So True

In the middle of the night, nothing tastes better than a glass of cold tap water.

The Top Two Movie Lines of 2008!

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath, and it's finally finished . . . Dave's Top Two Movie Lines of 2008 (one of the movies isn't even from 2008, but I saw it in 2008 and that's what is important) and so, here they are, in no particular order:

1) I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!  (from There Will Be Blood, delivered by Daniel Day Lewis)
  
2) Isn't it beautiful? Even though it's where everyone died (from Battle Royale, said by the girl that survived a three day organized slaughter-fest on a deserted island, she delivered it as they drove away on a speedboat-- it's one of those movies you have to see to believe: totally compelling, though the premise is ridiculous, and it's directed by a really famous Japanese director, Kinji Fukasaka, who you'd think is too old for that sort of thing-- he's 71-- but he's good at seamlessly and effortlessly mixing genres, like Bong Joon-ho does in that South Korean movie The Host, which I also really liked).

Double Parallel Movie Madness

Two recommendations with parallels: Slumdog Millionaire is like City of God, but in Mumbai instead of Rio de Janeiro-- I give it sixteen million blinded child beggars out of a possible eighteen million; and Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency is like a Richard Russo novel-- omnipotent, sprawling, and generous-- set in the suburbs of England-- I give it nine moors out of a possible ten.

Three Firsts

Three firsts yesterday:

1) Alex's first brazen and convincing lie . . . it was six A.M. and we were building the new Lego table and Alex and Ian were helping me, and Alex had already told Ian that it was "no time for talking" and then when Ian said something while Alex was busy holding the side of the table, he turned to him and clearly said, "Shut up, Ian" and when I confronted him he said, bawling "I said 'sun up!' because the sun is coming up!" and he pointed outside and, of course, the sun was coming up, but I know what he said and it wasn't "sun up" and who the hell says that anyway-- he claims he "forgot" to say the other words (the, is, coming) 

2) Alex's first use of sarcasm . . . we were building a huge rain forest puzzle and it was hard and I said, "Who got us this puzzle, it's hard" and Alex said, "Santa" and I said,"Santa must have heard you were smart" and Alex said, "I guess he didn't hear that you weren't smart" 

3) the first time a giant hawk smashed into our new bay window and sat stunned in the little pine tree in our yard for a while and then flew away.

Clever Incompetence

Catherine decided to make chicken scarpariello for our giant Christmas Eve party-- it's chicken and sausage, with bell peppers, sweet and hot cherry peppers, onions, all in a wine sauce, but you have to cut thighs and whole breasts into parts, and cut through bone, which is more difficult than it looks on television-- and she was having trouble with our knife, so I told her she should be using a cleaver (which is where the word "clever" is derived from, but she didn't want to hear this) and that if she was clever enough to use the proper tool, she wouldn't be having so much trouble, and I even offered to go buy her one-- but instead she wanted me to chop a few pieces, though she knows I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to cutting chicken (and this wasn't a chicken breast out of the package, this was skin and bones and gristle) and so she was sarcastic and emasculating about my ginger cutting style (I really don't like touching raw chicken, it's slimy and gross) and so I took a good chop at it and broke the cutting board in two (a big chop just like I see the chefs do on TV-- and Catherine said to me, "Do you see any cameras?") and then she relieved me of cutting duty, but she wasn't very happy with me . . . so, against my better judgment, despite the fact that I knew I might lose a digit, I got her a cleaver for Christmas.

All the Cute Girls Live in Canada

I've been telling this story to whoever will listen: a teacher who will remain nameless was walking around his class with a spur on his shoe (it had something to do with teaching True Grit) which the class found weird, but one of the girls simply said, "he's a single guy, he can do what he wants" and the teacher-- who is dating another teacher in the department-- said, "Actually, I'm not single--I have a girlfriend," and the girl looked and him and just laughed and laughed, sincere laughter, the laughter of someone who's heard a clever and surprising and completely absurd punch-line, and he said, "No, really, I do" and she said, "Well then, what's her name?" and he was about to say it but then realized they might recognize it was a fellow teacher, and he didn't want to spill that information, so-- and this is my favorite part-- he genuinely stuttered (you can't fake that unless you're a trained actor) and this teacher is NOT a good liar, so after some hemming and hawing, he finally said, "Uh, I can't say" which made everyone laugh even more, and finally he retreated to the classic response when cornered about a girl . . . "uh . . . she lives in Canada."

