Dave Debuts "Creepy White Van" to an Audience of One (Human)

If you're like me (or Linda from Bob's Burgers) you might occasionally sing original songs about whatever the hell is going on right in front of you-- and while Linda will do this right in front of people, I think I only do this when I'm alone-- or when I think I'm alone-- for example: this morning when I was walking the dog in the park in the 6:00 AM darkness and I saw a van-- a white van-- roll out of the park, it got me wondering . . . so while I let Lola loose to run around and sniff the trees in the large grassy patch near the playground, where she generally does her business, and I started singing:

Creepy white van, creepy white van

who is the driver? always a man

creepy white van

and then Lola, who was fifty yards away from me, near a park bench facing the river, starting barking-- barking at a man sitting on the bench, a man I had not noticed-- or I wouldn't have been singing an original song about a van-- this man who was either sleeping one off or resting after an early morning walk or ready clandestine tryst with a lover . . . but whatever he was doing, he probably didn't expect to get regaled with an original tune and then reprimanded by a territorial bitch.

When Canadians Like Maple Syrup

The Hidden Brain episode "Group Think" explains why Canadians like honey and maple syrup equally . . . UNLESS they are reminded they are Canadian (perhaps by watching this commercial) and it also explains why I didn't become a Bruce Springsteen fan until I left New Jersey and went to college in Virginia; it wasn't until then that I was reminded (by mayo on Italian style hoagies) that I was part of a group: central Jersey dirtbags.

Tooziest Toozday

Tuesday is obviously the worst day of the week-- it has none of the earnest go-getter initiative of Monday, none of the hump-day inspiration of Wednesday, none of the thirsty pub-night charm of Thursday, none of the happy-hour/weekend anticipation of Friday . . . and it ain't the weekend-- and this was a very Tuesday Tuesday . . . our new block schedule features 84 minute periods, which is a hell of a long time in the normal world, but even more so in a mask, and I got assigned another period of cafeteria duty-- for a sum total of 84 minutes of cafeteria-duty . . . because, as I found out after I wrote a bunch of irate, all-lowercase, unedited and unvetted emails to administration with lovely vocabulary like "shafted" and "sucks," that if you're off period 3 or period 7, then you're going to end up in the cafeteria for extended amounts of time, because with the block schedule they don't have many teachers off at the same time . . . so I made the best of it and ignored the children and graded as much Rutgers expos stuff as I could, which makes for a brutal Tuesday . . . but it can only get better from here (I'm also tired because we had an epic night game against our rival Metuchen yesterday . . . it went into overtime and ended in a 2-2 tie . . . their goalie laid out and made an incredible PK save with two minutes left, but it was still a good result and Alex played well . . . but wow, today felt like I really had a job, which I guess I do).

L'esprit d'escalier, Sixteen Years Later

Last night at a birthday party, while we were discussing life, death, birth etcetera, my friend Alec and I figured out what to say when you are present at the birth of your child and the doctor asks if you'd like to cut the umbilical cord-- because Alec didn't really want to cut the umbilical cord but he felt obligated to do so-- his wife had just pushed a baby out of her vagina and it was the least he could do-- so he reluctantly cut the cord . . . but now we know better, we know how to handle this situation (although we are way way late-- Alec has a daughter in college and another in high school) and here's how it's done: 

Alec designs theaters for a living, so when the doctor asked him "would you like to cut the umbilical cord? he should have replied, "Would you like to design the acoustical space for musical venue?" and this works for pretty much any profession (except doctor or nurse) so if you're an accountant and the doctor asks if you want to snip this long blood-filled tube attached to your wife and child, you could say "would you like to review these financial statements for compliance issues?" and I could say "would you like to grade and comment on these expository essays?" and while it's too late for us-- we can't go strolling back into the maternity unit of the hospital and try this out-- it's a jerk-store situation-- but we can pass along the comment so perhaps someone younger might implement it when they are handed those scissors and feel out of their depth but don't know how to express this feeling.

Ramble On, Jack, Ramble On

If you're looking for some sensitive and thoughtful fiction, you're probably not going to like Lee Child's first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor . . . an ex-military policeman with rambling on his mind wanders into a sleepy Georgia town that turns out to be the center of the world's largest counterfeiting operation, and also the place where his brother was murdered (along with lots of other folks) and so the wandering on his mind turns quickly to vengeance-- and by the time Jack Reacher is through with everyone who has wronged him, his only choice is to ramble on and avoid the investigation . . . because he did not operate within the boundaries of the law or any normal ethics-- and I'm guessing wherever he wanders will turn up more trouble.

