My wife and I are halfway through Best Picture winner Anora, and the vibe has shifted from pornographic-Pretty Woman to a Safdie-esque Uncut Gems bad-decisions-thriller (with some Sandler-esque silliness).
Later Children, See You in the Fourth Quarter
Ahh . . . Spring Break . . . finally . . . and so I am drinking a beer, listening to Stereolab (very calming) and writing in peace-- my wife is napping on the couch-- and I am unwinding from a chaotic day with the youth: I started the day at morning basketball and we only had nine and then Frank, one of the older guys (but not as old as me!) went down with a calf cramp and so we played four-on-four full court until exhaustion, and then by the time I got out of the shower the first bell had already rung so I hustled (as fast as I could) to first period-- and I must say that THAT Creative Class is lovely and we read aloud the riddle poems that the kids wrote, guessed, and did a food metaphor fill-in and everything was fairly mellow-- but by my second 82-minute period, the kids were starting to feel it, they knew the end was nigh . . . so I read the end of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to my sophomores and then they made horror skits and enacted them-- and they had to have a couple of classic horror tropes in the skits plus some sort of get out/stay-in debate (lesson plan straight from my podcast!) and while they were loud and nuts, they actually got the skits written and performed them-- mainly because class is endless-- and then my last Creative Class was bananas, a lot of weird bickering and overly energetic teenagers-- and I can't express enough how much I hate block scheduling because 82-minutes is WAY TOO FUCKING LONG to have a class right before Spring Break (or basically any time at all) but I survived and someday I will retire and miss this?
One More Fucking Day of This
Not much intellectual or literary going on in my head today . . . in fact, the only thought that is occupying my brain is that I only have to wake up and teach one more day, and then it's Spring Break-- better late than never but I need a break from school . . . especially since my room smelled like sour vomit this morning-- the foul reek was so disgusting that I called a security guard and he called the head custodian-- but it turns out it was just the smell of new mulch, which had seeped into the room from the courtyard and the acrid mulch smell mixed with the carpet mildew and accumulated BO and created an awful stench-- yuck-- which was impossible to air out and then to celebrate the end of the third quarter with my seniors, I confiscated my first cell phone today . . . a senior boy brazenly playing some video game while another student was presenting (which always makes me angrier than if they're trying to sneak some cell phone usage while I'm talking-- because I'm a professional and expect it and just tell them to put it in the calc pal or on my desk . . . but when a student is presenting . . . unconscionable) but on a positive note, I finally got some new blinds! . . . which operate with a button and seem like they might hold up, but despite the new blinds, we could still see the angry robin that lives in the courtyard and apparently can't find a mate so he fights his own reflection in the window right by my desk, pecking the glass and creating a general disturbance when the students are trying their best to learn (or play video games on their cell phones).
Severance is so Fringe!
Warning!-- there will be some spoilers in this sentence concerning Fringe . . . which aired from 2008 to 2013, so honestly, it's probably past the spoiler statute of limitations, but there will also be some Severance spoilers-- and if you're not watching Severance, get with it-- anyway, in both shows there is an oddball sci-fi love triangle: the main character-- a guy-- has sex for the first time with a bizarre, malevolent version of his love interest and thinks it is the actual love interest, not a doppelganger-- in Severance, Mark thinks he's boinking Helly in the tent, but he's actually boinking her cold and evil "outie" Helena and in Fringe, Peter thinks he's banging fellow Fringe team member Olivia, but he's actually banging the other Olivia, known as Fauxlivia, from the Other Side . . . and in both cases, the original love interests are very upset that their evil doppelganger's jumped the line and made love with their love interest before they could-- it's a weird, awkward, and extremely bizarre lover's quarrel . . . so there's that, plus Peter Bishop's dad, Walter Bishop-- the Australian actor John Noble-- shows up in Severance-- he's Burt's "outie" lover Fields.
Speed is Relative
Perhaps my new sprint-work out is having some sort of salubrious effect on my fitness-- because for a couple weeks now, twice a week I've been running four sets, 30 seconds each, where I run as fast as I can (without hurting myself . . . and I got my son Ian to accompany me on Sunday, which made me push myself a bit harder . . . although he was still much faster than me) because today at morning basketball, which was an up-and-back shitshow, I took off after a defensive rebound and received a long looping fast-break pass, that flew over the top of the last defender, and I caught it on the fly and converted the lay-up . . . the first time I've scored like that in a long time.
What the Fuck is Wrong with a Mini-Symbol?
So I learned a lesson this morning: it's best not to walk into the English Office and ask a bunch of surly, Monday-morning teachers for some ideas about literary motifs-- for whatever reason, explaining what a "motif" is can get very heated amongst the English teachers . . . and apparently they hate the term I invented: "mini-symbol" and my entire definition: "some repeated-- so more than one-- images or elements or mini-symbols that add up to a theme"-- they all find the term "mini-symbol" vague and offensive, although no one was willing to give me a concise and precise working definition-- aside from Stacey, who gave me a definition over the phone when she called me from attendance duty to remind me to post my attendance and I posed the question to her-- but aside from her, mainly they just wanted to rail against my definition . . . my buddy Cunningham told me "I know what it is in my heart" but would not give me any specifics (aside from the fact that she said another teacher, Jansen, who is generally beloved because he's actually a soft-spoken nice intelligent guy-- so lame-- had a much smarter definition . . . which she could not supply because she did not remember it) but I think the term "mini-symbol" is fine-- a restaurant can't have a Mexican theme unless there's a bunch of mini-symbols that create the theme-- one sombrero does not a Mexican restaurant make . . . you need some Day of the Dead skulls and some cacti and perhaps a wooden parrot and a Mexican flag and some mariachi music and some maracas and a chalkboard advertising fresh tamales and some bold colors and tile floors, etcetera . . . and this pattern of mini-symbols adds up to the theme!
Pathetic (and I mean pathetic) Fallacy
A dark pall has fallen over the land this morning, a grungy, gray, and glum gloominess . . . clouds and rain and mud and rot and decay-- and this would be fitting, if the pathetic fallacy was not a literary conceit, an artistic delusion-- but, alas, the weather does not care about my mood, although this morning it is, coincidentally of course, mirroring the contents of my soul: last night, for one brief moment, after Florida beat Auburn, I was in pole position to win the BIG March Madness Pool . . . the 25$ entry, 150 person pool that pays out nearly all the proceeds to the winner-- all I needed was Duke to win over Houston-- and then I would be be the top pool member with Florida as the winner and it would all come down to Monday night-- I was so excited, so happy to have made it this far in, and sure that Duke's high-powered offense would overcome Houston's slow paced style of play . . . and it looked like that was the case, Duke had a 14 point lead in the second half-- and thank God I fell asleep because if I had to watch the catastrophic meltdown and Duke squander a 9 point lead with three minutes to play, I would have maxed out my ticker and had some kind of coronary event-- so at least I was fast alseep when that bullshit happened (although I watched it this morning) and when I awoke deep into the night and checked my phone for the score, that is when the rains came, both inside my soul and outside on my roof . . . so close, yet so pathetic.
THIS is My Secret Purpose
Up until last night, I thought my secret purpose was to see a fairly obscure actor/actress on TV and say to my wife "I totally know that guy/chick" and then struggle to remember their name or what movie or show we previously saw this actor/actress in and then use my phone to track down their name and the roles they played-- and usually my hunch is right and I celebrate my facial recognition acumen-- but my wife is also very annoyed that I'm doing this instead of watching what we're watching-- especially if I pause the show to do my research-- but now I know my secret ability is not to identify faces, it's to identify diners . . . because I am 100% in recognizing diners on a TV show, whilst with actors/actresses I'm probably more around 80 . . . but last night, while we were watching season two of the show Severance, and Mark met his sister at Pip's and they showed the outside of the diner and the mountainous backdrop and I said to my wife "that's the Phoenicia diner!" and then I looked it up and "Pip's" is the Phoenicia Diner, a wonderful place to eat in the Catskills.
