I've Seen The Top Chill, It Was Great . . .

On my quest to plug the gaps in my pop-culture erudition, I tried to watch Top Gun, but I only made it half-way through-- I reached my high-five limit-- and I was worried that I would never know why Maverick's dad died, but Wikipedia has an excellent and precise plot summary that is far more entertaining than the movie . . . and so now I have to decide--much like my students with every book I've ever assigned-- if I should actually watch The Big Chill or if I should just read the synopsis and fake it?

Atonement: Cure for Happiness

If you've got some spring in your step, if you see the glass as half full, if you've been whistling away and looking on the bright side of life, and you want to curtail your absurdly optimistic outlook, then watch Atonement.

Are "The Hold Steady" Sincere . . . or Sincerely Ironic?

I'm not sure if The Hold Steady is sincere or not, but they seem like a Spinal Tap version of Bruce Springsteen, updated for the times, and that's not knocking them-- they're very entertaining.

Secret Park

I thought I knew my way around Highland Park (it's only a mile square) but-- based on some information from one of the elementary school teachers-- we found a new park (new to us); it's right behind the White Rose System and it has an old school merry-go-round and a cool rock wall for the kids to climb and some kind of fenced in court and it's shaded by huge trees and it was full of Asian grandmothers watching their grandchildren.

Face of a Pug, Heart of a Wolf

The lone timber wolf and the Bassett hound in the pink doggy-sweater both howl at the same moon.

The End . . . Not Really All That Nigh

There has been a grave miscalculation: the end is not nigh-- in fact, judging by what cosmologists predict from radio telescope data, the end is the opposite of nigh.

Range Life

Sometimes, when the kids are occupied elsewhere, I sneak into the kitchen, turn the range on low, and roast a marshmallow.

Dave Takes an Aesthetic Stand

Although it is certainly a shortcoming in my aesthetic sensibility, there is one thing for certain that I will never have any use for: the Dorian mode.

Reflecting on the Inflection

The problem with cell-phones is their immediacy-- there is no time for detachment from the narrative, no time for revision, hyperbole, and editing-- everything is in real time, without reflection . . . kind of like this blog.

Eight Year Olds Dude, Eight Year Olds . . .

At the beach today, a fairly innocuous looking guy who claimed to be a journalism teacher at a high school in Pennsylvania asked if he could take a picture of Alex and Ian-- they were wearing their sun hats and playing on a large pile of sand-- but I told him I thought that was kind of weird, and that I would rather he didn't; I would never ask anyone if I could take a picture of their kids, so that's how I made my decision, but it also may have been influenced by the fact that earlier in the day the lifeguards pulled everyone out of the water for a few minutes because of a reputed shark sighting.

Youth Sports: They Build Character?

While walking home from my pick-up soccer game, I saw a great moment in youth sports: a shaggy haired kid who couldn't have been more than eight was standing on the tennis court, sandwiched by his parents, who were tag-teaming him with a vicious coaching diatribe because of his lame strokes and lamer attitude-- the mom, who was wearing a Rutgers shirt and looked athletic in a stocky way, was lambasting him with lines like this: "If you don't lift your arm, I'll lift you! Don't tell me it's hot, it was hotter than this at camp! Did they have air-conditioning on the courts at camp? I don't think so! If you don't bend your knees, I'll bend you!" and then the dad, who was tossing this youngster balls to whack, told her to stop and "watch Momma, don't watch the ball, watch Momma" and he would toss her one and "Momma" would whip a crisp top-spin forehand down the line, and then Dad would go back to tossing to his kid, who could barely bop the thing over the net, and the berating would begin all over again.

Lying . . . It's What Civilized People Do

It's all how you phrase it: when I suggested (to save some money) that I could do some of the painting for our kitchen addition, my wife gave me an absolute vote of no confidence, and banned me from doing ANY painting in her new kitchen, which offended me, of course-- I told her she had to give me some sort of hope that I could possibly do it, if I was very careful and uncharacteristically neat, even if she didn't believe this and wasn't even planning on letting me even stir the paint can-- just to show faith that her husband has the ability to improve himself, just to see optimism and potential in the universe-- and she said to me, "What do you want me to do? Lie?" and I said, "Yes! That's what people do!" and she said I was too sensitive, but my friend Eric didn't see what the problem was, he just said, "This is great-- now you don't have to paint."

Tombstone . . . What the Fuck?

I just watched Tombstone, one of the movies all my friends had seen but me (now only Top Gun and The Big Chill remain) and it's like everyone is acting in a different genre of film: Kurt Russell and Dana Delany are in a cheesy 80's romantic comedy (and they don't even attempt to alter their diction); Sam Elliott is in a bona fide Western; Bill Paxton and Jason Priestly are in a made for TV movie; Powers Boothe is in a B grade slasher flick; Val Kilmer steals the show as Doc Holiday-- and he's in a super-freaky Tarantino-esque meta-Western; Charlton Heston is in The Ten Commandments; and the director had the audacity to start and end the film like a documentary, with some black and white footage and a voice-over, but he couples this with maudlin music, romanticized shots of thundering hoof-beats, Schwarzenegger-esque dialogue (Johnny Ringo says "Let's do this" and Kurt Russell replies, "See you in Hell") and there's also some of the most absurd gunfighting in cinema history-- what were George P. Cosmatos and the gang thinking?

