Author: Matthew Groff

  • Sports and Autumn

    Chelsea fired their manager, Thomas Tuchel, this morning. A little surprised, but Chelsea is having a pretty rough start to their season. Their loss yesterday, in the group stage of the Champions league, didn’t help, but still, it’s just the group stage. I would have thought if they didn’t make it out of the group, that that’s when I would have fired Tuchel. This is the one aspect of the Premier League that I don’t understand: you can be a manager with a winning record and still get fired. In the US, you have to lose first, then get fired.

    Enough of Chelsea!

    Today starts Tottenham’s Champions League campaign! Spurs will be taking on Marseille, and… I know nothing about Marseille, other than that it’s a city in France. The match is on at 3pm today on Paramount+, and there is a slight chance that I will be able to watch it. (If it rains today, I will be watching. If the skies are clear, I will be at the playground with the kid.) I’ll see how it goes.

    As for sports, the fantasy football league that I play in is about the start up. I haven’t paid any attention to what is going on in the NFL. And I really haven’t paid any attention to what the Dallas Cowboys are up to. The only thing I head this summer is that the Eagles should take the division, and that the JETS and GIANTS are BACK! Mind you, the local NYC sports news always says this about the JETS and GIANTS every year. Don’t worry, the press gives up on the JETS after the third game, and then they dump the GIANTS about half way through the season.

    The older I get, the more I enjoy the rhythm of sports leagues being rolled out in the Fall. The ramping up of both of the footballs, and the winding down of baseball. Basketball will start soon enough, and I again will flirt with following the Knicks. (My New York friends will talk me out of it.) In one sense, it gives me something to do on the weekends when it starts getting too cold and rainy to go out. I never really thought of myself as a sports fan, but since I moved from Texas to NYC, sports has given me a way to stay connected with friends and family. It’s an easy conversation I can have with people, and it’s also an easy excuse to send an old friend a text message, or when I talk to my dad, we can complain about the Cowboy’s O-line.

    I wonder if any of this sports watching will pass on to the kid? Right now, she finds it boring, but every now and then, she curls up with me and watch what I’m watching. Sometimes she asks questions, most of the time she doesn’t. Maybe what she’ll take away from sports is that it’s a chance to hang out together.

    (Speaking of which! If you are enjoying this, please take a moment to like, share of comment on this blog! I hear it helps needy people like me!)

  • Going Back to the Gym

    Not many people know this about me, but I haven’t been to the gym in almost three months. And now that I say it, I think I have told people this information before. Anyway, let’s all act like this is new, and not me rehashing a subject to meet my daily blog quota.

    I got in shape for “Swimsuit Season” by not getting in shape. I know that this was a bold choice, but after spending the Summer at the beach and water parks, I can see that for other middle-aged men, I was not alone in this decision. My dad bod is stellar!

    I stopped going to the gym because the school year came to an end, and I wanted to spend my time with the kid. And I also wanted to sleep in. But, I admit that was not the correct decision, as now I have to redevelop my habit of going to the gym.

    And I hate going to the gym.

    But I go to a nice gym in the neighborhood, which makes it not so bad.

    Yup, come Thursday, when the kid is back in school, I will be able to drop her off in the morning and then head over to the gym, which was the old system. And I do need to get back into it. I don’t like working out, but I also don’t want to die early. All the extra time I can have with the wife and kid is apricated, and the easiest way to attain that is just go work out for thirty minutes a day. So, it’s a pretty good deal.

    But I am lazy. I mean, I will do it, but I am really lazy. And I will hate every minute of it. And I will come home and the wife will ask me how my workout was, and I will shrug with an expression of not caring either way.

    My wife, on the other hand, when she come back from a yoga class, she’s all jazzed up, and excited, and happy, and full of energy. Good for her, and I’m happy that she gets that out of her workouts, but that’s not for me.

    Maybe one day, but not today.

  • It’s Labor Day

    I feel like I have achieved some sort of accomplishment for making it to Labor Day. Then I’m reminded of the Chris Rock joke, that you can’t be proud of something that you’re supposed to do. Like make it to Labor Day, or not go to jail.

    So, in my achievement/not achievement morning that I am having with my wife on the couch as we watch “The Price is Right,” I am thinking about how we got to the end of June, and I thought that this Summer would never get started or end for that matter. Yet here we are. The wife goes back to work tomorrow, and the kid is in school by Thursday.

    For me, I have to start looking for a job. Or at least, I have to start exploring ways to bring money in to help out the family. Won’t lie, I’m not looking forward to it. Part of it is that I have been out of work for so long, I have a little anxiety about returning. Also, I have this nagging feeling that I have started entering the realm of being just a little too old for certain jobs. And then there is what set of skills do I have? What I can do really only applies to theatre and non-profit arts groups.

