If people want to pay me cash for jogging around, blowing a whistle, and waving a flag, while the children kick a ball, so be it—this is the world we have chosen, this is the world we have designed, and all I can do is adapt and capitalize and enjoy it . . . these are the kinds of thoughts I have while taking my turn at AR, for our crew's third game, on a rainy Saturday, when the ball is out of bounds on the far side of a huge, wet grass field and won't be near me any time in the near future.
STONE CAGE BACKYARD DEATH MATCH!!!
In this corner of the backyard, we have—show me the money (wort)!!! . . . CREEPING JENNY! and in the same corner of the backyard, we have a not-so-cute little periwinkle called CREEPING MYRTLE! and these two shade-loving wrestlers are going to battle to cover the ground in a stone cage match, fenced in by medium-sized rocks (pilfered from the park) and may the hardiest, fastest-growing evergreen win . . . the internet predicts that Creeping Myrtle will CHOKE OUT Creeping Jenny, so that's worth the price of admission alone—although I must warn you that this match might take several years to resolve (maybe I'll do some stop-motion time-lapse photography to document the battle . . . although, probably not).
My Knee is a Blender?
Over the last three weeks, I've received three hyaluronic acid shots in my knee, and now all I have to do is sit back and let the gel blend with my existing joint fluid, which will dilute the inflammatory enzymes that break down cartilage . . . or so I hope-- I will say that I played pickleball yesterday and biked home, and my knee feels pretty good today, so perhaps the gel is blending.
Yet Another Racket (from the people that sell rackets)
I finally used the Dick's Gift Card I received from my mom some Christmas Past—I realized I could use it ONLINE and not have to actually visit Dick's Sporting Goods (which is located right on Route 18 in East Brunswick, and Route 18 in East Brunswick has now been under construction for the last three years and eight months . . . I shit you not) and so I bought a basketball (Alex stole mine and took it to Manhattan) and a pair of tennis shoes that were on sale . . . yesterday, the basketball arrived on my front porch, but I also got an email informing me that the sale-priced tennis shoes were out of stock, and so the order was canceled . . . so I went back to Dick's online store and tried to buy some other tennis shoes, thinking there would be some money in my account—but there was not—so I called the information number and told them what happened, and the very nice Midwestern lady told me that the money was credited back to the gift card, and I told her that I threw the gift card into the trash because IT HAD NO MONEY ON IT—I spent the money on the sale-priced tennis shoes . . . so now Dick's is snail-mailing me a new gift card with the balance on it—they can't just credit my account because (God only knows why) they have to refund the money in the same form they received it, which is a made-up fucking rule—money is fungible-- and I am sure most people don't bother to call the number and sort this out and so the money gets sent to a Dick's Gift Card sitting inside a soiled diaper in a garbage dump and then the missing money eventually boomerangs right back into Dick's gigantic bank account . . . and, to add insult to injury, the new gift card will take will take at least fourteen business days to be issued and then mailed because: fuck you.
Good Thing the Painting Behind Us Wasn't Saturn Devouring His Son
This twenty-five-year-old photo of my buddies and me in some funky bar/pool hall in Amsterdam makes more sense if you look closely at the painting behind us (but not THAT much more sense).
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Dave Comes Up with Some "A" Material ("A" Stands for Antenna)
Yesterday, I remembered that when I touch the metal prong of my 1/8-inch mini jack that I plug into my laptop to connect to my Edifier desktop speakers, I get a pleasing static hum—this is called the "antenna effect," and it is the result of invisible 50 Hz or 60 Hz electrical noise radiating from the surrounding lights and power cords—and so I said to the students (and I can't believe I hadn't thought of this joke earlier in my career) that when I plug the mini-jack into my ear, you can hear my thoughts through the speakers . . . you can actually hear what's going on in my brain-- and then I placed the mini-jack into my ear but I also simulataneously touched the metal prong, and the students heard the pleasing static hum, and I said, "Yup . . . that's what's going on in there," and they laughed.
The Art of Reffing in the Rain
I learned a few things while reffing three soccer matches in yesterday's nor'easter:
1) I need to get a vented, transparent ref poncho, like the other ref had—even though I changed my undershirt, I was soaked through and through;
2) I need to pack some large plastic garbage bags—the other ref, who was very well prepared, lent me one of his, so I had somewhere to put my ref bag and keep it relatively dry;
3) I need to get some sort of eyewear-specific hydrophobic spray—such as SOFT99RainHopper—because by the third game, I was soaked to the skin, and there were so many beads of water on my eyeglasses that I couldn't accurately call the lines . . . luckily, the game was a blowout, and it was raining so hard that no one else could really see much either . . . but, hypothetically, if someone heckled me from the crowd, if someone yelled, "Are you blind, ref?" I would have answered, "Yes, indeed, you are correct, I AM blind."
Through Surf and Storm and Howling Gale, to Call Offsides and Such
I (barely) survived yesterday's viewing of Resident Evil at the Rutgers Cinema—when I wasn't laughing hysterically, which was fairly often, I was either curled into the fetal position, clutching my wife's hand, or jumping out of my pants . . . then after the movie, we decided to go to the nearest liquor store and buy some beer, and we took a cut-through road (School Street) that wound its way through one of the strangest neighborhoods we've ever seen in New Jersey—every house was a completely different architectural style; many looked like they had endured home improvement projects built by very unskilled laborers, but there were also occasional McMansions dotted among Cape Cods, colonials, weird little beach house-style ranches, and houses with stucco walls—and now I am headed to ref in the storm, but I know it won't be as bad as the weather in Resident Evil, nor will there be zombies that send out fleshy tendrils, mate with each other despite decapitation, and form a huge aggressive ball of agglomerated bodies with many legs and arms.
You Fritter and Waste the Hours in an Offhand Way
According to the news, we are being battered by a powerful nor'easter this weekend, but so far the only trouble this storm has caused me is some difficulty trying to properly spell and punctuate the word "nor'easter"—the soccer matches I was supposed to referee have been canceled . . . which is mildly annoying because there hasn't been all that much rain and wind, but—for no good reason I can discern—doing fuck-all on this rainy day feels slightly different than if I was NOT supposed to work; it's like I gained some time (but lost some money) and I COULD have appropriately used this time to finally read Proust's In Search of Lost Time or to continue the dense and completely incomprehensible Being and Time, by the foundational philosopher Martin Heidegger—and then perhaps I would understand why time off from work because work is canceled due to inclement weather feels different than time when you were not supposed to work in the first place, but instead I took a nap, and now we are heading to the movies to see Resident Evil (though I never played the video game, but the internet says I will be fine as long as I understand that there is an evil corporation: The Umbrella Corporation, a dangerous virus, and a place called Raccoon City, which is NOT full of raccoons, it is full of zombies . . . I'm sure the plot will go down easier than digesting Heidegger).
A Very Diplomatic Move That I'm Going to Use Someday
Yesterday, five of us walked over to Steakhouse 85 for pub night—but there were only four seats around the corner of the bar, so Alec asked the slightly older-than-us gentleman sitting alone eating his oysters and salad if he wouldn't mind moving over one stool so we could sit together, and the slightly older-than-us gentleman graciously agreed to move over, and then Alec pushed the matter and said, "And then in a minute or so, we'll all be great friends," and the gentleman took a look at us and said, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
Ghost of Jersey Past, Food Edition
Tom Perrotta's haunting novel about one strange summer in the suburbs of New Jersey, Ghost Town, is set in 1974—before the entirety of New Jersey was home to an incredibly diverse population and an incredibly vibrant, inexpensive, and unparalleled selection of ethnic food from around the globe; there are hints of this future gustatory paradise in the novel: Jimmy, Wayne, Nilda, Hector, and Yvette visit a fictional Chinese restaurant called the Jade Palace, and Jimmy has wontons, hot mustard, egg rolls, and Asian noodles for the first time . . . this reminds me of our go-to Asian spot in the early 1980s, A-Kitchen, an authentic Hunan and Cantonese place that started in a gas station in Monmouth Junction and then moved to a traditional, rather rambling building on Route 27 in Franklin—we learned about the restaurant from the Asian kid on my travel soccer team, Kenny Cho, whose family either owned or managed the place—and we went all the time when I was young, and I would try to order "shrimp ding" as spicy as they could make it, and my father would wink at the waitress, th wink telling her NOT to make it that spicy-- as I was just a child, and a Caucasian hild at that-- and I would see him wink and tell the waitress to ignore his wink and make it spicy . . . typical family dinner drama-- but this place A-Kitchen was the real deal, the New York Times even wrote an article about it . . . and now some slightly more practical food nostalgia, if you live in Central Jersey-- becasue A-Kitchen is long gone, but Gambino's, the classic Italian place in New Brunswick, on Remsen Avenue, where my dad and his buddies would hang out is now a fantastic new restaurant-- with a liquor license-- called Tequila House . . . the mixed drinks are amazing, the decor is festive, the bottled beer is cheap, and the birria tacos contain ACTUAL steak-- when I ordered them the Hispanic server (we were the only gringos in the place) gave me a subtle nod, like Oh yeah amigo, you know what to order and my wife got the enchilads verde and they were also top notch-- so while the neighborhood has changed and La Cort Bakery and Gambino's are no more, there's some great Hispanic food replacing the Italian spots, which is exactly how Jersey operates.
