This Sunday at 10 AM, which is normally the time I play pick-up soccer at the turf, but you know, the pandemic-- so I was rollerblading . . . and I saw my fellow soccer buddy Guillermo jogging and I waved hello but neither of us was happy . . . it's a sad state of affairs (but I'm excited to start playing in a tennis league next Saturday . . . so I'll get my competitive fix then).
The Queen's Gambit is a Classed-up Cheesy Sports Movie
I thoroughly enjoyed the Netflix mini-series "The Queen's Gambit," even as I recognized sports trope after sports trope; it's a Cinderella story and this scene pretty much summarizes the film:
the protagonist, an orphan named Beth, learns to play chess in the basement of the orphanage with her first mentor of many-- the janitor Mr. Shaibel-- so you get the Rocky-style gritty determinism and training, but, of course, Beth is an intuitive player-- her brain is so active she sees the pieces move on the ceiling . . . she has to resort to tranquilizers and alcohol to calm her busy mind . . . and she passes through many obstacles, suffers setbacks, and finally-- with a sequence of mentors (including the archetypal wise Black lady) she finally learns the Russians' secrets-- they are collaborative-- they study games together and everyone plays-- they advance in chess as a nation . . . but, in the nick of time, her scrappy American friends come to her aid and though she once suffered abysmal defeat, it seems that her brilliance-- which she could only summon with tranquilizers-- can also be bolstered by cooperation and friendship and coaching . . . it's a heartwarming feminist underdog tale that made me weep like I was watching "Hoosiers"-- the acting and imagery is first rate, and the color palette almost feels like "Madmen," it's just as much fun to look at the outfits as it is to root for Beth . . . the writers decided NOT to explain very much about chess at all, and this works-- if you know the game, you might think the speed of play is unrealistic (and it would be good to revisit Jim Belushi's SNL Chess Coach skit) but to watch people actually play chess is laborious, and as an added bonus, now my kids want to play some chess (I destroyed Alex last night, just crushed him right through the middle).
Things For Which to Be Thankful
Due to the pandemic, Thanksgiving felt pretty weird this year, but I still have a hell of a lot to be thankful for . . . sorry, I have a hell of a lot for which to be thankful; here's an incomplete list:
1) Winston Churchill's retort when criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition:"This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put"
2) the fact that my family was able to get together at all . . . it was just ten of us, which leads me to the next thing I'm thankful for;
3) this amazing COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool . . . apparently there was an 18% chance of someone having COVID at our Thanksgiving get-together, which seems like a reasonable risk . . . so pull out this Risk Assessment Tool and you'll be the life of the party!
4) the amazing weather . . . this might be due to global warming, but most of us might be dead long before that's much of a problem, so whatever;
5) the dog beach at Asbury Park . . . my wife and I took the dog there today-- this was contingent on the absurd late November weather;
6) the fact that my kids love to play tennis-- we're getting a lot of outdoor play before the (costly) indoor winter season begins;
7) the fact that our ping-pong table is still in the driveway-- we've been playing every day, crossing our fingers that this weather lasts, and my son Ian is actually getting good enough to beat me (occasionally)
8) the fact that we've stepped up our ping-pong game to real paddles (Pro Spin Carbon)
9) this astoundingly funky Jimmy McGriff album "Groove Grease," which is excellent writing music and has a racy cover;
10) Jersey craft breweries, such as Cypress and Beach Haus;
11) the fact that my wife has taken up tennis-- I get a lot of exercise when I play with her . . .
12) the fact that I can do my job from home right now, without wearing a mask-- while remote teaching is kind of sad and occasionally gives me eyestrain and vertigo, it's a hell of a lot easier than hybrid;
13) a bunch of other stuff, but there's a Zoom happy hour with my fraternity brothers starting in 30 seconds, which I am also thankful for . . . sorry, for which I am thankful.
Happy Weirdsgiving?
Happy Weirdsgiving . . . may your stuffing and gravy contain very little COVID . . . or perhaps this will be a true American Thanksgiving and the native population will be decimated by disease, in the same way that the Native Americans-- through many a Thanksgiving-- suffered from smallpox, tuberculosis, measles and influenza.
The Wailing is an Awesome Movie
The Wailing-- an epic 2016 Korean horror film-- is a cross between The Exorcist and The Naked Gun . . . and the imagery and cinematography, which is astounding and beautiful, is somewhere between Deliverance and Apocalypse Now . . . the movie features angels and demons and all of us bumbling idiots in between, there are shapeshifters and possession, zombies and infection, ghosts and senseless violence . . . but all of these tired tropes are given new life . . . the film is streaming on Amazon Prime, watch it before it vanishes.