Rough Afternoon

My son Alex had a rough afternoon on the pitch today-- it was hot and we were playing a very tough South River team on their insane grass field-- it's part baseball field, part soccer field, with lots of bumps and ramps and hillocks-- and we're used to playing on turf and this team just cut us apart-- and our big center back (who knocked Alex out of the previous game with a head-to-head collision, knocked himself out of this game by planting his nose into the back of someone's head while going up for a header-- it was a bloody mess) and our 3-5-2 formation couldn't handle the skill and speed and wily moves of this mainly Portuguese team-- they knew how to play the proper weight passing into the space on the grass; they knew how to trap bouncing and lofted balls; they knew the simple feints that would work in order to get a defender tied up in the mud; and they knew how to run two players, one after the other, through the ball when it wildly bounced off the random patches of dirt and crabgrass-- but it's better to play a game like this and learn something than not play at all, and luckily, South River is group 2 and we are group one, so we won't run into them in the States.

Hygiene Theater Part II

This picture of my high school's "terminal" hallway says it all about "hygiene theater"-- today at cafeteria duty, teachers were told to make sure the students were seated with a one-seat buffer-- so every other seat, despite the fact that there are 500-700 kids in the cafeteria (before some disperse to the auditorium) waiting in line, eating, drinking, and living their lives-- and then some teachers were told to instruct kids to put their masks back on when they were done eating . . . the kids were not particularly cooperative about these mandates . . . with good reasons, as this picture demonstrates-- so we might as well take the masks off and take our chances, so then we can hear each other and recognize faces . . . Governor Murphy, give up on the masks in school-- they can't be helping all that much, and-- as a teacher with glasses and not the best ears-- the maks mandate isn't going to help in making up for educational losses in record time.

 

Acting! In the Hygiene Theater . . .

School is absurd right now-- we wear masks in class, but then we go to the cafeteria and 500-plus kids eat together without masks (and I supervise a section and I snack and eat and drink and wander around and chat with kids, so I'm not wearing a mask) and then we go back to small classes and put a mask on-- and the kids are supposed to have assigned seats (and sign in with a QR code) so they can contact trace if there's a case-- even though the cafeteria (and the auditorium, which is where the sophomores eat) has to be FULL of COVID-- because it's airborne!-- and my wife is in the same boat, with kids eating together . . . but she's not allowed to use a fan . . . anyway, either we're all going to get covid or were going to really bolster our immune systems . . . we shall see.

Looking for the Silver Lining in Chronology

My older son Alex-- a senior in high school-- had a good day on Friday; he learned he was starting at left-back in the soccer game on Saturday-- his first start in a real varsity game (and this is great for him because the team is excellent and mainly composed of super-skilled technical club players and Alex only plays soccer during soccer season-- but he's been playing well, he wins balls in the air, has some speed, a good left foot, and he just surpassed the six-foot mark, so he's pretty big-- so he was very excited to be out there for a home game against rival Spotswood) and then he drove to the movies with his friends and saw Shang Chi and then when he got home, he saw his SAT scores and he was very happy-- he improved 150 points and did especially well in math (and he wants to be an engineer) and then Saturday out on the turf the varsity coach said he was excited at how well Alex had been playing which is always nice, because as the JV coach, it's hard to tout your own kids too much-- it's a conflict of interest-- so I just agreed and told him he had been working hard and was really fit-- and Alex was a JV superstar last season, playing every minute of every game without injury and holding the team together so we could have some fun against generally tough opponents (we are in a conference with schools twice our size because we're competent at soccer) and Alex started the game playing excellent, winning balls on the ground and in the air, stepping to balls, and making some great distribution-- we're only playing three in the back so they can't screw up-- and then he called a head ball and went up for it and the center back, his buddy Luke, who is at least 6 foot three, maybe more, came flying out of nowhere and they clonked heads and Alex had to come off-- he might have a mild concussion or he might have just taken a hard short above his eye-- but he was annoyed that he got hurt in his first varsity start but I told him that it's a long, long season and he'd be back out there and to look on the bright side-- at least he didn't have to study for the SATs with a headache-- it was a great thing that the SATs were a couple weeks BEFORE he got his bell rung.