Low Rider on the High Ground

Just finished reading Thomas Friedman's new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution-- and How It Can Renew America . . . and so Merry Christmas carbon-producing, wrapping paper using, dirty fuel abusing (and so terrorist funding) American materialist pigs-- and I say this with greatest affection as I'm in the club as well . . . until I build my enclosed electric recumbent commuter tricycle, because then I will have the moral high ground.

Denetia? Internesia? Netheimers?

I started to type "can you get HDTV with rabbit ears" into Google, but when I got as far as "can you get," Google listed suggestions, such as "can you get pregnant on the pill" and "can you get pregnant from pre-cum" and "can you get pregnant right after your period" and "can you get pregnant on your period" and "can you get pregnant right before your period" and one non pregnancy-related topic: "can you get mono twice"-- and this distracted me so much that I forgot what I was going to search for in the first place (there needs to be a sniglet for when you go on the internet and get distracted and never get to and/or forget what you initially went on-line to do in the first place . . . internesia?)

Shoeless Muntazer

The best thing George Bush has ever done, and I mean ever, is dodge those shoes-- but if I threw them, one of them would have found its target, and I'll tell you why: Muntazer al Zaidi missed because there's very little snow in Iraq, and so it stands to reason that Muntazer had very little snowball fighting experience, because if he had, he would have perfected the time honored high/low tactic, and he would have lobbed his first shoe, thrown it weak and high like a wounded bird, and while Bush watched it (thinking to himself: that's hardly a throw . . . because A-rabs don't play good old fashioned throwing sports like baseball and football, they just kick things around . . . forgetting that at Andover, he himself was cut from the baseball team and had to become a cheerleader) and while W. was lost in thought, staring up at the shoe floating in the air, that's when I would have whipped the other shoe at him.

The Laugh Track is Wack

A student with good taste in television (The Office, Madmen, Curb Your Enthusiasm) convinced me to watch The Big Bang Theory; I turned it on and the physicists had built a time machine in their apartment, and were racing forwards and backwards in time . . . and it might have been a funny bit, but I couldn't enjoy it because there was a laugh track-- and it made me realize that I can no longer watch any new show with a laugh track (but I can watch an old show with a laugh track, like Seinfeld or Joanie Loves Chachi . . . why is that?)

A Good Retreat Is Better Than a Bad Stand

It started funny but by the middle I just didn't get it, and so-- despite glowing reviews by James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene-- I have given up on Flann O'brien's cult classic At Swim Two Birds; although I did learn what a Menippean parody is (and that anyone who knows what a Menippean parody is and is also a fan of this book, might also be an elitist wanker) and judging by the tone of the reviews for the book, I am wondering if anyone really gets it-- or if it's so bizarre and baffling, but also so highly regarded in learned circles, that no one wants to be the first to say that it's rather tedious and borders on nonsensical (or perhaps I wasn't reading carefully enough, but I'm way happier now-- I'm reading the Amazon.com pick of the year: The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher . . . so maybe I'm just middlebrow all the way).

To 1080p or Not to 1080p?

1080p or not 1080p, that is the question . . . and though it is far less profound than Hamlet's meditation on self-slaughter (but who would want to commit suicide anyway now that there's Blu-Ray?) this technological dilemma is far more pressing than thinking about what dreams may come when I shuffle off this mortal coil-- and those dreams probably won't be in HD.

Special Cake

So my friend took this screwed up cake that his girlfriend was going to toss in the trash, and he decided to decorate it with whatever candy was around her apartment-- and he ended up creating an "animal parade" complete with marshmallow observers, a street paved with jimmies, borders done with candy canes and gum drops, dead marshmallow people that had fallen off the cake, pretzel gates, etc. etc. and though that sounds pretty elaborate, I cannot stress how tacky and awful and downright retarded this cake looked, and when I walked into the office, I had not heard the story of the cake yet . . . all I heard was the very sweet, very nice, very motherly Special Ed. teacher talking to my friend like he was some kind of special needs student, and the more I insulted the cake, the more she complimented him for his "imagination" and cleverness, and really, the whole thing was so cloying that it made me sick (both the cake and the compliments).

Nerding It Up

Here's an example of the nerdy humor in my Shakespeare class-- and to get an idea of the kind of kids in this class, imagine this: once, during a discussion of Taming of the Shrew, I mentioned Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, and Bach, and two students were so excited by this reference to their favorite author of meta-philosophical conundrums that they actually high-fived each other; and so we are discussing Act IV of The Winter's Tale and the incorrigible rogue Autolycus is describing some of the ballads he can sing, and they are uniformly bizarre, but our favorite was the sad tale of a singing fish: previously, when the aforementioned fish was a lovely maid, she would not "exchange flesh" with the one who loved her and so as punishment for her prudery she was "turned into a cold fish"-- so I said the title of the ballad should be "To His Coy Fish-tress" but then a student thought of an even better pun: "To his Koi Mistress" . . . and perhaps you had to be there . . . or perhaps you had to be there, and be a real nerd.