Close Call

Close call in Princeton: after eating a giant meal at Tortuga's Mexican Village ( I ordered three items instead of two, I couldn't pass up an extra tamale smothered with chicken and mole sauce) we took the kids to the art and archaeology museum, where the rule is that you must hold hands with your children so they do not destroy the artifacts, and while staring at a Buddha, my button popped off my shorts and Catherine did not have a bobby pin on her (in fact, she thought my request was ludicrous) and, most importantly, I had been at the gym earlier and didn't bring an extra pair of boxers so I was commando under there . . . there was nothing but one layer of unsupported fabric between me and the art-- and some of those statues are naked . . . but I got out without flashing any Princetonites and from now on I will stick to two items when I eat at Tortuga's (but I can't make any promises about the underwear).

My Wife Berates Me About a Fictitious Insect

When I notice someone has the hiccups, I pretend there is a bug in their hair-- this usually gets people flustered, anxious and concerned . . . they pick through their hair, look for a mirror, shake their heads, etcetera . . . and, during the fretfulness, the reverse peristalsis usually rights itself, plus-- as a bonus-- the bystanders get a laugh-- but I tried this on Catherine yesterday and it didn't work; she said, "Well, get it out" and when I pretended to be squeamish about grabbing the bug she called me a "pussy"-- actually she spelled out the word "pussy," because the kids were sitting there, but still.

R.I.P. A Bunch of People

In the locker-room after successful swim with my new Otterbox (a contraption which makes an Ipod submersible) I heard one old guy ask another how he was doing-- and the other guy's reply was truly inspirational, one of the sunniest things I've ever heard, in fact, a whole new way of looking at the world; he said: "Doing good, doing good . . . a lot of people didn't wake up this morning."

Post-Judgement Judgy Stuff

On the way home from the beach yesterday (and there's no better way to decompress from a long weekend at the beach than by going to the beach-- except when Ian dropped a load in his bathing suit) we were listening to the radio and there was a reference to the "More Cowbell" SNL sketch and my wife revealed that she had never seen it, which kind of astounded me, but then I realized because of the massive variety of media choices that we have now, that we have gotten into the habit of understanding people simply by what they have seen and not their thoughts on what they have seen-- because of the lack of a common denominator (You hate Silver Spoons? Me too!) we simply count someone's choice in media as enough to signify taste, critical thought and intelligence (you watch The Wire? Me too! Awesome!) and not knowing about the existence of certain media is a serious character indicator (you've never heard of Radiohead? Very, very weird . . . there must be something wrong here . . . where did you grow up?) and this is probably not the best way to judge people.

The Tell-Tale Goggles

I might have had a better chance convincing the life guard who called me out of the ocean (which was clearly marked "No Swimming") that I was just "relaying a message to my friend on the kayak"-- if I hadn't been wearing my swim goggles.

Outer Banks Fishing Trip XV

Here are some things that happened during The Fifteenth Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip that didn't happen during the other years:

 

1) stand-up paddle boarding;

2) no swimming flag for three days;

3) Lacey, the bartender at Tortuga's, joined in movie game II and sat down and had a beer with us AND texted Jeremy twice to see if we would meet her out, despite the fact that she was married . . .  apparently, to a good-looking but humorless guy;

4) Whitney invented the movie sound track game and scrolled from A to Z on his infinite Ipod; 

5) Cliff demonstrated his knowledge of Mary Poppins and Grease;

6) Rodell demonstrated his musical knowledge of Singles and Fast Times at Ridgemont High;

7) Squirrel demonstrated his musical knowledge of The Big Chill;

8) we learned that I have never seen Top Gun (but I have seen The Big Lewbowski and can identify the Cheers theme song in one note) and that Lacy has never seen Vacation 

9) Frisbeer is all about defense;

10) Kenny Bloom and Fish were in spitting distance but decided not to show;

this is all I can think of for now, remind me of anything else I forgot-- it's too bad no one has been jotting down what happened at OBFT for the first fourteen years-- or perhaps that's a good thing.

Perhaps None of Them

Which is a better metaphor for life-- baseball, soccer, or Dig-Dug?

Ocean Miracles

As a kid, the closest thing to real magic is seeing someone walk into the ocean, sink down, and then slowly rise up, until it appears that the person is walking on water way out beyond the breaking surf; I'm talking about a sandbar, of course, not Jesus.

Ha Ha Ha

I will be truthful and tell you that this is not a fresh sentence-- I'm in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and this sentence was written days ahead of time-- but I've added an imaginary and subconscious laugh track, so you'll think it's live.

Grandma Logic

Yesterday, when we returned from a day at the beach, there was a cryptic message on the phone from my grandmother (this isn't unusual as no one in my family ever leaves anything concrete on an answering machine, they always demand a call-back) and when I called her back she told me she wanted to give me some money for my fishing trip, but I told her not to drive over because there was a downed telephone pole on Route 1, and so she asked me if Catherine had fifty dollars . . . and if Catherine did possess fifty dollars, then she was to give the money to me, and then my grandmother said that she would give Catherine fifty dollars; although my wife said this was the funniest thing she had ever heard, I held my tongue while I was on the phone because fifty dollars is fifty dollars and I wasn't going to risk losing the cash with a sarcastic comment about the logic of a financial transaction.

