Oh, Ruben Amaro Jr. Really? Are you genuinely this clueless? I find it hard to believe that a man in his position can be so completely tone deaf. The embattled general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies stuck his foot firmly in his pie hole the other day and then spent Tuesday trying to put out the fire. [Read more →]
Adults lament it all the time and I have lamented it here: Kids watch too much TV and generally look at screens too much. Researchers have quantified their screen-viewing in all kinds of worrisome ways: Too much screen time may even inhibit their ability to read emotions. It’s bad, people. But what is perhaps really bad is that the behavior, as with most behaviors of the youth, is so unself-aware, so mindless. Does it have to be that way? [Read more →]
10. “These GMO burgers actually glow in the dark!”
9. “Those chicken breasts won’t burn; I coated them in Vaseline.”
8. “What’s Cousin Sid processing those Memorial Day poppies into?”
7. “Before you try the coleslaw, would you mind signing this waiver?”
6. “Why would someone route a Memorial Day Parade right through the middle of our barbeque?”
5. “Who invited Chris Christie? – and where’d all the steaks go?”
4. “On this Memorial Day, let us remember those people Memorial Day was designed to memorialize….It can’t be veterans; that’s Veterans Day!”
3. “That’s not mayonnaise; you’re standing under a tree.”
2. “Uncle Harvey, I think the tradition is to lower your flag to half-mast, not your pants to half-assed.”
1. “Why does everything on the grill have a long thin tail?”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
A brief personal trip followed by a work trip has had me away for a while and I am unfortunately short on time to get a column together. We’ll return next week with something brilliant, I’m sure. In the meantime, here are a few stories to check out.
1) Pitcher Time Lincecum falls down.
2) Carlos Gomez gets hit in the head with a pitch.
3) Tiger Woods helps a stutterer.
4) Corey Kluber strikes out 18 and 12 in back-to-back games.
5) Rory McIlroy shoots a 61 at Quail Hollow.
6) Kentucky Derby winner American Pharaoh wins the Preakness.
10. My-My-My Bruce Jenner-ation
9. Journey to the Center of My Pants
8. A Midsummer Night’s Bris
7. 21 DryHump Street
6. Raise the Roofie!
5. Give ’Em Enough Grope
4. The Future Is Ours! (One-Percenters only)
3. Abstinence Makes the Fond Grow Harder
2. 100 Seniors Standing Around a Ballroom Texting
1. Fifty Shades of Bunting
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Please make it stop! The self-righteous grandstanding by all of the haters of the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady is making me crazy. If you don’t know what I am talking about, then you haven’t paid any attention at all to national news over the last couple of weeks. In the aftermath of “Deflate-gate,” about which I wrote back in January, the NFL has suspended Tom Brady for the first four games of this next football season, fined the New England Patriots a million dollars, and docked the team two future draft picks including its first round pick next year. How absolutely absurd. [Read more →]
“Any resemblance to persons living or dead…” The disclaimer has a neat red line through it. A message she failed to notice when she opened the book.
Sometimes a novel really speaks to you – really seems to hit home. You can see yourself and your struggle in those pages. But what if it really was you? What if someone got wind of your deepest, darkest secret and decided to tell the world…in the pages of a “novel”? That’s the situation facing Catherine Ravenscroft in Disclaimer
Catherine is a documentary filmmaker. She and her husband have recently emptied their nest, moving their somewhat trouble son, Nicholas, into his own apartment. They’ve moved to a new, smaller home, and as they are getting their belongings sorted out and put away, she finds the book on a table and from that point, her life begins to fall apart.
E. J. Preston, the author of this mysterious book, has somehow learned Catherine’s deepest secret, a secret that is slowly revealed to us over the chapters. It involves her son, that much we know from the beginning. We know that something happened and we know that Catherine didn’t tell her husband at the time. Preston has put his own spin on the events, told the story from a different point of view, made it into something that horrifies Catherine and would devastate her family.
We meet Preston early on and learn about his family. We learn about how he comes upon this story, and why he decides to tell it in this way. He has never met Catherine, but he believes that she is responsible for one of the great tragedies in his life and this is how he has chosen to take his revenge.
There were a couple of things I really liked about this novel. First is the idea that someone could put our deepest secret out there for everyone to see. That you could pick up a novel or open a website and there you are, exposed and humiliated. In this age of self-publishing, a story like this is completely probable and completely terrifying.
I also appreciate the skillful way the secret is revealed. I have to say that what I originally thought was way off. You think you know where it’s going, you think you know what side you’re on, but you’re probably wrong. The secret was not what I expected, and the way each piece of the puzzle comes to light made for a great story.