Ghost of Jersey Past
Tom Perrotta's new novel Ghost Town is evocative, haunting, and nostalgic—each concise chapter is a set piece on grief and adolescence . . . and Ouija boards—and the story is especially moving if you grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey . . . while the book is set ever so slightly before my time, the narrator is thirteen in 1974, and I was only four years old then, so I don't quite remember the early 1970s— the songs on the radio are "Kung Fu Fighting," and "Rock the Boat," and "When Will I see You Again"-- which I vaguely remember, but I certainly can't name the bands that played these hits; I also appreciate that this is a different version of New Jersey than when I came of age; the fictional town of Creamwood seems to be inspired by Perrotta's Union County hometown, Garwood, a factory town full of Cape Cods and split-levels, and—in the early 1970s, the town was segregated in a de facto fashion . . . while my middle school experience in Central Jersey was at the start of the incredible diversity that Jersey is now known for-- there were mainly Italians, Irish, Hungarians, and Jews in my town-- which we considered "white" people-- but there were also Indian and Asian and Black and Hispanic families in my neighborhood; not so much in Creamwood, which is pretty much all white, but the narrator, Jimmy Perrini, starts to question his town's tacit racism and-- after his mother dies from cancer-- he's pretty much left on his own and starts to have some experiences with his hippie cousin and his hippie cousin's racially ambiguous wife Nilda and her Black cousin Hector-- while the plotting of the novel is pretty formulaic, it builds up to a big climax and all that, Jersey is in the details; I love the moment where Jimmy is riding around with burnout Eddie Fitzpatrick in his Chevy Vega, and Jimmy says he likes Jethro Tull, and Eddie says—which are my sentiments exactly—"I might like them a little better if he shoved that flute up his ass."
Better Not To Know?
While I was chatting at the dog park, a retired Rutgers food science teacher told me that he didn't swim in the ocean much this summer because the bacteria levels were so high-- but luckily (or unluckily?) I did not know this, and so I swam in the ocean twice a day for most of August-- it would have been a sad summer if I were worried about slurping down fecal matter every time I cooled off . . . and yesterday at the doctor's office, when I was preparing to get my second gel shot in my knee, the nurse took my blood pressure, and I asked her if it was lower than last week, and she said, "Yes, it IS lower this time," and I told her I had the day off from school (for Yom Kippur) and last week I had rushed over after being in a room full of teenagers all day . . . so now I have proof that this stupid job is bad for me (which makes me NOT want to show up).
Shinebox? Shonebox?
Even English teachers have grammatical hurdles they struggle to clear on the daily—while I don't usually bother civilians about this one (unless they are training my dog) I often correct teachers in the English Office who misuse "lie" and "lay" . . . because it's the fucking ENGLISH Office and we should get it right; I also don't mind when Denise corrects me when I incorrectly swap "fewer" and "less" . . . I've even come up with a mnemonic to help me get this one right (it's alliterative: fewer fingers, less liquid) and this morning I learned a new grammatical rule (that came up because of the Wordle answer) and so apparently "shone" and "shined" are both past tenses of "shine," but you use "shone" if there is NO direct object and you use "shined" if the verb does refer to a direct object . . . so here's an example:
"Back in the day, young Tommy Devito shined Billy Batts' shoes so well, they shone like mirrors, but then years later Billy busted his balls about it, and so Tommy beat him to death."
The Shit I Will Miss . . .
While I am REALLY looking forward to retiring, as grading, planning, and working in a hot and humid classroom chock full of teenagers . . . more teenagers than ever because of budget cuts kind of sucks, BUT I realize that I will really miss my colleagues in the English Department—as regular people also kind of suck—for example, here is the kind of shit, the kind of daily banter, I will miss—we were all sitting in the English Office, and Cunningham asked us if it was okay to give her students an article that mentions a type of masturbation called "gooning," and so we were discussing "gooning" and whether or not she should photo-copy the entire article or perhaps cut that section out, and Eric said, "I don't think you should disseminate that."
Time Travel, Dinosaurs, and an Orgy = Kind of Boring
Despite containing a paleontologist orgy, plenty of dinosaur action scenes, evolved avian future inheritors of the earth, and a multitude of time travel paradoxes, I couldn't quite finish Michael Swanwick's sci-fi dinosaur time travel novel Bones of the Earth-- the story is Primer meets Jurassic Park, and is mainly concerned with the dissemination of scientific papers and information through the time continuum-- people come from the future and give hints (often to themselves) as to what research will be fruitful but everyone tries to avoid outright changes in causality-- or else The Unchanging, the future creatures who gave humans the gift of time travel, wil take it away; the book did make me think quite a bit; for example here's a paradox not exactly investigated in the book, but alluded to: say you have ten gold bars, and you take one-- so now there's nine in the box-- and you go back one hour in a time machine and then put that one gold bar into the box containing ten gold bars . . . so now there are eleven gold bars, so now the box that you take the gold bar from has eleven gold bars, not ten-- where did that extra bar come from? did you break the law of conservation if mass? could you keep doing this to infinity and flood the world with gold? causing massive inflation or something . . . apparently someone named Novikov thought about this, and came up with the Novikov self-consistency principle . . . anyway, I can't quite recommend this novel-- it's dry at times, despite the sex and dinosaurs, and often, the characters make long-winded expository speeches about various scientific theories and ideas-- Swanwick developed this from a short story, and it shows: six theropods out of ten.
A+ For Honesty
Yesterday in Creative Writing Class, I noticed an otherwise occupied girl in the back of the room, who was looking intently into her compact mirror and doing something to her face—so I summoned my sternest teacher voice and admonished her:
"Are you putting make-up on during my class?"
"No," she said, blithely,
"I'm popping a pimple."
What's For Lunch: Microplastics
Tuesday at lunch, despite being hangry, I noticed that all my lunch Tupperware containers inside my little lunch cooler were covered in a weird clear gel (nice job noticing things, Dave!) and at first I was very disturbed by this, but then I found the culprit: one of my rectangular blue plastic reusable ice packs had cracked open, and it was leaking goop (the goop, I later learned, is made of a superabsorbent polymer called sodium polyacrylate) and so I wiped things down as best I could and ate my lunch, which was probably seasoned with microplastics . . . and then I did a bit more research because I was curious, and this goop is different than the goop inside Strecth Armstrong, that's high-viscosity boiled corn syrup and probably more edible than ice pack goop.
A Long Long Road: Secrets of Tom Petty's Sustained Success (Act One)
Act One of my new Pig on the Wall series is up and streaming . . . if you enjoy it, leave a good review or star rating: thanks!
I Guess I Could be a Dean at Harvard . . .
