Ostrich Philosophy

My son Alex came home Tuesday with a nasty scrape on his arm, an injury he suffered in what he named "the arena"-- a free-form fighting melee that became an after school ritual for several days; I'm happy to say I witnessed the inception of this 4th-5th grade gladiatorial combat zone, and I'm also happy to say that I predicted its demise . . . a teacher finally broke it up, and while it looked like a lot of fun, and boys certainly need to burn off some energy and aggression when they leave school, I'm still glad to see it go -- there were a lot of head-on collisions and body slamming, and the ground wasn't particularly grassy-- there were trees and dirts and roots, and so Alex is probably lucky that he got away with such a minor injury . . . and this confirms one of my lessons about kids: it's always better when you don't watch what they're doing, because most of the stuff they do-- stand on furniture, play on the stairs, whip around sharp objects and bash each other with sticks-- looks incredibly dangerous, but most of the time they don't get hurt, and the only person who suffers is the adult watching all the violent nonsense.

Enough About Serial Already

Here is a piece of graffito I read on a condom machine in a bar bathroom: "this gum tastes funny."

Now That Serial Is Over, What Will My Brain Do?

The podcast Serial has finally reached its conclusion-- and while the ending might not satisfy the binge-listeners, anyone who listened to Sarah Koenig slowly explicate the case: the major and minor players, the details, the neighbor-boy and Mr. S., the time-lines, the Nisha call, the Asia alibi, the theories, the issues, the geography, the criminal justice system, the nature of narrative, human nature and truth . . . anyone who consumed this thing week-by-week, with plenty of time to process and discuss each episode with other rabid fans-- these people can't be disappointed by the ending (and I am speculating, of course, which is just what the podcast simultaneously invited us to do and warned us against) but the final episode had it all-- new shit, old theories, new possibilities, Deirdre, the phrase "West Side Hitman," and a final (sort of) conclusion about the case and our justice system; this is not to say that I wasn't rooting for The Last Minute Solution and the greatest forty-five minutes of digital audio ever recorded, and it's not to say that I didn't laugh (really hard) at the Funny or Die parody of the ending-- but I was setting the bar low (because that is the key to happiness) and I set it low enough (and I'm not ashamed to admit) that I got a bit teary-eyed at Adnan's last words-- his stoic attitude towards the universe and the case; he leaves Sarah with this: "I think in a sense you leave it up to the audience to determine" but Sarah says she can't do this -- she can't "take a powder" on a conclusion-- and then she says what we know she has to say, and while it's not last second Hail Mary into the end zone (my friend Kevin said it was more like when the quarterback takes a knee in order to preserve a hard fought tie) but I still think it was more than enough-- she provided plenty of drama and thought provoking commentary, brilliant pacing and superb detail and flawless transitions and dense tape-- tape we have listen to, and so we have to really pay attention, we can't just look at it and draw some quick conclusions; generally the only type of drama that can get me all weepy like the last two episodes of Serial are sports stories-- Friday Night Lights and Hoosiers and Rocky, that sort of stuff-- and I think that's how I felt here; I admired the fight, both from Sarah and her "little garden spade" and from Adnan, who allowed this awful time to be pried back open and scrutinized (would a guilty man agree to go through with this?) and even though it's cliche, sometimes you play as hard as you can, and you don't get a result, and that's frustrating and disappointing, but the important thing is that you put it all on the line and played . . . and that's what this podcast and Sarah Koenig and Adnan did . . . I don't think I've ever spent three months following anything this closely: a news story, a TV show, a book, a sports team . . . Serial takes the cake in that department, and now it's finally come time to conclude this sentence and I think I will end with the moral of the story-- endings are hard . . . there's so few that are memorable and perfect (The Shield, The Winter's Tale, and Let the Right One In immediately come to mind) but that's because endings are contrived and in reality there are no endings, things just keep on going, whether we like them or not . . . so hopefully Episode 13 of Serial (otherwise known as the universe that Serial resides in) will eventually provide us more information about the case, but we have to remember that our universe isn't obligated to explicate anything, and so we just do the best we can with what we have.

Of Course We Do (Not)

My son Alex explained to us that he was making a movie at school and then he asked: "Do we have any snow leopard costumes?"

Like Spider Like Son

Although I am a competent basketball player now, this wasn't the case in college-- in fact, the only basketball skill I possessed back then was the ability to do "the spider"-- a silly drill in which you bounce the ball between your legs with two dribbles in front and then two dribbles behind your back-- and if you can get it going fast it looks pretty neat (and serves absolutely no strategic purpose, though that didn't stop me from doing it at half-court during our intramural games, after which I would chuck up a forty foot hook shot) and now I'm coaching 4th-5th grade basketball and I gave my players some "homework" ball handling drills -- including the spider-- and my own two children are obsessed with it and can actually do it pretty well, though it's probably the last thing they need to master (they'd be better served if they could make a lay-up or dribble with their heads up) but they've obviously got quite a bit of their dad in them (the other morning my wife said: "they can't be all you! they've got to have some of me in them!")

Surprise!

Fans of my idiotic ramblings know that I hate surprise parties-- I think people should be allowed to prepare in advance for social events (and I still haven't recovered from when Catherine threw me a surprise 30th birthday party-- I thought we were headed out to my favorite Mexican place for a relaxing dinner with my family, and instead I had to talk to a bunch of people that I wasn't prepared to talk to . . . it took me an hour to recover from the "surprise") and while I appreciate the planning and cleverness in order to successfully throw one of these parties, I always wonder about the purpose-- I wonder if the party is more for the planners than the recipient; anyway, I was a participant in a surprise birthday party on Saturday night and I suggested that we really give the recipient a surprise-- and I ran through a number of scenarios, including group nudity, knocking him unconscious and driving him to an undisclosed location and leaving him on the side of the road, and finally an easy one: when the birthday boy entered the house, his wife and I would make out in the living room and when he caught us, I would say "Surprise?" . . . but we executed none of my creative ideas, and just went with the traditional hiding in the kitchen and scaring the crap out of him with a shrill "Surprise!". . . and then I stayed out far too late (it's always traumatic for me when I surprise someone, and I need to assuage my anxiety with alcohol) and I was too tired to attend the big charity bash at my friend's mom's house on Sunday night . . . but Catherine went without me and later that evening I received a picture on my phone of her making out with a friend and he accompanied the picture with a text that said, "This is what happens when you don't come out" . . . surprise!

The Way We Were

For the past two weeks, my children have been starring in an epic saga of forgetfulness; they forgot their homework and the materials they needed for their homework multiple times (resulting in awkward phone-calls to their friends-- there is nothing worse than supervising nine and ten year old boys while they make phone-calls in which they actually have to glean some information from the communication) and then Alex nearly shit his pants when he realized that he forgot his saxophone-- his newly purchased very expensive saxophone-- "on the hill by the school" because he played some football right after school let out, but then his brother rushed him to leave . . . and so, nearly an hour after he left the very expensive saxophone on the hill, we raced back to school-- to find that the saxophone was no longer on the hill where he left it, and so there were even more tears, but he lucked out-- some goodhearted soul brought the instrument into the main office-- and as a result of all this forgetting, Catherine and decided that the two of them couldn't walk home for a week-- and that if either of them forgot their stuff, then they were BOTH losing TV for the night and that I would have to pick them up and check to see that they had everything they needed . . . and while I was annoyed with their irresponsibility, I was exactly the same way when I was a kid, so it was hard to actually be angry with them . . . and they do have to remember a lot of stuff; anyway, I raced out of my school last week so I could get to their school and check on them, and when I found the spot where the fourth graders were let out, I saw Ian and a few other kids engaged in an insane tackling and wrestling melee, with plenty of full speed running into each other and lots of chucking each other to the ground and it surprised me that this was happening on school grounds but they seemed like they knew what they were doing and that this was some sort of daily ritual so I forgot about it (especially since Ian had to return inside the school to find his trombone, which he forgot) and then the next day when I picked them up, my other son-- who is in fifth grade-- was also involved in this melee and I asked him if this happened every day and he said, "No, this never happens . . . but I saw them and joined in" which made me laugh because the whole thing looked so casually violent, like they always did this to let off steam after a school day, but I warned them that when some teacher or aid saw this, they were going to get in trouble and I told them about the very first after-school detention I received, which, coincidentally, was for-- and I quote this-- "play-fighting in the yard" (I'll never forget the description because I had to bring the detention slip home and get it signed) and I'm really hoping they start remembering their school materials because I don't want to see any more of this, as it's too stupidly nostalgic (and my wife doesn't care if I committed these same errors, she thinks we're all idiots).

How to Write the Comment of the Year

There are only sixteen days left in 2014, so if you're looking to win the prestigious Sentence of Dave Comment of the Year you'd better get cracking; to see what you're up against, read yesterday's sentence and the comments (and you also need to read this sentence as well) and then you'll understand what you need to do:

1) synthesize elements from two or more sentences in a brief and humorous fashion;

2) offer an ironic juxtaposition; zman's comment not only juxtaposes black and white, but also sleek and fluffy AND large and small . . . absolutely masterful;

3) you should avoid making fun of Dave-- while Clarence may have gotten a laugh yesterday, he's never going to win Comment of the Year with that kind of attitude.

