Cheesy, over-the-top, obnoxious nonsense

How does one possibly explain this?

Is it a Miami thing?   
Or a Miami Heat thing?
Or a Lebron James thing?

I spent some time this morning viewing several other NBA team’s introduction videos (many of them can be found on YouTube), and unlike the Heat’s video, every one that I watched featured highlights from the previous year.  Three-point buzzer beaters, thunderous two-hand jams, behind-the-back passes and the like.

Nothing like this. 

After last year’s media fiasco involving the introduction of LeBron James and Chris Bosh to the Miami Heat fans (below), how could the Miami Heat media relations people actually this intro video was a good idea?

Or maybe it was a good idea. 

Maybe this kind of thing plays well in Miami. 

Oy.

Resolution update: 2011 in review

The following is the December update and end-of-year review of my 2011 New Year’s resolutions. I am currently in the process of deciding upon my 2012 goals and will post them later in the day.

Of my twenty-one New Years resolutions established at the beginning of 2011, fifteen were successfully completed. One was partially completed, and five were not.

Of the goals achieved, I am most proud of my 23 pound weight loss (bringing my total weight loss to to 54 pounds over a period of two years), my storytelling success at The Moth, and the staged reading of my rock opera, The Clowns.  I thought that each of these goals would be especially difficult to accomplish in 2011, so their completion was very satisfying to me.

Of the goals I failed to complete in 2011, the failure to complete my fifth novel looms large as I work hard to finish. While there were mitigating factors that interfered with my ability to finish the book (detailed below), it should still be done by now. I have too many other books that I am excited about writing to fail to complete a book in 2011.

I also wish that I had done better with my goal of re-learning the flute. With just an hour each week, I could have ended 2011 playing the flute again at a fairly proficient level. This was a doable goal that I simply failed to take seriously.

The success or failure of each individual resolution is as follows:

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

Done. My weight at my physical on Thursday was 184.2 pounds. It took all year, but mission finally accomplished.

2.  Do at least 50 100 200 push-ups and 50 100 sit-ups a day.

Done. I missed six days of exercise in December due to pneumonia, but other than days missed due to illness throughout the year, I was successful in achieving this goal in 2011. In fact, I raised the initial goal of 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups to 200 and 100 respectively.

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

Not completed.  I did not practice in December, and for the year, I practiced for a total of six hours. This goal was far from accomplished.

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

Done. Chianti is now my wine of choice.

5.  Complete my fifth novel.

Not completed. This goal was not accomplished for several reasons.

There have been a variety of unexpected demands placed upon me with the publishing of my next novel, and each of these required surprisingly large chunks of my time.

I also switched novels midstream, eventually returning to the original concept after three months of indecision. I wrote enough words in 2011 to constitute at least one novel, but unfortunately those words are spread between three incomplete manuscripts.

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

Done. Revisions of both of my stories continue, and a new story is underway.  I hope to have at least one of these books accepted for publication in 2012, and I plan on attending a children’s literature and publishing conference next April.

I’d like to take my career in children’s literature much more seriously in 2012.

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

Not completed. My partner and I simply did not connect in 2011. Meetings were scheduled, rescheduled and ultimately cancelled. We are both extremely busy people who live in different states, but I am still disappointed that this project did not get off the ground in 2011.

8.  Complete an outline for my memoir

Done. A more targeted approach to the writing of this memoir will begin in 2012.

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

Done. Posts continue to hit the blog on a fairly regular basis.

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

Done.

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

Done. As stated last month, I originally needed to complete three classes in order to receive my certification, but after jumping through some administrative hoops and providing the state with documentation, I only need to complete two classes now. Therefore, resolution accomplished.

I also passed my English certification test with flying colors, scoring 191 out of a possible 200 points despite not studying for the test.

Several people told me that it was foolish to take this test without studying, making this one of my most satisfying achievements in 2011.

Spite makes everything better.

I hope to be certified to teach high school English by the end of 2012.

12.  Try liver.

Done. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.

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

Done. Unexpectedly. In a manner of speaking. In December, I wrote a blog post on suggested holiday gifts for teachers, and that post was picked up by a writer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and quoted heavily in the paper and on their website, with links back to my post.

I wasn’t planned, but my words managed to find their way into a newspaper after all. I also have a piece currently on submission to the Hartford Courant and await word on the possibility of its publication.

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

Done. In November, I told a story at my second StorySlam and my third Moth event of the year. I attended a fourth Moth StorySlam last week, but unfortunately my name was not drawn from the hat, so I was unable to tell my story.

