Major Monday

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

The Art of Reffing in the Rain

I learned a few things while reffing three soccer matches in yesterday's nor'easter:

1) I need to get a vented, transparent ref poncho, like the other ref had—even though I changed my undershirt, I was soaked through and through;

2) I need to pack some large plastic garbage bags—the other ref, who was very well prepared, lent me one of his, so I had somewhere to put my ref bag and keep it relatively dry;

3) I need to get some sort of eyewear-specific hydrophobic spray—such as SOFT99RainHopper—because by the third game, I was soaked to the skin, and there were so many beads of water on my eyeglasses that I couldn't accurately call the lines . . . luckily, the game was a blowout, and it was raining so hard that no one else could really see much either . . . but, hypothetically, if someone heckled me from the crowd, if someone yelled, "Are you blind, ref?" I would have answered, "Yes, indeed, you are correct, I AM blind."

You Fritter and Waste the Hours in an Offhand Way

According to the news, we are being battered by a powerful nor'easter this weekend, but so far the only trouble this storm has caused me is some difficulty trying to properly spell and punctuate the word "nor'easter"—the soccer matches I was supposed to referee have been canceled . . . which is mildly annoying because there hasn't been all that much rain and wind, but—for no good reason I can discern—doing fuck-all on this rainy day feels slightly different than if I was NOT supposed to work; it's like I gained some time (but lost some money) and I COULD have appropriately used this time to finally read Proust's In Search of Lost Time or to continue the dense and completely incomprehensible Being and Time, by the foundational philosopher Martin Heidegger—and then perhaps I would understand why time off from work because work is canceled due to inclement weather feels different than time when you were not supposed to work in the first place, but instead I took a nap, and now we are heading to the movies to see Resident Evil (though I never played the video game, but the internet says I will be fine as long as I understand that there is an evil corporation: The Umbrella Corporation, a dangerous virus, and a place called Raccoon City, which is NOT full of raccoons, it is full of zombies . . . I'm sure the plot will go down easier than digesting Heidegger).

Ghost of Jersey Past, Food Edition

Tom Perrotta's haunting novel about one strange summer in  the suburbs of New Jersey, Ghost Town, is set in 1974—before the entirety of New Jersey was home to an incredibly diverse population and an incredibly vibrant, inexpensive, and unparalleled selection of ethnic food from around the globe; there are hints of this future gustatory paradise in the novel: Jimmy, Wayne, Nilda, Hector, and Yvette visit a fictional Chinese restaurant called the Jade Palace, and Jimmy has wontons, hot mustard, egg rolls, and Asian noodles for the first time . . . this reminds me of our go-to Asian spot in the early 1980s, A-Kitchen, an authentic Hunan and Cantonese place that started in a gas station in Monmouth Junction and then moved to a traditional, rather rambling building on Route 27 in Franklin—we learned about the restaurant from the Asian kid on my travel soccer team, Kenny Cho, whose family either owned or managed the place—and we went all the time when I was young, and I would try to order "shrimp ding" as spicy as they could make it, and my father would wink at the waitress, th wink telling her NOT to make it that spicy-- as I was just a child, and a Caucasian hild at that-- and I would see him wink and tell the waitress to ignore his wink and make it spicy . . . typical family dinner drama-- but this place A-Kitchen was the real deal, the New York Times even wrote an article about it . . . and now some slightly more practical food nostalgia, if you live in Central Jersey-- becasue A-Kitchen is long gone, but Gambino's, the classic Italian place in New Brunswick, on Remsen Avenue, where my dad and his buddies would hang out is now a fantastic new restaurant-- with a liquor license-- called Tequila House . . . the mixed drinks are amazing, the decor is festive, the bottled beer is cheap, and the birria tacos contain ACTUAL steak-- when I ordered them the Hispanic server (we were the only gringos in the place) gave me a subtle nod, like Oh yeah amigo, you know what to order and my wife got the enchilads verde and they were also top notch-- so while the neighborhood has changed and La Cort Bakery and Gambino's are no more, there's some great Hispanic food replacing the Italian spots, which is exactly how Jersey operates.

