Just Living My Life, Dave-Style

As I was walking out the door on Wednesday morning, I realized that I had forgotten my cell-phone, and so I went back into the kitchen to retrieve it . . . and as I walked by the counter I noticed an overturned yogurt container, a spoon, and an open magazine-- it took me a moment to process the tableau-- and then I realized that this was my mess, that I was the culprit, and I told my wife that I couldn't believe I could be so rude and slovenly -- which made her laugh-- and the odd thing is this: I was genuinely surprised that I didn't clean up after myself, and -- before I saw the evidence-- I certainly believed that I cleaned up after myself once I was done with my breakfast; if someone interrogated me, I think -- even under the strain of torture-- that I would have insisted that I had rinsed out my yogurt container and threw it in the recycling bin, put my spoon in the dishwasher, and put my magazine away in some acceptable magazine storing location . . . yet I did none of this, and so I am starting to wonder about the ramifications of Just Living My Life, Dave-Style.

The Car: Much Faster Than A Horse

This Thanksgiving, we were able to resurrect an old tradition -- one we haven't done in a few years-- we hightailed it out of Jersey to visit our friends in Bolton Valley, Vermont . . . and, as usual, I was astounded by the amount of traffic we had to endure in order to escape New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, and I was also -- as usual -- astounded by how much the terrain, culture, and weather can change during a seven hour drive; Rob and Tammy don't live IN the mountains, they live ON the mountain -- five miles up a treacherously steep road . . . their house is even in elevation with the ski lodge . . . and so on Monday, we essentially drove from winter back to fall . . . when we left their house, it was a near blizzard, and several times we nearly slid and fishtailed to our death, but by the time we got back to Jersey, it was fifty degrees and sunny, and we were able to hit some tennis balls down at the park.

My Team Is Losing . . .

In Hanna Rosin's new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, she uses the stark contrast between how her son and how her daughter get organized for school as the anecdote that illustrates her copious statistics . . . girls are far more equipped to handle the rigors of modern education than boys, and so while her daughter makes to-do lists for tasks that lie weeks in the future, Rosin is doing everything in her power "not to become her son's secretary," and this dichotomy now continues from elementary school right through college, where women outnumber men on almost every campus and certain elite schools are practicing "affirmative action" for the boys, so that the male/female ratio doesn't get incredibly skewed (and I can already see this trend in my own house -- I have two boys-- and the rule is that "the homework isn't done until Mommy checks it" because Daddy is incompetent, overlooks things, and doesn't read directions).

Heady Topper: I Am Undecided

On our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Bolton Valley, Vermont, there was much mention of the legendary Heady Topper Imperial I.P.A -- a locally brewed and canned beer -- and everyone seemed to have an opinion on it; most folks loved it, and were willing to rush over to the tiny Alchemist Cannery in order to grab a few cans before they sold out, but others were vehemently opposed to this beer that "tasted like a pine tree" and so I decided to try it for myself . . . we swung by the brewery, but they were sold out (of course) so I had to make do with a sample, and while I certainly didn't feel that it was "world class", I did like the first few gulps, but then it got a little sharp and hoppy for my taste . . . I prefer New Jersey's Hopfish IPA . . . which is ALWAYS available at Pino's in Highland Park, and so though it doesn't have the legendary allure of the beer that is impossible to buy (the demand for Heady Topper is so great that it costs $3 for one can and $72 for a case, there's no price break for bulk buying) I like the fact that I don't have to plan my day around an alcohol purchase . . . which seems like a pathetic pursuit for grown man with a wife and two children.

Hurray For Zman! Hurray for Man!

It's a good thing Sentence of Dave super-commenter Zman recommended that I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian feminist novel Herland, because otherwise when Hanna Rosin asked the question "What does the modern-day Herland look like?" in her new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, I would not have understood the allusion, and I would have felt like one of the men she was describing: disempowered, penurious, and uneducated . . . I would have felt like a man in one of the 1,997 metropolitan regions of the country that James Chung studied (out of 2000) where young women had a higher median income than young men (and if you want more statistics like that, read the book, as it is chock full of them).