    I talked about this with the wife last night, and we are in agreement that though another income stream would help the family, there is no rush for me to go out and take the first job that comes my way. I can take my time and find the right fit. That does help me relax a little.

    But, alas, for today is the end of Summer in our house. We most likely will do nothing but watch TV, and let the kid do what ever she wants. We will give ourselves one final day to relax.

  • BEST OF 2022: Short Story Review of “Wood Sorrel House” by Zach Williams

    (The short story “Wood Sorrel House,” by Zach Williams, Appeared in the March 21st, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I see spoilers!)

    I do not know what to make of this story. I haven’t stopped thinking about the thing since I finished reading it, but I still can’t come up with what it’s all about. And this is meant as a compliment. If a story lives on in the reader’s mind, and does dissolve into forgotten nothingness as soon as they are finished with it, then that author has achieved something. I tip my hat to you Zach Williams; your story is taking up space in my brain.

    “Wood Sorrel House” is about a couple and a toddler seemingly trapped in a cottage in the woods. Days pass, they age, but the toddler does not. Each morning food and supplies are replenished in the house, thus allowing them to live in the cottage. The couple tries to figure out where they are and why they are there, and soon they discover the toddler is never able to get hurt.

    I have an ego, and some days I think I am smart, and when I started reading this story, I was like, “Oh, this is an absurdist styled story, and it’s a metaphor for death.” Because, if my college education taught me anything, it’s that absurdist/surrealist/modernist stories are all really about death. But as I kept reading, I began to doubt my ego-driven conclusion. Why was the snapping turtle killed? What happed when the male in the couple disappeared? What happened to the toddler when the woman went down to the lake for days at a time? Why did the couple age, and get injured, but the toddler was immune and also ageless?

    I found that this story was taping into emotional territories that made me react. Perhaps it’s because I’m a parent, but I kept feeling this sense of dread for the toddler, that something awful was going to happen. There was a sense of disgust in how the man went out a destroyed nature. And a sense of sorrow as the woman tried to make sense of all of it. I was reacting to this story, I was compelled by it, but I couldn’t make sense of it. If it wasn’t about death, what was it about? Was it the lack of logic? Things stayed the same at the cottage, but the outside world seemed to keep moving; not changing into something different, but just moving along. Was this a metaphor for dealing with Covid? Maybe it had no meaning, but that would make it about death, right? What was it?

    Like I said, I don’t know what to think about the story, but the story is making me think about what it could be about. That’s a pretty successful story.

  • BEST OF 2022: Short Story Review of “Annunciation” by Lauren Groff

    (The short Story “Annunciation,” by Lauren Groff appeared in the February 14th & 21st, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    First of all, I am not related to Lauren Groff. Second, this is the first short story by her that I have read. And it was a good one to start with. From the first paragraph, I felt like I was on a journey, and was being guided by a person who knew how to unfold a story. If you haven’t pieced it together, I liked this story, and I am suggesting that you should read it. For that reason, I will forgo a synopsis of the piece, and give my reflections on it.

    Lauren Groff crafted a well-made short story. As it unfolded, I didn’t know where I was being taken, but after I finished, I could see the structure that held the story up. The opening, narrator development, introduction of characters, seemingly random incidents, rising action, climax, resolution, and even a denouement, which not too long ago I was complaining about the use of denouement in short stories. I mean, the title tied in to the denouement, as well. But the structure wasn’t the only admirable quality of the story.

    What I loved reading was about this narrator who was not perfect, who did struggle, and was still struggling. A person who had these moments, anecdotes even, that represented the life she led, and she still found herself thinking of these people, and the mysteries that never will be solved. And, this was a personal favorite of mine, the narrator was literary person without being a writer character. I fully believed that she was introspective, empathetic, and aware of the small details of the world she inhabited.

    But it was the theme, the through line, of motherhood that ran through the story that impressed me. Though I didn’t catch it as I was reading it, the denouement captured, and focused the theme for me. It made me reevaluate each of the women in the story, their form of motherhood, and how they are viewed or apricated by their children for what they do, or have done for them. This theme of motherhood didn’t fit neatly in a box, meaning that I didn’t feel the story was trying to say motherhood is “this way.” Mothers are all over the map; good, bad, wonderful, awful, secretive, open, all different and yet the same, somehow. And for some, motherhood takes a toll.

    That makes the story sound dark or overtly complex, but I found myself optimistic, and hopeful at the end of the story. Lauren Groff created a journey in this story, so we all came out on the other side different from this experience. I liked the world that this story is in, and the characters who inhabit it. Stories like this leave me feeling inspired; that short stories can express truths, and have weight. That they are worth reading and creating.