Less Cheese Please

We stopped buying bags of pre-grate cheese (mainly because they have weird chemical additives to prevent clumping) and this had two good outcomes:

1. we eat less cheese;

2. when we grate a block of cheese by hand, the cheese tastes better.

Riley Sager, You Give Genre Fiction a Bad Name

 

Wow . . . this new Riley Sager book The House Across the Lake is a hot mess . . . but it certainly inspired me to think about the rules of genre fiction and lent itself to an episode with many special guests: Bart and Lisa Simpson, Marty and Rust, Steve Martin, God, Alec Baldwin . . . so my advice is DO NOT read this book, listen to my podcast instead: "Riley Sager, You Gives Genre Fiction a Bad Name."

Highs and Lows

I was quite pleased with myself (for a few minutes) at indoor soccer this morning-- the first two games were zero-zero ties (no wonder Americans don't watch soccer) but in the third game, I scored two goals to give our team a definitive win . . . and the winning team stays on; in the next game I was trying to send a ball up the line, and I was near where we stash some of the stray gym equipment-- so after I kicked the ball, my foot connected with a protruding wheel on a volleyball net base-- OUCH!-- the sound resounded throughout the gym and I really nailed my big toe (and ripped my sneaker!) and then I was not so pleased with myself, although I was able to play a few more games (after I shook it off) and now my foot and toe hurt . . . stupid wheel.

Sarcastic Tone Implied

I'm not very good at sarcasm-- I don't have the voice for it-- so I've got to broadcast it . . . here it comes: you know what's fun after teaching English to high school students all week . . . helping your son on Saturday with all the AP English assignments he neglected to complete while he had COVID.

AM Record

An EB AM record . . . nineteen people at Friday morning basketball today-- pretty wild, we had an upstairs game and a sub-gym game-- and the winner of the sub-gym game (after 11 minutes of play) walked up the stairs and played the winner of the upper gym game . . . and it only took three games for my shot to warm up, but when it did . . . it was pretty spectacular (for 7:15 AM in the morning).

Two Profound Questions

Here they are:

1. Why is it so hard for me to get a pair of socks on without ripping them?

2. Why have I gotten so into listening to The Brian Jonestown Massacre lately?

Dave is Not a Doctor

I'm not a medical doctor (though I often play one in my home, when I'm diagnosing my children and telling them various remedies: try the NetiPot, take some ibuprofen, you need to ice that, go take a shower, take some Tums, etcetera) and I learned yesterday that sometimes it's beneficial to go see an actual medical doctor because they know a bunch of stuff and you don't end up down a WebMD rabbit hole; anyway, my son Ian has been experiencing some gastrointestinal distress and he had to stay home from school yesterday so he could be near a bathroom, and this is the second time this has happened recently, so I took him over to our pediatric doctor and we told her the deets-- he had COVID two weeks ago and lately he's been having stomach pains and diarrhea and she asked if he had been drinking sugary drinks and the answer was a resounding yes-- Ian works at the local bubble tea place so he has access to free delicious sugary drinks all the time-- and he had three Tuesday during his shift, and a bunch of lychee fruit-- and she said that after COVID or any viral infection, your GI is screwed up and can't handle sugary juice or drinks, and it gives you the runs, and then she asked if he had any dairy-- cheese, milk, etc-- and the answer was yes and she told us that after COVID people are generally lactose intolerant for a week or two, while certain bacteria is returning to their GI tract, so mystery solved and now we know the culprit and what to do to remedy his discomfort . . . that young lady really knew her stuff!

Why I Don't Own a Gun

When I play pickleball, I get great joy from hitting my opponent square in the chest with the ball-- if they pop up a "dink," this is perfectly acceptable behavior (when you're playing with guys) and when I play badminton, if someone doesn't hit their shot deep enough, and they are near the net, I take great pleasure (as do the rest of the players in my badminton crew) in nailing the person in the head, chest or stomach with the shuttlecock-- last week, I even took aim at someone who had just dove and was on the ground-- I hit a man while he was down!-- and though I behave like this while competiting, I consider myself fairly civilized . . . but if you take this basic human (male?) desire to hit other people with fast moving things and then you toss 400 million guns into the mix, something bad is going to happen on a daily basis . . . and it does, day after day in America-- and this is why I don't own a gun!

