Dave Has a Miraculous Post-Christmas Vision!

When your mind strays outside the established box-walls, then you will certainly suffer disdain and criticism, even from those who profess to love you . . . but you must carry on, bravely,  faithfully, into the pale; so let it be know that upon the 26th day of the twelfth month of the Year, 2014, the day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ (or maybe not, but that's a whole other historical conundrum) I was delivered a post-Christmas vision in the form of a mini-van packing strategy: instead of building upwards in the back section of the van, the way I would normally stacketh our belongings, leaving a small "cavern" for the dog-- instead of this precarious and vision-obstructive pile of luggage, I would buildeth horizontally and create a "floor" of luggage, coolers, equipment, instruments, and victuals and I would layeth the dog's bed and a blanket on this "floor" of stuff and then the dog would have much space in which  to cavort and frolic and the driver would also be able to see out the rear of the van . . . and when I announced this vision to my wife, she said unto me, "I don't want the dog lying on my bag!" and I pronounced to her that I would bury her bag deep in the "floor" of mine own construction, under a blanket so that our dog would not lieth on her bag (despite the fact that our dog is liething all over everything in our house) but then when she saw my handiwork, she pronounced it good and renounced her doubt in my vision (for this particular incident) and the family did rejoice (until we were fifteen minutes down the road and my wife announced she forgot her sunglasses, so we had to turn around and get them . . . which raises an interesting philosophical question: how far down the road do you have to go before you don't turn around and go back for sunglasses?)

A Book For People Who Thought "The Road" Was Too Depressing

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, adds nothing new to the apocalypse trope-- in fact, I think she keeps it simple on purpose: a killer virus wipes out the bulk of humanity-- but the book is deserving of all the accolades (National Book Award Finalist, Amazon Sci-fi Book of the Year) and then some . . . it's vivid and completely gripping from page one, it's beautifully written, and there are scenes of great violence and decay-- of course-- but unlike Cormac McCarthy's The Road, there are also moments of beauty and poetry and hope . . . it's The Walking Dead if the zombies were replaced by actors, musicians, and prophets; while it's not a super-idealistic noble-savage view of humanity, it's also not an illustration of Hobbes Leviathan . . . it's somewhere in between: more "literary" than hard sci-fi, but still a perfectly imagined world and I highly recommend it (especially, as an English teacher and a musician, because this book gives me hope that I might have some small but valuable role in a post-apocalyptic environment . . . "survival is insufficient").

Some of the Best Sentences Ever Written (By Me . . . This Year)

Once again, it's time for me to arbitrarily choose my favorite posts of the year; I hope you enjoy them and perhaps 2015 will provide more excellent material for me to condense (or refuse to condense) into sentence form . . . so without further fanfare, here are some of the best sentences ever written . . . by me . . . in 2014:

Greatest Holy Miracle (Involving Balls)

The Commenter of the Year's Favorite Sentence of the Year

The Sentences That Produced the Comment of the Year

Human Consciousness Explained and Illustrated

A Most Titillating Sentence About Racks and Knobs

The Best Advice for Ebay Sellers

An Ironically Woeful Sentence

An Unsolved Mystery

Best Before/After Incident

Least Awkward Moment of  Dave

Prank of the Year

Crackpot Theory of the Year

Most Educational Use of Facial Hair

An Actually Woeful Sentence

A Sentence That Contains Two of My Favorite Places in the Universe 

Most Surprising Cameo (and Comment) of the Year

A Mystery Solved

Angriest Sentence of the Year

Most Reflective Moment of Dave

French-kissing Your Sister (the Best Tie Ever)

Best Paean to Sarah Koenig and Serial

A Fashion Statement

and, finally . . .

A Fashion Dilemma.

Unwarranted Death Stare

So I'm walking down the hall, minding my own business, trying to get to my period 10/11 Creative Writing class on time and in front of me is a nice little girl that sits in the back right corner of the aforementioned class, and she's walking along with another nice little girl from the class, and Nice Girl #1  happens to turn around and she's sees me and makes eye contact and gives me the meanest glare imaginable-- a death stare-- and then she turns back around and walks into the class and I follow her and when I get into the room, I say to her "What was that for?" and she says, "I'm sorry, I predicted that you were absent because I didn't see you when I walked by class, so I told my friend you weren't here and then when I saw you in the hall I got really mad that my prediction was wrong."

