Let's All Get Along, Fellow Companions (and Spell Words However We Want)

There's nothing more American than spelling stuff however the fuck we want to spell it; this goes for brand names, of course: Kwik-E-Mart . . . Froot Loops . . . Chick Fil-A . . . Lyft . . . Kool . . . and there are plenty of words that we spell differently than the British: center instead of centre, gray instead of gray, defence instead of defense-- but in the end, who cares?-- brands use different spellings so they can secure copyrights and garner attention, and language is a river and these little differences are water under the bridge . . . BUT my buddy Whitney, who is a spelling and grammar egghead, actually pointed out a spelling anomaly that is quite interesting (thanks, Whit) and-- after I've been challenging my classes, fellow teachers, random strangers and even my wife to this oddball spelling experiment and-- unlike most etymological word origin accounts, this one is NOT stupid and boring (did you know that the word "stupid" comes from the Latin stupere, which means to amaze or confound, but it suffered from typical pejorative semantic drift and by the 16th century it meant someone mentally slow . . . and that the word "boring" stems from the verb "to bore"--a repetitive and tiresome motion of drilling a hole by hand . . . see what I mean? stupid and boring . . . perhaps even shallow and pedantic) BUT try this experiment and see if you get the same results as me . . . ask someone to spell the word "camaraderie" and you should get some interesting results-- "camaraderie" is the French version of the word and an acceptable way to spell it, but in North America the spelling evolved into "comradery" and this change probably happened because of Communism and the Cold War and the assumption that these unified Russkies loved to call each other "comrade"-- or at least they called each other that in the movies and on TV . . . and whether or not this is how the alternate spelling arose, what I have found is that most people now use a hybrid spelling and use bits and pieces of each word and often spell the word "comraderie"-- or something close to that-- and I speculate that this will be another acceptable spelling in a few years . . . I hope you are stupefied and amazed by this etymological conundrum and do not find it stupid and boring (in the modern sense of those words).

Dave Escapes the Silo . . . and Laughs and Laughs

My life has improved exponentially since I quit watching the boring, colorless, slow, pedantic, ponderous dystopian TV show Silo . . . what a drag-- since then I have been mainly watching comedies : Fisk, Platonic, Pokerface, and my guilty addiction: The Big Bang Theory . . . Fisk is an Australian, female-oriented version of The Office-- but it's much shorter and the story arcs are fast, furious, heartwarming, and fucking hysterical; Platonic sounds cheesy but actually tackles some fairly intricate issues about marriage and relationships in a zany madcap fashion . . . and Rose Byrne is a comic genius, and Kitty Flanagan, who plays Helen Tudor-Fisk, is the Australian version of Rose Byrne; Pokerface has a dark underbelly but Natasha Lyonne always brings the laughs, even when things get perilous; and when I tell people I'm watching The Big Bang Theory, they react in two ways: totally condescending or "oh yeah, that show is hysterical" and I'm siding with the latter opinion, I find the show utterly wonderful-- I never saw a single episode before last month and watching Jim Parsons play Sheldon and recite those incredibly long and bombastic punch-lines is mesmerizing-- and apparently it was NOT easy for him to memorize those lines, he really had to work at it, every single episode-- and I also feel like the show owes quite a bit to Seinfeld . . . it's often about nothing, the relationships rarely change (so far) and Howard Wolowitz looks like a miniature version of Jerry, but he has the self-absorbed concupiscence of George-- and he's ostentatiously Jewish-- and yes there is a laugh track but it doesn't really bother me (in fact, it might enable me to watch this show alone, something I rarely do  . . . I'll watch live sports alone because it feels like other people are there but I will rarely watch a TV show alone . . . but maybe I just needed a laugh track to keep me company).

That's Entertainment?

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

Malcolm Fucking Gladwell

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

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

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

A Tough Predicament to Resolve in 30 Minutes

When I went for my early morning swim in the ocean today, I certainly thought about the tragic demise of Malcolm-Jamal Warner—  he was one of the good ones from my generation, and born the same year as me and a native of New Jersey to boot— so when I swam out past the breakers, I pondered the fact that I was one riptide away from eternity— and Sunday night, I certainly thought about his TV dad — Bill Cosby— when I was out at the with my son and I forgot to watch his beer when he went to the bathroom and when he got back and found it, unguarded, he said: “Dad, I could have been roofied!”