A Memory Called Empire
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is big-brained sci-fi and it will take a little while to understand what's going on (I didn't realize there is a glossary of terms in the back of the novel . . . the existence of which often indicates the kiss-of-death for comprehension and readability, but I managed to figure things out without referring to it and I'm an idiot) but I recommend giving it a shot . . . it asks this question:
--how do you preserve your culture and memory when you are on the verge of being subsumed and appropriated by a gigantic galactic empire?
and the mining station Lsel has an answer: proprietary technology that fuses the memories of past people with present citizens, in the form of a neurological implant and a grueling physical and mental process that allows the voices of the past to coexist in the same body as the present person; diplomacy is at the heart of the novel, but there's plenty of action, violence, insurrection, and politics as well; the author is also a Byzantine scholar and the book won the Hugo award . . . it ain't an easy read, but I will probably read the next in the series as well-- and I hope the next book I read is a little easier on my brain (just as writing a blog is a much easier way to preserve memory and culture in a world being subsumed and appropriated by algorithmically polarized social media).
Of Podcasts and Analogies
Joe Rogan is the Bruce Springsteen of podcasting; he's indefatigable and manages to be both a dude and a pro-- a weird combination of everyman and talent . . . here are some recent episodes I recommend:
1) #1566 Nicholad Christakis . . . required pandemic listening-- this enlightened me to the fact that pandemics are nothing new-- throughout history, they have been the norm-- and while this current one could be far worse, it's also not going away any time soon;
2) #1555 Alex Jones and Tim Dillon . . . Rogan does a great job fact-checking and slowing down Alex Jones-- he often sounds like a high school teacher, chastising Jones for talking over him and not connecting the dots . . . but he does it in a pleasant way and allows Jones to actually get across what he's all about, uncovering corruption-- some of which may be based on fact-- and linking this corruption into wild insane global conspiracies that sound utterly insane when you put them under a microscope;
3) #1550 Wesley Hunt . . . Hunt is a black Republican that ran (and lost) in Texas's 7th Congressional District; he's a veteran of the Iraq war and former AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter pilot and he's a great reminder that there are plenty of reasonable Republicans out there-- who are interested in promoting business and creating jobs but still understand environmental externalities-- and have no interest in promoting QAnon;
4) #1554 Kanye West . . . this one takes a while to get going, but it eventually becomes Kanye's beautiful religious twisted fantasy . . . he mentions "God" quite often;
meanwhile, if Joe Rogan is the Boss of Podcasting, Sam Harris is some kind of demanding and complex jazz-- Ornette Coleman-- or perhaps prog rock . . . Harris is the Steely Dan or the Mars Volta of podcasting . . . intellectual, sincere, a little too earnest, and very smart . . . his new one, Republic of Lies, has some excellent logic and analogies about Trump's fight to dismiss the election results:
-- he likens Trump's move to use the courts to challenge the election results to a soccer player late in the game who flops in the penalty box, hoping to be awarded a penalty kick by a clueless referee . . . and he makes the point that the soccer player is acting in bad faith-- he knows he hasn't been fouled but he's going ahead with the ploy anyway-- and the other players on the team and the coaches also know the player hasn't been fouled, but they've got to go along with it as well . . . so Trump is writhing around on the ground in fake pain and everyone on his side is in on the ruse . . . Harris contrasts this with the many liberals who think there is systemic racism everywhere in America-- while he doesn't think this is true (and neither do I, listen to his reasoned take on this) he understands that the liberal who believe this truly believe it . . . they're not faking it and there's more at stake than a game . . . democracy is at stake;
--Harris points out that all this "deception" was all done in plain sight: Trump began setting up the fraudulent claim that mail-in ballots are corrupt early, he tried to defund the post office so they couldn't deal with the ballots, he made no attempt to get the states to begin counting mail-in ballots early, and then he claimed that the results on election night should stand . . . wow;
--and finally, if the Democrats engineered massive systemic voter fraud, they would have also won the House and Senate races . . . he's willing to give Trump voters a "mulligan" and I see his point-- there's no reason no harbor animosity-- the real blame right now lies with the right-wing media demagogues-- who have jumped on the presidential bandwagon-- and all the folks on Trump's team (especially Rudy Giuliani) who are going along with this particularly egregious and high-stakes "flop" in the penalty box of American democracy.