Dry Bones (Longmire #11) by Craig johnson
The only thing better than a Craig Johnson Longmire mystery with all the usual fixin's-- the vast and desolate landscape of Wyoming, a well-plotted police procedural, some emotional stuff about Longmire's family, some Native American lore and legend, a moment of deus ex Henry Standing Bear, and some mystical Native American visions-- is a Craig Johnson Longmire mystery with all the usual fixin's plus not one but TWO prehistoric creatures . . . one species that qualifies as a living fossil, with 90 million years of staying power, and the other that is legendary in the fossil record; Danny Long Elk is found floating face down in a farm pond filled with snapping turtles, who have done some damage to the dead body AND a paleontologist discovers a complete tyrannasaurus rex skeleton on his property-- which is a very valuable find-- and also a legal conundrum because the find is on land that belongs to the Cheyenne nation . . . and if the plot of Dry Bones plot sounds enticing, then you should also read Michael Connelly's City of Bones, which features the La Brea Tar Pits and perhaps the first human murder on record (I'm a sucker for mysteries with some forensic paleontology thrown in for good measure).
Sophomores are Sophomoric
As we trudge along towards this year's (very late) Spring Break, my sophomores grow more and more unruly and annoying . . . they can barely concentrate, even during a quiz-- which led me to insert questions like these amidst the actual comprehension questions on Shirley Jackson's masterpiece We Have Always Lived in the Castle:
2. When you are finished with this quiz, you should:
Turn and chat with your neighbor about the answers
Make strange faces at people
Sit silently until the entire class is finished
Poke someone
4. You should take AP English because:
You genuinely enjoy reading and analyzing literature
Your friends are taking it
It looks good for college admissions
Your secret crush is in the class
9. Draw a picture of the Blackwood house. This is not worth any points, but simply to occupy you and prevent you from being obnoxious and annoying while the rest of the class finishes the quiz.
and, oddly, this strategy worked and they were much better behaved during the quiz today than they were last class-- when I had to deliver a profanity-laced diatribe to get them to stop pestering each other while some students finished the quiz . . . now mind you, a profanity-laced tirade does work, but it's exhausting-- so this was a more efficient strategy and I will be putting "behavior reminder questions" and random word jumbles and picture prompts (that are not worth any points) on all their quizzes in the future.
Money, It's a Gas: Squandering Economic Victories
My new episode of We Defy Augury is a rather epic meditation on wealth and its consequences, at both the human and national scale; my thoughts and theories are (loosely) based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner's novel The Long Island Compromise and Andrew Bacevich's political critique The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory . . .
Special Guests: Tana French, Pat Martino, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe, Ayn Rand, Bret Easton Ellis, Gordon Gekko, Noam Chomsky, Ross Perot, and Miley Cyrus.
A Whale of a Prank
Today in my Grade 10 Honors English class, I distributed copies of Moby Dick-- which I found mouldering away on a high shelf in the book room-- and then counted the days of Spring Break on my fingers and did some long division on the board: eleven divided by 822 . . . the days of Spring Break divided by the number to pages in this great behemoth of a novel and I arrived at 74 pages a day . . . but I told them that would be the easy part of their Spring Break assignment-- the hard part would be the vocabulary in the enovel, which is erudite, recondite, and archaic-- and I told them I was halfway through and already the vocab list was over 150 words, and they would be quizzed on those words (and the entirety of the novel)on the day we returned from break . . . and then a couple kids started laughing and the rest of the class realized that I was April fooling them . . . but I did convince a couple of kids to actually take the novel and give it a shot-- I promised them the opening hundred pages would not disappoint, but then they might want to "skip a bit, brother" and make their way to the final sequence-- and perhaps this reverse psychology might work, the joke assignment might be more appealing than an authentic, graded task-- one kid said, "Better this book sits on my shelf than on a shelf in some closet."
Mainly Lame Day Off
No school for me today because of Eid al-fitr-- my wife had no school as well but she's on a lady's long weekend in Savannah, so I decided to optimize all my terrible shitty chores into one day: I did some lesson planning (I'm underwater) and our taxes (we owe a shitload) and went to Costco (costly trip, but on the bright side, it wasn't particularly crowded) and cleaned up the house, then I took a break and went to the gym and shot baskets and lifted weights and played some pickleball-- but now I'm in the home stretch, cleaning the bathrooms and then, finally, I need to shave, shower and do the netipot-- allergy season has arrived . . . and THEN I'm going to lie on the couch and read my Longmire mystery.
Pickleball Initiates the Severance Procedure?
During these troubled times, certain subjects are hard to bring up in social settings because of the controversy and awkwardness these topics engender-- for instance, I play a lot of pickleball with my friends Ann and Craig but we are NOT allowed to bring up pickleball in mixed company because everyone else gets annoyed, so Ann refers to it as "the game that shall not be named" and we do our best to keep our pickleball gossip on the DL . . . it's also hard to discuss current TV shows because of the general fragmentation of media-- no one is watching the same show at the same time and so you don't want to spoil anything, or talk about a show that no one has seen-- I truly miss Fridays at work the day after a new Seinfeld aired on Thursday night . . . there was something for everyone to discuss-- anyway, my wife is away in Savannah and so I hitched a ride to the brewery with Ann and Craig yesterday, so during the car ride, we were able to talk about pickleball and a TV show without being chastised-- we have all been watching Severance (but we had to curtail the conversation once we got to Flounder because we were meeting people) and then, at the end of the ride, Ann articulated her theory that synthesizes pickleball and Severance . . . she said that playing pickleball with all these various groups of people we've met, is like going to work in Severance . . . it's kind of wonderful, you just show up, you have these fleeting relationships with these people, but you really don't care that much about them because they're not part of you're "outie" life-- or that's not exactly true, your pickleball self cares about them quite a bit during the session and you see them quite often, yet you know nothing about their childhoods or outside lives and you don't think about them during your outie life and they don't think about you, you only know if they have a good backhand or fast hands at the net-- there's really no time or space to chat, it's not like golf-- it's a fast-paced game with lots of switching partners-- and then once the session is over, you barely remember what happened-- that's the nature of the game . . . it's not soccer or basketball where you might remember two critical plays, instead you hit the ball a zillion times, and you often felt like a hero and you also often felt like an idiot, so it all evens out and you remember nothing except it was a time-- but there are glitches in the severance, of course, because after Ann revealed her theory during the car ride, we saw a pickleball guy at the brewery!-- and we had a brief but awkward conversation about when and where we would next be playing pickleball and then he wandered away and we did not pursue further interaction, for fear of reprisal from Lumon.
Spring: Time to Shed Some Clothes (and Some Body Fat)
As usual, with the end of winter comes the annual "it's time to shed a few pounds and get in shape" portion of the year-- my wife and I are going to stop eating dessert after dinner while watching TV . . . which was perfectly acceptable behavior this winter because it was dark and cold and bleak-- but now the dark-times are over and it's time to shed the fat-- and my wife listened to some lady on a podcast (who might be an orthopedist? I would ask her, but she's in Savannah on a ladies' weekend) and this lady doctor on the podcast said it's all about various types of movement and that during the course of each week you should:
1) do four 45-minute walks-- you don't need to do crazy amounts of cardio;
2) lift weights twice a week but lift heavier than you might normally lift . . . 3-5 sets of weight you can put up 4-6 times;
3) twice a week, do four repetitions where you run "as fast as you can" for 30 seconds, then let your heart return to normal and do it again-- so four sets of these each session for a total of eight sprints a week;
and I like this routine as I can work this stuff in around pickleball, basketball, and soccer, but I did the fast running on Wednesday, at the park, and while it was fun and not all that hard while I was doing it, it was a longer sprint than I've run in a while-- full court basketball requires sprints but they are three or four second sprints-- same with indoor soccer-- and on Thursday and Friday my right quad was occasionally cramping up, maybe every eleventh step-- which made for some humorour walking around-- but my leg recovered and I felt great at pickleball this morning . . . I did the heavy lifting Thursday and my shoulder is a bit sore, but again, I survived at pickleball today, although my shoulder started to hurt when I was hitting into the wind, there was a stiff breeze today, and you had to whale the ball . . . so we will see how this new routine goes-- my guess is I will either get injured soon and be a total disaster or I won't get injured and get super-jacked and super-fit and everyone will be so impressed by my physique that they will put a statue of me next to Rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Friday Bed Magnet
It must have been a long and tiring week throughout our school, because there was a good inter-disciplinary crowd at happy hour this afternoon and we talked a lot about sleep -- how much people sleep . . . some people don't sleep much!-- for how long people sleep, what time they go to bed, what time they wake up . . . and all I can say is that I need sleep and writing this sentence is making me sleepy.