Don't bother listening to Derek Thompson's podcast "What's the Point of College"-- because neither he nor Dean David Deming-- who first encouraged AI use at Harvard and then sort of took that statement back-- have anything of real interest to say on the subject; they go over all the boilerplate stuff: school is the gym for your brain, there's a communal aspect of school that is important; it would be nice if people went for the love of learning but that's probably not true, yada yada yada . . . and while Deming makes several proposals, including having students defend their essays like thesis candidates, none of these are practical for a class of 30-50 kids . . . and neither Thompson nor Deming says aloud what I believe: reading and writing are meditative and good for our consciousness and our collective souls, and that it would be nice if we had some cultural touchstones and shared knowledge—and so if you're paying a shitload of money to send your kid to college, at this point, college should be concerned with mandatory class attendance, device free spaces, and getting kids to do the mental work they won't do on their own-- reading and writing and thinking and presenting, right there in class . . . it's the only way forward (unless perhaps you're doing engineering or some very job oriented course of study, then you're actually learning the stuff you'll use on the job-- but for the rest of the courses: history, English, psychology, sociology, political science, etcetera-- you are just learning hwow to learn, learning terms and phrases, learning how to parse difficult sentences and text, and developing the stamina and focus to read, write, and think.
Protect Ya Neck (and your head as well)
Oh yeah . . . it's the first time since 2009 that BOTH the Giants and the Jets have won their opening game—looks inevitable that they will collide in the Super Bowl (unless Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo collide with the opposition too many times and the unmentionable happens).
Supine Straightening
At night, my wife likes to get into a "made" bed, but I usually go to bed before she does—I'll go upstairs to read my book while she watches an episode of "Below Deck," and I usually remember that she likes her side of the bed to be neat and organized and flat and tucked in AFTER I've gotten into bed and set up a bunch of pillows so I can comfortably read my gigantic Kindle Scribe, and I will tell you, it's really hard to MAKE the bed once you are already IN the bed.
One Sentence College Essay Workshop (Complete With Videos)
During the first month of school, when I start to lose my voice—which I inevitably do: allergies and all the talking—I actually have some videos to fall back on (because of all the remote teaching during COVID) and I realized that I've never posted them . . . and that I may never tell these stories again, as they are very particular to certain lessons; yesterday the seniors were working on the College Essay, something in which I am certainly an expert; the first thing we do is list our "great" accomplishments, and then we try to figure out how to discuss these accomplishments without sounding pompous or arrogant or didactic or annoying—college essay prompts set kids up to be annoying . . . and I also remind them that they are children, and they may not have any actual "great" accomplishments and they have to be generous and open and sincere— being nice to your parents is a great accomplishment, as is having a wonderful friend group, or asking someone out on a date, or learning to cook something—it doesn't have to be a perfect score on the SAT or straight As or athletic prowess or digging wells for homeless orphans in Nicarauga . . . and then I give them two techniques to use when writing about this accomplishment; they could either tell a solid story (I give them the Dan Harmon 8-step story template and focus on the heavy price-- if you don't have a heavy price it's just an anecdote) and then I present them with two true stories from my high school golf career-- STORY NUMBER ONE and STORY NUMBER TWO . . . and I ask them which one would make for a better college essay (I also tell them that one of these stories WAS my college essay) and we discuss which story is more appropriate-- there's usually some debate (but the second story was my actual college essay . . . though I am the villain, as there's much better lesson and there's a heavy price for my actions) but then I give the kids an alternate route-- if you don't have a compelling structured story about your accomplishment or passion, then I tell them to develop something symbolic-- and I show them The Story of the String Bag, in which I describe how this string bag incident is a metaphor for coaching, symbolic of what it is like to be a coach-- which is a much better way to discuss something than listing all your accomplishments, which sounds more like a resume-- and then I made the kids watch my amazing, incredible pickleball video, in which I execute an ATP and I told them how great I am at pickleball and I made them applaud for my shot, and then I told them that they should not have applauded for me and no one likes a braggart and that I am actually BANNED from discussing pickleball in the English Office and I explained that if I were to write a College Essay about pickleball, instead of focusing on my incredible skills and ability, I would talk about pickleball and the the relationship with my brother-- and how it gives us something to do together— my brother was the one who pressed the button at the pickleball place so that my ATP video would be recorded, and my brother is the one who taught me to play, and pickleball is something we can do together-- not all siblings have that . . . so I would write about what pickleball symbolizes, a way for me to get together with a family member-- not about how good I am-- and the kids understood this concept, and then, while I was recounting all these sports stories and trying to teach them how to NOT to sound like an asshole, I remembered a moment from when I played freshman football that would be perfect for a college essay, a symbolic moment—so I tried to explain this to my three college writing classes and I learned that most kids do NOT understand football at all; my hypothetical essay was about switching from soccer to football-- I was the fastest kid in 8th grade—but no one wants to hear about how fast you are, that's not an essay-- so i would write about how I decided to switch from soccer to football because it was the 1980s and football was what the cool kids played, so I thought it would be a great avenue for scoring with the ladies (despite my bowl haircut and feathery, never-been-shaved mustache) and because I was fast, the coaches put me at running back (they didn't let me play defense because I couldn't really tackle anybody) and I asked my students where you should run on a soccer field and they kind of understood this—that you're allowed to run wherever you want: into space, you can check to the ball, you can get wide, you can go forwards, etcetera . . . it's free range—but then I asked them where you run on a football field, and it was like pulling teeth; barely anyone understood the concept of a PLAY or a ROUTE . . . and literally no student had heard the concept of a hole, a numbered spot where you were supposed to run because people were blocking for you there—because when I started playing football, I had a soccer mentality and never ran to the correct hole and that would be what my essay would focus on, the difference between soccer and football-- and there was this one symbolic moment, when I actually saw my coaches jump for joy at what I did-- and I wasn't running with the ball, all I did was successfully execute my "Gap Read Down" assignment and properly block the defensive end instead of going out wide-- our fullback gained some yards and the coaches were ecstatic that I didn't fuck up again . . . after one season I had enough though, football was too rigid and practice was boring-- too much runng through all these plays-- and so I switched back to soccer because I loved the autonomy . . . it would be a great college essay, as long as the reader had some knowledge of sports (and my students do not have much knowledge of sports . . . it's wild to explain this stuff to them).
Dave is NOT a Doctor (But He'll Suffice in an Elevator)
This morning, just before first period, one of our co-workers thought she was having a heart attack; she was standing just outside the English Office (on the second floor) and she felt dizzy and weak, like she might pass out, and she looked very pale; and we learned that there was an inciting incident: before driving to school, she was checking something under the hood of her car, and she did not properly prop the hood stay, and so her hood slammed down and the hood stay poked her in the chest, and she was pretty freaked out about this because she thought the hood stay could have impaled her if she was standing a foot closer (but it did NOT impale her, she just had a red mark on her chest) and so Krystina and I got her into the elevator, which is right next to the English Office, in order to get her to the nurse's office, which is right below us, on the ground floor (but while we were going down int he elevator, the nurse came up the stairs, which was a bit farcical) and while we were in the elevator, I told her it was probably a panic attack due to her shock from the hood-stay incident, and I held her hand for a moment and using all my medical expertise, I determined that her hand was not clammy or cold, and I told her that this indicated that she was NOT having a heart attack, and she would be fine, though I clarified I was NOT a doctor and had very little medical training (First Aid and CPR) and by that time we were at the nurse's office, and it turned out she WAS fine, her vertigo and anxiety were caused by adrenaline from the hood stay incident, her blood pressure and pulse were normal, and the color returned to her face, and she managed to last through the school day.
Quest For Pants (That Are SO Fire)
This summer, I went to the Jersey Shore Premium Outlets to buy more Eddie Bauer hiking pants-- these pants fit me perfectly; they are appropriate for the workplace, the bar, and the trail; and they have one zipper cargo pocket, perfect for a phone or a wallet or a power bar or a one-hitter-- they are, and i am not being hyperbolic, my favorite pants in the world, but to my chagrin, after much searching the Jersey Shore Outlets, and then asking the lady at Columbia, who recommended a great Italian market and sandwich place in Little Silver-- Ferrucci's-- but also informed me that the Eddie Bauer outlet had closed, I sorrowfully resigned myself to the fact that I would never find these pants again; but a few days ago, I took matters into my own hands and found the exact same pants on Amazon-- and there were on sale! thirty-one dollars! and so I bought three pairs, and now I am very happy . . . although if I actually lose some weight, I might have to size down in the waist-- but then they might not be on sale . . . so now I need to decide if I should buy some aspirational pants; the moral: being a materialistic consumer AND a cheapskate is hard work (I've never paid full price for pants, and I'm not going to start now).