9/11 and the Pandemic
The current Covid pandemic and 9/11 are probably going to loom large in my lifetime-- the significant events that will leave their mark on my consciousness-- and I feel the same about both of them:
1) I've experienced both events from an unusual perspective . . . I was teaching in Damascus when the planes hit the towers, and I am coaching and teaching through this pandemic;
2) I feel like both events are common occurrences that Americans haven't normally dealt with . . . pandemics have been the norm throughout history, and most developing countries (including Syria) still deal with deadly infectious diseases on a daily basis-- malaria, typhoid, yellow fever river blindness, chikungunya, etc-- and many countries outside the US cope with plenty of terrorism . . . so the pandemic and terrorism were both events where we joined the rest of the world . . . I wish my looming significant event was Woodstock but that's not how it's going down.
Home Computer Advantage
A bonus of doing school from my home-bunker is that when I use my iMac, I don't have to remember to click the dreaded "share computer audio" button when I share my screen and want to play a video clip . . . for some reason, Apple computers do this automatically (I don't know why they wouldn't).
First Day of School All Over Again
It was the first day of school all over again today . . . the first day COVID caused remote school-- and I had first day jitters-- I was holed up in my study/music studio/junk room, which has a survivalist-bunker vibe (because of the cardboard boxes, the tools, the do-it-yourself-shelving, and all the cans of dog food) and Microsoft Teams wasn't playing all that nicely with my iMac . . . but I got it together and delivered the goods-- including an especially appropriate lesson on conspiracy theories (unshaven and poorly lit, I looked the part)) and while I missed my colleagues and the spaciousness of my classroom, I enjoyed fast internet, hot coffee, mask-free teaching, frequent snacking, walking the dog on my free period, no commute, time to sleep until the late late hour of 6:30 AM, and a sense of empathy with the majority of my students-- who have been virtual since day one . . . we'll see what I think of this whole endeavor when January rolls around.
Heeeere's David!
Winter is coming, it's getting dark before 5 PM, the pandemic is worsening, and my school has gone all remote so I'll be teaching at home until January 11th-- and my children are also doing school virtually as well-- so we'll all be home . . . for a while . . . I'm getting a Shining vibe about this winter (and I can't even think of an alternative winter-vibe that is fitting . . . Fargo? Dumb and Dumber?)
Modernist Poetry Helps Your Backhand?
I'm nearly done with Timothy Gallwey's classic The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Performance, and while I won't reveal any of the secrets I've learned (because I might have to play you in tennis) I will let you in on one thing: this is probably the only instructional tennis book that refers to T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."
The chances are now even greater that there will be a split between memory of theory and memory of action. (I am reminded of the lines from "The Hollow Men," by T.S. Eliot: "Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ and the act/ Falls the Shadow.")
Dave Encounters Three Dangerous Things
As I was cleaning out our kitchen-junk-drawer I noticed dangerous thing number one:
1) Krazy Glue looks like Chapstick . . . which can lead to this error;
and while I was reading my library book A Memory Called Empire, I created dangerous thing number two . . . I was eating a Honeycrisp apple slathered with peanut butter and:
2) I got peanut butter all over the fore-edge of the book and the page I was reading (which, coincidentally, was about an intergalactic diplomat who died from an allergic reaction) so if someone with a severe peanut allergy checks out the book once I'm through with it, they are headed straight for anaphylaxis;
3) dangerous thing number three happened when I was driving to work this morning . . . I was in traffic on Route 18 and it was raining and foggy and a medium sized spider-- I won't call it large because I've seen large spiders and they are obscene . . . but it was certainly the size of a quarter-- and this spider descended on a thread of silk from the driver side window and was headed straight for my arm hair . . . so I grabbed my lunch bag and swatted at it, but also nearly hit the divider and slowed down-- I was lucky not to cause an accident-- I think I finally got the spider out my window, but I'm not sure . . . we'll see if it's gone on my ride home today.
Twice? Only When It's Double Twenty
For the second time this year, the school where I teach is going completely virtual (and while this will be easier for me and probably simpler for my students-- the hybrid model is really difficult to execute, technologically-- but all-remote schooling going to be really tough for certain special needs students-- especially those that have been attending our school five days a week; I covered a class down in that world yesterday, and those kids desperately need in-person school . . . my younger son could also benefit from some structure-- I got home yesterday and found him making fresh pasta in the kitchen-- which is an ambitious endeavor, especially since he was supposed to be working on some kind of history assessment, which he blew off . . . I guess now I'll be home to keep an eye on him).
Several Pandemic Firsts
A few minutes before our JV team was about to step on the field for today's home game against Sayreville, the opposing coach jogged over to me and told me their team had to cancel-- as his AD had called him and told him that a kid who missed the bus had tested positive for COVID-- and then they beat a hasty retreat to the bus . . . this was the icing on the cake for today's game, which qualified for several firsts:
1) the first time I ever simultaneously coached and attended a faculty meeting . . . I kept one earbud in while I organized warm-ups and chatted with the refs;
2) the first time I ever had a game canceled due to a pandemic when both teams were on the field and ready to play;
3) the first time I ever took a phone call from the school that employs me as a coach while attending a meeting for the school that employs me as a teacher, while attempting to coach my team . . .
the lesson here is that multi-tasking makes me feel like my heart is going to explode; I'm a one-thing-at-a-time person.
