Karaoke in the Daylight is Weird

Another school year, another end-of-the-year party . . . and a new addition in the diversions-- besides cornhole, this year there was also karoake . . . yikes . . .  and the party was comprised mainly of history, English, and gym teachers-- not the music department-- and I got bullied into singing a song with very few lyrics: "Don't Come Around Here No More" . . . which is more awkward to sing than a song with a lot of lyrics-- because there's not much to do during the music (unless you can dance, which . . . nope).

Nice Job Seth . . . Now Just Keep Doing It Until You Are Old

If you haven't seen Seth Rogen's show The Studio yet, watch it-- it's fucking great-- and episode six, "The Pediatric Oncologist," achieves Curb Your Enthusiasm-level awkward humor-- looks like Larry David is passing the baton to Seth Rogen (and since Curb ran-- intermittently-- from 1999 to 2024, Rogen should aspire to make The Studio for the next 25 years).

Prophetic Fallacy

I am teaching my sophomores The Great Gatsby and today we acted out scenes from Chapter Five-- the section when Nick arranges for Gatsby to meet with Daisy at Nick's little house for tea, the first time they've seen each other in five years-- and at first Gatsby and Daisy are awkward and embarrassed, while it is raining-- but then: pathetic fallacy alert!-- then the old chemistry comes back and the sun, empathetic to their emotions-- starts to shine (which is a fallacy, the weather does not give a shit about your emotions) so I made sure to have a student play the weather in that scene-- and he's a tall kid so he loomed over the other two actors, it was fantastic-- and then the natural world reflected the book; I stayed up to late last night watching the Knicks' epic comeback against Boston, then dragged myself out of bed for 6:30 AM basketball-- and it was a dark and rainy gloomy day and I was tired and hungry and had a headache from the humidity-- but I went to acupuncture after school, which usually loosens me up and when I got out of acupunture, lo and behind! the sun was shining, and there was a cool breeze, and I was able to sit on the deck in the sun and read my thoroughly joyful and entertaining book (Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon) so perhaps the pathetic fallacy is not a complete fallacy, it's just selective and relative-- the weather is always expressing someone's emotions, it just might not be yours.

Severance is so Fringe!

Warning!-- there will be some spoilers in this sentence concerning Fringe . . . which aired from 2008 to 2013, so honestly, it's probably past the spoiler statute of limitations, but there will also be some Severance spoilers-- and if you're not watching Severance, get with it-- anyway, in both shows there is an oddball sci-fi love triangle: the main character-- a guy-- has sex for the first time with a bizarre, malevolent version of his love interest and thinks it is the actual love interest, not a doppelganger-- in Severance, Mark thinks he's boinking Helly in the tent, but he's actually boinking her cold and evil "outie" Helena and in Fringe, Peter thinks he's banging fellow Fringe team member Olivia, but he's actually banging the other Olivia, known as Fauxlivia, from the Other Side . . . and in both cases, the original love interests are very upset that their evil doppelganger's jumped the line and made love with their love interest before they could-- it's a weird, awkward, and extremely bizarre lover's quarrel . . . so there's that, plus Peter Bishop's dad, Walter Bishop-- the Australian actor John Noble-- shows up in Severance-- he's Burt's "outie" lover Fields.

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.

Strange Things Afoot All Over the Place

My stomach hurt, and I had a low fever on Sunday night into Monday, but I suffered through the school day and then collapsed on the couch after school-- and after eating nothing but plain noodles and oatmeal, I finally felt better by lunchtime today (and ate a chocolate donut to break my bland food fast) and then I went to acupuncture and Dana crushed my traps and neck and shoulder-- they were incredibly tight from an extended pickleball session on Sunday-- and even though I was sort of sick, I also graded a bunch of essays Monday and today, which means I was hunched over my computer screen (and to add to the pain and suffering, the underclassmen are nuts lately: I think they're finally coming out of their shells, which is annoying-- I preferred when they were quiet and awkward . . . and soon enough the seniors will go berserk) and then this afternoon when I was walking the dog in the park and I let her off leash, she raced over to a large object and then jumped away from it-- for good reason-- as it was a giant fishhead, perhaps a monstrous carp or some other riparian behemoth, that some animal must have dragged into the middle of the grass field, several hundred yards from the riverbank.

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.

Mistook!