One Sentence College Essay Workshop (Complete With Videos)

During the first month of school, when I start to lose my voice—which I inevitably do: allergies and all the talking—I actually have some videos to fall back on (because of all the remote teaching during COVID) and I realized that I've never posted them . . . and that I may never tell these stories again, as they are very particular to certain lessons; yesterday the seniors were working on the College Essay, something in which I am certainly an expert; the first thing we do is list our "great" accomplishments, and then we try to figure out how to discuss these accomplishments without sounding pompous or arrogant or didactic or annoying—college essay prompts set kids up to be annoying . . . and I also remind them that they are children, and they may not have any actual "great" accomplishments and they have to be generous and open and sincere— being nice to your parents is a great accomplishment, as is having a wonderful friend group, or asking someone out on a date, or learning to cook something—it doesn't have to be a perfect score on the SAT or straight As or athletic prowess or digging wells for homeless orphans in Nicarauga . . . and then I give them two techniques to use when writing about this accomplishment; they could either tell a solid story (I give them the Dan Harmon 8-step story template and focus on the heavy price-- if you don't have a heavy price it's just an anecdote) and then I present them with two true stories from my high school golf career-- STORY NUMBER ONE and STORY NUMBER TWO . . . and I ask them which one would make for a better college essay (I also tell them that one of these stories WAS my college essay) and we discuss which story is more appropriate-- there's usually some debate (but the second story was my actual college essay . . . though I am the villain, as there's much better lesson and there's a heavy price for my actions) but then I give the kids an alternate route-- if you don't have a compelling structured story about your accomplishment or passion, then I tell them to develop something symbolic-- and I show them The Story of the String Bag, in which I describe how this string bag incident is a metaphor for coaching, symbolic of what it is like to be a coach-- which is a much better way to discuss something than listing all your accomplishments, which sounds more like a resume-- and then I made the kids watch my amazing, incredible pickleball video, in which I execute an ATP and I told them how great I am at pickleball and I made them applaud for my shot, and then I told them that they should not have applauded for me and no one likes a braggart and that I am actually BANNED from discussing pickleball in the English Office and I explained that if I were to write a College Essay about pickleball, instead of focusing on my incredible skills and ability, I would talk about pickleball and the the relationship with my brother-- and how it gives us something to do together— my brother was the one who pressed the button at the pickleball place so that my ATP video would be recorded, and my brother is the one who taught me to play, and pickleball is something we can do together-- not all siblings have that . . . so I would write about what pickleball symbolizes, a way for me to get together with a family member-- not about how good I am-- and the kids understood this concept, and then, while I was recounting all these sports stories and trying to teach them how to NOT to sound like an asshole, I remembered a moment from when I played freshman football that would be perfect for a college essay, a symbolic moment—so I tried to explain this to my three college writing classes and I learned that most kids do NOT understand football at all; my hypothetical essay was about switching from soccer to football-- I was the fastest kid in 8th grade—but no one wants to hear about how fast you are, that's not an essay-- so i would write about how I decided to switch from soccer to football because it was the 1980s and football was what the cool kids played, so I thought it would be a great avenue for scoring with the ladies (despite my bowl haircut and feathery, never-been-shaved mustache) and because I was fast, the coaches put me at running back (they didn't let me play defense because I couldn't really tackle anybody) and I asked my students where you should run on a soccer field and they kind of understood this—that you're allowed to run wherever you want: into space, you can check to the ball, you can get wide, you can go forwards, etcetera . . . it's free range—but then I asked them where you run on a football field, and it was like pulling teeth; barely anyone understood the concept of a PLAY or a ROUTE . . . and literally no student had heard the concept of a hole, a numbered spot where you were supposed to run because people were blocking for you there—because when I started playing football, I had a soccer mentality and never ran to the correct hole and that would be what my essay would focus on, the difference between soccer and football-- and there was this one symbolic moment, when I actually saw my coaches jump for joy at what I did-- and I wasn't running with the ball, all I did was successfully execute my "Gap Read Down" assignment and properly block the defensive end instead of going out wide-- our fullback gained some yards and the coaches were ecstatic that I didn't fuck up again . . . after one season I had enough though, football was too rigid and practice was boring-- too much runng through all these plays-- and so I switched back to soccer because I loved the autonomy . . . it would be a great college essay, as long as the reader had some knowledge of sports (and my students do not have much knowledge of sports . . . it's wild to explain this stuff to them).

