I can’t believe I’m about to write the following sentence. Stephen King’s latest doorstop of a novel, Under The Dome, is ponderous, predictable and, worst of all, boring. And this is coming from one of the biggest Stephen King fans on the planet. Heck. I even read From a Buick 8 and liked it, [...]]]> by Richard

I can’t believe I’m about to write the following sentence. Stephen King’s latest doorstop of a novel, Under The Dome, is ponderous, predictable and, worst of all, boring. And this is coming from one of the biggest Stephen King fans on the planet. Heck. I even read From a Buick 8 and liked it, but this latest forest killer is just plain awful.

Not only was this bad, but I think it’s broken me of my automatic purchasing of Stephen King novels. I had no idea what Under The Dome was about. I just ordered it because I love his novels. When it arrived, I discovered its length and the fact that this was a book he’d tried to write many years before and I began to get a bad feeling about it.

Turns out, my bad feeling was fully justified. Let’s start with the most noticeable thing; it’s length. This puppy could have been put to bed at a third of the length if it weren’t for the fact that Stephen King loves his characters. He stuffs the book full of them and lets us know the backstory of almost every single one of them. And, not only that, he also documents just about every second of every day that the New England town of Chester’s Mill spends trapped under an unexplainable (to them, but not – unfortunately – to us), invisible and impenetrable dome.

Each of the approximately one thousand, nine hundred and fifty three characters gets some quality speaking time and, each time one of them opens his or her mouth, they get to spout some by-now clichéd Stephen King dialogue. Words are changed around and then repeated again and again as if this were a new technique. Some event happens once and then it’s thereafter referred to as “the famous” fill in the blank. Basically it’s Stephen King at his he-really-needs-an-assertive-editor worst.

Once the characters find they are trapped inside the Dome, we’re allowed a look around at the skeletons in the closet, particularly the closet of the local bigwig Big Jim Rennie. It’s Rennie who, when the Dome comes down, begins to take draconian measures to grab power. It’s also revealed that Rennie, along with other town leaders, have been running the country’s largest meth lab near the local radio station. At the time of the book, the only person out there with the highly flammable meth chemicals and enough propane to fuel a battleship, is a religiously crazy meth smoker. What happens next isn’t really a surprise if you think for more than two seconds.

Finally, we find out who or what dropped the Dome on Chester’s Mill. Once I found out, though, I began to beg for mercy. Surely it couldn’t be what I thought it was. It was. It was hoary and dusty when Star Trek used it way back in the 1960s. This trope hasn’t improved with age.

No, I think Under The Dome has definitely given me something to think about. Mainly, why did I buy this thing without checking it out first.

I’m giving this book one (1) dude out of five, if only because I got a little exercise lugging the thing around for a week; a week I’ll never get back. Don’t waste your time or money on this book. Seriously, life is too short.

You can find this review, along with thousands of other, on a great book site, Novelspot. It’s a fantastic site, full of book lovers sharing that love with anyone who’ll listen. You can find all books reviewed here at Novelspot as well.

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I just discovered a grocery store called Trader Joe’s. I know I’m really late to the party, but when I get in a grocery store rut, I tend to stay in the rut for a long time. Hence calling it a rut instead of a quick digression. Like that. Anyway.

My wife, known to me [...]]]> by Richard

I just discovered a grocery store called Trader Joe’s. I know I’m really late to the party, but when I get in a grocery store rut, I tend to stay in the rut for a long time. Hence calling it a rut instead of a quick digression. Like that. Anyway.

My wife, known to me as She Who Must Be Adored, has been on me to go to Trader Joe’s for a while. Apparently, food snobs hippies people with discerning tastes have been raving about the place for a while. I finally went the other day.

Well, it’s no Skaggs Alpha-Beta (inside joke for old people who used to live in Dallas [hi, high-school friends]), but it is, um, interesting. Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it.