Yesterday afternoon (or yesternight, as Shakespeare would have it) we went to the Grant Avenue Block Party and I played some cornhole and drank some beers and then it got too dark to play cornhole and I was getting kind of tired so I walked over to my wife, who was in a circle of women under the canopy, embroiled in a conversation, to check and see if I should grab another beer or if she was ready to go and I slid my arm around her, familiarly-- or perhaps even a step past familiarly, as this was my wife-- and then the two of us realized that this was NOT my wife, this was my wife's doppelganger . . . or certainly her doppelganger in this particular instance, in this particular lighting-- and while I was very embarrassed to have sidled up to this lady-- who I do know in passing from soccer and other town stuff-- and put my arm around her, in my defense, she was wearing the same white tank top as my wife; she has the same toned, tan, and freckled left arm as my wife; she was wearing similar glasses to my wife; she has blonde hair like my wife; she was gesticulating in an animated fashion, as my wife is wont to do; and from the angle I approached, she really looked like my wife . . . enough so that I went and found my wife and positioned her in the same spot, next to this woman, so that I could convince myself (and the other people who saw this awkward encounter) that it was a logical mistake and we all agreed that the resemblance was uncanny (and if you enjoy this theme, this recent incident complements this absurd moment of mistaken identity at the gym, from over a decade ago, quite nicely).

Dave Silences the Angry Mob!

At the start of Monday's department meeting, I had a moment of conversational triumph that made me quite happy-- it doesn't rival this anecdote, but it's still one of the rare times when I said the right thing at the right time-- all the English teachers were assembling in Stacey's room for the meeting and it was HOT in there and she didn't have any windows open nor did she have her AC on (which I understand, the thing sounds like a jet engine) so I climbed up on the radiator and started opening windows-- which is awkward and dangerous but it's the only way to get the upper windows open-- and while I was clambering around up there, I was also complaining loudly-- and everyone else was complaining about me, complaining that I was complaining too much, that I was causing a ruckus, that I was going to kill myself or knock over a bunch of Stacey's school stuff that was stacked on the radiator . . . and then Krystina walked into the room, waving her hands around her flushed face, complaining about how hot it was and nobody yelled at her-- they empathized with her and treated her kindly (this is typical behavior in my department, the other day when I played some King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard for Stacey and Cunningham while we were driving to Wawa, they yelled at me the whole ride for "inflicting" this awful music on their ears but when I told them that Matt liked King Gizzard-- Matt is a very nice and intelligent middle-aged lawyer/finance guy who went to Princeton and is now taking up teaching-- they were like: "oh, it's probably music for smart people and we didn't get it") and then, after seeing how hot and bothered Kyrstina was, I had an epiphany, which I loudly delivered from my lofty perch to the room full of teachers and my boss, "Let's remember what our new principal said on the first day of school: Maslow before Bloom!" and everyone was shamed into silence because they remembered this moment from the opening meeting and it's true: you can't focus and learn anything when you're sweating, sticky and uncomfortable, Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes before Bloom's taxonomy of intellectual thought.

Teacher Appreciation Week Belated Bonus

I was driving on Hart's Lane, en route to the gym from my high school, and the light turned yellow at that awkward moment when your only options are to either come to a screeching halt or blow through the intersection, though the light is going to turn red-- and although I saw a cop car waiting at the right-hand junction, I decided to blow through the light anyway (what was I thinking?) and sure enough, when the light changed, the cop pulled me over but when he walked over and saw me (and I was wearing my school ID but I think he just recognized my face) he said, "Oh sorry, I played soccer, graduated in 2020-- I remember you-- I just pulled you over because of the light" and I tried to apologize but he didn't even want to hear it, he just said, "Take it easy, have a great day" and so all the schedule changes this week, the short lunch, the fights, the new classes, all that crap-- this made it worth it.

Awkward (and Impulsive) Dave Amuses His Students

Today during first period, while I was showing a movie clip-- so it was dark-- a young lady in a denim jacket entered my room, but just barely entered-- and she asked if she could talk to one of my students-- and my student got up and the two of them talked in the hall-- I figured it was something about homework or a computer charger or something-- and then the student came back into the room, but the young lady continued to lurk and then said something else, so I shushed her . . . Thomas Haden Church was explaining The Scarlet Letter to his class in Easy A-- crucial for our assignment about the evolution of mate choice and gender norms and the ever-changing aesthetics of attraction-- and then the young lady in the denim jacket said, "I just need Tanvi to go to room 1618 . . . I'm a school aide . . . I work here" and I was like: "I'm so sorry I shushed you-- you look so young, you look just like a student!" and she said, "I'll take that as a compliment" and then she left and my class laughed at my rudeness and embarrassment and I said to them: "Notice how I used gender norms and aesthetics to get out of that awful situation-- you can't go wrong telling a woman she looks young" and we all learned some valuable lessons.

