We spent this wet Memorial Day Weekend moving my son Alex out of his New Brunswick apartment and cleaning the place up-- and I made the requisite drive today with a box spring and mattress roped to the top of the car, and now our basement, study, and storage area is full of his crap-- but it's nice to have him home for a while (although he's doing job interviews so maybe not for long) and the dog is very very happy to have the whole family under one roof.
Knicks! Knicks?
Alec, Catherine, and I went to the River Road Tavern last night for cheap beer, fairly cheap Blanton's, and great cheesesteaks . . . and to watch the Knicks (because there's no dedicated sports bar in New Brunswick right now-- annoying) and the crowd in this joint was comically diverse-- all the ethnicities of central Jersey in one small dive bar-- mainly there to watch the Knicks dominate once again . . . this is an absurd run, ten wins in a row and a +225 point differential over that stretch-- but my son tells me that the teams from the West are very, very good, and if the Knicks make the finals, things won't be as easy.
Schizophrenic Saturday, So Far
A raw, rainy Memorial Day Weekend Saturday, which has had a bipolar quality-- I had so much fun playing pickleball this morning with my brother, Ann, and Craig-- we started at 7:30 AM at Ace in North Brunswick (they open at 6 AM?!) and played together for two hours, and then Marc and I whipped all comers ont he challenge courts until I realized I had to get out of there and help my son move out of his apartment in New Brunswick-- that was NOT so much fun and more about carrying overpacked bags of clothes and books (children don't know how to repsonsibly pack things) and tearing apart and tossing old furniture, but we got done a decent amount (although the job is not done, I will have to go back Sunday and Monday-- yuck) and now I am very sore-- I am too old to do two physical things in one day) but eagerly awaiting tonight's Knicks game.
Maybe Because I Came of Age in the 1980s?
I am getting into Roxy Music's older stuff-- and while I'm definitely enjoying it, sometimes it's a bit too over-dramatic and campy for me-- I get why For Your Pleasure (1973) is regarded as the ultimate glam-rock-avant-garde album . . . but maybe my taste is basic: because I still think Avalon (1982) is their best.
The Dank
Three cheers for the drizzle, the damp, and the clouds-- I know I won't be singing in the rain three days from now, but after that wicked heat wave, I am truly enjoying the dank.
Blissful Beach Day
My son and his girlfriend took the train to Long Branch yesterday to beat the heat, but they didn't know that over a thousand kids from Newark were doing the same for "Senior Skip Day"-- so they got a first-hand view of some teenage chaos, both on the train and on the beach.
Dave Changes His Tune About a Tune
I have often criticized the inane, vague, occasionally cryptic, occasionally matter-of-fact lyrics of the song "A Horse with No Name" but I'm old enough to admit when I'm wrong, and I now realize I was dead wrong (and beating a dead horse) when I knocked these lyrics-- and there is great irony in this-- because if the narrator is accurate about the heat being hot, then his brain, like mine at this very moment, is addled by the high temperature, and when he describes the desert as being comprised of "plants and birds and rocks and things" he's not being obtuse on purpose-- he can't think of a better word than "things" because his consciousness is baked by the sun (and the song is only two chords because the music is stunted from the heat and parched ground) and so the structure and lyrics to this song are not imprecise and ill-defined; they are fuzzy and nebulous due to weather . . . this song is an extended pathetic fallacy and quite perfect.
The Heat is Hot
The heat is hot, and my brain is addled, and I wish I lived within walking distance of the ocean (the stupid Raritan River does nothing to cool things off).
Another Ordeal at Eagle's Landing
Today, I refereed three games in Monroe with Bill-- a grouchy old codger who is still running centers at age 80!-- and while there were a few moments of conflict . . . some disputes about player passes, some toxic masculinity amongst the three dudes coaching the Brick team, and a guy coaching his team on the spectating side of the field-- who Bill excoriated and relocated-- but still, this was a walk in the park compared to my second game yesterday, out at Eagle's Landing in North Brunswick (the location of my first game as a ref and also the setting my first fan fistfight . . . perhaps this field is cursed for me) when, with thirty seconds left in the half of a U-13 game, the goalie, a girl, and a player in the box had a small collision-- which looked like nothing-- until the offensive player, who was lying prone, started shrieking-- and when I jogged over and saw the injury, for a moment my brain couldn't process it and then I nearly puked-- a compound fracture between the knee and the ankle-- so the kid's leg looked like it was turned askew and had an extra bend in it-- yikes-- we called 911 and it took fifteen long minutes for the ambulance and the police to arrive-- they drove out on the grass field while we milled around-- and both coaches agreed to abandon the match-- not that we could even restart because there was no moving this child-- he was a trooper after the initial yelling and shrieking, which occurred when he turned and saw the injury-- but he did NOT want the EMTs touching his leg or moving him, so then a second ambulance came and I think that's the one that administers pain meds and such, and the poor kid was on the away team so he lived all the way down in Manchester, over an hour away-- but I assume they were goign to take him to a local hospital-- though our work was done once the game was abandoned, I hung out for a while at the site, because the two home coaches were brothers who graduated from East Brunswick High School, where I work, so we chatted about the state of high school to kill time while watching the medical crew do their work . . . and I'll tell you: I could not get that image out of my head yesterday and ast night, when I went to sleep-- I don't think I've seen anything like that since I was a little kid.
