It's Easy Enough To Look It Up

Brendan Gleeson has been in two recent thrillers that owe a lot to Quentin Tarantino . . . they both explore the interstitial time periods that gangsters and cops inhabit between the action; In Bruges (2008) follows the adventures of two Dublin hit-men (Gleeson and Colin Farrell) sent to cool down in Belgium after a hit went horribly wrong-- and whether you like Hieronymous Bosch or not, I highly recommend this movie-- and now Gleeson stars in The Guard, which is equally as good . . . although the gangsters (international drug dealers) can be a little overly clever when they discuss philosophy, but the reason to watch the movie is to see Gleeson (a lazy and disenfranchised Galway cop, who is a good man who could have been a great man, if not for his location and his vices) interact with Don Cheadle-- who plays an FBI agent sent to Ireland to investigate drug smuggling . . . Cheadle can't tell if Gleeson is "really mother-bleeping dumb or really mother-bleeping smart," and neither can we . . . until the end: I won't spoil the ending, but it's easy enough to look it up on the internet, and I give this film two girls from the agency in Dublin out of a possible two . . . you have to see it not only for Gleeson, who is prodigious both in his size and his acting skills, but also for the plot, which makes excellent use of a crotch-infection, and actually makes you think twice once you've finished watching . . . and if you have seen it, remember that the IRA guy in the cowboy hat owes him a favor.

I Could Have Told You This Without Doing A Study

A recent study done at The University of California asserts that people enjoy mystery and suspense stories more if the plot is spoiled . . . and this makes perfect sense to me, because I usually enjoy something more if I have more information about it; it is easier to process and less stressful . . . which is why I am vehemently opposed to surprise parties, which have nothing to do with the victim's enjoyment of the party and are all about the selfish, egotistical party-planners, who think they are so clever, withholding information from the person who is supposed to enjoy the party the most, but, of course, the victim doesn't enjoy the party the most . . . the planners enjoy the party the most, because, as the study illustrates, they are in the know, and the victim doesn't enjoy the party because the victim is either A) genuinely surprised, which as the study shows, is not particularly enjoyable and can be a lot to process-- I was genuinely surprised by a party on my 30th birthday, and it took me an hour to get over the fact that we were no longer (and never had been) going to my favorite mexican restaurant or B) not surprised because the victim sussed out the party, and then has to deal with the stress of acting surprised, which, unless the victim is a professional actor, is not fun and rather stressful . . . and so let this be a lesson to all of you potential surprise party planners: people enjoy knowing what's going to happen next . . . especially if it's something fun like a party, so don't deprive someone of all the happy and enjoyable preparatory thoughts about a party in their honor just because you feel the need to exercise your sinister desires to spread disinformation and skulk about . . . you're not being ingenious, you're being iniquitous.

Geeks, sportos, motorheads, dweebs, dorks, sluts, buttheads... they all think he's a righteous dude.

Alexandra Robbins' new book The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School doesn't break any new ground with its thesis: the traits that you might be bullied, ridiculed, and ostracized for in high school are the very same traits that may lead to success when you leave the cliquey, rigid walls of school and enter the real world . . . but the book is well worth reading for the stories of the kids she follows . . . it's an eye-opening non-fiction update of The Breakfast Club, and while it's not quite as harsh as Mean Girls (which was based on a similar book called Queen Bees and Wannabes) it is still a rough road for Danielle (the loner), Whitney (the popular bitch), Eli (the nerd), Blue (the homosexual gamer), Regan (the weird girl), and Noah (the Band Geek) as they navigate the difference between being liked and being perceived as popular, and it makes you remember how cruel it is to ostracize someone . . . and even though I deal with kids this age all day, they are different in class, and so if I am assigned cafeteria duty this year, I'm going to keep my eyes open and see if I can figure out what's actually going on in there . . .

 

Romantic Getaway?

My wife and I took a quick childless vacation to Philadelphia last week . . . a night of romance at The Thomas Bond House, a quaint, historical, and affordable bed and breakfast in the heart of the city's historical section . . . although our itinerary was anything but romantic: we began at The Mutter Museum, which is housed in The College of Physicians and contains a collection of stomach turning medical oddities from the 18th and 19th century . . . and while I won't go into detail describing them, I will tell you this: you should be glad you're not hydrocephalic . . . then we saw a very un-romantic movie (The Guard with Brendan Gleeson . . . the most romantic part is when he has some fun with two girls from "the agency" in Dublin and contracts a genital rash . . . and while I am being un-romantic, let me talk about money: the movie theater, like everything else in Philly, was cheap . . . it was only 6.50 for a ticket) and we ate at two excellent places that certainly can't be described as romantic-- The Good Dog, which has the appearance of a neighborhood dive bar but makes amazing sandwiches, and Dmitri's, which is tiny, crowded, noisy, and spartan, with a black and white checked floor, tables, and nothing else inside . . . but the octopus and shrimp and hummus and avocado citrus salad are excellent . . . and then we finished our anti-romantic romantic getaway at Eastern State Penitentiary-- claimed to be the first modern building in America and the first penitentiary in the world-- and the place is truly creepy, especially when you listen to the audio tour, which is narrated by Steve Buscemi, and highly recommended (and if you've seen Twelve Monkeys, several scenes from the film were shot inside the prison walls).

Who Needs Anything Else?

The plots of the HBO comedy Bored to Death are pretty thin, but you don't need a plot when you get to watch Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis pretend to get stoned in a car (when Galifianakis asks Danson a question about time, Danson claims ignorance because he's on "marijuana minutes.")

Motion Trumps Emotion

There's nothing like getting your ass in gear for combating apathy and/or anxiety . . . and once you get your shit moving, all the other bullshit just seems to fade into the background (and if you are appalled and offended by my liberal use of profanity today, then read this . . . I'm relieving both the pain and the stress in my life without using drugs and/or alcohol or physically abusing my loved ones).

The Anecdote of the Jar

No one wants to hear parents bragging about their kids, so I'll make this quick and then get to the conspiracy theories: my six year old son Ian used pastels to draw the clay jar pictured above while he was at his art class; the shading is first rate, and his teacher was so impressed that she put a picture of it on her web page . . . and my first reaction when Ian brought this piece home was: "You didn't make that!" and Sentence of Dave has investigated artistic manipulation enough that I at least have to entertain the idea that Ian didn't produce this very competent still-life . . . but then who did? . . . at first I suspected his art teacher Jill, and that made sense, because if we perceived her as an excellent teacher, then we would keep sending Ian back to her for lessons, but, unlike Marla Olmstead, Ian will produce quality art in front of anyone (and also, unlike Marla Olmstead, you can usually tell what it is he has produced) and so the hoax must be more sinister . . . I am guessing that Banksy is posing as my six year old son-- his ultimate piece of performance art-- and meanwhile my actual son roams the earth with his mentor Mr. Brainwash, doing graffiti art, and eventually they will reveal the swap and bask in the glory of media fame . . . and the price of both Banksy and Ian's art will sky-rocket.

This One Comes Together At The End

So last Monday night Catherine and I were supposed to see the new Planet of the Apes movie, which is called Rise of the Planet of the Apes and purportedly details how genetically modified intelligent apes defeat the humans in a war for species supremacy . . . and judging from the reviews, the film uses the usual science-fiction trope of giving the human race exactly what it deserves for experimenting where it shouldn't . . . but though my mom got the kids on time, one errand led to another and we missed the movie and instead went to The George Street Ale House for food and drinks . . . but we got more than we bargained for: a young man at the table behind us decided to attempt to eat "Das Burger," which is two 1 pound hamburger patties, four fried eggs, four slices of pork-roll, a slab of Gouda, apple-wood bacon, and four onion rings all served on a giant bun . . . if you finish "Das Burger" in under 30 minutes then it is free, but if you don't, then it costs 29 dollars . . . and though the guy started strong, never putting the burger down and using water strategically to help his mastication, it still came down to the final minute and, with his friend cheering him on, he was able to shove the last bit of meat and bun in his mouth under the wire, but then he bolted towards the bathroom in what I thought was a joking feint to go vomit . . . it wasn't a joke . . . but he choked his vomit back down . . . TWICE . . . and officially ate "Das Burger" . . . and judging by this event, I don't think the demise of human civilization needs anything as radical and dramatic as genetically modified intelligent apes, we're doing fine on our own.