Got To Be the Calf Sleeves

I played indoor soccer for 90 minutes yesterday and then I played pickleball for two hours this evening-- and while I think I looked fairly athletic playing both sports, if you could see the awkward and ugly effort required for me to pry off my shoes, socks, calf-sleeves, and knee sleeve/braces after I finished playing, you'd wonder if I was capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, let alone actually doing something athletic, graceful, and coordinated.

Acting! And Floating . . .

The last episode of The Curse is so epic it might be worth the whole ordeal of signing up for a free trial of Paramount + just to see it-- and while you should watch the other episodes-- which are strange, slow, awkward, and don't resolve a hell of a lot-- the show is really all building to this last episode, which starts with what seems like a realistic send-up of “The Rachael Ray Show”-- featuring Rachael Ray and Big Pussy from the Sopranos-- and then things get really wild, like really, really wild-- like Stanely Kubrick-star child, Tim burton wild-- and it sort of makes sense in the context of the show and it's certainly allegorical-- but it's also downright fun-- a very advanced, opposite version of "the lead game" . . . and now I've seen Emma Stone do a lot of acting lately-- weird, compelling, not exactly relatable acting-- in this show and in the film Poor Things and while I have no idea how to judge great acting-- other than to know that Kate Winslet is really good at it-- I think Emma Stone has also got an incredible ability to get a lot across without saying anything.

Virtual School + Halloween Candy = Nap Time

Another wonderful day of online teaching-- accompanied by a proliferation of Halloween candy, which is an unavoidable temptation when you're talking to a screen-- but there was one highlight and I thank my colleagues (and the candid and comical WhatsApp English teacher chat) because they warned me that admin was popping into virtual classes . . . and they weren't popping in at the beginning of class, when they could catch us setting up creative lessons; making Channels and break-out rooms and other virtual groups; communicating instructions clearly, and all that good stuff-- they were popping in for the last five minutes to see if teachers were ending early or teaching online until the bitter end of class . . . so I was prepared and told my students, that had some work to do in the Channels, to come back to the General meeting with five minutes left and-- lo and behold-- an administrator showed up in the waiting room and I let him in while I was teaching the most English teacher thing in the universe in the chat-- MLA format citations and punctuation-- and kids were asking questions on how to cite oddball situations-- quotes within quotes and all that-- and I was demonstrating all this in the chat . . . it was a great moment in American education-- because generally, whenever an administrator walks in your room, virtual or not, even if you've just executed the best lesson in the world, they come in at some weird awkward moment and you get all pissed off that no one ever sees you teaching properly . . . anyway, virtual school still sucked but at least there was one nice moment, and once it was over, I ate a bunch of Halloween candy and took a nap, and now I'm off to the pickelball scouts for my third day in a row-- I miss early morning basketball and I can't believe we did this kind of shit for over a year, I think I've erased most of it from my memory (but luckily it lives on the blog!)

Sometimes High School Kids Are Actually Charming and Entertaining

This morning the students in my first period Public Speaking class crushed their Demonstrations speeches-- I always get nervous before we do 82 minutes of presentations because when they are bad and awkward, time crawls-- but today was wonderful and the variety was pretty astounding: we learned how to do a card trick; rebuild a drag-racing clutch; we witnessed an adept tarot card reading; I followed some instructions on how to do a professional pirouette; a guy demonstrated on the whiteboard how to draw a bunch of cartoon heads; and a girl showed us a slideshow on how to make cake pops . . . and then she gave everyone a cake pop!

Weird Movie

The Banshees of Inisherin is evocative, beautiful, bucolic, awkward, insular, funny and weird-- it will make you evaluate your friends, your landscape, your purpose, and just how clever you really are versus how clever you think you are . . . and though it's a slow burn, you'll eventually fall in love with Achill Island, J. J. Devine's Pub, and Jenny the miniature donkey.