Dave Invents A Revolutionary New Diet

I would like to lose a few pounds before I gain a few pounds on vacation (I will not gain them back-- I will gain some entirely new pounds on vacation, mainly composed of fermented sugars, aquatic life, and pulled pork . . . unless I continue my moratorium on large mammals) and so I have developed a new diet, the gum diet: whenever I want to eat a cookie or a ham sandwich, instead I chew some gum.

Four Firsts

Today, I present four "firsts":

1) Alex caught his first fish; 

2) Ian caught his first fish; 

3) I monitored my first kid able to swim in deep water-- Ian, who is only three, has been experimenting with holding his breath underwater and jumping into the pool (unlike his older brother Alex, who is more tentative and anxious, and completely oblivious to peer pressure-- I was like this as a kid too-- Alex could care less if he looks like a complete wiener in front of other kids) and then yesterday Ian started swimming for real-- stroking, kicking, keeping his mouth closed-- and he jumped in and out of my friend's pool for hours, letting himself go deep under-water (he's too short to touch) and then he practiced swimming to the ladder, and then he finally swam the length of the pool, while I nervously treaded water beside him;

4) also, the other day, I was playing with the boys at Bicentennial Park, and I saw an Asian grandmother try to do the little zip line-- first time I've ever seen that, and perhaps the last, as I think she pulled something.

You Don't Ask a Tomato For Ketchup

The recent salmonella-laden tomato scare reminded me of my favorite line in the 1978 camp classic film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Sam Smith, who is so masterful at the art of disguise that even though he is black, he has no trouble posing as Hitler, successfully infiltrates the camp of the killer tomatoes . . . but while he is eating human flesh with them, he makes a grave error and asks, "Can somebody please pass the ketchup?"-- and then he is consumed by the tomatoes he is spying on.

The Fat Gets Fatter

When I woke up this morning, I had a brief blissful moment of delusional consciousness . . . I thought that I didn't go out last night in New Brunswick and do the usual thing that happens when Whitney comes to town (shoot darts, chew tobacco, stay up far too late in a dinghy bar, get a grease-truck sandwich) but then that feeling was shattered by my son Ian's voice . . . he was yelling "Time to wake up!" at Alex's door (Whitney's daughters were sleeping in there) and then it all came back to me: I remembered that, improbably, we did go out, energized by the late appearance of Mose-- long after the kids and the ladies had gone to bed-- but there was one salubrious change in the routine . . . I did not get a greasetruck sandwich and Whitney, infamous for his usual two sandwich order (we'll have a cheese-steak and egg and a fat-bitch/ we? you!) only ordered one measly cheese-steak and egg-- which confounded the order taker: no mozzarella sticks on that? chicken fingers? french fries? gyro meat? do you want your cheese-steak and egg on top of a chicken parm?-- and then Whitney shared the seemingly slender sandwich with me, and we realized that the super-sizing of America is pretty scary, because fifteen years ago we thought a cheese-steak with egg was the height of gluttony, but now-- in comparison to the newer "fat" sandwiches-- it has become an hors d'oeuvre.

Bloggers Unite!

John McCain may have thought he was being cute with a bunch of his constituents, but when he said, "Now we've got the cables, talk radio, the bloggers-- I HATE the bloggers," and this comment was followed by loud laughter from the crowd-- but that's the moment he lost my vote . . . yes, this was going to be the presidential election that I finally planned to participate in-- to get out and vote, to cast my ballot, to chime in politically, to pull the lever for democracy, but now I might just sit at home and blog about what a stupid comment that was, alienating the most intelligent, creative, energetic, egalitarian cutting-edge, diligent, gritty, inventive, sincere, down-to-earth and timely segment of the media-- the bloggers!-- who I now hope will go jihad on his ass and remind everyone that McCain once wanted to rid the country of the corn and ethanol subsidies but has now changed his tune, and I hope they will dig up all that great blogging scuttlebutt and hearsay and rumor and fact and spread it across the internet in a tsunami of searchable text that will wash away the slightly tech-savvy septuagenarians who recognized the word "blogger" as something liberal and elitist and having to do with computers and therefore deserving derision, along with the McCain campaign itself!

Camping Trip Gone Sideways (We Disgorge at Lake George)

Some of the things that happened on our first camping trip with the boys: 

1) the first night at the site, Alex christened our new tent with vomit, and then he continued to vomit all night, so we didn't really sleep;  

2) Alex recovered the next day, and so we thought maybe he vomited because he was drinking non-potable water out of his hands-- which were covered with ashes from the firepit; 

3) I got everyone lost on the way to a hike along Lake George-- there are TWO route nines-- but Dom and Michell's GPS saved the day;

4) I had to carry Ian nearly every step of an "easy" 3.5-mile hike;

5) we saw a lot of amphibians: giant tadpoles, toads, tiny frogs, and a red eft;

6) we started an insurrection at a beach where the lifeguard was late, so that when he arrived, everyone was in the water 

6.9) Alex took a shot to the eye from one of those old-school self-push playground merry-go-rounds (most of which have been removed because they're so dangerous-- I haven't seen one in twenty years) 

7) we lost the 175-dollar flip-out key to my parent's new car, which they lent us for the trip, and spent hours searching for it, and even went so far as to have my father FedEX a spare before we found it in a place that I had only gave a perfunctory glance, but luckily I never vehemently blamed Catherine during the search, though she is usually the one to lose things 

