Tom Perrotta's new novel Ghost Town is evocative, haunting, and nostalgic—each concise chapter is a set piece on grief and adolescence . . . and Ouija boards—and the story is especially moving if you grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey . . . while the book is set ever so slightly before my time, the narrator is thirteen in 1974, and I was only four years old then, so I don't quite remember the early 1970s— the songs on the radio are "Kung Fu Fighting," and "Rock the Boat," and "When Will I see You Again"-- which I vaguely remember, but I certainly can't name the bands that played these hits; I also appreciate that this is a different version of New Jersey than when I came of age; the fictional town of Creamwood seems to be inspired by Perrotta's Union County hometown, Garwood, a factory town full of Cape Cods and split-levels, and—in the early 1970s, the town was segregated in a de facto fashion . . . while my middle school experience in Central Jersey was at the start of the incredible diversity that Jersey is now known for-- there were mainly Italians, Irish, Hungarians, and Jews in my town-- which we considered "white" people-- but there were also Indian and Asian and Black and Hispanic families in my neighborhood; not so much in Creamwood, which is pretty much all white, but the narrator, Jimmy Perrini, starts to question his town's tacit racism and-- after his mother dies from cancer-- he's pretty much left on his own and starts to have some experiences with his hippie cousin and his hippie cousin's racially ambiguous wife Nilda and her Black cousin Hector-- while the plotting of the novel is pretty formulaic, it builds up to a big climax and all that, Jersey is in the details; I love the moment where Jimmy is riding around with burnout Eddie Fitzpatrick in his Chevy Vega, and Jimmy says he likes Jethro Tull, and Eddie says—which are my sentiments exactly—"I might like them a little better if he shoved that flute up his ass."
Better Not To Know?
While I was chatting at the dog park, a retired Rutgers food science teacher told me that he didn't swim in the ocean much this summer because the bacteria levels were so high-- but luckily (or unluckily?) I did not know this, and so I swam in the ocean twice a day for most of August-- it would have been a sad summer if I were worried about slurping down fecal matter every time I cooled off . . . and yesterday at the doctor's office, when I was preparing to get my second gel shot in my knee, the nurse took my blood pressure, and I asked her if it was lower than last week, and she said, "Yes, it IS lower this time," and I told her I had the day off from school (for Yom Kippur) and last week I had rushed over after being in a room full of teenagers all day . . . so now I have proof that this stupid job is bad for me (which makes me NOT want to show up).
Shinebox? Shonebox?
Even English teachers have grammatical hurdles they struggle to clear on the daily—while I don't usually bother civilians about this one (unless they are training my dog) I often correct teachers in the English Office who misuse "lie" and "lay" . . . because it's the fucking ENGLISH Office and we should get it right; I also don't mind when Denise corrects me when I incorrectly swap "fewer" and "less" . . . I've even come up with a mnemonic to help me get this one right (it's alliterative: fewer fingers, less liquid) and this morning I learned a new grammatical rule (that came up because of the Wordle answer) and so apparently "shone" and "shined" are both past tenses of "shine," but you use "shone" if there is NO direct object and you use "shined" if the verb does refer to a direct object . . . so here's an example:
"Back in the day, young Tommy Devito shined Billy Batts' shoes so well, they shone like mirrors, but then years later Billy busted his balls about it, and so Tommy beat him to death."
The Shit I Will Miss . . .
While I am REALLY looking forward to retiring, as grading, planning, and working in a hot and humid classroom chock full of teenagers . . . more teenagers than ever because of budget cuts kind of sucks, BUT I realize that I will really miss my colleagues in the English Department—as regular people also kind of suck—for example, here is the kind of shit, the kind of daily banter, I will miss—we were all sitting in the English Office, and Cunningham asked us if it was okay to give her students an article that mentions a type of masturbation called "gooning," and so we were discussing "gooning" and whether or not she should photo-copy the entire article or perhaps cut that section out, and Eric said, "I don't think you should disseminate that."
Time Travel, Dinosaurs, and an Orgy = Kind of Boring
Despite containing a paleontologist orgy, plenty of dinosaur action scenes, evolved avian future inheritors of the earth, and a multitude of time travel paradoxes, I couldn't quite finish Michael Swanwick's sci-fi dinosaur time travel novel Bones of the Earth-- the story is Primer meets Jurassic Park, and is mainly concerned with the dissemination of scientific papers and information through the time continuum-- people come from the future and give hints (often to themselves) as to what research will be fruitful but everyone tries to avoid outright changes in causality-- or else The Unchanging, the future creatures who gave humans the gift of time travel, wil take it away; the book did make me think quite a bit; for example here's a paradox not exactly investigated in the book, but alluded to: say you have ten gold bars, and you take one-- so now there's nine in the box-- and you go back one hour in a time machine and then put that one gold bar into the box containing ten gold bars . . . so now there are eleven gold bars, so now the box that you take the gold bar from has eleven gold bars, not ten-- where did that extra bar come from? did you break the law of conservation if mass? could you keep doing this to infinity and flood the world with gold? causing massive inflation or something . . . apparently someone named Novikov thought about this, and came up with the Novikov self-consistency principle . . . anyway, I can't quite recommend this novel-- it's dry at times, despite the sex and dinosaurs, and often, the characters make long-winded expository speeches about various scientific theories and ideas-- Swanwick developed this from a short story, and it shows: six theropods out of ten.