Physics Equation with Dark Matter

Black fleece pants + black jacket + black rainy night + black Nike sneakers + black dog = almost getting hit by a car while walking the dog.

I Finally Understand Madmen

It took me a while to get it, but I have a good excuse-- I was distracted by all the outfits: Meghan's beautiful outfits and Peggy's atrocious outfits and Pete's silly outfits, Joan's voluptuous outfits and Betty's evolving outfits-- ironically, I share the same blindness as the men on the show . . . but I can't be blamed because of the "curse of testosterone"; anyway, better late than never, and so here it is: the show's theme is essentially the title of Hanna Rosin's candid book The End of Men and the Rise of Women; Don's infinite fall during the theme song is more than a tragic symbol of his own career arc . . . it's a symbol of the decline of all men in America; as the show grinds to a close, the women are gaining power and thinking for themselves-- Joan as a partner and Peggy as a talented executive and Meghan as an actress and Betty as an assertive and intelligent housewife who realizes her talents were wasted-- while the men are dinosaurs (Lou) or hipsters (Roger doing acid, Stan and his beard) or insane (Michael cuts his nipple off!)-- and when Don and Harry Crane leave the hip L.A. party and head out to sip whiskey at the old man restaurant with the paneled decor and a stone hearth, you can sense that the good times are over . . . maybe Don will regain some tiny shred of relevance, or achieve sobriety, but that's hardly a happy ending to the show, and I'm assuming it will end far worse than that.

Six Ways to Annoy Your Friends (Now!)

If you read the new Steven Johnson book How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World then you will learn lots of annoying facts about his six topics of invention: glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light . . . but I won't bore you with pedantry (though Johnson's writing can make anything exciting, even the history of refrigeration) and I'll just summarize his theme instead: to be extraordinarily innovative, you don't want to remain true to yourself and your unorthodox principles -- you might improve the world slightly that way-- but Johnson strives to dispel this "lone genius" myth; instead, if you really want to do something groundbreaking, you've got a little lost and form new connections, explore uncharted terrain, break your routine, and let yourself be buffeted by the new ideas circulating in the ether . . . and it still might take a LONG time before the world catches up with you . . . but the inventions are out there, just waiting for the right suite of technologies to become available, and the right brains to combine them (the same way Shakespeare went about "smashing words together" to make Elizabethan English into something more modern).

In the Old Days, If You Didn't Go to Church, You Got Whipped (Cream?)

I haven't been very zealous about my children's religious attendance (let's be frank here, I haven't even been mildly interested in making them attend church) but you reap what you sow; last week my youngest son told my wife: "putting whipped cream on my ice cream is part of my religion."

Tony Luke's is Better Than Jim's (and Other Notes for Future Trips to Philly)

Catherine and I spent the weekend in Philly (sans kids) and I'd like to note some highs and lows for both my readers and my future self:

1) Not only is the roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and long hots at Tony Luke's better than the same offering at DiNic's-- but (though it's comparing apples to oranges . . . or pigs to cows) it's also better than a cheesesteak at Jim's-- and as an added bonus, the staff is actually cordial at Tony Luke's-- the woman taking my order didn't seem to mind at all that I had a question-- while Jim's has a "soup Nazi" feel to the ordering process . . . who do I order from? . . . the guy with the metal thingie? . . . did he make eye contact with me? . . . does that mean I need to say something? . . . I'm pretty far along in the line . . . am I too far in line? . . . should I have said something? . . . is it too late? . . . did I miss my chance?. . . do they have provolone? . . . do I have to say "wit wiz"? . . .. how do you spell "whiz"? . . . should I say "wit prov"? and after all the hazing, we were still underwhelmed by the cheesesteaks from Jim's this time around (although I must admit, that past times they were delicious);

2) our next trip to Philadelphia, I am going to get a cheesesteak from Tony Luke's and see if it is as good as the roast pork sandwich (because quite a few people were eating cheesesteaks there);

3) the Good Dog and La Locanda Del Ghiottone are great places to eat;

4) the tour of the Physick House is worth doing: the guy who does the tour is the great-great grandson of Dr. Physick-- "The Father of American Surgery"-- and while he's an eccentric man, who seems to be living his life both in the 18th Century and the present, simultaneously, there is no question that he knows a buttload about the house and the history of the area, which he gets across in passionate anecdotal fashion, with loads of bad puns, and -- odd as he is, and history buffs are usually quite odd-- at least he doesn't dress in period garb, which is a big plus . . . but be warned, the good Doctor's surgical tools are rather primitive and the accompanying diagrams made me light-headed and also, I'm pretty sure he explained to us, while discussing the family tree on the wall in the room with all the surgical tools, that he's seriously inbred;

5) The Hop Sing Laundromat has a lot of rules, so I put the kibosh on going there;

6) listening to the podcast Serial while driving is dangerous stuff . . . Lynn and Connell were so engrossed that they missed the exit . . . by thirty miles (but Lynn did get an A+ on the Episode 10 quiz that Catherine and I created for my class);

7) Connel got the perfect mojito at lunch at Cuba Libre, but then couldn't get the diner bartender to replicate it . . . but he does claim that the best drinks in the world are served at the awkwardly named Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company (but Catherine and I didn't go over there, as you have to mortgage your house to afford the drinks, which run fifteen dollars a piece-- but Lynn and Connel say it was well worth it, so next time I will suck it up and pay);

8) if you want to go to Farmicia, you need a reservation; same with Howl at the Moon, and McGillin's was a madhouse at 10 PM on a Saturday night, far too young a crowd (we walked in while the bouncers were breaking up a fight . . . the place was a giant frat party-- if you want to visit Philly's oldest bar, try the afternoon);

9) it's a long walk from the Old City to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, especially when it's pouring rain and you're only wearing a sweatshirt because your wife didn't emphasize the weather forecast (she told me, but she didn't TELL me);

10) the Thomas Bond House keeps the heat too high, so you have to break the rules and open the windows-- which have no screens because it's a restored historical house.

Sarah Koenig, Laura and the Dude Profanely Grapple in the In-Between Place (Philosophical Shit Part 2)

If you go 38 minutes and 40 seconds into Episode 8 of Serial, then you get to hear Sarah Koenig set up what she calls "her favorite piece of tape from all her reporting so far"-- and then you hear a friend of Jay's named Laura stumble and stutter and curse her way to the conclusion that she's very confused and things are extremely complicated-- there's just too much conflicting information; Sarah Koenig says that Laura's stream-of-consciousness equivocating could be her own . . . and all this reminds me of the scene in The Big Lebowski when the Dude proclaims, in the same stuttering, stumbling epithet-laced manner that "new shit has come to light" -- and the Dude and Sarah Koenig occasionally strike me as similar, though Koenig is a far more seasoned and professional investigator, but she still seems slightly over her head-- digging away at the case with her "little garden spade" . . . and open to all possibilities, as the Dude is, and though this is a wonderful trait, it means Serial may end like The Big Lebowski . . . an excellent picaresque journey that disappears into a scattered collection of phenomenal fragments (at the start of Episode 9 of Serial, Koenig presents the "new shit"-- three things that are fairly well substantiated, but actually increase the fog, complexity and ambiguity of the case).

Philosophical Shit

I think teachers often forget Aristotle's idea that "the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet" because they are already educated, so they know how to do the tasks they assign, and find it hard to imagine themselves stumbling around in the shadowy ignorance of Plato's allegorical cave; and while I do my best to empathize with the plight of my students, I certainly know some of my material too well to remember what it's like not to know it -- which is why teaching the podcast Serial has been so difficult and enlightening . . . I've learned that I am much better at reading than I am at listening, and that I have trouble with details, timelines, and auditory descriptions of geography . . . I made my students write an essay connecting Plato's cave metaphor to Episode 7 and 8 of Serial and one essay explained that Sarah Koenig couldn't be manipulating us (the audience) because she is also in a shadowy cave of ignorance, the maze of her investigation, and we are -- like Inception-- inside an even shadowier cave within her cave, and then I added another layer to this: though I am the teacher, I'm not great at organizing things this dense and detail-oriented, and so I am in an even darker cave within that cave; anyway, I am listening to the episodes two or three times, in order to plan and teach each one, and the students are helping me as much as I am helping them (and often summarizing and analyzing things in ways more eloquent and precise than I am capable of, which is impressive . . . and the main thing you should learn from all this, is that if you're life is on the line, you don't want me arguing your case).

Can Anyone Peel an Egg?

I've got decent fine motor skills-- I can shoot a dart, play lead guitar, and tweeze an ear-hair with unerring accuracy-- so why can't I peel a hardboiled egg?

What the Kids Are Saying . . .

Here is some of the slang I've picked up from the teenagers this school year: apparently, if you are over forty and some young person has nicely groomed eyebrows, then it's really funny if you tell this person their eyebrows are "on fleek" . . . also, if you're a teenager and you've got a BAE (a boyfriend or girlfriend) then you can say that you and your significant other are "cuffed."