Nothing is More Annoying Than a Semi-Super-Power

I'm listening to the new Revisionist History podcast about face blindness, which got me curious-- am I a "super-recognizer"-- I certainly think I'm quite good at recognizing faces-- as a teacher, you need this skill-- and so I took a couple of online tests and what I learned is that while I'm probably not a "super-recognizer," I am quite a bit above average at recognizing faces, according to the two tests I took-- and this makes perfect sense, because I think I'm a super-recognizer, especially when my wife and I are watching TV and I always think I've seen every actor is some other show-- and most of the time I am right, but sometimes I am wrong (and I annoy my wife with this half-assed superpower every time I go down this rabbit hole).

How Many Timed Would You Hold an Embalmed Hand That Summons the Dead?

We are back in Jersey, after a good trip to the Poconos: we watched the Scranton Penguins blank the Cleveland Monsters and everyone agreed that hockey is far better live and up close than on TV (the puck is airborne a surprising amount, whcih often cannot be discerned when you're watching on a two-dimensional screen) and then we burned the remaineder of the firewood and made s'mores . . . also, the night before we watched the requisite horror movie that you must watch when staying at a cabin in the woods, and though it was hard to find one that Layla hadn't seen-- she's quite the horror-movie aficionado-- the Netflix algorithm recommended Talk to Me and we all agreed that it's a winner, with all the classic horror tropes, a fast-paced plot, an embalmed hand that summons the dead, and plenty of bad bad decisions that lead to awful consequences-- but kids will be kids and if they possess an embalmed hand that summons the dead, they're probably going to screw around with it until some bad happens.

Engimatic Riddles Wrapped in Paradoxical Bullshit

This morning, I asked my Google Home speaker what the temperature was in Highland Park and it told me the temperature in Highland Park, Illinois-- 43 degrees-- but I live in Highland Park, New Jersey so I asked it for the temperature in Highland Park, New Jersey and I also reminded the speaker that Highland Park, New Jersey is the place where both I reside and the place where the speaker resides-- and it told me the temperature-- 43 degrees-- and I was like "wtf?" and so I checked my phone and apparently, this morning it was 43 degrees in BOTH Highland Park, New Jersey and Highland Park, Illinois . . . so dumb . . . and last night, and this happens quite often, I sat on the afghan on the couch-- and this really annoys my wife, she can't understand why I would sit on the blanket-- she thinks that's both uncomfortable and idiotic-- because then when she wants the blanket, I'm sitting on it and it's a process to for me to get off it, especially if I'm all splayed out watching TV . . . but last night, I sat on the other blanket, not the one my wife was using, and then it got unseasably cold and I wanted to use the blanket-- but I was sitting on it and it was really annoying to get it out from under me, so now I get it.

THIS is My Secret Purpose

Up until last night, I thought my secret purpose was to see a fairly obscure actor/actress on TV and say to my wife "I totally know that guy/chick" and then struggle to remember their name or what movie or show we previously saw this actor/actress in and then use my phone to track down their name and the roles they played-- and usually my hunch is right and I celebrate my facial recognition acumen-- but my wife is also very annoyed that I'm doing this instead of watching what we're watching-- especially if I pause the show to do my research-- but now I know my secret ability is not to identify faces, it's to identify diners . . . because I am 100% in recognizing diners on a TV show, whilst with actors/actresses I'm probably more around 80 . . . but last night, while we were watching season two of the show Severance, and Mark met his sister at Pip's and they showed the outside of the diner and the mountainous backdrop and I said to my wife "that's the Phoenicia diner!" and then I looked it up and "Pip's" is the Phoenicia Diner, a wonderful place to eat in the Catskills.

 

Pickleball Initiates the Severance Procedure?