8) we left a day early because Catherine, Ian, and I all contracted the stomach bug that Alex had, and we all spent the night and morning throwing up and running to the bathroom-- which is really hard to do when you're sleeping in a tent, so we packed the car in the morning-- with much help because we were too weak to lift and shake the tarps-- and Ian was wandering around the camp-site in a daze, occasionally dry heaving, but luckily, he only had to use the bucket once in the car, and he slept for the bulk of the four hour ride, which was so eternal for Catherine and I that we switched driver/navigator roles four time, but we made it home in once piece and everyone was asleep before 7:30 (so this is ACTUALLY being posted at 5:30 AM, unlike the past few days, which were automatically posted while I was away, which I think is really cool-- I am always providing the best sentence content on the web-- but others think this is a little sketchy, but I didn't want to bring my lap-top on a camping trip, though I think there was WiFi, which is pretty ridiculous, but perhaps on the next trip I will bring it, because this trip I scorned everyone's air-mattresses and refused to sleep on Catherine's as a matter of principle, it makes the tent cluttered and the kids use it as a moon bounce, but then once I contracted the flu, sleeping on the cheap Thermarest pad made every part of my body sore, so I got my just desserts).

The Animal That Needs Rescuing is Me

My four-year-old son Alex frequently talks about moving to the rainforest so he can rescue animals-- like his hero, Diego-- but what he doesn't realize, is that in the summer in central New Jersey, the rainforest moves to you and the animal that needs rescuing is me, from the midges and the mosquitoes (maybe I should stop complaining and turn on the air conditioning).

The Fountain of Youth Contains Grape Juice and Vinegar?

I play soccer every Sunday, and my body hurts when I start and my body hurts when I finish, but there's a twenty-minute window when I feel young again, but that twenty minutes cost me-- I'm sore for a few days after I play-- and the effects are both physical (I limp on my left ankle) and mental (kind of like Charlie in "Flowers for Algernon," it makes me remember that I was once young and fast and limber, but now I'm headed in the other direction and, sadly, I realize it) unless, and I still haven't tried it yet, unless the home remedy I just learned about is truly a fountain of youth . . . the recipe is one part apple cider vinegar to four parts juice (grape and apple) and you drink a few sips of it, chilled, every morning and then you're never sore again.

Toddler Magic

My son Alex did his first magic trick the other day-- he took a penny, showed it to me, and then placed it behind his back and asked me to guess which hand it was in; I guessed his right hand, but he opened his palm and it wasn't there, and then I said, "Okay it's in your left hand"-- and then I heard the sound of a coin falling onto the wood floor-- and then he opened his left hand . . . and it was empty: magic!

Raise the Bar With Alcohol

Try Let's Go Fishin' (you know: the action-packed board game where players try for the biggest catch) with a bit of a hang-over: it's a true test of dexterity.

War and People

We watched Persepolis last night (if you haven't read the graphic novel, now you don't need to-- someone animated it for you!) and I finished Willa Cather's One of Ours this morning; both works portray war as an awful thing, so they have that in common, but also, in both works, the war doesn't so much as change the main character as just show him or her (respectively Marjane Satrapi and Claude Wheeler) in a clearer light-- so I recommend both not as grim, cautionary tales, but more as character studies: they both have a light touch.

The Sea Breeze Doesn't Make It to Spotswood

Yesterday at the beach there was a cool enough breeze off the ocean that when you got out from swimming, it was downright chilly, and even when we got into the car (which was parked in the sun) the thermometer only registered 81F, but on the ride home on Route 18 it slowly and steadily rose, and a mere thirty-five miles later-- at the Spotswood exit-- the temperature had climbed to 95F: when we got out of the car, it felt more like disembarking from an airplane after taking a winter flight to somewhere tropical (and meeting Celine, fresh from Turkey, accentuated the feeling that we were in another country, and she dredged up many fond memories of haggling with cab-drivers in meter-less cabs).

You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry

King of Kong joins Hoosiers, Billy Elliot and Rescue Dawn as movies that have gotten me choked up and teary eyed-- but King of Kong (a documentary about a rivalry between world class Donkey King players) is almost too archetypal to be real, and I wonder how they got such great footage of Billy Mitchell-- the Darth Vader of the film-- because he came off as so enigmatic and secretive . . . I hope I'm not being manipulated by the film, because that wouldn't make me weepy, it would make me angry . . . very angry . . . and I'm trying to control my temper, though that's hard during the summer, since I spend all day with my kids-- and the only thing they respond to is anger-- but I'm trying to be a good model for my son Alex, who now talks about his anger in the third person-- e.g. this morning, after Ian destroyed his Lego spaceship Alex said, "I'm getting my anger, I think in a second I'm going to have my anger, my anger is coming" and then, as he predicted, it did.

The Sort is Happening and It Is Big

I can't put down this new book by reporter Bill Bishop called The Big Sort; the premise is that Americans are agglomerating into micro-geographical regions of similar people-- mainly because so many Americans have moved in the past thirty years and everyone realizes how important and controllable this choice is, but this exacerbates the division between Democrats and Republicans because there's a sort of feedback loop when you only interact with people of your own mind-set . . . and that whole idea that there are swing voters out there to be persuaded, that's a myth, there are almost no swing voters-- and actually, people's choices aren't changing the party-lines, the party lines are changing people's choices to be more in line with the party, because it's easier to conform to a group (which is now more homogeneous than ever) and instead of engaging in discourse and debate with media and people different than you-- as was much more the case in 1976, when statistics show that you were more likely to switch parties, live in a mixed party neighborhood, have people in your church of mixed party, etc-- instead your church is probably primarily of your political affiliation (and is the most accurate prediction of what party you are-- if you believe the Bible is the undisputed Word of God, then you are a probably Republican)-- and this just scratches the surface of the book . . . I read 250 pages last night because my parents took the kids, so it was a lot to digest, but one fact I remember is that if you belong to a mail-order movie rental club (like Netflix) you are probably a Democrat.