Aphorism Week is Canceled!

Due to yesterday's atrocious aphorism, The Sentence of Dave Board of Directors has decided (wisely) to cancel Aphorism Week . . . expect the usual drivel tomorrow.

Aphorism Week Begins!

It's aphorism week here at Sentence of Dave, and here is #1: Follow your dreams, even if they lead you down into a deep, dark and sticky abyss from which there is no escape . . . and once you have fallen down so deep into your own particular dream-pit that there is no way back to the light, once you are trapped, your arms and legs stuck to the walls, and the only possible way to escape is by hacking off your limbs Aron Ralston style, then you know you must continue to follow your delusional fantasies-- to become a world renowned graffiti artist or pass the audition for American Idol or pilot a hot-air balloon around the world-- and so you continue them though you are blind, isolated, and friendless, and you do this until you die, but in the moments before your death you feel great satisfaction that you lived life as your own man, bowing to none, listening to none, forging your own path, and this feeling makes it almost worth the fact that there is no one to mourn your passing, in fact, there's not even anyone to pay for your funeral and you will be buried in a pauper's grave.

A Full Day in NYC (Including The Whitney)

Though over 1.5 million people live in Manhattan, it felt like a small town last week when we arrived at the 81st Street Subway Station and found a note taped to the column outside the Museum of Natural History entrance that read "Gabov and Akos . . . We went to get some beers" and though we never caught up with Gabov and Akos at the bar, my two sons enjoyed the giant mamenchisaurus exhibit-- the museum staff actually built one of these creatures, with muscle and organ cutaways . . . very illuminating and highly recommended . . . also highly recommended (thanks Zman!) is lunch at the Shake Shack-- which is on Columbus between 77th and 78th and so a very short walk from the museum . . . the Shake Shack has awesome burgers, fries, and shakes and it is far cheaper than museum food, and they'll let you back into the museum after you go eat there (warning: get there before noon or you'll wait in a giant line) and after the museum, we trekked across Central Park to see The Whitney-- The Museum of American Art, not the all around fun guy that lives in Norfolk-- which had an exhibit of Lyonel Feininger's colorful expressionist paintings-- which we all enjoyed-- but I think my kids liked Cory Arcangel's "Pro Tools" exhibit more . . . he creates weird technological installations, such as Various Self Playing Bowling Games, which is a bowling alley consisting of large-scale projections of bowling games from the late 1970s to now, with each bowler only chucking gutter balls . . . there was also an optical illusion he created with metal carts that made Catherine and I question our sanity and a film of hundreds of different people on YouTube playing a Paganini piece, stitched together note by note . . . it almost gave me a epileptic seizure but it is SFW, so check it out . . . and we ended the day by taking a taxi ride back to Penn Station . . . Alex and Ian fell asleep the moment their heads hit the dirty, germ encrusted taxi seats.

A Song Contest!

Anyone and everyone with an ounce of musical talent: head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for the First Annual G:TB Song Contest, sponsored by Almighty Yojo Productions . . . you just might win The Grand Prize.

Mine Shaft

I highly recommend a visit to The Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, NJ . . . it is the self-proclaimed "Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World" and you will not be disappointed in this regard . . . the museum (Zobel Exhibit Hall) contains a startling array of valuable minerals, fossils, and mining equipment-- in fact, it was recently burgled-- and the pièce de résistance is a giant wooden periodic table with cubbyholes containing samples, ore and examples of every element (there should be one of these in every science class . . . but the guy who built it said it contains 25,000 dollars worth of stuff) and when you do journey down into the historical Sterling Hill Zinc Mine, perhaps you'll be lucky enough to have an older gentleman named Bob as your guide . . . he calls the men "Ace" and the women "Sweets" and speaks in staccato sentences that begin with information about the mine but end with anecdotal non sequiturs about twenty dollar bills and driver's licenses, motel rooms and electrical outlets, and the importance of a good dentist . . . he's also not afraid to tell a joke or two (e.g. what side of a cow has the most hair? the outside) and every time someone sneezed he high-fived their snot coated hand and said, "God bless you and God bless me," and, if you are still not understanding the value of having a guide with dementia, remember that it's a two hour tour deep into the bowels of the earth, so having Bob as a guide only adds to the excitement, as you're not sure if you will ever return to the surface again.

A Geography Question

Is it better to live in Hoboken and have a view of the Manhattan skyline . . . or spend the extra cash and live in Manhattan, and have a view of the Hoboken skyline?

The Peeing Tree

I assume you are familiar with Shel Silverstein's tale of sacrifice called The Giving Tree, but that's nothing compared with what "The Peeing Tree" had to endure on our camping trip . . . the tree was named this for obvious reasons, as four boys under ten years old need to urinate a lot when they are in the woods, and the tree absorbed their micturates without complaint or offense . . . but (also for obvious reasons) the stories do not end in the same manner . . . you wouldn't want to sit on or anywhere near "The Peeing Tree."

Two Strikes on China Mieville (But A Home Run for Rex Stout)

For the second time, I have given up on a China Mieville novel . . . I tried to read Perdido Street Station and loved the wild imagery, the inter-species love affair, and the detailed bestiary of New Corubuzon, but got bored with the repetitive plot, and now I have given up on his new novel, Kraken, which happens in an bizarrely imagined version of London and recounts a "squidnapping" and-- among other things-- a Giant Squid Cult, a strike among magical familiars, people who can be folded up like origami, and other cool Philip K. Dick-esque (Dick-ian?) conceits, and although there is plenty of action, once again, the plot is rather lame and repetitive and so three hundred pages was enough for me . . . but the book I switched to-- a Nero Wolfe mystery called Some Buried Caesar, by Rex Stout-- is worth reading: a plot worthy of a Raymond Chandler novel, hard-boiled wisecracks worthy of Dashiell Hammett, and the near idolatry of a prize-winning bull named Hickory Caesar Brindon . . . a bovine protagonist always referred to by his full moniker: ten prize orchids out of ten.

A Fantastic Ratio

I finally polished off George R.R. Martin's second novel in his epic The Song of Fire and Ice . . . A Clash of Kings is long, bleak, and complex-- it's definitely got the "Empire Strikes Back" groove-- and I have figured out the secret of how Martin retains his magical lack of whimsy: his proper name to adjective ratio is ten to one.

Setting the Bar at the Bar

This is often the case: you consider anyone who drinks less than you a teetotaller, and you consider anyone who drinks more than you a dipsomaniac.

The Ascent of Money: Same Taste But More Filling

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, by Scotsmen Niall Ferguson, is yet another book about economics that teaches this lesson, summarized neatly by Frank Knight in 1921: "Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated," which is the idea that risk can be computed and monetized, while uncertainty (or as Donald Rumsfeld aptly put it, "unknown unknowns") cannot even be fathomed-- especially because, as Ferguson cleverly points out, your average investment banker has a career of twenty five years and bases his formulas and strategies on relatively recent data, but every forty or fifty years something happens beyond the pale, beyond our imagination-- but despite these occasional bouts of creative economic destruction, Ferguson believes-- like Matt Ridley-- that the ascent of money has done mankind great good, but he doesn't prove this with abstractions and theories, and that is the fun of the book; he uses messy examples from throughout history . . . each chapter tackles a different financial institution, from its origins until now (banking, the bond market, the stock market, insurance, real estate, globalization) and he often points out that finance was just as complex and chaotic in the past as it is now, and whether he's describing fellow Scotsmen John Law's gambles with the French Economy or the Medici's first attempts at banking or the Opium Wars, his writing is vivid, informative, challenging, and always cycles back to economics: ten Scottish Ministers' Widows' Funds out of ten.

