Sentence of Dave

A World Without Knobs

I banged the back of my hand really hard on one of our glass doorknobs . . . and I blame society.

Gluttonous incidents 327,967 and 327,968: this week on the way to school I ate BOTH cashew granola bars that were intended for lunch and snack (yes, I am a grown man who needs to bring a snack) thus leaving me with no recourse when faced with the giant chocolate cake in the English office, and since there were no plates, I worked my way around the outside of the cake, just eating the icing, which was coated with chocolate flakes . . . which leads me to wonder how skinny I would be if there wasn't always random food sitting around the office (and my house and my parent's house and the grocery store).

Short Attention Span Literature

It's nice when an excellent author writes something easy and fun . . . so though you may not have had the literary endurance to digest Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece Suttree, at least you can breeze through No Country for Old Men or The Road . . . and I never made it through Denis Johnson's Vietnam epic Tree of Smoke but I whipped through his new one, Nobody Move, a dead ringer for a classic Elmore Leonard novel (complete with precise Leonardesque vocabulary, the car door squeaked because the bushings were shot).

Birth School School Death

Back in the 80's I thought The Godfather's tune "Birth School Work Death" was dark and funny, but now that I'm 75% of the way through the song, it's more than a little scary, especially because if you're a teacher-- as I am-- then the second and third stages are essentially the same: Birth School School Death (unless you insert summer vacation in there-- Birth School Summer Vacation School Summer Vacation Death-- and then things don't seem as grim).

Midgets? Hieronymus Bosch?This Just Might Be The Film For You

If you like midgets, medieval architecture, old-style Quentin Tarantino flicks, and Hieronymus Bosch, then In Bruges is tailor-made for you-- I give it six canals out of a possible seven-- but I do admit that I may be biased because I love medieval architecture, old-style Quentin Tarantino flicks, and Hieronymus Bosch . . . and I certainly don't mind a movie with a midget or two (or more, just watched Time Bandits the other day with the kids).

Here I Am to Save the . . . Ugh, Sorry . . .

Awkward Moment of Dave #21,987: walking towards the cafeteria, I heard one of the school aides chastising someone-- the aide was standing in the door frame talking firmly to a person just beyond the door, saying, "That's not how you act, even if you're having a problem, you don't behave like that!" and so I decided to step in and give her a hand with this recalcitrant student-- since they often don't treat the aides with the same respect they afford the teachers . . . so I opened the other door and stepped through like Superman, and said in my most resounding baritone, "What seems to be the trouble here?" and then realized that the older aide was talking to another lunch aide, about some personal problem, I suppose, because she looked at me funny and said, "I think we can handle this" and I had no coherent reply ready, so I beat a hasty retreat.

Thinking on Pink

If you say the word "pink" to me, I think of the color pink, and feel a little fruity, but if you say "Pink Floyd" I think of the cover of Dark Side of the Moon and don't feel fruity at all-- why is that?

Near Death Pun

Yesterday, I was pushing Ian in the stroller to the post office, and while we were in the middle of the street (in the crosswalk, I might add), a car with handicapped plates didn't wait for us to finish crossing-- he revved his engine and crossed South Third, so he was essentially heading right at us-- but all I could think was "if this guy hits us-- a dad and his kid in a stroller walking within the confines of the crosswalk-- after running through a STOP sign, then when we go to court, he's not going to have a leg to stand on."

Hmmm . . .

Yesterday, a student was falling asleep in class-- let's refer to him as John Doe-- and so I told him to take a walk and wake up or I would have to "send him to the nurse"-- which is a euphemism for send him to get drug tested-- and a few minutes after he left class a student said, "There's John Doe in the courtyard, he's sleeping!" and there he was, in a state of complete repose on the grass, headphones in his ears, asleep just outside my classroom window.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Tree

My tree was wilting but once I irrigated the root ball and dribbled in some water, it sprung right back up (seriously, I'm talking about an actual tree here!)

I Might Need to Make a Big Poster

There is a propagandistic war going on in our house: Alex noticed a fruit roll-up wrapper on the floor and asked me who threw it there and I said, subtly, ever so subtly: "I don't know, maybe mommy" and he said he didn't think so because I like to "litter" and throw wrappers and garbage on the floor of my car and that all I do is "eat and litter, eat and litter, eat and litter" and even though I was the one who threw the wrapper on the floor (it was during a VERY exciting movie) I still don't think a five-year-old should be making assumptions like that-- especially since he rarely rides in my car so obviously he didn't get this information first-hand (even though it's true) so I'm going to have to step-up my disinformation program.