Still, three opportunities to tell a story and one victory was an enormous accomplishment for me in 2011 and has led to unexpected opportunities in 2012. The Moth has become an important part of my life, and I hope that it remains so for a long, long time.

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

Done. Since the reading in October, we have heard from two local theaters that may be interested in a full production of the show, and things look serious for a fall performance.

16.  Organize my basement.

Done. Thanks to the breakdown of my car yesterday, I finished this job.  Items still need to be thrown away, but even the throw-away piles are organized now.

17.  Land at least one paying client for my fledgling life coach or professional best man business.

Done. Working with my client has been a thrill, and I have learned a great deal from the process as well.  Helping someone to achieve his goals demands a great deal of introspection, and this has been beneficial to me as well.

It also appears that I will be taking on my second paying client in 2012.

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

Partially completed. We eliminated well over half of our education debt in 2011.  While we failed to pay off all of our student loans, we made significant progress.

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

Not completed. The funding for this never became available.

20. Make one mortgage payment from poker profits.

I end the year with 28% of a mortgage payment in earnings, a far cry from my goal. A lack of time to play poker contributed heavily to this failure.

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

Done.

Skype and Facebook do not mitigate the absence of a loved one, and it was stupid of Roger Angell to assert otherwise

I am going to criticize the maudlin sensibility and shortsightedness of this The New Yorker piece tomorrow, but for now, I ‘d like to take issue with Roger Angell’s lament over the loss of soldiers writing actual letters from the battlefield. Angell writes:

Twenty years ago, many of us got a whole new sense of the Civil War while watching and listening to Ken Burns’s nine-part television documentary, which took its poignant tone from the recital of Union and Confederate soldiers’ letters home. G.I.s in the Second World War wrote home on fold-over V-Mail sheets. Troops in Afghanistan and, until lately, Iraq keep up by Skype and Facebook, and in some sense are not away at all.

While I have no friends or family members currently serving overseas, I have had my fair share of students whose parents and relatives have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I can assure Mr. Angell that these mother and fathers and aunts and uncles are in every sense of the word away, regardless of how often their image may appear on a computer screen or how often they may update a Facebook page.

To state otherwise is stupid.

I can’t imagine how that sentence found its way past an editor or any other reasonably minded person at The New Yorker.

My awkward, uncomfortable gay moment

From a piece in The Daily Beast:

Eric Dondero, a former longtime aide to the representative, has written a post at Rightwing News defending Ron Paul against charges of racism and anti-Semitism but also acknowledging that the congressman is “personally uncomfortable” around gay people.

My first reaction upon reading the piece was to laugh out loud at the thought that anyone could be uncomfortable around gay people. Especially a physician and a congressman with more than twenty years in office.

You’d think that at some point, professionalism, education, experience, and maturity would supersede any unfounded prejudice or juvenile discomfort.

Why sexual orientation would even be in the forefront of another person’s mind is beyond me. I have gay friends, but their homosexuality is not the single most defining aspect of their character.

Yes, they are gay, but they are also fathers, husbands, golfers, designers, builders, attorneys, and friends. Their sexual orientation is just one small part of who they are as human beings.

The thought that anyone might be uncomfortable around them for one small aspect of their character is ludicrous.

But then I was reminded of a time when I was younger and found myself feeling especially uncomfortable in the company of a gay friend.

Not the personal discomfort that Ron Paul allegedly feels, but discomfort just the same.

For the story, I’ll call my friend John. John and I were managing a McDonald’s restaurant in Massachusetts at the time. I was about 22 years old, and John was about ten years older than me. I knew that John was gay and lived with his boyfriend, but we had never spoken about his sexual orientation, nor had he spoken about it with any other employee in the restaurant as far as I knew.

John was still in the closet, but his closet had a transparent door. His sexuality wasn’t exactly a secret. It was more of an elephant in the room. No one was going to mention it unless he mentioned it first, and during the first year we spent working together, he never did.

Then John and I were sent to a conference in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, a town on the tip of Cape Cod. What was supposed to be a three hour drive turned into five thanks to summertime traffic.

About an hour into the drive, John and I were listening to music on the radio. I was driving, and we had been sitting in a comfortable silence for quite a while, lost in our own thoughts. As we crossed over the Bourne bridge, John reached over and switched off the radio, took a deep breath, and said, “I know you know that I’m gay.”

The statement took me by surprise, but after overcoming the initial shock, I remember feeling immensely relieved that John’s homosexuality was no longer an unspoken fact hanging between us.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?” John said.