During these troubled times, certain subjects are hard to bring up in social settings because of the controversy and awkwardness these topics engender-- for instance, I play a lot of pickleball with my friends Ann and Craig but we are NOT allowed to bring up pickleball in mixed company because everyone else gets annoyed, so Ann refers to it as "the game that shall not be named" and we do our best to keep our pickleball gossip on the DL . . . it's also hard to discuss current TV shows because of the general fragmentation of media-- no one is watching the same show at the same time and so you don't want to spoil anything, or talk about a show that no one has seen-- I truly miss Fridays at work the day after a new Seinfeld aired on Thursday night . . . there was something for everyone to discuss-- anyway, my wife is away in Savannah and so I hitched a ride to the brewery with Ann and Craig yesterday, so during the car ride, we were able to talk about pickleball and a TV show without being chastised-- we have all been watching Severance (but we had to curtail the conversation once we got to Flounder because we were meeting people) and then, at the end of the ride, Ann articulated her theory that synthesizes pickleball and Severance . . . she said that playing pickleball with all these various groups of people we've met, is like going to work in Severance . . . it's kind of wonderful, you just show up, you have these fleeting relationships with these people, but you really don't care that much about them because they're not part of you're "outie" life-- or that's not exactly true, your pickleball self cares about them quite a bit during the session and you see them quite often, yet you know nothing about their childhoods or outside lives and you don't think about them during your outie life and they don't think about you, you only know if they have a good backhand or fast hands at the net-- there's really no time or space to chat, it's not like golf-- it's a fast-paced game with lots of switching partners-- and then once the session is over, you barely remember what happened-- that's the nature of the game . . . it's not soccer or basketball where you might remember two critical plays, instead you hit the ball a zillion times, and you often felt like a hero and you also often felt like an idiot, so it all evens out and you remember nothing except it was a time-- but there are glitches in the severance, of course, because after Ann revealed her theory during the car ride, we saw a pickleball guy at the brewery!-- and we had a brief but awkward conversation about when and where we would next be playing pickleball and then he wandered away and we did not pursue further interaction, for fear of reprisal from Lumon.

Spring: Time to Shed Some Clothes (and Some Body Fat)

As usual, with the end of winter comes the annual "it's time to shed a few pounds and get in shape" portion of the year-- my wife and I are going to stop eating dessert after dinner while watching TV . . . which was perfectly acceptable behavior this winter because it was dark and cold and bleak-- but now the dark-times are over and it's time to shed the fat-- and my wife listened to some lady on a podcast (who might be an orthopedist? I would ask her, but she's in Savannah on a ladies' weekend) and this lady doctor on the podcast said it's all about various types of movement and that during the course of each week you should:

1) do four 45-minute walks-- you don't need to do crazy amounts of cardio;

2) lift weights twice a week but lift heavier than you might normally lift . . . 3-5 sets of weight you can put up 4-6 times;

3) twice a week, do four repetitions where you run "as fast as you can" for 30 seconds, then let your heart return to normal and do it again-- so four sets of these each session for a total of eight sprints a week;

and I like this routine as I can work this stuff in around pickleball, basketball, and soccer, but I did the fast running on Wednesday, at the park, and while it was fun and not all that hard while I was doing it, it was a longer sprint than I've run in a while-- full court basketball requires sprints but they are three or four second sprints-- same with indoor soccer-- and on Thursday and Friday my right quad was occasionally cramping up, maybe every eleventh step-- which made for some humorour walking around-- but my leg recovered and I felt great at pickleball this morning . . . I did the heavy lifting Thursday and my shoulder is a bit sore, but again, I survived at pickleball today, although my shoulder started to hurt when I was hitting into the wind, there was a stiff breeze today, and you had to whale the ball . . . so we will see how this new routine goes-- my guess is I will either get injured soon and be a total disaster or I won't get injured and get super-jacked and super-fit and everyone will be so impressed by my physique that they will put a statue of me next to Rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Conference Madness

Tonight is the dreaded parent/teacher evening conferences, from 5 PM to 8 PM-- but, luckily my schedule is light (or perhaps not luckily because I implore my students to simply talk to their parents about how it's going in my class and remind them that all their grades are on the computer and that I know how to use email fairly well, so if their parents actually have a pressing question, it's much easier to email me than to drive to the school and talk to me, especially since I will be watching NCAA basketball games on YouTube TV while I speak to them so I won't be giving them my full attention).

