Blog of Done

Ten years ago my wife, Christine and our two boys, Aidan and William, and I were on vacation in a warm place with our friends from California when a story unfolded in my head. On the flight over, I read an article that described the lack of relevant scripts for the many aging actors in Hollywood. As we relaxed in the pool, I told my friend, Roger, a Yale educated emergency room physician, about my idea for a screenplay. I described a story in which two young boys befriend an elderly man over a mutual interest in trains then embark upon an adventure to save a forgotten steam engine. Roger asked,

"How much of this do you got down?"

"Nothing. I just came up with it," I admitted.

The only thing I wrote at this point in my life was a humor article in college and technical papers on topics in computer science presented at conferences. I didn't have a clue what made me think I could write a feature length film.

When we returned home, I got online and found a fifteen page summary explaining screenplay formatting. I purchased the popular script writing software, Final Draft, and off I went. A few weeks later I completed the first draft. I read online to never let anyone who is not a successful writer read your script. The problem with this is that no one who is in the industry is interested in reading the musings penned by a nobody. Most first time writers unload their initial draft on their friends and family, all of which are likely not professional writers.

Most of the comments I received added virtue not value to the story. Some insisted that a particular character should be a girl or that every character should be from a particular ethnic group. I waded through all these sentiments, made some revisions then submitted the script to the prestigious Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science international script competition. It tanked.

In response to a call for scripts with strong female leads, I wrote a drama about a former mountain guide, overcoming the loss of her son, finds herself banding together with a group of neighbors for mutual survival during a winter of excessive snowfall. I became interested in the storyline after a late summer tropical storm caused thousands of people in our state to lose power for four days. People started to unravel. I thought that if this ever happened during the winter, we would all be screwed. I also liked a plot in which your own home was not a refuge, that the familiar was not a safe place. The story was a modern day Donner Party, less the cannibalism.

The script was an ambitious project. To be of any interest, it had to be about a lot of people being shoved together in one space which meant developing multiple, distinct characters. Long ago, we lost the ability to live in a village so it was easy to find conflict. I also liked the idea that if it snowed in New England like it does in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, that is, feet for days at a time, the entire region would shut down. The fact is each winter, we are six feet away from being six feet under.

A guy who worked for my wife was neighbors with a woman who once worked in Hollywood. She has writing credits for several popular Disney movies. She graciously offered to read my work. As my first exposure to a real industry professional, her commentary was succinct and actionable. She said things like,

"Make this character quirky"

and,

"You brewed all these people together and nothing really happened."

After absorbing her input, the following year I submitted both scripts to Nicholls. The drama was received favorably, making the quarterfinals which was top 375 out of 7442 entries. I was certain I was on my way to a career in writing.

The following year I wrote a science fiction piece in which the International Space Station was repurposed as a luxury retirement community as medical research pointed to the health benefits of low gravity living until a pilot and his uncle begin to question the operation of the facility. The Academy's contest allows three entries so I completed three scripts, something less than 5% of the entrants do.

Most would-be screenwriters take a class in college that requires them to write a script which is why they have one in the first place. Once I was on a panel discussion when I was asked what advice I would give someone just starting out as a screenwriter. I answered,

"First off, listen to as much advice as you can get, but don’t heed nobodies like me who actually haven’t made it. If you have taken a class in screenwriting at a local college and you got an A on your final project which your professor wrote on the title page, 'Great Job! You should enter this into a contest,' don’t bother. If that’s the only reason why you have a screenplay, then you’ll probably hate being a professional writer."

Money won't make a writer write well. That I know is true. So this time around with my three entries I was certain I would place highly. When the results rolled in all three scripts bombed. Worst yet, one commenter referred to the protagonist in the family film by the wrong name. He called him "Winston" when his name was "David." That wasn't even close. I was disappointed. Every year, I thought I was advancing just a bit, but now I wasn't so sure. It was clear that my scripts were skimmed by readers who offered vague commentary like,

"The characters are undeveloped,"

or the go to screenwriting bash,

"The dialog is stilted."