Let's Play Duck Duck Oil Sands

 

Kate Beaton's graphic memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is heavy viscous stuff . . . I get into it in my new episode of We Defy Augury-- the gist is that if you reverse the male fantasy of being stranded with a large group of bored and sex-starved women, if you reverse that ratio and make it fifty men to every woman, it becomes Kate Beaton's nightmare.

Where Art Thou, Snow Day? Wherefore, No Snow?

Another gray, kind-of-mild winter day . . . where is the snow? 

Moral: Eat at La Casita!

Yesterday at early morning basketball, we had sixteen players so we had to run a pair of four-on-four games across the gym-- while this was fun and very tiring, it was also dangerous, as when you run games this way there is very little space between the end line and the bleachers-- and one row of bleacher seats were protruding s when I barreled in for my patented hook shot, which involves a fair amount of contact-- think bowling ball and bowling pins-- after I made the shot my momentum carried my into the bleachers, where the one protruding row took me out at the knees and I scraped my elbow against the recessed bleacher wall-- but, aside from a scraped arm, I was fine . . . although by the time the school day was over, I was looking forward to a mellow evening-- the wife and I went to La Casita and drank a few beers and ate mole and sopes and a gordita-- and we had the place to ourselves, which was nice but kind of sad-- if you live in town, PLEASE support this place . . . it has great food and it's cheap (which is very unusual for food these days!) and it would be a great loss if it closed.

Real Night Court Takes Longer Than 22 Minutes

I hope my son learned his lesson yesterday at night court-- my lawyer buddy Jay got his violations knocked down to two points (and a stern lecture from the prosecutor) but it was still a long, rainy, costly evening . . . and we saw what COULD happen-- the kid in front of us got his moving violation knocked down to two points as well, but he was doing 60 in a 25 so he lost his license for ten days (and you have to go BACK to the DMV and get a new license, a punishment in itself) and that youngster gave Alex a lecture as well and said that Alex should be thankful that he has a supportive father who accompanied him to court, because his dad -- a truck driver-- was so pissed at him that he didn't want anything to do with the matter; anyway, I hope he slows down, I hope our insurance doesn't go up too much, and I hope Ian learns his lesson (by proxy) as well.

The Joys of Fatherhood

It would be a perfect Thursday afternoon to relax, take a nap, perhaps have a beer or two and avoid the ugly weather, but instead, I'll be accompanying my son and a lawyer friend on an excursion to Woodbridge Municipal Court to take care of my son's (three) moving violations-- because, in the parenting domain, while grades and school and medical stuff seem to be my wife's purview, illegal activities are my jurisdiction.

I'll Always Have "Tupperawareness"

 I made a playlist on Spotify called "psychedelicious" but -- once again-- I haven't coined anything new . . . dammit.

Beware the Candy House

 

Jennifer Egan's new novel The Candy House, ostensibly a "sequel" to her tour-de-force A Visit From the Goon Squad, reminds us that "knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing"-- the book is certainly a wild ride, dipping into the consciousness of all sort of tangentially related characters-- but in the end, like eating too much candy, you will be cloyed but unsatisfied-- and that is Egan's purpose, of course-- as she is a super-genius . . . and this was a tough We Defy Augury episode to make because this book is more like a social network than a narrative-- it took all my brain cells to hold it together.

Let There Be Sweat

The Sporting Gods did shine their benevolent (and sweaty) light on New Jersey yesterday-- for five glorious hours, as Rutgers defeated Ohio State (vengeance!) in overtime and then the Giants hung on to beat the Vikings in their first playoff appearance in years . . . I definitely had a bit of a hangover this morning, but some sacrifice to the Sporting Gods-- in the manner of imbibing-- is necessary for such illustrious results.

May the Sporting Gods Shine Their Light on New Jersey Today?