American Art Forms and More Dated Allusions

Today in Grade 10 Honors English class, I charged my students to make the best possible argument for the "most American art form"-- I was doing this because we just finished Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and, unfortunately, the slave narrative was very popular and powerful American literary genre-- so I told them to choose another art form that embodied America-- and after some prompting, the five groups chose these topics: jazz, country music, hip-hop, reality TV, and motor vehicle culture . . . and the reality TV group was working right next to my desk, so I could hear their sophomoric logic and often needed to guide them towards rationality and at one point I said, "You've got to mention our president if you want to win this debate!" and they were like: "Wha?" and I then realized that these sophomore girls had never heard of The Apprentice and did not know Donald Trump's trademark phrase "You're fired" so I polled the class of twenty-five and only one student knew this . . . but then, after more prompting-- the sophomores require a lot of prompting-- they recognized the connection between the fantasy of reality TV and actual political reality-- the fact that Donald Trump was now actually firing federal employees-- and other than this youthful oversight, the presentations were quite persuasive-- hip-hop and car/motorcyle design and culture were probably the best-- but then I synthesized those and said that the MOST American art form is playing hip-hop from a monster stereo system in your tricked out low-rider . . . and then I informed them that though they did a good job, they all neglected to remember that we were still in the 1800s in the chronological progression of the class (which is not actually how the curriculum progresses but I like to teach the kids some history along the way so I like to do things chronologically) and so next class I will make my case for the Western as the most American art form-- or at least for the 1800s . . . as the Western features guns and freedom and taking the law into your own hands and treating Native American poorly and manifesting destiny westward and horses and trains . . . and I'm going to introduce this genre and how it operates with a clip from Malcolm Gladwell on Joe Rogan's podcast-- and this is two hours and twenty-six minutes in and Gladwell is starting to get wacky, as anyone would-- just before this segment he says some sexist things about women who love Law and Order and then he explains his compass-point theory on Westerns . . . and all the other compass points-- here are his categories of thrillers:

A Western takes place in “a world in which there is no law and order, and a man shows up and imposes, personally, law and order on the territory, the community”

An Eastern is “a story where there is law and order, so there are institutions of justice, but they have been subverted by people from within”

In a Northern, “law and order exists, and law and order is morally righteous, the system works.” (A prime example is, of course, Law and Order.)

A Southern is “where the entire apparatus is corrupt, and where the reformer is not an insider but an outsider.” 

Friday Potpourri

Today felt marginally better than yesterday-- the sun was out and it warmed up to 40 degrees-- but we were still fairly chilly when we had an unexpected and rather lengthy fire evacuation because something started burning in a cooking class-- I was about to call it a fire "drill" but it wasn't a drill, it was an actual fire-- albeit a very small one-- which interrupted an important discussion in Creative Writing where I was informing my students that The Beatles were not fro the midwest, they were from England . . . seriously . . and I today also introduced my sophomores to the idea of a "very special episode"-- a concept from the 1980s and 90s where a normally humorous TV program tackles a delicate or controversial event with the appropriate gravity . . . the one I'll never forget is the WKRP in Cincinnati episode about the Who concert where 11 people got crushed to death . . . a total bummer . . . we had a very special episode of class today about the LA fires-- and it is to be continued next class!-- perfect . . . I'm going to try to make the lesson into a very special podcast because it would take too long to describe here and I've got no time to sit and write because I'm about to finish my week-long triathlon of old man sports on a bad knee-- I played indoor soccer on Sunday, morning basketball on Tuesday, and now I'm about to go play some indoor pickleball-- if my knee holds up, I'll be very pleased.

Some Things That Are Completely Different

If you're looking for some batshit crazy apocalyptic sci-fi, I highly recommend Robert Charles Wilson's novel Spin--  I won't even try to explain all the consequences of the "spin membrane" that is mysteriously placed around the earth (by a mysterious superior alien race that scientists refer to as The Hypotheticals) but the stars go out early in the book and then some very well-depicted political and psychological and scientific chaos ensues-- and the book really makes you think about time, as a concept-- the book is the first in a trilogy (but apparently the other two books are not as good, so I'm going to skip them) and if you've read or watched The Expanse series then you'll find some familiar themes-- and if you're looking for a batshit crazy surreal almost sci-fi movie, you might like I Saw the TV Glow, a mesmerizing story about two disaffected teens in the 90's who share an obsession with a strange supernatural TV show called The Pink Opaque . . . the fictional world of the show begins to bleed into the "reality" of the of Owen and Maddy's constrained suburban lives-- and Maddy's complete and utter acceptance of this alternate reality sends her on a quest to find her true identity and gender, a quest that Owen is reluctant to embark on or even comprehend-- it'sa film full of weird imagery, awkward moments, and fragmented horror.

