Automobiles, Automobiles, Automobiles (and The Cult)

A very un-Dave weekend, but I survived and had a pretty damned good time, despite all the traffic: Saturday morning, I drove my Kia Sportage forty minutes through typical New Jersey traffic to Zman's house-- there's no good way to get there from Highland Park-- and then after listening to a few tales of Zwife's driving misadventures, we got into Zman's Alfa Romeo and headed up to Hopkinton-- home of Gormley and also the town where the Boston Marathon starts-- but we had to wade into epic traffic on the Hutchinson or the Cross Bronx or the Merritt-- who the fuck knows the difference between those roads?-- so we stopped for lunch at Zuppardi's Apizza in West Haven, which was delicious-- and then fought through a bunch more traffic on the way to Gormley's lovely abode, in the piney, fern gullied, rock-walled suburbs of Hopkinton-- and then we took a walk through the hood, where we did NOT encounter a beach ball (fucking AI is destroying reality) and then got ready to head to the show, which was in Boston city center, at the Orpheum-- and Gormley's wife drove us in, through even more traffic (thanks Liz!) and we hopped out at a traffic light and then I had to chase down the car because I left my phone charging in the backseat . . . I caught up to Liz as she was turning right, knocked on the window, jumped in and grabbed my phone, and then jumped out of the car before anyone could even beep at her-- a random middle-aged white dude was impressed by my alacrity and he said, "nice move!" and I held up my phone and told him "my ticket to the show is on here!" and he said, "Are you going to see The Cult?" and I said, "Yes I am!" and then we went to jm Curley's for drinks and food and then walked to the Orpheum for the show-- the opening act was a noisy duo called The Patriarchy-- but the lead singer was a lady . . . ironic!-- and then The Cult came out as The Death Cult, the goth-punk band that preceded The Cult-- and Ian Astbury was in some sort of Native American dress-robe and they played all the old stuff from Dreamtime and before (e.g. "Gods Zoo") and then the curtain went down, we restocked our beer, and then The Cult came out as The Cult and played all the old favorites, from "Wildflower" to "She Sells Sanctuary"-- I especially enjoyed a stripped-down double time version of "Fire Woman" . . . I guess they were like: we're required to play this but we're going to do it quickly . . . anyway, it was a great show, the band seemed especially energized and invigorated playing the old goth-punk stuff-- Billy Duffy had to actually pay attention to what he was doing instead of cranking out the power chords and the drummer, John Tempesta, is exceptional and really laid down those culturally appropriated tribal beats-- I did have to tell the guy in front of me to lower his phone-- he seemed to think he was filming a documentary-- but once I said something, he stopped holding it up without any conflict-- and in general, the crowd was very pleasant-- it was essentially a convention of burly middle-aged white males, a few still sporting long hair but most bald or balding-- and everyone looked like they were trouble thirty years ago but had since more-or-less assimilated into normal society-- it made me think of how long a history I have with this band-- I first saw them on the Electric tour in July of 1987 at the Felt Forum-- so 38 years ago-- it was an insane show-- they opened with "Bad Fun" and the moshing was actually violent and Ian got stuck on top of a amplifier at one point and roadies had to help him down . . . there's not many bands that I saw in high school that are still touring (The Who are probably the only other band that fits into this category, although I think they are done now) and then after the show we went back to jm Curley's for a nightcap and caught a ride back to Hopkinton (thanks for arranging that ride, Gormley!) where I finished the leftover pizza and hit the sack and then Zman and I got on the road early and hauled it back to Jersey-- that's more car-time than I prefer to do but I chewed some gum and enjoyed the good craik (as they say in Scotland) and Zman's flawless driving and now I'm home andd getting ready for school tomorrow . . . a whirlwind weekend.

Road Trip with Zman!

On my way to Boston to see The Cult open for themselves . . . I will explain further once I fully understand this paradox.

Do the Right Thing (and Be Punished For It)

After school yesterday, the pickleball gang was meeting at the new pickleball courts in Buccleuch Park-- fourteen new courts!-- and Buccleuch Park is in New Brunswick, adjacent to the Rutgers College Ave campus-- so the perfect distance to bike ride from my house in Highland Park . . . this would be a great warm-up for my hamstrings and hips AND I wanted to do the right thing and not add more traffic and pollution to the general mayhem that is New Brunswick/Rutgers at the start of the semester so I took a look at Google Maps and noticed that the shortest route was one I had taken before-- you go across the Route 27 bridge from Highland Park to New Brunswick, and then you go past the homeless encampment and through a tunnel that goes under the bridge and then you take a narrow, overgrown, pavement path in between Route 18 and the south bank of the Raritan River-- and the path is definitely decrepit and ruinous and in disrepair, full of trash and overgrown with ragweed and poison ivy, but it's not closed-- so I rode this path, which I hadn't been on in many years-- since COVID?-- and I passed some sketchy looking holes in the fence and a homeless guy actually shooting heroin-- the needle was in his arm-- and I had to pass very close to him because the path was so narrow and I didn't want to fall down the cliff and into the river--

and I finally got to the stairs which lead to a bike path bridge over Route 18, and then this bridge connects to the Rutgers campus bike path-- but when I reached the top of the stairs, the gate to get out was chained and padlocked-- 

so after going through all the stages of grief and doing a lot of cursing-- I could SEE the Rutgers children and see the Rutgers buildings, but I could not escape the caged bridge and there was no way across Route 18 there-- it was a multi-lane freeway under and overpass with a high concrete divider in the middle-- so after much profanity, I texted the pickleball crew, told them I would be late-- and carried my back back down the stairs, rode the overgrown path, passed the homeless guy-- who had now set up a tarp and was shooting heroin again . . . I had to walk my bike past him so as not to run into him-- I said, "right behind you, man . . . the gate was locked!" but he didn't seem to feel my pain-- and then I biked all the way back to the bridge, crossed over into New Brunswick proper and biked through the College Avenue campus to the park, where I played some pickleball, and then I biked home in the ensuing darkness, using the New Brunswick bike lanes-- but there were some assholes parked in the bike lanes in places so I yelled at them-- and my next move is this: I'm going to write an irate letter to the city of New Brunswick-- they either need to indicate that this bike path is closed or they need to clean it up and open the gate-- but this anecdote is a microcosm of our bike paths in Middlesex County-- there are some decent ones but none of them connect particularly well and there are always dangerous unprotected sections and it's really not viable to bike places unless you're willing to risk your life . . . so that's one of the many reasons everyone is in their car creating traffic (some of the other reasons are that people are stupid and people are lazy).

Excremental Learning

They say an old dog cannot learn new tricks and that might be true, but an old man learned a new trick this morning-- my lower back has been hurting, and so I've been having some difficulty picking up and bagging my dog's stool . . . especially on our morning walk, when my body is not warmed up-- but this morning, I took a very wide stance-- that is the key, widening the stance-- and then I did a semi-lunge to pick up the yucky stuff and it was much easier: an old man learns a new trick!

The Old Man Takes a Day

Twenty years ago, when I took a "mental health day," I would go extreme mountain biking, or hiking, or fly-fishing at the Ken Lockwood Gorge for a run on the beach or something epic, but I am obviously getting old-- today I took the day off because I couldn't sleep last night because of my lower back and hip, so I went and got a massage; then to Costco where I spent an inordinate amount of money on mundane items; and then took an epic nap . . . but now my back and hip feel better and I think I'll be able to carry on tomorrow.

Methought the Kids Knew This Word

Woe is me . . . or perhaps I should say: "sad is me" or maybe "methinks I am sad" because yesternight,  methought that high school seniors knew the meaning of the word "woe" but today, while teaching Hamlet, I learned that the majority of students do NOT know the meaning of the word woe-- or as my fellow Language Arts teacher Denise said: "the distance between the students and the English language keeps growing larger."