If You Have a Cool Jazz Voice, Then You Don't Need Transitions

If you've got a cool jazz DJ voice, like Venus Flytrap or Gary Walker (from WBGO out of Newark) then you don't need to use transitions-- everything is smooth and cool, so last Wednesday, after Gary Walker finished playing Grover Washington Junior's groovy saxophone version of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Love," in one long flowing sentence, in his deep, gravelly signature voice, he explained that Grover Washington was a good friend of WBGO and that they love his music, and also, that fifteen years ago on "this very day" Grover was in Manhattan to do some recording for CBS and he "bent over to tie his shoes and he collapsed and died" and, then, all in the same breath, he informed folks that alternate side of the street parking would be in effect and to make sure to feed the meters.

A First World Conundrum

Does anyone else have trouble napping when the cleaning woman is doing her thing?

New Rack vs. New Knobs

My wife is wonderful and amazing just as she is, but that doesn't mean she can't occasionally improve things . . . so this year, for Christmas, she got a new rack (just for me!) and this is even better than her incredibly thoughtful gift back in 2011 (a set of new knobs) because she really didn't want (nor did she need) a new rack-- but she knew that I wanted her to accept the fact that we both might enjoy a new rack . . . because everyone loves a new rack . . . in the kitchen, of course, not the bedroom; in fact, we don't even have an old rack in the kitchen-- my wife likes to keep all the pots and pans in a set of deep drawers-- but I don't have the patience nor do I have the skill to successfully dig them out or stack them in . . . I like when everything is visible and easy to grab-- and this applies to both knobs and racks-- and so I always wanted a hanging rack for the pots and pans and she finally agreed to indulge me (and not only that, she bought it for me in secret and got our handyman to come over and install it . . . the best Christmas gift ever . . . even better than if she actually got a new rack . . . which is a recipe for back problems, if you ask me).

Seriously, Sirius?

So I'm walking my dog and it starts to rain and it's cold and damp and I'm hurrying home and he pulls me to a complete stop so he can urinate on a fire hydrant and I'm like really? that is so cliché and I tell him this, but it doesn't seem to make an impression-- so I guess it's actually a thing: dogs like to urinate on fire hydrants, even if it's raining (and my dog hates the rain and generally refuses to go out in it or stay out in it, so he must have desperately wanted to urinate on this fire hydrant).

Fell On Black Days

Sunday was the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus the shortest day and longest night of the year-- if you care to know how any of this astronomical crap works, here is a link-- but don't ask me about it, because I was too tired to comprehend any of the details of the article due to the fact that the lack of daylight sends me into a semi-dormant, totally idiotic state; on the bright side, the days will be getting longer now, but if you live in New Jersey don't get too excited-- because spring is rainy, cold and miserable (a fact I always forget) so not only is it going to be a long winter, but there won't be any decent weather until next fall.

The Significance of #47

Having this blog has made it easy to keep track of the important things in my life, such as the number of tacos I ate in 2011 (200!) and the number of books I read in 2013 (22) and I am very proud to say that this year I more than doubled last year's book count (mainly because I read a lot of quick reads: crime-fiction and travelogues and slick non-fiction) and I just finished my fifth Don Winslow novel of the year (The Gentlemen's Hour . . . plenty of surfing, corruption, torture, and murder . . . plus some big Serial type issues, such as how the prosecution and police often "massage" eyewitness reports and confessions in order to get what they need for a conviction-- whether it's the right guy or not) and that's book number 47; for the entire list and my seven favorites, head over to Gheorghe: The Blog. 

