More My Speed

Although my plumbing skills are abysmal-- as is fitting and proper for an English teacher—I am capable of measuring, drilling, and screwing (even if I don't measure all that much, it's the motion of the driver, not the size of the screw . . . being an English teacher also makes me capable of recognizing and utilizing crass wordplay and innuendo) and so though I couldn't install the pipework and fixtures properly in our new sink and vanity, I WAS able to affix the towel rack (and I am glad they gave me two tiny Allen head tightening screws; I didn't understand why at first, but my wife said it was probably in case you lost one and then on my first attempt, the screw slipped out of my hand and slid down the drain—lost forever—so for my second attempt, I inserted the screw BEFORE I entered the bathroom with the ring and then tightened it with the tiny Allen wrench . . . even when it's easier, it's never easy).

Zman Knows Me Too Well (Fuck You Zman)

My buddy Whitney (a.k.a. Les Coole) and his co-host Penny Baker do a fantastic radio show on Tuesday nights on WODU, and last Tuesday they let the fans take over the playlist (with Penny Baker's approval, of course) and so I submitted a mini-theme-: three songs that share a mystery common denominator . . . my original three songs were "Love the One You're With" by Stephen Stills, "Where It's At" by Beck, and "Shake It Up" by The Cars-- but Whitney and Penny substituted Violent Femmes "Kiss Off" for "Love the One You're With"-- which was probably too classic rock for the show . . . anyway, fucking Zman guessed my mini-them ONE song in—so annoying—but he said he just "thought like an English teacher" and moments into "Where It's At" he guessed "songs that end in prepositions," which was correct- even though technically in the song "Kiss Off," off operates as an adverbial particle that modifies how you should kiss and it's the same grammatical situation with "Shake It Up" . . . but "Where It's At" and "Love the One You're With" truly end with prepositions functioning as prepositions- so the moral here is that the next time I submit a mini-theme, I'm NOT going to think like an English teacher, I'm going to think like a patent lawyer.

The Alarm is Off

Another school year in the books: we loaded the kids on the bus, I cleaned up my room, we chatted in the English office, I ran over to the vo-tech to pick up my son Ian's OSHA card, my friend and fellow English teacher Stacey did a fantastic and very teacherly graduation speech (41 minutes in) while I played some pickleball—because the unfortunate thing about being a graduation speaker is that you have to attend graduation—then I went to lunch with my wife (Tacoria) and took a nap . . . and while we do have a meeting tomorrow and grade sign-out (and a pool party) I don't have to set my alarm until next September.

I Do Need to Cut Down on My Pizza Intake . . .

The women in the English Department like to do things communally, especially get coffee from WaWa and pay too much for food delivery . . . and while I'll sometimes take part in these cooperative ventures-- especially coffee runs: I don't mind getting coffee for one or two people (although I prefer Rachel to Stacey, as Stacey's coffee order is always very complicated) but I'm more every-man-for-himself when it comes to getting food and I REFUSE to ever take part in overpriced food delivery . . . so today when I had to run an errand, I stopped by Pasquale's and got a slice of grandma pepperoni and a slice of mushroom pizza and then, when I went into the English office to relax and eat my food, I got bullied into sharing a sliver of each slice with Cunningham and Denise (because I had the audacity to go and buy food all by myself . . . the gall).

Pain: It Hurts

I went to the dermatologist today, and she used a liquid nitrogen spray to freeze off some actinic keratosis on my nose and the top of my head-- this was moderately painful-- but slightly less painful than earlier in the day, when Kyle, a powerful, left-handed, lanky youngster, clobbered me in the side of the face with a pickleball.

Crunchy

 

My wife makes her own granola (and now I'm spoiled: it's much more delicious than store-bought).

Happy Father's Day! Half Day?

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there . . . but honestly, considering how easy it is to become a dad-- I won't get into the details of THAT-- but there's no pushing a ten-pound baby out of your womb, no breastfeeding, no perimenopause, no pelvic floor weakness, no postpartum depression, no hemorrhoids, no cesarean section, and no bowel issues-- so maybe dads shouldn't get an entire day, maybe just a half-day?

Deatz Analyzes the Beats!