Hypothetical Hyperbolic HW Nearly Foments Real Revolution

Last Friday, my senior College Writing class read the first scene of Hamlet, and we learned that the nation of Denmark is worried about an unsanctioned Norwegian invasion, led by a vengeful Young Fortinbras-- who wants to recover the lands that his father lost in a battle with Old King Hamlet (who appears in the play as a ghost) but Young Fortinbras did not get permission from his bedrid uncle to spearhead this invasion so Young Fortinbras has gathered a wild band of desperadoes and organized a rogue mercenary army to do his bidding . . . but the Shakespearean description of this is rather dense and difficult reading, so I always preface it by saying, "Ok, this is your homework over the weekend"-- which piques their interest-- and then the kids are confused but, slowly but surely, we figure out the passage:

Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in it, which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost.

and the students finally recognize that I am telling them to collect-- or "shark up"-- their most "lawless" friends and acquaintances and go out and do some vengeance upon their enemies and perform some deeds that "hath a stomach in it" and we chuckle about this absurd suggestion and move on . . . but I now realize that my sarcastic hypothetical hyperbole might have been lost on a few students because a kid from my class passed me by today in the hall and he asked, sincerely, "What was that homework we had to do again? It was confusing," and I was like, "Yikes . . . I was just kidding . . . please don't shark up a bunch of lawless resolutes and form a rogue army and recover any lands by strong hands and then say I had anything to do with it."

How to Prevent Munchausen by Proxy and Stockholm Syndrome

My "robust immune response" to the flu and COVID vaccines has finally dissipated-- and while my symptoms were real, I'm not sure my wife and my friends actually believed me-- and my wife was certainly not controlling me using the Munchausen by proxy method . . . I'm too intolerable when I'm sick, so no one in their right mind would try that bullshit on me-- I also think I'm too annoying to be involved in Stockholm Syndrome (in either direction) and the way to prevent that from happening is also to be really annoying . . . I will keep y'all posted on how to prevent other weird syndromes (e.g. Jerusalem syndrome, Paris syndrome, Capgras syndrome, Stendhal syndrome, the Cotard delusion, and the Fregoli delusion) in the future.

Hypothetical Schadenfreude Alleviates Dave's Misery

Yesterday at school-- for the good of the children, the old people, the country in general, science, and my immune system-- I got both the new COVID booster and the flu shot (COVID booster on my left shoulder, which is still very fucking sore, and flu shot on my right shoulder, which is less sore) and I am unhappy to report that I couldn't sleep last night-- I had the chills and everything I've ever injured in my entire life aches (including my fucking back) and I feel like absolute garbage today and the only thing that will make me happy is if the people at work who neglected to get the vaccines get really sick and have a bad case of vomiting and diarrhea (at school . . . in front of all their students).

Battling Two Vaccine Shots While Writing A Review For One Battle After Another

My wife and I saw One Battle After Another, and all I can say is that I'm proud of Paul Thomas Anderson (and all the excellent actors and actresses in the film) for making such a spot-on, brave, funny, compelling, satirical, dystopian, and incredibly topical film . . . the film seems to be set in a parallel universe that reminds us that we are now living in a Trumpian parallel universe-- how things might have been if they actually got the vote count right in Florida!-- and in this universe, late 60s Black Panther/BLA and early 70s style Weather Underground liberal violent resistance is still happening and is now directed toward undocumented detainment camps . . . and this sort of violent resitance-- freeing detainees, robbing banks, housing undocumented immigrants-- would be difficult because of the amount of digital surveillance (but the film attempts to address this) and the government is portrayed as a parody of our current regime-- everyone sounds like Stephen Miller and Trump-- there is fear and paranoia of the enemy within and the aliens trying to invade . . . but the film also portrays the futility of violent revolution, how it usually ends in imprisonment, betrayals, informants, ratting, snitching, hiding, drug abuse, loss of purpose, difficulty rejoining society and all the rest . . . Leonardo DiCaprio really lenas into his role as Bob Ferguson-- and the film is often laugh-out-loud funny . . . anyway, I'm fading fast, I got both my flu shot and my COVID shot today (fuck you, RFK) so I'll end this review in incoherence, as I think I have a low-grade fever, but remember-- time is a human created construct that doesn't actually exist . . . but it controls our lives.

The Call Is Coming From Inside the Hat!

After I play pickleball, I hang my sweaty baseball caps on the clothesline across our back deck so that they can air out and dry-- yesterday, just before I went down to the park to play, I grabbed a hat off the clothesline, put it on my head, and then I went inside my house to fill a water bottle . . . and while i was filling the bottle, I felt a lump on my head and I felt the top of the hat and there was a bump-- but the bump was inside the hat . . . weird . . . so I took off the hat and felt my head . . . no bump-- very weird-- but then I looked inside the hat and there was a large spider in there, which had been sitting on my head, causing this lump in the hat . . . and, perhaps because I was all alone, I was surprisingly calm, despite my intense dislike of spiders, and I shook the spider into the sink and squashed it (and then checked my head for other spiders, but I was in the clear).

Get Out of Your Car and Regain Ambulatory Autonomy!

When I get to school early, I like to "pull through" and get a spot with my car facing out, and to get one of these coveted spots, I often have to park between two other cars, and I am finding more and more that when I pull between these two cars, there are still people inside the cars and these people continue to sit there while I hop out and grab my stuff and start my day . . . so I asked in the English Office and apparently lots of people like to sit in their cars once they arrive at work-- which seems totally fucked up to me, I can't wait to get out of the car . . . I hate sitting, and I hate being trapped in a little box, and I want to regain ambulatory autonomy-- but evidently these people want to sit in a little metal box and talk on the phone or listen to one more song or listen to some inspirational self-help guru-- I heard that shit emanating from one parked car-- or they're just avoiding going into the building because they hate work or they are introverts or they get anxious-- but my advice to these people is:

1) stop idling and polluting the air;

2) get out of your car and live your life!

Just Give Me Some Time, Dammit!

On the basketball court, I need a fair bit of time to set up for a three-point shot . . . and in the kitchen, I need a fair bit of time to set up to cook a meal.

My Back, Unlike World Liberty Financial, Is In the Red

My back is no longer back in the black-- it's in the red, deep in the red . . . so I should NOT have played three hours of pickleball yesterday, nor should I have read the news-- as far as I understand it, Trump pushed out US attorney Erik Siebert because he refused to pursue "trumped up" charges on James Comey and replaced him with an inexperienced beauty queen named Lindsey Halligan AND Trump also essentially received a quid pro quo bribe from an Abu Dhabi investment fund, to the tune of a 2 billion dollar investment in World Liberty Financial, and then the Trump White House reversed restrictions on the export of Nvidia AI computer chips to the U.A.E.-- though I guess this deal hasn't gone through yet becuase of security concerns, but still WTF?-- and, worst of all, my classroom is especially dank and smelling of mold because it was so unseasonably hot and humid over the weekend . . . such a Monday.

My Back is Back in the Black

I was out of commission for a day, but now my back is back in the black so forget the hearse because I never die-- I played three hours of pickleball today, stiff back and all-- basically, I've got nine lives and I'm abusing every one of them, so look at me now: dinking and slamming and winning hand battles . . . I'm just making my play and I'm hitting a wicked backhand flick as a speed-up as well, so don't try to push your luck, just get out of my way-- perhaps my back is back in the black because I hit the sack early last night-- but even one day of rest is too long for me, it's been too long and I'm glad to be back, with my gang, going out with a bang, looking at the sky and realizing it's time for lunch.

Back to School: Not Great For My F$#king Back

For the first time in a long, long time, my lower back has seized up-- probably from playing basketball yesterday morning and then teaching three 83-minute periods and then going to happy hour at B2 Bistro and sitting on a barstool for several hours . . . who knows? . . . but I am unable to put socks on and will be lying on the couch all day (not the worst sentence for Dave) and I need to start going to acupuncture again.

Sandy Hook, The Mule Barn, Idioms, Lanternflies, Always Sunny . . .

My wife and I had no school on Tuesday (because of Rosh Hashanah) and so we drove our bikes to Sandy Hook and rode the multi-use trail through the old yellow brick army barracks (some of which have been renovated into beachfront rentals) and to the various beaches (one of which is clothing optional, we did not opt to stop) and finally to the new bar/restaurant, The Mule Barn-- which has a lovely patio, but we elected to have a beer indoors because it was hot as fuck out-- the Mule Barn is a great joint, on the water, all the way out on the end of the hook and it serves a variety of New Jersey beers (and apparently the food is good as well) and while we were there, my wife-- who is a mix-master of idioms-- described someone as "loud in the crowd" but then she did not possess the second half of this phrase she invented-- she wanted to say that this person is "loud in the crowd" but shy in smaller groups . . . so I enlisted AI to come up with a rhyming second half but the best it could muster was "loud in the crowd but a mouse in the house" and "loud in the crowd but a bore when it's four"-- I odn't think those are lexical masterpieces-- and then we drove back over the bridge to the Atlantic Highlands for lunch and a beer at The Proving Grounds, where we were swarmed by lanternflies-- I thought those things pretty much died out in New Jersey but apparently they all migrated to the beach to enjoy the waterfront views-- so though our food was great, we beat a hasty retreat once we finished and headed back to our lantern-fly-free but very humid hometown and I walked to New Brunswick with the guys and we went back to Harvest Moon for shitty beer-- why?-- and we sat outside in the humidity--why?-- but I did get to meet up with my son Alex, who had just gotten out of class and he walked back to Highland Park with us, to my friend's house and had a beer with us-- and then we watched two very funny episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "Mac and Dennis Become EMTs" and "The Gang Goes to a Dog Track"-- highly recommended . . . a fabulous day off from work.