My son, Aidan, played trumpet in his school jazz band. He auditioned for an exclusive regional ensemble but didn't make the cut. When I went to console him he said,

"It's okay."

"You're taking it pretty well," I noted.

"That's because you taught my how to lose."

"I did?" I asked.

"Not because you're a loser. Because you keep trying when you don't win," he explained.

I entered each of my three scripts to a whole host of competitions. To date one placed first and another third. I was a finalist nine times and a semifinalist eleven. Often all three scripts made it to the same level of distinction in a single contest. In 2018 my family film reached the first third of semifinals, top 50, in Nicholls while the drama made quarterfinals in the latter three times in 2015, 2017 and 2020.

Along the way the many contest achievements allowed me to speak to a whole host of industry professional and a few movie stars. I didn't always follow the advice given to me which is probably why I'm an unsuccessful screenwriter. One bit of guidance I ignored was to perfect a single genre. I always thought a writer should be versatile, that is, capable of penning most anything. After writing three screenplays in different genres, I decided my next script would be a comedy.

Making people laugh on demand is no easy task. Most comedies put the biggest gags in the trailer to make you think the film is funnier than it really is. Writing a film that makes people laugh out loud requires capabilities I knew I did not have. To hone my skills, I wrote a humor blog posting every Tuesday and Thursday for a year starting in August of 2016. After 104 posts on subjects ranging from politics, celebrities to medical procedures, I completed my year of the blog. I wasn't sure if I would keep it up, but I did. Initially I thought I would run out of ideas after a month, but they kept rolling in. With over 120,000 page views and over fifty subscribers, I think I can say that it was an enjoyable run.

After four years of research and note taking, I finally completed my fourth screenplay, a comedy that is close to home for me. I know now that my future resides in humor writing which is even more challenging today in a world in which offense often triggers censorship. It's very hard to be funny in a Petri dish.

During the run of my blog I saw a lot of changes in what I was able to write. At first, I penned anything I regarded as funny. When I started out I never dreamed that anyone would do anything worse than flameout in the comments. The cyberattacks on my subscription service and outright attempts to gain control of my content by fraudulent scammers pretending to be Google employees peddling advertising advice was amusing at times. Often these events resulted in a post in which I played the clueless old guy baffled by technology. Ultimately Google made it difficult to promote my blog by rejecting ads for half my posts on grounds that my font was too small and hyperlinks too close. Oddly, ads were dropped only for posts about current events. When Google announced that they no longer supported subscription service on Blogger, I knew it was over.

Many readers enjoyed the pieces about being a parent or how I met my wife. I often described these events as a "journey" because it always felt like to me that together we all were going someplace. If I couldn't come up with something funny, I opted for a family themed post to stir emotions. When we laugh and cry we make the same face and sound and even tear up because both come from the same place. Good writers know to visit that place as often as they can.

We all need to smile again and to that end, I'm going to continue to write, focusing on comedies, but I won't be doing so here anymore. When I started out I promised to write something twice a week that would be free of ads and never include poetry. I managed to live up to that bargain even though many times I wanted to upload excerpts from my three volume memoir of my experiences photographing decoy swans written in Iambic Pentameter. I truly hope that I made some of you laugh, perhaps just when you needed to the most, and maybe someday we'll do so together once again.

Anatomy of a Junk Drawer

The Junk Drawer

As the holiday season approaches each year, and we all gear up for the national custom of giving thanks to Native Americans for showing us how to grow corn with a dead fish followed by the celebration of the birth of our Savior by weeks of unfettered consumerism, I embrace the self imposed task of sorting out the junk drawer. The junk drawer is the catch all bin of things that are never discarded right away, but instead held in stasis until a later time.

