Go Knicks!

My wife returns from Florida tomorrow morning, and then life will regain its usual rhythm-- not that I did anything wild while she was gone, it was mainly business as usual-- but I tried to do a bit of socializing even though my instinct when I am left to my own devices is to hole up and read and get high and strum my guitar: I went to Happy Hour yesterday at B2 Bistro, but I only had one beer (and then a Coke, which Cunningham roundly insulted for drinking) because I had pickleball practice at 7 PM and needed my wits about me (Terry also only had one beer because he was reffing a soccer match at 7 PM but he had a Diet Coke after his beer) and pickleball practice was fun-- my calf is healed and my new paddle seems to be functional (Vatic Pro V-sol Power) but because my friend Ann wasn't there-- her knee hurt-- there was only one other non-Mandarin speaker at practice and so I really did not understand exactly what was happening-- and then this morning I substituted for Catherine and had coffee at her friend Johanna's house (Connell and Adrian were there too, so I wasn't the only guy crashing) and I talked to my neighbor Pernille quite a bit about the state of education and AI (she's a Rutgers professor) and tonight I'm hanging out with Ian and his friend (and possibly Alex) for the Knicks game-- I'm buying sandwiches so that the youngsters will socialize with me-- but I will be very glad when Cat is back in Jersey.

So Hard to Find Good Help . . .

I recognize that this Study Hall bathroom duty is a very easy job-- but it's also interminably boring . . . class should not be 83 minutes long: I've read, I've graded, I've planned, I've paced, I've stretched, and now I've even written this sentence-- I've done everything except fall asleep, which is what I feel like doing.

Dave as a Bachelor is No Gourmand

My mom had heart surgery yesterday, and she is already checked out of the hospital-- the miracles of modern medicine . . . and she didn't even need Donald Trump to lay hands on her!-- meanwhile, back at the ranch, I miss my wife-- she went down to Naples with my brother to help my mom out . . . Ian and I have been eating the baked ziti she made before she left, but we're nearly at the end of it, so we got some sandwiches from Park Deli for dinner tonight-- and I did cut up some peppers and lettuce and cucumbers and eat a salad with the ziti last night, to get some roughage-- but it seems that if my wife leaves town, the menu mainly consists of pasta and beer (and takeout) and so I will be glad when she returns.

Summer in April . . .

I took off work today to monitor my mom's progress during surgery-- she's getting a cow valve to replace a valve in her heart?-- and things are looking good-- she's through the surgery and in recovery now, and my brother and my wife are down in Naples, Florida to help her out-- although the recovery is supposed to be very fast . . . and, oddly, it's hotter here in central Jersey than it is in Florida-- I was just soaking my wife's garden so that the spring flowers don't shrivel up and die-- school is going to be very, very hot tomorrow (they had the heat on over the weekend).

Some Things That Need to Be Said

 

It's time to set the record straight: Trump has a history of sabotaging Medicaid and ACA subsidies, so it's hard to believe him as an angelic healer, and Roy Ayers-- who made some very groovy jazz/funk-- could have done better with the chorus of his 1976 tune "Everybody Loves Sunshine"— he must have heard America's "Horse With No Name" and been inspired by the lyric "there were plants and birds and rocks and things" because his bridge, "just bees and things and flowers," gets FOUR repetitions . . . he could have said "trees" or "leaves" instead of "things."

Dave With an Idea To Help the Youth

In the newest Plain English episode, "The Job Market for Young People is Brutal," Derek Thompson talks to Rogé Karma about the reasons for the terrible job prospects for young people and how this is NOT all to be blamed on AI . . . the job market is bad for young people with college degrees and possibly worse for people without degrees and this stems from inflation and consequent higher interest rates, and the Great Resignation, and Trump caused ecosnomic volatility-- tariffs, trade wars, the Iran debacle-- and also certainly the ageing of our workforce, the fact that people are working longer, and the gigantic age wage gap . . . old people make so much more than young people now and it pushes adulthood back-- the ability of young people to buy a house, get married, move-out, and start a business or start-up-- and this leads me to believe that a job like mine-- a teacher-- and also police, firemen, and probably a lot of other state jobs-- the salaries should be on a bell curve-- so that you make your highest salary when you are around 50 years old and then your salary starts to decline-- so that there's an incentive for you to leave and take you pension and not hang around forever and block young people from getting jobs.

Planned Pickleball Obsolescence?

