Sentence of Dave

I could never imagine that people would be so rabid about something as mundane as sinus irrigation, but when I was suffering some sinus pro...

One of the few nice things about growing old is that my feet don't smell as bad as they did when I was a kid . . . but maybe that's...

A good day skim-boarding at the beach for young and old on Saturday: Alex had his first real success, he's now strong enough to chuck t...

I'm slightly embarrassed that this was the movie that I had the "Netflix team" working their damnedest on so that I could rec...

Somalian extremist dilemma: do the pros of banning the bra outweigh the cons of banning music?

I recently saw two relatively difficult kids' movies: Oceans , which is a visual treat (especially the blanket octopus and the night- t...

Whether you blog about it or not, history (and stupidity) repeats itself; last night I lay awake wondering if I was itchy because I had come...

Apparently, the evolutionary trait "do whatever the fuck you want even if it's asinine and dangerous" is more useful to a youn...

The boys and I spent Rutgers Day on College Avenue instead of going over to Ag Field Day, and I highly recommend this if you hate crowds and...

Sunday 5:51 AM: Ian yells, "I need you to wipe my butt!"

I don't think I actually need to define this, your imagination will serve you better, but here is a new word . . . perhaps you can try ...

We shouldn't have found this so amazing, and the fact that we did is a clear illustration of how technology has fragmented our culture: ...

Alex, who just turned six, is onto us: at dinner the other night he slanted his eyes and gave my wife his most skeptical look and said, &qu...

One of my students bravely revealed that when she was young, she thought that the disc-shaped jellyfish that often wash up on the Jersey S...

The next installment in a series of daring arboreal adventures: you might remember last year when I pulled a a giant limb down with a foot...

The eponymous Tyson documentary is surprisingly moving, sincere and candid . . . plus you get to see all his fantastic knock-outs, plus you...

How many calls does it take from the dentist's receptionist before you schedule an appointment?

Special bonus here . . . it is my new advice column over at Gheorghe : Ask the Dungeonmaster (and now there's a special double bonus ...

After school, Alex and Ian immediately got up to something upstairs, I heard lots of banging and whispering, but no crying, so enjoyed the q...

Ian begins each new day in the same way . . . he yells down the stairs, in his high pitched voice, to whomever might be listening: "Do ...

Sometimes, after I have a few drinks, I like to sit down and start a sentence even though I don't know where it's going to end up, a...

I usually don't post clips, and this is the sort of thing that I think is incredibly addictive, dangerous, and dehumanizing-- and in the...

Compare/contrast: Thursday night versus Friday night . . . Thursday night I met some friends for half price beers at Charlie Browns and the...

Do not doubt the power of the universal language--mathematics--when verbal communication is poor: I asked the Indian man at the Raceway sta...

Two days ago at dinner, we caught Alex in a private moment-- he had taken two peas and placed one of them on the edge of his plate and the o...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo inspired me to read another Swedish detective story-- this one, called Sidetracked , by the world famou...

Adam Haslett's debut novel, Union Atlantic , is a mini Tom Wolfe novel-- like Bonfire of the Vanities or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Te...

Our kids are champion car travelers, they did the eight hours back from the beach without a complaint-- yet they are often terrible when ins...

There is nothing like a Circus Peanut: the color, the texture, the taste . . . and if you want to read more, head over to G:TB for the Fir...

Rice Krispies wouldn't snap, crackle and pop . . . if corn weren't a subsidized crop.

Hot Tub Time Machine is very funny and also very very vulgar . . . and what made it even funnier for Catherine and I is that once the credi...

I have been elected by the student body to give the graduation speech this year, and I am a bit nervous as I'll be speaking to a very la...

Does Surfer Blood sound too much like Weezer for its own good?

It must be in the genes: Alex and Ian sit down together on the couch to look at the new Lego catalog, which sounds pretty innocuous, but wit...

I'm feeling constrained by this format, I think it's time for me to spread my wings and fly. I think I need to try something new.

Does anyone actually get Andy Capp?-- and I'm not talking about his Hot Fries, which are delicious, I'm talking about the comic stri...

While I can only commend Sean Penn for going to Haiti and lending a hand, I also think he may have lost himself in his "role" as a...

Once in a while it's fun to have a date night: an intimate dinner at a rustic spot (Sandy's diner) and then something special in the...

Alex tossed a shield bug in the toilet, but Ian (who STILL refuses to let us use live worms as fishing bait) rescued the drowning bug, not t...

We started watching the second season of Breaking Bad , and it is just as excellent and intense as the first-- if you like to sit tensely w...

Here is a great picture of last week's flood and what it did to the park a block from our house-- if the ocean levels do rise as predic...

There is nothing more serene to me than running barefoot on the beach with my iPod, or that's how it used to be, but I think I will be m...

I rarely post videos, but I'm sure that this is the most important film since Citizen Kane , and it inspired the kids and me to build a ...

On St. Patrick's Day, my son Alex had some questions about Ireland, and so I showed him a map and put on some Irish music (Horslips) and...

Because of all the flooding, I forgot to mention just how much I hate daylight savings time-- it's not just the darkness in the morning,...

If you can stomach it, you should read The Good Soldiers , David Finkel's account of his time with battalion 2-16 during "the surge...