Malcolm Gladwell: Explaining the Big Picture, Anecdotally

New episode of We Defy Augury up-- "Malcolm F$%cking Gladwell" . . . my thoughts (loosely) inspired by his new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point . . . and while I also delve into his other books and theories-- I try to keep it light and breezy, as would befit a podcast about the master of light and breezy non-fiction writing . . . but eventually I get stuck in the weeds (as one is wont to do when analyzing Gladwell's anecdotal evidence).

The Four Rings of Marriage?

There's an old joke about the "three rings of marriage" . . . 

1) the engagement ring

2) the wedding ring

3) and the suffering

classic stuff . . . but-- if you have a lisp-- there's also "the swallowing" . . . to explain: a few nights ago I stumbled into the bathroom in the dark-- it was probably 2:30 AM-- urinated and then groped for the plastic water cup . . . and I guess I had trouble locating the plastic water cup because I turned on the bathroom light-- and I normally do NOT turn on the bathroom light and I just fill the cup in the dark and drink some-- but for whatever reason, I turned on the light and I thank the Lord of Sun and Light (Amun-Ra?) that I did so-- because just before I drank, I noticed that there were two objects in the water cup-- rings!-- and the water was weird and soapy . . . my wife decided to clean her wedding ring and engagement ring and she ill-advisedly used the grope-in-the-dark-bathroom-water-cup (and placed the cup on the bathroom counter!) and so I came very close to swallowing two of the rings of marriage . . . and then there would have been much gastrointestinal suffering before those things returned to the light of day.

I Am NOT Eating This Chicken! (of the Woods?) or Will I?

This morning, while walking the dog, I encountered this weird brain-like fungus-- and I am proud to say that Lola did NOT eat this thing-- even though I later learned that this fleshy bracket fungus, Laetiporus, is also commonly known as "Chicken of the Woods" because-- if cooked properly-- it tastes like chicken? or chicken brains?-- not sure if that's true and I'm not going to cook this mess and find out . . . I noticed this mound yesterday in an incipient stage, and I hope that by tomorrow morning, it will disintegrate (or that it turns into some sort of "Last of Us" style humanoid creature-- THEN I will kill it and eat it because that means that the shit is going down and I'm going to have to learn to eat and survivie in a fungified world.

I Am Not Mechanical

After my son failed to execute the repair, I watched several videos on how to replace a broken sun visor on a 2012 Honda Accord and then I really tried to follow the instructions-- Ian helped me on the first attempt-- and we failed-- and then I watched more videos and went back out there on my own-- and failed-- and then I gave up, as I am wont to do . . . and then I went back again and twisted and pushed the tab and spun the contraption and wedged it in there and--finally!-- the replacement visor locked in place . . . and I still don't know how I did it.

I'm One in a Million, Baby (and less racist than Axl Rose, I hope)

When our civilization goes belly-up and the world is a hot, flooded, energy-depleted wasteland, I am quite sure one of the reasons for this will be all the massive amounts of power used by cloud storage data farms, which require massive and constant power consumption to run all the IT and AI equipment, and to prevent servers from overheating-- and when some future civilization examines just what data was housed in the cloud, they will find the bulk of it is the stupid text strand I have with my friends where we share how we did on various puzzles-- the NYT mini crossword, Pips, Connections, Wordle, Quordle, Bracket City, Framed, etcetera-- this text strand is decadent and wasteful and treats the incredible technology we have at our disposal cavalierly, and yet I get great joy from from this absurd strand, especially when the NYT Connections bot pronounced me truly distinctive in my Connections style and I have a place to send this incredibly interesting digital information.

Disney Chooses The Easy Way (Which Might Make Things Hard for the Rest of Us)

A few words on the Charlie Kirk shooting and the ensuing political consequences:

1. your thoughts and beliefs are your own and you are free to THINK whatever you want about the Charlie Kirk shooting-- you can be happy about it or sad about it or angry about it or any complex mix of these basic emotions . . . you could think it's a tragedy on par with the J.F.K assassination or you could think he had it coming-- or you could be like me . . . when someone informed me of the shooting, I said, "Huh? Who is that?" and no amount of explaining was going to make me care about him any more than any other victim of gun violence in our great and violent nation (and it's not like Kirk was an elected official who died in office, e.g. Melissa Hortman, the leader of the Minnesota state House Democratic caucus, who was killed alongside her husband, on the same day that a state senator, John Hoffman, and his wife were shot and injured . . . those are actual political assassinations) and I'm not going to pretend that lots of people didn't have lots of awful thoughts when Kirk was killed, but that is within their rights-- just as it is within my rights to root for the Jets only in certain circumstances-- because my friends are Jets fans-- and I will root wholeheartedly for them if the Giants are winning their game, but then if the Giants start losing, in my heart of heart, I hope the Jets lose too . . . because misery loves company-- this is awful and juvenile, but thoughts and beliefs are private and totally protected by the First Amendment, so you can root for whatever outcomes you like in your mind . . . and also realize that your thinking about them does not change anything in the physical world;

2. you are legally allowed to express your thoughts and beliefs abstractly-- in the proper place, at the proper time-- in order to try to change reality . . . now you can't drive around with a bullhorn in a quiet neighborhood at 3 AM and scream your political thoughts, that's not protected by the First Amendment, nor can you specifically call for violence-- you CAN'T say "in retribution for Kirk's death, I am going to release a horde of killer bees upon Jimmy Kimmel next Thursday at 4:00 PM . . . be there!"

3. while you can legally express your thoughts and beliefs and you will not be jailed for them-- with many caveats: as long as you are not slandering or libelling someone or revealing government secrets (nuclear codes, etcetera) or blackmailing or threatening an individual or corporation or soliciting someone to commit a crime or propagating child pornography or engaging in extreme obscenity-- BUT even if you are not doing one of these things that is not protected by the First Amendment, you could still suffer real world consequences for your opinions-- and this is what the MAGA crew is pushing-- cancel anyone who says or does anything defamatory about Kirk and his legacy;

4. the government is not allowed to control the content of the media, nor is blackmail protected by the First Amendment, so when Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said, about cancelling Kimmel, "We can either do this the easy way or the hard way," this was illegal and unconstitutional and, honestly, quite frightening-- and, the fact that Disney caved to this threat is even more frightening (but not as frightening as the fact that Amazon paid 40 million for a Melania Trump vanity doc) and hopefully this will be parsed out in a court of law and Samuel Alito-- as he always does-- will side with Freedom of Speech and realize that sometimes it protects "thought that we hate"

5. the right believes that this autocratic backlash from the Trump administration is a comeuppance for the left, who limited free speech about vaccines during COVID and whose "woke" ideology got people like Dave Chapelle, Kevin Hart, and J.K. Rowling in hot water-- and the threat by the Trump administration to take away tax-exempt status from left-leaning organizations (because they support radical leftist terrorism) is revenge for when the Obama administration used the IRS to target organizations afffiliated with the Tea Party;

6. this bullshit is totally typical . . . when a party is NOT in power and they are the underdog, they usually want unlimited free speech so they can criticize the powers that be-- but once a party takes power, then they squelch free speech and expression and want everyone to tow the party line-- and the Trump administration is going beyond the pale in how they execute this-- more transactional than any recent administration, more bullying, more use of leverage, more blatant blackmail and unconstitional rhetoric . . . it's shameful to use Kirk's death like this, but it's also perfectly normal in politics to "never let a good crisis go to waste."

Harvest Moon: Making Fairly Shitty Beer for Nearly Thirty Years

For the first time in a long time, I went to Harvest Moon last night for a few beers with the guys, and I was duly impressed: the Firehouse Red tasted bland and fuzzy; the Fuller Moon IPA left something to be desired in the way of hoppiness, crispness, and flavor; and the Dunluce Castle Stout, while drinkable and not as disappointing as the other beers, was not notable in any particular way . . . it's fairly amazing-- this microbrewery, which has been operating in New Brunswick since 1996, has consistently made lame and lousy tasting beer for three decades, yet they keep plugging along, while more interesting pubs have withered and died-- but you'd think they'd figure out how to make better beer by now.