Tennis Notes/Sibling Notes

My boys had a tough match today-- they were playing Wardlaw Hartridge, an undefeated private school with a very good team, but it was a match that they had an outside shot of winning-- very outside-- and Alex (at second singles) was up 5-2 in the first set against a kid who was a better player than him and Ian (at first singles) was playing one of the better players in the county . . . and Ian was down 3-1 but hanging in and Alex took a look at the other matches and told Ian that he "had to win"-- because they play next to each other-- and Ian and Alex started bickering and there may have been some profanity . . . which the kid Ian was playing thought was directed at him . . . but it was directed Alex-- so then there was an awkward stoppage while all this was sorted out and it did not help Alex or Ian-- Alex ended up squandering his lead and losing his set in a tiebreaker . . . Ian lost the first set but then came around and led most of the second set before losing 7-5-- I was really proud of him for making it a match, and both my kids learned a valuable lesson; tennis is an individual sport and you can't be concerned about what's going on next to you . . . you've just got to focus on your match and see how it all turns out once you're done (they get another shot at this team on Monday, it would take a miracle, but maybe they'll figure it out and win).

Rambling Saturday Morning Thoughts and Warnings

I'm a little logy from staying up late last night but it was worth it-- Rutgers beat Clemson for their first NCAA tourney win in 38 years-- and I am wondering if all the college towns with teams in the tournament are going to experience a spike in COVID cases in a week or two . . . especially teams that win a game or two . . . I was in a crowded bar last week when Rutgers beat Indiana and I was probably lucky to not get corona, especially since cases are still really high here in Jersey-- the virus is being weirdly stubborn, despite vaccinations and I'm assuming it's college kids passing it around . . . so I decided to stay in last night and avoid the pandemic, since Catherine and I are getting our second shot tomorrow and spring break is on the horizon-- we'll see how this strategy plays out; in other rambling news, while I was returning home from my morning ramble to the dog park, a sketchy looking guy seemed to emerge from the woods on the hill that leads back to my street-- which may mean he was wandering through someone's property and not the park per se; he was a youngish white dude with longish hair-- kind of nondescript but looked a little unkempt-- and he stomped his boots on the street to get the mud off them and this spooked Lola and she started growling at him, so I turned her and continued up the hill but this guy followed us and he wanted to chat and pet Lola, but she was having none of it-- it's weird how a dog can get a sketchy vibe from someone--  and then he kind of walked beside us, asking me about Lola's breed and complimenting her paws and wrists-- weird-- and then he said he'd like to have a dog but his rental doesn't allow it . . . and then I said, "Take it easy" turned toward my house but I didn't go straight into the driveway-- I did the old walk-by-your-own-house-so-the-sketchy-guy-doesn't-know-where-you-live trick, which may have worked-- but anyway, if you live near Donaldson Park, lock your car doors and keep an eye out for this guy, he may have been wandering through backyards and he's certainly worth avoiding if you don't want to end up in an awkward conversation.

The Specter of Walt Disney Raises Awkward Dave from the Grave

In the past decade, I've tamed Awkward Dave to some degree, but he still occasionally rears his ugly, awkward head; one of these times is when adults-- grown-ass adults--  proclaim their love of Disney World; this boggles my mind and-- unfortunately for my awkwardness-- we've got a bunch of these people in our school (and there are several in the English department!) and some of them visit Disney every year-- it's like a religious pilgrimage-- and some of them visit Disney World and they don't have children . . . and while I understand taking your kids there once so they don't feel alienated and neglected-- although my wife and I refused to go and swore we would never take our kids until finally my parents actually dragged us all there and footed the entire bill . . . I had a lot of problems with the experience, but I'm an extra-high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass . . . but that's not what this sentence is about, it's about the awkward fugue-like state I enter when adults mention their love of Disney World . . . I start saying crazy, insulting, and awful things right to their faces, and these are people I work with and see every day; here are some examples of things I start spouting to perfectly nice co-workers: 

-- I rant and rave about how lame it is to share a bunch of antiseptic engineered memories with the rest of the Philistines in the park; 

-- I explain how happy I was when an alligator ate a small child at the Disney Grand Floridian Resort and Spa because it injected some reality into the fantasy;

-- I told someone they were totally fucked in the head because she was touting the merits of the Epcot food and wine festival . . . I told her for that amount of money you could go to Italy and have real food and wine!

