Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 622

Seriously?

How am I going to explain this to my daughter when she's old enough to understand the lunacy behind these two maps?

I have a new job.

Frank and Jaime McCourt, owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers and currently engaged in bitter divorce proceedings, paid a psychic hundreds of thousands of dollars over a five-year period to watch Dodger games on his television and send positive thoughts to the team in hopes of boosting their chances of winning. 

I have many areas of interest in my life.  In addition to my future career as a life coach, I am also interested in working in the fields of economics and sociology.  History, politics, the law and even physics also intrigue me.  When my teaching career comes to a close someday, I could see myself perusing careers in any one of these fields.

But today I'd like to make my new career official: 

I declare myself a professional psychic, ready and willing to begin work for any sports team except the New York Jets.  For a fee slightly less than that of the clearly ineffectual psychic that the Dodgers hired (their last World Series appearance and win came in 1988), I am willing to send a tsunami of good thoughts to your team over the television airwaves, and if possible, in person as well.

That's right.  I'm a psychic now.  And a damn good one, too. 

Pretty exciting.  Huh? 

But please note:  I have one advantage that most psychics do not. 

In addition to sending out positive thoughts to your team, I am also perfectly willing to wish destruction and annihilation on your opponent for no extra charge.   While most psychics favor the positive realm of spirituality, I am an certified expert when it comes to wishing bad things on people.  I am the king of schadenfreude.  The champion of negativity. 

I have been known to wish for career-ending injuries on certain New York Jets football players, and for the right price, I am willing to offer this service to your team as well.

Put the power of the positive and the negative to work for you today.

Matthew Dicks:  teacher, author, DJ, minister, life coach, and now professional psychic. 

An exciting day for me, and if you are the owner of a sports franchise, perhaps for you as well.

Unfaithful unicorn with a mix tape

Somehow, someway, this is funny as hell. 

But what was the pitch?

"I'll have a steamy romance with a unicorn, set to a an 80's power ballad, and we'll throw in a mix tape, too.  It'll be hilarious!"

How does that get the nod?

And yes, the word someway is an actual word. 

I know.  I was surprised, too.

A change in nomenclature

As a teacher, I assign a lot of nicknames to students, a practice that my friends and I often did as a kids.

Growing up, everyone I knew had a nickname. 

I also refer to students by their last names quite a bit, and these last names often become a student's primary name as long as they are in my class, and sometimes beyond. 

It can be quite surprising the first time you walk into my classroom and hear students casually call one another by their last name, but it makes me smile every time. 

Today I spoke to a parent whose son is now a junior in high school.  Back when he was in my third grade class, I gave him a nickname that stuck so hard that everyone in his life, including his parents, still refer to him by this name to this day.

His original last name has all but disappeared.    

I can't tell you how much this makes me smile.

I know far too much about The Land of the Lost

I know far too much about the original 1970's version of The Land of the Lost. even though I haven't watched the show since I was a kid.

While visiting a children's museum this weekend, I explained to a fellow Dad that the imitation crystal cave in which my daughter was playing was reminiscent of the pylons in The Land of the Lost.

"Pylons?"

"Yes," I said.  "Pylons.  Remember?  The position and color of the crystals controlled everything from the weather to the length of the day." 

He clearly didn't remember.  Like most people, the extent of his Land of the Lost knowledge included a few dinosaurs, a big earthquake and little more. 

He could not immediately recall the Pakuni, the small, ape-like humanoids who befriended the Marshalls upon their arrival, or the Sleestak, the race of large-eyed reptilians who inhabited The Lost City and hunted Altrusian moths.

And I'm willing to bet that he couldn't have named any of the dinosaurs that inhabited the pocket universe (Grumpy, Spike, Dopey, Alice and Torchy).

And I'm quite certain that I was the only person in that museum, and perhaps for many, many miles, who could sing the show's theme song with perfect accuracy. 

And I have yet to meet anyone who knows that the character of Will Marshall was played by actor Wesley Eure, but that in the show's opening sequence, Wesley Eure was simply listed as Wesley, a fact which I found both baffling and mysterious as a child, and still do.

