Barry's Life in Napa Blog

Preface: This is one of those posts where I will relate bits of my personal history that unveil the workings of my mind, and as such, may be viewed as (a) self indulgent (b) pathetic (c) whiny, or (d) all of the above. I proceed apace, undeterred. Central thesis: Halloween sucks for me. Argument: Halloween, for me, is like almost every other holiday - front-loaded with anticipation, and rarely providing a commensurate payoff. And that stems from a series of childhood incidents that left me as unfulfilled as a trick-or-treating kid who sees a toothbrush dropped into his candy bag. There were at least three elementary school Halloween disasters - my Halloween baggage. Being just as "actor-y" at age six as I am today, the selection of a costume was of immense importance. My mother always offered to sew up something, so we would peruse the Butterick patterns at J.C. Penney and I would usually find something super cool that I wanted to be. In disaster number one, I had chosen to ...

My uncle Rodney, the last of the three Martin brothers, died two days ago at 94. He was married for 72 years. It's hard to know if all those years were happy years because he was prototypically the man who wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful, but I think he was happy. I cite this as a pre-counterpoint - a preterpoint, if you will - to what follows. I will now wage war with the concept of happy endings. (No, not that kind, you pervert.) From toddler-hood we are marinated in happy endings. Wicked queens (no, not that kind, you pervert) and ugly stepsisters and predatory wolves in the woods always get what's coming to them. Handsome princes and damsels in distress find true love and always live happily ever after. We learn fast. At about age 5, my daughter whispered to her grandma during a stressful moment in a Disney movie, "Don't worry, they get married in the end." This was a movie this child had never seen before. She was already primed to believe in happy...