Admittedly, I have two junk drawers, one in the kitchen, the main junk drawer, and another in the laundry room, the auxiliary junk drawer. The main one usually goes critical first, being located in the high traffic region of the house near the refrigerator and the microwave. This year I decided when I clean out the junk drawer, I would attempt to categorize the contents to understand why this on deck refuse exists at all. I surmise that we are all collectively too busy to make decisions about discarding something potentially important so in true procrastinator fashion we place the object in a drawer until there is so much shit in there, it won’t close. We all do it. The first level of dissection of the junk drawer follows the taxonomic categorization of “garabage” versus "non garbage items."

Non Garbage Items, NGI

The main junk drawer is the keep safe for the “good scissors," which aren't meant to be discarded. They rightfully belong in the junk drawer. I also store my car keys, wallet and sometimes my phone in there as well. Scotch tape is also a non garbage item. These things are what the drawer is really for.

Chitter Chatter
Scissors

When I was a kid, our junk drawer had, along with the good scissors, the bulky zigzag scissors which, to this day, I haven’t a clue what they are used for. As kids, we called them “chitter chatter scissors." No one ever used them in our house. Not once, but they resided in the junk drawer where they attained a lofty status by their association with the good scissors.

There are a lot of NGI chords in the junk drawer all varying in length, color and purpose. Each year when I clean out the junk drawer, my wife, Christine, peruses the contents then exclaims,

“There’s that thing. I was looking for that.”

Christine uses a whole host of electronic gadgets that require tethers for juice including two cell phones, one for work and one for personal use. Although a pain to remember two mobile phones, it's less hardware, and way less legal consequences than having your own personal email server. Christine is forever looking for a charging cord for things like old iPods and something called an "exercise FOB." You’d think by now she would know to check in the junk drawer, but that is another oddity about the practice of temporal crap hoarding.

There’s too much shit in there.

There's so much stuff in that drawer that actually looking through it is impractical. It might as well be a stuff black hole in which everything including light cannot escape. That would speed up this yearly housekeeping for sure.

Assorted Crap

Coins

There was money in the junk drawer. Why a fair amount of coins was in there is beyond me. It’s not like a decision about discarding money needs to be postponed. Besides, money can be used right away to buy more stuff. I found a 1946 nickel and a wheat penny in there, both of which went into a shoebox in my desk full of old coins.

Hardware

There was plenty of hardware in the junk drawer. Screws, nuts, bolts, nails, cotter pins, washers. Quite the assortment of important metal fasteners. I have jars full of these things in my workshop. When I die, an auctioneer will dump all of them in the garbage.

Assorted Crap Keepers

There were several free ride tokens for the flying horse carousel located at the local beach in the junk drawer. This past summer our youngest, Willy, won them for snagging the brass ring. He claimed all of them for his personal junk drawer in his desk. There was a fair amount of crayons, pencils and pens as well as erasers and a bottle of white out. There were two padlocks with no keys. There was a box of ear plugs, some Nerf darts, wire nuts, and several garden hose quick connects. There were Legos, buttons and grommets, game pieces to Trouble, four micro glass cleaning clothes, a protractor, two magnets, five partially used ChapSticks and three pocket knives. All these things are keepers.

Obvious Junk (Garbage)

A calculator with a broken display, dead batteries, expired membership cards, (the oldest dated to 2013), old iPhones, coupons from last year were all found in the junk drawer.

Unknown

There’s some unidentifiable things in there as well. No one in my immediate family knew what any of these items went to or were for. That’s probably how they got in there in the first place. Sometimes, I ask Christine obtuse things like,

“Have you seen that little piece of plastic?”

To which, she responds,

“You got to give me more to go on than that.”

So I add,

“It’s red.”

That’s the kind of thing that ends up in the junk drawer, a little red, important piece of plastic. I would never be able to find an item like that because there’s too much crap and money in the junk drawer. Come to think of it, all the stuff just ends up in another less filled, more well defined container than the junk drawer. The money goes in the change bucket. After I sorted the contents, everyone took the stuff they valued and put it in their private junk drawer inside their personal space. In a few days, all that crap will migrate back to the main junk drawer while my family wanders around aimlessly looking for their important shit.