That Would Be in the Ass, Jalen

You may remember The Newlywed Game moment when Bob Eubanks asked this question: "Where is the strangest place you've ever made whoopee?" and a woman answered, "That would be in the butt, Bob" but that's not how it went down-- the truth is much more succinct, she said, "in the ass" and the moment never aired (but was featured on a clip show) and, tangentially related to this topic-- I'm trying to be an Eagles fan this season but I really hate the term "tush push"-- it kind of grosses me out-- and I'm also not a big fan of puns, so while "brotherly shove" was funny once, I've had it with phrase as well-- I think the announcers need to have some standards and consistency and call this play an "assisted sneak" . . . or perhaps "The Jalen Hurts," because when those guys are shoving you in the ass, it's got to hurt.

Bald-Faced Hornet = Elephant

It's my 31st year teaching high school and my lessons just keep getting better and smarter and funnier and more relevant and more brilliant-- case in point, yesterday I'm teaching the Orwell masterpiece "Shooting an Elephant" and the main thrust of the story is that Orwell does NOT want to shoot this elephant, but the crowd expects him to shoot the elephant-- he's the colonialist MP with the gun and while the Burmese despise him, he is the authority figure and the elephant, while in heat, did kill a man-- but then the elephants calms down and Orwell does not want to shoot a large, valuable intelligent working beast of burden-- but, as Orwell describes it, the expectation that the elephant was to be shot "was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides, they wanted the meat"-- so Orwell has to live up to their expectations of the imperaliast despot and shoot the elephant-- and it is tragic and horrible . . . and while the students were in groups figuring this out, a girl came up to me and said, unironically, "There's a bee, can you kill it?" and I went over to their group, and there was indeed a bee on the wall (actually a yellowjacket, which is a wasp) and I said to the group-- which was very distracted by the wasp-- "I don't really want to kill this animal, I'm not allergic-- but I guess I'm going to have to kill it so you people can concentrate" and then I killed the wasp and I asked the class how this incident was like the story and they were able to make the connection and then I told them that sometimes-- especially if you have read lots of literature like myself and are very very smart and know how the world works-- you can resist the pressure of the crowd and the pressure to live up to the generic expectations of an authority figure and transcend commonplace thought and so I told them the story of the bald-faced hornet nest above my driveway and how, at first, at the urging of my family and friends, I felt like I had to attack and destroy the nest-- and the hornet's nest is the elephant in this analogy-- and my son and I even made one attempt to destroy the nest but the hornets were unruffled by our attack (see the above video, which my class enjoyed) and then I told them about how my friends continued to pressure me to annihilate this nest, suggesting wilder and wilder methods-- dousing the nest with gasoline and incinerating it; attacking it with a drone; getting up on a ladder and sawing the branch off with a chainsaw and dropping the nest into a garbage pail; etcetera-- they wanted to see more videos, they wanted a bit of fun, just like the Burmese-- and while I thought about doing something radical and violent to the nest, I then realized I was being pressured into something that did NOT need to occur-- something I did NOT want to do: bald-faced hornets eat mosquitoes and flies, and-- even though Ian and I attacked them-- the hornets forgave us and did not seek vengeance, so instead of destroying the nest, I learned to live with it-- it's been up in the tree for months now-- and I think this is a better path, to try to live in some kind of peaceable detente with dangerous creatures, just as we might need to learn to live with (and occasionally suffer attacks from) megafauna, if we actually value animals such as elephants and tigers and bears-- if we truly value all the creatures great and small on this earth, then we're going to have to learn to live with them-- even though we might occasionally suffer a sting or a trampling-- because we've invaded every nook and cranny of their habitats. 

Tail-gating?

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking our dog back from the dog park, and just before I reached my block, I noticed that a dude was walking a white poodle up ahead of me, maybe twenty yards in front of me-- and my block only has sidewalk on one side of the road, so I was forced to trail behind him but I figured as long as he kept up the pace, it wouldn't be a problem-- I keep an appropriate distance behind him until I got to my house . . . but his dog sensed my dog and turned and looked at her, and then the guy just stopped and stared at me, all pissed off and he yelled at me for "coming up behind him" and told me that wasn't cool and so I said, "this is my block, my house is right up there . . . I have to go this way" and he was all distraught and hot and bothered and so I attempted to walk around him-- but I wasn't taking my dog all the way out on the road becuase I never take her out on the road because I don't want her to think that's ever an option and-- of course, because regular dogs hate poodles-- the two dogs growled and barked at each other while I passed him and the guy, all vindicated, yelled "SEE!" and at that point I wanted to beat the fuck out of him but I was the bigger person and said nothing and just kept on walking, listening to him yell "INCONSIDERATE!" at the back of me-- and my wife said I should have made more of an effort to go around him and that I ought to have taken Lola into the street, but fuck that, this is Jersey and if you can't deal with a little tail-gating, then keep up your speed and if you want everyone to remain fifty-paces away from you then move to Wyoming, don't walk down a road with only one sidewalk in the most densely populated state in the union-- don't stop all miffed and block traffic . . . hopefully this douche will never walk his magisterial white poodle on our block again.

Put the Cell in the Cell

My high school has finally cracked down on cell phones-- for a while I felt like I was the lone lunatic preaching on the mountaintop that perhaps it's not a good idea to give kids a palm-sized video-gaming system/shopping spree enabler/social media network/video player/music player/day trading platform and expect them to learn AP Chem-- and so far so good, I think the kids feel the post-COVID lack-of-learning hangover and realize that maybe playing Subway Surfers, Clash of Clans and Snake all day, with Tik-Tok breaks, isn't the best way to get into college . . . BUT I still had to confiscate a phone today and take it down to phone jail (the admin office) but I will say that I was actually surprised by the blatant phone usage because things have been so much better so far-- hopefully this incident was an outlier and I won't have to spend so much energy policing this absurdity.

That's Entertainment?

The Giants/Dallas game certainly kept me glued to the TV . . . 17 points in the final 52 seconds, and-- despite the penalties-- the Giants (and especially Russell Wilson) played well . . . but the Dallas kicker (Brandon Aubrey) has a bionic leg and the ending was frustrating, lights out and a kick in the balls . . . but that's entertainment.

You Sure That's Bob Dylan?

Although it was something of a haul to the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden yesterday, we had a great time once we got there: Katie Crutchfield and her band (Waxahtachee) killed it and Sheryl Crow put on quite a show-- Crow is 63 years old and she can still really sing . . . and she's in great shape!-- the only song I felt she couldn't quite pull off is my favorite Crow song-- "Leaving Las Vegas"-- and maybe that's because the recording is perfect-- anyway, then the lights dimmed and Bob Dylan took the stage . . . and we literally could not find him . . . he was hiding behind a grand piano, surrounded by a halo of bright lights directed away from him and pointed at the audience, so you literally couldn't look in his direction-- he was like the unplayed guitar with the price tag on it in Spinal Tap . . . don't even look at it! . . . at the start of his set, he sounded like an ancient bluesman, growling indecipherable lyrics while his band played improvisational twelve bar compositions-- then he played a gritty version of "All Along the Watchtower" and a bunch of jazzy stuff, weird and chaotic, but his band was great-- and, finally, Willie Nelson took the stage . . . people really love Willie Nelson (my mom was quite emotional because he was one of my dad's favorites) and Nelson opened with "Whiskey River" and he played all the old favorites-- "On the Road Again" and "You Were Always on My Mind" and he also covered a Mac Davis song that was perfectly appropriate: "Lord It's Hard to Be Humble, When You're Perfect in Every Way" and Nelson finished up with "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die"-- and while Nelson sat on a stool the entire show and occasionally received back-up vocals and guitar help from Waylon Payne-- Willie still played all his own fills and plenty of instrumentals on his classical nylon stringed Martin guitar, Trigger-- and he can still play that thing-- very inspirational to see a 92-year-old up there doing his thing and doing it well . . . I hope he keeps it up until he hits the century mark.

