the show move from Harvard Square, where I have seen it many times, I am happy that it lives on in New England. As a card-carrying member of The Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club, a two-time performer in the show and someone who saw the Broadway version of the show twice, I am desperately hoping that the show lives on long enough for me to take my children someday.

When they are much, much older.  

If you are not familiar, a midnight performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is much more than just a showing of the 1975 science fiction/horror musical starring Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry. It is a live performance that demands audience participation that includes such things as dancing the Time Warp along with the film and throwing toast, water, toilet paper, hot dogs, and rice at the appropriate points in the movie.

Fans often attend shows in costume, while an onstage “shadowcast” act out the movie. Audience members also use newspapers to cover their heads and squirt guns for rain during the “Over at the Frankenstein Place” musical sequence, and use noise makers during the scene in which Rocky is unveiled.

Most prevalent, however, are the call-backs: lines that audience members shout back at the film at appropriately timed intervals. They are often hilarious, occasionally vulgar, and an ever-present element of any midnight showing. Many of these call-backs have been canonized over the years and can be as tightly scripted as any play, though new lines involving recent pop culture references often find their way into the script as well. You can actually buy audio versions of the film that include recordings of the audience call-backs in order to learn them before attending the show.

In truth, none of this accurately describes The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s the kind of thing that must be experienced firsthand to be fully understood.

I attended my first Rocky Horror Picture Show in the early 1990’s after arriving in Connecticut, but that show quickly shut down. Soon after, I discovered the midnight show in Harvard Square and began making the trek a few times a year for several years, though it’s been a while since I have returned. 

The problem with the show, or more accurately, the problem with potential audience members, is that the show begins at midnight, meaning that audiences don’t exit the theater until well after 2:00 AM. For someone like me, who lives in Connecticut, this means that I am probably crawling into bed just as the sun is peeking over the horizon  (or not sleeping at all), making it exceedingly difficult for me to find friends who are willing to attend a performance.

As you may know, I am a constant advocate of putting yourself out there, but I am also a frequent complainer about the lack of friends who are willing to drive into the city on a weeknight for a Moth show, arrive home in the wee hours of the morning after a Monday Night football game and are otherwise hampered by an incessant need to be home at a reasonable hour.

For these people, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an impossibility, even though it runs on a Saturday night. Admittedly, this is partly the result of an aging base of friends who simply cannot stay awake all night as they once could, but it also take a certain type of person who is willing to drive into Boston for a midnight showing of a movie where you will be asked to dance in the aisles, dodge toast and toilet paper, absorb a shower of water and rice and possibly be dragged on stage to perform. 

My greatest hope is that my children will be this kind of people.

Life is a hell of a lot more fun when you are willing to try the ridiculous and sacrifice sleep for the sake of possibility.

Wedding reboot: Free repairs

My wife and I are celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary yesterday. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

Though our anniversary is now past, I still have a few posts that I have yet to re-post here, so our anniversary will live on for a couple extra days.

Today’s post was written about our wedding rehearsal.

__________________________________________

On Friday night, just after our rehearsal dinner was complete, I ran upstairs to my room to grab my camera. While in the room, my new sunglasses, chosen after much consternation by Elysha and her sister, fell off my head, popping out one of the lenses.

This was the first pair of sunglasses that I had brought that cost more than $20, so I was annoyed.

I brought them to Elysha, who tried to repair them, but the lens’s hold on the frame was tenuous at best.

A couple hours later after dinner we were standing by a bonfire, drinking and chatting. I had my sunglasses in my hand when my friend Jeff bumped into me, knocking my drink to the ground. Recognizing an opportunity, I released my sunglasses at the same time, allowing them to fall too, hoping the lens would pop out again.

It did.

When I picked up my glasses, now in two pieces, I shouted, “Look what you did! Thanks a lot. Elysha just bought these for me for our honeymoon.”

Almost on cue, my genius wife snapped at Jeff as well, using a voice that he later described as “more angry than I’ve ever heard before.”

Jeff assured her that he could repair the glasses (a fact which I did not doubt, since the guy can fix just about anything) and ran inside to do so.
As soon as he entered the manor, Elysha and I started laughing, explaining to our friends what had just happened. Someone brought me another drink and we all sat back down, waiting with great anticipation for Jeff to finish.
It actually took Jeff quite a while to make the repair, and at one point I wanted to go inside and confess the truth to him. I hated to think that he was missing too much of the party, but our friends convinced me to let him toil a little longer.

I worked.

Jeff returned about 20 minutes later and the glasses were like new. They held together for the entire honeymoon and beyond.

I confessed my prank after he returned the glasses to me and he was (as always) a good sport about it. What had surprised him the most was how angry Elysha had become, and how quickly she managed it, but I was not surprised.

