Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 531

Simian declarations

I handed my daughter a banana yesterday for lunch.

“Daddy, cut it up! I’m not a monkey!”

As I was cutting it up, she added, “You’re hairy like a monkey! Not me!”

“I don’t want to be Jewish!”

Gary Sernovitz of Slate does not like the hora for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s not even Jewish.  

I am also not Jewish, but having been subjected to the tradition at my wedding (my wife is Jewish) as well as having to organize and facilitate the tradition at a number of weddings over the years as a DJ, I am also opposed to it.

I actually think the whole thing is kind of insane. I can’t believe that a people so stereotypically coddled by their stereotypical Jewish mothers would allow brides and grooms to risk life and limb on their wedding day by being raised above a dance floor in chairs.

People fall off these chairs all the time.

In the words of television producer Bill Grundfest:

“The tradition of having out-of-shape Jews lift overweight Jews up in chairs was popularized by a personal injury attorney in Bayside. He foresaw the falling and breaking that followed, and cleaned up.”

My own experience with the hora was not without injury. I wrote the following three days after my wedding in July of 2006:

________________________

One of my greatest concerns during our wedding was the hora, the traditional  Jewish folk dance that would culminate with me and Elysha lifted up in chairs over the dance floor.

I am not a small guy, and I did not want to be dropped onto the tile floor.

When the dance began and I joined the circle of people whipping around the floor, I looked around for my groomsmen and saw Jeff standing nearby. He was the smallest of a group of big, strong guys, but I figured that he was better than nothing.

“Jeff!” I yelled. “This is it. I’m going to be in the chair in a couple minutes. Be ready, and get the others ready too!”

“No problem,” Jeff shouted back and then proceeded to the bar. By the time he returned, the song was over and I was back on the ground.

His excuse: “You said it would be a couple minutes. I just needed a drink.”

It’s remarkable how someone who had been there for me all weekend long took that moment to disappear.

As the chair came out, I looked around and saw Elysha’s 110 pound cousin take up position on one corner of the chair. “I don’t think so, dude!” I shouted and literally shooed him away.

In the end the only groomsman lifting the chair was my friend, Tom, who took a serious smack in the head when the chair (and I) took a frightening tip backward in his direction. I began yelling, “I don’t want to be Jewish! I don’t want to be Jewish!” and was finally lowered back down to the ground.

The next day Tom’s wife called the ugly-looking mark on his forehead his Harry Potter scar.

For me it was a mark of friendship, which was more than I could say for the rest of my groomsmen.

As for the rest of them, I know that my best man was lifting Elysha at the time and another one of the groomsmen had gone home to his infant twins, but the remaining four were nowhere to be found. At breakfast the next morning I questioned them as to their whereabouts.

Scott and Gary, the largest members of the group, claimed that they were standing nearby, watching me as I was lifted in the air. “You seemed alright. It looked like they had everything under control,” Gary said.

“And we had drinks in our hands,” Scott added.

Shep informed me that he was in the downstairs recreation room at the time, watching wresting at the time.

“No you weren’t!” I responded in disbelief.

“Yes, he was,” his wife answered. “I was with him, playing pool.”

Why did I even invite him to my wedding?

MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND in Greece

Thoughts?

The gender disparity of the marriage proposal

Here’s the difference in a marriage proposal for a man and a woman.

When a woman receives a marriage proposal, it means that a man has asked permission to spend the rest of his life with her. He has decided to put everything on the line, drop to one knee, and tell the girl who he loves that there is no one else in the world more perfect than she.

When a man proposes marriage, the best he can ask for is consent.

That said, there is little I would change about my marriage proposal to Elysha. It was a near-perfect day. 

The inexplicable is fertile ground for fiction.

I saw this door in a Portuguese club on Saturday night.

It is set into a brick wall. It’s elevated about three feet off the floor. The top of the door extends all the way to the ceiling. It’s accessible only through a set of impermanent, wooden stairs. The plate on the door reads “Rancho.”

As a writer, I couldn’t take my eyes off this door.

Have you ever seen a better bit of inspiration for a novel?

 

Resolution update: June 2012

1. Don’t die.

Still breathing.

2. Lose ten pounds.

Here’s the good news:

I lost 38 pounds over a period of two years, and I have not put any of that weight back on.

Here’s the bad news:

I have still not lost one additional pound since then. I would like to place the blame on the birth of my son (and the slightly reduced workout schedule), the heel spur that has prevented me from running as often as I would like, the emergence of the golfing season, which provides considerably less exercise than basketball, and the amount of time I have spent on my ass working on my book.

But in the end, excuses suck, as do my results thus far.   

3. Do at least 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups five days a day.  Also complete at least two two-minute planks five days per week.

Done. I am also quite relieved that I moved this goal from seven days a week to five days a week in January. The two days off each week helps a lot.   