Bars and Belmar on Bikes

My wife and I were going to paddleboard this morning, but it was drizzling, so we got on our bikes instead: we had a beer at Darcys, the Bradley Beach soccer bar which opened at 7:15 AM for the start of the Premier League, we got there at 11:30 AM and it felt like we were playing catch-up; the place was raucous; then we hauled it over the bridge to Belmar and had beers at Bakes Brewing Co, which were delicious, and the space is epic; then we biked towards home and ate at 10th Avenue Burrito, which was great, as always, and now we are going to get motivated and head to the beach and enjoy the east wind (and we've been using our bikes so much that I have greasestains on both my calves, from the chain I guess-- which I will have ot really scrub at in the shower).

Sad News and Nostalgia

Some sad news was passed along to me recently: Tim Raba passed away; I haven't seen Tim in many, many years, but he was a phenomenal North Brunswick athlete—primarily baseball and soccer, but he could play anything—and while he had his struggles after high school, I'll always remember embracing him after he scored in overtime in the County Finals against East Brunswick—he was the other outside back, I played on the left and he played on the right (and we had two future college players at stopper and sweeper . . . we were the best defense in North Brunswick history, I think we had three goals scored on us in 24 games my senior year) and Tim and I were the fastest kids on the team, two of the fastest players in the county, and now he's gone and I'm fat and slow, and there's a lesson here, but it's lost on me, other than time goes by and everything falls apart.

Big Day, Already (Dave Finishes a Book, Installs a Ceiling Fan, and Prepares to Be a Soccer Fan)

 

I woke up early this morning and finished a massive tome (900-plus pages) I've been reading for two years: Reaganland: America's Right Turn (1976-1980) . . . this is the final installment in historian Rick Perlstein's series on the rise of the American conservative movement and while the books are exhaustive (and exhausting) they do remind you that there's nothing new under the sun— the playbook was the same: savvy conservative politicians harnessed anxieties about women and race and sexuality and crime and the lack of Christianity and family values in America . . . and the same tropes: scandals such as Hunter Biden and Billy Carter; optimism (make America great again!) instead of tightening your belt (and wearing a sweater) and absurdities—Carter's killer rabbit!-- and pretty much everything Reagan said about pollution (trees cause more pollution than automobiles?) and nuclear weapons (nuclear proliferation is none of our business? all the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk?) but despite Reagan's lack of policy and factual knowledge, Carter was no match for "the Teflon President," who could really deliver a speech and galvanize the corporate elites, the Southern whites, the evangelical Christians, and generally disaffected voters who were sick of inflation, high gas prices, the hostage crisis, and how the counterculture movement was bleeding into the suburbs . . . and not only did I finish that epic history, but I also finished the third Thursday Murder Club  Mystery (The Bullet That Missed) and I successfully installed a ceiling fan—alone! -- which is a crazy procedure; for a decent amount of time the fan housing and blades were hanging from a thin metal cable while I connected all the electrical wires and the remote receiver . . . but, unlike my plumbing debacle, the fan and the light now work like a charm (and neither leaks water) and really, my day has just started . . . now I'm off to play pickleball, then I'm going to acupuncture, and then we're headed out to watch the USA play Bosnia AND Herzegovina—it seems ridiculous that they have to play two countries at the same time.

The Method

At my age and fitness level, the rules of the game seem to be: no impact sports (pickleball, basketball, soccer, tennis) two days in a row-- and try not to play pickleball for much more than two hours-- and then right after playing an impact sport, go swimming at the YMCA in the colder, full-length competition pool-- just a few laps and some stretching and then a hot shower . . . and then you can actually walk into New Brunswick for the USA vs. Australia World Cup game and not look like a limping geezer.

Addendum: the method did NOT work today; I got a hamstring cramp at Destination Dogs while watching the game . . . not incapacitating, but maybe I shouldn't always swim after impact sports.

Saturday Stuff

I just refereed a soccer match on a very large turf field, and the center ref-- Carlo-- is seventy-five years old! . . . I hate the phrase "seventy-five years young" but in this case, it might actually apply . . . and then I took the cash I made from the game and pretty much fed it into my car and then I returned home for a break between games, and my son Ian, who I woke up this morning because I couldn't find any water bottles-- after searching and searching in the cabinets and the dishwasher-- my son Ian showed me that the two bottles I was looking for were sitting right in plain view on the counter-- pretty embarrassing-- but meanwhile, he's dealing with some sort of situation where he threw his blanket into his cactus, and now his hands and his blanket are covered in cactus quills, so we're all idiots (but I hope I can ref for another twenty years).

