I am hoping today is the last time I review the Trojan War in English class--or with anyone, for that matter-- but to explain Act II, scene ii of Hamlet, it had to be done, and I did draw a lovely chart on the board, with all the main players: Achilles, Paris, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Hector, King Menelaus, King Priam, Queen Hecuba, Pyrrus, and of course, the "Face that Launched 1000 Ships" . . . Helen-- and I did learn something new today, as I wondered if the Greeks would have launched 1000 ships if Helen was NOT the most beautiful woman in the land, if she were homely-- but I did a bit of research and apparently, the Greeks STILL would have laid siege to Troy to bring her back, even if Helen were a horsefaced buck-toothed bride with a great sense of humor, because of The Oath of Tyndareus . . . this oath legally and socially bound kings Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, etc. to mobilize their forces, regardless of what Helen looked like because Paris had violated and betrayed his host Menelaus and abducted his wife, but I'm sure the Greeks were more motivated because she was so attractive, because well . . . men.
Dave Perseveres, A Little (But With Profanity)
I thought I was having a bad day because one of my Creative Writing students alerted me that she could only see two of her assignments in our grading platform (Genesis) and the rest were invisible, and it turned out that some bizarre little toggle switch deep inside the assignment settings called "Show in Parents Module" was switched to NO, and so I had to manually reset all these little toggle switches during my lunch period (and then I found the culprit, a default in the global settings that had mysteriously switched halfway through the quarter—insane) but then I thought about the plight of Nuri and Afra in the novel I finished yesterday, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, and how these refugees from the Syrian civil war, who lost their child in a bombing, and traveled from camp to camp, carrying the burden of PTSD, grief, guilt, hallucinations, blindness, and regret—and somehow persevered, with very little to live for, and thinking about this novel made me feel a little less beleaguered, but just a little (and the incident was quite useful in Creative Writing class, where we were modernizing Aesop-type fables to reflect modern morals and lessons—it was the perfect example, and they actually witnessed me melt down about it, curse our grading platform, and then they saw me solve the mystery and carry on with my job).
Keep It Up, Sedaris!
David Sedaris is in fine form in his new essay collection, The Land and Its People—if you like his brand of grouchy, gay-Larry-David-style joke-making . . . this book is less grim than Happy-Go-Lucky and Calypso, as Sedaris seems to be following the advice of a writing teacher he had back in 1990, a British woman named Freda Garmaise, who told him the only rule of writing comedy is NOT "don't punch down" but in fact "always be as tasteless as possible"—so there are lots of tasteless punch-lines and images in this book, and even some tasteless jokes in his essay about meeting the Pope—and, as with most David Sedaris books, I inhaled this thing and finished it in two days . . . I wish I could savor the humor, but his sentence-writing is so adept, fluid, and surprising that I just want to keep going—and I hope Sedaris keeps going—and I have the same wish for Larry David-- I hope Sedaris keeps going, even if his material gets thin, because I like his writing style, his tone, and his tasteless jokes.
Note to Self: City Walking Requires Good Shoes!
Do You Believe in the Almighty Ramen?
While my high school students have never heard of the Protestant Reformation, purgatory, the Spanish Armada, or the obscure Bruce Springsteen song "Born to Run," they do all know that you can fix a toilet with ramen noodles and super glue—even though this method DOES NOT WORK, for obvious reasons: structural instability, water expansion and mold, leakage of wastewater, etcetera, etcetera . . . but they saw it on TikTok, and they believe in it, just as much as the Medieval Catholics believed in the concept of Purgatory.
Alfred Hitchcock's "The Leaves"
I raked a bunch of leaves yesterday, and Ian helped me bag them-- and now, today, there are even MORE leaves all over our front and back lawn, it's like I never raked them-- the leaves just keep on coming, an onslaught of leaves, there's nothign you can do to stop them-- AND, to add insult to injury, it's hot and humid outside, not at all raking weather . . . so I made a pronouncement to my wife, the household, and the neighborhood in general: "I am not raking any more leaves until it's cold and crisp out!" . . . also, pro-tip: if you wait a while to rake your leaves, sometimes it gets really windy and the leaves blow off your lawn and down the street and they are no longer your responsibility.