4. Practice the flute for at least an hour a week.

Flute still broken. I’ll drop it off for repairs this week. I promise.

5. Complete my fifth novel before the Ides of March the birth of my next child.

Not complete. I’ve given myself three more weeks, which means writing fulltime, which I should have probably been doing already.

6. Complete my sixth novel.

Looing forward to returning to my sixth (and seventh) novel after I manage to complete this albatross of a fifth novel.

7. Sell one children’s book to a publisher.

I have been contacted by a children’s book editor who read and liked MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND and who may have interest in one or more of the manuscripts. My agent and I have been revising two manuscripts and we should have something to present by month’s end.

8. Complete the book proposal for my non-fiction, photographic  collaborative project.

I will contact the photographer this week.

9. Complete three chapters of my memoir.

This project, which will be part of an overall proposal, will be completed this summer, but only after the albatross is killed.

10. Complete at least twelve blog posts on my brother and sister blog.

Unprompted by me, my sister wrote a piece about the games we played as children, and I must respond this week. Three down. Nine to go.

Kelli continues to write these posts on her phone, since her laptop is no longer functioning. I have an old laptop to give her when she finally makes it over to my house to see the baby.

11. Become certified to teach high school English by completing two required classes.

I need to follow-up with Elysha on this. I suspect that any work that she was doing in this regard came to a halt when Charlie was born. Now that he is a month old, perhaps we can finalize these plans.

12. Publish at least one Op-Ed in a newspaper.

Same as last month. I published a piece in Beyond the Margins in April, which is not exactly a newspaper but is a great place (and maybe even a better place) for an author to publish.

I still have two pieces currently in the pipeline with hopes of both finding their way into print soon. I also wrote a blog post this month that I chose to keep off the blog in hopes of placing it somewhere else as well.

13. Attend at least five Moth events with the intention of telling a story.

My third Moth appearance will now take place at the GrandSLAM championship on July 17 at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan. The theme of the night is “Fall from Grace.” If you would like to attend the show, let me know and I can alert you as to when tickets are available.      

I have also planned for my next two Moth events, both taking place over the summer. They are:

Monday, July 30 (Theme: Judgment)

Tuesday, August 14 (Theme: About Time)

If you would like to attend either of these StorySLAMS with me, please let me know. I’m always looking for company.

14. Complete the necessary revisions of our rock opera (The Clowns) so that it can be staged as a full production in 2013.

I have cleared a week in July to complete these revisions with my partner. We should have actual dates for our next production of the show soon.

My partner has also begun writing music for the next rock opera. It appears that he is sucking me in all over again.  

15. Rid Elysha and myself of all education debt before the end of the year.

Incremental progress has been made on this front in June.

16. Give yoga an honest try.

I have a friend with some free classes who has offered to bring me to a lesson. Also, a yoga instructor and friend may be conducting some classes in her home this summer. One way or another, this will happen.  

17. Meditate for at least five minutes every day.

I mediated for five minutes a day on everyday in June, and I think I might actually be benefiting from it. Or at least doing it somewhat correctly. I’ve been able to clear my mind of all thoughts on a fairly regular basis, though doing so seems entirely unintentional on my part. It just happened one day, and it’s happening fairly regularly now. I sit down, begin breathing, and suddenly the ten minutes (my new time length) is done, almost as if it hasn’t happened.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do next, but this ten minute start to the day feels good, so I’ll just keep doing it and see what happens.

18. Agree to try at least one new dish per month, even if it contains ingredients that I wouldn’t normally consider palatable.

In June I tired a spinach lasagna, which was not unpalatable.  

19. Conduct the ninth No-Longer-Annual A-Mattzing Race in 2012.

The race is planned for the fall. 

20. Post my progress in terms of these resolutions on this blog on the first day of every month.

Two days late.

Pop head off before eating.

About 200 years ago, the lobster was regarded by most Americans as a filthy, bottom-feeding scavenger unfit for consumption by civilized people. Frequently ground up and used as fertilizer, the crustacean was, at best, poor people’s food. In fact, in some colonies, the lobster was the subject of laws—laws that forbade feeding it to prisoners more than once a week because that was “cruel and unusual” treatment.

This is the opening paragraph of Josh Schonwald’s Slate piece that discusses insects as a viable source of nutrition for human beings. As someone who does not like lobster, I love this paragraph. The food that people are willing to pay six dollars a pound to eat, basically as a result of its scarcity, was once considered unfit for human consumption because of the ease by which it could be acquired.

Despite how much you might profess your love for the taste of lobster, taste is not the only factor at work here. If lobster were as plentiful as it was 200 years ago, it would cost a penny a pound and you would be feeding it to your least favorite dog.

Should we be surprised? Name another food that is almost always dipped in butter? If lobster were really so tasty, why would you mask its taste with melted butter?