Fermi's Paradox and The Great Filter Wish You a Happy Holiday Season

This year I'm not going to get so upset over the rampant materialism and consumerism (and the resulting environmental disaster) caused by the holiday season, and one of the things that's helping me cope is Fermi's Paradox and its evil twin, The Great Filter: when several physicists were discussing the high probability of extra-terrestrial life (based on the vast number of stars like our sun and planets that could support life) then Enrico Fermi ended the discussion with the question "Where is everybody?" and one possibility is that there are Great Filters which are very, very difficult to pass through on the road from inert matter to intelligent life . . . and one of these "Great Filters" might be the technological ability to destroy the very planet on which you live, and we've reached that capability, and we seem to be fairly intent on activating this Great Filter (for more on this, listen to Dan Carlin's podcast Blueprint for Armageddon II) and so I'm not going to worry about the earth any longer-- I'm going to live it up, because apparently every other intelligent civilization in the galaxy destroyed itself before figuring out interstellar travel, so why should I expect anything more from humans?

Real vs. "Real"

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)  is a film with many layers-- but the layers are shallow . . . we never leave the epidermis-- and in the end, though there's some good performances and some interesting irony and meta-irony (Michael Keaton plays an actor past his prime trying to stay relevant, but all people can remember him for is his role as the superhero Birdman . . . sound familiar?) the movie is overwrought and forgettable; Edward Norton does his impression of the best actor in the universe, the arch-fiend is a critic-- who might destroy Michael Keaton's play and might even destroy the movie as a whole, but then Keaton saves the day with his performance and his "performance" and for some inscrutable reason (perhaps to make it more "real") this is all done in one long Steadicam shot, giving the illusion that the film is one long take . . . but all this does is make the film far too long (two hours) for this kind of comedy, there's too much time to "get" the irony and the ambiguity (and maybe all this quality TV has ruined me, but I'm used to brevity now) and so while there are funny and profound and vivid moments, as a whole the movie is ponderous (JCVD does it better) and Emma Stone's various rants and lectures about Twitter and social media are annoying and dated, but if you want to see something real (rather than "real") then check out On the Ropes, a 94 minute boxing documentary from 1999 that tells the story of three boxers and their trainer Harry Keitt; Keitt has been homeless, shot his cousin over a drug deal, and addicted to cocaine, but he fought his way out of trouble and now tries to inspire his fighters . . . but even if you train hard, it's tough to defeat the ghetto: Tyrene Manson is a Golden Gloves contender, but she gets screwed by her crackhead Uncle Randy, who sells drugs to an undercover cop, and Tyrene gets charged with intent to sell as well (simply because some drugs were in her room, which is hardly "hers" as she lives in a house with many other people . . . watching her incompetent lawyer and the cold-hearted judge that sentences her is heartbreaking); George Walton is a young fighter with professional aspirations and ability, and he leaves his trainer behind and learns some hard lessons about trust and talent; and Noel Santiago is a likable slacker who finds inspiration and enthusiasm in the boxing gym, but also learns that even if you try, sometimes success is elusive . . . Birdman takes a long time illustrating a few things about some shallow and insipid characters, but On the Ropes cuts to the bone much quicker, and though the film is gritty and at times ugly, there's some unforgettable moments in it.

It Works For Me

I've found that in the winter, if I take my dog for a bike ride or a hike through the park, I get far less muddy if I tuck my sweat pants into my socks, and while I realize this looks ridiculous, I'm just going to apologize in advance and do it anyway.

Enough of That . . . Or Is It?

I finished Dana Goldstein's book The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession and while there's certainly fascinating stuff in there (the reason, in the1800's, politicians embraced females invading a traditionally male job was because they would work on the cheap) and the book lays out, in a comprehensive and unbiased manner, the history of teachers and unions, education and desegregation, the various attempts to use testing and teacher evaluation to improve schools, the political and moral panic that often resulted in teachers being persecuted for reasons other than incompetence, the charter school movement, Teach for America, the Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and all sorts of other things that I knew only passing information about, but for the layperson the interesting part of the book is the epilogue, where she makes some recommendations based on all her research, and these are logical and worth taking a look at; but for those of you who don't feel like it, which I totally understand (you could be reading a Don Winslow book) here is a short summary:

1) teacher pay matters and while teachers aren't paid poorly in America, they aren't paid nearly as much as in countries with very successful education systems,  such as Finland, South Korea, and Japan-- if teaching jobs aren't coveted, and if teachers aren't as respected as doctors and engineers, then you won't be able to attract excellent candidates;

2) we need to focus on using good teachers as models and creating communities of excellent practice, rather than creating systems of evaluation purely to ferret out the bad teachers-- as these systems always fail because of the insane amounts of paperwork and data they create;

3) tests need to return to their rightful role as diagnostic tools, not as methods to achieve high stakes funding-- which resulted in teaching to the test, gaming the system, and all sorts of illustrations of Campbell's Law;

4) the principal matters as much as the teachers-- exceptional leadership improves the bottom third of teachers and the top third of teachers-- not excess evaluation paperwork;

5) star teachers were not necessarily the best students--so simply hiring people with higher math SAT scores isn't necessarily going to improve American education-- research shows you're better off hiring someone with excellent communication skills, who adeptly uses a large vocabulary, and can explain things well-- even if they once struggled to learn them in the past (and I agree with this, because I was a horrible and disorganized student, and so I know how to contend with this in class);

6) teachers benefit from watching each other work-- but there's usually no time for this (although since I started teaching Serial, a number of my colleagues have observed my class, and it's great-- they're not administrators filling out paperwork while I teach-- so there's no pressure-- and I can ask them for suggestions during the lesson or afterwards);

7) end outdated union protections-- there needs to be a faster way to fire incompetent veteran teachers, and a streamlined way for the teacher to appeal being fired (because teacher appointments and terminations have certainly succumbed to political whims in the past);

8) we are not as homogenous as Finland and there are limitations to our educational system, which is very decentralized, so it's near impossible to use top-down reform to improve our schools-- there's no federal body to check how schools are implementing federal standards, and federal funding is fairly minimal (compared to state and town funding) and we have schools in America with incredibly different study bodies and educational problems, so every school might need a slightly different plan to improve;

and finally, if you want to hear something more condensed on these issues, which features an interview with Dana Goldstein, then listen to this week's episode of Freakonomics: "Is America's Education Problem Really Just a Teacher Problem?"

Miraculous Ironic Juxtaposition with Exceptional Significance

As I got in my 2001 green and tan Subaru Outback (this will be important later in the sentence) at the local Quikcheck, I noticed that a guy from my pick-up basketball game was sitting in the mini-van parked next to my car, and a fluffy little white dog was sitting on his lap-- and I took a look at my dog, who happened to be in the backseat of my Subaru, and I felt deep sympathy for this guy next to me, because my dog is excellent looking-- he's sleek and black and streamlined, like a sports car-- and I had a moment where I felt great pity for all dudes that have fluffy little white dogs, instead of super-cool muscular black dogs-- and then the moment passed and I pulled out of the Quikcheck and was nearly run off the road by an intimidating '70's era muscle car-- a Charger or a Mustang, I think-- it was wide and mean looking, blue, with a thick white stripe on the hood (it looked like the car from Saxondale)-- and I'm sure the dude driving it felt the same way about me and my lame Subaru Outback that I felt about the guy with the fluffy white dog; and there are two ways I might interpret this miracle of juxtaposition:

1) I should respect people's choices-- maybe some guys likes fluffy white dogs and it's none of my business to think otherwise, or . . . .

2) I need to purchase a vintage muscle car so that I can pity people driving Subarus and minivans (and I'm leaning towards #2 because in six years, I'll be fifty and then I get to have a mid-life crisis).

Ring Out the Bells!

Let it be known that on the morning of 26th of November, in the year 2014, at approximately 6:55 AM, that Dave parked his minivan perfectly . . . equally distant from the outer lines, and just inside the back line of the spot . . . and if you don't think this is a big deal, then this is because you haven't seen some of my other attempts at putting my car between the lines (and take a look at some of the other cars . . . granted, we have to be to work very early, and it's dark, and we're tired, and thinking about the day's lessons . . . but still, it can be ugly).

Reading for Pleasure is Fun, But What About Reading For Anger?

I am bashing my way through Dana Goldstein's comprehensive history of public school teaching in America, and while I'm not exactly enjoying the book (look at the cover, you can tell there aren't going to  be any jokes) I am learning something: all this shit coming down the pipe right now has been tried before: merit pay plans, complex evaluation schemes that overburden administrators with paperwork, test data collection, tying school achievement to test scores, and strict productivity measures . . . and none of it has worked any miracles, so it's sad and frustrating that the nation is wasting time on the re-institution of these ideas, when the key to good teaching is the same as it ever was--  attract smart, passionate, and creative teachers who know their stuff and put them in an environment that is conducive to learning (but of course, it's hard to measure how smart, creative and passionate a teacher is . . . which is why the business world has gotten away with byzantine evaluation systems . . . but education, ironically, is always the last to learn anything).

This Is the Closest My Dog Will Get to Downhill Skiing (and the Closest I Will Get To Being a Chairlift)

I've already discussed the pros and cons of the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash but here is a practical use for this wonderful contraption, if you want your dog to experience the joys of downhill skiing . . . and if you'd like to experience the joys of being a human funicular: find a moderately steep hill, such as the one in Donaldson Park that leads down to the middle school soccer field, and then put your bike in the granny-gear and bike up the hill, turn around, and zoom down, your dog racing by your side . . . then repeat until your dog is tired and happy, and your legs can no longer function.