In conclusion, nothing of real value is ever in the junk drawer. The best items are some useful, everyday thing, but mostly the drawer is full of crap. You never find in there some precious metal, bones of a saint or a lost work of art. Mostly assorted would be jetsam that should be placed in the trash straight away.

Not everything of course. Certainly not the good scissors.

Editor's Note: Originally published on November 6, 2018.

The Math Behind Lotteries

The recent billion dollar jackpots got me thinking about winning lots of money. I, myself, don't play the lottery since one is more likely to die of spontaneous human combustion than to purchase a winning lottery ticket. A friend of mine plays the numbers daily. He's the kind of guy who can look at a lottery ticket and determine in his head if the chosen numerals are likely to come in. If they are he usually says,

"Those are good numbers."

He's a man of a few words. The Theory of Good Numbers is very complex. For instance, if a train wrecks and a number like "7114" is clearly visible on part of the wreckage, then "7114" is a good number even though the passengers on the train might think differently. Many people play birthdates since such numerals are inherently good. Whenever I think about cashing in on stacks of green I'm undeserving of, I usually don't think to play my wife's birthdate nor that of my children. I also never win either. I just can't cross the chasm that would allow me to associate my love ones with money.

The lottery is most often played routinely by middle class people who watch shows like Jersey Shore. Oddly, the jackpot has to be in the multimillions before lawyers, doctors and people who watch Masterpiece Theater start scrambling for a ticket. Most people play lotteries because they can't comprehend the staggering mathematical odds against them. The math works out that lottery jackpots are statistical combinations, that is, a subset of numbers picked from a sample space such that order doesn't matter. For instance the odds of picking five different numbers from 1 to 70 and one number from 1 to 25 to win the Mega Millions lottery is 1 in 302,575,350. This number is so minuscule that you have almost the same odds if you don't have a lottery ticket at all.

Many people are sure that it is just a matter of time before they strike it rich in a way that will set themselves and their family up for life. Unfortunately, their epitaph is probably going to read,

"I was supposed to have won the lottery."

The fact is lotteries are a tax on people who are lousy at math. People say that someone has to win although this is not always true. Sometimes, no one wins, but every time many lose. Once when I purchased a lottery ticket, the cashier asked,

"Do you want to annuitize that?"

"Annuitize what?" I asked.

"Your winnings," she answered.

I wasn't aware that I was going to win. I preferred to defer my answer until I actually won because something told me that I was unlikely to have to decide, right then and there, the manner in which the state run lottery commission will distribute my winnings. She insisted that I had to answer before the drawing. In reality, I could've opted for my winnings to be paid in the Vietnamese dong. I don't think it was going to matter.

All in all, I dislike lotteries because they sell a false dream while making millionaires weekly out of people who God had no intention of having so much money. Lotteries are just another Orwellian prediction that was proven true. We all need to face the sobering thought that most of us will never win the lottery. I'm waiting for the day the first trillion dollar jackpot is farted out of the lottery commission. Maybe then, I just might buy another ticket.

But then I remember, you can't lose if you don't play.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 30, 2018.

Don't Try This at Home

 

I thought I've seen it all on YouTube; after all, I watched a video of a guy swing his buddy around while he dangled from a rope attached to the bucket of an excavator. That's mere child's play compare to what came up in my YouTube search recently. It's a video of a guy, called "Wheelz," doing a front flip in a wheelchair. The stunt is part of Nitro Circus, an entertainment company that markets X-Game style events. I really didn't want to watch this guy rocket down a ramp in a wheelchair and launch over a fifty foot chasm. This dude must be thinking,

"You know, I'm just not paralyzed enough."

Not only does the guy wipe out hard, he face plants, but that doesn't stop him. He keeps going, trying one more time to stick the landing. His buddies think this is great, like the dude is a hero for trying such an awesome trick.