I love mentioning this fact to lobster lovers and watching their reaction. Some simply ignore my statement entirely, while others attempt to rationalize this unfortunate fact by explaining that the way we prepare lobster today (dropping a living creature into a boiling pot of water)  is different than how it was prepared two centuries ago, therefore changing the taste entirely.

Schonwald brings up this fact about lobster (one I first learned year ago in a Bill Bryson book) to point out that attitudes about food can change over time, which is something many people are hoping for when it comes to eating insects.

Schonwald believes that two food sources that strike many as unpalatable—insects and seaweed—could play a critical role in not only feeding the 2.5 billion extra humans expected by 2050, but doing so in a green, climate-friendly way.

Many insects are what you might call superfood—rich in protein, low in fat and cholesterol, high in essential vitamins and minerals like calcium and iron. More important, insects are green super-foods. Bugs are cold-blooded (they don’t waste energy to stay warm), so they’re far more efficient at converting feed to meat than cattle or pigs.

I was once a consumer of insects. As a Boy Scout, I learned wilderness survival training while at camp one summer. Included in my training was the identification and consumption of insects that are nutritionally viable to human beings.

I ate a grasshopper, a cricket, and a large, black ant, which did not taste like a blueberry as promised but was not too bad.

Not only was I required to eat these insects, but I was also required to locate them in the forest and prepare them for consumption.

In the case of crickets and grasshoppers, this meant removing the rear legs lest they trigger your gag reflex on the way down.

In the case of the ants, we were taught to pop their heads off to prevent them from biting on the way down.

It sounds disgusting, but I was a fourteen year old boy at the time, so I loved gross things and was basically an idiot.

Most important, insect consumption was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of my wilderness survival training. In the event of an apocalypse, I am going to kick ass.

And probably eat a lot of bugs.

Teaching terrifying books?

Flavorwire recently posted a list the 10 of the Most Terrifying Children’s Books From Around the World.

Three of the books (shown below with must-read plot summaries courtesy of Flavowire) were written in English (including two by authors who my wife and I routinely read to our daughter).

So here’s a thought:

Perhaps I could design a series of lessons for my students centering on some the most terrifying children’s books ever written in English.

Maybe I could even write one or two of my own.

I know it sounds strange, but kids love novelty and subversion. I guarantee that if I stood in front of the class on a Monday and said:

“Friends, this week we are going to be reading and analyzing some of the most terrifying children’s books ever written, and perhaps you’ll have a

chance to write your own terrifying story as well. What do you think?”

…I would barely be able to contain their enthusiasm.

Even the most reluctant of readers would be thrilled about reading these books, and this should tell you a lot about the causes of reluctance in readers. Oftentimes it’s not the attitude or ability of the student that’s keeping him or her from reading as much as it is finding that student the right book.

Of course, I’m not sure what these lessons might do in terms of my reputation as an educator in the community, but I promise you that the kids would love them.

_____________________________________

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In Brave Mr. Buckingham by Dorothy Kunhardt (the author of child classic Pat the Bunny!), the brave Native American man Mr. Buckingham is slowly dismembered — losing one foot to a buzz saw and another to a fish before his arm is sliced off by a gardener and he gets hit by a truck — as he tries to prove to little Billy that it won’t hurt to pull on his loose front tooth. That’s him there, just a head left.

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In Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin, circa 1865, the sparrow kills Cock Robin and then all the other terrifying creatures of the forest talk about how they’ll bury him. An excerpt: “Who saw him die? I, said the Fly, with my little eye, I saw him die. Who caught his blood? I, said the Fish, with my little dish, I caught his blood.”

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We had to include Outside Over There, by Maurice Sendak, of course. This scene depicts ghostly French horn-playing Ida’s baby sister being stolen by goblins, who leave a terrible ice replica in her place.

My first hickey in a very long time

I was lying next to my son, staring into his eyes as I am wont to do, when he lashed out at me like an angry cobra and latched onto my nose like it was his pacifier.

At first I thought it was amusing and asked my wife to take a picture, but it quickly became decided less funny.

The amount of suction that he was able to generate was astounding.

When I finally managed to detach him from my nose, my wife looked at me and gasped.

Charlie had given me a hickey on my nose, my first hickey in a very long time. Though it’s visible in this photograph, the picture really doesn’t due it justice. It was large, red and lasted two days.

My daughter had a habit of biting my nose when she was an infant, but never did she latch onto my face like a vacuum cleaner.

I suspect that I will be keeping my nose far away from my son for quite a while.

 

Serious about sleep

Best thing about my daughter’s recent allergic reaction-ambulance ride escapade:

Worry about her last night as she slept, I agreed to set an alarm and check on her every hour. Still worried, my wife decided to bring Clara into bed with us, something we only did once before when she was a baby.

When Elysha went to get her from her crib, she refused. She had no desire to sleep with Mommy and Daddy.

My family sleeps in our own beds, We all take sleeping very seriously.