Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 613

I wished minor injury on my daughter. Am I a bad father?

I was in the playroom at the museum yesterday with my daughter. 

There's a short slide in the room, no more than three feet long, made to look like it was carved from stone, and Clara was insisting on running down the slide rather than sliding.   

I asked her to stop several times but she refused. 

I removed her from the slide, but eventually she found her way back to it.

I told her to stop again.  She ignored me.

I removed her again.   

Finally, I told her that she could slide down one more time and then we would have to leave to pick up my wife.  Instead of sliding, she ran down the slide, this time tripping at the bottom and falling to her hands and knees.

A second later she popped back up.  "Clara okay!" she shouted.  "Clara okay!"

"Too bad," I said aloud.  "I was hoping for a natural consequence.  A skinned knee or something."

The woman beside me stared in horror.  Her jaw literally dropped. 

"I didn't want her hurt badly," I said. "Just a learn-your-lesson kind of bump or bruise.  You know?"

The woman's jaw remained unhinged.  She looked at me as if I were the most wretched human being she had ever seen.

"It's not as if my wishes come true," I said.  "There's no genie involved.  And it's not like I pushed her down the slide."

The woman remained stoic in her internal vilification of me.   

But sometimes kids need to fall down to learn a lesson. 

Right? 

Is it wrong for a father to wish a minor injury on his daughter in the name of education?

The single redeeming moment from a classically bad 1980s sitcom

I've never heard of the 1980's sitcom Day by Day, but from what I can tell, it was undeniably stupid.

But it is also apparently well known for one episode that spoofed The Brady Bunch and included all the principle characters from the 1970's sitcom except for Greg Brady. 

It took me five days to watch the whole thing (I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to online video), but I have to admit that I was slightly mesmerized watching the Brady family making fun of themselves.

Hillary Clinton is sexually suggestive?

You've seen the now-iconic photo of US officials being updated on the Bin Laden raid.

Right?

But have you seen this version of the photograph, published in Di Tzeitung, the ultra Orthodox Hasidic Jewish newspaper.

Notice the absence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason? 

They were removed from the picture. 

It is Di Tzeitung's policy to never publish pictures of women in their newspaper, because these images could be considered sexually suggestive.

My wife is Jewish, but when it comes to Judaism, Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are similar to her in name only.  In fact, most, if not all Hasidic Jews would not even consider my wife's reform brand of Judaism to be Judaism at all, and I contend that she should in turn do the same.

You simply cannot affiliate yourself in any way with a group of people who would:

A.  Erase the images of female US officials from photographs as important and historic as this one.

B.  Believe that a fully-clothed, black-and-white image of Hillary Clinton might be so sexually suggestive as to warrant removal from their newspaper.

Nothing against Hillary, but she isn't exactly eye candy. 

And if this is the case, what else might they do?

Would the editors of Di Tzeitung have removed the image of Jackie Kennedy from the JFK assassination photos?

Does the newspaper routinely remove the Statue of Liberty from its images of New York harbor?

[image error]

And most important, what would this ass-backward newspaper do if America ever elected a female President? 

And did they refuse to show an image of Margaret Thatcher during her term in office? 

Or the Queen of England?

And how the hell would they handle the images of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir if she were in office today? 

Would they refuse to print a photograph of the Prime Minister of Israel?

Of course, these photographic restrictions are just the tip of their sexist iceberg.  Orthodox and Hasidic Jews don't even allow men and women to sit together in temple, providing men with preferential and segregated seating.

You cannot use the perils of sexual suggestiveness as an excuse for doctoring a photograph of our Secretary of State while simultaneously treating your house of worship like an Alabama schoolhouse in 1963. 

June 25: Be there.

From one of my agent's colleagues. 

I intend on participating.  I hope you do as well:

_______________________________

Hi everyone,

I've gotten sick of reading the bookstore obituaries in the publishing news, so I'm starting a viral campaign to get people, on one day, to go buy books from their local bookstore. Might not end up changing the tides, but it's something small I can do and I'm getting a good response so far. Here are the details for you to pass on to your friends/family/fellow booklovers:

Who: You and all the book-lovers in your life
When: June 25th, the first Saturday of Summer!
Where: Your local bookstore (and if you don't have one near you, Powell's ships)
Why: Because bookstores are dropping like flies and we want them to stay alive

Thanks for passing this along to whomever you think would want to get on board.