Even More Revision of the Eternally Entertaining Willie Nelson Joke

My wife and I are taking my mom to see Willie Nelson tonight-- yes, he is still alive! he is 92 years young-- and if you combine his age with his opening act, Bob Dylan, then you've got 176 years of gritty and nasal vocal expertise . . . Catherine and I are more excited for the artists going on a bit earlier-- Sheryl Crow and Waxahatchee-- but I was also excited to tell the infamous "Willie Nelson joke"-- which I told several times today (what's the last thing you want to hear when you're giving Willie Nelson a blow-job? that's not Willie Nelson!) but I think there might be a better, more cerebral punch-line . . . "are you sure that's Willie Nelson?"

Confusing Possibly Drug Addled Mindfuckery

Seth Harp, in his book The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, mentions four Army wives who were murdered in 2002 by their husbands in Fayetteville and how these deaths were first attributed to the drug Lariam (or mefloquine) because all the soldiers took this anti-malarial medicine while in Afghanistan and the possible side-effects of the medicine are hallucinations, psychosis, aggression, anxiety, and paranoia but Seth Harp believes that this attribution to Lariam is a cover-up and that these soldiers were experiencing PTSD and they were also doing all kinds of other (illegal) drugs such as cocaine, meth, molly and bath salts . . . but to make this more confusing, Lariam was pronounced very dangerous by the FDA in 2013-- the issued a "Black Box" warning and notified users that they could experience permanent neurological damage, suicidal thoughts and psychosis from the drug-- and to make this even MORE confusing, your narrator himself might be compromised and unable to write this sentence-- because my wife and I took Lariam in 1999 when we went to the Cuyabeno jungle basin in Ecuador-- a well-meaning doctor in Metuchen prescribed it to us and once we started taking it, we experienced paranoia, technicolor dreams of giant spiders, and lots of anxiety-- but when stopped taking it, at the advice of some Germans out in the jungle with us-- when I asked them what they were taking for malaria, they said, "vee take nothink"-- so once we stopped taking the pills, these chaotic feelings subsided and we had a much better time (except when my wife went to the outhouse, put her flashlight down, sat to pee, and something shot out of the darkness and attached itself to her chest-- she shrieked, flung the creature, and ran out of the outhouse with her pants at her ankles-- and  upon inspection, we found that a giant tree frog, maybe a foot long, had suction cupped itself to her shirt . . . good times) and so now I don't know what to think about this drug and the murders but I still believe it fucked us up mentally and possibly could have done the same to these soldiers.

Malcolm Fucking Gladwell

There's nothing like the ephemeral and fleeting promise of a Malcolm Gladwell book: at the start, you truly believe when you are finished, you will understand how the world works; twenty-five years ago The Tipping Point explained how ideas moved through the society with mavens, connectors, and salesmen-- and how these people operated within the boundaries of The Law of the Few, The Law of Context, and The Stickiness Factor-- good fun and while in retrospect, these ideas only explain a few specific anecdotal incidents, reading Gladwell is still a blast-- you just have to take things with a grain of salt, check his facts, and try to apply his broad theory to some other events to see if it's true-- his new one, Revenge of the Tipping Point, is equally compelling-- Gladwell is an excellent and concise story-teller . . . this time he's explaining how epidemics happen-- how superspreaders can enlarge small area variation and how media events can change the narrative, or "overstory" as he calls it-- and while you might sometimes forget how this is all supposed to hang together, he weaves wonderful narratives about a rash of L.A. bank robberies, COVID, the opioid crisis, the Magic Third, racial redlining, Harvard admissions and obscure sports, and TV events about the Holocaust and gay marriage and they all add up to some idea about something profound which may or may not apply to the rest of the overstories of our time and culture.

Busy Half Day (Off)

Grueling day: online traffic court with my son Ian for his hydroplaning incident-- the case was adjourned because he still has a probationary license . . . he never updated it and to plead down a ticket, you need ot have a full license-- so back to the DMV before we can do Zoom Court all over again; then we went and picked up Ian's new (used) car in East Brunswick-- a 2012 Honda Accord that seems to house no roaches or spiders; then over to New Brunswick to pick up Alex-- it's a zoo over there right now because of all the returning students-- and then a sushi lunch with the boys at Pi's in Highland Park and now it's time for a nap.

Lo & Behold! David Playeth Around the Pole!

In the Book of Acts, God instructs Ananias to meet Saul on "the street that is called Straight" in Damascus-- Mark Twain calls this the only joke in the Bible-- because Straight Street is a actually a winding road, so though it is called Straight, it is actually serpentine-- hysterical in the context of that book-- and sometimes, whence the street is not straight then you must wind how you may . . . such as when David smote the pickleball that was travelling very wide and thus David smoteth the ball around the net-pole and into the field of play, making David victorious both in the eyes of God and the eyes of men.

Car Shopping with Ian, Carmine, One Roach, and Several Spiders

We are currently car shopping for a piece-of-shit-that-baresly-accelerates for my son Ian-- who recently hydroplaned and consequently totaled my wife's lovely and quite nimble Mazda CX-5-- and so we've been looking at reliable cars in the 4K range, which seem to be 2007 and 2008 Honda Accords-- yesterday we went to Keyport, to a little auto dealer on the side of Route 35-- near the strip bars-- and test drove a 2008 Accord . . . and aside from the roach on the ceiling (which Ian brushed onto my head, causing me to leap out of the car) and the spiders in the trunk (and the cracked shift box case and the floppy sun visor) the car was in decent shape-- and Ian, Carmine, and I took it on a test drive-- Carmine is the son of Mel (as is Mel Jr.) and a sister is working there as well-- I didn't catch her name-- but it's a family affair, and they're all working in an office half the size of my living room (and I don't have a big living room) and so on our test drive Carmine asked if we could run an errand? and I said "sure!" and we headed over to Mavis Tires (which involved a convoluted sequence of turns and a U-turn) and the Carmine said-- in his Long Island accent-- "If I'm gone for more than a minute, you can drive away" and I told him "no rush, I'm not planning on stealing this car" then he proceeded to have a spirited convo with a Mavis employee in the parking lot about the price of some tire sensors and then he got back in and he said, "they try to whack ya for deez sensas . . . I can only buy wholesale but ya gotta I need them right now" and then we drove a bit more and we couldn't get the radio to work and Carmine promised he would get the radio to work-- he said he's "put it in writing" and then we got down to brass tacks with his dad, Mel, about the price-- Mel Sr. had certainly smoked cigarettes for five or six decades (he had a pack of Marlboro Reds on his desk) and he had the voice to prove it-- and Mel said Carmine was nuts, that he couldn't fix that radio but maybe the mechanic could on Monday and then Mel proceeded to Google some of the broken parts on eBay and show us how cheap they were-- a new plastic gearbox cover for 18 dollars, a working sun visor for 12 bucks, and he even showed us some options for replacing the stereo and then he started telling us the story about how he got a ticket and got the charge reduced in traffic court but they STILL put points on his license-- they fucked him and then his car insurance fucked him over-- and then the sister was telling us about a traffic ticket she got and then they were talking about Carmine's ticket and I managed to bring the negotiation to an end and told them we'd call on Monday and see if they got the stereo working and go from there . . . car shopping is a grueling experience.

Y'all Ready For This? Probably Not

My new episode of We Defy Augury, "Y'all Ready For This?" is (loosely) inspired by S.A. Cosby's Southern noir novel The King of Ashes and Tana French's wild tale of undercover infiltration The Likeness-- I explore the idea that reading (and perhaps acting, according to Val Kilmer) might train your mind-- in the comfort of your own home-- to tackle life's most wild and weird and disturbing situations . . .particularly 1

1) going undercover and assuming someone else's identity;

2) violent warfare to protect one's family.

Teamwork and Lots of Experience

I made it to 6:30 AM basketball this morning, despite a hip flexor strain- and I shot fairly well from VERY deep but couldn't make space to take any reasonable shots-- but the most exciting moment was when Frank Noppenberger-- the venerable AD from many years ago-- and I combined to rebound a ball under the basket . . . that rebound was gathered by a combined 126 years of decaying athleticism.

Giving Zero Fucks, In a Good Way (Educationally)

Today was my thirty-first "first day of school" as a teacher-- I told them the rules, summarized the course sequence, learned some names, and did a fun icebreaker activity . . . and I am pleased to announce that I've reached the stage in my career where I had exactly zero first-day jitters, nervousness, or anxiety.

The Canadian Allman Brothers?