Ostrich Philosophy

My son Alex came home Tuesday with a nasty scrape on his arm, an injury he suffered in what he named "the arena"-- a free-form fighting melee that became an after school ritual for several days; I'm happy to say I witnessed the inception of this 4th-5th grade gladiatorial combat zone, and I'm also happy to say that I predicted its demise . . . a teacher finally broke it up, and while it looked like a lot of fun, and boys certainly need to burn off some energy and aggression when they leave school, I'm still glad to see it go -- there were a lot of head-on collisions and body slamming, and the ground wasn't particularly grassy-- there were trees and dirts and roots, and so Alex is probably lucky that he got away with such a minor injury . . . and this confirms one of my lessons about kids: it's always better when you don't watch what they're doing, because most of the stuff they do-- stand on furniture, play on the stairs, whip around sharp objects and bash each other with sticks-- looks incredibly dangerous, but most of the time they don't get hurt, and the only person who suffers is the adult watching all the violent nonsense.

Enough About Serial Already

Here is a piece of graffito I read on a condom machine in a bar bathroom: "this gum tastes funny."

Now That Serial Is Over, What Will My Brain Do?

The podcast Serial has finally reached its conclusion-- and while the ending might not satisfy the binge-listeners, anyone who listened to Sarah Koenig slowly explicate the case: the major and minor players, the details, the neighbor-boy and Mr. S., the time-lines, the Nisha call, the Asia alibi, the theories, the issues, the geography, the criminal justice system, the nature of narrative, human nature and truth . . . anyone who consumed this thing week-by-week, with plenty of time to process and discuss each episode with other rabid fans-- these people can't be disappointed by the ending (and I am speculating, of course, which is just what the podcast simultaneously invited us to do and warned us against) but the final episode had it all-- new shit, old theories, new possibilities, Deirdre, the phrase "West Side Hitman," and a final (sort of) conclusion about the case and our justice system; this is not to say that I wasn't rooting for The Last Minute Solution and the greatest forty-five minutes of digital audio ever recorded, and it's not to say that I didn't laugh (really hard) at the Funny or Die parody of the ending-- but I was setting the bar low (because that is the key to happiness) and I set it low enough (and I'm not ashamed to admit) that I got a bit teary-eyed at Adnan's last words-- his stoic attitude towards the universe and the case; he leaves Sarah with this: "I think in a sense you leave it up to the audience to determine" but Sarah says she can't do this -- she can't "take a powder" on a conclusion-- and then she says what we know she has to say, and while it's not last second Hail Mary into the end zone (my friend Kevin said it was more like when the quarterback takes a knee in order to preserve a hard fought tie) but I still think it was more than enough-- she provided plenty of drama and thought provoking commentary, brilliant pacing and superb detail and flawless transitions and dense tape-- tape we have listen to, and so we have to really pay attention, we can't just look at it and draw some quick conclusions; generally the only type of drama that can get me all weepy like the last two episodes of Serial are sports stories-- Friday Night Lights and Hoosiers and Rocky, that sort of stuff-- and I think that's how I felt here; I admired the fight, both from Sarah and her "little garden spade" and from Adnan, who allowed this awful time to be pried back open and scrutinized (would a guilty man agree to go through with this?) and even though it's cliche, sometimes you play as hard as you can, and you don't get a result, and that's frustrating and disappointing, but the important thing is that you put it all on the line and played . . . and that's what this podcast and Sarah Koenig and Adnan did . . . I don't think I've ever spent three months following anything this closely: a news story, a TV show, a book, a sports team . . . Serial takes the cake in that department, and now it's finally come time to conclude this sentence and I think I will end with the moral of the story-- endings are hard . . . there's so few that are memorable and perfect (The Shield, The Winter's Tale, and Let the Right One In immediately come to mind) but that's because endings are contrived and in reality there are no endings, things just keep on going, whether we like them or not . . . so hopefully Episode 13 of Serial (otherwise known as the universe that Serial resides in) will eventually provide us more information about the case, but we have to remember that our universe isn't obligated to explicate anything, and so we just do the best we can with what we have.

Of Course We Do (Not)

My son Alex explained to us that he was making a movie at school and then he asked: "Do we have any snow leopard costumes?"

