Loose Leaf Calculations
I Wish I liked Yoga, But I Find It Intolerably Boring
I just returned home from The Source Wellness Center in Metuchen, and while I highly recommend this place for physical therapy . . . for whatever ails you, visiting there is a bit multifarious-- today I was there for a sore right shoulder and an arthritic knee, and I began with physical therapy and stretching, with Nicole, which was pretty mellow-- some light massage and pulling and twisting of my limbs this way and that, a little painful but a two out of ten; then acupuncture, which was VERY relaxing, I actaully fell asleep so deeply that when I woke up I thought it was time to go to work; then Joe absolutely crushed my shoulder and calves on the massage table-- I actually pounded the side of the table and cried uncle, probably an 8/10 on the pain scale-- but this did loosen things up, and then Dr. Jensen did some chiropracty on me, which wasn't exactly relaxing but didn't hurt either . . . so a wild ride, and now I do feel a better (but I'll ruin it tomrrow, playing pickleball, and go back again next Thursday).
It's All Fun and Games Until You Get Hit in the Eye
I played pickleball last night against a young guy who was easily 6' 7'' and not a skinny 6' 7'' and at first it was disconcerting; he absolutely crushed the ball, and I learned that essentially, you could not hit the typical "third shot drop" on him because, if it was in reach, he could clobber it with his huge reach and wingspan-- lobbing was also right out, and same with cross-court dinks when he was on the left side, because he could reach out and poach them-- the only thing that worked was violent and ugly, firing the ball right at him so that he couldn't extend his arms, no drop shots, very few dinks, maybe a dipping drive at his feet, but anything that got up in the air came back VERY FAST-- this made the game violent and ugly, but much closer than the first time I played him-- I was trying to convince my buddy Craig to play the same way, but it was essentially smashing chaos ball (and my shoulder hurt afterward) and then in the next game the big dude nailed another player square in the eye (and he wasn't wearing glasses) and the fun sort of fizzled out, as it is wont to do when something like that happens.
What If Homer Made Helen Homely?
I am hoping today is the last time I review the Trojan War in English class--or with anyone, for that matter-- but to explain Act II, scene ii of Hamlet, it had to be done, and I did draw a lovely chart on the board, with all the main players: Achilles, Paris, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Hector, King Menelaus, King Priam, Queen Hecuba, Pyrrus, and of course, the "Face that Launched 1000 Ships" . . . Helen-- and I did learn something new today, as I wondered if the Greeks would have launched 1000 ships if Helen was NOT the most beautiful woman in the land, if she were homely-- but I did a bit of research and apparently, the Greeks STILL would have laid siege to Troy to bring her back, even if Helen were a horsefaced buck-toothed bride with a great sense of humor, because of The Oath of Tyndareus . . . this oath legally and socially bound kings Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, etc. to mobilize their forces, regardless of what Helen looked like because Paris had violated and betrayed his host Menelaus and abducted his wife, but I'm sure the Greeks were more motivated because she was so attractive, because well . . . men.
Dave Perseveres, A Little (But With Profanity)
I thought I was having a bad day because one of my Creative Writing students alerted me that she could only see two of her assignments in our grading platform (Genesis) and the rest were invisible, and it turned out that some bizarre little toggle switch deep inside the assignment settings called "Show in Parents Module" was switched to NO, and so I had to manually reset all these little toggle switches during my lunch period (and then I found the culprit, a default in the global settings that had mysteriously switched halfway through the quarter—insane) but then I thought about the plight of Nuri and Afra in the novel I finished yesterday, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, and how these refugees from the Syrian civil war, who lost their child in a bombing, and traveled from camp to camp, carrying the burden of PTSD, grief, guilt, hallucinations, blindness, and regret—and somehow persevered, with very little to live for, and thinking about this novel made me feel a little less beleaguered, but just a little (and the incident was quite useful in Creative Writing class, where we were modernizing Aesop-type fables to reflect modern morals and lessons—it was the perfect example, and they actually witnessed me melt down about it, curse our grading platform, and then they saw me solve the mystery and carry on with my job).
Keep It Up, Sedaris!
David Sedaris is in fine form in his new essay collection, The Land and Its People—if you like his brand of grouchy, gay-Larry-David-style joke-making . . . this book is less grim than Happy-Go-Lucky and Calypso, as Sedaris seems to be following the advice of a writing teacher he had back in 1990, a British woman named Freda Garmaise, who told him the only rule of writing comedy is NOT "don't punch down" but in fact "always be as tasteless as possible"—so there are lots of tasteless punch-lines and images in this book, and even some tasteless jokes in his essay about meeting the Pope—and, as with most David Sedaris books, I inhaled this thing and finished it in two days . . . I wish I could savor the humor, but his sentence-writing is so adept, fluid, and surprising that I just want to keep going—and I hope Sedaris keeps going—and I have the same wish for Larry David-- I hope Sedaris keeps going, even if his material gets thin, because I like his writing style, his tone, and his tasteless jokes.
