Tee time is 10:00 AM. Jim gives me a tour of the set of clubs (good ones) borrowed from Pico. How to hold the club. Proper stance. How to swing. I also have the advantage of having watched a three-minute YouTube video for beginners on how to swing a golf club: heart high, arms to the side. Pico and Fernando are experienced golfers, and their skills show right away. They both drive long, high...
After a blip last month in which one of us missed, the Delmar Dads Movie Club was back last night with a full roster of our three founding members. It was Paul’s turn to choose, and this guy is on a winning streak. We saw Weapons, the kind of horror/mystery/thriller type film I would never choose, but am glad that he did. Weapons has one of those far-out concepts: what happens to a community when...
My mom, Irene Klein, died more than 40 years ago when she was 58 and I was 24. I was still largely undeveloped as an adult, and losing my mother was a huge blow. I drifted rudderless and without purpose for some years after. I’ve always wondered what my life would have been like if she’d been around to continue loving me and guiding me. Then when I was 35, in marrying Harriet, I gained a mother...
I forgot to include a story in the newsletter I write for the tennis club. I forgot we were going to tell the kids about the Richardsons. I forgot to get my car inspected because when I looked at the sticker it was three months overdue. Harriet reminded me we were going to tell the kids about the Richardsons. I went to the hardware store, the grocery store, and the library, and I remembered my...
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m a fan of multilinear films and novels, which are constructed around multiple protagonists with intersecting storylines and driven by a central theme. So when Owen told me he watched the film Crash (2004), I was keenly interested in his reaction. As a side note, I included Crash with the word ‘Sorry’ in parentheses, on my “List of Must-See Movies.” I...
I’ve given talks about my books and answered questions from readers. I’ve stood in front of audiences and hosted business presentations. I’ve confidently pitched marketing ideas to skeptical executives. I’ve performed timed slide presentations at Pecha Kucha nights. I’ve given eulogies at funerals and toasts at weddings. None of these public speaking situations did me in. And yet, I have a...
A subset of the Delmar Dads Movie Club went to the Spectrum Theater last night and saw “Friendship,” a cringey black comedy starring the actor and comedian Tim Robinson, whom I’d never heard of, but apparently is popular. It was my turn to choose what film we’d see on the second Wednesday of this month, and darn if the pickings weren’t slim. I almost chose “F1” but was warned by someone trusted...
We are emotionally available, we have words to express our feelings. We rally for our friend in need. We are men. I can’t trust her. You shouldn’t trust her. She’s admitted to everything I’ve found out but nothing more. You’ve got her cornered. She’s on the defensive. She won’t even talk to me. Let’s have a beer. I’m a mess right now. I’m in a bad space and it feels like it will never end. We can...
I hear the jagged revving of chainsaws in my neighborhood and I head outside to investigate. A few houses down the block from mine a tree removal crew is on the job, a crane extending high into the canopy, a chipper idling in the road ready to chomp. Multiple trees are being taken down in the front of one of the shadiest houses on the block. Towering, majestic oaks I’ve always admired. They must...
An essay published by the bipartisan think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) discussed the challenge of surprising your enemy in a military attack in the twenty-first century. Back in the day, it was easier to pull off a military shocker. Case in point: the United States was woefully unprepared for the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. But today...
Since the day I was old enough to stray from my mother’s watchful eye and wander off from our blanket spread on the sandy, modest public beach at Thunder Bay on the shore of Lake Erie in Canada, I would take beach walks along the curve of the bay. Walk east, and you come across Root Beer Creek, so named by us for its water color. Walk west, and you come across a flat rock area abutting the shore...
One of my favorite punctuation marks—the em dash—(see what I did there?) is under siege. I’ve made liberal use of the em dash in all five of my novels, deploying it early and often in my writing style: STASH (page 1): “But she reminded herself that Nora was only seven, a loving, intelligent girl, tall and strong and for the most part capable, yet fearful of small things going wrong—such as...
I only recently discovered a term for a phenomenon I’ve experienced many times, one we’ve all experienced—hedonic adaptation. I’ve known about hedonism, which is living to maximize pleasure, and I’m acquainted with several hedonists who have devoted their lives to pleasure, but hedonic adaptation is new for me. Hedonic adaptation is the process by which we tend to return to our baseline level...
It’s been a while since I’ve found a novel so compelling that I knocked off one hundred pages a day and finished reading the book in three days. Flesh, by David Szalay, is that novel. A reviewer in The Guardian wrote that Flesh is “a novel about the Big Question: about the numbing strangeness of being alive; about what, if anything, it means to amble through time in a machine made of meat.” The...
Nature handed us cold, wind, and rain the entire time, and yet the turnout for Hands Off at the New York State Capitol looked to be several thousand Americans who are sick and tired of an authoritarian administration run by a cruel, amoral, abusive, lying felon and his billionaire enablers. Despite the weather, the crowd was enthusiastic, the signs plentiful and creative. The faces I saw were...