Like Spider Like Son

Although I am a competent basketball player now, this wasn't the case in college-- in fact, the only basketball skill I possessed back then was the ability to do "the spider"-- a silly drill in which you bounce the ball between your legs with two dribbles in front and then two dribbles behind your back-- and if you can get it going fast it looks pretty neat (and serves absolutely no strategic purpose, though that didn't stop me from doing it at half-court during our intramural games, after which I would chuck up a forty foot hook shot) and now I'm coaching 4th-5th grade basketball and I gave my players some "homework" ball handling drills -- including the spider-- and my own two children are obsessed with it and can actually do it pretty well, though it's probably the last thing they need to master (they'd be better served if they could make a lay-up or dribble with their heads up) but they've obviously got quite a bit of their dad in them (the other morning my wife said: "they can't be all you! they've got to have some of me in them!")

Surprise!

Fans of my idiotic ramblings know that I hate surprise parties-- I think people should be allowed to prepare in advance for social events (and I still haven't recovered from when Catherine threw me a surprise 30th birthday party-- I thought we were headed out to my favorite Mexican place for a relaxing dinner with my family, and instead I had to talk to a bunch of people that I wasn't prepared to talk to . . . it took me an hour to recover from the "surprise") and while I appreciate the planning and cleverness in order to successfully throw one of these parties, I always wonder about the purpose-- I wonder if the party is more for the planners than the recipient; anyway, I was a participant in a surprise birthday party on Saturday night and I suggested that we really give the recipient a surprise-- and I ran through a number of scenarios, including group nudity, knocking him unconscious and driving him to an undisclosed location and leaving him on the side of the road, and finally an easy one: when the birthday boy entered the house, his wife and I would make out in the living room and when he caught us, I would say "Surprise?" . . . but we executed none of my creative ideas, and just went with the traditional hiding in the kitchen and scaring the crap out of him with a shrill "Surprise!". . . and then I stayed out far too late (it's always traumatic for me when I surprise someone, and I need to assuage my anxiety with alcohol) and I was too tired to attend the big charity bash at my friend's mom's house on Sunday night . . . but Catherine went without me and later that evening I received a picture on my phone of her making out with a friend and he accompanied the picture with a text that said, "This is what happens when you don't come out" . . . surprise!

The Way We Were

For the past two weeks, my children have been starring in an epic saga of forgetfulness; they forgot their homework and the materials they needed for their homework multiple times (resulting in awkward phone-calls to their friends-- there is nothing worse than supervising nine and ten year old boys while they make phone-calls in which they actually have to glean some information from the communication) and then Alex nearly shit his pants when he realized that he forgot his saxophone-- his newly purchased very expensive saxophone-- "on the hill by the school" because he played some football right after school let out, but then his brother rushed him to leave . . . and so, nearly an hour after he left the very expensive saxophone on the hill, we raced back to school-- to find that the saxophone was no longer on the hill where he left it, and so there were even more tears, but he lucked out-- some goodhearted soul brought the instrument into the main office-- and as a result of all this forgetting, Catherine and decided that the two of them couldn't walk home for a week-- and that if either of them forgot their stuff, then they were BOTH losing TV for the night and that I would have to pick them up and check to see that they had everything they needed . . . and while I was annoyed with their irresponsibility, I was exactly the same way when I was a kid, so it was hard to actually be angry with them . . . and they do have to remember a lot of stuff; anyway, I raced out of my school last week so I could get to their school and check on them, and when I found the spot where the fourth graders were let out, I saw Ian and a few other kids engaged in an insane tackling and wrestling melee, with plenty of full speed running into each other and lots of chucking each other to the ground and it surprised me that this was happening on school grounds but they seemed like they knew what they were doing and that this was some sort of daily ritual so I forgot about it (especially since Ian had to return inside the school to find his trombone, which he forgot) and then the next day when I picked them up, my other son-- who is in fifth grade-- was also involved in this melee and I asked him if this happened every day and he said, "No, this never happens . . . but I saw them and joined in" which made me laugh because the whole thing looked so casually violent, like they always did this to let off steam after a school day, but I warned them that when some teacher or aid saw this, they were going to get in trouble and I told them about the very first after-school detention I received, which, coincidentally, was for-- and I quote this-- "play-fighting in the yard" (I'll never forget the description because I had to bring the detention slip home and get it signed) and I'm really hoping they start remembering their school materials because I don't want to see any more of this, as it's too stupidly nostalgic (and my wife doesn't care if I committed these same errors, she thinks we're all idiots).