There are Two Types of People

No matter how stupid the idea is, I love it when an essay start with the premise "there are two types of people" and so I will follow suit; there are two types of people: 1) people who talk during movies 2) people who don't . . . and I am a number one all the way: movies are MUCH more interesting when accompanied by my insightful commentary.

Five Years Of Sentence of Dave!

I have been writing this blog for so long, that I can't really remember much that happened before its inception (I refer to these events as pre-Sentence of Dave) and along the way I have evolved my style from its simple and clutter free roots to my current prolix bombasticity . . . my syntax has gone from grammatically correct to convoluted elliptical absurdity, and my diction -- which was once precise -- now often includes superfluous lexical garbage, such as repeated usage of the word ersatz and repeated misusage of the word miracle . . . and all this time, my dedicated fans have stuck with me, and so I would like to offer my sincerest thanks . . . I hope I can wring five more years of material out of the theme "Dave" . . . more fragmented logic and half-baked ideas, more awkward moments, more useless opinionated capsule reviews . . . I'd like to thank all the guys at Gheorghe:The Blog for inspiring this "spin-off" and especially Zman for his diligent and persistent commenting over here; and I'd like to thank my wife, children, and colleagues, both for providing material and for pointing out when I have done something really stupid, which is always the best content of all.

One Man, Two Bags . . .

My dog has gone from being a one bagger to a two bagger, and while this is a good thing in a baseball game, it's NOT such a good thing during his 5:30 AM consitutional . . . if my stomach wasn't empty, that second load would certainly cause an early morning upchuck.

Happy Thanksgiving

For the greatest Thanksgiving monologue in cinematic history, go to the seven minute mark of this excerpt of Pieces of April (and then, as a bonus, Katie Holmes gives her synopsis of the holiday as well) and if you have the time, watch the entire movie -- simple, elegant plot and an excellent ensemble cast.

First World Problems

Now that our power is back, I am happy to say that the worst problem in our house is a universal one -- and though I didn't flush the toilet with malicious intent Monday evening, I was quite pleased to hear my seven-year old son Ian, who was in the shower, use the proper tone -- the tone his Dad taught him --when he screamed, "WHO'S USING THE WATER?"

The Nerds No Longer Need to Get Revenge

 I asked my son Alex what he was doing on the playground with his friends, and he told me -- without any shame-- that they were playing a game they invented called "Dalek tag," which had a number of rules, all revolving around references to Dr. Who . . . my boys love the new version of the show and so do a few of their friends, but the rest of the kids had never seen it, yet they were still willing to join in . . . this is a big change from when I was a kid-- back then, if you made up a game based on campy sci-fi television, then you didn't advertise this to the entire playground (unless you wanted a serious beat-down).

Weekend of Dave!

Catherine and I attended two parties over the weekend . . . Friday night was the Third Annual Scary Story Contest and Saturday night was a Beer Pong Birthday Party -- and I won Best Story at the Story Contest and at the Beer Pong Party, I held the table for several hours with my silent and stoic partner Bob, who was prone to diving on the floor for difficult shots, and then when we were finally unseated, my wife and I returned and held the table until the party ended . . . so quantifiably, this was pretty much the most successful weekend of my life, as it was rather easy to measure how well I did at each party . . . I wish all of life was so concrete and simple, with transparent rules and immediate gratification, but now it's back to the confusing, ambiguous daily grind of life, where there is no apparent way to keep score and no easy way to figure out if you are holding the table or winning the contest . . . by the way, would anyone like to play darts with me at the Park Pub on Thursday?

Did Dave Defend His Title?