Note to Self: City Walking Requires Good Shoes!
Do You Believe in the Almighty Ramen?
While my high school students have never heard of the Protestant Reformation, purgatory, the Spanish Armada, or the obscure Bruce Springsteen song "Born to Run," they do all know that you can fix a toilet with ramen noodles and super glue—even though this method DOES NOT WORK, for obvious reasons: structural instability, water expansion and mold, leakage of wastewater, etcetera, etcetera . . . but they saw it on TikTok, and they believe in it, just as much as the Medieval Catholics believed in the concept of Purgatory.
Alfred Hitchcock's "The Leaves"
I raked a bunch of leaves yesterday, and Ian helped me bag them-- and now, today, there are even MORE leaves all over our front and back lawn, it's like I never raked them-- the leaves just keep on coming, an onslaught of leaves, there's nothign you can do to stop them-- AND, to add insult to injury, it's hot and humid outside, not at all raking weather . . . so I made a pronouncement to my wife, the household, and the neighborhood in general: "I am not raking any more leaves until it's cold and crisp out!" . . . also, pro-tip: if you wait a while to rake your leaves, sometimes it gets really windy and the leaves blow off your lawn and down the street and they are no longer your responsibility.
Winter is Coming, But Not Today
It was unseasonably warm and sunny today in Central Jersey—and not just the weather—my fellow English teachers, who are pretty much across-the-board liberal, were rejoicing over the Democratic "blue tsunami" . . . and many of them were wearing the color blue—I was also quite pleased about the rebuke of our Douchebag in Chief, but I didn't check the election results until AFTER I had donned my blue button-down shirt; ostensibly, I wore this because of the near-record high temperatures, as this particular shirt has vents in the back, but I must have also had some sort of subconscious desire to wear blue . . . anyway, the thing I am most pleased about is a fantastic Trumpian moment at the start of his eve-of-the-midterms speech in front of the reflecting pool (which, oddly, was ABOUT the reflecting pool, not any political issue) when Trump ad-libbed (I hope!) an incredible paradoxical turd wrapped inside an enigma encased in fecal matter: "I've kept every single promise I made, except far more . . . I've actually kept far more promises than I made."
The Slow Horses Universe (Like the Marvel Universe, Except Opposite)
Diana Taverner: "Why do you keep calling it by name?"
Jackson Lamb: "These products won't place themselves."
Yellow Shirt Epiphanies
Two things I realized about refereeing soccer:
1) similar to teaching, you have ot be strategic about when you go to the bathroom;
2) when you AR several games in a row—and work a particular sideline—you should switch sides from game to game (two weeks ago, I neglected to do this, and I received a sunburn on the right side of my face—but yesterday, I switched sides, and my sun exposure was much more even).
OK, Now Just Leave My Clock Alone!
While in the past, I have certainly ranted and raved about Daylight Saving Time, this year—right at this moment—I am feeling good about the time shift, mainly because I NEVER FUCKING ADJUSTED FROM SIX MONTHS AGO . . . so I got a good night's sleep last night, and—for once in my life—woke up at the proper time—so now can we just leave it and be done with this bullshit?
Halloween Should Only Occur on a Dark Cold Gloomy Rainy Tuesday
My dog hates Halloween (and so do I, especially when it falls on a Saturday).
Halloweek is Too Much Halloween
This week, our kitchen table (and most every counter space) has been an unholy, ungodly, disorganized mess—and the culprit is Halloween (and my wife's wife's job: fifth-grade teacher) and Halloweek is not over yet; on Wednesday, my wife and her class transformed her Honda CRV into a "Frog Prince"-- spectacular job, and her class won first place for their efforts; then today my wife's entire fifth-grade team dressed as all the characters from the Mario video game—my wife was a Piranha Plant—and my son Ian and his girlfriend Kyla are attending various parties and doing different costumes for each, and my wife and I are attending a Tim Burton-themed party, and my wife is being the spider from James and the Giant Peach (and I am being James, which only entails wearing a hat and suspenders, just my speed).
Dave Soldiers On
I was attempting to eat an apple while teaching my English 12: Music and the Arts class this morning—I get hungry during these stupid 83-minute periods—and (serves me right) while trying to simultaneously teach and chew, I bit the inside of my lip, but, to the amazement (and chagrin) of my students, I soldiered on, despite the wound, and continued to educate them.
Words, Words, Words . . .