How to Write the Comment of the Year

There are only sixteen days left in 2014, so if you're looking to win the prestigious Sentence of Dave Comment of the Year you'd better get cracking; to see what you're up against, read yesterday's sentence and the comments (and you also need to read this sentence as well) and then you'll understand what you need to do:

1) synthesize elements from two or more sentences in a brief and humorous fashion;

2) offer an ironic juxtaposition; zman's comment not only juxtaposes black and white, but also sleek and fluffy AND large and small . . . absolutely masterful;

3) you should avoid making fun of Dave-- while Clarence may have gotten a laugh yesterday, he's never going to win Comment of the Year with that kind of attitude.

Physics Equation with Dark Matter

Black fleece pants + black jacket + black rainy night + black Nike sneakers + black dog = almost getting hit by a car while walking the dog.

I Finally Understand Madmen

It took me a while to get it, but I have a good excuse-- I was distracted by all the outfits: Meghan's beautiful outfits and Peggy's atrocious outfits and Pete's silly outfits, Joan's voluptuous outfits and Betty's evolving outfits-- ironically, I share the same blindness as the men on the show . . . but I can't be blamed because of the "curse of testosterone"; anyway, better late than never, and so here it is: the show's theme is essentially the title of Hanna Rosin's candid book The End of Men and the Rise of Women; Don's infinite fall during the theme song is more than a tragic symbol of his own career arc . . . it's a symbol of the decline of all men in America; as the show grinds to a close, the women are gaining power and thinking for themselves-- Joan as a partner and Peggy as a talented executive and Meghan as an actress and Betty as an assertive and intelligent housewife who realizes her talents were wasted-- while the men are dinosaurs (Lou) or hipsters (Roger doing acid, Stan and his beard) or insane (Michael cuts his nipple off!)-- and when Don and Harry Crane leave the hip L.A. party and head out to sip whiskey at the old man restaurant with the paneled decor and a stone hearth, you can sense that the good times are over . . . maybe Don will regain some tiny shred of relevance, or achieve sobriety, but that's hardly a happy ending to the show, and I'm assuming it will end far worse than that.

Six Ways to Annoy Your Friends (Now!)

If you read the new Steven Johnson book How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World then you will learn lots of annoying facts about his six topics of invention: glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light . . . but I won't bore you with pedantry (though Johnson's writing can make anything exciting, even the history of refrigeration) and I'll just summarize his theme instead: to be extraordinarily innovative, you don't want to remain true to yourself and your unorthodox principles -- you might improve the world slightly that way-- but Johnson strives to dispel this "lone genius" myth; instead, if you really want to do something groundbreaking, you've got a little lost and form new connections, explore uncharted terrain, break your routine, and let yourself be buffeted by the new ideas circulating in the ether . . . and it still might take a LONG time before the world catches up with you . . . but the inventions are out there, just waiting for the right suite of technologies to become available, and the right brains to combine them (the same way Shakespeare went about "smashing words together" to make Elizabethan English into something more modern).

In the Old Days, If You Didn't Go to Church, You Got Whipped (Cream?)

I haven't been very zealous about my children's religious attendance (let's be frank here, I haven't even been mildly interested in making them attend church) but you reap what you sow; last week my youngest son told my wife: "putting whipped cream on my ice cream is part of my religion."