A+ For Honesty
What's For Lunch: Microplastics
Tuesday at lunch, despite being hangry, I noticed that all my lunch Tupperware containers inside my little lunch cooler were covered in a weird clear gel (nice job noticing things, Dave!) and at first I was very disturbed by this, but then I found the culprit: one of my rectangular blue plastic reusable ice packs had cracked open, and it was leaking goop (the goop, I later learned, is made of a superabsorbent polymer called sodium polyacrylate) and so I wiped things down as best I could and ate my lunch, which was probably seasoned with microplastics . . . and then I did a bit more research because I was curious, and this goop is different than the goop inside Strecth Armstrong, that's high-viscosity boiled corn syrup and probably more edible than ice pack goop.
A Long Long Road: Secrets of Tom Petty's Sustained Success (Act One)
I Guess I Could be a Dean at Harvard . . .
Don't bother listening to Derek Thompson's podcast "What's the Point of College"-- because neither he nor Dean David Deming-- who first encouraged AI use at Harvard and then sort of took that statement back-- have anything of real interest to say on the subject; they go over all the boilerplate stuff: school is the gym for your brain, there's a communal aspect of school that is important; it would be nice if people went for the love of learning but that's probably not true, yada yada yada . . . and while Deming makes several proposals, including having students defend their essays like thesis candidates, none of these are practical for a class of 30-50 kids . . . and neither Thompson nor Deming says aloud what I believe: reading and writing are meditative and good for our consciousness and our collective souls, and that it would be nice if we had some cultural touchstones and shared knowledge—and so if you're paying a shitload of money to send your kid to college, at this point, college should be concerned with mandatory class attendance, device free spaces, and getting kids to do the mental work they won't do on their own-- reading and writing and thinking and presenting, right there in class . . . it's the only way forward (unless perhaps you're doing engineering or some very job oriented course of study, then you're actually learning the stuff you'll use on the job-- but for the rest of the courses: history, English, psychology, sociology, political science, etcetera-- you are just learning hwow to learn, learning terms and phrases, learning how to parse difficult sentences and text, and developing the stamina and focus to read, write, and think.
Protect Ya Neck (and your head as well)
Oh yeah . . . it's the first time since 2009 that BOTH the Giants and the Jets have won their opening game—looks inevitable that they will collide in the Super Bowl (unless Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo collide with the opposition too many times and the unmentionable happens).
Supine Straightening
One Sentence College Essay Workshop (Complete With Videos)
Dave is NOT a Doctor (But He'll Suffice in an Elevator)
This morning, just before first period, one of our co-workers thought she was having a heart attack; she was standing just outside the English Office (on the second floor) and she felt dizzy and weak, like she might pass out, and she looked very pale; and we learned that there was an inciting incident: before driving to school, she was checking something under the hood of her car, and she did not properly prop the hood stay, and so her hood slammed down and the hood stay poked her in the chest, and she was pretty freaked out about this because she thought the hood stay could have impaled her if she was standing a foot closer (but it did NOT impale her, she just had a red mark on her chest) and so Krystina and I got her into the elevator, which is right next to the English Office, in order to get her to the nurse's office, which is right below us, on the ground floor (but while we were going down int he elevator, the nurse came up the stairs, which was a bit farcical) and while we were in the elevator, I told her it was probably a panic attack due to her shock from the hood-stay incident, and I held her hand for a moment and using all my medical expertise, I determined that her hand was not clammy or cold, and I told her that this indicated that she was NOT having a heart attack, and she would be fine, though I clarified I was NOT a doctor and had very little medical training (First Aid and CPR) and by that time we were at the nurse's office, and it turned out she WAS fine, her vertigo and anxiety were caused by adrenaline from the hood stay incident, her blood pressure and pulse were normal, and the color returned to her face, and she managed to last through the school day.