I'm built way different than this guy. I wasn't always a responsible husband and father. As an adolescent, I jumped my bike over ramps mimicking Evel Knievel who on TV specials destroyed his body while attempting to jump a motorcycle over a bunch of buses. One time I messed up the landing and rode my bike straight into a tree. That was it for me. I never jumped my bike again.

I spent most of my adult life avoiding anything that would disrupt the use of my legs. My advice to a guy attempting to flip his wheelchair is more along the lines of,

"Take up scrimshaw."

The real odd part of the video is that the guy's mother encourages him just before he attempts the dangerous stunt. I know this is a little like trying to explain abstract art to someone who is blind, but I really don't understand daredevils. The so called "adrenaline junkies" love what they do, the feeling they get for doing whatever they do on whatever they do it on. Bear Grylls is one of these guys.

Like me, Bear is a husband and father, but unlike me, he jumps out of planes that are perfectly capable of landing. He was a fixture on survival shows on the Discovery Channel until they had a falling out over something the network wanted Bear to do which crossed the line. I would love to know what that was since I saw Bear bite the leg off a live bullfrog and wash is all down with his own urine. He also climbs up trees during educational self rescue narrations.

Bear Grylls

Now, here is where I differ with Bear Grylls. If I survived a plane crash in the jungle, I'm staying with the plane. I'm not going to try to trek out of the malaria invested jungle. I'm not climbing a rocky bluff "to get the lay of the land." I'm going to sit on the emergency beacon transponder and wait for rescue. I'll be home in a few days, comfortably sipping Mountain Dew while I watch another rerun of Who's the Boss while Bear is alone, cold and wet in the jungle, eating a cave spider, and giving himself putrid water enemas to stay hydrated.

Bear does things that is just going to get himself killed. When he gets fit for a pine box, is anyone going to be surprised? I mean I'll be sad because I like the guy, but he's asking for a dirt nap. You don't have to look any further than Steve Irwin to see Bear Grylls's future. Irwin was the Crocodile Hunter who spent most of his life annoying wildlife. In his impossibly short kaki shorts, Irwin would dive in front of the camera, inserting his mug next to some poisonous reptile then scream,

"Look how bwha-utiful she is!"

into the animal's ear canal which is likely a thousand times more acute than his. Or he would pull an animal out its hiding spot to show us all how it's done. The animal undoubtedly thinks that something is going to dispatch it's ass for dinner. You know, animals hide to avoid the food chain and Steve Irwin. I especially liked it when he pulled snakes out of holes by the tail. The snake probably thought,

"I'm screwed now!"

Irwin fed an 800 lb. alligator while holding his infant son. In his defense, he said,

Steve Irwin

"I'm a pwha-fessional."

That goes against every instinct of parenting that even wild animals understand. You don't see Tony Hawk skateboarding with his son in his arms, or Jimmie Johnson thundering around the NASCAR track with his daughter strapped into a car seat. Irwin was not an educated zoologist. He was the son of a zookeeper. That's not to say he didn't have real knowledge of animals. It's just that he got bit in the face a lot. I avoid animal bites especially to my face with the same intensity as I do paralyzing collisions.

Finally, the Animal Kingdom had enough of this loudmouth's habitual intrusion into the wild and one of them took him out. With all the times Steve Irwin inserted himself into the food chain, it was no wonder that he eventually got killed. I'll bet when the crocodiles heard this they were embarrassed that they didn't think of it first. Irwin got too close to a seemingly docile and graceful manta ray, cruising in the Great Barrier Reef. I thought those things were more chill than that, but then again, they're wild animals swimming about trying not to get eaten while looking for their next meal, and hopefully in the spring, they'll get laid.

I'm sure the dude bros out there that make that one handed sign language thing with two fingers and a thumb while sticking out their tongue just before they skateboard over a hundred foot gorge, think I'm a boring, old guy who's most thrilling stunt involves mowing the lawn. In moments like that, the sage advice of Steve Irwin comes to mind,

"Don't try this at home."