Dave Ends Up Plus Five (Cents)
Yesterday, in a mad rush to get to the 7 AM Faculty meeting, I forgot my lunch-- and the meeting was a boring explanation of why teachers will no longer be getting "highly effective" grades because administrators are revisiting the language in the Danielson evaluation model . . . super-fascinating, especially for someone who is retiring-- and then this morning, because it's Back-To-School-Night, and I wanted to go straight to the gym before going back to school, so I brought my gym bag, which was green, but forgot my school bag, which is also green-- so I had to get a loaner computer from the school library and I couldn't leave and reenter the building because I did not have my ID; my class was a humid jungle, absolutely disgusting, but we suffered through (the principal walked by, felt the wave of heat coming out of my classroom and said, "That's awful, you should put a in work order" but I don't know what that will do-- my little portable AC, which is too loud to teach over (or hear the children, they all whisper now when they speak) and it's miserable output can't combat the body heat generated by twenty-seven teenage bodies, so there is not any foreseeable solution . . but I did make it to the gym-- where I learned that my phone is probably dead and the Google Messaging app, which hasn't been working well for two days, completely blacked out-- and I also went to Barton's Nursery, where I bought some Creeping Jenny and Ajuga-- and then I went home, walked the dog, snacked on Bradley Beach biscotti, but I was too tired to dig holes for the plants, and I briefly saw my wife-- who has no AC at all in her classroom-- and she had an awful migraine from the heat and humidity in her class and immediately went upstairs and passed out-- and then I showered, noticed I lost three pounds (water weight) and got back in the car and headed to school, but I stopped for a large can of Coke on the way and the dude rung it up: $2.30 and I happened to have cash and a few coins, $2.35, and I thought the register guy was going to give me a nickel back, but instead he just passed me back my dime (and when I got back into the car, I realized why he may have done that, as I had a large booger in my nose and perhaps he felt bad for me) and now I am about to begin my last Back-to-School-Night ever, and that makes me very happy-- you shouldn't go to work twice in the same day (and run through the same schedule in miniature-- it's tiresome).
Sunrise: A Mystery Town Wrapped in an Enigma Inside of a Riddle
Like a set of three Matryoshka dolls, the three narratives in Téa Obreht's novel Sunrise nest inside of each other, and each story has its own set of secrets-- it's a gothic Western tale inside a Jonathan Franzen story of familial relations and disillusionment inside an episode of Alone (complete with tragically inspirational backstory) and so if you're looking for a page-turner that's a bit more meta than most, this is the book for you: nine Bulki bars out of ten.
We Bike to the Train
While I was on the train yesterday, I noticed a bunch of people riding Jersey Transit with their bicycles—something I've never done—so today Cat and I biked to the New Brunswick station and took a weird hidden elevator up to the Eastbound Track (the elevator was so small we had to ride up one at a time) and took the train to Metuchen, with our bikes; from the Metuchen Station it was a short bike ride (just past Wood Stack Pizza) to an entry point to the Middlesex County Greenway, a shaded bike path that goes all the way to Fords; we rode the path until the end and then back to Metuchen, where we intended to go to Hailey's Pub for a beer and burger, but Hailey's was closed, so we tried a new Latin American cafe, Fresh Twist, and everything was delicious . . . we had an empanada (they have a WIDE variety of empanadas, including Shrimp, PB & J, and the one we got: Sweet Plaintain, Cheese, and Beef) and I had a beef patacón sandwich, and Cat got a chicken and avocado wrap, and apparently the birria tacos are also delicious—this place is a winner, lovely decor, great food, casual, and not too expensive (especially for the center of Metuchen) and we will be going there again; then we caught the Westbound train and we wanted to get off at the Edison Station, which is a slightly longer bike ride, but less hilly, but for some reason our train car door did not open, so we continued on the New Brunswick and then made a much easier exit on the Barnes and Noble side of the station and biked back to Highland Park . . . very fun, especially since there's no pleasant way to bike to Metuchen (and we can't afford to move there-- the real estate prices are out of control).
I Should Have Biked to the Train
Yesterday, I took the train down to Hamilton to play in Battle Royale Six, an unsanctioned but incredibly well-structured pickleball tournament that my brother's buddy Craig organizes—teams of four, selected by captains, compete against each other for cash and medals—and then everyone goes to my brother's house for a Labor Day BBQ . . . and I was on my brother's team, and we played very well when we played together; we beat some of the best two-person teams—but we didn't do all that well when we were separated, although our team squeaked into the playoffs, and Marc and I beat our pairing, but our partners lost, so we had to play a "Dream Breaker" tiebreaker—you play four points and then swap out, and the other two players on your team play four points, and you play to 15 . . . we lost by a point and then lost the Bronze match 22-20—a guy nailed an ATP from a ball that bounced off the net, absurd—but I was happy that we were competitive, I haven't played against guys this good since June; all told we were on the courts from 10:30 AM to nearly 3:30 PM—I got over 20,000 steps, and I could barely walk by the end of it . . . and then we headed to my brother's house for food and cornhole . . . a few hours later, my mom drove me to the Hamilton Train Station, and I caught the 8:07 PM train to New Brunswick and I was planning on ubering the last mile home, instead of walking, but it was an 8 minute wait and the uber ride cost 13 bucks, so I figured I could walk it, but by the time I got up the hill (and to pass the time while I trudged along, I computed that I've made that walk from Highland Park to New Brunswick and back over 1000 times) my legs and knees were really giving out-- this was mainly due to an unforeseen factor, I was carrying a gym bag with all my pickleball equipment and clothing and water bottles and all that and the bag got HEAVIER and HEAVIER during my walk, until it was made of lead-- but luckily, when I was a little more than halfway home, a passing car slowed down-- they recognized that the person trudging along was barely able to move their legs-- and this turned out to our friend Colleen and she stopped and gave me a ride home and then I ate some raviolis-- I was hungry again-- and passed out (next time I will wait for an uber . . . or bike to the station: I saw a lot of people bringing bikes on the train, apparently you can do that on off-peak hours or the weekend-- that would be a great way to get home after a long day on your feet).
Bruce Springsteen: More Youthful Unintentional Irony
Bruce Springsteen, just like my son Alex, produced some fantastic unintentional irony when he was a young man (and I learned this from the fascinating book Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin) because while Bruce was writing and recording songs about being sprung from cages and driving down Highway 9, songs about offering Mary redemption and escape beneath the dirty hood of his car, about two lanes that could take her anywhere-- car-centric anthems like "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run"-- and stories about the Magic Rat driving his Dodge over the Jersey State line to meet a barefoot girl in "Jungleland"-- while he was making this seminal rock album, Bruce could NOT really drive a car-- he was so obsessed with music and his guitar in high school that he never learned to drive, and he didn't get his own vehicle-- 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible-- until after the album's release, in 1976 . . . so perhaps that's why the album is so romantic about cars: Bruce hadn't experienced road-rage, maintenance costs, and traffic yet; if he had, he might have had a very different tone towards automobiles and the Magic Rat might have caught the PATH over the Jersey state line.
Young People, Sometimes They're Ironic and They Don't Even Know It
I'm very proud of my son (and thanks to everyone at Stages for allowing him to intern and mentoring him) because he's landed a job at a company in Brooklyn that makes buildings in NYC green and ultra-energy-efficient, but full disclosure (not that I'm going to call his new boss and rat him out) the last two times Alex left town to visit his girlfriend in Manhattan, he left his window-unit air conditioner on—and the first time he did this, it ran for days (because his ultra-inefficient brother didn't bother to turn it off and we were at the beach).
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once . . .
