Author: Matthew Groff

  • Watching Movies

    I’m a big movie fan, and I especially love awful, really bad movies. As a huge MST3k fan, that should come as no surprise. But, I still remember the wonder, and awe of going to see “Empire Strikes Back” in a theater with my dad and brothers. When I think back on it, it was like I won the lottery with “Empire” being my first movie. It set the bar pretty high.

    I also love sharing the movies that I grew up watching with my daughter. Some movies hold up really well, and some were not as good as I thought they were. But not all 80’s movies for kids are created equal. I’m not sure my six-year old daughter is ready for a melting Nazi.

    And today, I started to wonder when I can start watching dramas with her. You know, grown up dramas where what all the adults do is talk a lot, and the movie usually ends hopeful, but also a little sad. You know, like “Ordinary People,” Chariots of Fire,” “The Verdict” “The Big Chill” “Places in the Heart” “A Room with a View” “Broadcast News” “The Accidental Tourist” and “Dead Poets Society.”  

    When I was growing up, we didn’t get cable, but we got a VCR, and rented movies. My parents would rent a movie for us boys, usually an action movie like “Jaws” or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and then the parents would rent a grownup movie, like from the list above. And out of all of those movies, the first one that I remember sitting through, and not leaving after the first boring talkie ten minutes, was “The Accidental Tourist,” which when I think about it, was an odd choice for 11 year old me to sit through, and enjoy.

  • First Time at the Dentist

    Yesterday was the kid’s first experience with going to see a dentist. I know for some people going to the dentist is not an enjoyable experience, and looking at the websites for pediatric dentists, almost all of them have a page dedicated to calming your child’s fears of going to the dentist for the first time.

    My kid saw Little Shop of Horrors, so she didn’t have the healthiest appreciation of the dental profession.

    But I was committed to making sure that the kid would have no issues with going to see the dentist for the first time. I found lots of videos online about kids going to the dentist where they explained the tools, and the procedures. We watched them together, and she very quickly associated that dentists are just like any other doctor, as they are there to help and make you feel better.

    And the pediatric dental office we went to was great! This is what they do, but they were really great at making the kid feel special, and explaining everything to her, so she wasn’t afraid. I could even feel my anxiety rise as the cleaning started, and the kid let the assistant start touching her teeth, but she was fine. It was all fine, and the kid even said that she found the dentist fun!

    I told her how proud I was of her. Then we got home to tell mom all about the dentist, and I added how proud I was of the kid. After dinner, I reminded the kid of how brave she was at the dentist, and that made me proud. As we brushed our teeth before bed, I reminded her how proud I was how she handled the dentist. And then when I tucked her in, she told me to stop telling her how proud I was of her.

    I was laying it on rather thick.

    And I had committed the sin of trying to over parent my child to compensate for my perceived failings in my life. I was a nervous, anxiety riddled child. I worried so much about things, that I often made myself sick to my stomach to where I couldn’t get out of bed. I wish I wasn’t the worry-wart little kid, as it created self-doubt and fear in me, and I have had to work hard as an adult to overcome it. I just wanted to make sure the kid isn’t afraid of things like I was.

    This might be one of those life lessons where as I parent I need to set the example, rather than over praise.

  • Supporting the Local Coffee Shop

    We got a dog way back in February of 2020. It was a birthday gift for the kid, and we just beat the huge rush of people getting pets before the Covid lockdown. We love our little dog, and it has been great having a little furry animal to snuggle and play with. The dog is great with the kid and people. She wags her tail when people talk to her, and she lets them pet her. But if another dog is near, our little girl turns into a ragging killer, as our dog hates all other dogs.

    Well, the other day on our morning walk, I saw that a store front which had butcher-paper over windows, was now opened as a coffee shop, and a local coffee shop at that! Not a chain, but an actual local coffee shop. My first thought was that this is great, as now we have a place to get a real cup of coffee, that was not corporate, or, no offense, a crappy bodega coffee that could have been sitting around for days. Then I was struck by the solid courage that this person has for opening a new business, a food service business non the less, in New York City during a pandemic. That right there has made me a fan of this place.