Plenty of Action After the Movie

The first half of Wall-E rivals films like Modern Times, Brazil, and 2001: A Space Odyssey (which it parodies in the second half) for pure aesthetic entertainment and memorable imagery, and though it has a message for the kids and a tacked on happy ending, the movie is really just about looking at the screen-- bring the kids (if you want to answer a thousand questions, especially if you're with my son, Alex, who has inherited my penchant for talking, questioning, commenting, editorializing, and crying in the movie theater) or, even better, leave them home (and maybe the wife too-- Catherine jammed her ankle yesterday, running after Alex, who was riding his big-wheel staright into the road, and when she tried to get up after the movie was over, she couldn't walk and it was dark, of course, and we were meeting my parents next door at Bertucci's but as she hobbled out of the theater it started down-pouring, but we couldn't run for the car because she couldn't run so we got soaked and when we were sorting things out in front of the restaurant, Ian, vigilant about his big-boy underwear, pulled his pants down and showed the restaurant and parking lot some full frontal nudity and I had to scoop him up and run inside to the bathroom, leaving my crippled wife in the down-pour with Alex).

Gust Avrakotos' War?

Despite Tom Hanks (who is a tool, and always plays himself) and Julia Roberts (who is weird looking and affected and always plays herself), Charlie Wilson's War is a good movie . . . fast-paced, well-told, and entertaining: a cross between Charlie's Angels and Syriana; typically, Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the show, but the original and more appropriate title-- Gust Avrakotos' War -- doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

And Groundhogs Will Try That Long Preserved Virginity

Yesterday, on the drive home from the beach, Catherine and I saw something neither of us had ever seen before: a fat groundhog perched atop a tombstone; this is nothing like seeing a vulture or an asp or raven perched on a tombstone . . . that's ominous, of course, but this tableau made death and decay seem kind of cute.

Willa Cather Knows Electric Cars?

I'm reading Willa Cather's One of Ours-- which was published in 1922-- and without any fanfare, in a line of description about the town miller's wife, Cather wrote "she dressed well, came to town often in her electric car, and was always ready to work for the church or public library"-- which makes me wonder . . . if an electric car was a commonplace item in turn of the century Nebraska, then: who killed it?

Dave Wrote This Sometime or Other

I want to assure everyone (especially super-fans Squirrel and Whitney) that these sentences are as fresh as if they were just plucked from the salty heart of the ocean-- and even when they are flash-frozen, the are just as tasty and delicious (and if this doesn't make much sense, it's because I'm nursing a hang-over and the after-effects of eating a Fat Dad at 2 AM last night).

Dave Exorcises Junk Food Demons (and Sinks the Shot)

Yesterday, there was a giant spread of junk food in the English office, and as usual, I was drawn to the worst thing on the table-- a box of glazed mini-crullers-- but just as I was about to put the donut in my mouth, some other impulse took hold--DEMONS OUT!-- and I whipped the box of mini-donuts as hard as I could across the room at the little metal trashcan and-- to the surprise of the people in the room-- it went right in . . . and I think my relationship with junk food will be different now: I have conquered the urge to be a glutton, and my reward is that I am now unerringly accurate (although two periods later I did eat six mini-muffins, and I cut each one in half so that I could have double the surfaces to coat with butter).

Flattery + Humor = Parody

Someone drew the notable events of the year on the message board in the English office, and the parody of my blog went like this: "So I went to the Amish market to buy some meat and we contracted cholera and I decided to write a song about it."

I Coin A Word: Tupperawareness

Time to get all sniglety:  some people possess a special ability to precisely gauge which plastic container is the right size to store the leftovers from dinner -- and I call this ability to accurately choose the correct container "tupperawareness" and while I do not possess this ability, (not by a long-shot) I am interested in studying people who do: I would like to learn their secret.

Dave Gets a Little Smarter

Thirty eight years living on this planet, and still so much to learn-- in the last two weeks I learned three things:

1) there are flying squirrels indigenous to New Jersey;

2) St. Augustine (not Jamestown!) is America's oldest permanent European settlement,;

3) that funny looking trestle sticking out into Farrington Lake over by Sir John's Restaurant is not the remnants of an old train line . . . it was a trolley.

Fuck You, BB&T Banking

A proud moment: we received a post-card from BB&T Banking saying that we have only one more car payment on the Subaru . . . BUT if we are using "autodraft" then the final payment will not be drafted from our account-- we will have to initiate payment by mailing a check AND if it's not mailed on time then late fees will be assessed BUT there was no phone number or address specified on the postcard (nor was there a reason why they wouldn't "autodraft" the last payment) and so after some irate phone-calling-- where no reason was given by the customer service representative as to why BB&T refuses to "autodraft" the last payment, we got the information we needed-- but because of this underhanded and, quite frankly, despicable attempt by BB&T to incur late fees on their loyal and punctilious customers, I am calling for a jihad on all BB&T employees and products-- yella!

