The Smallest State Makes It Big

No fresh sentence today, as I am in Newport, Rhode Island, with my wife and some friends-- and I've never really explored much of Rhode Island, but I do know that it is the smallest state in the union, so I am sure they are excited to have me and have prepared for my visit.

Night Conferences Get Heavy

We had FOUR days of parent/teacher conferences this week— including two three-hour night sessions from 5 PM to 8 PM—I truly do not understand why our district does this (we also have a four-day session in the spring) and so I try to keep things terse, brief, and very dry— unlike some teachers who are congenial and bubbly for 12-16 conferences in a row, I just don't have that kind of social stamina, and so I review the quiz and writing grades, tell the parent if the kid is missing anything, and then ask if they have any questions—but inevitably most of the conferences get deep and weird—no one ever asks about the books we are reading or the content of the class, they just want to know psychological stuff about their kid, which is way outside my purview; here are some things that were said this week:

"He will not open his mind to me . . . he says he likes the class, but he will not give me details . . . he will not tell me the details of his day"

and I try to be empathetic to these parents, but I think I said to this very nice Asian mom, "He's a teenage boy . . . maybe when he's thirty?"

and another woman—wondering what her son's college essay was about because he wouldn't share it with her and I had read it—expressed a desire to "crack open his head" and see what was inside, and I was thinking: you might not want to see inside a teenage boy's head . . .

a parent asked if she thought her son was "stressed while writing this essay," and I said I did not know, but he got a good grade . . .

another mom confessed that her son's room is very messy and she thinks he has ADHD . . . I said he did very well on his reading comprehension quiz

and one lady, who brought her son to the conference, half-complained that her son "does robotics for three or four hours each day" and I think she was insinuating that he should study more, but I said, "Wow . . . maybe he'll build me a new knee!"

but I shouldn't complain; all of my parents were very nice and very concerned, and nothing was as odd and weird as what happened to the history teacher next door, who had a mom come in all fired up, and she complained about how her son's new Audi was getting covered with sap in the school parking lot because of some offending tree, and he was like, "Maybe you should talk to the vice-principal about that . . . he's in charge of senior parking."

Dave Is Visited by Public Teacher Nightmare Number One (or perhaps number two?)

Now that this incident is in the rearview mirror, it's a little easier to discuss—but yesterday . . . yesterday, I was going through it, but during the school day I kept it all to myself, I didn't tell a soul until I got home and saw my wife; I should point out that yesterday was the dreaded day after night conferences, which is already a miserable day, even without extra distress: you drive home in the dark from three hours of night conferences, three hours of boring, desultory conversation; you pass out from exhaustion; and then you get up and head right back to school, right back to the room you were in what feels like moments before—it's very Groundhog Day—but to add insult to injury, yesterday morning, on my drive to back to work, while driving on Harts Lane, I thought I had to pass some gas but it turned out there was something a bit more solid (but also kind of liquidic, thixotropic?) needing to exit my bunghole-- and while I thought that I curtailed the excrement in the nick of time and figured  that I'd simply make an emergency trip to the bathroom before first period, and that would be the end of it-- but when I arrived at school, I raced to the main office bathroom to evacuate my bowels, and once I got down to business, I realized I was living out one of the worst of teacher nightmares-- I had indeed shit my pants right before school-- but as far as shitting your pants goes, it was fairly minor (but not THAT minor) so I cleaned out my underwear as much as I could, sprayed some Fabreeze on the stain, and then scrubbed it a bit more, ended up getting some urine on my pants during this clean up, stuffed some toilet paper inside my underwear to absorb some of the dampness, and then went on with my day-- and while I did visit the bathroom several times, just to clean things up a bit more and swap out the toilet paper in my underwear, I managed to successfully perform my afternoon conferences and teach all my classes with shit-stained skivvies, and I lived to tell the tale . . . we'll see what other demonic teacher nightmares visit me in this last year of teaching . . . perhaps my car will break down on the way to school, or I'll show up wearing my pajamas, or I'll forget the names of all my students-- but none of them will be as gross and awful as this one, I surmise.

Dave Does It Backwards

I haphazardly read a couple of Louise Penny "Three Pines" mysteries (A Trick of the Light and Glass Houses, the seventh and thirteenth books in the series, respectively) and though the pacing is a little slow, I enjoyed the French Canadian setting and characters—Chief Inspector Armand Gamache often travels from police headquarters in cosmopolitan Montreal to the rural hamlet of Three Pines, which is full of wacky denizens . . . anyway, I am now reading Still Life, the first novel in the series—and I'm realizing I probably should have started there in the first place; I would have avoided a lot of confusion and conjecture.

THAT's The Spirit (Spirits!)