-- I like to call out people who claim they are feminists yet worship the princess culture;

so I've decided this can't go on . . . if people want to spend their hard-earned money on Disney vacations, so be it . . . I need to be more tolerant; also, I don't think they can help it-- I wish I could claim to have noticed this myself, but it was Chantal who pointed out that all the devout Disney worshippers are practicing Catholics . . . so maybe there's some tie-in between actually practicing religion and loving Disney-- and we all know you can't control whether you have that "belief" character trait . . . I don't have a lick of it and I think it saves me a lot of trouble (in fact, I just read a great little piece in The Atlantic about how politics has replaced religion in America . . . and Disney is better than politics, I suppose).

Hybrid School: The First Week

Here a few thoughts about teaching my first week of hybrid-model school:

1) hybrid doesn't work very well . . . you can either pay attention to the kids in the room-- and we are tending to have two or three kids in the room-- or you can pay attention to the kids on the little screen, but it's difficult to pay attention to both groups . . . what tends to happen is that the kids in the room become "virtual" kids and they just participate on the screen, and then there's no reason to have them there in the first place;

2) it's hard to hear the virtual kids unless they have a nice microphone . . . one virtual girl told us she learned to sew during the pandemic and that she sewed a "flag" and I told her that a flag seemed pretty easy to sew, because it's a rectangle and she said, "let me go get it" and she retrieved a "frog" not a flag-- which looked much more difficult to sew;

3) it's hard to understand the in-person kids because they are wearing masks, so I'm constantly asking them to repeat things;

4) got two drama kids to do an impromptu scene on the Microsoft teams;

5) a number of us have insanely large classes, I have 31 kids in a college credit writing course-- so this is going to be difficult to manage virtually and grading-wise, and it also ensures that we are never going back to school because-- pandemic or not-- there's no way to stuff 31 seniors into my classroom

6) I'm still teaching elective classes: Philosophy and Creative Writing . . . I'm not sure why if the actual English courses are packed . . . didn't anyone think of this?

7) I'm taking a lot of walks with my in-person kids-- I put the virtual kids to work and then we go outside and discuss the reading like normal humans;

8) my son Ian-- who is a sophomore and is all remote-- was on a virtual "scavenger hunt" and he got his beloved weighted blanket and put it on his head-- as instructed-- and it fell off his head and landed on the laptop-- MY good laptop-- and ripped the screen from the body of the computer . . . Ian was crying and totally regretful and I felt really bad for him . . . but at this rate he's going to go through 90 laptops this virtual school year . . . I did manage to duct tape the screen to the computer, so it works . . . sort of;

9) I've now sent several rambling emails to administration, about class size of the senior English courses courses and about opening doors, courtyards and windows because we are in a global pandemic;

10) Genesis, Microsoft Teams, and Canvas are impressively dysfunctional and unsynchronized; we are doing all our own tech support and trying to get things to clean up and work, but everything is fragmented, disorganized and incomprehensible;

11) in an attempt to organize things, I  deleted all the channels where various teachers are supposed to meet on Microsoft Teams . . . who knew I had this power?

12) I was running late for work this morning because I was filming a video of myself for work;

13) it's fun to break up pretend fights off-camera-- you just get up quickly, bang a bunch of stuff, and then come back and tell the kids you broke up a fight;

14) we need an all virtual day to catch-up . . . this isn't sustainable;

15) people are already getting laryngitis from teaching with a mask on . . . once coachign starts back up again, my throat is going to be raw every day;

16) my eyes are so tired that I feel like I'm going blind;

17) at first I thought the four rotations of in-person kids would give up and go virtual because there are so many 1-3 person classes, which are awkward . . . but the kids I talked to kind of like it because they only go to school every eight days-- so it's like a weird little masked adventure-- but the teachers are masked and teaching EVERY day, for extra long periods . . . it can't last;

18) my own children are enjoying virtual school -- they can sleep until 8:55 and then school is from 9 AM to 1 PM . . . my high school is still making kids get up to attend class at 7:26 AM . . . it's cruel and unusual punishment for a teenager;

19) Stacey almost cried twice today: once because she forgot her laptop charger-- which is now a vital piece of equipment-- and then later in the day when she taught twenty minutes on mute and then had to repeat the entire lesson;

20) I have a girl with a one-on-one aid that accompanies her to my room and I teach this girl in two different classes, but she only comes to school once every eight days-- like all the in-person students-- but her aid comes to my room every day, though the aid doesn't have a laptop yet . . . so the aid mainly just watches me say weird stuff into a computer;

21) East Brunswick Vo-Tech shut down yesterday, so I think we are the only school building with kids in it in the county . . . and so far it has been quite an adventure.