Magical Moonlit Moose Sighting

Summer has begun, and it makes me recall my most vivid memory of last summer: my friend Rob and I were driving back up Bolton Mountain after a kickball game and consequent kickball-related picnic, it was late and the moon was full (and he lives in Vermont) and finally, after years of waiting, I got to see a moose; it was walking on the side of the road, fully illuminated by the moonlight, and we drove along side this tall, rickety creature for what seemed like five minutes-- he ambled along next to the car and I was able to get a good look at him by sticking my body out the sun-roof . . . and it was magical, just magical . . . although not as magical as if it were a unicorn or a centaur, but still pretty magical, despite the bushy moose beard . . . and I should also point out it was a juvenile, so if I've led you to believe it had those big antlers, it didn't.

Hey Internet! Write This Novel!

Here's a terrible idea for a novel: 

the internet becomes so large and complex that it attains consciousness and starts writing e-mails to people, because that is the only way it can connect with reality-- it has no senses, just an awareness through its content that there is an outside world (like the reverse of The Matrix . . . or maybe a science-fiction version of Pinocchio) but, honestly, I'm not going to write it, and so I'm just throwing the idea out there . . . perhaps the internet will read it and then decide to self-reflexively write it-- so listen up, Internet, if you write a big-budget movie, I want some compensation!

Life Imitates Art?

Life imitates art (or what Whitney and I call art, but the rest of the world calls dreck)-- and it answers an ethical question as well: in a recent case, Nicholas Creanza (a pharmacist) posed as a gynecologist and "examined" several women, but he cannot be charged with rape because of an old law that states that an assault can't be considered rape if consent is obtained through fraud or deceit, and, either coincidentally or by design, Creanza's actions mirror the plot from "Dr. Seuss"-- Random Idiot's cross-over Beastie Boy's style hit from 1991 that details how Theodore Geisel uses his honorary doctorate to open a gynecology clinic and have his way with unsuspecting women, which we thought was a felony and so sent him to jail in the song (the Grinch who stole Christmas doing thirty to life/ sent to the slammer, now he's Bubba's wife) but really, we should have just sent him for some counseling.

Focus Is Everything

Several days ago I mentioned the fact that my son Ian shares a birthday with the Olsen twins, and I posted an alluring picture of the twins sporting butterfly pasties; for some reason, this picture increased traffic to my blog tenfold (on one day, over 800 people visited) so I am going to focus less on my oldest child Alex, who although cute and quotable, has pissed me off of late (because when he saw Ian sprinting across the house, he raised his foot and karate kicked him in the stomach, nearly breaking Ian's breastbone) and focus more on Ian and the Olsen twins-- though, as I have said before, I have never watched an episode of Full House (but, although I didn't know it until Catherine mentioned it last night, I have been watching Mary-Kate-- she's the Jesus-loving pot dealer on Weeds).

Do Cremains Inspire Brand Loyalty?

Although Stacey thought that Dr. Fredric J. Baur (the inventor of the Pringles can) was buried in a Pringle-can shaped sarcophagus, that wasn't quite the case: some of his ashes were placed in an actual Pringles can and the rest were put in a traditional urn-- if he was buried in a big round red coffin with the Pringles logo on it, then it would have been very hard to keep a straight face at the wake, which is the most important thing at a wake . . . not to laugh at the body-- but what I am more curious about is the effect of interring someone in a product's container-- it can't be good marketing-- and it reminds me of the scattering of Donnie's ashes in The Big Lewbowski: did Folger's actually pay to have their brand name on the receptacle?

Dave Knows How to Steal Wry Observations (From the Population at Large)

When I began this blog, I thought my sentences would be full of wry observations (e.g. How would the convenience store 7-11 have reacted if the planes hit the World Trade Center on July 11th instead of September 11th, and the numerical array 7-11 became synonymous with the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil? Would 7-11 have changed its name? Or marketed itself as stalwart purveyor of patriotic snack consumption? the only way to beat the terrorists is by eating a Slim Jim?) but more often I overhear the wry observations than actually think of it myself; I love to eavesdrop, and I heard this just before the skies opened in New Brunswick Saturday night . . . the girl walking in front of me said, "This is my Einstein moment for today . . . when people hear thunder and lightning, they open up metal umbrellas and point them toward the sky," which is a pretty good point, but still, last night, I would have risked it to avoid the soaking I got, and another not so wry observation was directed at my wife and I as we braved the storm-- the doorman of the tapas place looked at me, soaked to the skin, and then at Catherine, snug and dry in her hooded Columbia rain coat and said, "Wearing that jacket tonight? Smartest move ever!" and when we walked into the super-cooled air-conditioning of the Hyatt, I realized he was right (and the Hyatt is too classy to have hand dryers in the bathroom).

Bosky Stringfellows

If you don't mind sacrificing your sunny disposition, read about the Stringfellow Acid Pits-- I just read the story in an anthology called The New Kings of Nonfiction-- and the case is a mind-boggling combination of Jarndyce and Jarndyce and Michael Clayton, with no easy culprit, plenty of waste and corruption, and no good answer; on a lighter note, in another essay in the book I learned a new word: bosky . . . perhaps your yard is bosky-- especially if you live in Central Jersey.

