Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 628

Creative and frugal

My wife bought practically free toddler's shirts off the clearance rack and used the fabric, which was cheaper than purchasing something at a fabric store, to make these hats for her friend's kids.

She's really bursting at the creativity seams lately.    

While on the subject of hats, I'd also like to add that anyone (I'm thinking of a certain video podcast host who will remain nameless) who wears a knit cap on an 85 degree Los Angeles day (or in any other warm weather clime) is a fool more obsessed with image and trendiness than functionality and reasonability.

Fashion that defies all logic is only worn by sheep.

In fact, if you are wearing a knit cap on any warm day, you resemble a sheep, both literally and figuratively.     

The I told you so calendar

I have often said that the four best words in the English language are "I told you so."

People scoff at the assertion, but I have yet to hear four that are better. 

And as a result of my fondness for the expression, I have an "I told you so" Google calendar, set up specifically for time-stamped opportunities to say "I told you so" to someone I know and love.

While not going into specifics, an entry on this calendar might result from an encounter like this:

I'm talking to a Red Sox fan midseason.  The Sox are in first place and their closer, Jonathan Palelbon, is pitching lights out, while the Yankees closer, Mariano Rivera, is struggling.  I assert that by the end of the year, Rivera will have overtaken Papelbon in saves, and the Red Sox fan laughs at me, telling me I have no objectivity when it comes to baseball.

As soon as possible, I open a browser on my phone or laptop and access my calendar.  I scroll ahead to September, and on the closing day of the major league season, I make an entry in my "I told you so" calendar, reminding me to call the Red Sox fan on that day if Rivera has indeed overtaken Papelbon in saves. 

While this is not exactly what happened last season, something very close to it did and I was able to make that utterly joyous "I told you so" call on the last day of the season.

It was such great fun. 

I was telling my mother-in-law about this calendar when it dawned upon me that she also has an entry on the calendar, due to arrive sometime later this year.  And my father-in-law has at least two entries on the calendar, one as far away as 2020.

While she desperately wanted to know to what the entry pertained, I refused, assuring her that she would find out in due time. 

Quoted on Twitter, which is only slightly less prestigious than Bartletts Book of Familiar Quotations

I was quoted twice this week on Twitter, which is a good sign considering one of my lifelong ambitions is to make it into Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. 

The first tweet reads:

From an article in Reader's Digest Aug '09: "The story already exists and you just need to find it." -Matthew Dicks

Oddly enough, I do not recall ever interviewing with Reader's Digest and cannot recall seeing any article in the publication about me.  Still, this is a phrase that I use often, so wherever Reader's Digest got their information, it was at least accurate.

The second tweet reads:

"Old age is the last dirty trick." -Matthew Dicks, Unexpectedly Milo

Though this line appears in the book, it was actually said by the mother of a  good friend during her last year of life.  I liked it so much that I stole it for the book. 

So technically this one is not mine. 

But add the first to my current list of hopefuls, both assembled by me and culled from this blog by a generous reader. 

1. Brevity is the sou

2. Lost potential is difficult to measure and convenient to ignore.

3. I wrote term papers as a means of flirting with girls.

4. In my most treasured friendships, there is little room for hurt feelings.

5. Ambiguity in the possible death of a character is an act of cowardice on the writer's part.

6. I spend many of my evenings struggling to stay alive. 

7. Don't let anyone fool you.  Death is hardest on the dead.

8. Passive-aggressive, indirect, and anonymous are three of my least favorite qualities in any form of communication.

9. Nothing convinces me about the stupidity of human beings more than driving in the vicinity of the mall on a Saturday.

10. I am more impressed with the quality of a person's questions than with the quality of their answers.

11. It is all about me, but you're welcome to occupy space.

12. Spock said that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but what if the many are all incredibly stupid?

13. You can determine the effectiveness of a teacher by the frequency by which you can enter the classroom and speak to the teacher without grinding learning to a halt.

14. If you are not delegating enough, you are not lazy enough.

Red Dawn moments

My wife recently watched Red Dawn for the first time.  It's my best friend's favorite movie of all time, and while I like it, it has issues. 