My copy of Disclaimer
10. A Princess phone
9. A pound of Imperial margarine
8. A crib with a moat and turrets
7. A Hello Kitty scepter
6. A mattress with no pea under it
5. A year’s supply of Royal Crown Cola
4. A throne-shaped potty
3. A can of dragon repellant
2. A silver knife and fork, to go with the spoon in her mouth that she was born with
1. A frog to kiss
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
As I wrote recently, I’m fascinated by what influences people to be who/what they are. Perhaps in the same vein, I’m also curious about how what we learn transfers to other situations. There is a robust body of research studying learning transfer; it’s elusive to pin down how what we learn in one situation can be applied to another.
There are always quite a few murder mysteries in my TBR pile, so only the really good ones stand out. Orient
Mills is a bit of a drifter, a foster kid who has fallen on hard times and is rescued by a neighbor, Paul Benchley. We know from the first few paragraphs of the book that there will be murders. We know that Mills will be blamed for them, even though he didn’t commit them, and he gives us some clues as to the murderer. The clues didn’t help me unmask the killer; they just made me suspicious of everyone we meet in Orient.
Paul offers to take Mills to his family home in Orient, on the North Fork of Long Island. It’s an isolated town, lots of families who have been there for generations, and the town is undergoing some rapid changes as new money and new people flood in. In particular, there are a lot of artists coming to the community. Not nice folks who want to paint the lighthouses along the shore. No, these are big-time, big money modern artists, the kind who will bash through your dining room wall with a sledgehammer, expose the pipes underneath, throw glitter on them and call it an installation piece (and charge you $100,000). They have very different sensibilities than the long-time residents, and the cultures are bound to clash. Some neighbors welcome the new blood and the new money that comes with it. Others are afraid of losing the quaint and peaceful town they’ve always known. There is plenty of hostility and distrust on both sides.
In addition, there is the threat of Plum Island Animal Disease Center – a research facility that some residents believe is working on dangerous projects. When a strange, mutated carcass washes up on an Orient beach, even the skeptics begin to wonder…
Paul puts Mills to work cleaning out two generations of hoarding in the old family home, where he discovers some secrets about his benefactor and the town. He becomes friendly with Beth, a failed artist struggling with her husband’s artistic success and a bad case of “I have everything I wanted so why am I not happy?” There are conflicts on the island between the successful artists who are driving up real estate prices and long-time residents who want to keep Orient a sleepy village, frozen in time. When long-time residents start turning up dead, it’s easy to point fingers at the new kid in town.
I didn’t recognize, at the start of the book, that the places Bollen mentions – Orient, Plum Island, Oysterponds, etc – are real places. I think that adds to the appeal of the book, the idea that you could take a drive through the streets you’ve read about, stand on the beach and look towards the lighthouse.
Beth became a real source of annoyance for me (which may have been intentional, on Bollen’s part). She’s an artist who doesn’t paint because she’s afraid to fail, even though her husband is supportive and encouraging. Her husband agrees to leave New York City and move out to this little island town because his wife wants to go home again. Her mother gives her a beautiful, spacious home on the island. She and her husband want to have a baby, but now that she finds out she’s pregnant, she hasn’t told her husband and she is considering an abortion. She has everything she wants, she gets everything she asks for and she is still not happy. She is the kind of character you want to grab by the shoulders and give them a good shake, ask them if they have any clue just how lucky they have been and how pathetic they are for not appreciating it. It’s infuriating! But you hope they have time to work it all out.
Really enjoyed this one, mostly because it was tough to see where the story was going. There were several angles – conflict on the Historic Board, a drunken handyman who knows all the town’s secrets, crazy artists and the looming presence of Plum Island, which may be slowly poisoning the residents. I admit I didn’t care for that last storyline, but it didn’t keep me from enjoying the mystery.
My copy of Orient
Playing in the NFL is the goal of many college football players. The amount of work these guys put in to get to that point, from the time they are young children, is astonishing. Most of them will never even get a sniff of The League, but that does not necessarily keep them from dreaming. By the time the best players reach the draft, these guys have a pretty decent idea of when they are likely to be picked, so the money they’ll make on that initial deal is fairly well determined as well. Sometimes, though, the dream is derailed. For one player, La’El Collins, an unimaginable situation arose last week, immediately before the draft, leaving his football future very much in doubt. [Read more →]
10. “Mom, we kind of always assumed you were our father.”
9. “I’m taking you out to dinner, but we have to hurry; Taco Bell closes at nine.”
8. “What do you mean, ‘What is it?’ – It’s a nose hair trimmer!”
7. “Here’s all the ingredients for a fantastic Mother’s Day dinner. All you have to do is cook it!”
6. “And you are…?”
5. “Uncle Dad knows about us!”
4. “Of course these flowers aren’t stolen from a funeral home. That banner just means, when you go to bed tonight, I hope you rest peacefully.”
3. “Mom, I have a surprise for you: I’m adopted!!”
2. “Here’s your gift, Mom: a DVD of Oedipus Rex –you sexy thing you!”
1. “Honey, I’m afraid the kids now have a new Mom. Her name used to be Bruce.”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