Dave Knows How to Behave in Line at the Pharmacy

Although I have never seen an episode of Full House, I do know that when you get to the head of the line at the pharmacy-- especially a long line, when you have plenty of time to prepare-- that you'll be required to provide some sort of tender-- cash or charge-- and I don't demurely look askance, step back, and then sheepishly root around in my purse, then fumble around in my wallet inside the purse, then look at the money like it's some kind of insect that lives in the purse, then make a bit of small talk with the cashier, then hand over the money, as if it's better to do such base things with someone you're acquainted with; somehow, without ever watching Full House, I've figured this out, that it's better to have your money or credit card in hand to speed things along, because if you're waiting to pick up a prescription, you're either impotent (like one of the guys in the line-- the pharmacist's voice was a little too loud) or someone is sick, and not only have I figured this out, but I have also (unlike my computer spell-check) learned how to spell non sequitur.

Happy Birthday . . . Ian, Mary-Kate, Ashley, and William Butler Yeats

Ian turns three today; if he were a bit older (notice my use of the subjunctive tense) he would be able to rap with the Olsen twins about sharing a birthday, and if he were a lot older he would have had a sure-fire conversation starter with William Butler Yeats (who I hear was equally as hot).

The Early Bird is Annoying

The nice thing about sleeping with the air-conditioner on (besides the fact that it keeps you cool) is that you don't hear the birds in the morning; my neighborhood birds woke me up this morning at 4:30 AM, two hours before my alarm clock is set to go off-- thanks birds!

Harbinger or a Test?

To do my part for the planet, I've sworn off consuming large mammals for a few months, but when I unwrapped my number 29 from The Park Deli, it was loaded with ham instead of turkey-- and I ate it, of course, it wasn't my fault, and it tasted delicious-- but do I regard this as a sign (that there is nothing to be done, the end is nigh, an omen of consumption, a harbinger of ensuing pork, and I should gorge on greasy flesh before the rapture) or perhaps this was a test-- and if it was a test of my newfound principles, then I failed miserably.

Dave is RRRRIIIIIPPPPPED

I have never felt stronger than yesterday at the gym-- but don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with a description of a ten day cycle or how much I bench-pressed (makes me think of Boogie Nights: let's say it together . . .) or how creatine makes me urinate all the time-- instead I'm going to describe what happened when I got out of the shower (insert joke here); I was drying off my back, using the two-handed yoke pull, when I heard a fantastic comic book RIIIIIPPP: I had nearly torn my towel in half . . . and even though it happened because it was a very old beach towel, weathered by years of sun and salt, and had nothing to do with my awesome strength, I enjoyed the moment and RIIIPPPPED it some more.

Alex Wins the (Mental) Contest

Yesterday, on the way to soccer practice, Alex wanted to race his soccer ball against my soccer ball down the big hill that leads to the park; playing the role of the good father, I did not push my ball as hard as he pushed his, but though Alex's ball took an early lead, it met extra resistance in some high grass that my ball avoided, and so my ball surged past his and rolled much farther into the field-- but when I claimed my victory Alex denied me, and when I pointed out that my ball went faster and farther, he said that to win the race, you had to get your ball to land on the (oddly enough) exact spot that his ball had landed on.

Sorry

It's not the heat, nor is it the humidity . . . it's the ball sweat.

Bow Down to Our Insect Overlords

Ian's first three years could be titled Portrait of an Entomologist as a Young Man; it's not that just that he likes to spot, collect, hold, and observe bugs, bees, worms and spiders-- he actually thinks about them: yesterday, after discovering several ant hills in the garden, he looked up at me and said, ominously, "the ants are mad at us" . . . and when I asked him why he said, "because they like to bite us" which makes some sort of sense, but I definitely had a vision of Them! when he said it.

Darth Vader Would Be Scary as a Whale

My kids can sing the Darth Vader theme song in the voice of just about animal: a sheep is "baa baa baa baabuhbaa buhbabaa" and a pig is "oink oink oink oinkoinkoink oinkoinkoink"-- but yesterday Alex tried it as a blue whale and although I admire his spirit of artistic experimentation, I would have to say that his impression of a cetacean is pretty poor.

Alan Partridge: Too Droll For Some

Whenever Catherine goes out, I plan to watch whatever we have from Netflix (now it's this show The Riches, with Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver-- so far it's excellent) but every time instead of watching, I go up to bed the same time as the kids, read, and then fall asleep within minutes-- which is pretty pathetic-- but I think I can only watch television with other people; in fact, I can't remember the last time I've watched a TV show or a movie alone . . . probably last year when Catherine gave up on The Alan Partridge Show and I kept watching (because Steve Coogan is priceless).

My Children Cooperate in a Jailbreak

Two scary things happened yesterday: 

1) I learned that my red running shorts are "not sexy" and look "very eighties"-- and the fact that they have netting (so you don't need to wear underwear with them) didn't seem to impress anyone in the English office; 

2) I came home to find Alex and Ian pretending to sleep on Ian's floor, and when I asked them how Ian got out of his crib, Alex said he helped him get out, by stacking several laundry baskets and then using a large stuffed Winnie the Pooh as a ladder-- and the scary thing is not that Ian escaped, it is the bigger picture: the natives are starting to cooperate.

There Will Be Milkshake Drinking

We finished There Will Be Blood last night; at first Catherine relegated me to watching the end of the film on the laptop so she could watch the two-hour finale of The Bachelor, but then she decided that I looked too depressing, sitting in a straight-backed chair with headphones on, watching the one of the bleakest movies ever made, so we watched the end together-- and my final comment on the film is this: I swore off butter after watching Last Tango in Paris, and now Daniel Day-Lewis has ruined the milkshake.