You Just Keep On Pushing My Love Over the Borderline

Apparently, there are dozens of inland immigration checkpoints well within the U.S. border and many U.S. citizens are fighting mad about these "warrantless unconstitutional" security stops that take up their time and energy, and so there has been a wave of "checkpoint refusal" videos-- and an entire culture of how to impede the DHS efforts to detain vehicles and check the driver's documents . . . and while I admire these brave and principled souls, mainly I'm glad that I don't live near any border of significance (and if you wonder what things would be like if there were no border between the U.S. and Mexico, then listen to the Freakonomics episode "Should the US Merge with Mexico", which entertains this thought experiment).

Wet Dreams?

It's easy to fall asleep to the patter of a steady rain, but the erratic drops from a leaky faucet will keep you up all night.

The Tritium Age of Podcasts

For the past few years, I've grown more and more enthusiastic about podcasts . . . and I wasn't sure why this happened, as the technology has existed for a while; I can remember the first one I listened to back in 2007 (The History of the Byzantine Empire by Lars Brownsworth) and while I certainly enjoyed learning about my favorite period in history for free, I couldn't imagine that this was anything groundbreaking, nor did I think that my friends would be interested in the topic (unlike now: I'm recommending podcasts to everyone, 24/7) and after I finished learning about Diocletian and Justinian, I immediately went back to Howard Stern (on my Sirius radio) but this New York magazine article explains what's behind the current renaissance in podcasting . . . and while I love the fact that podcasts have increased exponentially in variety and quality, I don't like the reason why . . . because the reason isn't intellectual and the reason isn't futuristic; in fact, the reason is mundane and environmentally destructive; the reason is cars . . . cars have gone on-line, and so on-demand listening is easy and convenient, and Americans drive a lot-- so the advertising money works if you have a successful podcast, and so I'm going to have to begrudgingly thank the internal combustion engine because I'm learning a shitload of cool stuff; here's a sample:

1) the 99% Invisible episode Vexillonaire taught me that if you want to design a flag, you should draw a one-inch by one-and-a-half-inch rectangle on a piece of paper, and draw your flag in that tiny space, because that small drawing is exactly how a flag looks when you view it up on a pole;

2) the Radiolab episode Cities taught me that the speed people walk in various cities correlates with all sort of things: income, patents created, the number of libraries, how many fancy restaurants exist, etc. etc. and the bigger a city is, the faster people walk;

3) Desi Serna's Guitar Music Theory taught me that in a blues progression, you can play the parent major scale over any dominant seventh chord, so if you've got an E7 chord, then you can imagine that it's the fifth degree of the progression and play an A major scale over it;

4) Sarah Koenig's Serial is still teaching me what this medium can do . . . and that on-demand-listening might be more controversial than anyone imagined.

Serial Hyperbole

For nine weeks, I've been touting the podcast Serial, and people are finally starting to listen to me-- in fact, there's even a Slate Spoiler podcast about the podcast-- but while I'm proud to say that I was hip to this thing when it started, and let everyone know it, I certainly wasn't smart enough (or brave enough) to teach it to my students, but -- thanks to my friend Alec, who sent me a link to "Why I'm Teaching Serial Instead of Shakespeare" and double-thanks to a generous and altruistic English teacher (Michael Godsey) who provided lesson plans, hand-outs, and connections to the Common Core Standards-- I started teaching Serial on Friday . . . and though I'm not going to skip Hamlet, I will say this: I've never had a kid say to me, when I introduced a new book "now I know what I'm doing this weekend" but a bunch of kids stayed after class to ask me questions about the podcast (which I could barely answer, because this story is so complicated) and that's what one student said before she left the room (another student listened to seven episodes in one day before I even started teaching it . . . Sarah Koenig has invented a new genre of media, and created a masterpiece in one fell swoop).

Stuff I'll Never Write

Since I'm never going to write this brilliant treatise, I'm offering it up to the internet: the trial of Hermione in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is strikingly similar to The Trial of Socrates: both defendants remain stoic in the face of an illogical accusation brought forth by one person, both defendants refuse to weep or use theatrics to sway the jury, both defendants predict that the prosecution will dearly regret their decisions, both appeal to the gods for justice, both defendants refuse to cower before a death sentence, and both cannot imagine living if their current honorable status is stripped from them. . . this would be a great doctoral thesis for someone with academic aspirations . . . all I ask is a little something for the effort (perhaps total consciousness on my deathbed).

One Two Three . . . Four?

Sometimes, early in the morning, when I'm counting scoops of ground coffee as I dump them into the coffee-maker, I realize that I haven't been counting scoops of coffee, I've just been counting.

Phones Have Little Screens

Here are two e-mails from my friend Connell, after I asked him to check out a place on Airbnb:

1) This one looks really tiny to me . . . I'm looking on my phone so that shouldn't be surprising; 


2) I just looked at the place from my computer . . . the place looks fine and the location looks great;

and so I think we can learn a valuable lesson here; Marshall McLuhan was right, the medium does embed itself within the message-- if you look at an apartment on your phone, it looks claustrophobic and tiny, but if you view it on a 27 inch monitor, it looks spacious and inviting . . . and this brings me to my actual message: the youngster at my workplace that watches Madmen on her laptop is NOT watching the same television show that I am watching; she is watching a show about what happens to Don Draper (Richard Whitman) while I am just gawking at props and sets and furniture.

Meta-Collisions

We all know that texting and driving is a deadly combination, but what about all the crashes caused by seeing someone texting and driving, and then getting so indignantly angry at the texting-driver that it causes you to get into a crash . . . because it's very distracting to properly curse-out a texting-driver in the lane next to you: you need to roll down your window, lower the volume of your car stereo, beep your horn, spout some dire statistics interlaced with profanity, and flip them the bird-- all at a moment's notice (I couldn't find any information on this phenomenon, but I'm sure it's bad news).

How to Be a Lousy Neighbor (in the Fall)

I did some research, and-- if you like your lawn-- then you have to rake up the leaves in your backyard, otherwise they will smother the grass and/or kill it with bacteria . . . but if you're patient enough (and don't mind being a lousy neighbor) then I've found that the leaves on your front lawn will eventually blow away (or at least all over your neighbors' lawns) but despite this epiphany, I still went out and bought some leaf bags, and so (eventually) I'm going to do the right thing (or make my kids do the right thing).

Savages Lives Up to Its Title

Even for Don Winslow, Savages is especially brutal: two hydroponic marijuana growers take on the Baja Cartel, there is an abduction, and much collateral damage (and I'm taking a break from my Winslow book-binge, after consecutively reading Dawn Patrol, The Winter of Frankie Machine, and Savages, but after I finish the newish translation of Brothers Karamazov, I'm sure I'll be ready for some clipped prose and hip dialogue and get right back to him).

Sometimes a Tie Isn't Like Kissing Your Sister (Sometimes a Tie is Awesome)

Friday Night, Liz and Eric hosted the 5th Annual Scary Story Contest (the prompt was "The Hive" and there were eight stories in all)-- and as usual, the stories were fantastic: well-written, various in content, genre and theme -- giant insects in the Australian outback, a lepidopterist/ serial killer, a troll with a honey-comb eye, a town possessed by droning, an old beauty queen who poisoned young pageant goers, and an especially possessive female ghost with a particular musical taste -- and they were all deftly executed . . . and while the contest isn't all about winning-- comparing these stories is like comparing apples and pomegranates-- it's certainly fun to get the most votes, and it's always nice to collect some money . . . but this year there were two stories that tied for first-- so then it became an issue of whether or not we should vote as a group to break the tie, or just have co-winners share the money . . . and the group went back and forth for a moment before deciding to break the tie, which we did ("Highly Intelligent Extremely Violent" edged out "How to Win the Scary Story Contest") but this was a highly unusual tie, because Stacey and I decided on a risky tactic: we worked cooperatively on two stories (knowing that we would possibly lose a vote, since you can't vote for your own, so we couldn't vote for two of our own) but -- miracle of miracles!-- our two stories tied for first, so the tie-breaker didn't actually matter, and it was quite awesome to watch people breaking a tie, and not mind which way the vote went, because we were both playing for both teams; the lesson here is that it's fun and profitable to write with a partner, especially if you use Google Docs, and it's especially fun to write a scary story using Google Docs because as you are writing away, creepy words and images are appearing in other spots on the screen, almost as if you've channeled some kind of ghostly spirit to help you write . . . and just to feed Stacey's ego, since it was her first win, I should point out that her idea beat out my idea in the tie-breaker, but I should also point out that though her initial outline of the story fleshed out the setting and the conflict, when things got interesting, one of her bullet points in her "scary outline" was simply "fucked up shit" and it was really fun to cooperatively fill-in that part of the story.

The Only Good Thing About Umbrellas . . .