My knowledge, for reasons that I fail to understand, is vast when it comes to The Land of the Lost.

Sadly, this expertise has proven to be relatively meaningless in my life thus far. 

Thus far.      

Two interesting tidbits I did not know about The Land of the Lost but just discovered after skimming the Wikipedia article to confirm the spelling of Wesley's last name: 

To support the show's internal mythology, renown linguist Victoria Fromkin was commissioned to create a special language for the Pakuni, which she based on the sounds of West African speech and attempted to build into the show in a gradual way that would allow viewers to learn the language over the course of many episodes.

And yet the Sleestak were supposed to number about 7,000, but there were only three Sleestak costumes available for the show's production, which sometimes required creative editing to create the illusion that they were that numerous.

It seems to me as if the allocation of resources for this show were slightly mismanaged.  

For the record, my expertise on The Land of the Lost ends with the original series.  I never saw Nickelodeon's remake of the show, and I watched about twelve minutes of the film adaptation before turning it off in disgust.

Curse you, Will Ferrell, for trying to turn a show I adored as a child into a weak attempt at campy humor and an endless sting of sight gags. 

The Land of the Lost deserved better.

Who loves Elmo?

Actually, I kind of love Elmo. 

He is quite possibly the nicest creature I've ever seen.  His joy in infectious. 

It really is.

Clara loves him, too.  

Accomplishments in the trenches

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

That is my favorite quote, and everyday of my life I attempt to live and breathe these words.

I am not always successful.  There are times when I get lazy.  There are days in which I fail to accomplish my goals.  There are hours that I wish I could have back.  But the one thing I never do is make an excuse for not accomplishing a goal or completing a task. 

H. Jackson Brown was right.  I have just as much time in the day as Jefferson or Einstein or Keller.  And I have more labor-saving devices than they could ever imagine.     

My only complaint with Brown's quote:

He left two notable people off his list:  Lofting and Schwarzschild.

In fact, I think these two men might be more impressive and more apropos than anyone else on Brown's list.

Here's why:    

When people tell me that they don't have enough time to write their great American novel or are waiting for a sabbatical or for their kids to get older before they begin writing, I laugh. 

If you really want to write, you will find the time. 

Lofting and Schwarzschild are perfect examples of this. 

Hugh Lofting wrote the first Doctor Doolittle novel, The Story of Doctor Doolittle, from the trenches during World War I when actual news "was either too horrible or too dull to bear."  He wrote the first book as a series of illustrated letters to his children, so that they could continue to hear their father's voice while he was stationed in Europe, fighting the Germans.  

Lofting would write a total of twelve Doolittle novels over a thirty year period, and his second, The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle, went on to win the the prestigious Newbury Award.

And it all began in an English trench amidst bullets and artillery shells and mustard gas. 

Meanwhile, fighting in the same war on the Russian front, huddled in a trench similar to that of Lofting's, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for "the limited case of a single spherical non-rotating mass," which led to prediction of the existence of black holes. 

In a letter to Einstein written from his trench, Schwarzschild wrote: 

As you see, the war treated me kindly enough, in spite of the heavy gunfire, to allow me to get away from it all and take this walk in he land of your ideas.

In 1916, Einstein wrote back to Schwarzschild on his results:

I have read your paper with the utmost interest. I had not expected that one could formulate the exact solution of the problem in such a simple way. I liked very much your mathematical treatment of the subject. Next Thursday I shall present the work to the Academy with a few words of explanation.

Schwarzschild would die from pemphigus a year later while stationed on the Russian front, but his accomplishments are revered and relevant to physics to this day. 

All of this accomplished in the midst of a World War.

During my last book tour, a woman told me that she was waiting for "just the right desk before she got started on her book."

I laughed at her statement, and I fear that I may have offended her, but what would writers like Lofting or Schwarzschild have accomplished if they waited for the proper seating apparatus to arrive in their trench?