Dave Clocks This Metaphorical Tea
Today was metaphor day in Creative Writing-- I reviewed the types of metaphors (simile, personification, etcetera) and I gave them a way to remember the difference between synecdoche and metonymy that I thought of this morning in the car-- and it is car related-- with synecdoche, you use part to represent the whole-- so "check out my wheels"-- while with metonymy you use an association to represent the idea, so "check out my ride" and then I gave them a couple of metaphorical quotations to unravel:
Language is fossil poetry (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Prose is the museum, where all the old weapons of poetry are kept (T.E. Hulme)
and some of them got the collective point-- that a dinosaur is older than a fossil and the weapon is older than the museum and so living breathing interesting poetic language becomes dead fossilized prose and we barely notice it--then we had a fossil poetry fill-in-the-blank challenge-- I have a quiz with fifty body part metaphors-- eye of a needle, head of lettuce, safe by a hair, save face, sticks in your craw, etcetera-- they are easy for old people but quite difficult for highschool students . . . and then I went over how there are dead metaphors all around us-- when you call someone bright or brilliant or a clear thinker or lucid, you are comparing them to the sun or a lightbulb-- and when you call someone sharp or keen or they have an acute wit or make a good point, you are comparing them to a blade-- and thus the word "clever" derives from the word "cleaver"-- and we went over runny noses and running faucets, which run like a river-- but running motors run like a horse . . . which is why car engines are measure in horsepower . . . and then things got interesting because my first period class is smart and they started thinking of recent examples: many of them paradoxical . . . if you're "the shit" it's great but if you're "a piece of shit" it's bad . . . you can spill the tea or you can clock that tea . . . someone said, "I'm not a monster" because being a monster is bad -- unless you're a "beast" on the basketball court; the party can be "lit" or "fire" and those are probably related to smoking weed and those are good, or you can be on fire, which is good, but it's not good to be fired or burnt or cooked-- those are bad-- although if you're "cooking" then that's good; being hot is good and being cool is good, but being "mid" or cold is not so good; if you "ate" or you "served," you did well-- but if you got "served" you need to appear in court-- and "ate" is so popular that if you did well, they might say "4 plus 4" or "one more than seven" and if you're chopped, that's bad-- you're ugly-- and the chuzz are chopped whores, and if you did it well and finished strong, they don't say "mic drop" anymore, the kids say "period" or "point blank period" and there's a new one for old people that I really like, when you are playing pickleball, if someone speeds up the ball at you and you bend your body out of the way and dodge the ball and it goes out of bounds, you "matrixed it" and then we speculated about how the kids of the future would be doing a fill-in quiz about "clocking the tea" and "that party was lit" in the same way that they did a quiz on old phrases like "skeleton in the closet" and those kids would be using some new incomprehensible metaphorical slang and the cycle would continue.
Strange Things Afoot All Over the Place
My stomach hurt, and I had a low fever on Sunday night into Monday, but I suffered through the school day and then collapsed on the couch after school-- and after eating nothing but plain noodles and oatmeal, I finally felt better by lunchtime today (and ate a chocolate donut to break my bland food fast) and then I went to acupuncture and Dana crushed my traps and neck and shoulder-- they were incredibly tight from an extended pickleball session on Sunday-- and even though I was sort of sick, I also graded a bunch of essays Monday and today, which means I was hunched over my computer screen (and to add to the pain and suffering, the underclassmen are nuts lately: I think they're finally coming out of their shells, which is annoying-- I preferred when they were quiet and awkward . . . and soon enough the seniors will go berserk) and then this afternoon when I was walking the dog in the park and I let her off leash, she raced over to a large object and then jumped away from it-- for good reason-- as it was a giant fishhead, perhaps a monstrous carp or some other riparian behemoth, that some animal must have dragged into the middle of the grass field, several hundred yards from the riverbank.
Identity and Alcoholism, Sci-fi Style
If I were to choose one genre-- and only one-- that I would have to read and watch for the rest of my life, I think it would be science-fiction . . . while I love a good mystery/crime thriller, you can could inject that element into a sci-fi plot-- but I just love seeing how writers and directors explore our modern problems (and problems that we can barely dream of) in a story where the setting, the technology, and the alternative reality is the main character . . . so here are the two most recent sci-fi stories I ingested, sauce and all:
1) The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis-- the author of The Queen's Gambit, Tevis struggled with alcoholism most of his life, and this beautiful, sad novel uses a single humanoid alien on a mission to find food and water and resources for his advanced but dying race to explore loneliness and addiction-- Jerome Newton, the industrious, resilient, and polite alien slowly builds an empire by introducing advanced technology to earthlings, but along the way he experiences futility, ennui, and profound disconnection-- and alcohol seems to assuage this;
2) Bong Joon Ho's new film Mickey 17 is a fun and satirical journey into space and the ends of identity-- we go to the far reaches of the galaxy, where a hysterically Trumpy Mark Ruffalo is leading a band of colonists to settle on the ice planet Niflheim and one of the members of the expedition is an "expendable"-- which means they can send him to die over and over and then reprint him with most of his memories intact . . . Mickey Barnes becomes an expendable because of money issues-- and this criminal/mystery subplot is underdeveloped and a bit silly, but that is no matter-- because it gets us out into space and exploring what it means to be a unique person . . . or what philosopher's call the "Ship pf Theseus"dilemma-- because (spoiler!) not only is there a 17th version of Mickey at the heart of this movie, but also Mickey 18-- and so the usual "multiple" hijinks ensue, with Pattinson doing a great job face-acting the subtle differences between the two Mickeys and his girlfriend Nasha showing true love for both her soulmates . . . because they really are both versions of Mickey-- but which one deserves to live . . . and the aliens of Niflheim kind of steal the show at the end, an added bonus that makes this epic satirical sci-fi not only a philosophical conundrum but also an entertaining and snowy visual maelstrom.
Bar Stool Sporting Spectating Spectacular
Yesterday afternoon, my son Alex and I took the train into the city to have a beer and some food at a sports bar (he just turned 21!) and then go to the Knicks/Wizards game-- so we watched NCAA basketball on the train and then more college hoops while we ate and drank at Goldie's Tavern, a spacious place with good food and drink close enough to Madison Square Garden-- Goldie's was full of Knicks fans and a couple of beautiful people-- a dude who looked like he was right off The Bachelor and his date, who was a young Jennifer Connelly look-alike-- and then we walked over to the game, but we had some trouble finding our seats, which were in section 219 . . . but we were in row BS6 . . . which did not seem to exist . . . and then we learned we had Bar Stool seats, right on level with the concession stands-- with a temporary wall behind you and a nice little bar for your beer in front of you . . . and these tickets were pretty cheap, considering, probably because the Wizards are lousy (although Jordan Poole was fun to watch) and March Madness was happening-- but anyway, these seats totally spoiled me and I don't know if I could ever sit anywhere else-- there's no one in front of you or behind you, you have space on your side and can swivel, you can stand any time you like, you don't have to put your beer on the floor, and -- if there's a close college game you want to keep tabs on, you can rest your phone on the little wall above your personal "bar" . . . I guess the secret is out about these seats, to some extent, but if you can ever nab them, they make for a comfortable, non-claustrophobic game experience-- you don't have to rub elbows with the masses or ever stand up to let someone through and you have easy access to both the concession stands and the bathroom . . . pretty sweet.