I am admittedly an umbrellist-- I hate those things-- but I have found one good use for them: the I'm going to a picnic and I'm bringing an umbrella game; I just learned this game from some kids in my Creative Writing class-- to start you say: "I'm going to a picnic and I'm bringing an umbrella" and then other people ask to bring things, but you only "allow" them to bring the thing if they say "umm" before the item; for example, if someone says, "Can I bring . . . umm . . . a sandwich?" then you say "sure!" but if they say "can I bring a sandwich?" then you say "absolutely not!" and some kids know the game, some kids figure it out, and some kids go crazy trying to understand why you can bring certain things and not others (this is very similar to the the "I love coffee but I hate tea" riddle) and one girl, once the gig was up and she knew the trick said to me: "So I was being punished for speaking properly?" and I said "Yes."

I Wear Ugly Shoes Because Sitting is the New Smoking

So if you haven't heard, sitting is the new smoking (even if you exercise) and chairs are the unassuming enemies that live among us (for more on this, check out 99% Invisible Episode 139: Edge of Your Seat) and that's why, when I was at the world famous Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, I went to the Rockport store and bought some very ugly (but very comfortable) shoes, so I would be more inclined to stay on my feet . . . but I've suffered some derision for these shoes (from my wife and colleagues) because they're not very stylish . . . but I suppose I'll have the last laugh, because I'll be wearing them when all my stylish friends are dead and gone (which doesn't sound all that appealing, but at least I'll get to throw Rockports on their graves).

Holy Cow! Or Should I Say Holy Owl?

If you haven't seen the documentary series The Staircase then I pity you . . . but if you have  seen it, then you need to listen to the first episode of the podcast Criminal (Animal Instinct) because it gives a perfectly logical answer to the Peterson murder . . . The Owl Theory!

If You're Near Phoenicia . . .

If you're anywhere near Phoenicia, New York, make sure to stop at the Phoenicia Diner . . . the turkey chili is the best I've ever eaten (it probably helped that we did a four hour rocky and muddy hike to North Mountain Ledge just before we ate) and I loved my wife's reuben (home-made sauerkraut and corned beef) as well; this joint has figured out how to balance affordable upscale-diner ambience without too much of the hipster farm-to-table Woodstock vibe (and they have a children's menu too).

Aphorism of Ian

My son accused my wife of sitting on his stuffed monkey and she said, "No I didn't!" and then -- much to her surprise-- Ian pulled the monkey from under her butt and my wife laughed when she realized that she hadn't sat on his stuffed monkey, he tricked her and then pretended to pull it from under her rear-end and after she finished laughing, Ian told her: "a day without laughter is a day wasted."

Just Because You Live in Woodstock, Doesn't Mean You Know About Woodstock

For the November long weekend, we rented a fantastic house (Airbnb!) in the scenic little fly-fishing town of Phoenicia up in the Catskills-- and we took a side trip to Woodstock (which is just as you might imagine it: kitschy shops, art galleries, farm-to-table organic restaurants, etc.) and stopped at Peace, Love & Cupcakes and found out that Janice-- award winning cupcake maker-- went to Douglass College (Rutgers) in New Brunswick, remembers Greasy Tony's, and student taught at East Brunswick High School-- quite a small world-- and now she's an old hippie that runs a fantastic cupcake shop in Woodstock, but that doesn't mean she's any kind of authority on the concert that occurred in 1969 on Max Yasgur's farm: for the sake of my children, we were trying to list some of the acts at the show; I said The Who and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were there and she insisted they were NOT there . . . but they were there (despite this lack of knowledge about the line-up, her cupcakes were still very delicious).

What's Wrong With My Head?

When I wear a rain-jacket, the hood always covers my eyes-- I don't know if my neck is too short or my eyes are too high on my head or my posture is too troglodytic-- and so in order to keep dry and see where I'm going, then I have to wear a baseball cap and the rain-jacket hood . . . this seems like overkill; does anyone else have this problem?

Even Bruce Loves a Reading List

Even though Bruce Springsteen and I only have three books in common on our favorite books list (Moby Dick, Blood Meridian, The Brothers Karamazov) I still totally approve of his list (I've read fifteen of the thirty books on his list and might read a few of the one's I haven't read).

Dave Receives a Compliment Meant For His Wife

My wife has been multitasking like a madwoman lately-- work craziness, packing for our son's school camping trip, making lunches for everyone, cooking all the meals (because I'm coaching all the time) and participating in various community stuff (ice cream socials and School Board election events, etc etc) so I decided to get her some flowers and write her a note to her reminding her how much the family appreciates all she does for us; I called the florist and then got Ian and the dog ready to walk over there, but then we decided it would be more fun to bike over, so I attached the dog to my bike and we cycled over to Main Street, picked up the flowers, and headed home -- and I felt a little overwhelmed, as I was:

1) trying to hold the wildflower bouquet;

2) trying to prevent the dog from wrapping the bungee cord around any trees, bushes, or humans;

3) trying to keep an eye on Ian, since we were crossing some busy roads and navigating some areas where there was no sidewalk--

and I must have looked pretty absurd: biking with the dog, trying to hold the flowers, my son trailing behind me, because a mom pushing a jogging stroller took a look at me, made some inferences, and said "You're a good husband!" and I said, "I think I bit off more than I can chew here" and then she yelled-- because I was flying past her at this point: "You're teaching your son a great lesson! How to multitask!" and when I got home, I realized the irony . . . I was trying to thank my wife for multi-tasking with some flowers, but instead I got complimented for my multi-tasking (by a fairly cute jogger mom, I might add) even though I'm a horrible multi-tasker (and not even very adept at doing one thing at a time).

Trick and Treat

Despite being exhausted from non-stop soccer events, I decided to so something fun and ambitious at my son Ian's Thursday night soccer practice: Soccer Olympics! with prizes for the winning team! . . . I figured it was the day before Halloween and the kids would enjoy some friendly competition-- and I had a funny joke planned; I was going to award the winning team oranges and then give the losing team candy, though my wife said this was a bad idea and the kids wouldn't get the joke and might kill each other and/or me-- but she was wrong, the kids tried to kill before the prizes were awarded-- the friendly competition wasn't so friendly: there was an actual fight, kids were cheating, bickering, etc. and my son got busted for an f-word violation, and so it turns out you shouldn't have Soccer Olympics the day before Halloween, but once we sorted out the mayhem and announced a winner, I forged ahead with my joke and said, "Okay, for the winners, who did so well at all the events and are such great athletes, we have something healthy and delicious: oranges!" and the kids were happy to have them-- for a moment-- but then when I said, "Okay, and we should punish the losing team and give them something bad for them . . . candy!" and then there was a fun moment of cheering and complaining, from the losers and winners, respectively, but there was no outright fighting, and then I gave the winners candy and the losers the rest of the oranges and everyone was happy.

Dave Makes His List

My buddy Rob over at Gheorghe: The Blog assigned his staff an impossible task: make a list of your ten all-time favorite songs; though I'm awful at making decisions, I finally completed my list (after much hemming, hawing, and hedging) so if you want to check it out (and a lot of other verbiage about music) head on over and read Dave Beats Around the Bush Before Listing a Dozen Songs (FU Base 10!)

Too Much Perspective

A few weeks ago, I got an outside perspective on my personality (and it wasn't particularly flattering) and while I've processed it and learned from it, I wasn't quite ready to do it all over again, but just last week, I received another piece of the fascinating puzzle that I call "How the World Views Dave"; last week, I ran into an old student at the Wawa-- I taught her four years ago in Creative Writing class-- and after the usual stereotypical pleasantries, she said, "So . . . are you letting your kids watch TV yet?" and I told her that I was . . . a little bit . . . and so now I know that a bunch of students know me as "the crazy guy who deprived his children of video games and television" because once you're a few years out of high school, you only retain one idea about each teacher (because that's all your brain needs) and so once again, I've got to revise my view of how the world views me . . . I thought all my students remembered me as that "really fun guy who was also smart and taught us lots of valuable lessons, but in a totally creative and engaging way" but they actually just felt bad for my children.

Ironic Kid Holiday Collision

My son Alex lost his tooth at school on Halloween, but the Tooth Fairy must have been working overtime because she forgot to take it and leave some cash (and you can see why Halloween would be an extremely busy time for the Tooth Fairy, because of all the Tootsie Roll consumption . . . also, The Tooth Fairy and her spouse stayed up late binge-watching The Walking Dead, which was totally in the spirit of one kid holiday, but made it difficult to remember TWO kid holidays in one day; as an unrelated addendum, I would like to add that I would be way more careful than the people on The Walking Dead . . . they're constantly splitting up, investigating insignificant tight spaces, and holing up in spots with no good exit . . . if there's a zombie apocalypse, stick with me).

Dave is Headed for a Book Binge

I read Don Winslow's tour-de-force drug cartel novel The Power of the Dog over the summer, and I just finished his surfing/crime thriller The Dawn Patrol, and it was so good that I am going to keep going and read all of Winslow's books-- next on my list is The Winter of Frankie Machine . . . Winslow combines elements from two of my favorite writers: Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy (and since Elmore Leonard is dead and James Ellroy takes a long time to write his books, I'm very happy to have discovered Don Winslow).

Best Halloween Treat Ever

My dog Sirius provided me with a delectable Halloween treat-- two engorged ticks-- each the size, color and consistency of a plump blueberry (I had to pry them from his stumpy tail with a forked stick . . . yuck).