The Myth of the Starving Artist

According to North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, there's no such thing as a starving artist-- if you're foraging for grasshoppers and wild plants for sustenance in an absurdist dystopian dictatorship, then you've got no energy or brainpower left to consume or create art-- which is just how Kim Jong-un wants it; Park tells her story on the Joe Rogan podcast, and it is by turns horrific and enlightening-- I'm not sure what we can do about the state of affairs in North Korea because they possess nuclear weapons, but Park describes the place as worse than a Nazi death camp . . . this is an amazing episode, but perhaps there are inconsistencies in Park's story . . . although I'm not sure if that matters; she is also highly critical of "Woke" culture and you can understand why-- when you've seen the terror and racism and horrors of North Korea, it must seem that Americans are quibbling about minor affairs.

Trump, Shakespeare, Assassination, Viral Media, Abe Lincoln, Wife-Beating, Etc

James Shapiro's book Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future is far more fun and compelling than the title; Shapiro, a noted Shakespeare scholar, looks at how American Shakespeare productions in eight different periods of American history reflect the politics and predilections of the times . . . so you've got:

1) Othello in 1835 and themes of miscegenation;

2) the cross-dressing genius of Charlotte Cushman, who apparently played Romeo far better than any man could;

3) class warfare, populist riots, elitism, and Macbeth in 1840s Manhattan;

4) Abe Lincoln's meditations on Hamlet . . . apparently he liked Claudius' confession soliloquy (my offense is rank, it smells to Heaven) better than "to be or not to be"

5) The Tempest and immigration in 1916;

6) feminism, the role of the woman and all that in 1948, with The Taming of the Shrew and Kiss Me Kate . . . the way Shrew  was staged often indicated how the director felt about the growing amount of women in the workforce and the role of women in general;

7) adultery and same-sex love in Shakespeare in Love and 12th Night in 1998 . . . apparently major revisions were made to the theatrical version of Shakespeare in Love to make it appropriate for a general movie-going audience-- in the original script, Shakespeare took much longer to realize Viola was a woman and thought he had fallen in love with a man and was confused about his sexuality-- that was the main conflict, but that got stripped down for the 1998 audience, which was just starting to embrace homosexuality;

8) and the wild left/right culture wars of the Trump era, embodied by a version of Julius Caesar wherein a Trump-like figure is assassinated, sparking a firestorm of typical right-wing outrage and internet virality;

and at the heart of this is the fact that America loves Shakespeare even more than England-- and it often evokes our darkest sins in a way that we can handle and discuss: incest, suicide, adultery, racism, sexism, class warfare, democracy, tyranny, etc and it would be a shame if the same thing happened in America that happened in England in 1642-- the theaters were shut down because of civil war between parliament and the crown, ending in the beheading of Charles I . . . hopefully the right won't abandon Shakespeare as elitist melodrama and the left won't abandon him because he was a white male (though the term didn't exist yet) and we'll be able to use him to air our debates and grievances and politics in an artistic and public forum.

Ironic and Idiotic Advice and Action Juxtaposition

Teenage boys are often the worst about basic common sense and safety-- for example, they leave the burners on in the kitchen and go elsewhere in the house, often forgetting that they are cooking something-- so when I asked Ian to hold the ladder while I was cleaning out the front gutter (to avoid further flooding) and he said, "I'll just do it myself" I told him that climbing up on a long ladder is a "two-man job" and so we went outside and took turns cleaning out the gutter and holding the ladder and we tested out the clean gutter with the hose and everything seemed satisfactory-- a job well-done, without mishap-- so Ian went inside to take a nap and I got curious about the gutter above the back porch, and-- ignoring my own advice-- I carried the ladder to the backyard and up onto the deck, propped it against a corner high up on the house, climbed up, cleaned out the gutter, and then decided I could climb up a bit more and get on the roof and grab a few sticks, and that's when one end of the top of the ladder dislodged itself from the corner and started free-floating and I felt like the whole thing was going to topple and I was going to break my neck; I managed to grab the roof and right myself and climb down without injury, but I was scared shitless and angry with myself for not following my own advice.