I refereed five soccer matches this weekend, and a couple of those games got out of hand; they were played on a slippery grass field, and the home team, mainly Portuguese and Hispanic kids from the South River club, were much more experienced on this surface than the white kids from down the shore; when one team crushes another in youth soccer, it's always a disaster, even though there are rules in place—you're not supposed to beat a team by more than six goals, but then once you are ahead by six goals, you have to do something with the ball-- playing possession is demeaning, scoring more goals is unsportsmanlike, going to the corners and shielding the ball is rather violent, putting kids in random positions ends up being chaotic, and trying to dribble through the entire team leads to fouls-- in one game, once the home team was ahead by six, the away team pulled the goalie and let him go up and play striker—but then in the general madness, a couple balls slowly rolled into the empty goal, thus running up the score beyond a six goal margin—and some of the parents got very butt hurt that their team was losing so badly—and then the home team decided maybe they should let the other team score, but that's demeaning and it didn't work out either . . . I had to convince one dad to get off the field; he strode a few yards into the pitch and yelled to his son NOT to shake hands when the game ended . . . it's never fun when it goes down like this, and after tha match, I gave the young coaches, who I know pretty well—they went to the school I teach at—some tips on how to rein in the score EARLY when you see a blowout developing (when I coached, once some of my more dominant teams got a three or four-goal lead, I would tell them the only they could score was on a header off a weak-footed cross; that was usually difficult enough to stop them from running up the score, but it also gave them something to practice) but I did hear one dad on the sideline with the RIGHT attitude about his son's team getting slaughtered—after the seventh goal was scored on his team, he asked his wife, "Is there a bar nearby?"

Do You Know Your Bruce?

A very special Jersey edition of Pig on the Wall: musician, DJ, musicologist, and my good friend Les Coole demonstrates his musical acumen about all things Bruce (and Tom Petty as well) during a quiz entitled "Do You Know Your Bruce?"-- play along at home and see how you do . . . and we use Bruce Springsteen's career, methodology, and lyrical style to shed some light on Tom Petty, creativity in general, and the rarity of longevity in the music biz.

Leon's Getting Larger

For the past week, I've been confronting larger and larger bugs in the downstairs bathroom—first there was a mosquito, then a little cockroach, and then one of those spindly camel crickets, and yesterday there was a fairly large spider crawling down the tiled wall—and though I'm a bit of an arachnophobe, it was 5:15 AM, so I couldn't wake my wife to take care of the intruder, so I fought it with a long-handled broom (and won!) but I'm kind of nervous about what tomorrow will bring in this escalating creepy-crawly sequence.

We Win!

Today, moments before the kick-off of a U-9 soccer game, the center ref for the game called captains from each team for the coin toss-- the winner of the coin toss may choose either to take the ball first or to defend a particular side-- but after one failed coin toss and then the consequent explanation to the three away team captains that one of them must call it in the air, the center ref tossed the coin again and the away team captain called "tails" and the coin came up tails, and once this was announced, the three kids from the away team raised their hands in exultation, cheered, and ran off . . . ostensibly, to tell their team they won the coin toss-- but we had to call them back and explain what the coin toss was for and, as always with children under ten, they chose to have the ball.

King of Pain

Yesterday, I went to Source Wellness Center (chiropractor, massage, acupuncture, and OT all in one spot!) and—under advisement from my wife—let the new deep massage guy Joe work on my calves and hamstrings, and while I endured the hamstring work fairly well, when he started doing stuff to my calves, he said, "You're going to hate me for this, and you're very messed up, but we can fix this," and then he started pressing spots on my calves, and the pain was so inordinate that I, in quick succession, prayed to all the gods of mercy in the universe, saw little black spots on the sun, cursed, cried, white-knuckle gripped the massage table, and understood the pain of childbirth . . . today, I am a bit sore, but my knee is much looser—all the muscles surrounding it were incredibly tight and restricting it, and so I am going back again next Thursday for more of the same.

Katie Zacharia vs. C.J. Kregg: Steel Cage No-Holds-Barred Coffin Mexican Death Match

It is not fair to compare fictional characters with reality . . . but it is fun; my wife and I just finished season two of The West Wing, and perhaps the most savvy, tactical, witty, and upright person on President Bartlet's staff is C.J. Kregg—she's tall, fast-talking, assertive, and poised . . . and perhaps because she crushed this role, Alison Janney gets to play the president on The Diplomat—anyway, to then see Trump's new secretary, Katie Zacharia, bumble her way through her first propagandistic disinformation monologue, after recently watching so much West Wing, this made me very, very sad . . . so I definitely can't go back and rewatch Battlestar Galactica, because President Roslin would give President Bartlet a run for his money—although I would love to see Trump handle a Cylon attack: "This war against these aliens will end as soon as I want it to end."