The Medium is the Scooter

Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan said: "the medium is the message" and I think this is particularly true in sports: in the 1930s, the golden age of radio-- baseball, horseracing, and boxing were the most popular sports in America and these were the perfect sports to describe in an audio broadcast-- they are easy enough to narrate, there are slow moments either before or during the action so there's plenty of room for anecdote and description (I grew up listening to Phil Rizzuto tell stories about his barber during Yankee broadcasts) but as televisions got bigger and gained higher and higher definition, basketball and football gained popularity-- these are games where everyone is moving around at once and you need to see the action-- and you can choose where to look-- you can check out the defensive formation, or the blocking scheme, or the guy posting up in the paint-- it's impossible to narrate it all so it lends itself to a visual medium . . . and the internet appears to lend itself to sports gambling and fantasy sports, where people don't even bother with the narrative of an individual game but instead watch clips and short videos and consume statistics-- and TV has tried to keep up with this with the NFL Red Zone and such, which is essentially football coverage on crack . . . and who knows what the next medium will be for consuming sports-- flying your own drone over an event or being in a 3-D VR stadium-- and then who knows what sport this medium will lend itself to-- perhaps croquet will make a comeback.

Multiview! Multiview . . .

Today was an exciting day in New Jersey on the YouTube TV multiview-- you could watch the Giants AND the Jets at the same time-- and both games came down to the wire, I was toggling the volume back and forth like a madman . . . and then the Giants blew it-- their chipshot field goal attempt was blocked-- and they were eliminated from the multiview . . . and then the Jets blew it in overtime . . . but it was fun while it lasted.

Dave Suffers Ridicule and Derision (While Microwaving His Lunch)

When I pulled my lunch out of my cooler today in the English Office, my friend Cunningham was visibly (and audibly) appalled -- normally I eat some sort of delicious homemade meal: leftovers or a fresh salad, occasionally a sandwich-- but today all I had was a Trader Joe's Chicken Burrito Bowl . . . normally Catherine and I do some serious cooking and meal prep on Sunday (more Catherine than me, often) but this Sunday we ate a late lunch/early dinner at Bonefish Grill-- we had to use some gift certificates-- and we had a few drinks and watched the Jets squander another fourth-quarter lead and then we went home and relaxed-- on a Sunday! . . . we were still in Thanksgiving/Birthday weekend mode and so we had cupcakes for dinner and did no meal preparation for the week ahead-- so Cunningham called me "trash" and truly enjoyed disparaging my "TV dinner"-- such judgment!-- even though this bowl was quite delicious; check out the Trader Joe's description:

"seasoned chicken breast, brown rice, red quinoa, black beans, corn, bell peppers, Cheddar cheese... this is a hearty bowl . . . its Southwest style, smoky chipotle sauce marries all of those flavors and textures together and turns a bowl into a meal" 

but I guess because my wife has always set such a high standard and I always bring in great fresh lunches, there's no deviating from this path . . . anyway when I got home from school, I set out to realign the universe and I made a batch of delicious and colorful chili, which is simmering right now in the crockpot-- so chili for dinner, chili for lunch tomorrow, and God help whoever has to cover me tomorrow morning at AM basketball, because this chili contains plenty of garlic, hot peppers, and beans.

Detroiters . . . Don't Bring It Up Around My Wife

So as a rule-- or an eccentricity, I'm not sure which-- I don't watch TV alone (unless it's a sporting event because then I feel like I'm part of the crowd) but there is an exception: there are a small number of shows that I consider hysterically funny and my wife detests-- such as Saxondale-- and so I have to go it alone with these programs (unless my son Alex is home, because he enjoys I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson as much as I do) and now there's another show to add to this category, Detroiters-- which also features Tim Robinson (who my wife finds incredibly annoying) and the utterly charming Sam Richardson . . . the show is an absurdist combination of Madmen and Dumber and Dumber . . . but perhaps even dumber . . . anyway check it out, it's on Netflix right now (along with A.P. Bio with Glenn Howerton, which, thank the lord, my wife DOES find funny) if you're looking for something stupid, surreal, and very funny.