If you love the Allman Brothers but you've worn out the grooves on their oeuvre, then you could give "Dickie Betts" by the Dean Ween Group a listen-- no surprise that those guys did an Allman Brothers Tribute . . . or-- more surprisingly-- you could listen to "Making Memories" by Rush . . . I've been going through their discology lately and the tone and sound of this track kind of shocked me (in a good way).

Talking Turkey

On the drive home from my mother's house in Monroe yesterday evening, we saw a bunch of wild turkeys crossing the road and the rest of the car ride home, my wife educated me on the many names for groups of turkeys and the names for various age classifications of turkeys . . . this shit is fucking absurd: baby turkeys are called "poults" . . . which maybe has something to do with poultry? . . . and juvenile male and female turkeys are called, respectively: "jakes" and "jennies" . . . and adult male turkeys are called "toms" or "gobblers"-- and then there are a shitload of names for a group of turkeys-- a group of young males is called a "gang" or a "posse" or a "mob" . . . and if it's just a random flock of turkeys, it could be a "gobble" of turkeys or a "rafter" of turkeys or a "brood" of turkeys . . . and I'm certainly skipping a few terms, like "longbeard' and "bearded hen" but it's all a bit overwhelming-- this is ONE kind of bird!-- but I know the turkey is a very important American bird, consumed with great zeal and relish on Thanksgiving and famously preferred over the bald eagle as a national bird by Ben Franklin-- Franklin thought the turkey was a respectable bird of Courage . . . after my wife explained all these various terms-- which I immediately forgot-- she found some other internet compendium of names for groups of every kind of bird . . . I don't know who uses these terms or when, but this list is way beyond "a murder of crows" . . . the only two I can still recall is a "charm" of finches . . . and that is a good one to remember because the goldfinch is the New Jersey state bird, and-- for obvious reasons-- I am also partial to a "squadron of pelicans."

Preparing for Reentry . . . Time to Pedal Up the Hill

Time to reenter the working world . . . and I am also noticing that the big difference between biking here in Highland Park vs. biking at the beach is that around here we have hills . . . so you actually have to pedal, you can't just coast over to Happy Hour, have a few drinks and then coast home and go to sleep, without a care in the world . . . but I guess hills and work are a good thing? because they make you stronger? and feel purposeful? and when you reach the top of the hill-- or the end of a work day-- you feel fulfilled? . . . we shall see.

Ugh . . . Wake Me Up For Thanksgiving Break

So that's that . . . our beach vacation is over, and it's time to get back to the ol' routine: I'm fat from eating and drinking in goblin mode for a month (and not walking or running up and down any hills . . . the beach is very flat) but I got up early this morning, drove down to Hamilton and played pickleball with my brother (and jammed my hip somewhat . . . we'll see if the naproxen fixes that issue) and now I've got to clean some toilets, prove to my mortgage lender that I have hazard insurance, put away laundry, figure out what the fuck I'm doing in school next week, and eat a bunch of salad . . . wake me up when September end (and allergy season is over: my nose is a bit stuffy since I returned to Highland Park-- apparently there's a lot less pollen and ragweed at the beach). 

Dave Returns to Central Jersey (with very little fanfare)

My wife and I packed up our little pad in Ocean Grove this morning-- after another great beach day with friends on Friday-- and we drove back to Central Jersey . . . and we were pleasantly surprised to enter a clean house . . . Ian completed all his chores (he even put up a new magnetic screen on our back porch slider, so our dog can go in and out at will) and so my wife and I were able to get down to the rest of it: we put away all the beach stuff; my wife went down to her garden and planted seeds and harvested vegetables; I went to the gym for the first time in a month; I gave the dog a bath . . . also for the first time in a month; and while I loved living at the beach, it does feel good to be home-- while we definitely do not live in a large house, it seems like a mansion, after existing in a tiny space for a while-- it was also nice to use my big foam roller to sraighten out my back . . . the vacation bed was very mushy and my spine is out of whack . . . this was a fantastic summer (aside from when Ian totalled my wife's car-- but, luckily, I was at the beach with my college buddies for that hydroplaning escapade, and my family didn't tell me what happened until I got home) wherin I spent over a month close to the ocean-- but now it's time for school . . . and a visit to the dermatologist, I took a lot of sun over the last two months.

The Boys of Summer Have Gone

We leave the beach tomorrow, and the reality of work is rearing its ugly head- but Catherine and I had a great Thursday night out: we went to the R Bar for dollar oysters and sat upstairs-- very festive-- and then we saw my buddy bob play music at Mutiney Beach-- he plays bass in a band with an incredible uke player . . . they did reggae versions of several Pink Floyd songs-- and then we had one last sourdough pizza at Talula's; this morning we went stand-up paddleboarding in Manasquan-- we paddled past Fisherman's Cove and across the Glimmer Glass Lake to the train bridge . . . no wind and it was lovely and it really made me want to get another paddleboard-- I think mine deflated in 2019?--  it was a relaxing way to spend our last full morning . . . and I am now about to drag the wagon to the beach for one last beach day of summer-- and there are limited lifeguards because the kids have left for college or started high school sports . . . it's the beginning of the end.

My Dog is NOT a Valiant and Courageous Leader (but she plays one on TV)

This moment on the jetty at the dog beach in Asbury Park is probably the most epic and badass and commanding our pooch Lola has ever been depicted-- she is one regal beagle! she could run for president!-- you should see the other photos I took, they are trash: several of her yawning and the rest she is looking the wrong direction-- but perhaps she knew that this was her last trip to the dog beach for a while, as our beach vacation is winding down, and so she had to produce one singular image so she could remember the good times fondly (and fictitiously, as nothing is more meretricious than a portrait).

Kids . . . They are Full of Germs

I thought I was going to return home today for the first time in over three weeks, to pick up Ian and bring him to the beach-- but he's running a fever and his throat hurts . . . and then my son Alex, who was also supposed to come for a few days with his girlfriend, called me and told me he and Ava are both running fevers and have sore throats and all their friends have strep so they are going to the Healtch Center tomorrow morning to get tested and get some antibiotics-- apparently everyone returned to college with various viruses and germs, and they partied and went to concerts and basement shows and bars and hung out in small apartments and dorm rooms and got each other sick-- so while my wife got up early this morning and brought some stuff home and then headed to her classroom to get it set up (with the help of my cousin Kim) I spent a quiet and contemplative (and slighly hungover) day at the beach . . . I walked the boardwalk and took a bike ride to Jody & Jodee's Fish Market, where they serve all kinds of fish sandwiches-- I had a red snapper sandwich and it was delicious and this place is quite a scene-- it's a bit inland, on Route 35, and while beach clientele come in to buy fresh seafood, the lunch crowd was blue-collar and very salt-of-the-earth and very chatty-- they discussed ghosts and shootings and poltics (both sides are liars) and proper uses for ketchup (NOT on seafood) and everything looked excellent and I will return . . . hopefully, I will return to many of these spots that I discovered on this long vacation . . . and I'm also very thankful that I did not contract any illnesses from the many visitors we had-- because I'm about to wade into a sea of high school students and all the various germs that they harbor.

Last Taco Tuesday!

Next Tuesday is looming in the minds of teachers everywhere . . . first comes Labor Day Weekend, then comes labor-- but there's still some summer left (as Soder explained last night, we still have TWO Thanksgiving breaks worth of summer before school begins) and so we celebrated our last "taco Tuesday" at Barrio Costero-- Styacey, Chantal, Soder, and Terry and his family joined us for the finale-- Catherine and I attended every taco Tuesday in August (and Stacey made it to three of them) and they saved the best for last-- and apparently they have a chef's meeting on Monday about what tacos to serve on Tuesday-- we had, in order: steak, black bean and corn masa, chicken in some kind of birria sauce and last night was pork carnitas-- delicious-- and after tacos we went to the Black Swan to take advantage of all-day happy hour and then we tried to go to Johnny Mac's for free pizza but they wouldn't let Stacey and Chantal in- no ID-- we were like WTF? we're all over forty here-- but no dice-- so we went to the Bond Street bar for a final beverage and a discussion of how weird feet are (and how weird people who are into feet are) and then we wandered the streets of Ocean Grove, looking at the Victorian architecture and the Methodist tent city-- and the next time I will see those folks, our lives will be dictated by bells.

Genius New Game to Accompany Wordle!

