To Live and Die in the 80s (wearing very tight blue jeans) in L.A.

My wife and I watched To Live and Die in L.A. last night — it's streaming for free on Amazon Prime and I don't know how we missed this one in the theater; it's from 1985! — directed by William Friedkin (who also directed The French Connection and The Exorcist) it's a fast-paced noir thriller that begins with a rogue U.S. Secret Service agent going on a reckless, unsanctioned mission; Richard Chance — played by a young William Petersen of later CSI fame — lives up to his name, he's a base jumper who drinks and smokes constantly and instead of a G-man suit, he wears a football jersey, a scarf, and tight jeans-- very Don Johnson-- and between all the cigarettes, booze, and tight jeans, I don't know how he chases down the bad guys, but he does; right at the start, a master counterfeiter, played by a very young and unwrinkled Willem Dafoe, kills Chance's partner (with only three days left to retirement! so classic) and Chance pulls his new partner into a seedy underworld of morally bankrupt behavior that may or may not result in justice-- it’s worth watching this film for the credits font and the 80s fashion alone — and the excellent soundtrack by Wang Chung-- but there’s also an epic car chase that actually makes sense in terms of plot, character, and setting . . . I don't know how they pulled off this chase without digital effects — it's masterful; anyway, Roger Ebert gave this film four stars, and it deserves them, it’s cocaine-fueled, artsy violence in a grittier, seedier L.A. that doesn't exist anymore-- every scene is frenetic and full of interesting extras and you’ll half-recognize nearly every main actor, including Jane Leeves (she was "the virgin" in Seinfeld, but she's certainly not that in this film) but be warned — there's some hardcore 80s violence, nudity, profanity, and drinking of Miller High Life.

Severed (from the Humidity)

My wife and I visited Bell Works in Holmdel today-- the mixed-use facility built within the old Bell Labs building and the site where some of the show Severance was filmed-- and while we were not severed from our consciousness when we entered the vast and beautifully designed indoor space, we were severed from the disgusting humid weather . . . the air-conditioning in the massive atrium is top-notch (and there were people doing laps and walking dogs in there, enjoying the cool air) and on the way home we stopped at the Source Brewery for a beer and Delicious Orchards for some bread and cheese, a decent way to kill a very hot and muggy Sunday afternoon.

No Ass Tattoos . . .

Unfortunately, my wife and I did not read yesterday's comments so we celebrated our 25th Anniversary in a fairly traditional manner-- we caught the train to Newark, took the PATH to Jersey City, walked along the Hudson and took in the views of the city, and then sat outside and ate at Battelo-- which was delicious (prosciutto wrapped zeppoles!) while we watched the yachts, ferries, and sailboats navigate the river . . . then we walked our way through Jersey City-- which is a vey different place than it was thirty years ago-- gentrification!-- got back on the PATH and, of course, missed our connecting train in Newark Penn Station-- which is a disorganized shitshow and has NOT gentrified one bit-- you'd think they'd sync the PATH and the Jersey Transit train, but even though we sprinted up and down several staircases to get to the track, we still missed it by a minute, so then we had to wait in the very very hot waiting area-- not even a trickle of A/C-- because there were no benches up near the actual track (and everything smelled like urine) and so while Cat and I are big proponents of public transportation, I can see why everyone in America is driving everywhere-- our train system is a shitshow-- so thirty minutes later, we caught the next train to New Brunswick, and we ended up sitting in a very old train car with very little A/C) but I did get to hear a delightful, Lebowski-esque conversation between two old Jewish ladies sitting behind us:

Do you swim on Shabbos?

Yes, I swim on Shabbos.

Got to Catch the Train!

 No time for a complete sentence, the wife and I are off to Jersey City to celebrate our

Twenty-Five Years for Dave and Cat!

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of our wild wedding (I ended up taking a forced swim in the Lawrence Brook, thanks to my fraternity brothers and high school buddies) and an incredible journey with my beloved wife-- we traveled the world, educated the masses, raised a couple of children, refurbished a kitchen, fought a stubborn racoon in the attic, and we maintained our good looks and our even better sense of humor . . . I can't wait to see what the future brings!

Dave Gives it the Ol' Viticulture Try

Over two decades ago, Calvin Trillin explained that in a blind taste test, most people can't tell the difference between red and white wine, and this is true for me-- I am certainly no super-taster, nor do I have a particularly sensitive nose (except when it comes to my wife's deer repellent spray-- that shit makes me gag) so I really tried to channel this knowledge last night and drink a glass of Bread and Butter chardonnay (which I purchased by accident at Costco, it was lurking in a case of pinot noir) but I could not do it-- and so maybe visual clues do produce flavors, and a deep dark red color makes my brain taste one thing and light golden urine-like color makes my brain taste another. 