Teach Your Teachers Well
In a recurring feature that SHOULD recur more often, here are a few things I learned from my high school students recently:
1) chameleons do NOT change color to camouflage themselves, their color indicates their emotional state or can be used for social signaling-- so they are more like reptilian mood rings than reptilian spies;
2) Bill Belichick (72) is dating a slender 24-year-old named Jordon Hudson and he poses for some very silly pictures with her, including doing some athletic "beach yoga" and dressing as a fisherman and "catching" her while she is dressed as a mermaid;
3) "brain rot" phrases such as "the Balkan rage" and "the German stare" and "the rizz";
4) the slangy subjunctive hypothetical "Would you still love me if I were a worm?"
5) Several US coins have a front-facing presidential face instead of a profile, including the 1861-65 Lincoln dollar.
Conference Madness
Tonight is the dreaded parent/teacher evening conferences, from 5 PM to 8 PM-- but, luckily my schedule is light (or perhaps not luckily because I implore my students to simply talk to their parents about how it's going in my class and remind them that all their grades are on the computer and that I know how to use email fairly well, so if their parents actually have a pressing question, it's much easier to email me than to drive to the school and talk to me, especially since I will be watching NCAA basketball games on YouTube TV while I speak to them so I won't be giving them my full attention).
Madness
I filled out my NCAA brackets today and Venmoed various people money, but I did not use the proper emojis-- which my friend Terry showed me-- he uses the combination of the basketball followed by the trashcan . . . because that's generally where your basketball brackets end up after a round or two.
Sentence of Guy
We returned from Naples, Florida late last night on Frontier Air-- which is most definitely a seat-of-your-pants budget-type airline . . . but though we were cramped, Frontier got my family there and back on time-- unlike my brother and his wife who are still stranded in Florida-- they were supposed to leave Sunday but their flight was canceled due to wind and all the Frontier flights were full on Monday night and they don't really have reciprocity with other airlines or give vouchers, so my brother and his wife are flying out on Tuesday night-- hopefully because Frontier doesn't fly on Wednesdays to Fort Meyers-- but though the flights were sketchy, my father's Celebration of Life service was a great success: my wife did an incredible job collecting pictures of my dad and made a comprehensive slideshow of his life, which I set to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, two of my father's favorite musicians and then several people spoke about my dad-- I led off and spoke about my dad's impressive career in corrections and what a privilege it was to work with him . . . I wrote up my dad's expert witness reports, and then I talked about how my dad, despite his incredible career as a progressive prison director and designer, always expressed how proud he was of me, despite the fact that I haven't accomplished anything near what he accomplished in his life, and then I threw in a few literary allusions because I'm a bombastic jackass, and so I mentioned Turgenev and The Great Santini and Biff from Death of a Salesman and touched upon that classic trope of the son trying to impress his father, usually to no avail, but that I never had to worry about that because my dad always sincerely expressed pride in whatever I accomplished, teaching, coaching, being a dad, playing sports, whatever-- and that gave me so much joy and confidence;
then my brother Marc talked about how my father was always there for him and so he missed his best friend and confidant;
then my older son Alex. who just turned 21, recalled a time when he was very young and thought his Poppy was the coolest old guy in the world and how he thought that his Poppy was called "guy" because he was the original "guy"-- he was THE "guy" and Alex remembered how when he was older and needed help for a Model UN event, Poppy set up a lunch with Alex and his friend who was an FBI agent and the agent explained all the things Alex needed to know;
then my younger son Ian, who is 19, described how strong-willed and stubborn my father was and then he described what his Poppy would do when he did something stupid and idiotic-- Poppy would ask Ian to "step into my office"-- and Ian remembered how annoyed he would get when he heard this, when he knew he was in for a lecture, but then he finished his speech by saying though the phrase "step into my office" annoyed him then, now all he really wanted was to hear my dad say it one more time;
then some of my father's friends spoke-- his consulting partner Tony Ventetuolo explained my father's awful sense of direction and recounted an anecdote about a bridge in Sioux City and then he had us close our eyes and imagine my father missing a two-foot putt and asked if we could hear him from above, yelling profanity from Heaven;
and Mr. Apgar donned a pair of reading glasses with the price tag still on them and told a slew of stories, from Cape Cod-- how my dad would go to the Christmas Tree shop and "borrow" a pair of reading glasses and wear them with the tag on so he could read the prices and how he was there when my dad told him how excited he was that Catherine and I were going to teach overseas and he was hoping we'd land in Italy or Switzerland or Spain and his reaction when he got the phone call and we were going to teach in Damascus and how they had to go to the Chatham bookstore the next day and look at a map to see exactly where that was and he talked about what a great golfer and competitor my dad was and some other things I can't remember--
so we crammed in my mother's condo for the long weekend and celebrated my father's incredible life and I was really proud of how well my children spoke of him and how they comported themselves all weekend, putting up with a bunch of old people reminiscing-- and amidst all the eulogizing and sadness, we also had to celebrate three recent birthdays: my mom just turned 80, I just turned 55, and Alex just turned 21.
The Secret Hours is Like Gretchen Wiener's Hair: Full of Secrets
If you are a fan of Jackson Lamb and the show Slow Horses, then you need to read Mick Herron's standalone prequel The Secret Hours-- this book fills in a lot of the gaps and backstory of the misfit MI5 gang of Slough House and does it in brilliant fashion: the novel centers on a government inquiry into some wild and nasty business in Berlin just after the wall fell and the spies came out of the cold . . . and while it seems to be all codenames and obfuscation, if you're a fan you will start to recognize many of the characters and plot strands from the show . . . very entertaining and very illuminating but you certainly want to watch Slow Horses or read a few Slough House books before you dive into this one.
Romantic Gen Z Double Duplex Jorty Thriftiness
My son bought a pair of fashionable baggy jorts at a thrift sale, and his (shorter) girlfriend also wears them as a pair of pants.
You Can't Control Your Thoughts (About Will Ferrell)
Last night at dinner, my brother-- who lives in Hamilton, New Jersey-- told us about a terrible, horrible, awful child pornography case that happened in his town: a police officer and his wife, a Mercer County Sheriff’s Sergeant, were arrested for allegedly making videos where they had sex and their young children, drugged and naked, watched them and were also included in these videos-- disturbing, disgusting stuff-- and these two are now on house arrest, awaiting trial, because they were not safe in jail-- and while I was completely unsettled by this story, and the depravity of which humans are capable, I also could not help thinking about the fabulously surreal and hysterically funny dream that Ashley Schaeffer (Will Ferrell) recounts in Eastbound and Down, which ends with him commanding his wife to "let the boy watch."
Worst Bar on the Frontier
I find it odd that they serve alcohol on the airplane-- or at least in the Economy section of the airplane-- and I also find it odd that people in the Economy section drink alcohol during the flight, and this seems to be an even worse decision in the Economy section of Frontier airlines, where the seats do NOT recline and the legroom is several inches shorter than any other airline-- alcohol is a beverage that makes me want to pee, fight, dance, play the guitar, go walkabout, participate in games of skill and dexterity, and swim in any available body of water and none of these options are available in the Economy section (I assume some of these options are available in First Class, but I owuldn't know for sure) and so it astounds me when people order a drink on the plane, especially at 7:15 AM . . . but whatever, to each his own, maybe if I had a few drinks I would have been able to sleep in an upright position while listening to a combination of a high-pitched engine whine (which penetrated my earbuds) and the reissue of Sunlandic Twins, instead of walking off the flight with a massive headache.
Anecdotal Evidence
During my many years on the road, I have noticed that Subaru wagons tend to sport bumper stickers . . . and the older the wagon, the more likely it is to have many bumper stickers.
Who Says Teenagers are Self-Centered?
My senior college writing classes chipped in and surprised me with a "condolences" edible arrangement today-- a very sweet gesture that took some organization and foresight-- very impressive for the youth!