This could be-- if the sporting gods will it-- a great sporting day for New Jersey-- Rutgers vs. Ohio State basketball game is about to start, a vengeance match because of the lousy call that cost Rutgers the game the first time they played-- and then the Giants play the Vikings . . . and the Giants haven't been in the playoffs in half a decade . . . and I have no school tomorrow, so I'm going to crack open a beer soon and hope for the best-- and if the games are close, I'll be happy-- that's all you can ask for (and I scored a couple goals at Sunday morning indoor soccer this morning and my team won four in a row, so I'm feeling that the sporting gods are on my side today . . . although I guess everyone at soccer is from New Jersey, so that doesn't really indicate shit).

Picture This: You Are a Woman Working the Oil Camps of Alberta

Kate Beaton's autobiographical graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is heavy, viscous stuff; Beaton heads from Nova Scotia to Alberta to make some money and pay off her student loans, but working in the man's world of the oil sands, she experiences environmental devastation, loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual harassment and rape, and numerous existential crises-- all amplified by the insular nature of the oil camps-- highly recommended but not as fun as the last graphic novel I read.

Catching Up

This is the week COVID finally caught Catherine and Ian-- but not me! . . . or not yet-- and earlier in the week the principal caught Ian going out to lunch when he wasn't supposed to (because he left through a door with an alarm on it) and so Ian can't go out to lunch for the rest of the month and then on Wednesday afternoon, a state trooper caught Alex flying down the Turnpike, doing at least 90, weaving in and out of traffic, without using a directional and he was so appalled by his driving that he gave him three tickets and made him call his mother-- even though he's eighteen and a legal adult-- so the trooper could explain, as a courtesy, just how idiotically he was driving . . . so hopefully we're all caught up with this kind of crap and can now get on with our lives.

Word Word Words

Catherine and I couldn't agree on the difference in meaning between "pocket change" and "pocket money"-- the argument is too ridiculous to transcribe here-- but we did agree that Tanya's "core of the onion" speech about how when you peel away all her layers, there's just a "straight-up alcoholic lunatic" is an absolutely brilliant choice of words.

Next Level

This afternoon, Ian and I played basketball with a big man who could really pass-- it was like he had eyes in the back of his head-- and when he passed, which could happen at any time, in a fraction of a second-- the pass came fast . . . and now my thumb hurts. 

Stars, Caves, and Everything in Between

 

New episode of We Defy Augury up and streaming . . . "Stars, Caves, and Everything" is loosely inspired on the new Neil deGrasse Tyson book  but there's also a bit on Carl Sagan-- and I need to edit the audio to include some of this priceless Johnny Carson impression of Sagan, which-- oddly enough, life imitating art and all that-- spawned Sagan's catchphrase "billions and billions."

When Pigs Fly

I never listened to Pink Floyd's Animals enough-- perhaps because of the weird song lengths . . . 3 songs that are over ten minutes and two songs that are under two minutes-- but after a couple of listens, I think it's my favorite one . . . obviously Dark Side of the Moon is incredible, but I think I've listened to that one enough for several lifetimes; Animals is a bit like my favorite David Bowie album, Low-- both albums are heavy on musical interludes and instrumentals and light on lyrics, and the songs seem to have a more chaotic structure than you're typical verse-verse-chorus-bridge-verse.

I Sat in a Teacup Chair on a Little Island

Entertaining day in the city yesterday-- we took an 11:30 AM train in, along with lots of hockey fans going to the Devils/Rangers game (and I saw a few old students on the train-- they were from a dozen years ago so I didn't really recognize them until they identified themselves) and then walked The High Line over to The Little Island . . . pics below of the island, which is constructed of wide-mouthed concrete pylons full of soil-- the plantings are varied and fairly mature but I can't wait to see what it looks like in a few years when everything is grown in-- then we hung out at a great pub called The Blind Tiger and had some delicious nachos and an even more delicious IPA . . . New York brewery Equilibrium's Wavelength-- citrusy and smooth, not sure if they sell it out of state-- and then we saw Colin Quinn's show "Small Talk," which was incredible-- 65 minutes of A-list material and delivery . . . very Carlin-esque, fast-paced, detailed, insightful, funny, and often focusing on language-- one of the best comedy shows I've seen . . . and then-- the best part about seeing a 3 PM show-- we could go out for dinner and drinks and talk about the show-- I hate going to a late show, after dinner and drinks, when I"m full and groggy and have to pee, I'd much rather see the show early and then eat and talk about it: so we ate a Cuban/Chinese place called Calle Dao-Chelsea, which was excellent AND they have Happy Hour until seven on Saturdays and then we made our train and we were home by 9 PM . . . perfect day (aside from the fact that Catherine was coming down with a cold-- she's down for the count now).