Legos . . . They Are a Trap

I'll bet there's a negative correlation between time spent playing with Legos and "handiness"-- as a kid, I loved playing with Legos: they snapped together so easily, they could be built into durable and intricate structures without any other medium to hold them together, and you could start building without any structural plan and end up with a masterpiece, and my sons love them as well-- but, of course, real world materials don't behave anything like Legos-- it takes time, patience, forethought, and an understanding of how substances bond, stretch, crack, break, expand contract, and react to make anything lasting and aesthetic around the house or in the yard . . . something I don't have the patience for; and I'm afraid that my sons are traveling down the same path, as they blithely snap together spaceships, schooners, and castles with the greatest of ease.

Unnatural Action

Two animal encounters: over the weekend:

1) while I was running along the Raritan, I saw a blue heron acting in a deranged manner, listing from side to side and then finally collapsing into a heap, where it eyed my warily like some miniature feathered reptile-- and so when I got home I called several numbers until I reached Ranger Headquarters, and I told them the situation, and the next day the heron was gone, but I want to know what happened . . . I should have told the dispatcher to call me back once she had a full report of the incident so I could have some closure . . . can a heron get West Nile disease?

2) last night, our contractor went into the crawl space to retrieve some of his tools and he found a big fat raccoon in there, so he flushed him out, and after the raccoon went down the red and yellow plastic kiddie slide in our yard he climbed over the fence and into the neighbor's yard-- but not until one of the workers tossed a soccer ball at him.

Science!

Last night I learned that the best free thing ever (besides sex, which is never really free, but that's another sentence) is the annual Michael Faraday Physics Demonstration at Rutgers: they must have done fifty experiments in an hour and a half, to a packed lecture hall; it was entertaining enough to keep Alex and Ian's attention for long past their bedtime: imploding chemical drums, flaming balloons, floating magnets, the Bernoulli effect, the physics of lying on a bed of nails, a professor in an old time football helmet on roller skates propelling himself with a fire extinguisher, and, of course, everyone's favorite . . . liquid nitrogen.

Xmas Anxiety Reprieve and Return

While Catherine was away on her fifth grade camping trip last week, I felt like a Hindu or a Muslim or a Jew-- no Christmas anxiety; the kids and I never spoke of Santa or presents or lights or decorations or a tree, and I certainly didn't think about shopping or the forty people that are coming to our house on Christmas Eve . . . but on Friday Catherine returned, and so did reality-- I wanted to put my feet up and rest (I was a single dad for a couple days!) but she was all about making a list and checking it twice and getting down to brass tacks with all the Xmas bullshit (and I know I shouldn't complain, since I don't do much, but I think that makes the anxiety worse).

Reading Time!

We sold our TV last night-- and the kids were pretty good about it, considering they were right in the middle of "The Black Cauldron" when the guys came to take it away.

Who Is That Dancing Bald Man?

Tropic Thunder is best viewed without knowing the cast: it took me half the movie to recognize a couple of the actors (and, despite Ben Stiller, the movie is quite funny).

Plants/Birds/Rocks/Things/Heat/Hot

I was feeling pretty bad about the quality and content of yesterday's sentence, until I turned on the radio and heard the second worst song in rock and roll history-- the worst is Jethro Tull's "Aqualung," of course-- but the two chord classic "Horse with No Name" by America is a close runner-up; hearing their infamously vague lyric "there were plants and birds and and rocks and things" made me feel so much better about my own writing-- as did the phrase "the heat was hot" . . . but what can you expect by a band named after a geographic location, as they fall in with such ilk as Asia, Boston, Chicago, Alabama, Kansas, Europe, The Georgia Satellites and Styx.

I Go Out On A Limb . . . A Nerdy Limb

I know it's controversial, but I told my students anyway because I'm that kind of guy-- if I have an opinion, I speak it and let the chips fall where they may: my definition of science fiction is when the setting-- whether it's based on technology, set in the future, or simply a logical alternative to our own history-- is the main character of the novel or movie-- so that excludes and Star Wars and Godzilla, but does include Soylent Green and The Matrix.