There was a big crowd this year for Liz and Eric's Third Annual Scary Story Contest, and I was feeling some anxiety because I wanted to defend my crown . . . last year, I lucked out because two excellent stories were read back-to-back and, coincidentally, these two excellent stories were very similar in plot -- so I think they cancelled each other out, and so I was able to take the cash with this gross and silly tale ; this year the stories were all varied and all excellent . . . the theme was "it's the end of the world . . . as we know it" . . . and I was buried at number three in the order, so I didn't think I had a shot to win, but, miraculously, I pulled it out . . . most likely because I got a very good reading from my colleague Adam (and sadly, I repaid him the favor by kind of butchering his story, which he wrote in the dialect of what he described as "an elderly black man" but my interpretation sounded more like Benjy Compson from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury . . . oops!) and so I won Best Story and took home the big cash prize -- and this despite the fact that my voice was easily recognized, the anonymous reading made no difference . . . on one of my ballots it said, "This is so Dave, I hate you Dave, and I hope you don't win again" . . . but the person still felt compelled to vote for my very silly story . . . and I am quite proud of the fact that I even garnered a few votes for The Scariest Story (no mean feat for a guy who is extremely skeptical of spooky stuff) and at the end of the night, as a bonus (someone called it "dessert") I read aloud my eight year old son Alex's story-- he wanted to enter the contest and win some money and so he dictated a story to me minutes before we left for Liz and Eric's house  -- I think the babysitter thought the whole family was batshit crazy -- and, coincidentally, his story is quite similar to mine, which says something about my depth and sophistication as a writer . . . you can read both stories over here at Gheorghe: The Blog -- and thanks again to Eric and Liz for a fantastic party, and for all the writers, readers and attendees . . . definitely my favorite party of the year, and if you can ever attend, I recommend it: we sit in their spooky wood panelled basement in the dark, sip beverages, and listen to the stories -- and this low-tech fun is entertainment enough -- but then when you add the gambling to the mix, it makes for a truly memorable evening.

Hot Things and Stupid Decisions

Last Wednesday afternoon, my son Ian walked into the small bathroom off our living room,yelled "It's so hot in here!" and then ran out; I went to confirm this and he was right, it was so hot that you could feel the warmth radiating off the sink and toilet porcelain . . . and then I noticed that knob for the baseboard heater was turned up all the way . . . someone had turned the knob ALL the way up and this person must have done it in the morning and then closed the door to the bathroom, so the electric element had all day to roast the room-- and it certainly wasn't Ian, unless he was a very good actor and feigned his surprise at how hot the room was -- so I called over my other son, Alex, and showed him his handiwork, and he said, "I didn't know what it did!" and I said, "Then why did you touch it? Don't you remember when you shut off the furnace?" and though I was incensed for a moment, my anger subsided pretty quickly, because I remembered that several weeks ago, when my wife went away on a Ladies Weekend, I came down to the kitchen one morning and found that an area of our counter was extremely hot to the touch and then I noticed that the seltzer bottles and the coffee maker were also quite warm and this was because I left the toaster on all night (and so I implored my wife to let me get a digital toaster, because I have problems with the analog knob on the one we have, but she was having none of it -- she told me to learn how to use the knob, and I will have to give the same advice to my son Alex . . . and this raises an extremely deep philosophical question: if you are a knob, can you learn how to properly use one?

The Road in the Sky

Peter Heller's new novel The Dog Stars returns to a postapocalyptic world similar to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but this story is a tenth of a percent more fun than The Road, if only because Hig has a loyal dog named Jasper and loyal -- although grouchy and obsessively paranoid-- friend named Bangley, and Hig has infinitely more possibilities than the unamed father and son in The Road . . . though his world and his emotions are limited by the end of all things, he still has his plane to fly and new places and people to discover, even if the places are desolate and people are ruined . . . my favorite scenes are those of him flying, they are detailed and could only be written by somone as actually versed in adventure as the author, Peter Heller, who is a writer for Outside, National Geographic, and Men's Journal.