She’s a very sharp woman, and you should see how angry she can get if I forget to wear my wedding band, shrink one of her shirts in the wash, or attempt to paraphrase her in a way that she does not approve.

Scary stuff.

Wedding reboot: Free repairs

My wife and I are celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary yesterday. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

Though our anniversary is now past, I still have a few posts that I have yet to re-post here, so our anniversary will live on for a couple extra days.

Today’s post was written about our wedding rehearsal.

__________________________________________

On Friday night, just after our rehearsal dinner was complete, I ran upstairs to my room to grab my camera. While in the room, my new sunglasses, chosen after much consternation by Elysha and her sister, fell off my head, popping out one of the lenses.

This was the first pair of sunglasses that I had brought that cost more than $20, so I was annoyed.

I brought them to Elysha, who tried to repair them, but the lens’s hold on the frame was tenuous at best.

A couple hours later after dinner we were standing by a bonfire, drinking and chatting. I had my sunglasses in my hand when my friend Jeff bumped into me, knocking my drink to the ground. Recognizing an opportunity, I released my sunglasses at the same time, allowing them to fall too, hoping the lens would pop out again.

It did.

When I picked up my glasses, now in two pieces, I shouted, “Look what you did! Thanks a lot. Elysha just bought these for me for our honeymoon.”

Almost on cue, my genius wife snapped at Jeff as well, using a voice that he later described as “more angry than I’ve ever heard before.”

Jeff assured her that he could repair the glasses (a fact which I did not doubt, since the guy can fix just about anything) and ran inside to do so.
As soon as he entered the manor, Elysha and I started laughing, explaining to our friends what had just happened. Someone brought me another drink and we all sat back down, waiting with great anticipation for Jeff to finish.
It actually took Jeff quite a while to make the repair, and at one point I wanted to go inside and confess the truth to him. I hated to think that he was missing too much of the party, but our friends convinced me to let him toil a little longer.

I worked.

Jeff returned about 20 minutes later and the glasses were like new. They held together for the entire honeymoon and beyond.

I confessed my prank after he returned the glasses to me and he was (as always) a good sport about it. What had surprised him the most was how angry Elysha had become, and how quickly she managed it, but I was not surprised.

She’s a very sharp woman, and you should see how angry she can get if I forget to wear my wedding band, shrink one of her shirts in the wash, or attempt to paraphrase her in a way that she does not approve.

Scary stuff.

No one wants your stupid diploma so find something else to say.

I’d like to make it official for anyone who has not already come to this conclusion (and there seems to be a lot of you):

When it comes to your education, no one wants to take it away from you.

We all know this. We’ve all known this for a very long time. There is no need to say this ever again.    

A statement like “I earned my college degree and no one can take that away from me,” makes me think that the moron making this claim could probably benefit from another year or two of higher education.

When it comes to an athletic victory, however, a statement like this is even more ridiculous because it’s not always true.

“The Red Sox won the World Series and no one can take that away from us” (a sentence I read in a book recently) is stupid because it’s cliché, trite and meaningless, but in baseball, at least it’s probably true. No professional baseball team or player has ever been stripped of a postseason award because of impropriety, and there has been a great deal of impropriety in baseball’s past.

But when it comes to sports like the Olympics, cycling, college basketball and college football, there is a long history of gold medals, yellow jerseys, league championships and Heisman Trophies being stripped from victors and handed down to the second place finishers when misconduct was discovered.

In sports, trophies and ribbons and championships can be taken away, which is even more reason to avoid this trite, nonsensical statement.

Wedding reboot: My killjoy wife

My wife and I are celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary today. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

In light of our anniversary, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Today’s post was written during our honeymoon in Bermuda.

__________________________________________

Today Elysha and I swam with dolphins. I will never for get it.

I pointed out to her that in sticking with the theme of the day, I had intentionally donned my dolphin underwear.

“Pretty coordinated, huh?” I asked, hoping for her to be impressed.

“Those are swordfish, honey. Not dolphins.”

Is this what our marriage is going to be like?

 

My killjoy wife

My wife and I are celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary today. Following our wedding, I wrote about some of the more memorable moments and posted them on a blog that no long exists.

In light of our anniversary, I’ve decided to re-post some of those wedding memories here as a means of preserving them as well as sharing them with readers.

Today’s post was written during our honeymoon in Bermuda.

__________________________________________

Today Elysha and I swam with dolphins. I will never for get it.

I pointed out to her that in sticking with the theme of the day, I had intentionally donned my dolphin underwear.

“Pretty coordinated, huh?” I asked, hoping for her to be impressed.

“Those are swordfish, honey. Not dolphins.”

Is this what our marriage is going to be like?