I Don't Do This . . . But My Wife Might

Beer over ice: classy or trashy?

Boolean Illogic

I like girls and I like Girl Talk . . . but I dislike cars, yet I like Car Talk.

Two Boys + One Ball = WTF?

My two sons play a game at the pool that appears simple from a distance-- you see two children bopping a ball back and forth on the concrete-- but if you get within earshot, you'll realize that playing "boxball" is slightly more complicated than running the Indianapolis offense . . . the game begins with the winner of the previous match reciting the rules that will be in effect for the next game, and he may say any combination of the following: old school . . . including singles, doubles, triples, quadruples, and quintuples, sushi (using any part of your body), sushi cut (a slicing shot that can only bounce once), black and white magic (various spins that return the ball to the server), time bomb (you can throw the ball away and count to ten . . . the opponent has to get the ball back to the court before you finish counting), cherry bomb (throw it really hard at the ground and the opponent has to catch it), ocean (a square between you and the other person), negative and positive (more spinning shots), knives (bouncing it on the corner of the box), and moose crossing (allows a timeout for outsiders to cross the court) . . . and the kids don't find it funny when I satirize this preponderance of absurdly named rules . . . I like to ask if they're playing "sucker punch" and "necromancy" and "werewolves" and "octagons" but they don't laugh at my humor, because "boxball" isn't something to make light of.

Is This The Best Allocation of Valuable Resources?

Sometimes when I wake up there is a white hair jutting from one of my sideburns, directly perpendicular to my head, and obviously my body labored extremely hard to grow this gravity defying strand of hair in the span of a night, but meanwhile, my knee hurts and my back is sore from swimming and I still have some poison ivy . . . so my question is this: doesn't my body have better projects on which to work, rather than to grow these hairs?

Now I Know

David Brooks taught me why I write this blog: thumos.

Remind Me To Do This

In his new book The Social Animal, David Brooks cites a psychology experiment I'd like to replicate: in a college psychology class, the students decided to do an experiment on the professor (I'm surprised my students haven't done something like this to me, Lord knows I deserve it as I'm always doing stupid experiments on them) and it was simple yet effective; every time the professor moved to the left side of the room, the students appeared distracted and looked away from him, but every time he moved to the right side of the room, they became attentive and engaged . . . by the end of the period he was nearly out the door (on the right side of the room, of course) and if I read this during the school year, I'd have students doing it to teachers immediately, but since it's summer, I'm going to have to rely on my memory, and-- as this post proves-- this blog is more powerful than my memory.

Novels That The World May Be Better Off Without

Just about everyone has the plot of a novel brewing in their head, and a few weeks ago a friend told me his idea: it involved a Jurassic Park-like resurrection of Jesus Christ, using DNA from the Shroud of Turin, and then there was a Godzilla type monster (I can't remember if that was The Second Coming or the devil or what) and while I can't say that it's any worse than this idea, perhaps it's okay if some novels remain pipe dreams . . .

Remember Plato's Cave?

David Brooks' new best-selling overview of cognitive science, The Social Animal: The Hidden Source of Love, Character, and Achievement, is cleverly written through the perspective of a composite couple (Erica and Harold) and though the book is a review of many books that have already been mentioned on this blog (such as this book, this book, this book, and this book) and many books that I read about cognitive science before I began this blog (which annoys me to no end . . . I really wish I had a record of all the books I read before I started this project) the book was still an excellent read, mainly because of Brooks' effortless novelistic style, and I highly recommend it, although it should be called The Emotional Animal, because the main theme is that people, despite all our conscious powers of logical deduction, are stuck inside flawed but powerful minds, that are biased, opinionated, intuitive, fragmented, difficult to sway, in search of details that match already formed hypotheses, and generally illogical economically and syllogistically as far as our motivations and character.

A Very Cheeky Groundhog

It's been a long time since I've seen a groundhog do anything cheeky (and it still wasn't nearly as cheeky as this) but the drought must be severely depleting whatever groundhogs normally eat, because as we walked down the steps to the pool, my wife looked to her left and said, "There is a large animal on one of the picnic tables eating someone's food," and she was right-- and this was the kind of behavior you expected from a raccoon or cat-- but on closer inspection it was a groundhog, munching away at a ham and salami sub from Park Deli, and I had to swing our pool bag at the groundhog to get it to scamper back into the woods and the sub was ruined, gnawed open and dismantled, and so our friends had to order food from Loui Pizza City.

Are These Absolutely Necessary?

Does an eighteen wheeler carrying a load of giant rocks really need to be any more intimidating than it already is? . . . I guess the particular cab owner I saw on Route 18 thought so, and added some giant spike lug nuts to his tires to ensure than every car near his truck was scared shitless-- of either being hit by falling boulders or impaled by his tires.

New Music: Sometimes There's A Man

Sometimes There's A Man by The Density

The Almighty Yojo has whipped up another collage of sound for your listening enjoyment-- Sometimes There's A Man celebrates everything that is wrong with men . . . for lyrics and more head over here.

No Ghost In This Machine

The Machinist is visual and visceral-- Christian Bale loses so much weight that he literally looks like one of the machines in the shop where he works-- and his body is functioning like a machine in the context of the movie's plot . . . his weight loss and delusions are the result of some very simple cause and effect, and though the movie has stimulating and horrific tableaux throughout and Christian Bale and his delusional doppelganger Ivan (John Sharian) do a fine job acting, the plot is extremely repetitive and it takes along time to get to the pay-off: seven lathes out of ten.

A Stupid and Annoying Paradox

As you get older, your brain has a harder time recalling things, but your body remembers every injury crystal clear.

Capsule Review

True Blood is Buffy with boobs.

JCVD: A Meta-Action Movie

I'm sure I would have appreciated JCVD more if I had seen more Jean-Claude Van Damme movies-- I think the only one I ever watched in its entirety was Bloodsport . . . or if I read the tabloids more and knew anything about his life-- but I still found the premise intriguing, though it dragged a little at the end; Van Damme plays a down and out version of himself, sincere and beaten, losing a custody case for his daughter, losing roles to Steven Seagal, unable to access funds, and painfully honest about his career, his art, and living the shallow life of a celebrity; ultimately the film asks a meta-question: does acting translate to reality? are actors skilled in what they portray or are they truly just pretending? could Paul Newman really shoot a game of pool? is Clint Eastwood actually tough? can Natalie Portman do ballet? and can Jean-Claude Van Damme actually use his martial arts training to rescue himself and others from a real hostage situation? . . . you'll have to watch the film to see the answer, and endure a six minute sincere monologue from Van Damme about the significance (and futility) of his life, and I didn't fully understand the very end . . . warning: spoiler! . . . why he is convicted, but if you like action and you like meta and you like the darkness of foreign film then you will like this story.

The True Purpose of This Blog!

So during my arduous summer project-- tearing down the ivy encrusted rotting fence in our backyard and replacing it with a similar but new non-rotting fence-- I stepped on a rusty nail and it penetrated the sole of my foot and so I went on-line and read a bit about tetanus and lockjaw  (you CAN get tetanus from a rusty nail and it CAN kill you) and decided that I should get a tetanus shot, as they only last ten years and I couldn't remember the last time I had gotten one, and then I had the bright idea of searching "tetanus" on Sentence of Dave and I was directed to this post, which made me absurdly happy.

I Cause Marital Conflict

So I'm walking across the parking lot of our condo in Chatham and a lady riding by in a BMW stops her car and says to me (in her Boston accent) "Didja heah my cah squeak?" and I did hear her car squeak, so I say that I heard a squeak and so she turns to her husband in the passenger seat, points at him, and says, triumphantly: "See! He heard a squeak," and then a few minutes later I see her driving all alone, slowing down, and then speeding up, listening, and she says to me, "Nobody heahs my squeak."

Bonus Post at G:TB!