I told John that it was fine by me if he was gay. I told him that I has suspected as much.

“And I know you know that I like you,” John said.

To say that this took me by surprise would be an understatement.

“No,” I said, measuring my words carefully. “Actually, I didn’t know that. I thought you had a boyfriend.”

He said that he thought that Kelly, a mutual friend, had told me.

I told him she had not. “But it’s fine," I said. "No big deal.” I wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible, for both John’s sake as well as my own.

“But I really like you,” John said and proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes telling me why he liked me so much.

And that was the moment, the only moment in my life, that I felt uncomfortable around a gay person. My age probably played a big role. Being young (and much younger than John), I wasn’t equipped to deflect his amorous declarations with humor and empathy.

It was also 1993. Even in Massachusetts, it was uncommon to meet a gay person who so openly stepped out of the closet. The subject of gay rights was not exactly a part of the national conversation at the time. Gay characters has not yet broken onto the television landscape.  Yes, Massachusetts had Barney Frank, but this was still new ground for me.

Having John tell me that he was gay was a relief.

Listening to him explain why he was willing to leave his boyfriend for me was another story.

I also suspect that our physical setting played a role in my discomfort. We were trapped in a car together for the next three hours, and we would then be spending the next two days at a conference, sharing a hotel room and almost every minute together. As John continued to list my positive attributes, I had no way of extricating myself from the scene. Collecting my thoughts. Seeking counsel from a friend.

For the next two days, it would just be John and me.

John, a man ten years my senior, who was suddenly eager to profess his love and ready to dump his live-in boyfriend of two years for me.

At that point, I was uncomfortable.

Probably not the kind of uncomfortable that Ron Paul allegedly feels around gay people, but the kind of discomfort that I might have also felt had John been a girl who I was not interested in dating.

Though I have to admit that had John been a girl, my level of discomfort would not have been so great. Perhaps because I had been hit on by girls I did not like before and had learned to handle those situations, but also because I was 22 and had never had an openly gay friend before.

Suddenly this friend and colleague was speaking to me in a way that no man had ever spoken to me before, so yes, I was uncomfortable.

Eventually we returned to our restaurant and settled into our familiar routines. John never spoke openly about his sexuality to me again, and though I would occasionally ask how his boyfriend was doing, I never spoke about it either.

But that makes sense. Right? I don’t talk about my sexuality with my straight friends, so why would John’s homosexuality ever become a source of continued conversation? John was gay, but that was only one aspect of his character. In my world, it was more important that he was an effective manager, a responsible person, and a trustworthy friend.

Still, at the time, it felt as if the elephant had returned to the room, and I felt bad about it. John had shared something very personal with me, and as far as I knew, he had only shared that information with one other person in our restaurant. In failing to ever speak about it again, I suspect that John’s embarrassment over our conversation in the car never completely went away.

That conversation had become a second elephant in the room, and in many ways, a much larger elephant.

Had I met John later in life, and had that conversation taken place ten years later, I suspect that I my level of discomfort would have been minimal.

Perhaps nonexistent.

I also suspect that I would have handled it in such a way as to strengthen our friendship rather than hinder it. John needed someone much smarter and much wiser than me that day. He needed someone who could’ve recognized his vulnerability in that moment and said something to lighten his load and somehow transform his declarations of love into something more positive.

Because of my discomfort, I just wanted it to end as quickly as possible.

I’ve always regretted not handling it better.

Six months later, the New York Times finds a whole need breed of douchebags to quote about wrist watches

Six months ago, the New York Times published a piece about the unexpected ascension of wrist watches in certain segments of the cell phone generation. Somehow they found men willing to say things like this:

“In certain circles,” Mr. Thoreson said, “if you don’t have a substantial timepiece with some pedigree, you feel like you’re missing out on something.”

“Right now there is no clearer indication of cool than wearing a watch. If it was your grandfather’s bubbleback Rolex, even better.”

This led me to suggest several alternate titles for the article, including my favorite:

Douchebags Make It Douchy for Non-Douchebags to Wear Watches

Fast forward six months. The New York Times has once again published a piece on wrist watches (perhaps a bi-annual feature?) and has somehow managed to find an entirely new set of douchebags to quote for their story.

This piece centers on the increasing size of wrist watches, spurned on my celebrity fashion trends, and includes quotes like:

“Guys wanted a fine timekeeping device that not only kept time but said something about status and personal style.”

“It (a large wrist watch) gets attention, and it makes a statement.”