The Greatest Thing Since Racism?

Maybe you love white bread or maybe you hate it, but either way, you're making a statement . . . and if you need some help deconstructing exactly what that statement is, then you need to listen to the latest episode of 99% Invisible "Good Bread" . . . because white bread and brown bread have been around for thousands of years, and for thousands of years your choice of bread has had a subtext to it.

Coaching Question

How does one motivate a fantasy football player?

The Manfridge is Compromised

We have an extra refrigerator in the basement, which I have populated with craft beers and home-pickled delicacies; these things go perfect together: hoppy high-alcohol beers and hot peppers, radishes, red onions and beets in salty brine . . . manly stuff, to be sure, but last week my wife went to Buy-Rite and came home with blueberry ale and raspberry "smash" cider and now my fridge has a totally different feel . . . and I can only imagine the dirty things going on in there in the dark now that the shelves are co-ed, and I assume I'm going to find some baby beers (8 oz nips?) on the bottom shelf in a few months (or days, what is the gestation cycle for beer?)

Snowpiercer! The Greatest Something Ever!

Okay, I agree that it might have been hyperbole when I claimed-- halfway through the film--that Snowpiercer is the greatest movie in the history of cinema, but now that I've had some time to reflect, I will make this claim . . . and I dare you to dispute it: Snowpiercer is the greatest post-apocalyptic/class commentary/ultra-violent/revolutionary/metaphorical-allegorical on-a-train movie ever made (by a huge margin!)

I Might Remember This

So Stacey rushes into the office and proclaims it's the best day of her life and then she pulls an essay anthology out of a bag, and slams a boxed set of leather-bound classics (Dracula, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc) onto the table and then she goes into a long-winded and detailed account of how it's teacher appreciation week at Barnes and Nobles and how she got so many discounts because how she got the box of leather-bound books for next to nothing (two dollars? I can't remember) and I realized that this was some kind of woman thing -- "saving" money when you've actually spent money -- and I insisted that the books she bought weren't actually real books, they were prop books, and to prove this I read from each of them in a pompous British accent, and then I threw my apple at the trash and missed, and when I retrieved it, Stacey dared me to throw it at a helium balloon floating above the computer, and I took her up on the dare (and nailed the balloon from all the way across the room, a spectacular shot I might add, if I were a prick . . . which, apparently I am) and unfortunately the apple was a little mealy and it exploded all over the place when it hit the balloon and so I had to get down on the floor and clean up the apple shards and I'm recounting all this not because it's particularly profound, but because most off periods in the English office are uneventful and not memorable at all; aside from this one particularly weird off-period, I 'd have trouble discerning between any of the other ones from this year . . . and this is the theme of the first episode of a fantastic This American Life spin-off podcast-- how hard it is to remember a particular moment in any day of your life-- the podcast is called Serial, and I highly recommend it: a reporter revisits the alleged 1999 murder of a high school student and finds holes in the case (and if you know what happens, please don't spoil it, because I'm right in the middle of this thing and I love it).

Gimme Shelter (and Robots)

It took me a while (and my book reading rate has been pretty lame through soccer season) but I finished Susan Palwick's sprawling sci-fi novel Shelter; while it's got plenty of entertaining sci-fi tropes: AI, robots, brainwiping, compassion as a crime, and a strange virus, I should warn you, besides all the futuristic stuff-- which is engagingly imagined-- the book also contains a bunch of feelings and emotions, artificial and otherwise.

Sad News: Dave Has No Fashion Sense

The death of Oscar de la Renta caused quite a hubbub in the main office Tuesday morning; everyone was lamenting his passing . . . and I was quite shook up as well, mainly because I didn't even know he existed, and then-- quite suddenly-- he was dead.

Dave Creates Post-Modern Art

I took the manual for the new paper-cutter and cut it in half (with the new paper-cutter) and then placed the two halves of the manual on the bed of the paper-cutter, in an aesthetic tableau which signified that not only did I know how to use the paper-cutter, but that I also realized the irony of using my paper-cutting skills to cut the manual of how to use the paper-cutter . . . and many people enjoyed the "meta" aspect of my post-modern tableau . . . the only way to improve it would be to leave a couple of faux-severed fingers on the bed as well, the blood dripping unto the slashed manual (and also, something fun: some people get really nervous when you do "paper cutter humor," such as sticking your head under the blade and looking carefully at something on the bed or pretending to cut a piece of paper while holding your hand directly under the blade . . . if I were a prop comic like my hero Carrot Top, I would incorporate a paper-cutter into my act).

TGIFU

Not that I would ever question our school's administration, but last Friday may have been a little more intense than it needed to be; first, we had an unannounced emergency lockdown drill-- which happened during passing time, so kids had to bunker down in the nearest room-- some teachers and students were quite scared (but not me, because I figured if anything was actually going on, everyone would be receiving a flood of text messages, and no one was)-- and then later in the day, a number of life-sized wooden red silhouettes appeared in the main atrium . . . these are for Violence Awareness Week, and each silhouette has some horrific story attached to it, generally involving murder, vengeance and dismemberment . . . have a nice weekend!

An Open(ly Angry) Letter

Dear Coaches of the Livingston Legion U-10 Soccer Team,

one of my many faults is that it takes me far to long to recognize when people are being rude and obnoxious, and so when I do realize it, I get very angry because my emotions have been simmering for too long . . . so at the start of our U-10 soccer game last Sunday, when you accused our team of having a player older than our age bracket, I laughed it off, and told you "that's what the cards are for" but you kept pressing (and I later learned the referee should have taken charge here because the player cards are the official documents certifying the players) and since I was trying to put my players into positions, I directed your allegations to our team manager-- who you totally stressed out so that she went home and got the copies of our players' birth certificates-- and then you still said "you're telling me that kid is ten" and she said "I'm not telling you anything, this is his birth certificate" and meanwhile, what I should have done is direct the coaches to the kid's father-- who is one of my assistant coaches, so that you could have accused him to his face of forging documents in order to have a kid play in a younger age group on a low level travel soccer team-- an insane accusation-- but I wasn't thinking on my feet because I was trying to coach a bunch of nine year olds . . . and then we found out that despite your allegations, your team was far more skilled than ours (and you had a goalie bigger than our biggest kid, and your goalie played four quarters) and when you realized that I subbed my kids in and out equally, not necessarily based on size and speed-- then the two of you shut your mouths on the age issue and stopped yelling at us and started yelling at your own players (and my players for "distracting" your players when my subs were passing a ball around behind the bench) and-- even though you were better-- we played hard and the game was tied 0-0 with two minutes remaining when one of your bigger, older looking players popped a goal over my goalie's head (the fourth goalie I played, and while he's excellent, he's also the shortest . . . because I have a lot of kids who love to play goalie and I let them all do it-- whatever size they are, because they're all going to grow and they all need the experience) and when your team scored, the two of you screamed, jumped up and down, and hugged each other . . . over a nine year old kicking a ball in a goal . . . all the things I try to avoid on the sideline, and so after the game, once I realized just how pathetic and obnoxious you guys actually were, which took far too long, I told you "that you were everything that is wrong with youth sports in America and that it's a pathetic sight to see too grown men hugging when a child scores a goal in a U-10 soccer game" and you guys retorted that one of my players said something during a PK and that should have been "a red card" and while I told you that I admonished my players for doing that, it's not explicitly against the rules (and I believe one of my players said "turkey legs" while their player was taking the kick-- this is what I heard through the nine year old grapevine-- but the ref said he didn't hear anything) and so I'd like to thank you for turning what was supposed to be a relaxing and fun Sunday home game, with all the the parents out to watch their kids run around, into a stressful and horrible afternoon,

indignantly yours,

Coach Dave.

Me? A Seat Stealer?

It's always interesting (and sometimes disturbing) when you get an outside perspective on your personality: last week in the English Office, my friend Stacey stole my seat-- I put down my lunch and went over to the microwave and when I got back, she was sitting where I put my stuff-- and I was in hungry mode, so I said a few choice words to her and she laughed and said back "Now you know how it feels" and I said "What? Do I steal seats? Am I a seat stealer?" and she said "Every day" and I reflected and realized that this might be true . . . and so now I have revised my idea of what people think when I enter the office; I used to think that when I walked in, the collective consciousness was something like this: Dave is here! Let the fun will begin! Everything that happened previous to Dave's entrance has been completely insignificant and rather boring but now things will get interesting! but now I know what people are actually thinking: Goddammit, Dave is here . . . I'd better not get out of my seat or he's going to steal it.

Processing: 21st Century/19th Century Juxtaposition

The new Aphex Twin album Syro is good music to pickle to (if you like that sort of thing).

