Blog

  • DIY Home Remolding Videos

    I used to watch HGTV for all the remolding shows. I will stress the word “used to” because after a few weeks, I noticed that all the shows were the same in their structure, and they didn’t show you how to improve anything in your home. Such as every HGTV show had the same reality tv plot wherein half way through the show, the hosts discovered some huge “whatever” that would cost way more money to fix, and then they had to call the client and get their reaction, and decide what to do next. But no matter what the issue was, it all worked out, and Joanna put a huge “LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE” sign up on the wall. Oh, and they only thing I learned about fixing my home was to hire a good contractor.

    All of this has now lead me to watching YouTube videos. At first, I was looking for clips that would help me patch a hole in the wall, or install trim, or build a built-in. But, the Algorithm caught on to me, and started pushing all these renovation videos on me. Like, “we bought a school building in the country and turned into our dream house” type videos. Or “I bought a row house in Boston, and am fixing it up with my girlfriend and our dog.”

    I won’t lie, late at night, these videos suck me in. Not so much the people, or their story, or how they did it all (though I wish they would go into more of those details), but I get sucked into their home renovation ideas, and I try to figure out if that would work in my apartment. See, I have a mudroom area, and a place for a built-in buffet/bookshelf but I can’t figure out how to make it work…

    As I have watched more and more of these renovation videos, I have started to notice, especially the ones that are a long series, that they all kind’a do the same thing. They all have a time-lapse video of their demo, or a time-lapse of the contractors doing something, with a jangly guitar underscoring it. Or, they do this confessional thing where the “admit” that they might have bit off more than they can chew, and the whole project might fail.

    But it never does.

    They always figure out a solution, or they pay more money to the contractor who figures out a solution. Yeah, it’s all rather cliché.

    Or to put it another way…

    Once, you know, I’d like to see someone just throw in the towel; They can’t do it, it’s just too expensive, or they settle. Sure, that wouldn’t be a very interesting video, but it sure would be a cautionary tale for all of those middle-aged guys out there, that have no experience at home improvement, but think they can do it because they watched a video at 1am.

  • Spring Break (Unedited)

    I’m not using this as an excuse… but here’s my excuse; the kid is on Spring Break, and we’ve being doing stuff in the City, so I haven’t had any time to write. Which isn’t 100% true, as I have had some down time after running around with the kid, but I’m so tired, I just stare at my phone or nap.

    Right now, I’m at a playground on the Upper East Side, watching the kid and her friend running around. What I want is to nap, because we did run around the Guggenhiem for a couple of hours. To keep myself awake, I’m trying to hammer out a log on my phone. It’s kind’a working.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Haircuts, Dog Haircut, and Hats

    (An’ I don’t really care if you think I’m strange…)

    As a balding man, haircuts are a very funny thing. What hair I do have still grows and needs to be cut periodically. Yet, with a significant smaller amount of hair on my head, having to pay full price for a haircut does make me feel like I am being taking advantage of. Shouldn’t there be a bald man’s discount?

    My dog also has to get periodic haircuts, but that’s called grooming, but in the good way. She gets her trim every three months, and when we enter into the final weeks before her cut, she is a hairy mess. She’s a little Chewbacca, if I were to describe accurately.

    I am a fan of hats, and that was before I started balding. When I was doing costuming in my college theatre department, I would try to come up with any excuse to put a hat on a character. In my real life, I’m a baseball cap and beanie guy. But what I would love to be is a fedora guy. And not one of those short brimmed hipster fedoras; no, I’m talking a classic wide brim 1930’s or 40’s fedora. But I think for the look to work, you have to be in a suit. Fedoras are formal, while a ball cap denotes a casual or sporty aesthetic. So, I need to wear more suits is what I’m saying.

  • Earworm Thursday: Knights of the Round Table, but in Lego, and…

    And for comparison…

    And you know…

  • Short Story Review – “Good Girls” by Martha Keller

    (The flash fiction story “Good Girls” by Martha Keller was first published in Milk Candy Review on September 19th, 2024.)

    One of the many things that I love about flash fiction, as a form of storytelling, is that it lends itself quite well to writers willing to play with the structure and the form that a narrative can take. Martha Keller accomplishes this deconstruction of a traditional narrative, rather well in her piece “Good Girls,” which appeared in Milk Candy Review back in September of 2024.

    After an opening paragraph, which describes the immortal clashes between girls on swings and boys who wish to remove them, the story takes on a narrative structure of examining consequential moments of life, every five years. What Keller uniquely creates is not a linear progression, but more like a retrograde motion, starting at the age of 30, and descending to a newborn. This format enables the reader to compare the desires and aspirations of each age, but highlighting specifically how what is important at a certain age, wasn’t even on the horizon just five years before. In considering this structure, it plays with a level of menace that seems just below the surface in each of these ages. How in each age, something is sought and even acquired, but the feeling of it being taken away is also present, which goes back to the opening paragraph of the girls on the swings and the boys wanting to take that from them.

    “Good Girls” is very efficient and succinct as a flash piece; only 400+ words. Keller doesn’t waste any time in this story. This directness coupled with the unique structure of its narrative creates an insightful work of flash fiction.