Do you think that these ten unevenly placed electrical outlets - located about a dozen feet in front of the McDonald's counter in a rest area off the Mass Pike - are enough?
I'm not so sure. Perhaps they should have covered the entire pole in outlets from floor to ceiling, just in case a busload of weary travelers want to charge their devices while simultaneously waiting in line for a Big Mac and a Coke.
My wife decided that the theme of our next Speak Up show at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford would be "Should've Known Better."
We decided this in the car on the way to New York. As she spoke the words aloud, I said, "Isn't there a song called Should've Known Better?
And there is. It's a Richard Marx song from 1987 - almost 30 years ago.
The song never hit #1 on any billboard chart.
I've never owned a Richard Marx album.
I don't have a song by Richard Marx in my iTunes library.
I was never a Richard Marx fan.
The song probably hasn't been played on a radio station since 1990.
And yet when Elysha played the song, I knew every single word.
That song - one I don't partuicularly like by a musician I never particularly enjoyed - has been living in my head for almost three decades, just waiting to come out.
Even Elysha - a woman who has more music in her head than anyone I have ever known - didn't know the lyrics to this song.
I knew every single word.
I can't help but wonder what else is living inside my head, waiting for the moment to raise its ugly head. What other song or memory or bit of trivia is still lying dormant, as pristine as the day it was encoded into my biological hard drive, waiting for someone to ask the right question and bring it forth?
The brain is a strange thing. Capable of forgetting something you were told five seconds ago yet also able to retain enormous chunks of information over decades without any effort to maintain the integrity of the data.
Oh, and I took a look at Richard Marx's other hit songs., I know at least six others by heart.
Perhaps the man is simply a virus.
Am I the only one who thinks it odd (and deeply disconcerting) that doctors and butchers dress so similarly for work?
A couple weeks ago I visited Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, as a part of my recent book tour for The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs.
Northshire is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. My wife and I take an annual pilgrimage to Northshire in the spring and always love our weekend spent in the bookstore. They certainly didn't disappoint this time around, either. I spoke to a warm and engaging audience, and after my talk, there was a cake auction to benefit children who need books in the home.
Cakes were designed to represent books. Here are what a few looked like:
After the talk, I was approached by a woman who said, "You are a lesson in contradiction, sir."
Before I could ask her what she meant, she was gone. But she bought two of my novels on the way out, so I'll assume it wasn't meant to be too bad.
Northshire is also the only bookstore that I have visited that has a special case for the pens that authors use to sign books. I like it. Made me feel very important despite my actual import.
Here's what I know:
Humor requires patience. The punch line is almost always the last thing to be said, and yet so many people want to say it first. They can't wait to get to the funny part, even though it's the waiting and the building that will make it funny.
When I describe my living circumstances in my early twenties, I say it like this:
"I lived with a family of Jehovah's Witnesses in a converted pantry off the kitchen with a guy named Rick who spoke in tongues in his sleep and the family's indoor pet goat."
A bad storyteller - or an unfunny person - always wants to get to the goat as soon as possible (because it's the funniest part) rather than building to it. They say the funny part first and then fill in the rest of the details when they no longer serve to increase the humor.
I hear this all the time. Both in regular conversation as well as storytelling onstage.
Considering all this, here is what I suspect:
People who make it a habit of interrupting other people are the least funny people I know. These are people who can't wait to speak. Can't wait to insert their voice into the conversation. Can't wait even a second to interject.
These are people who can't wait on a punchline.
But I'm not sure. It's just a theory.
Thoughts?
You may have heard that millennials are living at home more than young people in previous generations. In 2014, the number of young women living with their parents eclipsed their counterparts in 1940, and last year 43% of young men were living at home, which is the highest rate since 1940.
I'm trying to maintain an open mind about the economic struggles of millennials and not expand my own anecdotal experiences beyond reasonable boundaries, but I can't help but wonder if it's not high expectations rather than economic struggle that is keeping these people at home longer.
Do millennials expect more, and as a result, are less willing to live in substandard circumstances and struggle to survive?
When I think about how my friends and I lived during our post high school and college years, the one thing that marks that time is struggle.
We slept on floors and in closets. We drove dilapidated vehicles. We hung out in parking lots. We took dates to pizza places. It was not uncommon to have our electricity shut off from time to time.
And this wasn't the case for just me. The majority of people who I was growing up with after high school and college lived this way.
Again, perhaps my scope is limited, but as a young people, we preferred to eat elbow macaroni, sleep on floors, and watch black-and-white televisions rather than living with our parents.