No time to write a coherent sentence because I'm shopping for a new pickleball paddle-- which is a completely incoherent experience . . . there are too many types . . . and the stupid things wear out in six to nine months, and I've had mine for over a year.

Fan Fistfight in My First Game . . .

I refereed my first  soccer match today-- a U-15 game in North Brunswick-- and I was certainly nervous before I left the house-- checking my equipment, reviewing all the rules, making a cheat sheet of various fouls, but my wife said not to worry, that the assignor wouldn't "throw me to the wolves" for my first game, he'd put me with some experienced refs . . . and then I arrived and met one of the other refs and he was technically experienced—but not very-- he had done five games so far-- and then we waited for the third ref to show up, hoping it was someone with more experience than us-- and luckily the third ref, though only 21 years old, was more experienced than us-- he had been reffing for six years-- and then we ran into a hitch checking players and coaches in-- the coach for one team didn't have a game card and the coach and all the players need to have a game card-- but, after some doing, he was able to produce one electronically-- and then the game was fairly slow-paced for the most part, the players weren't that big and it was very windy and the field was kind of bumpy and lousy, so there weren't that many fast-paced attacks or brutal contact-- but with about ten minutes left, something happened in the far corner, so I couldn't see or hear it but I guess a mom claimed that a player grabbed his crotch or something similar, and then parents started chirping at each other and before we knew it, there was a fistfight on the sideline and other altercations were brewing and so the young center ref crossed his arms and ended the game-- and he was really out of sorts and upset-- he said nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before and he'd never had to end the game early-- so it was quite a mess and hopefully not indicative of future games (tomorrow I do a U-9 game, so it should be chillaxed).

Dave . . . Teaching Words

Our district pretty much told us to pause instruction this week because so many kids have religious holidays (Orthodox Easter-- and we have a lot of Coptic Christians in our school . . . not sure why we didn't have this week off? but I guess the borard wanted Spring Break to coincide with Passover? it's impossible to please everyone) and so I decided to show a movie that fit with our current text: "Always Be Optimizing" by Gia Tolentino-- and show the kids what happened around the time when they were born and give them an explanation as to why they might not be able to afford a house or get a mortgage and might be living in their parents' basement for the near future—and so I reviewed the terms of when various agents in the marketplace optimized mortgages, mortgage rates, adjustable mortgages, mortgage-backed securities, collateral debt obligations, credit default swaps, and lots of other financial tools and this led to the real estate bubble of 2008-- so I taught them lots of words and then showed them "The Big Short" because I was also looking for an example of "the cyborg" in Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto"—which is alluded to in the Tolentino text-- and this is a person that embraces the artificiality of the technological world that we live in and both works within the system and rebels against it, sometimes violently-- and there's no better example of this than Michael Burry . . . the the Michael Burry that Christian Bale portrays in the film.

Dave . . . Learning Words

A kid in my class proudly showed me her new Driver's License, and I said, "Nice . . . and even the picture looks pretty good!" and then Frankie, the boy sitting next to her said, "I'm mogging in mine"-- which means he's looking even BETTER in his picture (I needed this explained to me . . . and apparently it's a bastardization of the acronym AMOG . . . Alpha Male in the Group?)

Referee Imposter Syndrome

I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down to write something, but I'm too distracted to focus: apparently, I'm refereeing my first soccer matches this weekend, and I took the course back in November, so I need to review my notes, my pre-game checklist, practice my flag-pointing techniques, and check my whistle.

You Can't Control How You Sleep

I slept funny last night . . . but my neck doesn't think it's funny at all.

Back to School (without Rodney Dangerfield)

A LONG day after a short Spring Break . . . the first day back to school is always shocking and exhausting-- but I still managed to teach three senior English classes, walk a few laps around the track with Brady, attend the faculty meeting, and run to the library during my off period (I took out an absurd book-- the 1300 page comprehensive account Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert-- perhaps because I finally finished Stalingrad . . . I did read a regular book between epic historical tomes, Liz Moore's Long Bright River-- which I read in two days, a gripping page-turner-- highly recommended).

