Skip to content

Michael Scott’s final words deserved to be heard

Just for the record, I did not approve of the final moment between Pam Halpert and Michael Scott during Steve Carell’s final episode of The Office. Like the final moment between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation, the writers chose to leave the final dialogue between the two characters a secret, which…

Read More

Not the friends I want

“Carrying a $10,000 Birkin bag by Hermès will make you the envy of your friends. It could also help you snag a higher salary and better job recommendations.” This is the lead to a TIME article about recent research that suggests, much to my horror, that fashion choices, and specifically designer labels, influence earning potential.…

Read More

Henry Blake and Michael Scott: Thankfully not as intertwined as I (and many others) had feared

As The Office’s Michael Scott leaves the show forever, he boards a plane for Colorado and his new life. The final image before the scene ends is of his plane rising into the air. And in that instant, I thought about Henry Blake’s fate on M*A*S*H and was suddenly terrified that the writers of The…

Read More

The Facebook like button gender gap

The Facebook “Like” button appears to have a severe gender bias. I noticed that the majority of people who like my status updates are female and wondered if this trend is isolated to me or consistent throughout the Facebook universe. I also realized how unlikely it was for me to ever click the Like button,…

Read More

Devil on the rise

Two firsts today. Neither very good. 1. My daughter’s preschool teacher informed us that our normally angelic child misbehaved today for the first time. She yelled at her teachers and classmates and was non-compliant. She is remarkable verbal, they say, but today she used those words for no good. I fear that my genes are finally…

Read More

McDonald’s and Charlie Sheen would be bad titles, too

In regards to yesterday’s post on author’s acknowledgements: The Ottoman Hotel, Christopher Currie’s novel that includes a marriage proposal within the acknowledgement section, is poorly titled. There is a real Ottoman Hotel in Turkey that is apparently quite well known. The first five pages of Google return results related to the hotel, so breaking through…

Read More

This is how moms want to spend their weekend?

This week Living Social alerted me to the gomom.me convention taking place this weekend in Hartford, Connecticut. As far as I can tell, this is a convention dedicated to mothers. There will be a “motherhood panel of amazing moms,” a “fun image workshop,” a Spa Power Hour and a eco-friendly gift bags filled with samples…

Read More

A proposal in an author’s acknowledgements? How do I top this one?

After thanking his publisher and various bosses in the acknowledgements at the end of The Ottoman Hotel, first time novelist Christopher Currie thanked his girlfriend. “If it’s possible to fall more in love with someone every day, then that’s what I do. To my favorite, to the reason I live my life, Leesa Wockner, who,…

Read More

No exaggeration

My father-in-law once asked a former student of mine if I had a tendency to exaggerate at times. “No,” the boy said.  “Mr. Dicks doesn’t exaggerate.  He either tells the truth or he lies.” I’m not sure if it’s entirely true, but it’s an intriguing observation.

Read More

If only they were real…

If only my daughter’s new washer and dryer were real, my wife’s life would be so much easier, because Clara loves to pretend to do the laundry.   My wife does almost all the laundry in the home, but for the record, I did almost all of the laundry the four years that we lived…

Read More