5/19/2009

Tell No One is a sharp, emotionally draining French thriller in the vein of The Fugitive, and I give it sixteen croissants out of a possible seventeen . . . but the only complaint I have is that the Frenchman who plays the lead looks WAY too much like Dustin Hoffman, to the point where at times I thought Dustin Hoffman was making a cameo in the film, but then I would realize that it was just Francois Cluzet again-- this was very distracting, and I'm not sure what the remedy is-- maybe the foreign film market is only big enough for one of them, and they should shoot it out at high noon or maybe they should only appear jointly in movies where they always play separated twins, one raised in France and one in America . . . the odd thing is, everyone seems to know about this uncanny resemblance (thus the split image, it popped right up on Google) BUT NO ONE HAS DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

5/18/2009

While I was driving back from Wawa, I saw a mailman look at a piece of mail, then throw his hand in the air, then look back behind him angrily-- but then, get this, he didn't turn around and walk back to where he looked: so that piece of mail is definitely in the sewer.

5/17/2009

Young people having sex is pornography, old people having sex is slapstick: what kind of movie are you in?

5/16/2009

After Catherine deduced what happened with the Magic Bullet, she said she might need to start a blog titled "Sentence About Dave" but she's obviously not an avid enough reader of my blog-- because it's already been done (although it wasn't very long-lived, but how many of you can say you both write a blog and have had a blog written exclusively about you? how many of you? none of you! unless your name is Paris Hilton . . . so I'm in good company).

Philadelphia: The Cheese Isn't Just on the Steaks

I took the kids to the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday, which they enjoyed-- there is a good collection of armor and halberds and pikes and swords and old guns and a decent sampling of all the masters, modern and ancient, including a great painting of Prometheus with his liver being eaten by a giant eagle-- and they also enjoyed the famous view of Philly from the terrace, but when I showed them the clip from Rocky when he runs up those same steps, they didn't seem to enjoy that very much-- maybe because the 70's keyboard in the theme song is exponentially cheesier than you remember.

5/14/2009

Apparently, to get the Magic Bullet to actually chop anything, you have to attach some kind of sharp spinny thing-- otherwise, it just makes an annoying noise (another lesson learned during my week of preparing dinner . . . that was my mother's day gift to Catherine, I thought it would be easy but it's going to kill me).

Ian Gets Stung While Wearing Pajamas

Rough week for Ian: he got bit on the arm by a kid at school-- the biter's teeth made vampire fang marks but luckily the kid had all his shots; Ian also has a cut under his foreskin; and, on top of that, last night, while he was in his pajamas, after story time, moments before he was about to snuggle up in bed, he stepped on a bee that found it's way into out house (probably on my clothes while I was planting a tree) and so we went from serenity to hysteria; I grabbed the bee off his foot and threw it, but I couldn't find the stinger, and then I couldn't find the bee and wondered if someone else was going to step on it . . . but Catherine managed to locate it, and it was dead, and the stinger was lodged between Ian's toes-- a tender spot and hard to get at (kid's toes are tiny!) but he handled it like a little man and definitely know he's not allergic now.

5/12/2009

Wisdom from a jaded five year old to his younger brother: after a LONG Sunday, the boys finally finished their dinner and Alex asked if he could have a treat; I told him that his treat tonight was a shower, and while he was stomping up the steps he said to Ian, "This treat is a rip-off."

Godzilla Movies Are Funny Because They Are Dubbed

Catherine and I started watching the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In and it was dubbed, so after a moment I switched the audio to Swedish and put on the sub-titles; Catherine then called me "the most annoying person in the world," which I said was a little extreme, and then I told her that everyone switches from dubbing to sub-titles if it's available (except the Italians, who demand all movies be dubbed-- they can't stomach hearing any language but their own) and we made a ten dollar bet about what audio setting the person who recommended the movie used, so this sentence is TO BE CONTINUED (but I am correct, right-- no one listens to the dubbing, do they?)