If you want to know how to survive a tritium leak, and/or you like bugs, then you should check out my post at G:TB.

Our Band Could Be Your Life

Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad, is less about the music and more about the story of thirteen indie bands, including some of my favorites such as Dinosaur Jr, The Minutemen-- who provided the title-- Minor Threat, Mission of Burma, Husker Du, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, and Fugazi . . . and the story of these bands is surprisingly similar:

1) feel detached and isolated from the other young people around you
2) form a band
3) practice an insane amount while the rest of your peers are doing school, girls, sports, and other "normal" things
4) procure a beat up van
5) go on a DIY "tour" in aforementioned van, playing sixty shows in fifty days-- in odd venues-- to crowds ranging from a half-dozen to a hundred people, making very little money, barely enough to cover food
6) record an album on the cheap, very quickly, but proficiently, because you are so well practiced from your tour
7) do more tours in the dirty and cramped van, which will insure conflict between the band members and everyone else "touring" with you, but also get your name out there
8) finally receive critical acclaim, but after it is too late
9) attempt to sign with a major label, but either get screwed or lose artistic control or fall apart because of the constant touring
10) realize this would have been so much easier if the internet was around . . .

I give the book ten EP records out of a possible ten, and though I've outlined the archetypal structure of most of the chapters, God is in the details, and Azerrad treats the details just right-- he doesn't idolize or romanticize these bands and their music but he does get across the epic nature of what they were trying to accomplish, and he shows how they achieved success with minimal technology, support, popularity, and (sometimes) musical ability . . . as The Minutemen said, "We jam econo."

Appropriate Meta-Cameo

I rarely recount my dreams here because if I did, I'd be labelled a hypocrite (and because I almost never remember them) but bear with me on this one: I was having a typical spooky nightmare, driving on a dark snowy road in Maine and when I arrived at my house, someone (or something) had jabbed large icicles in a pattern on the door and around the windows and up onto the roof of the house . . . and then Stephen King and I got out of the car to investigate and we were eventually attacked with snow and ice by some delinquent, inbred kids . . . pretty scary stuff, except that I had Stephen King by my side, so I was never all that scared of the situation because no one is scarier than Stephen King and he was my ally (at one point, I even playfully tossed a snowball at him and nearly hit him in the nuts and he laughed about it).

Don't Squash My Delusions

I am really, really good at swatting flies-- definitely way above average (or so I believe, but this could be an example of the Lake Wobegon Effect . . . as I also believe I am a really, really good driver).

Bonus Post at G:TB!

If you love America, athletics, and women, then  you'll probably want to check this out.

Is This Rude or Just Clueless?

So at the condo we stay at in Chatham, we often see the same families year to year-- and my parents have befriended some of them-- so an older mom that lives in New York City . . . a woman who I haven't seen since last Fourth of July, who I would say I know tangentially in the least, and who I've never had an actual conversation with . . . greeted me in this fashion when I first saw her at the pool: "I have a favor to ask you . . . do you think you could teach our son how to ride a two-wheeler, he's seven and a half and he still can't ride," and though her husband was playing with their son in the pool, right there, he didn't say a word-- so I'm not sure which is ruder, asking me that monumental favor, or standing there-- as a dad-- and letting your wife ask such a monumental favor and not saying something like, "She's just kidding . . . you're kidding, right, hon?" but he didn't say anything and so I was forced to answer her and I should have said something about the time, effort, pain, and suffering it usually takes to teach a kid to ride a bike, but instead I suggested that she "take him to a ball field" where he could ride on the dirt and not get as scraped up (and my parents reported that they did see them all at a ball field, their son decked out in elbow and knee pads trying to ride a bike that was too small for him).

OBFT XVIII

I thought this would be the year I finally missed the annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip, but I was able to get from Cape Cod to Kill Devil Hills in a long evening of travel (and, ironically, I went from sunshine and warm water on the Cape to fog, rain, and cold water in North Carolina) and so my streak continues-- Rob, Whitney, and I are the only folks who are eighteen for eighteen-- and this usually guarantees you a bed (as we have a "bed lottery" based on how many years you have been on the trip, but without Cliff to organize the "bed lottery" it didn't happen . . . and because Jason, Craig and I showed up so late on Thursday, all the beds had been claimed and so I spent the weekend attempting to sleep on a variety of surfaces: the floor, couch cushions, under a table, a hammock, and a cot that opened like one of those cartoon bear traps) but despite the lack of sleep, it was still an excellent time; this list may only make sense to fishing trip attendees, but here are a few highlights and low-lights: 1) T.J. dealing (cards) 2) Johnny dealing with T.J.'s dealing 3) July Madness . . . I especially liked watching Whitney dutifully filling out "the notebook" while we all sat at the bar at Tortuga's 4) Saturday's staggering bill at Tortuga's 5) the "race" back from Tortuga's . . . Rob, McWhinney, Jerry, and I staggered the mile and a half home on the beach after consuming a staggering amount of food and beer . . . McWhinney runs away with it, Jerry resolutely takes second and Rob and I dog it and tie for third . . . thanks again Whit!

Two Uses For A Stand-up Paddle Board

 
Stand-up paddle boarding on the Oyster Pond in Chatham is an excellent way to sneak up on cormorants, herons, and kingfishers . . . or-- if you're my wife-- Harry Connick Jr.

If The Economy Is So Bad, Why Is Everyone Driving To Cape Cod?

When you wake up at 4:00 AM to drive to Cape Cod, you feel as if the universe owes you a traffic free ride . . . but the universe could care less about your earnest resolve and it will let cars accumulate on Route 25 despite your sidereal effort.

Syrian Memory #7

To show his devotion to God, St. Simeon the Stylite lived atop a fifty foot stone column for forty years . . . and if you visit this holy site, which is near the city of Aleppo, you can buy a St. Simeon Frisbee to celebrate his accomplishment.

Syrian Memory #6 (Catherine Screws Up)

We were lucky enough to accompany some US Embassy folks to the very high security "Austrian Position 16" in the Golan Heights-- though we had to pass through countless checkpoints and endure many extended radio conversations-- we were finally granted permission to go up the mountain and see the view: the post overlooks the Sea of Galilee and the Biblical farmland where Paul walked to see the promised land, you can also see an Israeli checkpoint and this is the area where the Druze-- members of a strange religion somewhere between Christianity and Islam-- negotiate cross-border marriages with megaphones to prevent inbreeding-- and on our way down the mountain, while I admired the fabulous mustaches that all the Druze men sported, Catherine realized that she left her jacket up at "Austrian Post 16," her nice Gore-Tex jacket that I bought her as a gift . . . and it took us six months to get that jacket back, finally a nice UN soldier from New Zealand got it to us when he was on leave in Damascus.

Syrian Memory #5

If you step on a land mine in the Golan Heights and hear that fatal "click," this is what you do: get someone to pile stones on your foot until you think there is enough weight to hold down the mechanism, and then cut your leg off at the knee and consider yourself lucky.

Syrian Memory #4 (Warning: This Is Gross)

While eating some pinkish chicken at a dodgy bar/dojo I contracted a parasite-- I won't go into details as to how the lab diagnosed that I contracted this parasite-- but the doctor was sure that giant intestinal round worms were living in my intestines . . . and according to Kara, our bio teacher, I should be quite proud that the little buggers made it to my intestines as full grown adults (8-9 inches long), as it is an arduous process: when you first swallow an ascuris,  it goes through the stomach and into the intestine and lays eggs, then these eggs hatch into larva, which molt and flow through the bloodstream to the lungs, and like salmon swimming upstream, the larva proceeds up the trachea, and then they are re-swallowed and they move through the stomach again, where they reside until you take a big pill, Zentel, and even after I took this big pill, things still weren't right, so I called the doctor and had this conversation: "I took the pill, doc, but . . ." and he said, "Remember, you injured your stomach and intestines, it will take a little while to return to normal . . . you are eating what I told you? Rice and bananas and tea?" and I said, "Yes, but how will I know when the worms are dead?" and he said, "You'll see them when they come out, of course . . . have a nice dinner."