I know this is tiresome, but I'm documenting these incidents for future generations (and there is some research about the Flynn Effect recently stalling or reversing, so this might be important anecdotal data) so here are some words and concepts that came up this week that the vast majority of my seventy-five College Writing students did not know, could not define, or could not decipher:
--quarrel
--chaste (or chastity . . . and then I had to explain the medieval "chastity belt," which actually might have been a myth)
--The Protestant Reformation
--The Puritans
-- purgatory
-- apparel
--vulgar
--neither a borrower nor a lender be
and, to add insult to injury, not one child in my thirty-person Creative Writing class had ever heard the song "Born to Run"—while they knew OF Bruce Springsteen and knew he hailed from New Jersey, they had never heard his advice—that Jersey is a "death trap, a suicide rap," and that you should get out while you're young.
Slow Horses . . . Slow Viewers?
I'm not even going to attempt to explain the plot of season six of Slow Horses—but be assured, it is complicated, fragmented, and obfuscated . . . and full of espionage, maguffins, double-crossing, and paradoxical intrigue-based irony; I do wish I recorded the befuddled conversations my wife and I had before, during, and after the episodes—we must have sounded very, very slow, and if we worked for the MI5, we would certainly be demoted to Slough House.
Newport in a Nutshell
Whirlwind weekend in Newport: Mel and Ed picked us up Friday morning; we headed northeast and stopped at Zuppardi's Apizza in West Haven—excellent once again—and then we drove to Aquidneck Island (I learned that Newport is a municipality on Aquidneck Island) and checked in at our hotel, The Bellevue Manor, we got some coffee at Picnic Cafe, met Julie and Rob, walked down to Bowen's Wharf and had some drinks, and then ate at the spacious Stoneacre Garden—food and drinks were a bit pricey but good; the next day, I got up early and caught the sunrise and the early morning surfers at Easton Beach, and then we bought sandwiches at the Picnic Cafe and packed them for our hike and we stuffed into Rob and Julie's car and drove to the Doris Duke mansion at the far end of the Cliff Walk—the mansion was impressive, especially all the Asian artifacts, including the beautiful hand-painted wallpaper—and the view from the expansive lawn over the rocky shore and the stone bridge, which spanned a canyon of daisies and ocean water, was even more impressive than the stone mansion itself (Doris Duke is the same lady who owned Duke Farms in Hillsborough, one of the most beautiful pieces of land in New Jersey, and she is also was involved in a scandal-- which the old ladies did NOT mention on the tour . . . in1966, the billionaire tobacco heiress crushed and killed her longtime interior designer and curator, Eduardo Tirella, with a station wagon outside the gates of her Newport mansion after a furious argument about him leaving her employ to become a Hollywood set designer-- the incident was ruled an accident but very well might have been murder, out of sheer rage at his audacity for leaving) and then Julie and Rob left to see their daughter perform trainer duties at a football game and we did the long and arduous hike back to the hotel, past all the insane mansions (and I took the best pictures of my life inside a tunnel!) and then we unpacked our sandwiches and learned that the picnic Cafe was NOT aptly named-- may sandwich was a total soggy disaster, avacado and bacon on sourdough, but they didn't toast the sourdough and put the whole thing on TOP of some salad with vinagrette dressing-- it tasted fine but was a soggy mess, Julie had the same experience in the car driving to the football game-- once we made it back to the hotel, I took a well-deserved nap, and then we got some coffee and a peanut-butter cookie from Picnic Cafe (much more in their wheelhouse) and headed out for drinks at Bowen's Wharf and dinner at Perro Salado, excellent Mexican food and drink, and not too expensive, highly recommended—and then Catherine found the Springfield Inn of Newport, a sticky-floored dive bar with a cover band, full of youngsters (except for the cover band itself, which was comprised of people our age—fifties to sixties, the guitarist looked like Will Ferrell in Eastbound and Down and wore a t-shirt that said "I Bleached My Asshole For This" within a Clorox logo) and the cover band played mainly 90s pop-punk songs: Blink 182, Green Day, "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus, etcetera . . . and the kids—mainly young scantily clad girls—knew ALL the words—very surreal . . . because we also knew all the words as well; the next morning, we got up and went to Fort Adams, a beautiful spot on the bay, and then we got in the car to haul it home—and what a haul it was, 7.5 hours . . . so though it was lovely, I'm not going to Newport again any time soon (although we are attending a wedding there next September, we have learned out lesson and will drive back to Jersey at 5 AM).
Traffic Makes a Very Small State Feel Much Larger
Our trip to Newport, RI was a blast, but the ride home was not-- it took us seven and a half hours to return to New Jersey-- luckily, Ed and Mel were good company (though Mel left her purse on a chair on the patio of Mystic Market in Flanders and she didn't realize this for an hour and the traffic was so bad that we didn't turn around and she's going to figure out how to have it shipped back to her) so perhaps I'll post some Newport photos and commentary tomorrow, after I've recovered from the trauma of this epically insane drive home.
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
Katie Zacharia vs. C.J. Kregg: Steel Cage No-Holds-Barred Coffin Mexican Death Match
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)
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
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!!!
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
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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
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)
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
One Sentence College Essay Workshop (Complete With Videos)
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
I Should Have Biked to the Train