“No man wants to wear a watch smaller than a woman has on.”

Once again I am stunned that they were able to find men willing to be quoted like this.

Have we really reached a point where male coolness is determined by the size and price of a man’s watch?

Whatever happened to the strong, independent man?

The man with his own sense of style?

The man whose style of dress was dictated by personal taste and not by a desire to dress like Tom Cruise or compete with the 64 millimeter watch that his buddy is wearing?

Why haven’t these guys realized that high school is over?

That unfortunate penis size cannot be compensated for by a wrist watch?

That materialistic displays of wealth strapped to a wrist only serve to demonstrate your insecure, sheep-like douchebaggery to the world?

I have a friend who, like me, does not wear a single item of clothing (other than sneakers) that displays a name brand. He intentionally opts out of fashion name-plating despite the fact that he was able to sell his company and retire quite early in life.

Unlike me, he is a man with plenty of money and could purchase the finest clothing and accessories possible, yet his style is completely his own. It is not dictated by celebrity fashion or the appearance or fashion choices of his friends or the people around him.

This, in my estimation, is a man. A real man.

The need to wear a time piece that “says something about status and personal style” is sad.

The belief that “there is no clearer indication of cool than wearing a watch” is pathetic.

The need for a man to wear a watch that “gets attention and makes a statement” is disgusting.

I do not understand these men. They sound like cartoon characters to me.  They sound like the mean, rich bad guys that populated so many of the John Hughes and John Hughes-like films of the 1980s.

Did films like Pretty in Pink and Revenge of the Nerds teach them nothing?

There is nothing wrong with wearing a wrist watch. It is an excellent way to keep track of the time.

There is nothing wrong with wearing a wrist watch that you think looks great.

There is, however, something wrong with a man whose choice of wrist watch is dictated by price, celebrity style trends or a mindless, materialistic competition with the men around him.

This is the sign of a man who never grew up. Never became a man.

And I remain shocked and dismayed why this guys would offer these kinds of douchebaggy quotes to the New York Times.

Again.

Alcohol must have been involved. It’s the only explanation. I hope.

Maximum joy

My daughter says that her cousin is her best friends.

Based upon this photograph, I believe her.

The story of our engagement

Today is Elysha and my engagement-versary. 

On December 28, 2004, I proposed to Elysha in Grand Central Station while twenty-two friends and family secretly watched.

Here is the story of that day. 

Outsourcing my New Year’s resolutions: Would you like to play a role?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I take my goal setting and New Year’s resolutions very seriously. At the end of every month I post the progress of each of my New Year’s resolutions, and I am tough on myself when I fail to achieve my goals. I’d begun the process of deciding upon my 2012 goals when I came upon a piece in the Wall Street Journal on New Year’s resolutions that suggests that outsourcing your resolutions may improve your ability to achieve them.

Most of us could use help achieving our goals. Who better to tell us how to improve ourselves than someone who knows us well—perhaps better than we know ourselves—and even may be all too happy to offer up some tough love? And if we promise to check in regularly with this person to discuss our progress, we'll probably do a much better job of keeping our resolutions.

"We all have blind spots, but the people we are intimate with can see through them," says David Palmiter, a couples therapist and professor of psychology at Marywood University, in Scranton, Pa. A loved one can encourage us to meet our goals and hold us accountable when we slip, he says.

I’ve always asked a select group of friends to suggest goals for my upcoming year, but after reading this piece, I thought it might be a good idea to open up my goal selection process to anyone who might want to participate.

So if you’d like to suggest a goal for me in 2012, I would love to hear your ideas. Please note that this does not guarantee that I will adopt every suggested goal, but I will seriously consider all that are submitted.

Also note that all goals must be empirically measurable, so a goal like “Be less of a jerk-face” could not be included in my list of resolutions because there is no way for me to determine if the goal was met.

But you’re welcome to tell me to stop being a jerk-face at any time if you’d like.

Not need to wait until the end of the year to make that request.

A book with real secrets waiting to be revealed (with a thumb or a hair dryer)

I want one.

How a fan of Boston sports fell in love with the Yankees

Robert Krulwich writes about how we become fans of the teams that we love. Based upon the research, it tends to be a love instilled upon us primarily by our fathers.

This video demonstrates this fact beautifully, if not a little cruelly.

My father and my step-father were not sports fans. Neither ever spoke a word about sports to me, nor did either one ever play a single sport with me. I am an outlier when it comes to the research cited by Krulwich. My undying love for certain teams came through means other than my fathers.