The Frenemy Known as Sunshine
Yesterday's copious and unseasonable sunshine caused a classroom disaster-- we're doing great American art forms and genres in Grade 10, and I showing the kids a Western-- Unforgiven, which is the best Western-- but the film has a number of dark and rainy scenes and my blinds are bent and mutilated and my projector bulb is getting dim and at certain times of day, if it's sunny, the sunlight just streams through and creates a glare on the screen, so the kids couldn't see shit when William Munny (Clint Eastwood) calmy goes on his murderous rampage to avenge the death his good buddy Ned (Morgan Freeman) because of the horrible glare and while this really upset me, the sunshine made for a fantastic afternoon of pickleball, where I took all comers, young, old and in between and coldly slaughtered them in various ways before coming home to do some emergency yardwork because the soil around my bamboo plants was very dry, because of all the unseasonable sun and wind.
A Tough Nut to Crack (on Limited Sleep)
I'm still a little groggy today, due to Daylight Savings Time-- and so I can't figure out this conundrum: if Trump dismantles the Department of Education, how will he ensure that deviant leftist teachers don't propagate critical race theory, condone perverse sexual identities, bring systemic injustice to light, and disseminate Marxist propaganda?
Someone Save Me From Daylight Savings Time
Rough Monday morning: our dog heard a smoke detector chirping in the kitchen at 4 AM-- the battery had run out and it was making that little distress signal, and while it was responsible and conscientious canine behavior, it was still hard to get back to sleep once the issue had been resolved-- and then when my alarm DID go off, it felt way too early-- because it WAS way too early . . . due to motherfucking Daylight Savings Time-- and then I stuck my toe in some dog vomit on the edge of the step . . . Lola ate too many cucumber slices last night (she loves cucumber slices) and must have upchucked them when she was fretting about the chirping noise and then I went through the day like a zombie and to add insult to injury, we had a meeting.
Francis Ellis and Lil Sasquatch at the Stress Factory
Great show at the Stress Factory last night-- as always-- and we had no clue what to expect from the comics because Stacey unloaded the tickets on us and went to Seaside for a St. Patrick's Day Parade; after a forgettable opener (I even forgot his name) then Lil Sasquatch took the stage and did a great bit about being an oddly sexual suit-fitting session by a little European man that could fit in his pocket and another about dolphin rape and then he critiqued the "Stop Human Trafficking" sign he saw at the airport, he felt he needed more methodology and advice on exactly how to follow those orders, and then the opener, Francis Ellis, who seemed to good-looking and too smart to be a stand-up-comedian-- he attended Harvard-- talked his membership in the exclusive Delta Diamond Medallion Club and about terrorists having trouble collecting points for their one way flights and about his first (and only?) fight which happened to be with a guy who had a mouthguard and absolutely lived for that kind of shit; then he criticized people who abuse the "Sophie's choice" metaphor and use it for frivolous circumstances and then he discussed how he liked kids "just the right amount" and how he was recently divorced and so he bought a Costco 144 pack of toothbrushes for any ladies that slept over-- but this made him look like a serial killer and then he talked about trying to impress the workmen on his block, the real men, but how it was hard to do while walking a French bulldog and then he really got into it with the aduience-- he wanted to know if anyone had a union job and he had a discussion with a guy who worked for Dupont, making printing plates and using monomers and polymers and then he asked if there were more union workers in the crowd and my wife yelled out and so he got to discuss teachers and the teacher's union and how he loved teachers but wow they get a lot of time off and then he gathered some more audience material from a couple of guys who lost chain necklaces (and when he was "ambushed" by a high school sophomore) and he wrapped all this up on his keyboard (which we did not know was on the stage or a part of the exact) when he first sang a romantic song about jizz and then sang a song that included all the audience participation specifics-- gold chains and teachers, and polymers, and all the other odd stuff he pulled from the audience that I can't remember-- so if Francis Ellis is coming to a small comedy club in your town, check him out, he's a fun, smart, and energetic entertainer.
No Handles (Except Love Handles)
First time I played morning hoops twice in one week in a few months-- and, strangely, though my legs were tired, my knee felt fine-- it still took me some time (and profanity) to warm-up, but in the end it was worth it all: the getting up extra early; the packing of clothing and towel the night before; the double knee braces; the rapid and rather perfunctory shower in the moldy coach's room; the race to class; the ridicule and derision from the students because of my open-toed sandals (which are much easier to don after a fast shower) and the general hangriness while teaching the first two periods-- because I made a game-winning three in the last two games-- and that's all you really remember, that last shot (although I also remember a couple of out-of-control dribbling escapades and those episodes were pretty traumatic . . . I really shouldn't be handling the ball unless I'm going to immediately shoot it).
Four Albums and a Lager
Things I have been enjoying lately:
1) pianist McCoy Tyner's exotic sounding jazz albums, especially Extensions and Sahara;
2) saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's swinging bluesy jazz album Somethin' Else;
3) trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's jazz fusion classic Red Clay;
4) the dark and (barely) smoky Smoke & Dagger lager brewed by Jack's Abby.
American Art Forms and More Dated Allusions
Today in Grade 10 Honors English class, I charged my students to make the best possible argument for the "most American art form"-- I was doing this because we just finished Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and, unfortunately, the slave narrative was very popular and powerful American literary genre-- so I told them to choose another art form that embodied America-- and after some prompting, the five groups chose these topics: jazz, country music, hip-hop, reality TV, and motor vehicle culture . . . and the reality TV group was working right next to my desk, so I could hear their sophomoric logic and often needed to guide them towards rationality and at one point I said, "You've got to mention our president if you want to win this debate!" and they were like: "Wha?" and I then realized that these sophomore girls had never heard of The Apprentice and did not know Donald Trump's trademark phrase "You're fired" so I polled the class of twenty-five and only one student knew this . . . but then, after more prompting-- the sophomores require a lot of prompting-- they recognized the connection between the fantasy of reality TV and actual political reality-- the fact that Donald Trump was now actually firing federal employees-- and other than this youthful oversight, the presentations were quite persuasive-- hip-hop and car/motorcyle design and culture were probably the best-- but then I synthesized those and said that the MOST American art form is playing hip-hop from a monster stereo system in your tricked out low-rider . . . and then I informed them that though they did a good job, they all neglected to remember that we were still in the 1800s in the chronological progression of the class (which is not actually how the curriculum progresses but I like to teach the kids some history along the way so I like to do things chronologically) and so next class I will make my case for the Western as the most American art form-- or at least for the 1800s . . . as the Western features guns and freedom and taking the law into your own hands and treating Native American poorly and manifesting destiny westward and horses and trains . . . and I'm going to introduce this genre and how it operates with a clip from Malcolm Gladwell on Joe Rogan's podcast-- and this is two hours and twenty-six minutes in and Gladwell is starting to get wacky, as anyone would-- just before this segment he says some sexist things about women who love Law and Order and then he explains his compass-point theory on Westerns . . . and all the other compass points-- here are his categories of thrillers:
A Western takes place in “a world in which there is no law and order, and a man shows up and imposes, personally, law and order on the territory, the community”
An Eastern is “a story where there is law and order, so there are institutions of justice, but they have been subverted by people from within”
In a Northern, “law and order exists, and law and order is morally righteous, the system works.” (A prime example is, of course, Law and Order.)
A Southern is “where the entire apparatus is corrupt, and where the reformer is not an insider but an outsider.”
My Allusions Grow (Even More) Dated
The Week Begins, as Literacy Ends
It is Monday, it's butt-ass cold, the double birthday weekend is over, Donald Trump is aligning himself with Vladimir Putin's vision of the new world order, and apparently-- according to the new episode of Derek Thompson's podcast Plain English-- reading an entire book is a dying art.
I Can't Drive 55 (or at Night)
Me and the Seuss, we share birthday fun--
If the doc were alive, he'd be one-twenty-one!
I'm not quite that old, but D. Boon would be proud--
there's no shame in saying it, so I'll say it loud,
fuck all those youngsters, growing old is no crime--
I'll revel in my age: double nickels on the dime.