 

We Walked on a Little Island

Colin Quinn has still got it-- more to come tomorrow, but a full day in the city (but MVD . . . Most Valuable Driver . . . to Ian, who drove us to the train station AND picked us up).

Weird Movie

The Banshees of Inisherin is evocative, beautiful, bucolic, awkward, insular, funny and weird-- it will make you evaluate your friends, your landscape, your purpose, and just how clever you really are versus how clever you think you are . . . and though it's a slow burn, you'll eventually fall in love with Achill Island, J. J. Devine's Pub, and Jenny the miniature donkey.

Weird Weather

Foggy and unseasonable warm this week, which is annoying as far as snowboarding conditions go but a great week for our hot water heater (and radiator heat) to be broken.

The Futility of Chasing the Shuttlecock

I was playing badminton yesterday morning-- singles-- and I was heading to the right but the shuttlecock came back more to the left and I unwisely lunged back in the other direction and rolled my ankle-- it hurt, but not enough to stop whacking around the shuttlecock, so I kept playing-- but that might have been ill-advised because now my ankle is swollen and sore (although I still got my steps in today-- I covered PE class and we went outside . . . it was a balmy 65 degrees . . . weird) and I guess I have implement the analogous lesson that I learned while playing competitive tennis-- even if you get the drop shot-- and with some extreme hustle, you might-- you're still going to injure yourself and not be able to hit the next shot . . . in badminton it's not the drop shot, it's the erratic weird shot that goes a strange direction-- and I'm too old to make sudden lateral directional changes.

Livin' La Vida Lapvona

 

A weird episode about a weird book: in "Livin' La Vida Lapvona", I try to make sense of Ottessa Moshfegh's repugnant folktale Lapvona . . . and while my analysis might be lacking, I am proud of the title.

School Returns with a Vengeance

My wife and I had to teach today, despite the fact that it was a federal holiday, while Ian got to sleep in; Alex didn't get in until two AM because he's off for college break; the road was desolate on the ride to East Brunswick, and though we were all tired, the kids were in good spirits (I made them stand up and announce New Year's resolutions after I bored them with my thoughts on digital minimalism, stretching, and eating less sugary treats) but last period things got a bit hectic, as we were saying resolutions a girl slid out of her desk onto the floor and had a seizure-- luckily, I'm right next door to the nurse, so while a student cleared the area around her head I ran and got some assistance and then we cleared out while they tended to her . . . then when I got home, Alex informed me that the tankless hot water heater was totally broken so we went to the gym, worked out, and I showered there, but then when I got home, I went down and turned the thing on and really banged the circuit board with my hand a few times and now it's working again, for the time being (or not . . . just broke again . . . and Catherine just got home and she had quite a day as well, the elastic in her tights broke-- she was wearing a dress so she didn't moon anyone but she was doing a lot of shimmying) and then I tried to light our gas grill with a long wooden match, but I turned all the burners on at once before I struck the match-- God knows why-- and a fiery plume shot forth and burned all the hair off my right hand-- but my skin didn't get burned, scary and weird, but I seem to be unburnt.

Feral Hogs + Atlanta = Awesome

 

We just finished one of my favorite TV shows ever: Atlanta . . . my son Alex finished ahead of Ian and me, but Alex watched the last few episodes of season four again with us (while annoyingly pointing out all sorts of stuff about the background music) and though I loved the last episode-- which is loads of fun and might explain the surreal nature of the show-- I enjoyed the penultimate episode most of all; Paper Boi has some wild adventures with a tractor and my favorite villainous creature-- a feral hog!-- what more could I ask for?