Are millennials simply unwilling to endure such hardships given the way that the overly-indulged way that so many were raised, or are the economic realities of today truly more debilitating than my generation?
An honest question.
Why do we climb into bed at night but lie on our death bed?
Strange. Right?
Speaking on death beds, why do so many people die in the absence of music?
I have no intention of ever dying, but if I was ever lying on my death bed (merely hypothetical), there would be music playing at all times:
Springsteen. The Beatles. The Who. Van Morrison. The '80's metal bands of my youth.
Why die listening to the beeps and whirs of medical machinery or the hum of passing traffic? Give me Thunder Road, The Bright Side of the Road, and Paradise City.
I'd go out listening to the stuff that I love. You should, too.
I mentioned underoos in class last week, and it turns out that none of my students are aware of the matching top-and-bottom underwear featuring superheroes, Star Wars characters and other heroic characters that dominated so much of my childhood.
Underoos were so ubiquitous when I was a kid that I assumed they still exist today, so I went to the Internet in hopes of showing my students an underoos commercial from the 1980's as a means of defining this product. But when I started watching the commercials on YouTube, I couldn't help but think that they were at least mildly inappropriate and possible exploitative to the children appearing in them.
Not to mention that the production values of the commercials are horrific.
Perhaps I was overreacting, but I can't believe that these commercials were on television when I as a kid. Little kids in little, form fitting underwear dancing all over the screen? And why the hell are little girls wearing bra-like tops?
Am I overreacting? Would these commercials be permitted to air on television today? Do you find them as creepy as I do?
Before watching, it should also be noted that this is not the first time underoos have been mentioned on this blog. Almost exactly a year ago, I became aware of the existence of adult underoos and wrote about them as well.
I need your help. I'm conducting an experiment. In order to maintain the validity of this experiment, I cannot reveal my hypothesis at this time. But part of the experiment is to assemble a list of the 100 most evil people ever. These can be both real and/or fictional beings.
Would you like to help?
If so (and I hope you will), simply send me your suggestions for the list. Send one name or ten names or 100 names. Every contribution will help. Post the names in the comment section of this post or send me an email or tweet the names of evil people with the hashtag #100EvilPeople.
If you could share this with your friends, that would help, too. As with most experiments, the more data I gather, the better.
Once the list is complete, I will share it here and reveal the purpose for its creation.
If you've ever attended one of my author talks, you'll know that I encourage strange, difficult, inappropriate, and challenging questions during the Q&A portion of the evening.
I even award a prize for the most challenging of questions: foreign editions of my books, books I have read and will never read again, and once $2 because I had forgotten to bring a prize.
This tradition was started in honor of a woman at my very first author talk who asked, "How do your ex-girlfriends play a role in your fiction?"
Surprised by the question, I responded, "Why do you ask that question?"
Her answer: "You look like the kind of guy with a lot of ex-girlfriends."
I'm still not sure if that was meant to be a compliment or an insult.
Either way, her question gave me the opportunity to tell a couple of funny stories about my ex-girlfriends, which is what I always do when asked a question. I tell a story.
During the most recent book tour for The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, I've been asked a fair number of challenging questions, including, "How many of your students have been inspired enough by your success to become writers themselves?"
I think the answer is none, though in fairness, the oldest of my former students are still in their early twenties. I didn't become a published author until I was 37.
But the most surprising, challenging, and possibly inappropriate question asked so far came a couple of weeks ago at a bookstore when a woman said, "You're such a sarcastic person. Do you ever make people cry?"
Sadly, the answer was yes, followed by a couple of funny stories about times when I ended up in trouble because of my mouth.
The first gift that my daughter ever received was a stuffed ear of corn from our friend, Justine. It's been sitting on the corner of her bookshelf for the last six years.
She knows that it was the first gift she ever received - given to her before she was even born - but she's never asked why someone chose corn in lieu of a teddy bear or a baby doll.
There is a reason. A good one. It's also one that Elysha and I have never explained to her, nor do we plan on explaining it anytime soon.
The question is when? When do we tell Clara why a stuffed ear of corn made for the perfect first gift?
Watch this video of my Moth GrandSLAM winning story from earlier this year and you will better understand our predicament. Then offer your own suggestion about when we should tell our daughter this story.
Could someone please explain the restroom configuration to me?
I stepped into the restroom, wondering if I should lock the door. I planned on using one of the urinals, so should I have left the door unlocked in the event another man entered, wanting use of the other urinal?