Editor's Note: Originally published on July 11, 2017.

Make Room for the Mesh

Wireless Thing

My wife, Christine, works in Information Technology for a Fortune 500 company. She’s been our family process improvement advocate and troubleshooting tech person ever since our first computer over 25 years ago. I have no patience for that kind of thing, especially waiting on the phone to talk to some dude in a country with marginal indoor plumbing about what I should try next.

Tech Guy: Ok, see the tab that says “Advanced?”
Me: Yeah.
Tech Guy: Click it. Now, see the box that says “Two's Compliment?”
Me: Yeah.
Tech Guy: Click that. Now, reboot.

As if that’s gonna do anything. Now, Christine is infinitely more patient than me when it comes to, well, everything. She actually develops a rapport with help desk personnel, often asking them about themselves or their family. By the time she arrives at a solution to her problem, she often has another Facebook friend.

New Wireless Thing

Recently, she decided to purchase a booster for our wireless network so that we could cover the far reaches of our house, namely the bonus room. I’m not sure what's needed because I hate that kind of thing, but I’m sure it involves another $500 black box with little stubby antennas and an array of LED lights that flash Morse code. We have a bin full of cables, but none of them ever work with the new piece of equipment. We’ll certainly have to buy new cords because the ones that come with the new black box will be too short. So off we went to big box, techno land.

At the store, a less than fit, pale faced, guy named “Doug,” who sported a scraggily beard and a ponytail, launched into an impromptu lecture on “mesh networks,” focusing on why they were better than Christine’s booster. I was so bored, I sat on the floor and began perusing the internet via my phone. Christine and Doug had a spirited, deep conversation focusing on the benefits of mesh technology. To me, it sounded like dolphins would get caught in the mesh network. I really wasn’t paying attention anyway while scouring the many videos of cats and images of people’s dogs. By the time Christine and Doug had reached consensus, I got a cavity from too much Imgur.

After hooking up three new electronic "towers," comprising the mesh, we waited for all the LED lights to glow green, the universal color for “go for the moon." As we readied ourselves to be blanketed by the mesh, Christine checked her phone, certain she would have three bars. Unfortunately we got "Challenger go for throttle up" as she realized that she had only one bar. She spent the next hour wandering about the house holding her phone aloft as she checked the strength of the signal.

I’m not sure how many wireless devices we already have competing for the airwaves in our house. There’s the phones attached to the landline which no one uses, the thermostat, the system that monitors the chemicals in the pool, the security system, the Bluetooth in the cars, and of course the internet which is now a mess. I mean a “mesh.”

After disappearing for quite some time as she chatted with some dude in India, Christine emerged from her techno cocoon with a partial solution. As she toiled away at optimizing our mesh, she had to unplug the cable to the TV so I wasn't able to get lost in educational shows like TLC's Doctor Pimple Popper or the many nature shows with titles like The Pronghorn: Reindeer of Peru. Instead, I had to watch a show I taped. I know "record" is the more accurate term since we no longer use tapes to save our favorite shows, thankfully. I thought I recorded a PBS documentary, The Lobworm: Natures Little Farmer, but discovered that I had a live, fundraising concert entitled Stomp instead. I was ten minutes into a bunch of theatre people beating on garbage cans when Christine emerged to explain that she got the main mesh tower working properly, but to diagnose the poor signal,

Shitload of Cable

we would need to purchase a 200 foot, Category 6 cable. I thought the whole purpose of wireless was to get rid of cables? She explained that she needed to wire up the separate towers to show that the poor performance was due to the physical separation.

A few days later, a package arrived with Christine’s wire so off she went laying her transcontinental house cable, connecting up the mesh towers. Later, while watching Disney on Ice which I taped eight years ago, she emerged.

"I know what the problem is," she explained.

"All fixed?"

"No, there are three internal walls and two external walls to the tower in the bonus room which weakens the signal. We'll need to get a cable to the third tower."