I am sure many of you-- as I do-- start your day by playing "Wordle," but "Wordle" needs a sister game, a game that comes out at 9 PM every evening, and this game should be called "What the Fuck was Wordle?" and to achieve it in one guess, you have to remember what the fuck Wordle was without any prompting-- and then-- if you can't recall what the fuck Wordle was-- there should be prompts, like my wife did for me last night, when I decided that I must have forgotten to do Wordle (I had not forgotten, I just had true Wordle amnesia) and she said, "this thing is in horror movies" and I was like: "ghost, creep, foggy, scare" and then she said, "it's alive but not an animal" and I said: "fungi?" and then she said, "it's very small" and I said: "spore," which was correct-- but I still had to check Wordle to see if that was really the word because I did not remember guessing it . . . so you're welcome, New York Times!

Doggelganger

I am currently reading Tana French's murder mystery The Likeness-- which begins with Detective Cassie Maddox encountering a murder victim that looks exactly like her and has also assumed her undercover identity from years previous . . . it's super-creepy-- and then this morning, when my wife and I were walking the Asbury Boardwalk with her family, we stumbled upon this mural which is a likeness of our dog Lola: we're going to have to get her over there and take a photo with her in front of it, but it's definitely her doggelganger . . . pretty weird (and I thought of the word "doggelganger" on my own, when I typed the word "doppelganger" it came to me but of course the internet already thought of it . . . stupid fucking internet).

 

Salt Life Continues

While my wife has driven back home a few times-- to tend her garden and do laundry and run some errands-- I have not left the beach in three weeks, so this is the longest amount of time I've spent outside of Highland Park since our cross-country trip many years ago . . . it's going to be strange to return home in a week and reoccupy my usual haunts and spaces, and I think I will appreciate everything more (as long as the weather doesn't turn hot and humid, if the weather turns hot and humid I'm going to be very angry).

Dueling Cheesesteaks (and other gastronomic notes)

Some notes on food and drink in the Asbury Park/Ocean Grove/Bradley Beach area:

1) the cheesesteak at the hipster sandwich joint The Speakeatery is better than the cheesesteak from Palmer's Quality Meats in Neptune City, although both these cheesesteaks are exceptional (and both contain chopped-up hot cherry peppers) the Speakeatery version is more steak-like, featuring chopped top round, while the Palmer's Meats version is more like a think-sliced Philly version . . . and I want to try more things from both these places;

2) The Asbury Park Distilling Co has happy hour-- 10-dollar highballs-- and the aquavit is very tasty, just a hint of licorice/anise flavor;

3) The R Bar has jazz and dollar oysters on Thursday night, and it's quite the hipster joint-- the drinks are excellent, and the bartender is very very attractive;

4) the deal at Johnny Mac's House of Spirits is that if you order drinks you are entitled to one free mini-pizza-- but if it's crowded, then you have to wait in line to get your pizza, so take advantage of this deal early-- and they also have ping-pong, skeeball, and cornhole;

5) the mussels in coconut curry are excellent at Catbird in Asbury, as is the sourdough crust pizza-- the size and taste is similar to Talula's . . . but Catbird is BYOB, so though it's a bit pricey, you can save some of your dough and that way, when the bill comes,  you won't be sour.

Tana vs. Tony

I'm proud to say-- mainly because of the lousy weather due to tropical storm Erin-- that, despite being on vacation, I knocked out another episode of We Defy Augury . . . "Tana vs. Tony: How to Solve a Murder Mystery" features my thoughts (loosely) inspired by Tana French's "Dublin Murder Squad" series and Anthony Horowitz's "Magpie/Moonflower/Marble Hall Murders" series . . . but the episode is more about the two types of mystery novels, those in a series, where you know the detective and his or her methods-- and those stories that feature a new and unique perspective for each case . . . and, be forewarned: you will be quizzed.

Mystery Cookie

I surreptitiously took a bite of a cookie I discovered on the counter, assuming it was of the chocolate chip variety-- that's what it looked like-- but its taste confounded me, so I stopped eating it . . . and then I later discovered (from my wife) that it was a lemon blueberry cookie-- those weren't sour chocolate chips, they were blueberries!

Henry Rollins Would Go Swimming

During our vacation, I thought we had encountered all the different beach warning flags: green, yellow, and red . . . but today Ocean Grove had up BLACK flags-- rise above!-- and these flags indicate that if you go swimming you will DIE . . . very punk rock.

It's a Rush, Rediscovering Rush

It wasn't until I was 52 years old that I started to dig the pop fusion facility of Steely Dan, and now I am pleased to report that— in my 56th year— I am finally delving into another band I neglected in my youth: Rush-- I am listening to all the Rush albums . . . and truly enjoying them—I always liked the music of Rush, but I could never tolerate Geddy Lee's voice; that was a dealbreaker for me— but perhaps salt life here at the beach has mellowed my judgment, or maybe my ears are getting older and less sensitive— who fucking knows— but the other thing I have learned here at the beach is that when you go running on the sand on a windy day, you need to wear big-ass old-school over-the-ears noise-canceling headphones—and then you can really enjoy your Canadian prog rock, despite the angry ocean.

Weapons is the Bomb

There have been some good movies out lately: I like Weapons-- the new Zach Cregger film (he also directed the horror flick Barbarians) even more than Sinners and Mickey 17-- which were both fantastic . . . Weapons is Pulp Fiction meets It and it is perfectly paced; makes as much logical sense as a horror movie can make; does not treat its characters cavalierly-- as many a horror film is wont to do, especially if you're on the chopping block; and features a compelling opening mystery and a wonderful closing scene (where it looks like the child actors are having a total blast) so this one is worth seeing at the movies-- despite the record number of coming attractions (some of which looked decent, a new Ethan Coen film and a new Paul Thomas Anderson film).

Meta-Debate Tempered by Alcohol

You don't want to go down this road with your wife: arguing about who is more argumentative (although the Bradley Beach bar crawl with the Dom and Michelle Moccio is mollifying the debate-- we went to The Little Dog Brewery (Gretchen is the first female brewmaster/brewery owner in New Jersey and she is very nice and knowledgeable and her beer is amazing) and Wheelhouse Distilling (a cute young newly married couple-- a fireman and an accountant-- own this with another couple . . . best mixed drink I've had in a long time: in-house spicy watermelon mixer and their bourbon-- delicious) and then we went to the Bradley Brew Project and I drank a very hazy pale ale called "Unicorn Girls."

We Defy Augury: Ocean Grove Edition

My new episode of We Defy Augury-- "Bungle in the Jungle, Salt Life at the Beach"-- is (loosely) inspired by the Charles Portis novel Gringos and my time living in Ocean Grove . . . and I sincerely appreciate all my listeners, and trust me, you will receive a very special prize if you make it all the way through.

Only in Jerzee: The Theme Continues

Yesterday, I went to play pickleball at Wardell Park-- it's a fifteen-minute drive from the beach and a well-organized, busy place, but the skill levels of the players are a bit random: some decent players, some old folks, and some wild cards . . . but there was one solid player I had some good games with the other day and he grabbed my paddle and put me in his group and then when we went out on the court and I assumed we were splitting up because we were the best players but he had other ideas-- so this guy, a big Mediterranean-looking dude, he said to me, "over here shradool" or something like that-- it was one of those made up Sicilian words that my father always used as a catch-all-- and this guy looked a bit like my dad (thirty years ago) so that was something and then I realized that he just wanted to mercilessly crush everyone and that's why he adopted me as a partner and the game started and we were playing an athletic lefty who I had played before-- a decent player but mainly a banger-- and my partner leaned over to me and said, "all this guy does is smash the ball, so don't return his serve like a pussy" and I was like: "okay" because who wants to hit a return of serve like a pussy?

Five Minute Tour of the Jerzee Shore

Yesterday, I was sitting on the beach with Stacey and my wife and I had to pee and I didin't feel like going in the water because it was fairly chilly down on the beach-- and so I headed up to the boardwalk to the public bathroom and this five-minute trip embodied the Jersey Shore experience: when I first passed the foot rinsing station at the edge of the boardwalk, a beautiful, slender lady in a revealing bikini was washing the sand off her long tan legs and I was like, "the Jersey Shore is the best . . . " and then I walked up the steps to the boardwalk and I was confronted with another scantily clad lady, but this was quite a contrast-- she was skinny and gnarled and leathery, her wrinkles had wrinkles-- she was perhaps 87 (or 47 but spent WAY too much time in the sun) and I was like, "the Jersey Shore . . . oh the humanity!" and then I went to the bathroom and when I returned, a middle-aged woman was struggling to turn on the foot-rinsing sprayer and she asked for help and I told her she was pressing the wrong thing and she had to press the little knob above the sprayer and then the guy behind me said, "YAH GOTTA LEAN ON IT LIKE IT OWES YA MONEY" and I was like "yes! you could only hear a sentence like that, off-the-cuff, in perfect context, at the Jersey Shore" and now I really want to toss out that phrase in the right situation (a door that's jammed because of humidity? a stubborn beach chair?) but I'm not sure if I'm Jersey enough to pull it off.