The Dress: Revisited By a Morning Person

According to this article in Slate, morning people (larks) had a much better chance of seeing that black and blue dress that took the internet by storm as white and gold-- and I am a morning person and I see the dress as white and gold-- and this is probably because I'm exposed to much more natural light each day and less incandescent light (because I'm sleeping) and so I assume the dress is in a shadow (or something like that . . . read the article).

Be Like Jenson (Not Novak)

I'm a compact guy, so no more following around-- I'm going to hit a compact two-handed backhand . . . and I might even chip it with some backspin occasionally, like that Jenson Brooksby fellow (but what I'm certainly not going to do is try to emulate Novak Djokovich . . . that guy is Gumby).

The Return of the Greased Watermelon!

This morning my shoulder felt awful, my legs were sore, and I was still a little slick from the vaseline . . . which are all good things as this means that the Rutgers pool was open this season and we were able to have an end-of-the-season-greased-watermelon-rugby match; this one was the most epic ever-- we decided to end it at 2-2 and call it a tie (though both points the other team scored were cheesy-- one wide of the cone and both in shallow water, the watermelon tossed by a standing person-- our goals were much more beautiful) and here a couple of pics of the youngsters and oldsters who participated (mt younger son was away but my older son Alex was in there, and his buddy Luke, both defenders don't he soccer team).

 

Hurricane Ida Jersey Flood Pics

Here are some pics of the Hurrican Ida floodwaters in Highland Park and New Brunswick . . . pretty wild-- for two days, our house was riverside:

Route 18 in New Brunswick, closed and submerged

Donaldson Park basketball court-- kayakers can dunk!

Mark WG kayaking in sewage water

the Hyatt in New Brunswick

Cedar Lane sinkhole

more sinkhole

Donaldson the morning after

Rob was down there too . . .

the tent that prevented some water from completely submerging our basement

New Brunswick and floodwater reflections

Route 27 bridge

Donaldson park-- drone shot

Donaldson Park tennis courts, drone shot.

What Does the Fox Scream?

I thought that when our coffee maker broke, that was the perfect ending for this summer-- but it wasn't-- the perfect ending was a monster rain event that flooded our basement (and everyone else's basement in the vicinity) so I spent my last night of summer dragging furniture up the basement stairs; shop-vacuuming water from the basement floor; setting up a sump pump in the basement shower; building a tarp and whiteboard tent around a leaky basement window in a monsoon, and admiring the fact that my shed stayed bone dry because of the expert flooring and drainage system I constructed; some irony here-- earlier in the day, the kids and I did a massive deep clean of the house to surprise my wife when she arrived home from her first day of school-- we cleaned bathrooms and sorted shelves and vacuumed stairs and carpets and spun the kitchen table so the carpet wouldn't pop up . . . and the kids were cooperative and hard-working and my wife was duly impressed but it all came to naught, because the house got really dirty again because of the flood-- I'll provide pictures and more tomorrow, but now I've got to go to a birthday event-- but late last night, when the park was flooded and the eamimals had to roam the streets, I saw a couple fox strolling down our street and they started SCREAMING . . . apparently this is what they do-- and then I got up and went to work, while my wife and kids cleaned up from the flood-- my wife's school was canceled and my kids haven't started yet-- and now the park is still flooded and all the roads are closed, an epic way to start the school year.

A Perfectly Apropos Ending for This Summer (but a bit on the nose)

On my final day of summer (but my wife is reporting to work today) the coffee maker broke, which is the perfect end to this summer of lost and dying things.

Penultimate Day of Summer!

I've got to report to work on Thursday, and this is what I've done so far on my penultimate day of summer:

1) went to the dog park at 6:45 AM;

2) took a bus to Clark and assistant-coached a varsity scrimmage-- my son Alex started at left-back and played quite well

3) took a nap;

4) played tennis against a guy who is very similar to me in skill and blew a 4-1 lead and ending up losing in a tiebreaker when we were at 6-6

5) enjoyed a few beers and watched a totally entertaining and disgusting horror movie with Catherin and Ian, Slither.

New(ish) Car!

We picked up our 2018 Mazda CX-5 today from Open Road Honda, we were looking for a CR-V or a RAV4 but we got a great deal (after a lot of broody negotiating . . . fueled by long, hot soccer practices) because it was the end of the month and the Honda dealership was going to sell this car to a Mazda dealership so they could certify it (and it's kind of a weird blue color that doesn't look great online but is perfectly fine in person) and I'm proud to say this is the first car we've ever owned that isn't the base trim model!