Yesterday afternoon, the dog and I were turning the corner from the park, and I saw my son Ian in the driveway, standing in the bed of his pool technician company pickup truck, wearing his pool technician collared shirt, sweeping—and when I got closer, he explained that some pool chemicals had spilled in the bed of his truck and he was cleaning up the mess . . . he was sweeping the granules of calcium hypochlorite—the stuff you use to "shock" a pool—and putting it all back into a big plastic drum; I didn't like the smell of it, so I told him to put on his ventilator mask, and he did so, and I grabbed him a trowel and a flat shovel to make the cleanup easier—and I should mention it was drizzling while he was cleaning up the spill and it had been drizzling while he was driving back from the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border, where he was working earlier in the day-- covering for someone who maintained pools in that region . . . once he got the bulk of the granules into the plastic container, he twisted the lid onto it, and we did a bit more hosing things down and cleaning up and then when he went to pick up the drum, he noticed it was HOT—there was some kind of reaction going on inside; I'm an English teacher, not a chemistry teacher, so I ran inside and googled some things and learned that because the calcium hypochlorite had gotten a bit wet and also because it was mixed with other organic matter from the back of Ian's work truck—some leaves and cardboard—that this was a highly unstable chemical situation, liable to spontaneously combust or explode . . . so I told Ian to call the fire department because there was no way I was allowing him to take the top off this plastic drum, which was getting hotter and hotter; a fire truck arrived in a matter of minutes, and the firemen got out and we explained the situation; just after the fire truck pulled up, my son Alex drove part way down our street and then had to back up, and he got out of Ian's car (which he had borrowed) and told me some very good news-- he got an engineering job in Brooklyn! with a company that takes city buildings and makes them ultra-energy efficient and green . . . awesome, amazing, incredible news!-- but there was very little time to celebrate, because the fire department had called the Middlesex County HAZMAT unit and they were on the way—and some police cars were pulling up . . . so I hugged and congratulated Alex and then got back to the task at hand—what was going to happen with this very hot drum of toxic chemicals in front of our house?-- I thought the HAZMAT crew would just take it away, but no such luck . . . they wanted Ian to call his boss and see if the company had a way to deal with and dispose of the drum—and then my wife arrived home from work, and I had to convey the GREAT NEWS! ALEX GOT A JOB! and the other, not-so-great news: YOU ARE STANDING IN A TOXIC EVENT! and then there was much consternation and many phone calls—Ian's boss had to talk to the HAZMAT crew— and there was much use of equipment—chlorine meters and heat meters and fire hoses (to wash away the pool chemicals in the street) and there were probably a dozen various town firemen and county HAZMAT guys chatting and discussing, and then another youngish guy from Ian's pool company showed up—but slightly older and much more experienced than Ian—and the HAZMAT guys put on their HAZMAT suits and tried to open the lid of the drum, but some yellow gas emerged, so they stopped—because they didn't want to release the gas into the neighborhood, so instead, the more experienced pool guy, who was a stand-up dude with an 80s mustache, a self-prossed "safety freak" who never removed his ear buds during the entire ordeal and had a wonderful, slightly jaded outlook on the scene (and he also gave Ian a nice plastic scooper) and this self-professed CPO (Certified Pool Operator) took the drum and put it in the back of HIS company pickup truck, and his job was to transport it to some county building in North Brunswick, where the HAZMAT people would meet him and figure out how to dispose of this mess—but before he took off with the drum, he shook hands with every guy there and thanked them, and then Ian and I shook hands with people and thanked them—this was quite the social event: town fire department, county HAZMAT guys, a schoolteacher and a couple of pool technicians, and the EMT guys that checked out Ian's vitals—all trying to figure out how to deal with this toxic, unstable drum of pool chemicals . . . but it seems we avoided a major explosion or a Don DeLillo-style airborne toxic event, and in the end, Alex got a job, and Ian might still have a job . . . we shall see (and I was going to abstain from alcohol this week, after a bibulous summer, but that resolution fell by the wayside—for stress-relief and celebratory reasons).
Last First Day (Dave Finally Figures It Out)
In all likelihood, this will be the last time I do "first-day-school-stuff"-- I am hoping to retire at the end of this year-- and fortunately (or unfortunately?) I have finally figured out the perfect lesson to do on the first day of class with my College Writing students-- a simple categorization, analysis, and synthesis progression using some quotations about writing-- so better late than never, I suppose.
Let's Get Small . . . Let's Get Really Small
I finally upgraded my music/podcast recording setup—my 2015 iMac served me well, but it was really starting to crap out during intensive tasks . . . so I bought a Mac Mini and an SSD drive, and wow—taking this shit out of the box was a little surreal, almost psychedelic . . . I thought of Steve Martin, of course—let's get small!-- and although this new setup works fast and flawlessly, I kind of wish the computer and hard drive were a little bigger—they were both expensive, and it just seems weird to pay that kind of money for stuff this small-- I never worried about anyone stealing my 27-inch iMac; that thing is a behemoth, but if someone wanted to purloin my setup now, they could stick it in a medium-sized purse . . . maybe I'll duct-tape both pieces of tech to a thirty-pound dumbbell to add the necessary mass they deserve.
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| R.I.P Big Guy |
A T-shirt, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside a Drawer . . .
You might be aware of the t-shirt enigma, but if not, I will do my best to explain it: most of the time, unless I'm about to exercise in an extremely cold environment, I want to wear the lightest, softest, thinnest t-shirt in my drawer—I assume this is the same for most people; I want to wear a light, soft, thin t-shirt when I am working out, when I am lounging around the house, when I am sitting on the porch in the Jersey humidity . . . so when I open my t-shirt drawer, I choose the thinnest, softest t-shirt, which means this t-shirt, soon enough, is going to go through the wash and get EVEN THINNER and EVEN SOFTER . . . thus precluding the wearing of my other t-shirts, which are thicker and stiffer and stifling and so, of course, do not go through the wash repeatedly because I rarely wear them-- so they never attain the status of the venerated thin and soft t-shirts . . . I'm not sure how to remedy this—there is, of course, the inevitable demise of these thin and soft t-shirts, but it takes a while—and I'd like to have more of them, so I occasionally wear a thicker t-shirt for a bit and then toss it in the wash, but unless I make a concerted effort to change this pattern, I'm stuck inside a cycle wrapped in an enigma of a riddle of soft cotton.
Texas . . . It's a Universe Unto Itself
While the next two books in the trilogy don't quite compare to Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke does wrap things up for Darren Matthews and his mom in dramatic fashion-- lots of family secrets (and a bit too much family history for my taste) and much conflict over race and crime in East Texas (and even a fair perspective from the POV of a Black Trump supporter) make all three of these three books compelling reads.
Home . . . The Place Your Kids Fuck Up
We are back from the beach—and I am home for the first time in a month (aside from a short pit stop three weeks ago, when I drove from Kill Devil Hills to the Jersey Shore—I stopped at home for a moment to pick up the dog and the bikes) and the house is a mess: the houseplants have not been watered, the lawn needs mowing, the backyard is a jungle, the bathrooms have not been cleaned, the dishwasher has not been run, the cardboard was not put out, Alex went to the city but left his AC on, the rest of the windows are open, etcetera, etcetera . . . the moral being our boys do not know how to take care of the house, BUT most importantly, the mess is superficial . . . they didn't burn the place down, so the vacation was well worth the cleanup (and my body is a mess too—a month of eating and drinking has me weighing in at 196.9 . . . not the worst number to see on the scale, but still).
Thar She Blows . . . Or Thar He Blows: It's Hard to Sex a Humpback Whale
Unlike last summer's epic fail, we had some success on today's whale-watching excursion—the Miss Belmar took us a long way from her home waters, nearly all the way to Sandy Hook, to see a juvenile humpback whale that our onboard cetologist called "Fishmer"—because the whale has a marking on its tail that either looks like a fisherman on a dock or a mermaid in the ocean (or perhaps it looks like a white blob on a giant sea mammal's tail) but it was well worth the long voyage because Fishmer spouted and splashed and even breached once—very exciting, check out the video—and then, once we got back on land, my wife and I biked to Talula's and enjoyed some local beers and sourdough crust pizza . . . an excellent end to an excellent vacation—but that's it for whales and dolphins and fevers of cownosed rays, back to the subtropical jungle of Central Jersey tomorrow morning.
These Are a Few of My Favorite F@cking Things
Our beach vacation—and the summer itself-- are coming to a rapid end, so this morning I decided to cram in a few of my favorite things before the thunderstorms:
1) I went to Wardell Park and played some pickleball—it was hot and humid, and I really worked up a sweat;
2) when I got back from pickleball, I got on my bike and rode to the beach and jumped in the ocean and took a swim—this makes my knees feel great, and I will truly miss this when we return home . . . in all my time at the Jersey Shore, the water has never been warmer . . . I know that when I finish playing pickleball back in Central Jersey, I should come home and take a cold shower or go to the Y and swim in the pool—but it's not the same as biking down to the beach, standing knee-deep for a while contemplating the waves, and then diving into a wave and swimming around for a bit, buoyant and also able to flush out my nasal cavities without shame—because the ocean is so fucking big, what's a little more snot in it?