Winter is Coming, But Not Today
It was unseasonably warm and sunny today in Central Jersey—and not just the weather—my fellow English teachers, who are pretty much across-the-board liberal, were rejoicing over the Democratic "blue tsunami" . . . and many of them were wearing the color blue—I was also quite pleased about the rebuke of our Douchebag in Chief, but I didn't check the election results until AFTER I had donned my blue button-down shirt; ostensibly, I wore this because of the near-record high temperatures, as this particular shirt has vents in the back, but I must have also had some sort of subconscious desire to wear blue . . . anyway, the thing I am most pleased about is a fantastic Trumpian moment at the start of his eve-of-the-midterms speech in front of the reflecting pool (which, oddly, was ABOUT the reflecting pool, not any political issue) when Trump ad-libbed (I hope!) an incredible paradoxical turd wrapped inside an enigma encased in fecal matter: "I've kept every single promise I made, except far more . . . I've actually kept far more promises than I made."
The Slow Horses Universe (Like the Marvel Universe, Except Opposite)
Diana Taverner: "Why do you keep calling it by name?"
Jackson Lamb: "These products won't place themselves."
Yellow Shirt Epiphanies
Two things I realized about refereeing soccer:
1) similar to teaching, you have ot be strategic about when you go to the bathroom;
2) when you AR several games in a row—and work a particular sideline—you should switch sides from game to game (two weeks ago, I neglected to do this, and I received a sunburn on the right side of my face—but yesterday, I switched sides, and my sun exposure was much more even).
OK, Now Just Leave My Clock Alone!
While in the past, I have certainly ranted and raved about Daylight Saving Time, this year—right at this moment—I am feeling good about the time shift, mainly because I NEVER FUCKING ADJUSTED FROM SIX MONTHS AGO . . . so I got a good night's sleep last night, and—for once in my life—woke up at the proper time—so now can we just leave it and be done with this bullshit?
Halloween Should Only Occur on a Dark Cold Gloomy Rainy Tuesday
My dog hates Halloween (and so do I, especially when it falls on a Saturday).
Halloweek is Too Much Halloween
This week, our kitchen table (and most every counter space) has been an unholy, ungodly, disorganized mess—and the culprit is Halloween (and my wife's wife's job: fifth-grade teacher) and Halloweek is not over yet; on Wednesday, my wife and her class transformed her Honda CRV into a "Frog Prince"-- spectacular job, and her class won first place for their efforts; then today my wife's entire fifth-grade team dressed as all the characters from the Mario video game—my wife was a Piranha Plant—and my son Ian and his girlfriend Kyla are attending various parties and doing different costumes for each, and my wife and I are attending a Tim Burton-themed party, and my wife is being the spider from James and the Giant Peach (and I am being James, which only entails wearing a hat and suspenders, just my speed).
Dave Soldiers On
I was attempting to eat an apple while teaching my English 12: Music and the Arts class this morning—I get hungry during these stupid 83-minute periods—and (serves me right) while trying to simultaneously teach and chew, I bit the inside of my lip, but, to the amazement (and chagrin) of my students, I soldiered on, despite the wound, and continued to educate them.
Words, Words, Words . . .
I know this is tiresome, but I'm documenting these incidents for future generations (and there is some research about the Flynn Effect recently stalling or reversing, so this might be important anecdotal data) so here are some words and concepts that came up this week that the vast majority of my seventy-five College Writing students did not know, could not define, or could not decipher:
--quarrel
--chaste (or chastity . . . and then I had to explain the medieval "chastity belt," which actually might have been a myth)
--The Protestant Reformation
--The Puritans
-- purgatory
-- apparel
--vulgar
--neither a borrower nor a lender be
and, to add insult to injury, not one child in my thirty-person Creative Writing class had ever heard the song "Born to Run"—while they knew OF Bruce Springsteen and knew he hailed from New Jersey, they had never heard his advice—that Jersey is a "death trap, a suicide rap," and that you should get out while you're young.
Slow Horses . . . Slow Viewers?