Tony Luke's is Better Than Jim's (and Other Notes for Future Trips to Philly)

Catherine and I spent the weekend in Philly (sans kids) and I'd like to note some highs and lows for both my readers and my future self:

1) Not only is the roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and long hots at Tony Luke's better than the same offering at DiNic's-- but (though it's comparing apples to oranges . . . or pigs to cows) it's also better than a cheesesteak at Jim's-- and as an added bonus, the staff is actually cordial at Tony Luke's-- the woman taking my order didn't seem to mind at all that I had a question-- while Jim's has a "soup Nazi" feel to the ordering process . . . who do I order from? . . . the guy with the metal thingie? . . . did he make eye contact with me? . . . does that mean I need to say something? . . . I'm pretty far along in the line . . . am I too far in line? . . . should I have said something? . . . is it too late? . . . did I miss my chance?. . . do they have provolone? . . . do I have to say "wit wiz"? . . .. how do you spell "whiz"? . . . should I say "wit prov"? and after all the hazing, we were still underwhelmed by the cheesesteaks from Jim's this time around (although I must admit, that past times they were delicious);

2) our next trip to Philadelphia, I am going to get a cheesesteak from Tony Luke's and see if it is as good as the roast pork sandwich (because quite a few people were eating cheesesteaks there);

3) the Good Dog and La Locanda Del Ghiottone are great places to eat;

4) the tour of the Physick House is worth doing: the guy who does the tour is the great-great grandson of Dr. Physick-- "The Father of American Surgery"-- and while he's an eccentric man, who seems to be living his life both in the 18th Century and the present, simultaneously, there is no question that he knows a buttload about the house and the history of the area, which he gets across in passionate anecdotal fashion, with loads of bad puns, and -- odd as he is, and history buffs are usually quite odd-- at least he doesn't dress in period garb, which is a big plus . . . but be warned, the good Doctor's surgical tools are rather primitive and the accompanying diagrams made me light-headed and also, I'm pretty sure he explained to us, while discussing the family tree on the wall in the room with all the surgical tools, that he's seriously inbred;

5) The Hop Sing Laundromat has a lot of rules, so I put the kibosh on going there;

6) listening to the podcast Serial while driving is dangerous stuff . . . Lynn and Connell were so engrossed that they missed the exit . . . by thirty miles (but Lynn did get an A+ on the Episode 10 quiz that Catherine and I created for my class);

7) Connel got the perfect mojito at lunch at Cuba Libre, but then couldn't get the diner bartender to replicate it . . . but he does claim that the best drinks in the world are served at the awkwardly named Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company (but Catherine and I didn't go over there, as you have to mortgage your house to afford the drinks, which run fifteen dollars a piece-- but Lynn and Connel say it was well worth it, so next time I will suck it up and pay);

8) if you want to go to Farmicia, you need a reservation; same with Howl at the Moon, and McGillin's was a madhouse at 10 PM on a Saturday night, far too young a crowd (we walked in while the bouncers were breaking up a fight . . . the place was a giant frat party-- if you want to visit Philly's oldest bar, try the afternoon);

9) it's a long walk from the Old City to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, especially when it's pouring rain and you're only wearing a sweatshirt because your wife didn't emphasize the weather forecast (she told me, but she didn't TELL me);

10) the Thomas Bond House keeps the heat too high, so you have to break the rules and open the windows-- which have no screens because it's a restored historical house.

Sarah Koenig, Laura and the Dude Profanely Grapple in the In-Between Place (Philosophical Shit Part 2)

If you go 38 minutes and 40 seconds into Episode 8 of Serial, then you get to hear Sarah Koenig set up what she calls "her favorite piece of tape from all her reporting so far"-- and then you hear a friend of Jay's named Laura stumble and stutter and curse her way to the conclusion that she's very confused and things are extremely complicated-- there's just too much conflicting information; Sarah Koenig says that Laura's stream-of-consciousness equivocating could be her own . . . and all this reminds me of the scene in The Big Lebowski when the Dude proclaims, in the same stuttering, stumbling epithet-laced manner that "new shit has come to light" -- and the Dude and Sarah Koenig occasionally strike me as similar, though Koenig is a far more seasoned and professional investigator, but she still seems slightly over her head-- digging away at the case with her "little garden spade" . . . and open to all possibilities, as the Dude is, and though this is a wonderful trait, it means Serial may end like The Big Lebowski . . . an excellent picaresque journey that disappears into a scattered collection of phenomenal fragments (at the start of Episode 9 of Serial, Koenig presents the "new shit"-- three things that are fairly well substantiated, but actually increase the fog, complexity and ambiguity of the case).