3) I went to Jody & Jodee's Fish Market and got yet another incredible fried fish sandwich—and I took some surreptitious photos while I was waiting for my tilefish on a roll because this place is Jersey as fuck . . . you couldn't invent the people who wandered in-- and where else can you get a fresh fried bluefish sandwich for $8.99?
A Feverish End to the Summer
Last night was the final Taco Tuesday of the summer at Barrio Costero—Soder joined us for steak tacos, but Stacey did not . . . she was still recovering from her trip to Vegas—and now I am sad to report that this long and wild month of socializing, partying, drinking, smoking, swimming-- so much swimming, the water at the Jersey Shore has never been warmer-- doing Zyn nicotine pouches, reading, strumming my guitar, writing podcast scripts, eating seafood and thin crust pizza at Vic's, drinking fancy drinks at The Wheelhouse, napping on the beach and all the rest of the good stuff is coming to an end; we visited so many people and had so many visitors that my head is reeling—but now it's time to dry out, start eating healthy, and get ready for school; vacation is not quite over, however, so my wife and I enjoyed a serene paddleboarding/kayaking journey this morning on the Manasquan Inlet, and because I was on a paddleboard and I was wearing my polarized sunglasses, I was lucky enought to see a number of needlefish darting through the water and several packs of fifteen to twenty cownose rays, flapping their wings just below the surface of the water . . . you should actually call a group of cownose rays (or rays in general) a "fever" of rays-- but I'm not a pedantic douchebag, so I'm not going to do that . . . anyway, I paddleboarded over a whole fucking bunch of cownose stingrays and it was a little scary-- but apparently they visit every summer when the water warms up, and they're fairly docile unless you step on their poison barb-- so be on the lookout and try not to shit yourself if you find yourself in the midst of them.
Worm Holes and Plot Holes at the End of Oak Street
Warning: spoilers ahead for the fairly entertaining dinosaur movie The End of Oak Street, but do not let these spoilers or plot holes stop you from seeing the movie—especially if you're like me and thoroughly enjoy any movie where humans have to survive while being chased by prehistoric megafauna—but the film opens a major can of time-travel worms in order to save Dad-- who gets eaten by a dinosaur, he sacrifices himself to save the family; so when the family finally finds its way out of the Cretaceous period and portals back to 1982, for some reason they pop out a few minutes BEFORE they went on their prehistoric wormhole journey—so now, just for a few minutes, there are two versions of all the characters, so the wife calls her husband to deliver some pizza, so he drives out of the neighborhood that is soon to be transported back in time-- but he's essentially and unknowingly abandoning his family—the family of doubles, so the doubles of the kids and Mom are going back to the Cretaceous to have more adventures, but without dad, they are going ot have to fend for themselves—because the version of the family that just came back are essentially stealing dad from another family/timeline . . . because the original Dad got chomped and eaten by a dinosaur, so they grab his double to complete the family in the present (1982) but now the other family that got sent to the past has no dad . . . so what if THAT family also makes it back? -- dad is really the dad of THAT family, and this "Rick and Morty" type theme is NOT addressed, nor is the fate of the family that gets sent back in time-- now Mom does phone a few people and tell them to get out of the neighborhood before it gets transported, and one of those people is the librarian . . . so she does NOT go back into the past, yet she's the character that saves them from being eaten right before they jump into the portal—but she shouldn't be there at all. . . but maybe don't think about any of these paradoxes and just enjoy the feathered, modernized dinosaurs (interestingly, no one in 1982 remarks on this, even though proto-feathers are a more recent addition to the idea of a dinosaur, but whatever) and hope that big-budget directors and producers and studios keep making stupid movies with giant creatures (maybe there will be a sequel, where the dadless family survives the Cretaceous and makes it back to 1982 and then steals dad back from the original family?)
Profound Epiphany (NOT about clip-on umbrellas)
After a rather silly trip to the beach yesterday afternoon (we decided not to take the wagon because of the state of my shoulder, so we donned backpack beach chairs and portable clip-on umbrellas my wife bought from a thrift store, and then biked to the beach—but when we arrived, my wife—who twisted her ankle the other day when her foot fell asleep and she got up too quickly and it bent weird—stepped off her bike and onto that swollen ankle, and because she was top-heavy with the backpack chair and the umbrella, she slowly toppled over, scraping her knee in the process, and she was helped up by a pregnant lady because I couldn't help her as I was in the same situation as her, on a bike with a bunch of crap on my back, and then, on the beach, the clip-on umbrellas did NOT really work the way we thought they would: one wouldn't latch onto the chair and the other couldn't be angled properly to give much shade) I had an epiphany while we were biking home (into the wind, backpack chairs causing serious wind resistance) and it's NOT the epiphany you're thinking; I had that epiphany on the way to the beach (biking with the wagon is fucking awesome! I will always use the wagon!) but instead I realized that if things go according to plan and we both retire from teaching this year, THIS IS OUR LAST SUMMER VACATION . . . after this school year, next summer will fade into fall, fall will darken into winter, and spring will emerge from the cold—but we'll never feel the looming shadow of school and lesson plans and memorizing student names and grading and curriculum changes and IEPs and all that anxiety ever again.
Dave Sits Up Straight
I must have been hunched over all day yesterday-- while riding my bike . . . which is a mountain bike so you can't sit upright-- and while sitting at the various bars we visited, and so when I jumped in the ocean yesterday afternoon and swam a bit, my left shoulder did something weird, and since then it's really been hurting, especially when I rotate my hand inward towards my torso-- and while I'm not a doctor, I do have YouTube, and so I think this is a shoulder impingement or some rotator cuff tendonitis, which can be caused by poor posture and hunching over-- so, once again, I am trying to improve my posture and walk like I have a stick up my ass, thumbs forward, shoulders back by the ears-- but though this makes my shoulder hurt less, it also feels very silly, like I'm playing some weird role in a movie: "HELLO I'M DAVE! PLEASED TO MEET YOU! I'M IN INSURANCE SALES! ARE YOU THINKING OF CHANGING YOUR POLICY?" or some shit like that . . . I'm even sitting up straight as I type this sentence, so it's hard with me to end with a joke or something ironic-- it's like I've evolved from a mischievous ape into an actual human being-- and so I'm just going to sincerely thank you for reading and wish you a blessed day.
Bars and Belmar on Bikes
My wife and I were going to paddleboard this morning, but it was drizzling, so we got on our bikes instead: we had a beer at Darcys, the Bradley Beach soccer bar which opened at 7:15 AM for the start of the Premier League, we got there at 11:30 AM and it felt like we were playing catch-up; the place was raucous; then we hauled it over the bridge to Belmar and had beers at Bakes Brewing Co, which were delicious, and the space is epic; then we biked towards home and ate at 10th Avenue Burrito, which was great, as always, and now we are going to get motivated and head to the beach and enjoy the east wind (and we've been using our bikes so much that I have greasestains on both my calves, from the chain I guess-- which I will have ot really scrub at in the shower).
My Knee is a Champion (to be precise, Sam Champion)
My left knee starts hurting when the humidity increases, and it REALLY starts hurting before a big rainstorm—so judging by how my knee feels this morning, there's going to be a big rainstorm today.
An Irishman and a Black Lady Walk into a Bar . . .
What do Northern Irish author Adrian McKinty and Black author Attica Locke have in common?-- besides never having been in my kitchen?-- I will tell you: though McKinty created Detective Sean Duffy, an RUC detective who works cases during the 1980s, the height of The Troubles in both Belfast and nearby Carrickfergus, and Attica Locke writes about Darren Matthews, a Texas Ranger who investigates drugs, murders, and white supremacy in Eastern Texas, the common ground is that both their detectives are fish out of water; Sean Duffy is the token Catholic working in an almost entirely Protestant force—and thus he's constantly under threat and scrutiny—and Darren Matthews is a Black Texas Ranger who finds himself investigating two murders in racist rural Texas and suffers for it . . . I just finished Bluebird, Bluebird, and it's one of the best crime novels I've read in years—I immediately started on the next one, Heaven, My Home . . . anyway, kudos to McKinty and Locke, they are birds of a feather . . . thanks for not making your mysteries "cozy" and tackling some tough themes about race and religion while also providing compelling procedural crime novels—well done!