Syrian Memory #3

We received two notes this week at school: note #1 was given to me in the middle of Public Speaking class and it said our school would be closing early as per orders of the US Embassy because of "demonstrations" in honor of Palestinian martyrs" . . . so we went to Kevin and Emmy's apartment and sat on their roof and drank beer and watched a mob of teenagers throw some stones at our school-- it was hardly a riot and the mob was also carrying text books and protractors . . . it was like getting school closed for a dusting of snow; note #2 was from the school nurse and it advised us that we should not eat at Station 1, our favorite schwarma joint, as ten cases of food poisoning had been reported in the past two weeks . . . so we will take that into consideration, but still, they do slice a tasty schwarma there . . . maybe it was a coincidence.

Syrian Memory #2

The Umayyad Mosque, the third holiest place in the Muslim religion (and the site has been a holy place for thousands of years: a temple to Haddad, and then Jupiter, A Greek Orthodox Church supposedly harboring the head of John the Baptist) is awe-inspiring-- fields of polished marble, walls of mosaics, and a monumental mosque housing a Shrine to Hussein (Mohammad's grandson) where Shiites were busy kissing a grate . . . the area was so holy that you couldn't wear your shoes, so I left my old stank Nikes in a pile of other shoes by the door, but when I returned, they had been stolen-- obviously the person who stole them didn't know that this was the third holiest place in the Muslim religion-- and then, conveniently, there was a youngster outside the gates of the mosque who took a quick look at the white man in his socks and immediately led me to the shoe souk-- where I'm sure he received a commission-- and his cousin sold me the crappiest pair of sandals in the Middle East.

Syrian Memory #1

While I am on vacation in Cape Cod and Kill Devil Hills, I have pre-loaded some thematic sentences for your reading pleasure . . . some of you might remember the long winded e-mail updates I sent out each week while Catherine and I were teaching in Syria; I have decided to revisit these in order to find the best moments and condense them into single sentences . . . so here is Syrian Memory #1: just after we arrived, my wife and I took public transportation to the ancient Christian village of Maalula, where the houses are nestled in the high desert mountains and painted a pleasant blue and where the people still speak the language of Christ, Aramaic-- and though I helped unload the vegetables from the van we did not receive a discount on our fare; we hiked above the town to visit the main attraction: the Shrine of St. Tekla-- here, supposedly, a woman converted to Christianity just before she was to be wed to a pagan man and she was flogged for this heresy, and then she fled and, miraculously, a beautiful gorge opened in the rocks to facilitate her escape and there is now a monastery at the foot of this gorge and inside the monastery are the typical relics and pictures and also a fountain where water drips into a basin and this water is supposed to relieve flatulence, and oddly, Catherine (who is never flatulent) drank from this fountain, but I did not . . . and in retrospect, this was my greatest regret from all our overseas adventures, that I didn't drink from that fountain, because sometimes, especially when I mix beer and ice cream, I wish I drank from that fountain.

More Style Over Substance

I couldn't really follow the plot of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and I'm not sure if you're supposed to-- it's a modern parody of Raymond Chandler's byzantine style-- and the narration is overly ironic and stylistic, but I will still recommend the movie if you are in my age bracket (forty-ish) because it's more like a get together of old friends . . . hanging out with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer is a blast, they are natural entertainers, and though their dialogue isn't terribly significant in regards to the plot, and though it's certainly not as clever as the insignificant dialogue in Pulp Fiction, it's still worth seeing how the two of them deliver it-- they are both old pros: three severed fingers out of five.

I Choose Style Over Substance

After reading six hundred pages of the second George R.R. Martin novel, A Clash of Kings, I have given up-- and while I admit that the plot is awesome and epic, I need a few adjectives when I am reading a novel . . . a little bit of style, and so instead I am wading through China Mieville's densely described genre-bending Perdido Street Station, a tale of bestial love in the city that is a veritable bestiary, New Crobuzon, and though the book has a map at the start, you don't need it . . . you can just groove on the freaky descriptions.

Memories Live In My Skull

The first compact disc I ever bought was The Cult's Sonic Temple-- I was a freshman in college and I didn't even own a CD player yet, so I had to travel from room to room to listen to tracks, but I knew that compact disks were the future and I didn't want to spend any more money on cassettes (if I were really smart, I would have stopped buying music altogether and listened to the radio until I could pirate stuff on the internet . . . think of the money I'd have saved)-- and though I was a little disappointed by Sonic Temple . . . it wasn't as good as Electric . . . I still held on to it, but the second compact disc I bought was called Positraction, by a band named Live Skull, and, with noisy, chaotic songs like "Circular Saw," and "Amputease," it was a little too disorganized for my tastes at the time-- and none of my friends liked it either-- so I sold it back to The Band Box and it remained in their used CD collection for my entire stay at William and Mary (and then I think Whitney bought it and gave it back to me so I may have the CD somewhere in my house) but I pretty much forgot about the existence of the band until I was reading Michael Azerrad's excellent book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 and I came across this sentence in the Sonic Youth section: "Why did Sonic Youth succeed when all of their peers-- bands like Live Skull, Rat At Rat R, and the Swans-- eventually fell by the wayside?" and so I went on Amazon and gave Live Skull a second chance and they are much easier to listen to now, since I've been listening to post-punk and post-rock and no wave for years and my ears are better attuned to pulling melody and order from dissonance.

Things You SHOULD Worry About

Matt Ridley has convinced me not to worry about global warming-- near the end of his book The Rational Optimist, he makes a strong case that though it is certainly occurring, the effects won't be as disastrous as the worst of the doomsayers believe-- and he says our time could be better spent on more tangible terrors: "the four horsemen of the human apocalypse, which cause the most premature and avoidable death in poor countries, are and will be for many years the same: hunger, dirty water, indoor smoke, and malaria," and he even shows that from a more aesthetic, environmental view, global warming is not the cause of the loss of biodiversity on earth: "the threats to species are all too prosaic: habitat loss, pollution, invasive competitors, and hunting," and then he returns to his thesis, which he believes will eventually solve these problems . . . he says, "so long as human exchange and specialization are allowed to thrive somewhere, then culture evolves whether leaders help it or hinder it, and the result is that prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands". . . as long as ideas can "meet and mate, to have sex with each other."

How Did You Miss This, Ridley? Maybe Because You're a Limey.

Matt Ridley, in his new book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, does a fantastic job of debunking the prevailing pessimism from previous decades: "In the 1960s the population and explosion and global famine were top of the charts, in the 1970s the exhaustion of resources, in the 1980s acid rain, in the 1990s pandemics"; he runs through each of these plus many other apocalyptic scenarios predicted by scientists (DDT, mass extinction, deforestation, the evils of the railroad, cancer epidemics in children, etc.) and then he comprehensively illustrates that none of these panned out in the devastating manner that was predicted and that the average lifespan, amount of leisure time, freedom from disease, and living conditions have improved over time for all humans-- but then he ends with the "great pessimisms" of today: Africa and global warming and when he describes Botswana (an incredible success story on a generally impoverished continent) he explains that they-- like many African nations-- are saddled with this list of failures: 1) they are landlocked 2) they have poor roads 3) exploding birth rates 4) AIDS and other diseases 5) they have never fully recovered from the slave trade 6) they were once colonies 7) their most promising industry-- agriculture-- is stifled by price controls and trade barriers 8) there is ethnic strife 9) the windfalls of resource wealth serve only to corrupt democratic politicians . . . but despite these problems, Botswana succeeded because of its good institutions-- "people could own property without fear of confiscation by chiefs or thieves"-- and it was barely paid attention to "by colonial rule" and so had to develop its own policies, and as I was reading this I was waiting for Ridley to compare Botswana to America . . . if you look at that list of "problems," each and every one has a parallel to America when it was first developing, and the factors that allowed America to succeed-- good institutions and the fact that we were too far from Britain for them to really police us, also makes sense-- but Ridley never made this connection, perhaps because he is British (and I've yet to finish the final chapter and see what he has to say about global warming).