Philosophical Shit

I think teachers often forget Aristotle's idea that "the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet" because they are already educated, so they know how to do the tasks they assign, and find it hard to imagine themselves stumbling around in the shadowy ignorance of Plato's allegorical cave; and while I do my best to empathize with the plight of my students, I certainly know some of my material too well to remember what it's like not to know it -- which is why teaching the podcast Serial has been so difficult and enlightening . . . I've learned that I am much better at reading than I am at listening, and that I have trouble with details, timelines, and auditory descriptions of geography . . . I made my students write an essay connecting Plato's cave metaphor to Episode 7 and 8 of Serial and one essay explained that Sarah Koenig couldn't be manipulating us (the audience) because she is also in a shadowy cave of ignorance, the maze of her investigation, and we are -- like Inception-- inside an even shadowier cave within her cave, and then I added another layer to this: though I am the teacher, I'm not great at organizing things this dense and detail-oriented, and so I am in an even darker cave within that cave; anyway, I am listening to the episodes two or three times, in order to plan and teach each one, and the students are helping me as much as I am helping them (and often summarizing and analyzing things in ways more eloquent and precise than I am capable of, which is impressive . . . and the main thing you should learn from all this, is that if you're life is on the line, you don't want me arguing your case).

Can Anyone Peel an Egg?

I've got decent fine motor skills-- I can shoot a dart, play lead guitar, and tweeze an ear-hair with unerring accuracy-- so why can't I peel a hardboiled egg?

What the Kids Are Saying . . .

Here is some of the slang I've picked up from the teenagers this school year: apparently, if you are over forty and some young person has nicely groomed eyebrows, then it's really funny if you tell this person their eyebrows are "on fleek" . . . also, if you're a teenager and you've got a BAE (a boyfriend or girlfriend) then you can say that you and your significant other are "cuffed."

Fermi's Paradox and The Great Filter Wish You a Happy Holiday Season

This year I'm not going to get so upset over the rampant materialism and consumerism (and the resulting environmental disaster) caused by the holiday season, and one of the things that's helping me cope is Fermi's Paradox and its evil twin, The Great Filter: when several physicists were discussing the high probability of extra-terrestrial life (based on the vast number of stars like our sun and planets that could support life) then Enrico Fermi ended the discussion with the question "Where is everybody?" and one possibility is that there are Great Filters which are very, very difficult to pass through on the road from inert matter to intelligent life . . . and one of these "Great Filters" might be the technological ability to destroy the very planet on which you live, and we've reached that capability, and we seem to be fairly intent on activating this Great Filter (for more on this, listen to Dan Carlin's podcast Blueprint for Armageddon II) and so I'm not going to worry about the earth any longer-- I'm going to live it up, because apparently every other intelligent civilization in the galaxy destroyed itself before figuring out interstellar travel, so why should I expect anything more from humans?

Real vs. "Real"

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)  is a film with many layers-- but the layers are shallow . . . we never leave the epidermis-- and in the end, though there's some good performances and some interesting irony and meta-irony (Michael Keaton plays an actor past his prime trying to stay relevant, but all people can remember him for is his role as the superhero Birdman . . . sound familiar?) the movie is overwrought and forgettable; Edward Norton does his impression of the best actor in the universe, the arch-fiend is a critic-- who might destroy Michael Keaton's play and might even destroy the movie as a whole, but then Keaton saves the day with his performance and his "performance" and for some inscrutable reason (perhaps to make it more "real") this is all done in one long Steadicam shot, giving the illusion that the film is one long take . . . but all this does is make the film far too long (two hours) for this kind of comedy, there's too much time to "get" the irony and the ambiguity (and maybe all this quality TV has ruined me, but I'm used to brevity now) and so while there are funny and profound and vivid moments, as a whole the movie is ponderous (JCVD does it better) and Emma Stone's various rants and lectures about Twitter and social media are annoying and dated, but if you want to see something real (rather than "real") then check out On the Ropes, a 94 minute boxing documentary from 1999 that tells the story of three boxers and their trainer Harry Keitt; Keitt has been homeless, shot his cousin over a drug deal, and addicted to cocaine, but he fought his way out of trouble and now tries to inspire his fighters . . . but even if you train hard, it's tough to defeat the ghetto: Tyrene Manson is a Golden Gloves contender, but she gets screwed by her crackhead Uncle Randy, who sells drugs to an undercover cop, and Tyrene gets charged with intent to sell as well (simply because some drugs were in her room, which is hardly "hers" as she lives in a house with many other people . . . watching her incompetent lawyer and the cold-hearted judge that sentences her is heartbreaking); George Walton is a young fighter with professional aspirations and ability, and he leaves his trainer behind and learns some hard lessons about trust and talent; and Noel Santiago is a likable slacker who finds inspiration and enthusiasm in the boxing gym, but also learns that even if you try, sometimes success is elusive . . . Birdman takes a long time illustrating a few things about some shallow and insipid characters, but On the Ropes cuts to the bone much quicker, and though the film is gritty and at times ugly, there's some unforgettable moments in it.

