Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 584

Marcel Prousts childhood sucked

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favourite book." - Marcel Proust

As a lover of books and an author, this is a lovely thought, but Proust's childhood must have really sucked for him to feel this way.

I have many wonderful childhood memories of time spent with books, but can a rainy day spent reading a great book really trump an afternoon of tackle football in the mud or fishing from a canoe with the prettiest girl in school or getting lost for two days in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with your best friend?

I don't think so.

Proust's childhood must have really sucked for him to have felt this way.

Andy Rooney and I have similar thoughts on sleep

Rooney and I are both exceedingly efficient when it comes to sleeping. 

We can sleep anywhere, regardless of comfort, and we can fall asleep almost immediately. 

Rooney seems to enjoy napping, a practice that I vehemently oppose, but perhaps when I am his age, my tune will change.

But in terms of thoughts on sleep, we agree on three things:

It's a terrible shame that most people spend a third of their lives sleeping. Anyone who is sleeping more than 8 hours a day is sleeping their life away. Most people could probably benefit from a little less sleep and a little more life.

Not exactly potty training

… but it's a start.

This is my daughter's new potty, which she specifically requested after watching some kids begin to use the potty at school.

My wife and I are secretly hoping that she will come home one day and be magically potty-trained by her teachers at school.

My solution to the soul-crushing nature of meetings

You're in a meeting.

The meeting is crushing your soul, as most meetings do.

You've already scanned the agenda and marked the items that could have been handled through a simple email.

It's most of them, of course.  It always is.

One or two people slow the proceedings by making useless, inane comments in order to hear themselves speak or ingratiate themselves to the speaker.

Minutia takes over.

The despair that comes with time wasted and minutes forever lost fills you.

There is little you can do to recapture the joy of being alive.  You have been forced to surrender your humanity.  You have become a thing.  A listening box for the mindless, incessant droning of another.

This is the moment when I raise my head and look to the speaker.  I focus intently, waiting for the moment when our eyes meet. When they do, I lock on, trying with all my heart to convey a sense of absolute focus.

Not interest. Not curiosity. Not understanding.    

Just focus.

And then I do not move.  I keep my eyes fixed on the speaker with laser-like precision while simultaneously assuming a countenance of intense disinterest.  I flatten my features, dull my gaze and freeze all movement.  I wait for the moment when I feel compelled to smile, furrow my brow, or best of all, nod in agreement. 

The moment will come.  It always does.    

Regardless of the stupidity of the speaker or the meaninglessness of the meeting, there will be a moment when the speaker expresses an thought or conveys an idea that will naturally engender a physical response. 

An approving nod.  A questioning tilt of the head.  A widening of the eyes.  A silent snicker of mutually-understood frustration. 

When this happens, I do not move.  I continue to stare at the speaker, dull and emotionless.  As others around the room nod and smile and scribble notes that  will be thrown away minutes after the meeting concludes, I am a statue in a sea of inexplicably genuine and understandably feigned interest. 

Having stolen my time and crushed my soul, I give to the speaker the only thing I have left:

Motionless, emotionless, unwavering disdain.

As my two-year old daughter would say, it feels me better.

The male protective shell at work

From a New York Times piece on recent testosterone research:

This is probably not the news most fathers want to hear.

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading "Goodnight Moon" for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children.

While the research is interesting, I thought the first line of the piece was shortsighted, misinformed and silly. 

Most fathers wouldn't give research like this a second thought because most fathers are men, and men are imbued with three unique, protective traits:

The innate ability to assume that research like this may apply to most men but never to them. The absolutely certainty in the depth and breadth of one's manliness and corresponding levels of testosterone. The unflinching self-assurance that even if one's testosterone levels were exceedingly low, he could still overcome any hormonal limitation through sheer force of will.

Dr. Peter Ellison is quoted in the piece as saying, "Unfortunately, I think American males have been brainwashed to believe lower testosterone means that maybe you're a wimp, that it's because you're not really a man."

Dr. Peter Ellison is an idiot. 

American males have been brainwashed into navigating life with blinders on.  We hone in on good news, compartmentalize the bad and think of ourselves as a self-actualized super beings whose flaws and foibles are merely the result of the misunderstanding of others.

My testosterone has been reduced since becoming a father?

Nonsense.

But if true, irrelevant.

And if relevant, ultimately meaningless.

See?  Perfect protection.

My new favorite Clara photo

I know a lot of great photographers, and my father-in-law is one of them.

The Moth and The Clowns: Save the dates

A couple of Save the Dates I wanted to make you aware of in the event that you are interested in attending:

First, I am performing at The Moth's GrandSLAM storytelling event on Monday, October 17 at the Highline Ballroom. 

431 West 18th Street in NYC. 

Doors open at 6:00 for dinner and drinks. Stories begin at 7:30.  I will be competing against ten other StorySLAM winners from the previous six months of competitions.  I've attended a GrandSLAM once and it was a lot of fun.  