Most glaring was the brother's decision to attack the Russian-held town at the end of the film in order to create a distraction so that the last two members of their insurgent band could escape to Free America. 

A diversion?

Had the Russians really sealed off tens of thousands of square miles of mountain terrain so tightly that a two-man attack on a town in the middle of the night would cause those Russian-held lines to open up?

I don't think so. 

But I digress.

It's the opening the scene of the film that I want to address today.  In it, Russian and Cuban paratroopers descend upon a high school in Calumet, Colorado.  We see them landing from the interior of a classroom, where a history teacher is teaching a class of disinterested students.  In midsentence, the teacher notices the paratroopers and assumes that they are US soldiers who have landed off course on a training mission.  When he goes outside to investigate, he is shot and killed. 

The war has begun.   

And the kids never hear the end of the lesson.

This is what I call a Red Dawn moment.  While in my mind a Red Dawn moment usually includes invading Russian soldiers, a Red Dawn moment is any interruption that permanently prevents a person from completing an important task or garnering desired information.

When Stephen King was struck by a car and initially reported killed in 1999, I thought that his Red Dawn moment had come.  In the midst of writing his Dark Tower series, a distracted driver had come along and prevented King from finishing his opus and prevented readers from ever learning the fate of Roland and his band of gunslingers.    

Last weekend I judged the American Legion State Oratorical Contest in East Hartford, Connecticut.  At the end of the contest, the two finalists were asked to rise so that the winner could be announced.  But while the boys remained standing, awaiting their fate, two other Legionnaires delivered short speeches, making the wait for the winner feel excruciatingly long to me and most assuredly painful for the two finalists.

I've been in situations like this before, standing and waiting to discover if I had won, and they are long, awkward and painful moments indeed.   

And at that moment, I had a Red Dawn moment.  I wondered what it would be like if Russian soldiers suddenly threw open the doors to the auditorium, announcing the start of World War III with machine gun fire and exploding grenades.  The boys would duck as bullets flew and struck ancillary characters on stage.  Audience members would flee for the exits, only to be gunned down by an anonymous Russian carrying an M-16.

Not me, of course.  I would keep my head down and make a timely escape when no one was looking.  

Eventually, the two finalists would escape through a door behind the stage, where they would team up with the surviving oratorical contestants (including the two female contestants in order to provide a love interest) and head for the low-lying, somewhat populated Connecticut hills to wait the end of the war.

And through it all, neither boy would ever know who had won the contest.  Tempers would eventually flare over the rationing of supplies and the decision to head into town for news, and when they did, the questions over who had won the oratorical contest would arise again.  A well-prepared, eight-minute debate would ensure, followed by a five minute off-the-cuff rebuttal, but no matter who was declared the winner, questions would remain.  The mystery over who had won the contest would remain a subplot for the entire war, or at least until the two finalists were stupid enough to march back into Hartford armed with machine guns and soldier-launched missiles, intent on creating a diversion so that their remaining oratorical companions (one female and one male) could escape over the Connecticut line into Free Rhode Island.

That, my friends, if the kind of Red Dawn moment that runs through my head on an almost daily basis. 

The lesson:  Don't keep people waiting.  You never know when World War III will begin. 

Love this photo

A contest! With prizes!

I like the word nonetheless a lot.  It's like the Swiss army knife of words.  So full.  So well equipped.  Practically three words in one. 

This morning I found myself attempting to use the word nonethesame, liking the sound of the word very much but finding my use of it less than adequate. 

Then the word nonethemore popped into mind. 

Also difficult to use. 

And so, a contest! 

Propose the best definition of each word, including (and perhaps most importantly) the use of the word in the most clever sentence, and you will receive a signed copy of UNEXEPCTEDLY, MILO and its German translation, 99 SOMMERSPROSSEN. 

You must submit a definition and sentence for each word in order to be eligible. 

Post your entries here or send them via Facebook, Twitter or email. 

Contest ends on March 31.

Good luck!

 

The Hills Have Eyes FOR YOU.

I should visit my sister more often.  She is a treasure-trove of blog ideas, bizarre subplots and characters for my books.  She lives her life in a way like no one I have ever known, and the people who filter in and out of her life are remarkable in their oddity and ineptitude.