It Works For Me

I've found that in the winter, if I take my dog for a bike ride or a hike through the park, I get far less muddy if I tuck my sweat pants into my socks, and while I realize this looks ridiculous, I'm just going to apologize in advance and do it anyway.

Enough of That . . . Or Is It?

I finished Dana Goldstein's book The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession and while there's certainly fascinating stuff in there (the reason, in the1800's, politicians embraced females invading a traditionally male job was because they would work on the cheap) and the book lays out, in a comprehensive and unbiased manner, the history of teachers and unions, education and desegregation, the various attempts to use testing and teacher evaluation to improve schools, the political and moral panic that often resulted in teachers being persecuted for reasons other than incompetence, the charter school movement, Teach for America, the Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and all sorts of other things that I knew only passing information about, but for the layperson the interesting part of the book is the epilogue, where she makes some recommendations based on all her research, and these are logical and worth taking a look at; but for those of you who don't feel like it, which I totally understand (you could be reading a Don Winslow book) here is a short summary:

1) teacher pay matters and while teachers aren't paid poorly in America, they aren't paid nearly as much as in countries with very successful education systems,  such as Finland, South Korea, and Japan-- if teaching jobs aren't coveted, and if teachers aren't as respected as doctors and engineers, then you won't be able to attract excellent candidates;

2) we need to focus on using good teachers as models and creating communities of excellent practice, rather than creating systems of evaluation purely to ferret out the bad teachers-- as these systems always fail because of the insane amounts of paperwork and data they create;

3) tests need to return to their rightful role as diagnostic tools, not as methods to achieve high stakes funding-- which resulted in teaching to the test, gaming the system, and all sorts of illustrations of Campbell's Law;

4) the principal matters as much as the teachers-- exceptional leadership improves the bottom third of teachers and the top third of teachers-- not excess evaluation paperwork;

5) star teachers were not necessarily the best students--so simply hiring people with higher math SAT scores isn't necessarily going to improve American education-- research shows you're better off hiring someone with excellent communication skills, who adeptly uses a large vocabulary, and can explain things well-- even if they once struggled to learn them in the past (and I agree with this, because I was a horrible and disorganized student, and so I know how to contend with this in class);

6) teachers benefit from watching each other work-- but there's usually no time for this (although since I started teaching Serial, a number of my colleagues have observed my class, and it's great-- they're not administrators filling out paperwork while I teach-- so there's no pressure-- and I can ask them for suggestions during the lesson or afterwards);

7) end outdated union protections-- there needs to be a faster way to fire incompetent veteran teachers, and a streamlined way for the teacher to appeal being fired (because teacher appointments and terminations have certainly succumbed to political whims in the past);

8) we are not as homogenous as Finland and there are limitations to our educational system, which is very decentralized, so it's near impossible to use top-down reform to improve our schools-- there's no federal body to check how schools are implementing federal standards, and federal funding is fairly minimal (compared to state and town funding) and we have schools in America with incredibly different study bodies and educational problems, so every school might need a slightly different plan to improve;

and finally, if you want to hear something more condensed on these issues, which features an interview with Dana Goldstein, then listen to this week's episode of Freakonomics: "Is America's Education Problem Really Just a Teacher Problem?"