Hey Democrats! Watch Some TV and Learn Something!

My wife and I are watching season two of the widely renowned show The West Wing—and, holy shit, I am wondering if any of Joe Biden's inner circle, close friends, family, or White House staff—the people that concealed Biden's cognitive state and health from the general public—saw this particular season—because if they did, they should have understood the potential political fall-out and consequences of shielding the public from this important information—and if they HAD seen season two, which is highly unlikely (or else these people are very short-sighted) wherein President Bartlett and his wife and his closest aides hide his diagnosis of relapsing-remitting MS from the American public and the administration faces severe blowback for perpetrating this omission, maybe the Democratic Party would have taken a more transparent political tack, and then they wouldn't have lost the trust of the American people, and then Donald Trump would not have been elected again.

Is This Relaxing?

When I get home from school, to relax, before I go play pickleball or lift weights or walk the dog and steal rocks from the park, I play a five-minute game of speed chess . . . while drinking coffee—but perhaps I should meditate or do tai chi or something more relaxing, to relax?

Celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day

An excellent and appropriate way to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day is to get a flu vaccine, because the flu was just one of the many diseases the Europeans gave to the Native Americans when they came to visit-- permanently-- and this "Columbian Exchange" was rather unequal in this regard, as the Europeans also brought over smallpox, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, typhoid, diphtheria, cholera, malaria, and yellow fever . . . while the only major diease that Columbus and his crew brought back to Europe was a particularly virulent strain of syphilis; in 1495 there was a massive syphilis epidemic in Europe . . . but the Native Americans certainly got the short end of the pathogen stick-- so get a vaccine and combat the spread of infectious diseases through our population!

I've Been Waiting for This Particular Infraction All of My Life (cue Dramatic Phil Collins Drum Solo)

Yesterday, while refereeing a U-12 boys' game, I had to call a PK, and it finally happened—the moment I've been waiting for . . . the moment I warned my players about when I coached—but I don't think the particular scenario ever happened, either when I was playing or coaching . . . until yesterday: I ushered all the players but the kicker outside of the penalty arc; I warned the goalie to stay on his line; I blew the whistle; the kicker took the kick, and it went high, over the keeper's outstretched hands—but the keeper did NOT touch the ball—and then the ball caromed off the crossbar right back to the PK kicker, and he shot it again, and I jubilantly blew the whistle and called a "double touch on a direct kick violation"-- the crossbar is essentially part of the field, and once you kick a direct kick, you can't touch the ball again until another PLAYER touches the ball . . . the crossbar does not count as a player, and so I awarded an indirect free kick to the defense and quickly explained the rule to the poor PK kicker, who thought he was going to get another shot on goal, and the experienced old Polish guy, who was the AR that game, raised his flag when it all went down and he told me I called it "perfectly."

Dave Tries Not to Stone the Young People

Here are a few phrases and facts the children did not recognize this week, leading me to believe that you need to explain EVERYTHING to anyone younger than thirty:

1) my wife's fifth graders (and all the young teachers in proximity to my wife's classroom) did not know the phrase "up the creek without a paddle," and I said most people say "up shit's creek without a paddle," thus the name of the popular sitcom—and my wife did not realize the show was named after the idiom . . . so everyone learning some stuff;

2) Cunningham's senior classes did not know the phrase "carbon-based life form," probably because they did not grow up watching Star Trek;

3) my seventy-five senior English students—aside from one or two kids—had not heard of the "Spanish Armada," nor did they know that Queen Elizabeth defeated this massive fleet of bellicose Catholics;

now I am sure that the young folks know plenty of important things that I don't know, delulu Labubu kind of stuff, so I'm not casting any stones (and for you young people, that phrase comes from the New Testament, when some old-timey people wanted to stone a woman to death, and Jesus said, "He that is without sin, cast the first stone," and this persuasive tactic actually worked and all these old-timey sinners walked away, and then the phrase evolved to "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," and there's also a Billy Joel album titled Glass Houses).