Talking With Himself

I assumed once the addition was done and we were able to use the new dining room, our children would start saying things like "Mother, could you pass the treacle pudding" and "Father, this aspic is divine" but it wasn't that way at all; instead of talking to us, Alex had a forty-five minute conversation (if you call lunatic ramblings, Jim Carrey-esque facial contortions, and out of control giggling "conversation") with his reflection in the bay window and Ian shrieked with laughter at his witty brother.

Peeing Etiquette and a Peeing Paradox

A woman in our department (Kristyna) is pregnant with her first child-- and it's a boy-- and she's definitely the feminine type, so I was giving her some tips on how to raise boys (always be developing their reflexes, constantly challenge them to physical contests, emphasize competition, compliment them on feats of flatulence and gluttony, stress the importance of athletics over intelligence, etc.) but the one thing she said her boy would never do is "pee on a tree"-- because it seems my boys, if they are more than seven yards from a bathroom, find it completely appropriate to drop their pants and water whatever flora is available; this led to a debate about when to and who can pee on a tree, someone claimed that if you let your kids pee on trees once they are over the age of eleven, then you are a degenerate, but I pointed out that if you drive over to Metuchen Country Club and wander onto the golf course, then you'll find well-to-do men over the age of eleven peeing all over the trees.

The Evolution of Beer Pong

Catherine and I played beer pong for the first time on Friday night (or the new version of the game, I remember a game we played with cups of beer on a ping-pong table in college, but we used paddles and if you lost you had to take your shirt off and the other team got to whack you with the ping-pong ball, which didn't hurt much, but it did leave a little welt that lasted for a few days . . . I think we called the game "pong-ping") and Catherine was good.

Bow Down to the Master Dave

Once again, I bow to the master: David Sedaris is the King of the Sentence; though I must admit that at the start of his new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, I wondered if he had run out of good stories to tell, but that's certainly not the case-- I could read Sedaris-brand sentences about a boil, or a cab ride, or the details of his relationship with his boyfriend Hugh, and they would still make me laugh (and, of course, they did).

You Just Opened Your Gift!

It's the holiday season again, and normally I am wracked by guilt because I know I need to get people gifts and I never do (my wife takes care of it) and also because I have charitable thoughts that never really come to fruition, but this year I am in the clear because I have been giving the gift of entertainment in the form of this blog-- and so as long as poor people have a friend with a computer and an internet connection, they can enjoy my thoughts and sentences the whole year round!

Hey Joe

At school, a small middle-aged man with glasses has been saying "Good morning Dave" to me for several years now, and this has been embarrassing for me because I didn't know his name and whenever I described him (hey, there's this little guy, with glasses, maybe he's fifty or so, wears a shirt with a tie sometimes, do you know his name?) no one could ever give me a definitive answer and then I would forget all about it until the next time I ran into him and he rudely flaunted his knowledge of my name again, but yesterday near the mail boxes, another teacher (I don't know her name either) said hello to him and she also said his name and his name is Joe (but am I really going to start calling him by name now?)

No Cake For Me

There was chocolate cake in the fridge last night and I thought about eating it, but-- get this-- I did not eat it . . . amazing, but true-- instead of eating cake I took three ibuprofen and went to bed at 8:30 because my back hurt because I'm trying to learn this soccer juggling trick called "Around the World" which involves this really violent leg motion after you flip the ball in the air-- you have to whip your foot all the way around the ball and then flip it back up, and although I'm getting closer to achieving this, I may have to quit trying to avoid serious injury.

What's the Only Thing Better Than One Fox?

While walking back from A&P yesterday, a bright red fox walked across my path (I followed him across the soccer fields just to confirm this-- just to make sure he wasn't a big squirrel or a cat or something, but, of course, it was a fox-- they are unmistakable in their color and gait . . . and a fox's tail sticks out straight and rigid from their body) and the reason I note this is that this is the second bright red fox I've seen in a week; while we were hiking with the boys on Friday one ran right by my feet . . . and if this seems far-fetched . . . if perhaps, you think I'm fabricating this, then think of what an ingenious fabrication it is-- because most people would fabricate one fox so they could have some daily content on their blog, but they would never think to fabricate two foxes-- not that I'm fabricating this-- or maybe I am . . . because that's exactly what someone who was fabricating a story would say.

Mumbai Multitasking

It's official: the Giants are so good they're boring; I yearn for the days of Butch Woolfolk (that was exciting football, in 1983 Woolfolk set the record for rushing attempts in a game-- 43), but I am getting a lot of reading done during the games . . . yesterday I finished Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger-- a first person tale of corruption, entrepeneurship, amorality and perserverance in the jungle of the modern Indian dream: and I give it nine rickshaws out of ten.