Quest For Pants (That Are SO Fire)
This summer, I went to the Jersey Shore Premium Outlets to buy more Eddie Bauer hiking pants-- these pants fit me perfectly; they are appropriate for the workplace, the bar, and the trail; and they have one zipper cargo pocket, perfect for a phone or a wallet or a power bar or a one-hitter-- they are, and i am not being hyperbolic, my favorite pants in the world, but to my chagrin, after much searching the Jersey Shore Outlets, and then asking the lady at Columbia, who recommended a great Italian market and sandwich place in Little Silver-- Ferrucci's-- but also informed me that the Eddie Bauer outlet had closed, I sorrowfully resigned myself to the fact that I would never find these pants again; but a few days ago, I took matters into my own hands and found the exact same pants on Amazon-- and there were on sale! thirty-one dollars! and so I bought three pairs, and now I am very happy . . . although if I actually lose some weight, I might have to size down in the waist-- but then they might not be on sale . . . so now I need to decide if I should buy some aspirational pants; the moral: being a materialistic consumer AND a cheapskate is hard work (I've never paid full price for pants, and I'm not going to start now).
Dave Ends Up Plus Five (Cents)
Yesterday, in a mad rush to get to the 7 AM Faculty meeting, I forgot my lunch-- and the meeting was a boring explanation of why teachers will no longer be getting "highly effective" grades because administrators are revisiting the language in the Danielson evaluation model . . . super-fascinating, especially for someone who is retiring-- and then this morning, because it's Back-To-School-Night, and I wanted to go straight to the gym before going back to school, so I brought my gym bag, which was green, but forgot my school bag, which is also green-- so I had to get a loaner computer from the school library and I couldn't leave and reenter the building because I did not have my ID; my class was a humid jungle, absolutely disgusting, but we suffered through (the principal walked by, felt the wave of heat coming out of my classroom and said, "That's awful, you should put a in work order" but I don't know what that will do-- my little portable AC, which is too loud to teach over (or hear the children, they all whisper now when they speak) and it's miserable output can't combat the body heat generated by twenty-seven teenage bodies, so there is not any foreseeable solution . . but I did make it to the gym-- where I learned that my phone is probably dead and the Google Messaging app, which hasn't been working well for two days, completely blacked out-- and I also went to Barton's Nursery, where I bought some Creeping Jenny and Ajuga-- and then I went home, walked the dog, snacked on Bradley Beach biscotti, but I was too tired to dig holes for the plants, and I briefly saw my wife-- who has no AC at all in her classroom-- and she had an awful migraine from the heat and humidity in her class and immediately went upstairs and passed out-- and then I showered, noticed I lost three pounds (water weight) and got back in the car and headed to school, but I stopped for a large can of Coke on the way and the dude rung it up: $2.30 and I happened to have cash and a few coins, $2.35, and I thought the register guy was going to give me a nickel back, but instead he just passed me back my dime (and when I got back into the car, I realized why he may have done that, as I had a large booger in my nose and perhaps he felt bad for me) and now I am about to begin my last Back-to-School-Night ever, and that makes me very happy-- you shouldn't go to work twice in the same day (and run through the same schedule in miniature-- it's tiresome).
Sunrise: A Mystery Town Wrapped in an Enigma Inside of a Riddle
Like a set of three Matryoshka dolls, the three narratives in Téa Obreht's novel Sunrise nest inside of each other, and each story has its own set of secrets-- it's a gothic Western tale inside a Jonathan Franzen story of familial relations and disillusionment inside an episode of Alone (complete with tragically inspirational backstory) and so if you're looking for a page-turner that's a bit more meta than most, this is the book for you: nine Bulki bars out of ten.
We Bike to the Train
I Should Have Biked to the Train
Bruce Springsteen: More Youthful Unintentional Irony
Bruce Springsteen, just like my son Alex, produced some fantastic unintentional irony when he was a young man (and I learned this from the fascinating book Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin) because while Bruce was writing and recording songs about being sprung from cages and driving down Highway 9, songs about offering Mary redemption and escape beneath the dirty hood of his car, about two lanes that could take her anywhere-- car-centric anthems like "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run"-- and stories about the Magic Rat driving his Dodge over the Jersey State line to meet a barefoot girl in "Jungleland"-- while he was making this seminal rock album, Bruce could NOT really drive a car-- he was so obsessed with music and his guitar in high school that he never learned to drive, and he didn't get his own vehicle-- 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible-- until after the album's release, in 1976 . . . so perhaps that's why the album is so romantic about cars: Bruce hadn't experienced road-rage, maintenance costs, and traffic yet; if he had, he might have had a very different tone towards automobiles and the Magic Rat might have caught the PATH over the Jersey state line.
Young People, Sometimes They're Ironic and They Don't Even Know It
I'm very proud of my son (and thanks to everyone at Stages for allowing him to intern and mentoring him) because he's landed a job at a company in Brooklyn that makes buildings in NYC green and ultra-energy-efficient, but full disclosure (not that I'm going to call his new boss and rat him out) the last two times Alex left town to visit his girlfriend in Manhattan, he left his window-unit air conditioner on—and the first time he did this, it ran for days (because his ultra-inefficient brother didn't bother to turn it off and we were at the beach).