Archive for August 2023

Woman is mowing her lawn in the 102-degree Texas heat. Riding a lawnmower. A four-foot venomous snake falls from the sky, lands on her arm, and wraps around it. The more she struggles to pull the snake off her arm, the tighter it holds on. A hawk appears from the sky, grabs the snake with…

While hiking Muir Woods National Park, a grove of coastal redwood trees, we had the following two encounters: Seeing Elysha’s New York Yankees cap, a man said, “Oh, you’re from New York?” “No,” Elysha said. “We live in Connecticut.” “Oh!” he said. “I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut.” So, too, did Elysha. For a…

We arrive in San Fransisco to discover that Elysha has left her medication at home. She calls her doctor and arranges for her prescription to be refilled at a local CVS Pharmacy down the road from our Airbnb. I arrive at the pharmacy the next day to pick up the medication. The CVS employee has…

“You Are the Sunshine of My Life” is a Stevie Wonder song you’ve undoubtedly heard many times. It was Wonder’s third Billboard chart topper and has become a classic still played 50 years after its debut. But did you know this: Stevie Wonder does not sing the first four lines of the song. Jim Gilstrap…

I was waiting to board a plane in Charleston, South Carolina. The airline attendant had called for the parents with small children who needed assistance to begin boarding. A woman with a middle school-aged daughter began moving toward the gate. The man standing beside me stepped forward, blocking their path. “She said small children who…

On the eve of the third and final show of “You’re a Monster, Matthew Dicks,” I was greeted in the theater lobby by an employee named Warren, who had seen the show the previous night. He offered me some kind words about the show and my performance, and then he said, “I have something for…

One complaint I had about the Barbie movie: I ended up in a theater where the film was subtitled, presumably for someone in the theater who was deaf or hearing impaired. While I have no problem with subtitling films for the benefit of the deaf community, I think I should know if that possibility exists…

Here’s how you can tell that “Barbie” – which I have seen – is an outstanding film: Conservative creeps like Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, and Elon Musk hate the movie. It’s so odd, too, because these little men fail to see that their hatred of the film reflects their own insecurity. They can’t see how…

Here’s a weird thing about my recent solo show, “You’re a Monster, Matthew Dicks” that I did not expect: I kept crying after the show. I stepped back into the wings at the end of the first night and started crying. This had never happened to me before, and I could not understand why. I…

I recently completed the three-night run of my solo show, “You’re a Monster, Matthew Dicks” at Theater Works in Hartford. I now find myself in that strange space where I am happy and relieved that the show is over and went so well and also saddened that I don’t get to perform it again tonight.…