Who Would You Rather Not Be Sleeping With?

Season 3 of Breaking Bad and Season 4 of Madmen both use the same conceit to add tension, pain, and drama: an ex-wife that stays in the picture . . . but I'd prefer Skyler White as my ex, rather than Betty Draper . . . they're both cold, and they're both disappointed with their respective husbands, but at least Skyler is helping out with Walter's business (and if you've never seen Breaking Bad, you have time to catch up before the new seasons starts . . . the show is so good it's making me contemplate getting cable television).

I Learn Where I Stand

I've been recommending Malcolm Gladwell's books to my wife for years, and she's never read one-- but last week I saw her reading a copy of The Tipping Point . . . apparently if her friend Lynn mentions that a book is good, then she runs out and gets a copy, but I can recommend an author for the entirety of our marriage and this has no consequence.

Breaking News! Little Fins Make A Big Difference!

Apparently, I was not having alcohol induced vestibular problems while stand-up paddle boarding on the Raritan Friday morning . . . I took the board for a spin on Farrington Lake this morning, but I deflated it so I could snap the three little fins under the tail (the other morning I forgot to put them on, and you can't put them on once the board is inflated, so I figured: "How much do I need these little fins?" and the answer to that questions is: "A lot") and the board tracked much better and was far easier to paddle and ride and so the moral to the story is: little fins can make a big difference.

This Does Not Logically Follow That

Stand up paddle-boarding the morning after a late night of pool and darts at the Corner Tavern wasn't such a good idea . . . but the murky waters of the Raritan provided enough incentive to keep my balance-- despite hangover induced vestibular problems-- and so I did not fall in.

Some Information on The Information

Twenty years ago James Gleick's book Chaos yanked me from the morass of post-modern fiction into the world of deftly written science, and reading Gleick's new book, The Information, felt like a comprehensive review of my past twenty years of literary science reading-- all bundled into a tour-de-force history of information theory that starts with African drums and ends with the noosphere, with commentary seamlessly merged into the text from all the "characters" that I've learned to know and love:  Babbage and Turing, Dawkins and Shannon, Dennett and Hofstadter, Maxwell and his demon . . . who Thomas Pynchon famously used in his post-modern fiction, Heisenberg and Godel, Einstein and Von Neumann, and many more . . . but Gleick ends his book in a place that has outstripped what science has to offer, and so he relies on two of my favorite post-modern authors to conclude: Stanislaw Lem and Jorge Luis Borges . . . he uses Borges' metaphor for the universe, his story "The Library of Babel," to approximate where we might be headed: "The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms," but then Gleick ends with his own voice, more positive: "As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms . . . we walk the corridors . . . looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information."

Is This Sentence Correct? It Doesn't Matter Because You Can Dance To It.

Accuracy is only one strategy among many that an idea may use to survive.

I Respectfully Disagree

I like the premise of the blog 20th Century Motors and the author makes a compelling case as to why the hypothesis "College Basketball: Far Inferior To the NBA" is one of the "worst ideas in our culture," but he doesn't refute my Sweet Spot argument . . . it doesn't matter if they're the best athletes in the world: the court is too small for them and they are too skilled at shooting from distance for the game to look aesthetically pleasing; he also claims that Greg Gillis from Girl Talk is a "make believe musician" and again, his argument is clever, satirical and certainly holds water, but- once again-- he forgets aesthetics: Girl Talk is fun to listen to, a complex and layered distillation of the best of music from our time, and it reminds us that pop music isn't all that serious or complicated anyway.

Serendipity or Stupidity?

My wife has no idea how to start summer vacation, and so instead of swimming, reading, watching movies, and going out to lunch, she is painting multiple rooms in our house-- but she knows that not only am I useless at painting, but I also hate it-- and so she enlisted our friend's younger sister to help her; Rachel is a college student looking for some summer employment, and she's extremely artistic and so after the initial painting is done, she is going to paint bugs on Ian's walls (good thing he's not a regular LSD user!) and Star Wars Lego stuff on Alex's walls . . . but not only does she paint, she also does tattoos . . . and her older sister Liz, who is sort of like her agent, pointed out to me that she is a specialist in drawing the giant squid . . . which is the tattoo that I have always dreamed of, a giant squid and sperm whale locked in a great undersea battle . . . so is it fate that has brought us together-- long after my juvenile desire for this tattoo has faded-- or is it something more sinister?

Just Because You Can't Remember, Doesn't Mean It Was A Bad Idea

So although I have no memory of this brainstorming session-- it was after a long day of imbibing while building a deluxe adjustable basketball hoop with Whitney-- apparently, I suggested to a friend's girlfriend's younger sister that she do the Scopes Monkey Trial for her Peeps Diorama history assignment, and that she should do a "gummy evolutionary ladder" as an exhibit in the diorama . . . and when my friend T.J. sent me a picture of the diorama, I said I thought it was really funny and asked him where he found it, and he had to remind me that it was my idea (and my wife-- who was fairly sober because she was the "foreman" of the hoop construction-- verified that I did indeed suggest this to the student) and so here are some pictures of the beautiful and clever diorama of this event, including a miniature blackboard display showing the progression of gummy evolution: Gummy Lifesaver to Gummy Worm to Swedish Fish to Gummy Bear to Sour Patch Kid to Milk Chocolate Peep to Bunny Peep . . . and so I am proud to have contributed to this award winning diorama, although I certainly did the easiest part-- suggesting an idea for a diorama is like pitching a movie, a hell of a lot easier than actually filming one.

If This Were In A Movie, You'd Call BullSh*t

Though finding meaning in coincidences is an absurd past-time, as we are subjected to an enormous amount of stimuli every waking moment, and our brains are trained to look for patterns-- so if we occasionally didn't note coincidences, that would be extraordinarily strange . . . if the song you were just humming didn't start playing on the radio or if you never ran into the old friend the same day you found a photo of him or her in the drawer, then that would be an improbable life . . . but still, sometimes coincidences are bizarre enough that they border on the unbelievable (remember the opening to the film Magnolia?) and if you are a fan of this blog, then you might remember the Two Fox Event, but that pales in comparison to this more recent coincidence . . . which I will call The Three Turtles in Two Days Event: Friday, on my way to work, I nearly ran over a large painted turtle that was inexplicably trying to cross Fifth Avenue-- so I stopped the car, grabbed it, threw it in the driver's seat, and drove it home so my kids could check it out . . . we let it go in the lake later that day-- and then Saturday morning, I was riding my bike up Second Avenue and nearly ran over an Eastern box turtle-- which was also inexplicable trying to cross a busy road-- so I grabbed this turtle and rode home one handed (I did drop him once, but he seemed fine . . . it's nice to have a shell) and we went through the same routine . . . my kids played with him a bit and then we let him go near our secret salamander spot . . . and then later that day it was Ian's birthday party and as a special treat we hired a reptile guy, who brought many large reptiles, including a giant black and white tegu, an alligator, and, of course, the third turtle to temporarily reside in my yard in the span of two days.

This Is Getting Stupid

My adult league soccer team played the predominantly Jamaican team in the first round of the playoffs last week-- and, unfortunately, we pulled the early slot on an absurdly hot day . . . if you were a betting man, due to the conditions, you'd certainly have taken the Jamaicans over the old old fat men, but we held on for a 4-3 victory, and I've been limping around ever since-- my knee and calf are swollen (I think I popped my knee-cap out of the slot when I cleared a ball) and Terry couldn't even play because of his torn calf from the previous game (not to mention his possible broken jaw and hyper-extended arm) and I think I'm getting to the point where I need to choose another sport to play competitively . . . like darts or pie-eating . . . or stand-up paddle-boarding . . . and so I ordered an inflatable paddle-board from Amazon and I can't wait to take it out on the Raritan and use it at the shore . . . I figure this will be a safe and fun way to rehab my knee, but my friend Connell doesn't think so-- he thinks paddle-boarding on the Raritan will be more dangerous than soccer, as I will certainly contract dysentery from the murky water.