Mostly, I think the store is trying to get stuff grown by small vendors, no large farming concerns or big companies. They offer meat without all the good stuff like growth hormones or genetic alterations. You know, stuff that makes life worth living.

I’d been handed a cookbook of things I could make by shopping exclusively at Trader Joe’s. I’d picked out a meaty salad and thought I’d get moving on it. The place is sort of small and very short on canned goods, unless they’re organic or some other froopy stuff like that. Still it does have a good selection of cheap wine, some interesting beers and foods that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Also? Every hippie in the Charlotte area was out shopping at Trader Joe’s. I haven’t seen that many pony tails on men since, well, since in a long time. (Hi, sis!) It took a while to get through the store, but turns out it was worth it.

I made a quick, easy salad with some nice chicken and black beans in it. Good stuff. So, if you’re into (sort of) healthy food, you might want to check out Trader Joe’s. You probably won’t regret it. (I know, I have the most forceful recommendations don’t I?)

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When last we left our dynamic duo they were trapped in the depths of the Questioner’s spiral question maze of death. Or, erm, rather, we were talking about some stuff from the actual A Dude’s Guide to Babies, by your humble authors.

We start with some wonderful stuff from Barry.

The reason I wanted [...]]]> by Richard and Barry

When last we left our dynamic duo they were trapped in the depths of the Questioner’s spiral question maze of death. Or, erm, rather, we were talking about some stuff from the actual A Dude’s Guide to Babies, by your humble authors.

We start with some wonderful stuff from Barry.

The reason I wanted to write the book was that to me getting a 500 page textbook that tried to encompass every possible scenario, issue , concern or event that was going to happen in the baby’s life was just not something that I or 99 percent of the fathers out there would find valuable. We wouldn’t read it. We wouldn’t use it. We needed something short, sweet and succinct that told us the twenty or thirty things that were the exceptions. We had basic blocking and tackling. What we needed was a coach for the finer points and strategy.

It’s like a football game. You learn how to run. You learn how to throw. You learn how to hit. That’s pretty much enough to let you get into the game. But what puts you into the all-stars is understanding a little bit more about the strategy. No one is going to figure that out for themselves and they have to be told what to do at least once.

I think most men have down the three basics of fatherhood. They need to keep the kid alive, keep the kid clean and keep the kid fed. It’s just all the other little things that are needed to accomplish those three goals. Those are the things dudes don’t know and you don’t want to have to learn about those on the job. You want to know about them before you start.

Once you know those 20 or 30 things you can go head and get the three basics down. For instance, it’s no big deal if you don’t wash your hands when you have a cold. Say you give that cold to someone else, meh, no biggie. They just suffer through the cold. But if the baby gets a cold because you don’t wash your hands, well, that’s a whole different deal. For starters, the baby can’t blow her own nose, she can’t take cold medicine, she can’t take cough medicine. You’ve got to do all that for her.

See, it’s the little things.

I went from DINK to dad within six months. My wife and I couldn’t have kids so, after a lot of thought, we decided to adopt three kids — two brothers and a sister. Then, six months after we welcomed them into our family, their birth mother had another child and so we adopted her.

It was a big difference. The older three were almost already potty trained and were a joy to have around the house.

But the newborn was a whole different thing. I stayed home with her the first three days we had her. Before my wife went back to work and left me with the baby, I thought it was going to be easy. I thought I was going to be able to work at home and take care of the baby — no problem.

Boy was I wrong. When she started crying, I didn’t know if she was tired or if she was hungry, or if she needed to be changed. It was something I’d never experienced before. Until I locked on to her cycle of wake, eat, poop, sleep, wake, eat, poop, sleep, etc., etc., etc. I thought I was never going to make it through the first few days. I cried and my wife laughed.

Nobody warned me about that.

So that’s Barry. This next bit is from Richard.

And once again we leave you in the lurch. Sort of. I mean the Addams family ain’t around, but I think you get the point.

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