Knicks!

I am still basking in the glow of last night's epic Knicks victory over the Hawks-- the Knicks were up 51 points at halftime-- a margin large enough for us to watch an episode of West Wing before returning to the game--. I should tell you that West Wing is a very good show that we missed and still feels quite relevant (although also totally dated because it's a bunch of smart, talented, dedicated, clever, wonky folks running the White House) and this enormous early lead also assuaged my anxiety about missing game seven because I am scheduled to referee a soccer match on Saturday evening (also a fantastic Sixers win to stretch the Boston/Philadelphia series to seven games . . . things are looking up for the Knicks!)

Rocco Knows Best

Under the tutelage of Rocco the Assessor . . . The Assessor of Soccer Refs, I worked my first center, which I found quite enjoyable: the time goes fast, you have to really lock in and focus, you get plenty of cardio, and you have to realize that ten-year-olds fall down a lot, even when there is no foul . . . this was also my first time dealing with a build-out line, which is an excellent rule but does require a lot of reminding the offensive team to retreat on goal kicks and goalie possessions-- but it does encourage some passing and possession . . . and I got the hang of it, and the parents were well behaved, perhaps because I was in Metuchen, not North Brunswick.

Go Knicks!

My wife returns from Florida tomorrow morning, and then life will regain its usual rhythm-- not that I did anything wild while she was gone, it was mainly business as usual-- but I tried to do a bit of socializing even though my instinct when I am left to my own devices is to hole up and read and get high and strum my guitar: I went to Happy Hour yesterday at B2 Bistro, but I only had one beer (and then a Coke, which Cunningham roundly insulted for drinking) because I had pickleball practice at 7 PM and needed my wits about me (Terry also only had one beer because he was reffing a soccer match at 7 PM but he had a Diet Coke after his beer) and pickleball practice was fun-- my calf is healed and my new paddle seems to be functional (Vatic Pro V-sol Power) but because my friend Ann wasn't there-- her knee hurt-- there was only one other non-Mandarin speaker at practice and so I really did not understand exactly what was happening-- and then this morning I substituted for Catherine and had coffee at her friend Johanna's house (Connell and Adrian were there too, so I wasn't the only guy crashing) and I talked to my neighbor Pernille quite a bit about the state of education and AI (she's a Rutgers professor) and tonight I'm hanging out with Ian and his friend (and possibly Alex) for the Knicks game-- I'm buying sandwiches so that the youngsters will socialize with me-- but I will be very glad when Cat is back in Jersey.

Fan Fistfight in My First Game . . .

I refereed my first  soccer match today-- a U-15 game in North Brunswick-- and I was certainly nervous before I left the house-- checking my equipment, reviewing all the rules, making a cheat sheet of various fouls, but my wife said not to worry, that the assignor wouldn't "throw me to the wolves" for my first game, he'd put me with some experienced refs . . . and then I arrived and met one of the other refs and he was technically experienced—but not very-- he had done five games so far-- and then we waited for the third ref to show up, hoping it was someone with more experience than us-- and luckily the third ref, though only 21 years old, was more experienced than us-- he had been reffing for six years-- and then we ran into a hitch checking players and coaches in-- the coach for one team didn't have a game card and the coach and all the players need to have a game card-- but, after some doing, he was able to produce one electronically-- and then the game was fairly slow-paced for the most part, the players weren't that big and it was very windy and the field was kind of bumpy and lousy, so there weren't that many fast-paced attacks or brutal contact-- but with about ten minutes left, something happened in the far corner, so I couldn't see or hear it but I guess a mom claimed that a player grabbed his crotch or something similar, and then parents started chirping at each other and before we knew it, there was a fistfight on the sideline and other altercations were brewing and so the young center ref crossed his arms and ended the game-- and he was really out of sorts and upset-- he said nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before and he'd never had to end the game early-- so it was quite a mess and hopefully not indicative of future games (tomorrow I do a U-9 game, so it should be chillaxed).