In general, my love for sports teams tends to be geographic in nature.

The Patriots were the only football team on television each week (when they weren’t blacked out due to poor attendance), so my obsessive infatuation with the team (I’m a season ticket holder) was born from indoctrination based upon exclusivity.

The Patriots were all I had in terms of football, so I loved them with all my soul.

I also love an underdog, and in the 1970s and 1980s, the Patriots were consistent underdogs. Even when they were good, they lost.

My love for the Bruins was similar in nature. Channel 38 in Boston broadcasted grainy footage of most of the games throughout the 1980s, but in Boston, a love for the Bruins was also expected.

No, demanded.

If you were living in the Boston area, it was highly recommended that you root for the Patriots, the Red Sox and the Celtics, but when it came to the Bruins, you had no choice. Bruins fans are an angry, violent, often drunk bunch of young men. To profess your love for the Rangers or the Red Wings at the time would have risked a genuine beating.

I had no choice but to love the Bruins.

But Ray Bourque and Cam Neely were playing for the team at the time, so they weren’t too hard to love.

My love for the Celtics is credited to my mother. She was an insatiable Celtics fan. I would often fall asleep to the sounds of her swearing at the television when things weren’t going well. My mother lived and died with every basket of the season, and she cried like a baby when they won the championship in 1986.

You also can’t underestimate the enormity of the Celtics in the Boston area in the 1980s. The Celtics ruled the sports landscape at the time. I remember marching in a Memorial Day parade on the same day that the Celtics were playing in a playoff game against the Pistons. In order to keep us abreast of the score during the game, two students armed with transistor radios were charged with listening to the game and moving through the rows of musicians, relaying updated scores as often as possible.

There was nothing bigger in the Boston area in the 1980s than the Celtics. Falling in love with them was a no-brainer.

And then there is my love for New York Yankees, which is credited to my brother.

My brother loved the Boston Red Sox more than anything else in the world.

I did not like my brother.

Therefore, I liked the Yankees.

Conveniently, the Yankees games were broadcast on Channel 11 out of New York, which I was able to pick up on the UHF band on most nights. I grew up listening to the late Phil Rizzuto describe the heroics of players like Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph and the great Don Mattingly.

What admittedly started out as spite eventually transformed into pure, unadulterated love.

Has there ever been a better love story?

Full house

And we wonder why it takes her so long to fall asleep.

 

You are not pregnant. She is.

New rule: No more “We’re pregnant.” Especially from men. In the realm of pregnancy, there is no we. While I’m sure that the men who use this ridiculous phrase probably have the best of intentions, it is a stupid thing to say.

If you are a man, you are not pregnant. To imply otherwise is an insult to the  women who actually bear the burden of pregnancy, and it makes you sound like anything but a man.

It makes you sound desperate for attention.

Like impregnating the girl wasn’t good enough.

Like you need more.

You don’t.

“My wife is pregnant” says it all. It indicates that you are responsible for creating a baby and are probably assisting your wife as the burden of pregnancy becomes greater, but doesn't imply that you are seeking any credit where credit is not due.

Take a stand against “We’re pregnant.” Push back at every utterance.

Stop using this ridiculous phrase if you have been, and if someone is foolish enough to use it, inform them, with grace and civility of course, that they sound utterly stupid.

Let’s make this a year filled with a little less stupidity.

My 2011 Christmas haul

My wife is an incredibly creative and insightful gift giver. Last year’s Christmas gifts were outstanding.

The assortment of gifts from 2009, which included a signed first edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, were even more impressive.

This year we agreed to forgo any real Christmas presents in favor of upgrading our entertainment system, but we were still allowed to purchase gifts for our stockings.

Here is what I found in my stocking on Christmas morning:

A game of Go Fish that uses images of famous novelists instead of regular playing cards.

A six-in-one utility key

A sheriff's badge that I will wear with pride in the classroom.

A Darth Vader LEGO pen.

A laser guide training tool designed to assist with putting.

And best of all, a Mr. T in your Pocket.  Press one of six buttons to get Mr. T to say things like “I pity the fool!” and “Quit your jibber-jabber!”

Also perfect for the classroom and life in general.

 

A remarkable collection of gifts.  I don’t know how she does it.

Sadly, I am not nearly as creative as my wife.

My original plan was to fill her stocking with kitchen gadgets, but after two circuits of Bed Bath and Beyond, my shopping cart was still empty. Standing near the front of the store, preparing for a third go-around, I said, “The hell with this. I’m just getting her an iPad.”