If you're looking for some music recs, my buddy Deatz has started a zine-like blog called Deatz Beats, where he posts playlists and oddball, musically adjacent anecdotes-- he's into a wide variety of music, but there's a lot of punk, electronic, experimental, and alternative stuff (and music for when you're full of rage).

The Method

At my age and fitness level, the rules of the game seem to be: no impact sports (pickleball, basketball, soccer, tennis) two days in a row-- and try not to play pickleball for much more than two hours-- and then right after playing an impact sport, go swimming at the YMCA in the colder, full-length competition pool-- just a few laps and some stretching and then a hot shower . . . and then you can actually walk into New Brunswick for the USA vs. Australia World Cup game and not look like a limping geezer.

Addendum: the method did NOT work today; I got a hamstring cramp at Destination Dogs while watching the game . . . not incapacitating, but maybe I shouldn't always swim after impact sports.

Not So Crazy, After All These Years . . .

Teenagers don't know who Paul Simon is.

This is Thriller Time

It's nearly summer, and so I'm taking a break from Robert Caro's twelve-hundred-page bio of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, and consuming some thrillers . . . I recently finished The Dry, by Jane Harper, a grim, tautly written, well-paced murder mystery in a rural Australian town full of Bogans (Aussie rednecks) and regret, and now I'm reading the second Thursday Murder Club book, The Man Who Died Twice, and then I've got Anthony Horowitz's sixth Hawthorne installment, "A Deadly Episode," waiting for me on hold at the library . . . so I'm turning pages, happy and intrigued, and learning absolutely nothing.

Jersey's Finest

Today was the best possible weather-- sunny and dry and 78 degrees-- and I know other parts of the country experience this regularly (fuck you, San Diego) but for Jersey, it was a slice of heaven . . . I biked over to Buccleuch Park for some pickleball, biked home to a lovely ravioli dinner, and because it was so dry, despite all the exercise, my shoes and feet didn't reek.

One More Day (of classes) to Go!

 

The last days of school with seniors are taxing and silly-- there's nothing at stake, most of them are exempt from the final exam, and they should really just be released from the grind-- but that's not how it goes, so instead, to kill some time on the last A-day, I showed them Father Guido Sarducci's "Five Minute University" -- a bit about starting a college that teaches you what the average college graduate remembers five years after college-- so economics is reduced to "supply and demand"-- and then I had them present something they would remember from elementary school, middle school, and high school five years or fifteen years or fifty years from now . . . and I told them a few stories (how to avoid getting "poled" on the Linwood playground-- "poling" someone consisted of a couple of large bullies grabbing a little kid, each bully grabbing and arm and a leg, then lifting the small child so he was horizontal to the ground, spread-eagled, and consequently ramming him, testicles first, into the basketball pole . . . the way I avoided this fate was to make friends with a giant kid with a mustache who hit puberty in fourth grade and stay near him at all times . . . until, of course, the next year, when I hit puberty and could start bullying younger frailer folk and continue the cycle) and then my students presented various memories and lessons-- some cute: the parachute games in elementary gym class and some more embarrassing, but it was a fairly fun way to pass the time before I had to sign yearbooks, which is always a chore.

One More Act to Go!

 

It nearly killed me (and Shakespeare is to blame . . . too many things happen in this section of the play), but I have finally finished my Pig on the Wall episode analyzing Act IV of Hamlet . . . so if you love Shakespeare and you've got two hours to kill, check it out.

Crisis Averted! Miraculous!

I was midway through Jane Harper's fantastic (and very grim) Australian thriller The Dry when I realized the Libby Kindle loan had expired and so I put my Kindle on airplane mode so that I wouldn't lose the book, but that didn't work-- it disappeared from my Kindle and I still need to solve the mystery . . . did the drought drive Luke Hadler mad, leading him off his entire family (except the baby) or is there another culprit . . . luckily, Highland Park library had a copy of the novel in the library . . . when the fuck does that happen? so I just biked over there, unperturbed by the heat because I was on a mission, and not only was the novel on the shelf, exactly where it was supposed to be, but I also borrowed the second Thursday Murder Club mystery-- which I thought was on hold but was actually sitting on the shelf, so now I've got a couple of actual bona fide library books to read (and thus I'll have to wear my progressive glasses) but still, this is rather unprecedented and definitely a minor miracle.