That seemed to make sense, but what if the man entering requiring the use of the toilet? Presumably he would not drop trou while I was standing there, which means he would have to stand by and wait. This would quickly become awkward as he watched me go about my business, standing ideally in the corner. In order to break the tension, maybe he would attempt some small talk, at which point he and I would probably have preferred that he be waiting outside the room.
And what if three or more men entered the restroom? Even if all of them required use of the urinal, the room is small. Things would get tight rather quickly.
It took me a moment to decide, but in the end, I opted to lock the door, keeping the restroom to myself.
Just me, three inexplicable toilets, and a lot of questions about what kind of rationale went into the design of this ridiculous restroom.
There are two kinds of people in the world:
People who are willing to share their toothbrush and those who are not.
The people willing to share are generally better people. Perhaps not as wise or prudent, but better. More trusting and generous and relaxed.
I would share my toothbrush with my wife, my children, and almost anyone else I know.
It's also important to note that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that you never share your toothbrush under any circumstances. In some cases, sharing a toothbrush can lead to life threatening infections.
I guess Billy Joel was right. Only the good die young.
Over the course of the last seven days, I have been scolded by three different people – all women – for wearing shorts. In each case, I was either heading to or from the gym, but I’ve also been known to wear shorts in cooler weather simply because they are comfortable and I don’t require the warmth of a pair of pants.
I was also repeatedly chided all winter long for wearing my winter coat of choice: a blue hoodie.
I own an actual winter coat. More than one, in fact. But with the exception of a few New England Patriots games, I wore a hoodie all winter long and was perfectly fine. Warm and toasty.
Except that wherever I went, friends and strangers – also only women – admonished me for not wearing something warmer. People at the grocery store and outside restaurants and in parking lots told me to put on something warmer. Stop being ridiculous. Act my age.
Many of them also warned me that I would catch a cold if I continued to dress this way, disabusing themselves of hundreds of years of germ theory and reverting back to a time before science when it was assumed that a cold was caused by the cold.
Honestly, I don’t understand this.
Who cares if I’m wearing a pair of gym shorts on a 38 degree day?
Why would anyone be concerned with my choice of outerwear on a winter afternoon?
How is what I wear in order to stay warm anyone’s business other than my own?
And why is this form of criticism exclusively female?
For the last year, I have attempted to avoid any negative comment about anyone’s physical appearance, regardless of their physical eccentricity. And I have become fairly adept – albeit a little smug – in doing so. In fact, I’ve reached a point where thoughts about a person’s physical appearance often fail to register as well.
When they do, I push them back, reminding myself of how petty and cruel and absolutely juvenile they are, even when said behind someone’s back.
I realize that scrubbing your mind and voice of all comments on physical appearance is a ridiculous goal, but can we at least agree these admonishments over seasonal appropriate clothing should be eliminated from our societal lexicon forever? If these women – and perhaps there are male critics out there, too, but I have yet to encounter one – want to go home and tell their loved ones about the man at the grocery store wearing shorts and a hoodie, fine.
They are heathen, unkempt trolls for doing so, but still. Who cares?
But why must they verbally reprimand me in public for not dressing to a standard that they feel is adequate?
I had a mother. She passed away in 2007. I miss her, but honestly, I’m fine. I don’t need any ladies – young or old – treating me like I ‘m a ten year-old boy in need of verbal reprimands about the warmth of the clothing that I’m wearing.
Even my mother didn’t do that.
Please leave me the hell alone. I’m fine. If I wasn’t, I’d put on a pair of pants and a warmer coat, jackass.
The local children’s museum, Kid City, recently opened a new medieval room. It’s a fantastic exhibit that includes castle walls, towers, a crossbow range, a tavern, a brick factory, and what I can only assume is a bladeless guillotine:
I am not opposed to the replica guillotine – in fact I kind of love it – but I can’t imagine that there aren’t a hoard of namby-pamby parents and guardians who take one look at this thing and shield their child’s innocent eyes and flee.
How does Kid City get away with this?
By the way, I love Google’s definition of namby-pamby:
“lacking energy, strength, or courage; feeble in behavior or expression.”
It’s sort of perfect. Don’t you think?
The first lines from James Taylor’s song Fire and Rain confuse me.
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can't remember who to send it to.
Put aside the first two lines, which are confusing in their own right, and the fourth line, which is also slightly baffling. I’m interested in the third line, where Taylor says that he wrote the song ‘this morning.” It raises a number of interesting questions.
This may get a little complicated. See if you can follow:
1. Did Taylor actually write that line on the day that he wrote the song? Did he really walk out on the morning in question and write this song?