Even More Ha-Joon Chang Analogies!

In his book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang accuses wealthy countries and their financial institutions of historical revision, and comprehensively proves that it was not the free market led these countries to success-- and in his chapter on intellectual property law he cites the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, or the law that extended copyright protection to the life of author plus 70 years (it was originally 50) and Chang doesn't propose the removal of all copyright law, but he does point out that for developing nations to actually develop, they need to implement first world ideas and technology yet they cannot afford to abide by the same rules as nations that are already technologically developed, and so he uses an analogy to explain his perspective . . . and since I am the main content provider for people in need of summaries of Ha-Joon Chang analogies, I will paraphrase it here: Chang says the amount of copyright law a country needs is like the amount of salt the human body needs: no salt will kill you, and too much salt is very unhealthy, but a little bit is beneficial . . . and the life of the author plus 95 years, even if it means anyone can have their way with Minnie Mouse, is too much salt.

A Fast Review of the Past

If you want to see a deaf mute kill a gangster's trigger-man with a fly rod, or a gun moll betray a private dick, or Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas when they were young, then Out of the Past is the movie for you: nine trench-coats out of a possible ten.

Chang vs. Jeter vs. Ridley! To The Death!

Matt Ridley's new book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves reminds us that even though many people are professing the end of days because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, high gas prices, a stagnant economy, rising food prices, and climate change, that people are still living better than at any other time in human history, and he argues that this is because of specialization and free-trade-- and credits David Ricardo for realizing this-- and this system of eschewing self-sufficiency and instead pursuing markets and trade enables ideas to mix and mate and reproduce, which leads to a higher quality of life for everyone involved, but sometimes he oversimplifies his thesis, especially when he makes over-arching statements like this: "The message from history is so blatantly obvious-- that free trade causes mutual prosperity while protectionism causes poverty-- that it seems incredible that anybody ever thinks otherwise," and then Ridley claims that there is "not a single example" from history of a country opening its border and ending up poorer . . . which is the logical kiss of death; Ha Joon Chang provides comprehensive examples of when protectionism is necessary for a country to thrive, and John Jeter provides examples of countries who opened their borders to the forces of global markets and became impoverished . . . so I guess these guys need to arrange a time and a date and settle this debate out in the streets.

Irony, Hypocrisy, Christie

While the extensive media coverage of Governor Christie's use of the State Helicopter to go to his son's baseball game is bi-partisan politics at its worst-- we have far more important things to debate in New Jersey-- there is still a delicious irony to the fact that Christie actually said this on the record:  "People in New Jersey now feel as if there have become two classes of people in New Jersey: public employees who receive rich benefits, and those who pay for them," and, of course, if you call for a "shared sacrifice" to balance the State Budget, then you'd better be prepared to be called a hypocrite if you're not "walking the walk"-- but, considering his plump figure and the fact that he was driven in a limo the hundred yards from the helicopter to the ball field-- it is doubtful that Christie walks anywhere.

No Virginia . . . You Are An Idiot (Spoiler Alert!)

I overheard a conversation between my two sons while we were driving to Grounds for Sculpture; Ian-- who is six-- emphatically professed his disbelief in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, and Alex-- who is seven-- agreed that they were all manifestations of "mommy and daddy," and I know that I am supposed to regret this moment and think: It's so sad that they've lost their innocence, their belief in make-believe and magic-- but what I actually thought was: Phew! Thank God my kids aren't idiots!

A Cinema Question

Are you supposed to cheer when Raymond Shaw shoots his Communist Red Queen mother at the end of The Manchurian Candidate?

Wonderful Images Day Two: Sperm Cake!

Nearly twenty year's ago at my friend Jason's first wedding, I ended my rambling, extemporaneous, and generally incoherent best-man's toast with a sperm joke-- my peroration was: As long as those little guys can swim!-- and the remark was received by the genteel Southern crowd as you might expect, and so I waited a decade for everyone to lighten up, and then tried a similar speech at Jason's second wedding-- but met with similar results-- but, finally-- no pun intended-- my time has come: Saturday evening at Liz and Eric's wedding, each table received a small wedding cake and a bag of frosting and we were told that we were in a "cake decorating contest," and that the winning cake would be the one cut and eaten by the bride and groom . . . and in my opinion, this is what every wedding needs, because after all the romantic stuff everyone is dying for a little friendly competition; it took my table a few moments to get on board with my plan, but once I took matters into my own hands and drew a giant red wriggling sperm on the pristine white icing, they had no choice but to follow suit-- and once they were in, they were all in . . . Audrey made wee mini-sperms for the sides of the cake, Laura drew a lovely smiley face on the featured sperm, Brady got blue Tic-Tacs from Rob so we could make the egg look more like an actual haploid reproductive cell, Jack and Terry wrote the caption "Life Begins" with crumbled chocolate cookies underneath the sperm and egg . . . and we eagerly pointed out the double meaning of the phrase to the bride and groom when we "campaigned" for our cake . . . and though there were some beautiful cakes, many with exquisite dragonflies on them-- the motif of the wedding-- the bride's mother (an art teacher) put in a good word for us and we we were announced the winners and took great pride in the fact that Liz and Soder cut our cake . . . and though I must be honest and report that there may have been some gloating over the fact that we won . . . perhaps we did not display the best "sportsmanship" after our victory, but, on the other hand, how often do you get to say: "I just won a cake decorating contest!"

A Wonderful Image Trumps An Annoying Event

Aside from this incident-- which doesn't count because it happened while I was running a high fever-- I hadn't received a traffic ticket in twenty years (this is partly because my father worked in corrections and so I could always drop his name and partly because I'm a fairly safe driver) but last week I received a letter from the East Brunswick Municipal Court and it had photographs proving that I "Failed to Observe a Traffic Signal," when I made a right onto Tices Lane off Route 18, but the fact of the matter is (I watched the video) that the light turned from yellow to red just as I was about to make the right, and though I should have come to a complete stop before I made the turn, I've never seen anyone actually do that, and no cop in their right mind would have pulled me over for this, but you can't talk to an automated camera . . . although maybe it would have been worth a try-- I could have waved my PBA card at it and said things like: "MAYBE YOU KNOW MY DAD? HE RAN ALL THE JAILS? HE TEACHES CRIMINAL LAW NOW? MAYBE YOU HAD HIM AS A TEACHER? PLEASE?" and when I explained to my five year old son Ian how the computerized traffic signal gave me a ticket because I didn't stop at a red light, he asked, "How did you get the ticket? Did it come twirling down?" and that image, of a computerized camera spitting out tickets from high above, so that they "twirl down" to the traffic offenders, is worth the 85 dollars I had to pay for my violation.

Bonus! An Important Topic That Requires Your Immediate Consideration

Bonus post today over at G:TB . . . you may feel secure in the fact that you've got your living will, your living trust, and your life insurance policies in order, but you still might not have considered this possibility . . .

Upset Victory

The last thing my friend Mario said to me as we stepped onto the field for our adult league soccer game last Wednesday was, "We will be slaughtered" and I agreed with him-- the team we were playing was comprised of fit, fast twenty-five year old kids, while our team is comprised of slow old men . . . and, to stack the deck against us more, we were missing several of our youngest, strongest, and fastest players, and so we only had one substitute . . . AND it was 95 degrees and humid-- but the soccer gods smiled on us, and our strategy of packing it back on defense and playing for the counter-attack worked and we ended up upsetting the youngsters 4-3 and I would tell you who scored the game winning goal, but my friend Terry says my sentences have gotten too long, so I'll end this one here.