It Was a Good Day

I took my last personal day today, and it's been a pretty good day, pretty pretty good . . . I walked the dog-- no barkin', no smog-- and then worked on my podcast, ate some leftover pizza for breakfast, went to Ace and played several hours of indoor pickleball-- where I'm trouble-- and then drove straight from pickleball to the pool and swam a few laps, came home and took a two-hour nap, roused myself and went out to Shanghai Dumpling for Ian's birthday-- he turns twenty-one tomorrow-- and now I'm settling in to watch the USA vs. Paraguay World Cup game, and I've got the brew and the chronic, and I didn't have to use my AK-- I don't even own an AK-- so I gotta say, it was a good day.

OG!OG!OG! Hustling From the Inbound Pass!

I went out and had a couple of beers for the first half of the Knicks game last night-- 3 dollar Miller Lights at our local bar!-- then I walked home, morose and pessimistic, at halftime and fell asleep-- the Knicks were down 29 points, so I didn't think they had a chance in hell, and I was exhausted from watching all this late-night basketball-- luckily, my son woke me up when he got home from New Brunswick, and I watched the final minutes with him, his girlfriend, and his buddy Gary-- and when the Knicks completed the largest comeback in NBA playoff history, sealing the game with OG Anunoby's tip-in off a long Brunson three-point attempt, we all screamed so loudly we woke up my wife (and scared the dog) but the real issue here is this: what are we going to call this monumental, life-changing basket? . . . The Perfect Putback? The Hand of OG? The Timely Tip? . . . or just "The Tip" . . . scratch that one, that doesn't sound right . . . but it needs to be called something, I'm sure the internet will figure it out.

Getting in Shape for the Battle of Zela

Today, after a soupy day at school, I went to the YMCA pool to swim laps, and I would like to say "I came, I swam, I conquered," but I haven't swum all that much lately, so it was more like "I came, I swam, I did not drown."

Focus This

Our principal sat my friend and colleague Stacey down at the prom and asked her if I was returning to teach next year or if I was perhaps secretly retiring-- and Stacey assured him that I WAS returning for another year of fun and chaos-- but the reason he was asking is that I somehow missed and did not respond to FIVE emails asking me to sign my letter of intent and contract . . . this was very embarrassing, as I have been on the ol' email several times in the past month (I'm not a diligent emailer, but I do check it occasionally) and there's proof in my inbox and sent messages that I've read emails and responded to emails recently, but I somehow missed these-- despite the double red exclamation points and all caps-- and I first blamed the FOCUSED and OTHER tabs but I think the real reason is I pinned too many important messages to the top and I wasn't really seeing many new emails . . . whatever the reason, it certainly wasn't my fault-- but I had to drive over to the Board of Ed building on my off period and sign my letter because the high school secretary had sent them all back over there and so I met another very nice secretary with an Irish accent and she said that I "wasn't the only one" but my colleagues insist she said this just tto make me feel better.

Dave . . . Not Only Does He LOOK Like an Old Man . . .

I heard an excellent Built to Spill song a couple of weeks ago on my buddy Whitney's radio show, and since then, I've been playing the band's catalog nonstop on Spotify-- and so I got very excited today when I was walking down the English hallway, and I heard "The Plan" emanating from my friend Denise's classroom-- I was like: Holy shit! Built to Spill! What are the odds! I wonder why she's playing this song? and so I popped in and started rambling on about how excited I was to hear a song from the 1999 album "Keep It Like a Secret," an album I just started listening to in its entirety, an album full of sprawling, catchy, slightly experimental guitar-driven prog rock-- reminiscent of "The Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips-- and then, in the midst of my musical monologue, I realized that "The Plan" was not emanating from her classroom; it was emanating from MY phone, which was in my pocket, and my soliloquy and my consciousness just sort of fizzled out, and Denise said, "You're acting like a crazy person," and I agreed with her, pulled out my phone, shut off the music, and rambled on, singing my song, round the world . . . you get the picture.