Saturday Stuff
I just refereed a soccer match on a very large turf field, and the center ref-- Carlo-- is seventy-five years old! . . . I hate the phrase "seventy-five years young" but in this case, it might actually apply . . . and then I took the cash I made from the game and pretty much fed it into my car and then I returned home for a break between games, and my son Ian, who I woke up this morning because I couldn't find any water bottles-- after searching and searching in the cabinets and the dishwasher-- my son Ian showed me that the two bottles I was looking for were sitting right in plain view on the counter-- pretty embarrassing-- but meanwhile, he's dealing with some sort of situation where he threw his blanket into his cactus, and now his hands and his blanket are covered in cactus quills, so we're all idiots (but I hope I can ref for another twenty years).
A Surreal and Mind Boggling Afternoon
My son graduated from Rutgers today —now we have an aerospace engineer in the family —and the last time I attended a Rutgers graduation was in 1995 . . . when my wife graduated.
There Are Rules Here
In the last weeks of school, my wife randomly selects a king/queen for the day in her fifth-grade class-- so every kid gets a turn to be a classroom monarch and as such, they are entitled to certain privileges . . . they get to sit in the teacher chair, they choose a prize from the prize box, they get to be first in line AND they get to make five rules for the day-- and these are the (quite impressive) rules that her first queen created:
1. Everyone had to adopt a food-based nickname (Tasty Taco, Ms. Sushi, Dr. Brownie, etcetera)
2. If you had to throw something out in the garbage, you had to moonwalk to get there;
3. If you left the room, when you re-entered, you received a "silent celebration"
4. If you had to sharpen your pencil, you had to proceed to the sharpener in slow motion . . . I really enjoyed this rule as it is reminiscent of "the lead game"
5. At the end of the day, there would be a paper airplane competition . . .
and my assessment: these are rules to live by, and I will be instituting them in my class (and from this time forward, please refer to me as Mole Poblano).
Dave Remembers What He Forgot
At some point after the summer, I totally forgot about my Big Weird Musical Project-- but no worries, now I have returned collecting and cataloging all my favorite albums (and other notable albums that come up in my research) in a Google Sheet, ostensibly to eventually print this spreadsheet out so I have a handy reference guide that I can peruse, the way we used to peruse shelves of CDs or albums, or racks of tapes . . . I'm up to 487 albums so perhaps when I hit 500 I'll print out a copy (and put it up on Gheorghe) but until then, if you've got any oddball albums you've been listening to that I might like, send them my way; lately, I've been grooving to "Last Nite" by Larry Carlton and "Street Dreams" by Lyle Mays (and everything by Roy Ayers).
End of an Era
Friday afternoon, my wife and I hustled over to Clydz in New Brunswick-- the grungy hipster basement martini bar with the excellent happy hour-- for perhaps the last time . . . or the last time in this location; this was the bar we went to after we got engaged (back in 1998) and a place where we have enjoyed many, many martinis and many good times-- I think it's being demolished in a week and then sometime this fall, Clydz will be resurrected in a much more modern venue up the street in the Helix-- but it won't be the same.
Eight Arms and Nine Brains
Ray Nayler's sci-fi novel The Mountain in the Sea is not an easy read, but contains plenty of (sea) food for thought-- the novel takes place in the near-ish future around the Con Dao archipelago in the South China Sea, where octopi have evolved the capability to use tools and a symbolic language-- and while there are some thriller and sci-fi tropes (there's an android, an AI powered fishing vessel, and plenty of international intrigue) the bulk of the narrative is philosophical, concentrating on trying to understand the perspective of a different, decentralized consciousness (Nagel's famous essay "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" is referenced) and really the book is like the film Arrival . . except that the aliens aren't from space, they are from a foreign watery place right here on earth, but the communication problem is just as intractable.
Happy Mother's Day!
Eleven years ago, the kids and I made a Mother's Day video called "A Day Without Mom" and then my wife and the kids made a derivative but even more ambitious video entitled "A Day Without Dad"-- so for this Mother's Day, the boys and I recreated the original video . . . it's not quite as cute, now that my children are taller than me (and we did have some filming difficulties, but we weathered the mishap-- the show must go on!-- and reshot the necessary footage).
I Hate Driving and I Hate Drivers
Today, on our drive to Avenel for a funeral service, it seemed like many of the people on the road operating motor vehicles had never done so before-- perhaps they were youngsters who had stolen these cars and were joyriding? . . . and, of course, I couldn't tell if these were underage drivers running stop signs, making illegal turns, changing lanes without warning, stopping in strange places, and tailgating because theses days, it seems everyone in New Jersey has tinted windows-- which also makes it very difficult to ride a bike, because you can never make eye-contact with the driver to see if they know you exist and are not going to run you over when you cross the road.
Dave Fully Commits
For the first time in months, I really hustled up and down the court at 6:30 AM basketball-- and my hamstring felt fine-- and not only did I really commit to running and getting back on D, but also (in true Nick fashion) I committed many fouls-- if they counted, I wouldn't have lasted past the first game.
I Am an Idiot
For Mother's Day, the boys and I are remaking a YouTube video that we filmed a decade ago called "A Day Without Mom"-- it's a hypothetical imagining of how rough our lives would be if Catherine weren't there . . . and while I still have to edit together the new clips, I'm lucky that there are new clips to edit-- when we had one more scene to film, the boys asked me to check the audio, and I realized I had not taken any video of the boys; I had pressed the photo button, not the record button-- so all I had were a few still pictures of each scene-- but the boys gamely redid every scene (once again) and hopefully the finished product will be a nostalgic and cute walk down memory lane for my wife.
What is Your Ween "Walk Out" Music
This was the question posed to me by my buddy Whitney while I was trying to cook dinner-- he's choosing "I'll Be Your Johnny on the Spot" while I would go with "Take Me Away" or "Awesome Sound"—but of course, there's no right answer here; it just depends on how you feel like walking out.
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