It's A Miracle That I Convinced SomeoneTo Marry Me

Right now in my English class we are the "Process Analysis" unit, which is a fancy way to describe a "How To" essay -- and so I made the kids get up in front of the class and describe some simple but interesting process to the class . . . how to hit a forehand, how to tie a slipknot, how to do a pirouette, etc. -- and I told them I wanted them to try this informal teaching activity so that they didn't end up like me . . . back when I was in graduate school, I applied to teach for The Princeton Review -- they were paying seventeen dollars an hour back in 1993 -- and I aced the SAT practice test and made it to the second stage of the interview, where you had to teach a group of people some simple process of your choice . . . I suppose they wanted to see how well you could give instructions and interact with a crowd . . . and the folks before me taught simple lessons on "how to cure the hiccups" and "how to draw Mickey Mouse" and then I got up in front of the room and taught people about "the evolution of the wing," a topic that always fascinated me . . . because half a wing doesn't seem to confer much of an evolutionary advantage to an animal, but an entire wing opens up entirely new vistas for a species to thrive in . . . and there are several theories on how this came to be -- one involving heat-regulation -- and, needless to say, this turned into a typical Awkward Moment of Dave . . . the room fell silent, in awe of my pathetic geekiness and my complete misinterpretation of the assignment, the audience, and what other human beings like to learn about . . . and (also needless to say) I did NOT get the job.

Good Thing This Belt Wasn't a Bunny Rabbit

My black leather belt got stuck in one of the loops of my blue jeans, which really annoyed me, and so I gave it a Lenny-esque yank and ripped it in half.

Little Nozzle Hides Out in My Kitchen For Three Years!

Three years ago, we completely remodelled our kitchen, and there are still some features that I haven't utilized . . . because I haven't noticed them yet; one such feature is a little silver nozzle on a hose that lives on our sink: you can pull it out and spray water at something from close range . . . and if I didn't see my wife using it the other day, I probably would have gone to my grave without noticing it.

The Sandy Seven

The "freshman fifteen" has been debunked, but I can attest that the "Sandy Seven" is real . . . I'm wearing it around my middle -- I attribute the weight gain to the concurrence of several unavoidable events 1) I had to finish all the food in my refrigerator before it spoiled 2) living in darkness results in alcohol abuse, laziness, and over-sleeping 3) once a few people in town got power back, it caused a chain reaction of dinner invitations, and so, as a direct consequence, more gluttony and alcohol abuse 4) once we got our power back, it was reason for celebration, which, of course, involved over-indulging in every way possible 5) the post-traumatic wind-down from the stress of Hurricane Sandy involved even more drinking and bingeing on Halloween candy (and if you could pro-rate Sandy's weight gain over an entire year, you'd be talking about the Freshman 180).

A Cinematic Analogy Both Succeeds and Fails in the Same Moment

I liked The Brothers Bloom, but I didn't love it -- it is definitely a film with more style than substance, which also describes the brothers themselves, who are extremely adept con-artists; we tour Eastern Europe with them, and the scenes are shot beautifully, but they happen so quickly that they actually lack drama . . . and for me to say something moves too fast means it must really be moving fast, because I don't have much of an attention span for slow films (Stalker almost killed me) but there is one thing I did love about the movie: Stephen's running gag -- when he meets someone, he always asks them to think of a card, and then he whips out his deck, cuts it, and presents the person with what should ostensibly be the card -- but it never is, he's not telepathic and he's always wrong, and so his brother asks him why he constantly repeats this pathetic failure of a trick, and Stephen says, "If I do it enough, someday it's going to work on someone, and then it will be the best damn card trick in the world" . . . I love this statistical approach to magic; I use the same method when I see an old student: I always take a guess at their name -- whether I am confident about this fact or not -- and while I often miss the mark, when I do get it right, they are always impressed . . . the other day in the library, I recognized a "kid" that I taught long ago . . . I recognized him despite the fact that he was a good thirty pounds heavier than when I taught him, and was also sporting a beard, and so I took a shot at his name and said,"Sebastian?" I said, and he turned his head and smiled, impressed that I remembered his name; it turns out that he's now thirty years old, which is wild in its own way, but when I explained my philosophy on guessing names and my analogy to The Brothers Bloom, I think I totally confused him . . . and, of course, I was breaking a cardinal rule of magic: a good magician should never reveal his tricks.