Bunnies on a Trampoline Portend Doom

Daniel Boorstin was worried about "pseudo-events" and manipulative imagery back in 1962 and expressed this in his classic treatise The Image, but things have gotten far worse and far more absurd than he could imagine-- if you can't trust security cam footage of joyful bunnies jumping on a trampoline, then there is no image you can trust-- which will perhaps move people back towards reading books?-- books can be fictitious, fabricated, and meretricious as well, but you have more time to parse the logic and research the examples and maybe the book is published by an organization you trust?-- who fucking knows, but we are headed into fuzzy and ambiguous times.

 

Broken Harbor Breaks Bad

Tana French's novel, Broken Harbor, is a crime procedural wrapped inside a portrait of insanity balanced atop a real estate crisis —and it's hard to remember when the real estate bubble popped, because it has reinflated, but it was less than two decades ago.

All the Umbrellas Look the Same

Another beautiful fucking beach day-- for most of us . . . but not for the little blonde girl who wandered two beaches from her family (and for her parents, who called the police) but my wife was on the case, got the girl to a lifeguard, who drove her from Ocean Grove over to Bradley Beach, where she was reunited with her family.

Salty Concession

To get my wife to stop nagging me about my habit of swimming alone in the ocean when there's a riptide, I told her she could up our life insurance policy.

Change of Pace, Place, and Space

Spending an extended amount of time in a different place and space has got to be good for my gradually atrophying brain-- I have to really pay attention when I'm walking around inside our little rental, as there are slanted ceilings, a twisty set of stairs, and a small kitchen: there are lots of places for me to hit my head or stub my toe, if I'm not careful-- and this is a good wake-up call for my brain . . . the same goes for walking and biking around-- we're going to be here for nearly a month, so I'm learning how to drive, walk, and bike some new streets . . . yesterday, my wife and I biked inland to Sunshine Village park because they have some outdoor workout equipment and it took some navigating to get there (including a weird bridge with stairs over Route 18 . . . we found an easier way to bike home) and I have to remember this when I'm teaching-- I have to move the students and the seating arrangements around as much as possible, so that the kids bang into things and can't figure out where to sit.

Tana French is The Bomb

I just finished The Trespasser by Irish-American mystery writer Tana French-- this is the sixth book in her "Dublin Murder Squad" series-- but each book is from the perspective of a different detective, so she does away with that whole "Sherlock Holmes genius detective trope" and instead focuses on how each case affects (and is affected by) the particular detective working the murder . . . and while I've read her books in no particular order (I also read Faithful Place and In the Woods in the Murder Squad series and her stand-alone novels The Wych Elm and The Searcher and I just started Broken Harbor) I am realizing that she is perhaps the best living mystery writer-- she is definitely a cut above Ruth Ware, although I love a Ruth Ware thriller-- so if you haven't read a Tana French novel, pick one at random and give it a shot, I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Salt Life

A cool, cloudy day here at the beach so I'm back at the coffee shop-- but this time, taking some advice from my wife, I have ordered my coffee "for here," and so I get it in a little blue mug, and then I can get a refill . . . anyway, lots of adventures in the past two days-- I oculd really get used to living down here:

1) yesterday, Stacey came to visit, and we spent some time at the beach, and then we went out for drinks and food in Asbury Park;

2) we visited the Black Swan for all-day Tuesday happy hour-- all alcohol is half off-- so we had some fancy drinks and apps . . . get this, in ANOTHER refurbished bank-- so I'm writing this sentence in a refurbished bank in Ocean Grove and we had drinks in a refurbished bank in Asbury-- fucking wild-- and while the food and drinks were great, Stacey and I did feel a strange and very random tapping on the metal foot rail but we couldn't exactly figure out which bar patron had the nervous feet;

3) then we went to Barrio Costero, the upscale Mexican joint, for Taco Tuesday-- three tacos and a spicy margarite for $15-- which is a deal at this place-- and there was no room at the bar so the hostess seated us at the "chef's counter" and we watched the kitchen in action-- it was quite impressive and I certainly got my money's worth-- I asked the head chef a lot of questions (she was saying "hands!" not "hits!" and the spritzer was full of lime juice) and we noticed that EVERYTHING was prepped and labeled, so they were really just assembling and cooking, for the most part-- an excellent experience;

4)  this morning, I shook off the alcohol and took Lola to the Asbury dog beach-- she enjoyed that . . .

5) after the dog park, I geared up and made the short drive to Wardell Park for some pickleball-- as usual, everything was organized and there were some decent players-- I ended up playing for nearly three hours;

6) post-pickleball, I cooked up some leftovers, collapsed on the couch and I read my Tana French novel until I fell asleep-- 

7) Catherine got home from her book club outing in Bradley Beach, and she's making some eggplant parm in our tiny kitchen-- she made the sauce yesterday with tomatoes from her garden and now she's prepping the white eggplants (also homegrown) and I took a lovely picture of this-- it's not easy to work in this little kitchen so that's why I cleared out (too many cooks=no good) and I did get a free coffee refill (but the AC in this old bank sucks).

Dave Finally Achieves Stereotypical Blogger Status!

 

In all my years of writing this blog, I have never once (until today) sat down in a hipster coffee shop, connected to the wifi, and wrote my daily sentence while drinking a cup of high-end joe-- but here I am, in Odyssey Coffee in Ocean Grove, stimming on caffeine, sitting at a counter, listening to some kind of chill-hop jazzy techno-beat, and crafting my sentence-- but it's a bit nerve-wracking trying to write in here, as I'm trying to guard my screen from prying eyes because I'm sure there are other bloggers in here who will steal my shit at the drop of a hat, so I've got to stay vigilant-- but my eyes aren't very good so I need to use a very large font, so youngsters can read my screen from across the room, those fuckers-- and honestly, there's too much stimulus in here anyway, I can't focus on anything but all the white people walking by and all the white people in here and the very soothing music-- it's starting to drive me crazy . . . smooth saxophone over a chillaxing kick drum?-- and really I don't know how anyone writes anything of quality when they are in one of these places and this will probably be the last time that I attempt this (although I do love the coffee!)

Perfect Beach Day . . . Too Perfect . . .

Another perfect beach day . . . or near perfect: I pulled the wagon down early while Catherine was at the grocery store and got set up-- there was plenty of open space (because it's Monday) so I placed the chairs and umbrella at the high tide line, with an unobstructed view of the water, but the two old ladies next to me had piercing voices so I moved over a bit and then I really got set up: I laid down in Cat's low-rider beach chair and put my feet up on the taller Tommy Bahama beach chair-- so I was horizontal to the sand-- and then I put on my headphones and started listening to a podcast about America's failure to build high speed railway lines . . . it was sweet while it lasted, which was about three minutes-- then a family comprised of a harried mom and four children invaded my space-- and there was so much other beach space!-- and they were loud, they were chaotic, the rental umbrella guy put the umbrella way too close to mine (notice the thin sliver of sun between the two umbrella shadows) and then a portly kid started digging a hole that was destined to go underneath my beach chair . . .I was so ensconced in this family that I think people around us thought I was the dad-- so I got up and moved once again . . . and there I remained for many hours (my wife came down with sandwiches, which was lovely) and I knocked out quite a bit of a Tana French mystery novel (The Trespasser) and perhaps tomorrow I will invade some other person's space, just to see how it feels.

Things Are Quiet, Too Quiet

Cat, Lola, and I are settling in to our beach rental in Ocean Grove . . . we had coffee this morning at Odyssey Coffee- which resides in the old bank on Main Street, you can drink your coffee in the vault, if you don't want a window view-- and then we walked through all the lush gardens and Victorian architecture to the Asbury Farmers Market and waited in a very long line to buy some sourdough bread (Benchmark Bread) and then we went over to C'est Cheese and bought some cheese to accompany the bread-- and last night, for the first time in my life, I made espresso martinis with Mr. Black and they were delicious-- and the weather is beautiful, there's a breeze off the ocean, and this is shaping up to be a lovely and relaxing end to the summer (which is the start of every horror movie ever).