What would they think of someone who was not working for want of a proper desk?

Not much, I would imagine.  

Resolution update: March 2011

1.  Lose 23 pounds, bringing me down to my high school track and field weight.

I'm down six pounds since the beginning of the year.  Seventeen to go.  Doing well.  My wife said I looked thin tonight.  Even better.  

2.  Do at least 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups a day.

Didn't miss a day last month.  I've also increased the push-ups to 75-100 a day.

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

Still no practice.  But the flute is finally home.  That counts for something.   

4.  Find a wine that I can drink every night or so.

Nothing yet. 

5.  Complete my fifth novel.

MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND (my fourth novel) is complete.  I am currently writing three different novels, a children's book and a non-fiction book on productivity. 

I'll have to settle on a book soon, because writing three novels at the same time is stupid.  In order to help me make a decision, I sent a list of possible ideas to my agent this week in hopes that she can make the decision for me.  Last time I asked her to do this, she told me to write MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, and things are working out beautifully.  So I'm returning to the well.      

6.  Complete and submit one children's book to my agent.

Not yet, but she should have something in hand by the end of this month, I think.  

7.  Complete the book proposal for the non-fiction collaborative project that I began last year.

Not yet.  A summer project.     

8.  Complete an outline for my memoir

Work continues on this project, though the outline has spread to my laptop, my journal, my iPhone and a bunch of post-it notes. Consolidation is in order. 

9.  Convince my sister to write on http://107federalstreet.blogspot.com at least once a week and do the same myself.

No progress, but my sister got a new job in March and may have more time to write.  I just sent her another pestering email.  

10.  Drink at least four glasses of water every day.

Thanks to my water bottle, done.

11.  Complete at least one of the three classes required for me to teach English on the high school level.

Nothing done yet. 

12.  Try liver.

Nope.

13.  Publish an Op-Ed in a national newspaper.

Nope.

14.  Participate in The Moth as a storyteller, at a live show or on their radio broadcast.

No, but I have another pitch written.  I will call this week.  

15. See our rock opera (The Clowns) performed on stage as a full production or in a dramatic reading format.

Our dramatic reading is scheduled for late October or early November.  The date should be finalized shorty.  Huzzah!

16.  Organize my basement.

Significant progress was again made this month.  And thanks to my wife, I now have a dump permit, so let the chucking begin!

17.  Land at least one paying client for my fledgling life coach business.

Nope.  Anyone?  Anyone?

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

Still waiting on the funding.

19. Replace the twelve ancient windows on the first and second floor of the house with more energy efficient ones.

Still waiting on the funding.

20. Make one mortgage payment from poker profits.

Still suck on about 20% of my payment. 

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

I forgot about February and am three days late for March, so not so good. 

Cheers

Gramps and Clara toasting with a martini and a juice box. 

I wish I had photographs like this with my grandparents. 

My first and only earthquake

I am fortunate to have experienced only one earthquake in my life.

More than a year ago, I wrote about the three best compliments that I have ever received.  

The first came on January 1, 1988 when I was sixteen years old. I was standing on a bridge in California, strapped to a bass drum, ready to march in the Rose Bowl Parade. Two teenage girls were sitting on the curb nearby, waiting for the parade to start. After giggling a bit, they managed to get my attention and tell me that I looked a lot like Tom Cruise.

I was clearly better looking in 1988, and Tom Cruise had not yet lost his mind, and we are the same height.

More importantly, I had one of those weird marching band hats on that probably made my enormous head appear normally sized, at least when compared to my fellow band mates. 

What I did not mention in that original post was that a few minutes prior to that compliment, Pasadena, CA experienced a very minor earthquake.  Of course, being from New England, it felt like the quake of all quakes, even though I was later told that had I not been standing on a bridge, it was likely that I would have never felt it at all. 

A less than average tumbler by California standards. 

It may also explain the compliment that the girls offered me that day.  Perhaps the earthquake had knocked their heads together, causing them to be momentarily concussed and slightly delusional.