Dave Forges On, Despite the Futility of It All

Yesterday, I was doing my Basic Shakespeare Intro for my senior College Writing class, and I taught one of my students in this class, Gavin, two years ago when he was a sophomore—in Honors English—and Gavin vaguely remembered this lesson—back then we did 12th Night, and now we are starting Hamlet but it doesn't matter; the basics are the same: Shakespeare was born in England (not, as some students told me, Russia or France or Vienna or Italy . . . Italy I get, because they read Romeo and Juliet—but Russia?) and Shakespeare often wrote in iambic pentameter, and he coined many words and phrases (eyeball, unreal, knock knock who's there, etc) and then we talk about WHY we still read Shakespeare today, in modern times, and my three reasons, in order, are:

1. His CHARACTERS—no one in the history of literature created as many compelling, psychologically unique, and fascinating characters, bar none—he is the champ;

2. His way with LANGUAGE—a close second, between Shakespeare and William Tyndale, those two created a large portion of the words and phrases we use today, plus Shakespeare was often writing poetically;

3. EMOTION—Shakespeare plays are wild and dramatic; they don't teach us any lessons, or that's not the main point; they are entertainment, and the people populating these plays really put it on the line—so the plays are fun to read, act, and view;

I have the students come up with reasons why we still read Shakespeare first, before I tell them the actual reasons, and many of them say, "He came up with a lot of interesting plots and stories," and I break the news to them that Shakespeare stole most of his plots from various sources: poems, myths, history books, old tales, novels, and other plays from the repertoire—there were no copyright laws back then, and artists "borrowed" with impunity . . .

so we went through this lesson with various slides and activities, and then the students tok a quiz on the material, and then we had a few minutes left in class, so we took a walk, and on our walk we ran into another student from the sophomore Honors English class from two years ago, a great student (Humza) who was now taking AP English-- and Gavin said to Humza, "Quick, name the three reasons we read Shakespeare," and Humza wracked his brain for a second and said, "He invented a lot of famous words and phrases," and Gavin said, "Ok, that's the easy one, why else?" and Humza said, "He came up with a lot of cool plots?" and Gavin said, "He stole his plots," and Humza, with all sincerity and seriousness, threw his hands into the air, shocked, and said, "He stole his plots?!" and I said, "Why? Why do I teach you people anything!?"

Is This Going to Be a Thing Now?

I don't know if this is a thing that happens when you get older (and produce less skin grease) but my ankles are really itchy and the skin down there is all dry—so for the first time in my life (heeding my wife's advice) I put on some moisturizer cream . . . and it seems to have helped.

Elephants, Acid, and Exploring the Inmost Cave

 

I just finished Act Two of my newest Pig on the Wall series (A Long, Long Road: The Secrets of Tom Petty's Sustained Success) . . . if you don't have the time or energy to listen to the whole thing, there is a musical quiz in the first few minutes, and at the 23-minute mark there's something else I made that I'm quite proud of, which turns into another oddball, one-question quiz—check it out and see if you get the answer.

Birds on the Brain

Last night (or actually 2:30 AM this morning) while I was in the depths of slumber, my wife yelled, "No! No! Don't let the turkey in the house!" which startled me from the depths of slumber—or momentarily startled me, then I started laughing—and while I normally don't recount dreams on this blog because dreams are stupid-- this one affected my actual physical existence, so I will attempt to sort out what happened here, psychologically, the concatenation of factors which created this dire and frightening avian scenario in my wife's subconscious mind:

1) my wife is afraid of birds;

2) we recently watched an episode of The West Wing in which Press Secretary C.J. Cregg finds two turkeys in her office—named Eric and Troy—and she has to determine which one is more photogenic and therefore will receive a presidential pardon from execution and consequent basting and roasting

3) fall weather has moved in, and Thanksgiving is approaching;

4) the weirdo across the street has several chickens and a rooster, and the rooster crows several times every morning.

Major Monday

I reffed six soccer matches this weekend-- and the Hyaluronic acid gel injections obviously haven't blended with my existing joint fluid because when I woke up this morning, my knee fucking hurt-- but I managed to finish my newest episode of Pig on the Wall (aside from the mix down) before school and then I rushed to the 7 AM Faculty Meeting (beats going 3 PM) which lasted a VERY long time, then I taught all day, but conserved my energy, because I knew when I got home from school, I was going to have to summon all my culinary skills and acumen . . . because I promised my wife-- in celebration of the fall weather-- that I'd make crockpot chili and crockpot chili needs some time in the crockpot, so right when I arrived home from school, I put on a pot of coffee and some Aphex Twin on the kitchen speaker and got to it-- caramelizing the onions, browning the meat, roasting the peppers, filling the crockpot with fire roasted tomatoes from my wife's garden, using the immersion blender to chop these tomatoes into slightly smaller pieces (very messy) and adding all the spices (I had to grind some black pepper with the mortar and pestle because we are out) and rinsing the beans and then doing all the dishes (aside from the ones I am soaking) and now I am done and the chili is simmering away in the crockpot, and I need to switch the Aphex Twin to something more mellow because it is stressing me out while I write this sentence.

Existential Moments Before an Offsides Violation

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).

 

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.

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).

Follicle Creep

Question for my stray facial hairs: how far up my face do you plan to grow?

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.

An Ode to the Sinkerball

Tommy John is dead-- but not gone; 

his eponymous surgery carries on.

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.