Warmest,
Kelly

Kelly Sonnack
Andrea Brown Literary Agency
kelly@andreabrownlit.com

No nightmares. Just swinish jurisprudence.

I've been having some uncommonly awful nightmares the last few nights, which have been good on one level because they force me out of bed around 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning, thus making my day more productive.

But instead of my typical five hours of sleep, I've been getting about three or four, which even for me can be tough.

This morning I am once again up at 4:00 AM, this time with a dog who is clearly not feeling well. 

But good news.

No nightmares last night.

Instead, I had a dream about the book WHAT"S WRONG, LITTLE POOKIE, a current Clara favorite, which tells the story about a mother trying to figure out what is wrong with her child.  After much guessing on Mom's part, Pookie admits that he can no longer remember the cause of his sadness, and therefore his problem has been solved.

 

I spent most of last night cross-examining Pookie on the witness stand in a very realistic court room scenario, except of course for the cartoon pig.  I hammered away at Pookie, upsetting the judge several times when I referred to Pookie as "A future slab of bacon!" and shouting, "Don't lie, Pork Chop! You know what's wrong!  Now tell the court what the hell is the matter with you before I turn you into a ham sandwich."

The judge declared me out of order several times and fined me a total of $6 for my insubordination. 

Going to sleep every night is like walking into a haunted fun house for me.  It's rarely boring, but it is almost never normal in any sense of the word.

Cigarettes and corn dogs make me look great

No matter how poorly I have eaten during the day, or how unhealthy I may be feeling, or how much weight I have put on during the previous week, I always feel better about myself after standing in line at a 7-11. 

The cigarettes, the corn dogs, the Big Gulps, the pre-made sandwiches, the candy bars. 

It made my Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich look like spinach salad sprinkled with vitamin water. 

Bathroom sculpture

My daughter has begun to show interest in the bathroom. 

About a week ago, she interrupted dinner to announce that she wanted to use the potty, and so we placed her atop the toilet, and after much haranguing, she actually peed a tiny bit.

Since then she has been spending a lot of time in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the seat down and having a grand old time. 

Yesterday she spent about 15 minutes in our upstairs bathroom with the door closed.  We asked several times if she needed help, but each time we were rebuffed. 

When she finally emerged, this is what we found:

 

A talented little girl.  Huh? 

Sort of the Andy Goldsworthy of bathroom sculpture.

Her very own sidekick! She must be stopped!

One of my daughter's favorite songs is The Beatles' "Her Majesty".  When it comes time for my wife to sing to her at night before bed, she asks for this song a lot, referring to it as the "nice girl" song. 

Leave it to my wife to teach my daughter about one of the few Beatles' songs to which I am not familiar. 

And not through any fault of my own.   

"Her Majesty" is the final track of The Beatles' album, Abbey Road, appearing fourteen seconds after the song "The End" and unlisted on the album's original jacket. 

As such, it is considered one of the first examples of a hidden track in rock music.

And as such, it tends to be one of the more obscure Beatles songs.

As a wedding DJ and music lover, there was a time in my life when I was the most knowledgeable person in my social circle when it came to music.  A song came on the radio and I would be the first one to name the title and artist. 

In a time before apps like Shazam could analyze and identify music in seconds, I was the next best thing.  

Then my wife came along with her savant-like musical abilities.  In second, she had made my knowledge of music seem trivial and insignificant.

Elysha is the Rain Man of music, and she's annoyingly humble and dismissive about this near superhuman power.    

And now she's teaching my daughter about hidden Beatles tracks when there are literally hundreds of better known songs that Clara would equally enjoy. 

I'll tell you what she's doing:

She's creating another musical savant right under my nose. 

It's not enough that she has so thoroughly undermined my area of expertise.  Before she's finished, she'll have my daughter snickering at my piddly excuse for musical knowledge.

With enough training, she could probably get Clara to name songs before they are even played on the radio. 

She'll have my daughter correctly predicting radio station playlists before they are even played.    

My wife is creating a sidekick. 

A Robin to her Batman.

I wish it were for nefarious purposes, because this is where I want to say, "She must be stopped!"

Except that Elysha doesn't have a nefarious bone in her body. 

So annoying. 

But Ill take this, too.

Yesterday I wrote about a possible Father's Day gift for me. 

If it proves too hard to find, I'd be perfectly happy with this as well.

I want this real, real bad.

Wondering what to get me for Father's Day?

THIS.