The Keys That Broke the Cat's Back
My wife went home from the beach yesterday to set up her classroom and harvest produce from her garden, and she didn't arrive back to our beach house until 9 PM—and she brought back various things we forgot to originally pack or needed: a fan, boogie boards, dog food, dog shampoo, some groceries, and her weighted (12-pound) vest, which I left in the car because I didn't feel like carrying it (it's heavy!) and then this morning, I moved her car out of our narrow driveway and snagged a spot down the street so that visitors could pull in, and when she was leaving to go for a walk, she asked, "Where's my weighted vest?" and I told her I left it in the car because it was heavy and I didn't feel like carrying it in last night, and then she said, "Where'd you park the car?" and I told her I parked it down the street, and then she produced a discontented grunt, and I asked why she was annoyed,, and she said she didn't want to carry her car keys around while she took her walk, and I said, "You're putting on a twelve-pound vest but you don't want to carry car keys? Seriously?" and then I brought up the whole straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back proverb, and she said something about the size of her pockets, and I was like, "Put the keys in the vest! You won't even notice!" and she laughed and went on her walk.
A Man Can Dream
My wife and I took a bike ride to the Asbury Sunday Market this morning, and I bought a loaf of sourdough bread and some wild mushrooms, and then we continued biking north along the coast into the high-rent districts of Loch Arbor, Allenhurst, and Deal-- and as we biked past the Gatsby-esque houses and estates, there was a small part of me that hoped that somoene pulling out of one of these driveways, in a Land Rover or an Aston Martin, might graze me with their expensive car-- nothing to awful, but maybe knock me down, maybe I'd suffer a broken wrist or a concussion, and the owner of this fabulously expensive house and car, maybe this person had a couple of DUIs in the past, and they've already been drinking a bit and they really don't want the authorities involved in this accident so they're like "How about two million dollars to keep this quiet? What's your Venmo?" and the Venmo goes through and I get an Uber to the hospital to get patched up and then I retire and buy a beach house.
Rolling Rolling Rolling, Keep That Wagon Rolling
My contraption with the lovely and poetic moniker: "Bike Trailer Hitch for Wagon Camping Rolling Cart Collapsible Wagon with 360° Swivel Joint & Shock Absorber, Quick-Release Clamps for Folding Wagons, Pet Carts & Garden Trailers" is working more elegantly than the name, although when I get up to speed on my bike, a full head of steam, hell bent for leather, dragging the wagon down La Reine Avenue towards the beach, I feel like a hurtling juggernaut, rolling thunder, an unstoppable force—but luckily no one has gotten in my way and I haven't had to break while pulling a full load . . . and, honestly, I don't think I'm going that fast (but it beats walking).
Sometimes You've Got to Use Force When You're a Man
This morning, my wife wanted to bike down to the ocean for beach yoga, but her bike lock was jammed (I was also planning on attending beach yoga, but the Moccios showed up last night and I overindulged, so fuck that) and so she drove her car down to the beach for yoga, leaving me with the project of unjamming her bike lock; I googled the problem and the internet told me to lubricate the lock and then try to feel the tumblers falling into place—they might be out of whack—and gently pull the lock apart- with the force that you use to open a refrigerator door . . . same with the YouTube video I watched, the guy said the important thing was NOT to use too much force, so I greased up the lock with some Pam cooking spray and tried to gently prize it apart but no dice, so then I grabbed a variety of tools and implements from the kitchen and tried to gently pry it apart—a bottle opener, a fork, a butter knife, etc.-- and then I noticed the plastic combination rings were starting ot crack and decided to apply a bit more force—perhaps if I could see what was going on under the plastic?--and I cracked one of the rings, and it did not help; there was no little button under the plastic that said "Press Me To Open a Jammed Lock," and so I went back inside and—BINGO! -- I found a screwdriver, and so first I ordered Catherine a new lock from Amazon, and then I took the screwdriver and went at the stupid lock, ripping apart the plastic rings and jamming the screwdriver in the device and leveraging the metal, cutting my hand in the process, but I finally got the screwdriver somewhere fatal and ripped the lock apart—and I was very satisfied when it slid open, despite the fact that I ignored all the advice on the internet, because-- like Kenny Rogers said-- sometimes you've got ot use force when you're a man.
Dave is a Fucking Genius
I think by this time, we all know that you put the beer in the cooler first, then the ice—but I just developed a similar move that I've never seen before; I was going to heat up some rigatoni and meat sauce in the microwave, and usually the sauce splatters all over the inside walls, so I have to put a paper towel over the bowl, but this time I had a brilliant idea, and I put the meat sauce on the bottom of the bowl and I covered the marinara with the rigatoni—so then when I microwaved, there was no splatter!
Everybody Likes a Compliment (especially Dave)
As is our usual habit, my wife and I were doing the NYT puzzle Connections yestermorning, and I whizzed right through without making an error, so I celebrated my intellectual magnificence,
and my wife said to me, "You don't need to brag,"
so I said to her, "I always compliment you when you finish quickly,"
and she said, "That's different,"
so I said, "No, it's not—bragging is just complimenting yourself."
Sad News and Nostalgia
Some sad news was passed along to me recently: Tim Raba passed away; I haven't seen Tim in many, many years, but he was a phenomenal North Brunswick athlete—primarily baseball and soccer, but he could play anything—and while he had his struggles after high school, I'll always remember embracing him after he scored in overtime in the County Finals against East Brunswick—he was the other outside back, I played on the left and he played on the right (and we had two future college players at stopper and sweeper . . . we were the best defense in North Brunswick history, I think we had three goals scored on us in 24 games my senior year) and Tim and I were the fastest kids on the team, two of the fastest players in the county, and now he's gone and I'm fat and slow, and there's a lesson here, but it's lost on me, other than time goes by and everything falls apart.
It's Hot, Widespread Panic HOT
This morning I took our dog Lola to the Asbury Park dog beach, and a good time was had by all—quadrupeds and hominids alike—but it was fucking HOT, and it was only 7:30 AM . . . it was heinously, hellishly hot and humid, unprecedentedly oppressive, stoically still . . . or that's how James Ellroy's sleazoid shakedown artist Freddy Otash would describe it—I just finished Widespread Panic, which is not exactly a beach read, but while we're on vacation, I'm going to try to power through Ellroy's second L.A. Quartet—A.K.A. the Freddy Otash Quartet . . . here's how Ellroy describes Otash in an L.A.P.D. confidential memorandum in The Enchanters: "Mr. Otash . . . a freelance extortionist, scandal-rag dirt digger, strongarm goon, perpetrator of divorce shakedowns, doper of racehorses, informant for Chief William H. Parker, procurer and dope conduit for President John F. Kennedy" and in Widespread Panic Otash blackmails, digs dirt, strongarms, and leverages such stars as James Dean, Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, and Elizabeth Taylor—I could barely follow his drunken, dexedrine-fueled machinations—but that's how it is with Ellroy, you just groove on the vibe and pick up what you can . . . anyway, I'm sure I'll get some reading done today as I'm going to remain in the AC for a while; I biked down to the beach and took a swim after my journey to the dog beach, and the water is sublime, but the beach itself is baking; my wife was down there in a beach yoga class with a bunch of other fit, good-looking women, but watching them just made me feel sad and out-of-shape . . . there's no way I could survive an hour of gyrating like that on the hot sand, especially while staring at the lovely clear blue ocean-- I'd last ten minutes and then get up and jump in the water.