Europe in the Air

It sucks when your seven year old son gets the joke and you don't: Alex told me he wished we could go back to Busch Gardens because he liked the ride Europe in the Air, and then he reminded me that it was "Europe-- the continent-- in the air," and not "Your up in the air," as he first thought-- and that he liked that the name meant both things . . . and I told him that I liked the joke as well, but what I didn't tell him was that, truth be told, I didn't realize the pun when we were at at Busch Gardens . . . and only got it long after the fact, with the help of a first grader.

Paradoxical Refuse

The bottom of one of our garbage cans has rotted out, which raises an interesting question: how do you dispose of a trash receptacle? (I have asked several people this puzzler, and no one has a solution . . . one person said she has actually spray-painted a message on one of her broken bins-- to alert the garbage men that she wanted to throw it away-- yet they still didn't remove it . . . but here are a few techniques that may work: my favorite is the recommendation to "disguise the trash can," by placing it inside a trash bag).

Another Use For Your Closet

Lately, my seven year old son Alex is on a roll . . . at dinner Tuesday night, he asked to be excused after eating only a couple bites of his ice cream (he had just earned back dessert status) which was strange because he has a sweet tooth and always finishes treats-- and after Alex left the table, Ian, a model of discretion for his five years, said to us, "You know what was weird? Alex had a handful of green beans," and I was impressed that he didn't outright squeal on his brother, instead he alerted us with some subtlety and sophistication, but it was enough of a hint for Catherine to chase Alex upstairs-- he said he was going to write his friend a birthday card-- and when she asked him about the green beans, he claimed that "he ate them," but upon further interrogation it turns out that he threw them in the back of his closet-- the second time in a week he's made an absurd choice for hiding contraband-- so Catherine made him fish them out and she told them that as punishment he had to eat them, but he claimed that they were "dusty," and so I washed them off with some cold water and once again . . . he's lost dessert for a week.

I'm Not A Professional Actor

So it must hard for my seven year old son Alex when his younger brother churns out super-cool looking drawings on a daily basis . . . when Alex draws something we try to encourage him, but I'm sure he can tell the difference between our feigned enthusiasm for his mundane scribbles and our unabashed adulation for Ian's boldly drawn creations . . . and so-- as a person who experienced growing up with someone talented (my brother was a piano prodigy)-- Alex might be better off if he quit drawing altogether and focused on some other skill.

I Was Thinking (That You Were Thinking)

I Was Thinking (That You Were Thinking) by The Density

A new song by The Density . . . this one explores the most awkward of moments: when you put yourself out there and admit to someone that you think they are groovy and special . . . they they reject you . . . you can read the lyrics over at G:TB, but the lyrics don't do the song justice . . . the real content is provided by Whitney, my colleagues at work, Jim Carrey, The Farrelly Brothers, The Coen Brothers, Lauren Holly, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Frances McDormand, and Steve Park and so I'd like to thank them for letting me splice, dice, and mangle their words . . . I appreciate it.

Busted!

My son Alex has had quite a week: first he confessed this lie, and then-- when he was on the way out the door for school on Thursday, my wife noticed a bulge in his sock, and when she asked him about it, he said it was "just bunched up," but upon further interrogation and a search, she found that he was attempting to smuggle "Now and Later" candies to school . . . and if he wasn't wearing shorts he might have gotten away with it (or if he would simply put them in his pocket, but he obviously knew he was doing something illicit and you don't put illicit stuff in your pockets, you put it in your socks).

Words Of Advice

Apparently, when your wife says, "I'm drawing a blank on what to get you for our anniversary," the proper response is not "We're getting each other gifts?" followed by "Do you want anything?"

Some Like It Hot (But They Are Idiots)

So the way I get my students to stop complaining about the heat (our classrooms are NOT air-conditioned, and they are poorly ventilated) is by complaining about it even more than they do . . . because I've stolen their gripe and added an unnecessary amount of hyperbole to it, their only recourse is to take the reverse position and so they eventually start encouraging me, they try to motivate me to finish class . . .they say things like:  there's only twenty minutes left-- you can make it . . . and I reply with statements like: THIS IS THE HOTTEST PLACE ON EARTH! MY ENTIRE BODY IS SOAKED WITH SWEAT! LET'S GO OUT IN THE COURTYARD, IT'S HOT BUT AT LEAST WE'LL BE OUTSIDE! I THINK I'M GOING TO PASS OUT! and the sight of a grown man behaving so childishly usually inspires them behave more maturely . . . and I just bought a wall thermometer at Home Depot, so now I'll be able to add a quantitative element to my complaints: IT'S 91 DEGREES IN HERE! THERE MUST BE A LAW THAT PROHIBITS THIS! WE NEED TO CALL OUR CONGRESSMAN! WE NEED TO ALERT THE AUTHORITIES ABOUT THIS! THIS IS A HEALTH HAZARD!

A Good Thriller You Probably Haven't Seen

For once, my wife gave me a task that was in my wheelhouse . . . . a task which I not only completed, but also enjoyed (unlike the time she assigned me the Christmas mission of buying her some sexy lingerie and I went to Victoria's Secret in the mall and saw the word "panties" and started blushing and then a cute girl asked if I needed help and I got nervous and ran out of the store and then got my friend Celine to go to the mall and pick out some things that Catherine would like and on Christmas when Catherine saw what Celine picked out, she was happy and amazed by my good taste and I told her Celine "helped me," but didn't tell her the truth: that I didn't even go on the mission . . . and I would have gotten away with it if another teacher hadn't spilled the beans and told my wife the whole sordid tale-- that Celine picked out the lingerie and showed it to all the women in the English department, so Catherine made me return the lingerie-- except for one item she couldn't part with-- and then she made me go buy lingerie all by myself as punishment . . . even though I thought it was pretty clever of me to complete the task in the fashion I did) because this task-- to use the internet to find a good movie-- was right up my alley . . . she said, "Find us a good movie to stream on Netflix," and so I went on-line and found some spectacular reviews for a thriller from 1991 called One False Move, starring Billy Bob Thornton as a violent drug dealer from Los Angeles and Bill Paxton as the small town Arkansas sheriff that collides with him and his violent companions . . . it's tense, graphic, ambiguous, and well-acted-- and you never know which direction it's going to take . . . is Dale "Hurricane" Dixon a heroic small town cop like Marge Gunderson in Fargo . . . or is he an inept yokel like Marshall Link Appleyard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance . . . I'm still not sure of the answer, but I do know this: the film may be worth watching just for Billy Bob Thornton's hair: ten mullet pony-tails out of ten.

That Was Close

Alex came home with a bloody nose the other day and he told us that a certain wild kid punched him in the nose and that this wild kid was sent to the principal's office and that Alex was sent to the nurse, and Alex has talked about having altercations with this kid before, and so I sat him down and had a man-to-man talk with him about bullies and how he might have to punch this kid back-- right in the nose-- to make him stop bullying-- and then my father told Alex about how I beat up the neighborhood bully at the bus stop one morning (it was a scene right out of A Christmas Story) and Catherine was concerned that the school didn't contact us about the incident and questioned Alex about it and Alex said he reported it to the teacher who was watching the playground and he asked us not to write a note and that he would handle it himself-- which I could understand because you never want to be the kid that squeals to his mom-- but we were discussing it a couple of days later and Catherine told me she still wanted to alert Alex's teacher to the situation and Alex overheard us talking and started crying and said, "I have to tell you something," and then he told us: apparently, he made the whole story up . . . he had been picking his nose and it started bleeding and he didn't want to get in trouble for picking his nose so he made up the whole punch-in-the-nose-tale so he wouldn't get in trouble for picking his nose but then when he heard that Catherine was going to write a note to the teacher, he figured out that he was eventually going to get caught in his lie, so he came clean, and hopefully he learned a valuable lesson (he's got a week with no dessert as his punishment, but his punishment would have been worse if my wife wrote that note because then we would have been embarrassed for falsely accusing some kid of punching our son in the nose and that kind of thing can get real ugly).