Pathetic Pathetic Fallacy

My short Spring Break is over-- a measly five days long (because our district did not budget any snow days) and the weather is appropriately rainy, dark, and glum: mirroring my emotions about returning to school, and the long stretch of five-day weeks where I will (futilely) try to educate fourth-quarter seniors-- and while normally, in reality, the weather does not give a shit about human emotions, in literature the weather often mirrors the themes of the situation (for example, the oppressive heat at the end of the Great Gatsby-- Tom is sweating like a pig, but Gatsby remains cool and perspiration-free) and it seems the weather is doing me this service today-- perhaps because I teach English and have oft-mentioned the "pathetic fallacy" to my students-- but whatever, the reason, this is the perfect way to end a short (but quite fun) Spring Break-- with the weather showing fallacious empathy towards my returning to work.

Over the Hamlet Hump!

 

I am past the halfway point in my insane podcasting project: a thorough analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet with a myriad of embedded clips from various productions-- it's close to breaking me because not only am I producing all this carefully edited content, but I'm also trying to achieve professional sound quality and loudness (-16 LUFS? should I normalize, compress, or use a limiter-- or do all three? it's nuts) but I'm over the Act III hump, so it's clear sailing from here (aside from the pirates) and while Act Three, Part One is elegant and professional, Act Three, Part Two is much more akin to what it's like to be in my classroom-- at times, things get a bit weird and meta . . . I hope you enjoy it.

New Stuff at the New Museum

Took the train back from the Big Apple today . . . though we only spent one night, we did quite a bit: we got a great deal on Hotwire for the Sheraton Tribeca (probably because it's under serious construction, it doesn't really seem safe to have patrons, but they did let us check in early, and there's a lovely rooftop bar, and they gave us two drink vouchers!) and we did lunch in Chinatown at Shanghai 21 (cash only) and then went to the New Museum, which has just reopened-- it's a fantastic sci-fi space and all the exhibits are on the theme of "New Humans: Memories of the Future," so surreal modern art and sci-fi exhibits (including the original "Alien" sculpture that inspired the creatures in the film and the original animatronic E.T. robot) and then we did something new-- we couldn't secure tickets for the Comedy Cellar or Village Underground so we stood on the waitlist line-- which was really easy because once they take your name, you're free to wander until right before the show-- and they called our name right at showtime and we got to see five outstanding comics (Erin Jackson, Dan Soder, Greer Barnes, Daniel Simonsen, and Adndrew Schulz) and today, before checking out, we got some excellent bagels at Leon's and then-- miracle beyond miracles-- we caught the subway just as it was leaving and THEN we caught the Northeast Corridor Jersey Transit just before it was leaving . . . public transportation working the way it always should!

A Short Sentence about a Long Book

I am on a train so I will keep this brief, to avoid getting trainsick: I just finished Vadily Grossman's epic and enormous novel Stalingrad . . . and I will be taking a break before I tackle Life and Fate.

Bipolar Beach Day

Ahh . . . Spring Break . . . finally: Cat and I headed to the beach, and while the water was very, very cold, the air was alternatively very very warm and randomly-- if the breeze shifted-- quite chilly; we ate amazing sandwiches at the Speakeatery in Asbury and then stopped for some beer at the Source Farmhouse Brewery (I had the nitro-conditioned Irish Red Ale . . . it took several minutes to pour and had the character of Guinness but with a malty flavor: delicious) and then we got some bread and cheese at Delicious Orchards . . . a good day (aside from the traffic and construction on Route 18 . . . will it ever end?)

Dave is Brave

I have completed my course of three hyaluronic acid injections into my right knee, so now my knee is full of this gel-like substance, which is supposed to lubricate the joint and reduce arthritic inflammation-- which it seems to be doing-- but I also pulled some muscle behind this knee and down into my calf-- so while my knee feels better, I'm still limping around . . . and I don't think this kind of bullshit is going to end until I'm pushing daisies (and I should point out that I valiantly let interns deliver two of the three shots, so I consider myself responsible for fostering the next generation of medical science).

Dave Defeats the Youth

Spring "Fake" has begun-- I headed off to school today, rather glumly, because this was supposed to be Spring Break, but we used too many snow days, and so we have school today and tomorrow-- and the day was something of a waste but we made the best of it-- I oly had six students first period (in a class of 28) and my two other classes were less than half full, so instead of doing my planned lesson, we did a REAL test of intelligence: we played Scattergories-- which is an incredibly stressful word game and good way to ward off dementia-- and I'm proud to say that I crushed these teenagers (and I'm sincerely proud of this-- even though their brains are atrophied from cell phones, social media, and AI, Scattergories is a game where you can lose to a twelve-year-old if you lapse in focus).