2. If he wrote it on the morning in question, did he then insert the line, which is the third in the song, into the song after writing the rest of the song? Or did he write the third line as the third line, indicating in the past tense that he had written a song this morning even though he was only three lines into the song at that point?
3. Is the line unauthentic? Did Taylor actually write this song at some other time rather than on the specific morning mentioned in the song? Is the mention of writing the song just part of the fantasy of the song, written only for the purposes of the narrative?
4. If the third line is inauthentic, why say it at all? Does this falsified timeline within the song really add anything to the song?
Here’s the most confusing of the questions:
5. If the line isn’t meant to be authentic, are we to then believe that James Taylor is singing these words, or is the songwriter referenced in the song someone other than James Taylor? Is Taylor writing and singing about a different singer-songwriter who has supposedly written the song, and if so, while performing the song, are we supposed to understand that Taylor is merely playing the role of that singer-songwriter, even though he also a singer-songwriter?
Did you follow?
More importantly, are you as disturbed about these questions as me?
My wife sent me this photo of my son from a recent visit to a children’s museum.
Yes, my family gets to go to children’s museums during the week while I slave away in the mines.
When I saw the image, I couldn’t help but wonder how Charlie understood how to use this device. It’s so unlike any telephone that he has ever seen in his life. The rotary dial, the cord, the immobile base, and even the separate, oversized, oddly shaped handset are all foreign to him.
Yet there he is, holding it to his ear, pretending to make a phone call.
Then again, I’ve also seen my son pretend to make phone calls using bananas and shoes, so perhaps imagination has a lot to do with it.
Yet somehow bananas and shoes more closely resemble the phones that Charlie has seen than this thing. Think about it:
I have to assume one of two things:
My Facebook feed has been full of wine over the past couple days.
Wine glasses set before roaring fires. Wine glasses being clinked in celebration. Wine glasses standing beside the spines of books and sleeping dogs and flickering candles.
It’s a funny thing. I spent last night drinking cold water from a steel water bottle. It was refreshing. Delightful, really. But I’d never think to post a photograph of it on social media.
Yet alcohol, and especially wine, seems to be the drink de jour. The universal symbol of relaxation. Celebration. There are moments when it seems as if half of the status updates in my Facebook feed include alcohol of some kind. Photos from bars and restaurants. References to wine and beer and spirits. Lamentations about the need for more alcohol. Boasts about the amount of alcohol already consumed.
I don’t drink. I belong to the tiny fraction of the population that doesn’t have a drinking problem but simply opts to not drink. I’ll have a glass of champagne when celebrating with friends or rare glass of wine at dinner, but otherwise, a soda or a water does me just fine. Makes me quite happy, in fact.
But water and soda don’t possess the inexplicable prestige that alcohol does. Water and soda – in some high school kind of way – aren’t cool. Posting a photograph of my bottle of water on Facebook would be ridiculous.
Settling in for a night of reading, writing, and maybe a little TV with my beautiful wife and some cold water. #perfection
Strange, Right?
But of all the things we could photograph to symbolize our relaxation, so many of us choose alcohol. I think it’s just as strange as my water bottle.
I sometimes wonder if all of this attention that alcohol receives isn’t the residue of a time when we couldn’t drink alcohol legally. When you’re 16 years-old and you start drinking, you feel mature. Sophisticated. Cool. Ahead of the game. Maybe those positive associations permanently attach themselves to alcohol in a way that causes people to view a glass of wine or bourbon as a powerful symbol of their adulthood. Their own prestige.
I didn’t start drinking until after graduating high school. Maybe I lack that residue.
I’m spit balling here, I’ll admit. I guess what I really want to say is this:
What the hell is with all the photos of wine and references to spirits on Facebook, people? How about a photograph of our couch instead? Or the book that you’re reading? Or your slippers? Or the quilt that you have wrapped around your body? Aren’t all of these things just as relaxing as that glass of wine, strategically framed by the light of your fireplace?
How about an occasional sofa? Or a pillow? Or a thermostat set to a toasty 72 degrees?
If nothing else, for the sake of a little diversity.
Everyone in my life seems to know the names of the television meteorologists. They say things like, “Brad Somebody is hosting this charity event next weekend” or “Bruce Gobbledygook says it’s going to rain tomorrow.”
Even my student’s know these names.
I can’t help but wonder:
These people can’t actually be watching the local news. Right?
They can’t be sitting through reports on car accidents and house fires and gas station robberies in order to hear a weather forecast that they can get on their phone or computer at any moment. Can they?
And if not, how does everyone seem to know Brad Somebody and Bruce Gobbledygook’s names?