Groovy

My wife (far left) and my cousins just before they went out to "Boogie Nights" at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, which I assume has a 70s vibe . . . but they look quite reminiscent of the get-ups me and my fraternity brothers would buy at the local thrift shop, for our beloved 70s parties back in college (my favorite purchase was a denim jumpsuit with a zipper that started at the collar and went all the way down to my crotch . . . so it was essentially a giant fly).

What's Happening in Those Other Timelines?

Sometimes-- like when my wife and I are walking on the sidewalk on Easton Avenue in New Brunswick and we almost get knocked over by a dude on a little electric motor scooter puttering along, staring at his phone-- I think we are in the dumbest technological timeline . . . we've harnessed all these vast technological powers and we use them for predatory sports gambling apps, crypto meme coins, space tourism, social media, isolated echo chamber polarization conspiracy mongering, floating sea homes for societal drop-outs, and cheating on homework . . . meanwhile there seems to be no no incredible and exciting systemic changes on the horizon (not even a lane in city for motierized vehicles, so they have to weave along on the sidewalk and occasionally veer into traffic).

Check ME Out!

This morning, while I was in the produce aisle at ShopRite, doing the grocery shopping so my wife could relax on Mother's Day, I overheard several women chatting, and they were wondering why the hell they were grocery shopping instead of their husbands-- and I almost said something to them but then thought better of it.

If You Trace a Pair of Shoes, They Look Like a Pair of Testicles

If you ask twenty-one fifth-graders to trace their shadows on the school playground blacktop-- as my wife's colleague did-- then you might end up with twenty-one drawings that look vaguely phallic-- which is troublesome if all the parents are coming to school for the Spring Concert (which they were).

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).

An Old Dave Learns New Tricks

I've learned three new things recently:

1) my wife taught me about this weekly workout schedule, and I've adopted it and it seems to be working-- my knee doesn't hurt, and I'm always sore, so those are good signs;

2)  I listened to a podcast about the power of NEAT-- NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis and basically encompasses all the random walking, standing, fidgeting, and daily movement you do and apparently this makes a HUGE difference in how many calories you burn during the day-- plus, if you take a fifteen minute stroll after you eat a meal, you really lower your glucose and blood sugar levels-- so I've implemented both these strategies and I've actually lost a few pounds (without going on Ozempic, which is what it seems like everyone is doing-- but I really like my big round butt, so I'm not messing with that shit) 

3) AND I learned something else today, and I came up with this out of the blue in the middle of teaching-- so here's the scenario: sometimes I have the projector on but I want kids to write stuff on the whiteboard so instead of having whatever Canvas announcements I have projected, I just want whiteness-- I don't want to shut off the projector because it takes a while to turn it back on-- so I search up a white background on Google and I project that version of whiteness and then the kids can write on the whiteboard and their writing is not obscured by the projection-- because it's white-- but today I had an epiphany, and instead of searching up a white picture, which is always weird and has borders, instead of doing that, I chose a little bit of white space that was already on the screen and I used my fingers on my touchscreen and I just kept expanding that white space until the projector was just projecting all this expanded whiteness onto the board-- and then I made the students tell me I was brilliant . . . but the real question is: will I remember to do this the next time I want to project whiteness?

D.P. Phone Home

So yesterday I believed that my crappy-Android-phone fell out of my pants pocket and was lying prone on the pavement in the high school parking lot, most likely run over by automobiles multiple times-- and once I realized this, when I got home from school, I decided not to drive back to the school and rescue my phone from this fate because 

1) I hate driving 

2) my phone is an ancient piece of shit

3) pickleball-- 

so I figured I would leave it to whatever fate befell it and then when I got to school today, I would see if someone picked it up and turned it in or if it was still intact on the ground near my parking spot-- but when I used Find My Android this morning, Google no longer reported my phone being in the school parking lot but instead just outside my house . . . weird . . . and so I thought maybe it fell out of my car when I got home-- and this would explain why the podcast played all the way home yesterday-- so I set my phone to ring and then went outside and it turned out my phone was not outside my car, but inside it-- it fell down under the driver seat-- and while I swore I looked in the car yesterday, I guess I didn't look in this spot and I also think I should get a different colored phone case (mine is black) because it blends in with the interior of my car and the main thing about this stupid incident is I won't be getting on iPhone anytime soon so for the foreseeable future my wife will have to deal with all the GIFs in the basketball group chat.