    And I look forward to going in to it. One day.

    Though the coffee shop is dog friendly, as I have seen other people with their dogs getting a cup, but If I were to head in there with my dog, and another dog were to enter, then all hell would break loose, and I don’t want to be that guy.

    But, you know, I don’t leave the apartment for leisure. I don’t leave the apartment unless I have a task to accomplish. I don’t know when I will visit this place regularly. This coffee shop is such a temptation for the life of normalcy that is very, very close to becoming a reality. I will get a cup of coffee in the joint to support of this proprietor, but what I want is to go to the place, get a cup of coffee, and just talk a walk in the city again, and drop in shops, and see places, and be social.

  • Personal Review: Cocktail (Film, 1988)

    There is a winding path to this story, so hang in there and follow me. And I guess I should also say; SPOILERS!

    Last night, the wife and I watched Cocktail, the 1988 Tom Cruise epic of bartending and love in NYC and Jamaica. I knew full well going into this movie that it wasn’t good, but I had never finished it. Maybe I had seen about half of it, but that would have been about 1990 or 1991 when we got a free preview of HBO on cable. Anyway, the wife was kidding me about not knowing how the film ends, and I joked, “What, does Tom win a bar tending competition in the end?”

    I was correct, in that I had seen about half of it, up to the point to where the movie moves to Jamaica. Anyway, I’m not going to kick this movie as we all know it’s not very good, but when film makes the hard right turn and Bryan Brown’s character commits suicide, my response was “Really?”

    “And you thought there was going to be a bartending competition?” my wife added with laughter.

    That having been said, it still was what I thought it would be; something to watch and don’t think too hard about it. Sure, maybe if the story stayed lite, not so much spurn the rich parent cliché, or my friend’s death make me change my life trope, and had a bar tending competition, and there was a bad guy “corporate” bartender who had no soul, who didn’t really “get” what bartending was all about… I mean, every bar movie can’t be Roadhouse, but still, you know, the little guy beating the big guy is always a crowd pleaser.

    But, to be honest, I needed to watch a movie like Cocktail last night. I couldn’t do another round of outrage news, or political comedy from Colbert or Seth. I needed a clearly silly escape after everything that has happened; a year of Covid, an election, people ignoring medical guidance, and everything else that seems to be a harbinger of the end of the world. I actually needed to see pretty people make mixed drinks in the Caribbean, and witness their very melodramatic reactions to life. And in the end, it all works out.

    So, maybe I will watch Roadhouse tonight.

  • Waiting My Turn for the Vaccine

    Is vaccine anxiety a thing? I mean, having anxiety about not having received your shot yet. That’s a thing, or it should be a thing.

    I’m not talking about anxiety of receiving the shot, like “I’m scared of needles,” anxiety. Not that.

    I’m also not talking about anxiety if the shot is safe, or will cause some awful side effect, or even crazy conspiracy theories.

    Nope. I’m talking about the anxiety I’m having just waiting for my turn.

    I’m trying to have patience, or at least I was. Last night, the thought that with all the variants out there, including this new New York City variant, that waiting for my turn is starting to get dicey, maybe even dangerous.

    Fear. This is fear, so let me just be honest. The tiniest speck of fear danced into my head.

    And that fear started kicking at the door of reason, as fear started asking me, why are all of these people getting vaccinated who shouldn’t be getting vaccinated? Social media keeps showing me pictures of people who are younger than me, who are not teachers, or first responders or in the medical field, or essential workers, getting vaccinated. Do all of these people have underlining medical conditions?

    And that fear started clawing open my logical side of thinking by asking, Am I being naïve by waiting my turn? Is everyone out there cheating to get the vaccine, and am I going to be left out in the cold, only to get sick with one of these super variants?

    But then Reason and Logic did take back over. I am healthy. I take precautions, like wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands, staying home. There are many people out there who do need the vaccine more than I do right now. Also, the faster that the groups in front of me get vaccinated, the sooner it will be my turn.

    I have to remind myself that Covid isn’t the only disease out there. Fear is just as contagious.