Barely a Script, But a Bear of a Movie

I am a lucky man-- when things get rough in my life, I can always count on my family . . . but sometimes I wonder if my family is an extension of my own consciousness and perspective on the world . . . sometimes I wonder if my family sees the world the same way I see it; I was looking for a movie to show to my Creative Writing classes, a film that told a story with very little dialogue and an abundance of imagery, and my colleagues and the internet led me down the usual paths -- Wall - E, 2001, Castaway, etc.-- but I wanted to show something that the kids had never seen before, and I stumbled upon a French film called The Bear . . . a movie about a young bear who has to survive in the wild after his mother has been killed by an avalanche . . . and while my wife and children loved this movie . . . despite the blood, the mating scene, and the psychedelia (the baby bear ingests hallucinogenic mushrooms and "trips" and-- besides this-- he also has a number of weird and expressionistic dreams) and despite the lack of dialogue (my son Alex aptly summed up the script: "it could fit on half a page of paper") we had a fantastic time watching this thing, we speculated on how they filmed it, we enjoyed the aesthetic beauty of the bears, and we were appropriately moved by the plot . . . and so I thought I knew what to expect when I showed it in class, but there was a much wider variety of reactions from my high school students than I anticipated: some loved it, some were disturbed by the drama and the realism, some couldn't understand the fact that it was a movie -- that the bears were acting and that no one was shot or hurt or nearly drowned . . . that every scene was set up and that the emotional impact of the bears' body language was an artistic conceit, probably created more in the mind of the audience than by the emotional state of the bears . . . and while I highly recommend this movie, both for adults and children, I must warn you that you will sound like a lunatic when you describe it, because you will delve into the details of how well these bears can act-- how they can feign an injury and pretend to catch a frog and show sadness and regret-- and so no one will listen to you, nor will they understand what an entertaining flick this is . . . but trust me and check it out (also, it's fun to say the title as if you were a Bill Swerski Superfan . . . What are you watching? Da Bear).

Infectious Irony

If I hear one more Ebola joke, I'm going to run a fever, start bleeding from my gums, and have impaired kidney and liver function.

Some Girls Give Me Diamonds, Some Girls Heart Attacks . . .

This school year, I endure many hardships:

1) I have to teach in three different rooms;

2) the periods when I am off from teaching in these three different rooms, the English office is full of women . . .

but I have learned a few things:

1) some women plan their trips to the gym around their hair-washing schedule;

2) I am a disorganized wreck and should not be teaching in three rooms.

Autumnal Ultimatum

Dear Fall,

unless you start producing some appropriately cold and crisp weather, I am going on a writing strike--

unseasonably (and sweatily) yours--

Dave.

Dave Almost Does Something New and Different (Warning: This Sentence is Anti-Climactic)

Saturday night, in order to make my life even more entertaining, I used this Random Word Generator to generate three words (pear, ransom and rudder) and then I told everyone at dinner that I was going to use the random words seamlessly and fluidly during the course of the evening (we were headed to a birthday party) but I didn't tell my friends what the random words were, and then at the end of the night, they would have to guess what the words were . . . but then the party was so much fun that I actually talked to a lot of different people and completely forgot the plan; I will have to try this activity again at a less dynamic event.

Turning It Around

I was having a rough Monday, but then after I finished my sandwich, I took the used aluminum foil and wrapped it around my plastic knife and fork and threw this package-- tomahawk style-- at the trash can, which was twenty feet away and obstructed by a table, and my shot hooked around the edge of the table and cleanly into the trash . . . and then I felt much better.

How Do You Treat a Sick Zombie? Very Carefully

I've become inured to the astounding amount of zombie-slaughtering gook and gore on The Walking Dead, but in season four there's also deadly flu-virus outbreak among the survivors, so on top of all the gross undead stuff, you also have to endure actual realistic sickness and quarantine . . . yuck!

Research

If someone in the car in front of you does something stupid, it's very important to speed up and get a look at the person who did the stupid thing; you need to know exactly what kind of person comes to a complete stop in a merge lane (a gray-haired butch looking lady wearing a denim shirt) or pulls out from a gas station onto Route 1 and crosses several lanes driving perpendicular to the lanes before turning into the flow of the traffic (short Indian man wearing a hat).

The Hallway Stutter Step is Never Pretty

Normally, I teach all my classes in the same classroom, but this year-- due to some scheduling conflicts-- I'm in three different spots . . . in between second and third period I actually have to hustle up a flight of stairs in order to make it to class on time-- and all this moving around is a challenge for me, because I'm not very organized, and so I've been doing quite a bit of stutter-stepping in the hallways: that weird and abrupt stop and turn around that always looks bizarre-- because I've just remembered that I've forgotten something and so I switch from walking full speed in one direction to walking full speed in the opposite direction, and this spin move is preceded by some nimble footwork, which might look athletic on the soccer field, but is just awkward and ugly in the workplace, so I apologize to everyone who has had to endure seeing me do it.

It's Gotta Be the Shoes, Right?

The power of brands is fascinating . . . if I say the words "Dolce Gabbana" to a high school class, it doesn't make much of an impression on most of the kids, but several students (usually female) will have an instant and visceral reaction-- it's like they just ate something amazingly satisfying and delicious-- and I find it odd that I don't know exactly why they have this reaction; I know that Dolce & Gabbana makes high end shoes, but I don't know what the brand means (the way I know what it means to own a Subaru) but apparently that doesn't matter, just uttering the syllables in a passionate voice can elicit sighs and moans from a select few-- which is a testament to the product, the advertising, or a combination of both.

One of the Many Things That Grosses Me Out

Every morning, I pour out the puddle of condensation that forms overnight inside the yogurt tub.

Dave is Almost Weird, Sad and Lonely

Last Thursday, I almost didn't go to the pub for the following reasons:

1) I was totally exhausted from school and soccer;

2) I've gotten obsessed with the step sequencer within my computerized digital recording software, which allows you to drag and drop patterns of notes into different synthesizers and drum machines-- armed with a minimal knowledge of music theory and a decent understanding of the program (Cakewalk X2), you can create some really wild sounding electronic music, and then layer in guitar and your own percussion from a drum pad . . . but I'm glad I ended up going out because Roman told a lot of filthy jokes and it would have been kind of sad to stay in and make music with a computer, instead of going out with my friends (and-- as a bonus-- one of the ladies at the bar reciprocated in the joke telling and performed an inspired and completely profane version of the "DEATH . . .  BY BOOFATA!" joke).

Dave Sets a Personal Soccer Event Record!

Last week, in one seven day period, I crammed in a dozen soccer events; and while I don't claim that this is any kind of world record, it's pretty impressive for an introvert like me; for posterity, here they are:

1) I coached a JV game on Monday;

2) coached JV practice Tuesday afternoon;

3) coached travel practice Tuesday night;

4) coached a JV game on Wednesday;

5) coached JV practice Thursday afternoon;

6) coached travel practice Thursday night . . . but I still made it to the pub;

7) coached JV practice Friday . . . I probably shouldn't have stayed for the last round Thursday night;

8) coached a travel game on Saturday . . . and our field was flooded so we had to move the goals and basically create a small field on a different field, so this soccer event turned out to more work than usual;

9) attended a Red Bulls game Saturday night with the wife and kids-- a great game, the Red Bulls won 1-0 and we ate at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Newark before the game, a good spot;

10) I played soccer with my pick-up crew Sunday morning;

11) coached my son Ian's travel game later on Sunday;

12) then watched my older son Alex's travel game, which started directly after Ian's game on Sunday;

and the result of all this soccer is that the game invaded my dreams and consciousness, I woke up thinking about it and went to sleep thinking about it . . . and like when you repeat a word over and over again until it sounds like gibberish, there were times when I found my life existential and absurd, but at the end of the week, on Sunday, when both my sons played travel games and they scored all the goals (Ian scored two in a 3-2 loss and Alex scored 1 in a 2-1 loss) which made everything meaningful again, which is ridiculous, but no matter how much I know you should stay detached from your children's athletic success, there's still nothing more exciting than when they score a goal-- especially for my son Alex, who rarely knocks one in . . . and there's more of the same in the coming weeks, so I'm going to have trouble coming up with non-soccer related material.

Fatalii Has the Word "Fatal" In It

My friend grew some Fatalii peppers in his garden, but he's not into hot peppers so he gave them to me-- and I tried a bit of one raw, but it made me cry and spit up phlegm, so I pickled them (which makes more sense, since they are listed as the seventh hottest pepper in the world, with heat ranging from 125,000 to 400,00 Scoville Units . . . and to put this in perspective, a jalapeño pepper averages approximately 5,000 Scoville Units) and I opened the jar last week and tried one, and I did this after breakfast-- at 6:45 AM, just before going to school-- and the pepper was very hot but also very delicious, with a sweet citrusy flavor in addition to the spiciness-- so I had my wife put some on my salad; forty five minutes later, I started sweating and had to race to the bathroom (luckily I wasn't teaching . . . I have hall duty first period) but despite these consequences, I courageously downed the rest of the peppers when I ate my salad at lunch, and I think I've built some resistance because I didn't suffer any adverse effects after lunch and now I'm eating a couple of them a day and I feel very strong and virile and manly, and I also feel like my colon is very clean from the massive doses of capsaicin I've been administering to it, so if anyone wants to try one, just swing by (but make sure you're near a bathroom forty-five minutes after you ingest it).