Dave Visits Two Beaches, Bitches
Over the past two days, I was lucky enough to experience the splendid enchanted isolation of what is basically a private beach on the Outer Banks-- my buddy Whitney's family has a half share in a house that's on the Historic Beach Cottage Row: these are very old, wood-shingled, weather-beaten original beach cottages (many from the 1800s) that are ocean front and essentially have private beach access . . . so while you may be able to spy another family or person here and there, it's mainly you and the sea oats, the dunes, the sand, and the sea (and, in our case, nineteen of your oldest friends-- loud and drunk-- constantly interrupting any chance you might have at listening to the soothing sound of the surf or achieving inner peace and tranquility) and now-- after much driving-- I'm back in Jersey, at the beach-- Bradley Beach in particular-- and the difference is remarkable; I got up early this morning, biked over the bridge to Belmar and then back to Bradley Beach on the boardwalk, and then did some sprints in the sand and took a swim (the water is tropical) and the main difference is people, the density of people . . . people at Jersey beaches get up early and run, bike, kick box, exercise, do you yoga, smoke pot, ride one-wheelers . . . whatever, it's fun and inspirational and always makes me exercise a bit harder than I would have-- there's so many fit people really pushing it; there were also people already set up on the beach-- at 7:30 AM!-- claiming some real estate and ready to put in a full beach day of relaxation and recreation . . . and we are a ten minute walk to the beach, or a short bike ride, but we're close to main street and a plethora of bars, restaurants, distilleries, breweries, laundromats, auto-body shops, the train tracks, a train station, and a park that has music every night . . . while I like the proximity of the ocean and the incredible scenery of the Outer Banks, if I had my druthers of where to relocate, it would be Asbury, Ocean Grove, or Bradley Beach (although one difference that can be annoying is that on Jersey beaches, you need to pay for a badge to be on the beach-- and while sometimes this is not enforced, my wife saw a head lifeguard freaking out about all the people already on the beach at 9 AM-- before the badge people patrol the entrances and he told her, "We have to walk the beach and check! we have to issue citations! These people are stealing services! Stealing services!" and my wife saw a beach badge crackdown go down).
OBFT XXXIII . . . Hauling It Back to Jersey
OBFT XXXIII is in the books (for me at least) as I left at 4 AM this morning, and now I'm packing my bags . . . to go to the beach—Bradley Beach at the Jerzee Shore . . . first-world problems; anyway, the usual highlights:
--delicious food and fun at Tortuga's—despite the surly bartender . . .
--I told Bruce a joke, which wasn't even that filthy, so I can repeat it here: my friend was dating this girl, and she dumped him, and he was so angry that he stole her wheelchair . . . guess who came crawling back?
-- Whitney did a lot of fantastic DJing-- his wheelhouse-- and he put an ORF Rock sticker on the door at Tortuga's
--Billy's post-collegiate daughter (who did a spot-on Jersey accent when talking to Paci) and a couple of her tall, athletic friends stopped by and hung out for an inordinately long time, considering we are boring old men; Rodell and I beat them all at cornhole, but they gave us a run for our money and then they tried to learn how to play our favorite drinking game, the convoluted, fast-paced, and Byzantine word-based contest known as Z . . . and Hanna actually progressed to the big leagues;
-- the water was brisk but refreshing;
--Rodell and I took all comers and ended up undefeated at cornhole;
-- there was much shooting the shit, shooting the breeze, and shooting the bull . . . the people who took our photo at Tortuga's were impressed that we've been able to tolerate each other for this long—it's a blessing—so thanks, Whit and all who made it, hope to see everyone and more next summer.
Typical Beach Report
A solid Wednesday night get-together to start OBFT XXXIII— Billy, Cliffy, Charlie, Paci, Swaney, Vicki . . . uh . . .Ethan, Jason, (sorry to ruin the rhythm) and, of course, Whitney and Elaine; we went to Aw Shucks for oysters— it was national oyster day— and some other bar for drinks; Charlie and I stopped at 7-11 for tobacco products— I wanted to try Zyn and Charlie wanted to by some traditional Copenhagen— and we were so confused by the array that the lady gave me my coffee for free . . . this is the second time in Norfolk that my general befuddlement has been rewarded by a free cup of coffee; then we went back to Whitney’s place and chatted about old man things: knee replacements, hip replacements, GLPs-1s, retirement, how annoying pets can be, King Crimson and Frank Zappa and jazz, etc and I tried the Zyn and it really worked— major nicotine rush— and then we left for the beach fairly early, the BBQ stand at The Border Station wasn’t even open yet, so I just got coffee and peanuts— but at least the lid fit on the coffee cup, because my drive from DC to Norfolk was marred by a faulty 7-11 coffee lid . . . I went to sip my very hot coffee while driving on I-64 and the top popped off and hot coffee exploded all my hands, shirt, shorts, legs, and car— yikes— but that is forgotten (and so is the back up trying to get through the I-664 tunnel into Norfolk) because now I’m at the Martha Wood, enjoying the water and the ocean breeze and the rocking chairs on the porch, reading a completely bonkers James Elroy book called Widespread Panic.
The Mall is a Mess
Full disclosure: I love shitty hotel gyms—probably because I wake up early and this gives me a destination while my wife sleeps, and there is always one other lunatic in there with me; that is how I began my day yesterday, and then Cat and I took the Metro from DuPont Circle to The Mall— and the Mall is a MESS . . . Apparently there is going to be a Grand Prix race later in August and so there are crews tearing up streets, building giant grandstands (which obscure the view of the Capitol building and the Washington Monument) and there are chain link fences and barricades made of rubber tires everywhere— it’s not particularly aesthetically pleasing, and I’m not sure why we have to race cars around to celebrate 250 years of America— a horse race would be more appropriate, especially considering that our reliance on the car and gasoline usage are what has America over the barrel— but don’t get me started— anyway, we wandered through the wreckage but thoroughly enjoyed our time in the National Botanic Gardens and the lovely courtyard within, and the Hirshhorn Museum has an incredible collection of modern art and complementary Basquiat and Banksy pieces that pretty much explain post-modernism, and then we walked to The National Portrait Gallery— and after a quick stop at Compass Coffee, I highly recommend their nitro cold brew— we enjoyed seeing paintings of all the presidents (and a photo of Donald Trump, looking extra tough) and the various other historical portraits and portrayals— I can see why people like this museum, as it’s a nice break from the surrealism and abstraction of Modernism and post-modern art . . . there’s recognizable people in these painting; then we took the Metro back to our hotel, swam in the pool, and headed to Boqueria DuPont Circle for happy hour drinks and tapas— lovely spacious bar, which is the difference between DC and NYC— DC has height requirements on the buildings, nothing more than 10 stories or so, which makes the city much more spacious and spread out, there’s not the crowded density of Manhattan or Philly— which is nice when you’re in a bar, but not so great for walking (I racked up 26,000 steps yesterday) and my wife questioned this number because she only had 20,000 steps but I reminded her that I wake up early and I’m always pacing around and then, after we went to the Western Market and ate some ice cream, we did a calibration test and walked the same distance and she registered 366 steps and I registered 372 steps, which is a negligible difference— though she claims I “wave my arms around a lot” and that’s why I get more steps— anyway, we fell asleep to an Office marathon while our children played ping-pong and partied hard in our driveway, enjoying the parent-free home (but we can spy on them with the Ring camera, which is fun) and no Cat is headed back home on the train and I am headed to Norfolk for OBFT XXXIII.
From Jersey to Double DC
Yesterday my wife and I drove through violent rain to Washington DC— for two hours, it was a white-knuckle drive, and— as usual on the Turnpike— despite the weather, people were driving like assholes and there were several accidents; but we arrived at the Hyatt near DuPont Circle (double DC!) safe and sound, my wife jumped out with the stuff, and I attempted to navigate to the parking garage, but Google led me astray and I pulled into the wrong underground garage— so I switched to Waze (I’m tech savvy like that) and blindly backed out into M Street— a move that would have met with ire, honking, and perhaps a collision in NYC, but the people are more forgiving in the South, so the maneuver went fairly smoothly— I found the deck, parked, reconnoitered with my wife and we went and got some happy hour dumplings and noodles and beer at an unassuming restaurant called CHIKO— a portmanteau of Chinese and Korean and a really cool and affordable casual place serving upscale Asian comfort food— we’d go back— then we got lost inside the O Mansion, one of the weirder museums I’ve ever wandered through— it’s five connected row houses full of vintage treasures and vintage junk, with no real differentiation between the two categories of stuff— piles of stuff, signed guitars and toys and paintings and photographs and antiques and clothing— but the fun is exploring the houses, which are connected by many many secret doors— we found quite a few— one led to a log cabin inside the house, hard to explain but an epic place and worth a visit— it’s also a working hotel and bar; after a couple hours inside that weirdness, we walked to a local dive—The Commodore— and had espresso martinis and chatted with the bartender; then we took a swim in the little pool in the basement of the Hyatt-- caution, world's slipperiest floor--took a nap, walked over to the City Tap House for beers and some sliders . . . a good half day of vacationing, after an awful drive.
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