Referee Imposter Syndrome

I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down to write something, but I'm too distracted to focus: apparently, I'm refereeing my first soccer matches this weekend, and I took the course back in November, so I need to review my notes, my pre-game checklist, practice my flag-pointing techniques, and check my whistle.

If Only My Right Knee Felt as Mediocre as My Left Knee

Another visit to Dr. Navia (and yet another cute young intern) for my right knee, which has been hurting pretty much whenever I'm not moving, so now I am headed for an X-ray on Wednesday, and then as soon as our insurance sees the X-ray and approves them, some hyaluronic acid gel shots that will hopefully lubricate this fucked up, worn out, overused leg hinge that I rely on for important and essential activities, e.g. basketball, soccer, snowboarding, and pickleball.

Betty When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Sir

I am proud to say that I have completed my soccer referee training, and I am now a licensed referee-- today I had to drive to Newark and do the field training, and I learned plenty: 

1) there are a LOT of nuanced flag signals for Assistant Referees to master;

2) do NOT blow the whistle when a goal is scored-- because you don't want to draw attention to yourself at a time when the players should be in the spotlight . . . just point to the center of the field, indicating that's where the restart will occur;

3) hold your yellow card straight up in the air, as you are warning the entire field of play what will and will not be tolerated;

4) do not wear your whistle around your neck; keep it in your hand, so as (and I quote) NOT to look like a "seventy-year-old-lesbian-gym-teacher."

Dave's Brain is Crushed with a Metaphorical Falling Goal

I endured seven hours of a soccer referee certification course today-- we viewed hundreds of slides, I took many pages of notes, we watched many videos of entertaining fouls, and now my head is swimming-- I am realizing it's really hard to make the correct call in real time (it's even fairly hard when you can replay a video several times) and one of the teachers -- a British fellow-- was a real stickler for using the proper terminology, which is tough because all kinds of Americanisms have crept into our parlance-- it's properly called the "penalty area" not the "penalty box" and it's a yellow card for "unsporting behavior" not "unsportsmanlike conduct"-- unsportsmanlike conduct is a fifteen year penalty in American football . . . and here's a situation the entire class got wrong:  if the goalie has possession of the ball and one of his own teammates punches him in the face, then because this is a striking foul during the course of play, the other team is awarded a Penalty Kick . . . so the moral here is don't punch your own goalie in the face when he has possession of the ball-- no matter what he said about your girlfriend (or whatever prompted this hypothetical insanity) and I also learned when to downgrade a DOGSO red card to a SPA yellow card (and a PK) and other such technical issues, such as the difference between SFP and VC . . . SFP is serious foul play and VC is Violent Conduct-- SFP occurs when there was some attempt to play the ball but the foul is excessive, VC occurs when there is no attempt to play the ball . . . both are red card/sending off fouls but VC is a worse suspension-- you also need to check the five S's-- shirt, shorts, shinguards, shoes and socks . . . and most importantly, make sure the goals are secured with sandbags or spikes, because occasionally players get crushed by falling goals . . . so that's priority number one-- and I'm sure this is a job like teaching, where you need a lot of experience and practice before you start to get things right-- I feel like I'm starting this path a bit late in life (there were lots of teenagers at the course!) but I think i'll get a better idea of what it takes tomorrow when I go to Newark for my field session.

There's No Offside on the Battlefield (but there should be)

No Civil War-related material today, as we drove home from Gettysburg this morning, and now I am slogging through my soccer referee modules-- which must be completed before my referee training next Saturday . . . perhaps I'll understand Law 11 by then (Offside).

A Well-behaved Toddler?

Stacey and I drove up to Morristown today to visit our buddy Cunningham and her incredibly well-behaved two-year son Quinn-- this was nothing like I remembered parenting a toddler . . . this kid listened (even when I told him not to kick this soccer ball, no matter what, and I was going to walk away . . . and you better not kick it when I walk over here . . . and he actually didn't kick it-- Cunningham was like "he listens to adults" and I was like "that's crazy") and didn't grab things in stores or run into the street or throw his food when he ate-- he's a lovely little observant dude . . . and I hope when he turns thirteen he gets into vandalism, petty theft, graffitti, parkour, and loitering, so Cunningham has to do some challenging parenting.