Obviously I don't expect any Connecticut friends to join us for a Monday night in the city, but tickets will be available soon if anyone is interested in attending.

If you'd like to come, let me know and I'll inform you when tickets are available (it should be very soon), or check The Moth's October event listings for when they go one sale. 

Second, The Clowns, the rock opera that Andy Mayo and I wrote, will be performed as a staged reading at the Playhouse on Park in West Hartford, CT on Saturday, November 5 at 8:00 PM and Sunday,November 6 at 2:00 PM.

No advanced ticketing.  A suggested donation of $5 is being accepted at the door.  And please spread the word.  We'd love to fill the playhouse for both shows! 

Mark those calendars if you are interested in attending either event, and thanks as always for all of the support!

 

Most embarrassing golf shot ever

I was standing at the 18th tee on Sunday, moments away from one of the worst golf shots in human history.  

Throughout the round, I had been experimenting with moving the ball forward in my stance during my tee shot, and the change had improved the trajectory and consistency of my drives considerably. 

For my last tee shot, I decided to move the ball up even further.  I had ruined my chances at a decent score two holes back after putting a ball in the water, so a bad tee shot was not going to ruin my day.

I was wrong.

I had placed the ball so far forward in my stance that as I swung, I had to reach out and bend in order to hit it, causing the ball to fly straight up and curving right in the direction of the the first green, about 30 yards to my right.  Four guys were on the green, lining up their putts, unaware that the moron on the adjacent tee box had somehow found a way to hit a ball at a 90 degree angle in their direction. 

I saw the ball almost immediately and nearly yelled "Fore!" before determining that its trajectory would thankfully land the ball well short of the green and at a safe distance from the foursome who were putting.

They might see or hear it land nearby, but none were in danger of being hit by the ball. 

I sighed the sigh of someone who has avoided embarrassment and humiliation of the worst kind. 

Then the ball landed, striking the asphalt cart path and launching 30 feet back into the air in the direction of the green again.  Before I could warn the guys on the green, my ball landed in the middle of the foursome, barely missing two of them as they prepared to putt.

I am rarely embarrassed on the golf course.  In fact, I can't remember the last time I was embarrassed.  Since I am a below-average golfer, I don't feel much pressure while playing, and even the worst of shots don't rattle me.  The best players in the world hit horrendous shots.  I just hit more of them. 

Most importantly, I tend to care little about what other players may think. 

But hitting your tee shot onto an adjacent green while a foursome is putting is pretty bad (and probably impossible to ever repeat), and failing to warn the players that the ball was coming makes it even worse.

I've been playing golf for four years and I have never seen anyone come close to hitting a tee shot onto an adjacent green.   

To their credit, the foursome did not give me a hard time.  They smiled as I approached the green and the one closest to me grinned and said, "So I guess you're putting for eagle.  Huh?"

I'm not sure if I would've been so kind. 

I'd also like to add that I hit a clean 7-iron off the green with my bag still strapped to my back (a shot I'd never been required to make before), so at least I experienced a smidgen of success in my midst of my abject failure.

A bouquet of amusing words

My daughter is two-years old, and as a result, she has a lot of amusing things to say.  A few gems from the past couple days include:

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Me: Why didn't you take a nap this afternoon, Clara?

Clara: A lion is coming. I have to tell someone.

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A conversation that Clara had with herself while looking in a mirror at the mall:

"I'm wearing my doggy shirt. We're both wearing doggy shirts."

"I have my hat tat (her word for hair elastics). We both have hat tats."

And the best one:

"I'm Clara. I'm Clara, too."

 

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While negotiating a split between football and Peep and the Big Wide World on Sunday afternoon:

Me:  Okay Clara, it's my turn to watch football now. 

Clara: NO! Peep doesn't want to watch football!  Peep wants to watch me! I'm running away!

The way the Patriots played on Sunday, I would have been better off watching Peep.

Bumble-Ardy lives again

I remember this Sesame Street clip from the 1970's quite well.  In fact, though I have not seen it in almost forty years and had forgotten that it even existed, I can still recite parts of it word for word. 

It was written by Maurice Sendak, and he recently adapted it for his newest children's book, his first in nearly 30 years.  

I love this story, undoubtedly because I loved it as a child, but also because of it's less than pleasant features:

The frightening voices of the pigs The mother's maniacal grin when she threatens the pigs with death The references to wine on a children's television show Bumble-Ardy's sneakiness and near-sadistic pleasure in mayhem

Could a video like this be made today?

I don't think so.

In response to today's more delicate sensibilities, Sendak was forced to make several changes for his new book, including changing wine to brine. 

Why anyone (even pigs) would bring brine to a party is beyond me. 

Sendak also transformed Bumble-Ardy into a pig, which broke my heart a little.  But he seems to balance this by including a dark prologue in which his parents are eaten, leaving Bumble Ardy's aunt to raise him.

I still haven't read WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, but this one sounds like a gem.