So that is how this round of internet access upgrade unfolded. I need to run a cable. We still don't have an internet signal in the far reaches of our house, but I know the new hardware is an upgrade because none of the wireless printers work, and I can't get email anymore. I did manage to get a better signal to the Xbox so I experience less network lags while playing online games with my sister, Jeannine, who recently asked,

"Have you noticed a difference with the new network?"

"Yeah, the lump on my neck is bigger," I answered.

I don't have a lump on my neck, but all these wireless electronic components sometimes worry me. What if all these gamma rays cause me to grow in size when I get angry or I start exhibiting precognitive ability to sense danger or worse yet, I discover that I can control antimatter?

I don't want to be a superhero, now that I'm getting ready to retire.

Editor's Note: Originally published on January 8, 2019. Robert installed the cable to the tower in the bonus room and underground to an outbuilding. We get five bars now everywhere.

Catfish: Beauty is in the Profile of the Beholden

Back in 2018, I started binge watching the MTV smash reality hit, Catfish. In its eight season, the show chronicles the investigation of online relationships by the two hosts, Nev and Max, who are asked to find out if a person met on the internet is real. The term, catfish, describes a person pretending to be someone else on social media. There are some overt red flags when someone is catfishing you. The biggest is when they're reluctant to appear on live video, or do so with the lights dimmed. You see, many people fake social media profiles often using a picture of a very attractive person in lieu of a real selfie.

It's no wonder that some people want to pretend to be beautiful. Studies show that attractive people are more likely to be helped, forgiven, get better jobs, make more money, and are more likely to be ascribed positive traits. People fake being a model online because they want to experience, just once, the attention that beautiful people get all the time.

The first recorded account of catfishing was when Anne of Cleves was painted by Hans Holbein. Anne was the fourth wife of Henry the VIII who had their marriage annulled on grounds that Anne was homely. The truth was Henry was catfished since Holbein painted Anne favorably, even though Henry instructed the artist to be as accurate as possible. Henry met Anne privately on New Year's Day in 1540 at Rochester Abbey after which he described her as,

"Nothing so fair as she hath been reported."

In 1993 my wife, Christine, and I were in London on a bus tour guided by an older, British woman. After explaining Holbein's painting of Anne of Cleves, the guide exclaimed,

Anne of Cleves

"When Henry met Anne in person, he thought she looked like a tram smash."

Henry married Anne to preserve a vital alliance with Germany. After exchanging vows, Henry said about his new wife,

"I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse."

As the fourth wife, Anne received a good settlement which was lucky for her since at the time, the second wife left her marriage with Henry sans her head.

Today, the hapless people catfished are often all in based on their text messages revealed on the show.

"I'm always here for you."
"You are the most important person in my life."
"I can say things to you I can't tell anyone else."

When you're in an online relationship with a smoking hot babe who listens intently, is funny and fun to talk to, you should be honest with yourself. An attractive woman doesn't need to pursue an online relationship with you unless she lives on Pitcairn Island. There is just too much opportunity for beautiful people in the real world to bother with virtual dating. When she avoids streaming because she is very shy, you naturally feel great sympathy for her because she's good-looking. You'll forgive her if it turns out she's been lying to you all along if, and only if, she looks like her profile picture.

Max and Nev do a lot of hugging each episode. They truly want both sides to heal and find happiness. The motto of the show is,

"All will be revealed."

Of course, Max and Nev are more sympathetic to the victim who is duped by the catfish, but they never state this one obvious fact,

The victim is mad because the person is really ugly.

One guy learned the woman he was pouring out his soul to for the past six months, "Trinity," was not a Victoria Secrets model after all, but instead an overweight bus driver named "Tammy." After this revelation, he responded to her inquiry if they could still regularly text by saying,

"That's not gonna happen."

Why? Because she's ugly, that's why.