I'm not even going to attempt to explain the plot of season six of Slow Horses—but be assured, it is complicated, fragmented, and obfuscated . . . and full of espionage, maguffins, double-crossing, and paradoxical intrigue-based irony; I do wish I recorded the befuddled conversations my wife and I had before, during, and after the episodes—we must have sounded very, very slow, and if we worked for the MI5, we would certainly be demoted to Slough House.
Newport in a Nutshell
Whirlwind weekend in Newport: Mel and Ed picked us up Friday morning; we headed northeast and stopped at Zuppardi's Apizza in West Haven—excellent once again—and then we drove to Aquidneck Island (I learned that Newport is a municipality on Aquidneck Island) and checked in at our hotel, The Bellevue Manor, we got some coffee at Picnic Cafe, met Julie and Rob, walked down to Bowen's Wharf and had some drinks, and then ate at the spacious Stoneacre Garden—food and drinks were a bit pricey but good; the next day, I got up early and caught the sunrise and the early morning surfers at Easton Beach, and then we bought sandwiches at the Picnic Cafe and packed them for our hike and we stuffed into Rob and Julie's car and drove to the Doris Duke mansion at the far end of the Cliff Walk—the mansion was impressive, especially all the Asian artifacts, including the beautiful hand-painted wallpaper—and the view from the expansive lawn over the rocky shore and the stone bridge, which spanned a canyon of daisies and ocean water, was even more impressive than the stone mansion itself (Doris Duke is the same lady who owned Duke Farms in Hillsborough, one of the most beautiful pieces of land in New Jersey, and she is also was involved in a scandal-- which the old ladies did NOT mention on the tour . . . in1966, the billionaire tobacco heiress crushed and killed her longtime interior designer and curator, Eduardo Tirella, with a station wagon outside the gates of her Newport mansion after a furious argument about him leaving her employ to become a Hollywood set designer-- the incident was ruled an accident but very well might have been murder, out of sheer rage at his audacity for leaving) and then Julie and Rob left to see their daughter perform trainer duties at a football game and we did the long and arduous hike back to the hotel, past all the insane mansions (and I took the best pictures of my life inside a tunnel!) and then we unpacked our sandwiches and learned that the picnic Cafe was NOT aptly named-- may sandwich was a total soggy disaster, avacado and bacon on sourdough, but they didn't toast the sourdough and put the whole thing on TOP of some salad with vinagrette dressing-- it tasted fine but was a soggy mess, Julie had the same experience in the car driving to the football game-- once we made it back to the hotel, I took a well-deserved nap, and then we got some coffee and a peanut-butter cookie from Picnic Cafe (much more in their wheelhouse) and headed out for drinks at Bowen's Wharf and dinner at Perro Salado, excellent Mexican food and drink, and not too expensive, highly recommended—and then Catherine found the Springfield Inn of Newport, a sticky-floored dive bar with a cover band, full of youngsters (except for the cover band itself, which was comprised of people our age—fifties to sixties, the guitarist looked like Will Ferrell in Eastbound and Down and wore a t-shirt that said "I Bleached My Asshole For This" within a Clorox logo) and the cover band played mainly 90s pop-punk songs: Blink 182, Green Day, "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus, etcetera . . . and the kids—mainly young scantily clad girls—knew ALL the words—very surreal . . . because we also knew all the words as well; the next morning, we got up and went to Fort Adams, a beautiful spot on the bay, and then we got in the car to haul it home—and what a haul it was, 7.5 hours . . . so though it was lovely, I'm not going to Newport again any time soon (although we are attending a wedding there next September, we have learned out lesson and will drive back to Jersey at 5 AM).
Traffic Makes a Very Small State Feel Much Larger
Our trip to Newport, RI was a blast, but the ride home was not-- it took us seven and a half hours to return to New Jersey-- luckily, Ed and Mel were good company (though Mel left her purse on a chair on the patio of Mystic Market in Flanders and she didn't realize this for an hour and the traffic was so bad that we didn't turn around and she's going to figure out how to have it shipped back to her) so perhaps I'll post some Newport photos and commentary tomorrow, after I've recovered from the trauma of this epically insane drive home.