What Comes Around Phones Around

I confiscated a student's phone today, which is always an ordeal, but it's the fourth quarter, and at this point, they should know better-- and then when I got home from work, I couldn't find my phone-- but I knew it was either in the house or in the car because I listened to a podcast on the way home . . . but when I used Find My Android, the computer reported that my phone was still in the East Brunswick High School parking lot . . . which was weird but I guess my car downloaded the podcast and played it even though my phone fell out of my pocket-- and it definitely fell out of my pocket because I had it in this weird little phone pocket in my work pants-- usually I wear cargo pants that have velcro sealed pockets but I have this one pair of Dickie's pants with a weird little open pocket and this morning, I was going to put my wallet in it this little pocket but I was like: "my wallet's going to fall out of this stupid pocket" and so I put my phone in the stupid pocket, because I don't care about my cheap-piece-of-shit-Android-phone and it turns out I made a good decision . . . and I didn't feel like driving back to school and searching for my phone because I had a pickleball commitment so I'll find out tomorrow if my phone is intact and in the parking lot, or crushed in the parking lot, or in the school office-- and if it's crushed or lost, then perhaps I will get an iPhone so I can join the AM basketball group chat and my wife won't have to get so many stupid GIFs from all my basketball buddies.

Who's Pipe Burst?

Yesterday, I had to return to teaching, but my wife's school had the day off . . . although it was not much of a day off for her-- she had to wait around for both Steve the Appliance Doctor AND the Rob and Keith the plumbers-- and while Steve the Appliance Doctor healed our fridge's drain blockage without too much trouble,  the plumbing job-- which involved replacing a leaky portion of our main sewage line-- was a bit trickier . . . apparently they couldn't find the main water shut-off and so I was receiving texts about this at work during lunch and frantically trying to remember which valve shut off all the water but then my wife texted me that something was wrong with the washer and that seemed strange, but maybe the shut-off valve was behind the washer?-- but something was stripped back there and it was a problem-- so now I was very concerned that we'd also need a new washer/dryer combination, which was expensive and very very difficult to get into our basement-- and when I got home, my wife tried to explain all the different things that were done to our house and appliances, and all the things that needed to be done to our house and appliances, but I was very tired from my first day teaching and kind of spaced out and our conversation turned into a home-owner's version of the Abbott and Costello bit "who's on first?" . . . I kept asking if they found the shut off valve and my wife kept saying something about the washer and the little closet and I was like "behind the washer?" and she was like "not THE washer, a washer" and I was like "what?" and then she said "I never said THE washer . . . I said a washer was stripped" and I went back to her text messages and she actually DID say "something with the washer is stripped" and I misintepreted this message and thought there was something wrong with our washer/dryer but it was actually the other kind of washer, a small flat metal ring, in the main water shut-off . . . so now they're going to have to shut the water off at the street juncture so they can fix this stripped washer in the main water shut off valve, which is not nearly as funny as the "who's on first?" routine.

Dave's New Favorite Bible Story!

Though I once read the entire Bible-- back when my wife and I lived in Syria and were visiting many of the sites mentioned in the Good Book-- I must have skimmed over the story of Elisha and the bears, which a student mentioned today in class in regards to my shaved (mainly) bald head . . . so to summarize, in 2 Kings 2:23-2, the prophet Elisha is minding his own business, heading to Bethel and some small boys (or, more likely, young men) jeer at him and his bald head and tell him to go up to Heaven like Elijah and begone, and Elisha curses these young men in the name of the Lord and in a flash, two she-bears emerge from the woods and maul forty-two of the boys . . . and as a high school teacher of annoying teenagers, who often ask, "Did you ever have hair?" this is now my favorite Bible story and while I understand there is separation of Chruch and State, I think I can teach this particular story because the East Brunswick mascot is a bear and perhaps this bear is interested in protecting bald men from ridicule.

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.

How Many Movies Will Anora Be?

My wife and I are halfway through Best Picture winner Anora, and the vibe has shifted from pornographic-Pretty Woman to a Safdie-esque Uncut Gems bad-decisions-thriller (with some Sandler-esque silliness).

Later Children, See You in the Fourth Quarter

Ahh . . . Spring Break . . . finally . . . and so I am drinking a beer, listening to Stereolab (very calming) and writing in peace-- my wife is napping on the couch-- and I am unwinding from a chaotic day with the youth: I started the day at morning basketball and we only had nine and then Frank, one of the older guys (but not as old as me!) went down with a calf cramp and so we played four-on-four full court until exhaustion, and then by the time I got out of the shower the first bell had already rung so I hustled (as fast as I could) to first period-- and I must say that THAT Creative Class is lovely and we read aloud the riddle poems that the kids wrote, guessed, and did a food metaphor fill-in and everything was fairly mellow-- but by my second 82-minute period, the kids were starting to feel it, they knew the end was nigh . . . so I read the end of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to my sophomores and then they made horror skits and enacted them-- and they had to have a couple of classic horror tropes in the skits plus some sort of get out/stay-in debate (lesson plan straight from my podcast!) and while they were loud and nuts, they actually got the skits written and performed them-- mainly because class is endless-- and then my last Creative Class was bananas, a lot of weird bickering and overly energetic teenagers-- and I can't express enough how much I hate block scheduling because 82-minutes is WAY TOO FUCKING LONG to have a class right before Spring Break (or basically any time at all) but I survived and someday I will retire and miss this?

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.