The older you get, the longer it takes to become friends with an acquaintance: kindergarteners at the park become friends in minutes . . . ...

It's a little embarrassing, but I can't stop listening to the new Beach House album; it's called "Teen Dream" and th...

Chop Shop takes you to a fantastic world, yet it feels completely natural . . . it begins with day laborers hustling for jobs-- is it Boliv...

I grabbed Anneli Rufus's new book Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On on an impulse because it has the same title as a new ...

Everyone is grouchy at work because of contract negotiations and expected budget cuts, and we wear buttons that say "No Contract, still...

Odd combination of events: high school play, high winds, and fairly high flooding . . . and a new English office chart and "points"...

Getting a massage is my favorite form of entertainment, not only because it feels good, but also because it is entertainment without negativ...

Yesterday, when the teacher I share a wall with asked me to come in and say a few words about the singularity, this made me increibly happy ...

I am beginning to think that Hamlet is a little like Neo, from the film The Matrix ; Hamlet is somehow subconsciously aware that he is in a...

Thank God the good playground is a block away from our house, as this spares me the humiliation of having to organize "play dates"...

Superfreakonomics is just as entertaining as Levitt and Dubner's first book, but it's a bit more controversial-- amidst its "...

There's nothing more fun (for an English teacher) than reading the same book at the same time as someone else, especially if it's ob...

The French movie Cache (Hidden) is riveting and infuriating, you have to see but it will drive you crazy-- it will make you paranoid, it wi...

Sometimes, when I've been away from my kids for a few hours, and I see someone's cute little baby, I think to myself: I should get C...

While trying to use some reverse psychology on my kids, I outsmarted myself; Alex and Ian are close enough in size that they wear the same...

So the other day Catherine was already home when I got home from school, which is a rare event once soccer season is over (she had a half da...

If you're looking for a novel that tackles big themes-- art and design, love and alienation, fate and meaning-- but you need some pictu...

The Hurt Locker takes place in Baghdad-- but I was able to recognize where they filmed it, Amman . . . when we lived in Damascus, we would ...

Today is our day: me, Seuss, and Bon Jovi, and I am the youngest, Though I just turned forty.

Alex and Ian found a lady-bug in the kitchen (possibly the same one that crawled on my wife's face in the night?) and Ian convinced Alex...

I love paradoxes and here is a great one from The Strong Horse, Lee Smith's new book on Middle East politics: "after 9/11, the schi...

WARNING: we watched Gremlins the other night with the kids, and though it's a little violent, they loved it . . . in this age of digit...

I just started Lee Smith's new book on Middle East politics called The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizatio...

Alex coined a word the other night; he said I should "buffle" someone with my newly shaven head, because it was "spiky and d...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a bit long for a thriller, but every time it slowed down, it was for a good reason-- and it's moody ...

I'm proud of the fact that I've been driving the same car since 1994 (a Jeep Cherokee Sport-- solid V6 engine and no power windows ...

Our Hamilton Beach food processor has these settings: Pulse, Grate, Quick Clean, Grind, Stir, Beat, Aerate, Shred, Puree, Blend, Crumb, Liq...

If you don't check the text messages on your cell phone for a long time, then when you finally do-- they tell a little story, and you ar...

Note to self: penicillin gives me a rash.

I loved the new Coen brothers movie, A Serious Man , for the first half hour, but then, once the theme dawned on me, it became harder to enj...

Ian groggily greeted me 6:24 Monday morning with this declaration, "Pirates play chess."

If there were any kind of cosmic justice, I wouldn't have had to endure A Gazillion Bubbles this weekend, since I took Alex to see One ...

Sea Isle City Polar Plunge Recap: a good turn-out, and everyone who was on time plunged, except our photographer Celine; the plungers wer...

Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger are with us no longer, but their legacy is: like Beck, they both championed the loser-- Salinger gave a voice ...

This very well could be the best moment of the rest of your life-- the moment that your thoughts are most lucid and your body is most respon...

After a fantastic day of snowboarding yesterday, Terry, Kim, Stacy and I hopped in my Subaru to head home, but on the way out of town I spo...

On the same day that my six year old son Alex wrote and illustrated a book called My Family (which had a page for every person in the famil...

Some people say everything happens for a reason, and though I don't believe them, it is fun to pretend that this might be true; so the...

Together is a Swedish film about a commune in the mid-seventies, and the moral is that you can't fight human nature: no matter how muc...

Apparently, high school kids find it really scary and funny if their teacher leaps over his desk and knocks over a chair and a water bottle ...

Missed the turn for Wawa and had to go to Quick Check for coffee, and I'm glad I did because on the register there was a sticker that re...

Just in case there's some kind of Freaky Friday type incident, and your mind suddenly inhabits my body, here is my mnemonic for remembe...

Alex and I were both occasionally a little lost and occasionally a little antsy during Charles Ross's One Man Star Wars Trilogy , but by...

My wife thinks we should spend some money on painting our house, but I think we should spend some money on a hollow-bodied guitar; my ratio...

Now that J.D. Salinger is finally dead, perhaps his family will allow a movie to be made of The Catcher in the Rye , and I'm assuming ...

Today my blogging efforts are here ; I wrote an Official Olympic Snowboarding preview for Gheorghe: The Blog , which mainly consists of ram...