The Smallest State Makes It Big
No fresh sentence today, as I am in Newport, Rhode Island, with my wife and some friends-- and I've never really explored much of Rhode Island, but I do know that it is the smallest state in the union, so I am sure they are excited to have me and have prepared for my visit.
Night Conferences Get Heavy
We had FOUR days of parent/teacher conferences this week— including two three-hour night sessions from 5 PM to 8 PM—I truly do not understand why our district does this (we also have a four-day session in the spring) and so I try to keep things terse, brief, and very dry— unlike some teachers who are congenial and bubbly for 12-16 conferences in a row, I just don't have that kind of social stamina, and so I review the quiz and writing grades, tell the parent if the kid is missing anything, and then ask if they have any questions—but inevitably most of the conferences get deep and weird—no one ever asks about the books we are reading or the content of the class, they just want to know psychological stuff about their kid, which is way outside my purview; here are some things that were said this week:
"He will not open his mind to me . . . he says he likes the class, but he will not give me details . . . he will not tell me the details of his day"
and I try to be empathetic to these parents, but I think I said to this very nice Asian mom, "He's a teenage boy . . . maybe when he's thirty?"
and another woman—wondering what her son's college essay was about because he wouldn't share it with her and I had read it—expressed a desire to "crack open his head" and see what was inside, and I was thinking: you might not want to see inside a teenage boy's head . . .
a parent asked if she thought her son was "stressed while writing this essay," and I said I did not know, but he got a good grade . . .
another mom confessed that her son's room is very messy and she thinks he has ADHD . . . I said he did very well on his reading comprehension quiz
and one lady, who brought her son to the conference, half-complained that her son "does robotics for three or four hours each day" and I think she was insinuating that he should study more, but I said, "Wow . . . maybe he'll build me a new knee!"
but I shouldn't complain; all of my parents were very nice and very concerned, and nothing was as odd and weird as what happened to the history teacher next door, who had a mom come in all fired up, and she complained about how her son's new Audi was getting covered with sap in the school parking lot because of some offending tree, and he was like, "Maybe you should talk to the vice-principal about that . . . he's in charge of senior parking."
Dave Is Visited by Public Teacher Nightmare Number One (or perhaps number two?)
Now that this incident is in the rearview mirror, it's a little easier to discuss—but yesterday . . . yesterday, I was going through it, but during the school day I kept it all to myself, I didn't tell a soul until I got home and saw my wife; I should point out that yesterday was the dreaded day after night conferences, which is already a miserable day, even without extra distress: you drive home in the dark from three hours of night conferences, three hours of boring, desultory conversation; you pass out from exhaustion; and then you get up and head right back to school, right back to the room you were in what feels like moments before—it's very Groundhog Day—but to add insult to injury, yesterday morning, on my drive to back to work, while driving on Harts Lane, I thought I had to pass some gas but it turned out there was something a bit more solid (but also kind of liquidic, thixotropic?) needing to exit my bunghole-- and while I thought that I curtailed the excrement in the nick of time and figured that I'd simply make an emergency trip to the bathroom before first period, and that would be the end of it-- but when I arrived at school, I raced to the main office bathroom to evacuate my bowels, and once I got down to business, I realized I was living out one of the worst of teacher nightmares-- I had indeed shit my pants right before school-- but as far as shitting your pants goes, it was fairly minor (but not THAT minor) so I cleaned out my underwear as much as I could, sprayed some Fabreeze on the stain, and then scrubbed it a bit more, ended up getting some urine on my pants during this clean up, stuffed some toilet paper inside my underwear to absorb some of the dampness, and then went on with my day-- and while I did visit the bathroom several times, just to clean things up a bit more and swap out the toilet paper in my underwear, I managed to successfully perform my afternoon conferences and teach all my classes with shit-stained skivvies, and I lived to tell the tale . . . we'll see what other demonic teacher nightmares visit me in this last year of teaching . . . perhaps my car will break down on the way to school, or I'll show up wearing my pajamas, or I'll forget the names of all my students-- but none of them will be as gross and awful as this one, I surmise.