One guy, Isaak, used a profile picture of a tall, chiseled-jawed, cleft chin hunk even though he was a short, dweeby, pimply-faced kid. He described himself as searching for a deep relationship with a woman. His dragnet swept up "Courtney" who was enthralled with Isaak until she found out what he really looked like. He was a great guy who was fond of giving foot massages when his attractive mug was on social media, but the minute Isaak appeared in living color, he was a scary creep with a bizarre foot fetish.

What I want to see on Catfish is a victim discover that a person is actually more attractive than their profile picture. That hasn't happened yet. Will Max and Nev focus on their deception? Or will the victim just look to the camera and say,

"Fuck yeah!"

They'll likely see them as an honest, respectable, thoughtful, human being even though they misrepresented their internet persona. Like Holbein's painting of Anne of Cleves, outrage only occurs if the person is uglier than their representation, and that's the true depth of the people featured on the show.

While beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, ugly is universal.

Editor's Note: Originally published on December 4, 2018.

Never Tattoo Sanskrit

Tattoos have been on the rise for some time now. In my day, the only people who got tats were biker dudes and prostitutes. All a tattoo artist needed to do was be able to spell "Born to Ride" and draw a small rose on someone's ankle. Today, things are more complicated.

I've been asking people about their tattoos. Not surprisingly, many have deep meanings such as lines from a Robert Frost poem to a favorite quote from one's grandmother. People undergo a painful experience to make a statement revealing something about themselves. How awful it must be to realize that tattooed words are misspelled. It's bad enough that you have to read the same phrase on your arm for the rest of your life without reliving your inability to spell as well.

I saw a picture of a tattoo on the internet that read,

"No Regerts."

The dude must hear, "You meant regrets”every time he goes to a pool party. That tattoo is worse than eczema.

Beckham's Back

David Beckham misspelled his wife's name on his arm. To his defense, he had her name tattooed in Sanskrit, and it got lost in translation. It was supposed to read "Victoria." Instead it reads, "Tammy." No, that's not true. It says "Vihctoria." Close enough.

Britney Spears had a Chinese symbol tattooed on her hip that was supposed to read "mysterious." The largest Chinese dictionary defines 23,000 distinct characters. The chances Britney was going to get this right even after emancipation wasn't very good. Britney's tattoo reads "strange." Maybe she meant that seeing how she was once sued for $10 million by a former bodyguard who claimed she frequently farted in his presence.

Recording artist and singer, Jesse J, had tattooed on her side,

"Don't loose who you are in the blur of the star!"

Jesse along with her tattoo artist both failed to see the extra "o." Lucky for Jesse her mother was good with a dictionary and pointed it out. Jesse loses on that one.

Rihanna has a lot of tattoos including wings under her breasts. That must have hurt. On her neck she attempted to tattoo "rebellious flower" in French, but the French have this annoying habit of switching the order of adjectives and nouns. They say "grange rouge" for "red barn." Rihanna got a tattoo that reads "rebelle fleur" which translates to "flower rebel." I'm sure that has meaning to hardcore gardeners.

She also took the same road as Beckham and tried to tattoo "forgiveness" in Sanskrit on her hip. Instead, she got "flatulence." No, that's not true. It's purported by a Sanskrit expert named Mark Fielden that her tattoo is "incorrectly written." I don't know who this self proclaimed expert is, but he's apparently noticed something amiss while staring at Rihanna's hip.



Johnny Depp had a tattoo that read "Winona Forever" on his right deltoid to honor his then fiancé Winona Ryder. When their relationship fell short of forever, Depp removed the last letters of her name so the tat reads "Wino Forever." Good thing her name wasn't "Peni."

You really need to know what you're doing when you get a tattoo because it's just as painful to get it removed as it is to get it in the first place. The permanence of tattoos is what makes them so special. Tattoo artists should make ample use of spellcheckers and the many online Sanskrit translators. Times change but tattoos don't which is why they sometimes lead to regerts.

Editor's Note: Originally published on May 23, 2017.