Champagne is Gross
We had a lovely pre-birthday celebration for Alex (and myself) last night-- we all went to Shanghai Dumpling and stuffed ourselves on noodles and various kinds of dumplings-- mainly soup-- and scallion pancakes and mochi sesame balls and then, though we didn't save room, we went back to our house and ate some birthday cheesecake and then Cat and I entertained the girlfriends with various photo albums and pictures of the boys when they were young and adorable and very silly . . . and Alex and Ian were great sports about all this, they really are getting to be actual normal people-- and Alex and I agreed that champagne is absolutely horrible (although Layla and my wife like the bubbles) and we're going to save the real drinking for our big birthday outing, we're going to see the Knicks in a couple weeks-- and then Ian drove the whole young crew back to New Brunswick and they went to a frat party or something, while the old folks collapsed on the couch to watch Mythic Quest and digest.
Birthday Weekend!
Buckle up: the birthday weekend begins-- Alex turns 21 tomorrow and I turn 55 on Sunday . . . so I put on a pot of coffee.
My Students Are Amazing (AI) Writers!
Earlier this week in my Creative Writing class we did an exercise where we voted on a topic and then everyone-- either alone or collaboratively-- wrote a piece on this topic, executing a particular literary technique . . . fun and simple and the topic the class chose was ripe for reflection: gossip . . . so once the kids finished, a student-- just a regular, run-of-the-mill standard sixteen-year-old-- read aloud his piece . . . and at the start there was some dialogue, which seemed a little too perfectly punctuated, and then he read aloud this symbolic sentence:
The weight of a secret, too heavy for two lips, was shared from hand to hand like a dog-eared book from the library—pages folded, words smudged, the original story lost.
and I played it cool (even though I knew no sixteen boy in 2025 would express such a sentiment in such a style) and I asked, with as much faux-sincerity as I could muster, just how he thought of such an interesting metaphor for a rumor-- a dog-eared library book--
and he said, "Oh, um . . . I didn't think of that part . . . my friend told me to write that"
and I said, "Is your friend named ChatGPT?"
and then when I was able to talk to him alone I asked him if he even knew what a dog-eared book was (he did not) and I told him to write his own stuff as it was insulting for me to have to read AI bullshit and he apologized and we left it at that and while I didn't want to embarrass him anymore than I already did, I loved the sentence so much that I used it as a cautionary example in my other classes-- so I read it to them and then I asked my students why this sentence set off so many AI alarm bells and the kids didn't fully understand so I had to explain to them that this metaphor was incredibly antiquated and specific and the best way I could explain it was that back when I was in elementary school-- Judd School-- our library had a copy of the Judy Blume book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and there's a part in the book where Margaret gets her period-- salacious!-- and someone would dog-ear this page (one of my students said she thought dog-earing a library book was a criminal act) and then pass the book along and the next person would be able to turn right to the salacious part and read it-- and explained to them that in 1982, a world without digital screens and cell-phones and readily-available smut on the internet, this is what passed for racy content . . . and the bizzaro ending to this story is that, despite all the readily available smut online, available at a moment's notice, one click away, Florida's Martin County banned a Judy Blume book (Forever) and so while this sounds problematic, it is Florida so what do you expect-- but when you ban something, it becomes more attractive (and more well known) and so maybe the ban will entice kids to read again and dog-ear some salacious pages and pass that book on, like a rumor, distorted, smudged, and heavy with secrets.
Wednesday with Thursday Vibes
This week is folding back on itself-- today I had Tuesday energy (the least amount) while my seniors had effusive Thursday chattiness and verbosity-- which is cute and would be fun on a Friday but is a lot to handle on a Wednesday that feels like a Tuesday, but the sun was shining like April, so we took a walk outside (and a few of us were moving . . . we were talking about sports and it must have inspired us to walk with some alacrity because we left half the class far behind until I remembered that I was responsible for the entire group and waited for them to catch up) and that helped but the fact that I'm already tired and burnt out from the four preps and the extra class and the rapid expansion of AI and the Trump administration means that I will be crawling to the finish line in June.
The One True Message
If there's one idea I could pass along to the young people, to the next generation of humanity-- one piece of wisdom, one profound final thought-- and I know this goes against human nature, against the "endowment effect" and our possessive minds, this conflicts with our desire for ownership and our love of indignance and personal space-- I know it's a hard message to get across and an even harder one for people to implement-- but I believe! . . . I believe we can learn to do this, as a culture and a collective and it will be a great leap forward . . . so the thing I will say on my deathbed, my dying words, my legacy, is this: the left lane is for passing!
Hookah's There?
Dave (Almost) Coins Another Word?
Apparently, the one unique word that I coined-- tupperawareness-- really has legs . . . my friend and colleague Matt said his friends have been so inspired by my lexical innovation that they are always trying to coin new words to rival my semantic masterpiece, and right now, as we speak, these guys are stuck in Lima-- five-hour delay-- and they are drinking and wandering around the airport and they are calling this activity "peroozing," which is pretty fucking great-- a triple pun!-- and it has inspired me to try to coin another word, for the people who back into parking spaces even though the parking lot is crowded and full of traffic and backing into the spot is going to hold everyone up . . . I considered "back-inner drivers"-- a sort of play on beginner drivers . . . but that's lame, and "barking" has obviously been taken by the canines, so I think I'm just going to refer to them as "assholes."
Dave is Declared a Hero (of a particular sort)
I think for future generations-- so they understand what is happening around here-- I should describe just how much pickleball is being played . . . normally on a Friday afternoon, I would have already ingested several beers and be getting logy, but instead, I took a nap and I'm about to don my compression socks, visor, and knee-brace and head out with my buddy to the 7 -10 PM open play at Pickleball HQ . . . and then on Sunday, instead of playing in my normal indoor soccer game, I agreed to drive down to the Mercer Bucks Pickleball Club and was declared a "hero" for doing so-- it's a 35-minute drive-- because my brother desperately needs an eighth player in his game-- he plays with an elite bunch and most of them are playing in a tournament, so they needed an extra body . . . I was really trying to avoid getting involved in indoor pickleball, but they keep building places and my friends (and brother) keep getting involved in various games and it's honestly not the worst way to spend the winter because the weather is fucking awful.
Laying It On Thick
The way to teach "The Modern Moloch"-- a phenomenal episode of 99% Invisible about the mostly unknown story of how automobile lobbyists and auto club enthusiasts destroyed the modern American city with car-centric infrastructure, blaming pedestrians for reckless walking and removing them from the streets instead of shaping the road system around the idea of autonomous walking, vibrant street life, and public transportation (we link this source to another great essay on this topic, Rebecca Solnit's "Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche") is to make the cartoons from the 1920's about sacrificing children to the Ammonite god Moloch-- as there was a great deal of hatred towards cars during this time period, hatred that has been glossed over by the Trump-like revisionist history that portrays America as always having a love affair with the automobile, a narrative that is written by the winners and just not true-- but the reason we can't have nice things is the bad guys won . . . and seem to be still winning, as Trump is now promising to "terminate" congestion pricing in New York City-- and the orange dicktater will probably succeed because Eric Adams is in his thrall-- anyway, the way to get this stuff across to high school kids is to begin the lesson reciting a list of all the people I've known that have died in car crashes and then go on a very depressing field trip to visit the Emily Fredericks bench in the lobby, Fredericks was an excellent student of mine back in the day, and she was biking to work in Philadelphia and in the bike lane when she was struck by a distracted garbage truck driver (earbuds in, looking at paperwork) and killed-- a sacrifice to Moloch and so that we can have our wide and fast city roads and unprotected bike lanes . . . and of course, nothing happened to the guy who hit her, all charges dropped because like Eric Adams is in Trump's thrall, we are in the thrall of the automobile . . . and the lightbulbs were starting to go off over the heads of these subruban students, as they recognized the problems with Route 18 and the Ryder's Lane-- the hodge-podge of zoning, the fact that a giant new condiminium complex is being built but it is completely disconnected from all the surrounding shops and stores except by roads, so it won't even be possible to walk to Starbucks and the traffic will get even worse and it will be even harder to cross the street . . . what have we wrought?