Case in point:

Have you seen the film The Hills Have Eyes?  I saw Wes Craven's 1977 original and bits and pieces of the 2006 remake, both which center upon a band of psychotic mutants who target a family in the New Mexico desert after their car breaks down.

An odd premise considering it involves the inexplicable existence of mutants in an otherwise normal world, but it was creepy nonetheless.

My sister recently watched the remake of the film, despite the lasting and traumatic impact that horror films have always had on her.  A film like The Hills Have Eyes scares the bejeezus out of her, and yet she watches films like this just the same.

That's Kelli. 

After watching the film, the following typical, Kelli-like instances occurred. 

Incident #1:

Upon arriving home after midnight, Kelli opened the door to her car and was greeted with an inhuman howling and screaming that terrified her.  She closed and locked her car door and immediately called the police, reporting that someone who "sounds like The Hills Have Eyes People is outside my house, and I can't get inside."

A police officer came to investigate the disturbance and escort my sister into her apartment.  Upon arriving, he asked Kelli to step out of her car, and when the howling began again, he asked if that was the sound that had frightened her.

"Yes," she said.  "That's it."

"That's two cats having sex," the police officer informed her.

Incident #2

About a week after watching the film, Kelli received a friend request on her MySpace account from an unknown person living in New Mexico, which will apparently be forever known to Kelli as The Land of The Hills Have Eyes people. 

The random and inexplicable friend request frightened her so much that she deleted her entire MySpace account, which she probably should have done a long time ago anyway.

I have a friend who lives in New Mexico, and I am pondering the idea of having him send anonymous notes through the mail with messages like:

We can see you.

We have eyes, you know.

Did you realize that you live on a hill?

It would be hilarious, expect it might kill her, too.

Must avoid a takeover

Two interesting aspects of Asian culture popped up in my Twitter feed today.

The first was regarding No-pan Kissas, popular Japanese cafes in 1980s with mirrors on the floor and waitresses who wore skirts and no underwear.

The second was an article in Time describing the surging popularity of McDonald's weddings in Hong Kong.  

I know the Chinese have become our biggest economic competitors, recently overtaking the Japanese, but isn't news like this enough incentive to hold back our Asian adversaries?

For the sake of the world, America must remain on top, if for nothing else, to at least stem the tide of Asian restaurant  insanity.   

Proverb 1.1

Your emergency cannot be classified as an emergency if you had time to post about it on Facebook. 

Book news, including MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND

I've had a few readers email me recently inquiring about news of my upcoming book, so I thought I'd offer an update:

My third novel, CHICKEN SHACK, which I finished in June of last year, has been slid onto the back burner in favor of my newest book.  I was about halfway done with the new book, MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, when my agent decided to bring the partial manuscript with her to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.  She loved what little she had read prior to the trip and wanted to share it with scouts and editors.  Thanks to this excellent decision by Taryn, the book gained a great deal of buzz at the fair, even garnering a mention in Publisher's Weekly. 

Since the fair, we have sold the rights to MEMOIRS in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Belgium, which forced me to bear down and finish the manuscript on a timely basis, which I did last month.  A completed manuscript is now in the hands of US and foreign editors for their consideration, and I am now in phone-watching mode, waiting for Taryn to call with more good news. 

Though I'm still anxious for CHICKEN SHACK to find its way onto bookshelves soon (it's odd to be sitting on a completed novel and not doing anything with it), the response to MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND has been extraordinary, making it well worth the wait.

In the meantime, I am currently trying to settle on a new book.  I started one, which I like a lot, but I've been told (and grudgingly agree) that it wouldn't make for a good follow-up to MEMOIRS. 

So I tabled that idea and started three other books, including a sequel to MEMOIRS, in the hopes that one of the stories would take off and assert itself as my next book. 

Unfortunately, all three have been chugging along quite well, making the decision on which to write next a difficult one.

And no writer should ever attempt to write three books at the same time.  I feel a bit like a philanderer, working on all three at the same time rather than applying all my time and energy to just one.  I have always preferred monogamy in all aspects of my life, so this indecision is not sitting well with me.

I have no date on when MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND will be released, but as soon as I know, you will be the first to know.

Thanks as always for your continued interest.