It violated the spirit of our Christmas agreement, but my wife is pregnant and will soon be spending untold number of hours sitting in a chair, breastfeeding a needy infant. I knew that an iPad could change this otherwise monotonous time in her life into something slightly more palatable, so I felt it reason enough to violate the agreement.

When she opened her gift and attempted to protest, I immediately pointed my Mr. T in your Pocket at her and pressed the top right button:

“Don’t gimme no backtalk, sucka!”

I pressed it a few more times until she ceased her protest.

See what I mean? How many gifts are so perfectly chosen that they can be used… no, needed….  about 30 seconds after opening?

Complex naming formula

My daughter has dramatically enhanced the way in which she names her baby dolls. Prior to today, every one of her dolls has been named after one of her classmates.

Baby Katie

Baby Lily

Baby Clara (yes, she named a baby after herself)

She has even named our unborn child after one of her classmates:

Baby Leila (she refuses to acknowledge that it could be a boy).

She received a new baby doll for Hanukah. After much prodding, she finally decided upon the baby’s name.

“It’s Baby Katie’s sister!” she said.

“Oh,” I said.  “Baby Katie has a sister? What’s her name?”

“Her name is Baby Katie’s sister! That’s her name!”

So now we have a doll in the house named Baby Katie’s Sister.

As an author, I find it difficult to name my characters, too, but this is ridiculous.

A perfect Christmas message

Not being schmaltzy, I promise, but this really is the perfect way to start off a Christmas morning.

I cannot recommend it more highly.

First piece for the new house

My wife and I hope to be able to build our own home someday. If we’re ever able to do so, I’d like my home to include this:

I am apparently not nice to people

My wife is the Matron of Honor in a wedding on New Year’s Eve. The bride called my wife this week to ask if I could help out on the day of the wedding. “Yes,” Elysha said, “but you have to play to Matt’s strengths. Don’t ask him to do something he can’t do.”

“Like what?” the bride asked.

My wife’s response?

“He’s not very good at being nice to people.”

That’s right. Her husband, the father of her daughter and future child, who is also a teacher of young minds, a wedding DJ, a minister, a life coach and an author, is not very good at being nice to people.

Somehow I’ve managed to assemble a wonderful and diverse group of friends even though I am not very good at being nice to people.

Perhaps what my wife meant to say was that I am not terribly effective at making small talk with people who I don’t know in more formal social situations.

But I don’t think so. I think she meant to say that I’m just not very nice.

Ultimately the bride explained that they needed someone to clear the guests from the lobby area just prior to the ceremony so that she could pass through without being seen.

“Oh,” Elysha said. “You need someone to clear a lobby full of people. Matt is your man.”

While this is technically true, I’m not sure if I liked the sound of this, either.

The whole conversation left me wondering what the hell my wife actually thinks of me, but I find myself suddenly afraid to ask.

Future storyteller?

Maybe my daughter will turn out to be a writer after all. And perhaps an editor as well.

Check out this moment of play with her little people. There’s storytelling and dialogue and plot coming from that little two-year old.

Even a bit of editing as well! Listen to how she switches the incorrect use of the word is to the correctly plural are.

I’ve had students who can make that switch!

My little genius.

Now if only she’d show even a modicum of interest in learning to use the potty, we would celebrate.

…though not having to step away from the computer while you’re writing has its advantages as well…

A reward for a stolen umbrella transformed into a reward for the execution of a small boy. Better than an obit for a still-alive mother.

No surprise that Mark Twain managed to turn a simple notice about a stolen umbrella into an amusing reward for the capture and execution of a small boy.

Also no surprise that Scott Bennett’s newspaper farce did not go quite as well.

The Pennsylvania man wrote an obituary for his mother (who was still alive) and got it published in the local paper in order to get paid time off for bereavement.

Unfortunately (for Bennett), relatives called the newspaper after the obit was published to say that Bennett's mother was actually alive and well.

Unconvinced, Bennett’s mother paid a visit to the newspaper to confirm her liveliness.

Bennett was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and fired from his job, of course.

Somehow I feel like Mark Twain could’ve pulled off Bennett’s ruse much more effectively. And more amusingly.

Scott Bennett was simply out of his league.

Justin Bieber and a pile of books!

The wrapping paper was fabulous enough. 

Gaudy and fabulous.   

But the books made my daughter absolutely giddy. There’s this beautiful moment when she can barely contain her excitement.

I’ve watched it half a dozen times already. 

I really have the best bookish friends in the world.