Hip Hop Mic Drop
I can't think as fast as Busta Rhymes raps in the Chris Brown song "Look at Me," but apparently that's not the fastest rapping . . . this Eminem tune "Godzilla" is faster (9.5 syllables a second!) but it's also indecipherable, and at this point, I think we're getting into the whole "if a rapper raps in a forest but none of the animals understand it, and then a tree falls on the rapper, are these animals going to care if they don't hear the rest of the verse" philosophical conundrum.
The Best Genre, Hands Down, Knives Out
I've been doing some heavy reading lately--I read an extremely challenging historical literary mystery by Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club, which inspired me to re-read Dante's Inferno and I've also been slogging my way through the last book in Rick Perlstein's masterful political trilogy Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 and The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert D. Kaplan-- but whenever I get too deep into the shit, over my head in literary shit, so to speak-- like the flatterers in the eighth circle of hell-- then I circle back to the best genre, really the only genre-- a modern procedural mystery story-- there is no question that this is the best genre of fiction ever invented (thanks Edgar Allan Poe!) and whenever I'm struggling to find something to really engrossing, I get a hold of a well-written crime mystery . . . this time it's Never Tell by Lisa Gardner, apprently this one is based on a real case (which I haven't delved into because I don't want to spoil the mystery) but it's gripping, detailed, well-paced, and each chapter is written from a different point-of-view, yet Gardner still maintains the mystery-- while I'm not sure which genre of music is the best-- I love hyperpop, alt-country, jazz fusion, hip-hop, post-rock, and many others-- I am certain that the mystery story is the king of all literary genres, bowing down to no other.
Presidents' Day . . . Take It Easy
My wife and I did NOT buy a mattress on our day off today, but we did go to the gym (though my wife and I were both very sore from working out too hard yesterday and walking around like very old people) and then we went out to lunch, but while I took the next reasonable step in this progression and took a nap, my wife-- who was starting on this bent at lunch, showing me Pinterest pictures and saying things like "I work hard"--appeared in our bedroom while I was mid-nap . . . with a tape measure!-- she's got some grand plans for our bedroom, which I like to keep in the style of Jay Gatsby-- "the simplest room in the house"-- and while I already talked her out of a plant wall over our heads at lunch-- although I love a plant wall-- because I don't want a plant falling on me while I'm sleeping . . . and now I think she's calmed down for the time being and found a book to read on her Kindle and is getting into the spirit of a random day off.
Leverage Works the Same, Even If You Are Old (Mass is Mass, and I've Got Big Ass)
I really hustled today at indoor soccer-- and it paid off, I scored a goal and had a huge assist to keep our team on the floor-- but I am realizing that my only weapon against younger, quicker players is my substantial mass . . . in the open field, all I can do is contain you young motherfuckers, but if you get caught near the boards, I am winning that battle-- and it's too embarrassing to call foul on someone my age.
Beware!
In Naples, Florida in February, the weather is sunny, dry, and warm, and sitting around the pool is lovely . . . except when it isn't (and apparently this sign is no joke, my brother said he almost got hit while relaxing in the hot tub).
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles . . .
I am back in Jersey-- flew in last night and I went to work today-- it was nice to return to normalcy and high school kids-- but my knee and back and shoulder hurt from the traveling . . . plane seats have gotten absurdly small (and I thought I was going to get seated next to the beautiful Swedish woman in front of me in the boarding line-- she was tall, slim, blonde hair, sporting a headband, and wearing skin-tight white pants and crop top t-shirt-- but I was not so lucky, I was one row short of sitting next to her and instead I had to stuff myself into the seat next to a very stout woman with a wet cough, whose thigh and arm rested on me most of the flight . . . oh well) and after enduring the stress of dealing with my dad's passing, sleeping on a weird mattress in a room with my brother--who snores-- and an incessant light from the breezeway, and then the car ride to the airport, the cramped flight, and then the shuttle bus to the mini-train to the big train-- and I did get lucky there, the train to New Brunswick was two minutes late and I just got there to catch it-- my body was very stiff and sore today . . . but my students were sympathetic and cooperative and they knew I was a little off-- I can't wait to get a full night's sleep in my own bed, without having to worry about an alarm.
End of an Era
My dad passed away last night, down here in Naples, Florida-- a place he loved-- and he will be missed, by his friends, family, wife, and colleagues . . . he truly led an illustrious life-- a distinguished career in corrections and as a criminology professor . . . his progressive ideas, consultant work, jail design, prison educational implementation with football great and activist Jim Brown, and his work as an expert witness in prison logistics and best practices-- I often helped him with the writing of the expert culpability report and wow, you want to stay out of prison if you can help it, some wacky shit goes on in there-- but my dad did his best to allay those awful prison stereotypes and make prison a safe place for rehabilitation, not mayhem . . . my dad was also a great athlete-- a star-swimmer, a lifeguard, and a baseball, basketball, and football player and he taught me and my brothers to catch, throw, bat, shoot, and hit a golf ball . . . he loved family vacations at the beach, Cape Cod and Sea Isle City in particular and he was a patient and supportive father and the same as a grandfather, and always such a fan of my boys Alex and Ian, always at their tennis and soccer matches, and supporting them in all their endeavors-- he always expressed how proud he was of his family, he had a wonderful relationship with all my cousins, and he had a plethora of friends in both Naples and Monroe-- he made the best of the rare form of parkinsonism that plagued the last five years of his life, and even while suffering through all that bullshit, he was larger-than-life and his attitude and sense-of-humor were exceptional . . . we were lucky he passed the way he did, without becoming a tragic figure and truly burdening my mom beyond her cababilities, and instead he will remembered fondly as the legendary "Guy" from New Brunswick, who went a long way . . . I will truly miss you Dad and I couldn't have asked for a better father, and as my son Ian texted me: "he was the best Poppy I could have asked for."
The Waiting (Is the Hardest Part)
Not much news here-- my dad is now comfortably unresponsive in the hospice center across the street from the hospital and slowly giving up the ghost-- but it is a strange trip to Florida for me, as I haven't been anywhere tropical for a long time, so alternating between hospital settings and resort setting is very surreal . . . most of my time here has been spent hanging out with my mother and brother in various hospital settings, watching my dad fade away but then-- when we take a break from the hospital-- I've been walking through manicured gardens and splashing in warm swimming pools in my mom's development in Naples and the weather is the polar opposite of New Jersey, or perhaps the antipodal opposite of New Jersey-- which makes this all very weird (for me, but not for the health care workers down here, who are incredibly professional and compassionate and I think very used to these kinds of scenarios, considering the average age of the people in this town).
At Least He Bet the Eagles
I talked to my dad on the phone last night during the Super Bowl and he was totally coherent, though he had recently fallen and hit his head and broken a rib-- and this coupled with the state of his lower body (weak and slow because of micro-strokes, afib, and a rare type of lower body Parkinson's) made it impossible for him to get out of the house to the nearby Super Bowl party -- which is why I gave him a call, I knew he was watching the game alone-- but when my mom came home at halftime, really just moments after I talked to him, she noticed he was behaving oddly and it was because he was having a massive stroke . . . so he's not at all in a good way right now and my brother and I are flying down to Florida . . . this getting old business really sucks (but that last chat I had with him was a good one, and he was happy that, like me, he bet the Eagles).
Triumph at Triumph
Yesterday was the first Saturday in a while that my wife and I were both healthy, so we took the train to Princeton (with Connell . . . it was the first time he ever rode the Dinky!) and first we stopped for an espresso martini and some snacks at the Dinky Bar and then went to the new Triumph Brewery location in Palmer Square-- inside the old Princeton Post office, an astounding renovation of a spacious 1930s building-- and I am pleased to report that both the beer and the food are excellent-- I liked both their IPAs and their dry stout, Connell doggedly stuck to a hand-pumped amber Celtic ale, and my wife had the pilsener and a delicious pear martini; as a bonus, they have live jazz every Friday and Saturday from 5-8 PM in the lounge . . . there are two bars, one in the basement-- it has a ratskeller vibe and there are plenty of TVs tuned into sports-- and then the upper bar amidst the restaurant seating, and that's where you can see and hear the jazz . . . anyway, this is a great spot-- nothing quite like it in the area, I don't think-- and taking the train to Princeton is much faster than driving (and driving home last night would have been treacherous-- we had to walk to the train station through a bizarre icy slush that stuck to your boots, while being constantly pelted with freezing rain-- and the walk up the hill back to Highland Park was like trudging through frozen wet sand . . . really weird).