A Good Read (If You're Over Thirty)

If you grew up in the '80's, Ernest Cline's sci-fi novel Ready Player One is so entertaining and satisfying that it feels like a guilty pleasure . . . it's set in the nearish future and things are predictably bleak and apocalyptic, but the masses find sanctuary in a massively multiplayer online virtual reality simulation called OASIS, which was created by the '80's nerd culture fanatic James Halliday; when Halliday died, he left a posthumous easter egg quest in the game-- and the winner would take control of his company, the game, and the incredibly vast fortunes that he amassed over his life (Halliday is a Steve Jobs/ Bill Gates hybrid) and the story follows Wade, the narrator, as he navigates the quest (and the violent repercussions of his success in reality) but the fun of the book is in the references and allusions: Joust, Zork, Pac-Man, Tempest, TRS-80,War Games, Star Wars, Bladerunner, John Hughes, Dungeons and Dragons, vintage Japanese TV and film, etcetera, etcetera . . . Cline packs in the '80's references on every page, from the obvious to the obscure; I'm not sure if the novel would be entertaining to anyone who wasn't a nerd in the '80's, but if you did grow up then, and know what a dodecahedron is, then read it.

Dave is Almost a Good Person

While walking around the school, I noticed a soda cup (complete with plastic top and straw) stuck in a boxwood shrub next to the soccer field-- a lazy student must have used the bush as a trash receptacle-- and so I went over, removed the cup, and threw it in the trash can (which was less than twenty yards from the shrubbery) and while part of me felt very good about my altruistic behavior, there was another part of my brain, the quid pro quo part, that was thinking: Dave just earned the right to litter (one time only) in the near future.

You Shouldn't Grade Coincidences (Unless You're a Jerk)

In the middle of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which is a play that hinges on a wild sequence of coincidences, Fabian comments on the madness: "if this were played on a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction" and I'm sure this same idea flashed across the collective consciousness of millions of baseball fans last Thursday night when Derek Jeter, during his final at bat in Yankee stadium, drove in the game winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning with a walk-off single . . . it seemed too perfect, an "improbable fiction," but-- as Shakespeare well knew-- coincidences happen all the time . . . they are a product of statistical likelihood-- but no one wants to hear about probability if the event in question happened to them personally . . . no one wants their coincidence "graded" because if the coincidence happened to you, then you believe it is special; for example, my wife saw a car the other day with four bumper stickers, each advertising a geographical location: Highland Park, Ireland, Ocean Grove, and Chatham, and she thought it was especially coincidental that she had been to all four of those places but I argued that people who had been to two of them had likely been to all four, and that an astronomical number of people saw the back of this car-- because we live in a densely populated state-- and that many of them had the same experience as her, thus diluting the uniqueness of her coincidence, but this didn't matter to my wife, who found the event special from her point of view . . . if you like this topic, then you'll love the Radiolab podcast A Very Lucky Wind, which explores coincidence in both a rational and emotional manner . . . and includes a metaphor which ruined my older son's appreciation of the magic of coincidences; a golfer drives a ball out onto the fairway and it lands on a particular blade of grass and this blade of grass cannot believe that he's been selected out of all the blades of grass in the world, that the ball landed on him, but from our point of view, this isn't special at all, because the ball had to land somewhere . . . so when one of the players on my son's soccer team expressed his amazement at the fact that the guy who moved in next door to him had the exact same name as him, my son Alex was not particularly moved by this event and later said to me, "it's like the golf ball and the blade of grass, people are moving all over the place and eventually someone is going to move next to another person with the same name."

I'd Do a Hunger Strike, But I'm Afraid I Would Get Too Hungry . . .

If it doesn't cool down soon, I'm going to hold my breath until fall starts.

It's Not Plagiarism If You Change a Word, Right?

My existence (in the fall, anyway) is but a brief crack full of soccer between two eternities of darkness (with thanks to Vladimir Nabokov). 

A Good Movie to Watch

The purpose of Wes Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel is to remind you how funny it is to watch people run around . . .  the situation doesn't matter, as long as the camera is far enough away and someone is running away from someone else on a colorful, lavish set (the secondary purpose of the film is simply to look at the sets . . . the colors and details are even better than an episode of Madmen).

Orphan IS the New Black, Dammit!

I'm not sure if this is a spoonerism or simply a transposition of words, but several times last week, I called Orphan Black-- the Canadian sci-fi show about clones-- Orphan is the New Black . . . and while this was certainly a mistake, it does make sense on a sub-conscious level, because I "broke up" with Orange is the New Black half-way through the second season . . . I loved the first season, which was fast-paced and dark and funny, but the second season the episodes were longer and much heavier (and even though I still love Orphan Black and plan on continuing our relationship, I am glad to be finished with season two . . . I need to watch something less "black" for a while).

Me? Allergies?

I don't consider myself susceptible to things other people fall prey to-- broken bones, arthritis, back pain, mortality, the constraints of the space/time continuum, etc. --but I've been waking up every morning at 4 AM and sneezing my brains out, and then repeatedly sneezing throughout the day, while suffering from red eyes and an itchy nose; despite these symptoms, I've put off buying any allergy medication because I can't accept the fact that I'm allergic to something-- pollen or dust or ragweed or whatever is out now . . . I keep waiting for the dry weather to break and figure my allergies will disappear once we get some rain, never to return, as there's some part of me that thinks if you just endure the allergy, your body will "get used to it" but I'm not sure if that's scientifically true or not, and I don't feel like checking.

There Are Two Types of Sockpuppetry?

Charles Seife may come off as a stick-in-the-mud, but his new book Virtual Unreality is chock full of examples of the "trickery, fakery, and cyber skullduggery" that exists on the internet; for instance, the art of sockpuppetry . . . type 1 sock puppets are created so that a person gets more attention or authority or notoriety for an opinion -- if you're an American student in Edinburgh and you want to blog about the Middle East, it's much better to do it as a "gay girl in Damascus" . . . and it's popular to create a type 1 sock puppet and then have this puppet come down with a fatal malady, so that you garner loads of attention and sympathy as you "die" on-line . . . type 2 sockpuppetry is even more sad and nefarious: you create on-line personas to agree with your real online presence . . . to bolster reviews and denigrate your competitors, to laud your writing and opinions, and to provide reinforcements for on-line feuds; it's always embarrassing when you get caught doing this, as Scott Adams found out several years ago (and because of the permanence and persistence of information on the net, real or false, though Adams made this error in 2011, it's easy enough to resuscitate the story years later . . . so be wary out there).

Double the Compliment = Half the Value

After I gave my spiel at Back to School Night-- and the way it works is that you run through your day's schedule, except that each "class" is seven minutes long-- and so after I talked to the parents of my third period class, a kind and lovely mom stayed after the bell and told me "I have two kids here in the high school and my daughter is a senior so I wasn't going to bother seeing any of her teachers, but she told me that I had to come see you, so you're the only one of her teachers that I visited" and I thought this was a very sweet compliment, but then when I went inside the English Office, Stacey repeated the identical story . . . a mom had two daughters, one a senior, one a junior, and she was visiting the younger daughter's teachers, but she was making one exception: Stacey's Philosophy class and so Stacey and I compared notes and it turned out that the mom who said this to Stacey was the same mom who said it to me . . . but it's still a nice sentiment, even if it's only half true (or could it be one third true? did she say the same thing to her daughter's math teacher?)

The Fever

For me, finishing Megan Abbott's novel The Fever was like surviving a nasty roller-coaster ride without puking-- I don't like roller-coaster rides-- and there's a part of me that doesn't like Megan Abbott novels, because they are so disturbing . . . and while I acknowledge that the writing is sharp and the plot moves and the characters creep off the page, the topics of this book are malevolent and particularly disturbing: hypochondria, seizures, algae in the drinking water, HPV vaccines, panic, social media rumor-mongering, peer pressure, and inscrutable teenage girls . . . despite this, I couldn't put it down, this is the kind of book that you read over coffee and breakfast before work at 6:15 in the morning, just to get through a few more pages: nine algal blooms out of ten.

Bag Therapy

I am a disorganized person, and I don't write lists or keep a calendar or use any other aid to remedy my scattered brain . . . or so I thought . . . but a particularly observant colleague of mine recognized that some people-- women especially-- use bags to order their lives, and that is certainly the way I do it; I have a bag for my school stuff, a bag for my laptop, a cooler for my lunch, another cooler for water bottles, a smallish bag for my high school soccer coaching, a large hockey bag for my youth soccer coaching, two bags of soccer balls, a portable AED in a bag, a gym bag, two PUG goal bags, and, finally, a small backpack and a large backpack for spontaneous excursions . . . and I can hide a mess in each of these bags, but it's a contained mess; I keep all my school stuff in packed folders-- again, each folder hides a mess-- and I'm trying to shift my lesson plans and writing to Evernote, which is an application which allows you to access digital "bags" from anywhere there is wifi . . . most of my bags live in my car, and this system works well for me, as I can store and remove them when necessary, and-- once a year-- I clean them out and find all sorts of interesting and surprising treasures.

Almost Vegan

A big thumbs up for the MorningStar Chipotle Black Bean Burgers . . . going vegetarian is less taxing on the environment, saves loads of fresh water, and is morally the right thing to do; not only that, vegetarian options are more delicious than ever (unfortunately, I've gotten into the habit of putting several pieces of cold-cut ham and/or several slices of bacon on top of my veggie burger, which makes it even more delicious but might not count as eating vegetarian).