Another Scary Poem
This one is a bit shorter than my Halloween 2020 special . . .
Two Four Six Eight
Trump is gonna litigate!
Seven Eight Nine Ten
We will count the votes again!
Eleven Twelve
I tire of this.
Escape from New York (After Willingly Going There)
Catherine and I went to NYC today-- we drove in instead of taking the train because covid cases are rising around here-- and the drive was fairly traffic-free--weird-- and the streets were fairly deserted, which I prefer to the normal throngs of humanity (but the economy doesn't prefer this, which is pretty tragic) and after a stroll through Central Park, we went to the MOMA . . . it was mainly empty and quite pleasant to browse all the famous and wacky art . . . then we went back to Central Park by way of Fifth Ave-- a lot fo the expensive stores were all boarded up in preparation for protests, riots, and God-know-what-else, and we encountered some brazen squirrels on a nature trail in Central Park and then we went for a late lunch at Westville Hells Kitchen . . . best veggie burger of my life-- and then we went back to the lot, took off our masks, and beat a hasty retreat back to Highland Park . . . in time for Ian and I to hit some tennis balls at the lovely and large p[ark right next to our house . . . had to be tough to wait out the pandemic in the city and it's going to be a long winter there.
Both Ends of the Sci-Fi Continuum Distract Dave
In order to distract myself from all this election nonsense, I've been listening to Tom Petty and reading science-fiction; I just finished one of the most difficult sci-fi books I've ever read-- William Gibson's The Peripheral-- usually I'm down with Gibson's prose, but this novel that seems to be about cyber-space and controlling three-dimensional peripheral avatars is actually about quantum information time-travel through a server-- surprise?-- and I was never comfortable with the plot, the characters, or what-the-hell-was-going-on . . . but I made it through and the end finally made some sense (this article with spoilers helped) and then I shifted gears and read one of the funniest, easiest, most entertaining and illuminating books I've read in a long while: Set my Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson-- a screenwriter for Pixar-- who takes a dental bot named Jared on a poignant and cinematic journey through human emotions, culture, and connection . . . it's so much fun that I watched election coverage from 9 PM to 9:20 PM last night and then went and finished the book and fell asleep, only to awaken to more ambiguity, so I'm starting another sci-fi novel: A Memory Called Empire.
Fall Break Coronavirus! Whoo!
Fall Break was off to an auspicious start-- Friday afternoon, I participated in the 9th Annual Scary Story Contest (and took third with my scary poem!) and Saturday Cat and I were about to attend an outdoor Halloween Party when I got a text from a JV player informing me that he had tested positive for covid (and so had his entire family . . . they were getting hit pretty hard by it) and so I switched from party mode to contact tracing mode . . . luckily, the player was very responsible and stopped coming to practice right when his mom grew ill, so the last contact was eight days prior-- but the head coach and the AD and I still had to make a spreadsheet of emails, inform all the players and the administration, and tell folks that we might have contracted the virus . . . the JV team ended up getting quarantined for six days-- which would be fourteen days from the initial contact-- but it was highly unlikely that there was any spread since we were outside and no one had any symptoms . . . my family got tested, just to be on the safe side-- we went to a fairly grubby old school doctor's office in a desolate strip mall-- lots of old leather furniture, a big fish tank, and yellowed linoleum on the floors-- and we had our first experience with the nasal swab . . . it wasn't too bad (I said I would do it again if someone paid me $20 and Cat and the boys said they would do it again for $5 . . . I said I don't need $5 dollars that badly) and we all turned out negative . . . we got results in 24 hours; hopefully we will get back to soccer at the end of the week; in other pandemic news, I bought a portable cheap exercise bike from Amazon, so we could ride it while we watch TV-- I think it's going to be a long winter-- and for 104 bucks the thing is miraculous, but they didn't ship us the seat, so while we wait for that, we duct taped a bunch of towels to the metal frame where the seat is supposed to go and that works pretty well.
A Bit on the Snout
On my way home from school the other day, I was able to snap a picture of an endangered species: the extraordinarily rare, extremely literal, proud and unreserved, completely-on-the-nose, totally lacking self-awareness Jaguar owner (and Jaguar vanity plate owner) who never learned the lesson Chip Kidd presents at the beginning of this TED Talk.