My Dog is Probably a Heathen
While it's impossible to truly delve into the mind of a dog, we can always speculate-- and it's been a long cold winter, so I've spent plenty of time on the couch observing my dog and I think she has what might be called a pagan mentality-- she's always doing ritualistic behaviors in the hope that they will have some effect on her world and the generally benevolent gods that control it-- I think she knows that to some arbitrary extent, her world is controlled by inscrutable deities, and so she tries to sit a certain way, or stare a certain way, or turn in circles so many times, in the hopes that this will produce food-- of course, at times, she attempts to take matters into her own paws and goes on the offensive, but we usually foil those attempts-- although she did get a cookie out of my wife's school bag the other day--and I think she knows that she exists in a polytheistic universe, with many strange gods, some human, some technological-- like the dishwasher, which always contains lickable items-- and while she knows she can't control technology, she will try different strategies and rituals depending on which humanoid gods are present, in the hopes of diving providence in the form of a treat, but all of this is so random, so uncontrollable, and because she can't speak (though she does try) she has to communicate through other symbolic actions, in the hopes that they produce good fortune.
Hump Day Existentialism
Today we started a new text in College Writing, a chapter from Rebecca Solnit's book Wanderlust entitled "The Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche" and so I took the kids through the myth of Sisyphus and how in Greek times, the Sisyphean task of rolling the boulder was punitive, but then how Camus adopted Sisyphus as the mascot of existentialism and the idea that "the realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning" and then I challenged the kids to come up with ideas of how our lives are absurd searches for meaning and identity because-- unlike back in the old days, when if your dad made barrels, then you were probably fated to make barrels . . . which, on the one hand is rather restrictive, but on the other hand, relieves you of a lot of doubt and anxiety-- but we are modern humans and our fate, according to Satre, is wide open and there's no higher power to guide us, so our existence precedes our essence, which he explains thusly:
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.
and then I challenged the students to come up with examples of how our lives are absurd searches for our essence-- but my examples were the best:
-- I'm going to Harvard to play football!
-- I just drove my car to the gym and I got so tired working out that I can't get any of this yard work done.
Dave's Shot is Breezin'
Two good things;
1) today at the gym, while I was shooting around, I made thirteen three-pointers in a row-- and all of them were solidly beyond the arc and I didn't have anyone feeding me the ball-- I was retrieving my own rebounds, tossing the ball out ahead of me, collecting, shooting, rinse, repeat-- and while this is a worthy accomplishment in any shoot-around, it's especially notable for those of you who know my blundering, unskilled basketball origin story (go Nicks!)
2) if you have the winter blues, George Benson's 1976 instrumental song Breezin' is the cure-- I certainly heard this song when I was a kid, and so when I relistened to it yesterday, I remembered the melody-- but I did not remember the miraculous groove (nor did I have the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate a miraculous groove when I was six-years-old).
FunTimes
Two interesting (and rather frightening) things we were told at our faculty meeting today:
1) do not interfere with uniformed Federal Agents (particularly ICE agents) if they show up on school grounds (I did not need to be told this-- I make it a policy to never interfere with uniformed Federal Agents)
2) always behave as if a student might be surreptitiously recording you-- and remember they can piece together pieces of conversation to make it sound like you said something you didn't-- and a confirmed HIB (harassment, intimidation, and bullying) charge results in a loss of a pay-step . . . and HIB is not based on objective behavior but instead on the harassment, intimidation, or bullying being "perceived" by the victim.
The Hegelian Trumpalectic
tone, attitude, or methods, just remember, there will be an eventual synthesis of some of Trump's more obnoxious objectives and maybe, eventually, some sort of halting progress.
Unintentionally Dry January (But Not Sand Island Dry)
I was determined NOT to do "Dry January" for two very good reasons—
1)I’m already a moderate drinker
2) January is so dark, cold, and dreary that a little alcohol helps me get through without going full Jack Torrance
but this January wasn’t fated to be a wet one for me-- two weeks ago I came down with a stomach virus, then my wife caught the flu, and just as she recovered I got a mild case of COVID, so aside from a couple of parties and our outing to see Louie C.K., I barely touched beer, wine, or spirits-- but I'm not complaining because I just read Matthew Pearl’s new book, Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder, and my January—despite its lack of alcohol and abundance of sickness—was a walk in the park compared to what the Walker family endured after their sharking boat shipwrecked on a spit of sand in the North Pacific (Midway Atoll), where they survived for eighteen months on seabirds, seabird eggs, the occasional fish, a bag of moldy rice that washed ashore, and an unlucky turtle—but no beer or tobacco; Pearl’s book is a gripping account of the shipwreck and the surrounding murder and mystery, including the presence of a nutjob named Hans, who was already living in a hut on Sand Island when the Walkers and their crew washed ashore-- and the book gets quite complicated with intrigue, it's not a tale like Swiss Family Robinson or Gilligan's Island, mainly because of the sinister first mate and his past crimes and new alliances, and honestly, after reading this, I'm astounded that anyone in the 19th century would willingly board an ocean-going vessel, given the abundant threats of shipwrecks, piracy, opium smuggling, scurvy, sharks, insurance fraud, blackbirding, and mutiny-- Pearl’s book is an astounding tale of survival, persistence, and malevolent maritime machinations and if you're looking to feel better about your landlocked piece of property, read it.
Thinking is Dead
I am having an existential crisis today, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I feel kind of lousy-- I just tested positive for COVID-- and this diagnosis is amplifying the feeling that life is futile, we are all decaying flesh, and we have designed technology to replace what we once thought was unique about the human mind and spirit-- the inciting incident for this existential crisis happened this morning, when I went to school early to photocopy my Creative Writing mid-term prompt about the film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" so that the kids would have to handwrite the answer because I didn't want them looking up stuff on Google and ChatGPT but then I fed my prompt into DeepSeek, the new, free high-powered Chinese AI-- and the prompt is pretty basic, just something to get the kids writing about a really complicated and interesting film:
How does the film use unreliable narration to explore relationships, memory, and time? What does the film ultimately say about our identity, our perspective, and the way we get along with people?
and, no surprise, DeepSeek gave an astute and organized and thorough answer to this prompt-- but an answer that sounded like AI-- parallel structure, abstract vocabulary, statements made with subtopics in groups of three-- but then I asked DeepSeek to summarize this answer in two sentences and use lots of profanity and it produced something that doesn't resemble AI at all:
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" uses its mind-fuckery of unreliable narration to show how relationships are a messy, chaotic clusterfuck of distorted memories and emotional bullshit. The film dives into the raw, fucked-up truth that love isn’t about perfect memories or clear-cut facts—it’s about the messy, irrational, and deeply human shit that keeps pulling people back together, no matter how hard they try to erase each other.
and this worries me, it means that there's no way to tell if the students are using AI-- now they can prompt it to sound much more human than previously-- and I think this means we have to rethink English/Language Arts class entirely-- it also depresses me that the skills I've spent my life developing can now be farmed out to a computer-- ideas that took my stupid brain hours of meditation and reflection can now be produced in a fraction of the time -- so I think we're going to have to have some difficult conversations about what learning and school is going to be like in the near future-- we could go the Luddite route-- the school is a gym for your brain route-- and do everything on paper and get rid of the computers . . . or we could turn kids into AI synthesizers, where they cull the best ideas from AI and develop them . . . or we could give up on teaching writing entirely and make English class more of a speaking and communicating class . . . but this stuff is evolving so quickly that it's breaking my brain-- it's also fun to ask DeepSeek "why is Jane's Addiction so fucking good?" and require it to use profanity in the answer-- I'm sure this Chinese AI broke a lot of copyright laws in its "training" but it really seems to know about everything (and how to swear realistically while telling you everything).
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