Don't Worry, That Guy Who Got Dismembered is Just a Minor Character

During story time, my son got upset for a moment when the King of the Elephants died from ingesting a poisonous mushroom, but then he realized that it wasn't Babar who died, but a minor character and he didn't care anymore, just as I have lost all feeling for the oil workers who keep getting killed in increasingly gruesome ways in There Will Be Blood (which is pretty good, but slow-- we are on day three of viewing it).

The Subway Is Byzantine

My last two trips to New York I have fared very poorly on the Subway System: previously, we took the B instead of the D on the way to the Met and ended up in Queens-- and this was certainly our fault, and alcohol consumption may have been to blame-- but this time even local Manhattanites were shaking their heads: after we ascended many stairs with the toddlers in tow, there was an 8 by 11 piece of paper instructing us that the A and the C were running on the local lines because of construction, and then after descending many stairs and taking the A we found ourselves whizzing by the 81st St. Museum stop, and then we kept going and going and finally we disembarked at 125th and took the downtown A to 59th then switched again to the uptown C to get to the Museum (it was funny hearing Alex saying "Why can't we catch the Local C?), and so on the way back we figured we had it down-- just take the C, take the local and we were guaranteed to stop where we wanted-- but as the D rolled by the conductor shouted out her window, "TAKE THE NEXT D! THE C IS ONLY RUNNING ON THE EXPRESS!" which we did and then switched again (it was easy, the train was waiting) but still . . . in the greatest city in the world should they be relying on taped up pieces of computer paper and shouting as their method of information dispersal?

DNA, Horizontally and Vertically

Microbial taxonomist Carl Woese says that in the good old days-- before archea, eukaryotes, and bacteria-- life shared its genes horizontally, there was no separation of DNA material, and evolution proceeded at a rapid, communal rate in the primordial soup, but then bacteria isolated itself and its intellectual property and the Darwinian age began (and lasted several billion years) and evolution moved slowly and separately; now, that time is coming to an end, the cultural revolution begat the bio-tech revolution, and once again, genetic material is being shared horizontally-- and I think this means that you shouldn't worry about that modified tomato that stays ripe for a month after it's picked because soon it will also be able to talk to you.

Pain or Sepsis?

Just worked up a sweat removing a splinter from Alex's foot-- it took the two of us to hold him down.

Emphasis is Everything

The documentary My Kid Could Paint That is about a precocious four year old abstract painter named Marla Olmstead-- and there are two ways to interpret the title: My Kid Could Paint That or My Kid Could Paint That . . . and that makes all the difference.

Do Kids Dream of Electric Robots?

Lots of sleep-related problems this morning: Alex had his "worst dream ever" about a giant man-eating robot (which, not so coincidentally, is what Ian wants for his birthday-- Alex said the idea "got into his head") and I rolled over in a weird way while I was sleeping last night and squashed my left testicle and it feels like someone kicked me in the jewels.

Gladiators Make Me Sleepy

Spartacus is the first Stanley Kubrick movie I've ever bailed on-- otherwise, I've seen them all (the furniture got me through Barry Lyndon and the nudity got me through Eyes Wide Shut).

Did You Sneak a Peak?

An old student spotted me while we were out Friday night, and it turns out she now teaches in Edison-- and what Catherine and the group thought was odd (and in retrospect, it is kind of funny) is that this petite girl was displaying a bodacious amount of cleavage, and the first thing I said to her after she asked "Do you remember me?" is "Of course . . . you and your friends made that "13 Ways of Looking at a Bra" video" and she remembered exactly what I was talking about-- she made video parody of a Wallace Stevens poem "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" with her two wacky friends, but to my wife and the ladies it appeared that I was commenting upon her ample rack.

Naked or Nude?

If you like looking at naked ladies in the woods, then Grounds for Sculpture is the place for you.

Women's Clothes Are Weird

Even though Stacy is several inches taller than me, her track jacket does not flatter my figure.

Enough Already

Last night I went to my first retirement dinner, and it made me want to retire-- would anyone like to pay me my salary so I can retire?

Sorry Mr. Murphy

Tomorrow is senior cut day, but it is done East Brunswick style-- the parents call the kids out sick so they don't get in trouble-- but it still reminds me of when I cut school with friends and we got caught and I had to meet with the vice-principal at NBTHS, who-- coincidentally-- is now the principal at East Brunswick-- which sort of makes me feel like I never left high school (although I didn't get in much trouble for cutting, my dad had coached him.)

A Pinata Made of a Plethora of Lego Pieces

I don't let my kids watch TV on rainy days (I find it entertaining to see what they'll do when they get stir crazy); yesterday afternoon Alex built a piesta (he meant a pinata) out of Legos and put it on a shelf and then he covered his eyes and whacked it with a Lego stick-- which crumpled on impact-- but after a couple of turns, including a devastating blow by yours truly, it broke into pretend candy pieces.

Mind the Monkeysphere

Yesterday, in my endless third period (stalled by some standardized biology test) the Levitsky twins introduced me to the term "monkey-sphere" . . . and now I must reflect: who will make the cut, who is in my monkey-sphere?

Time Travel Through Blogging

A student of mine had a good idea for my blog, but I'll never be ambitious enough to do it; he suggested that for each day I post, I also post a sentence that pre-dates the first entry, so that I'm extending the blog in two directions-- the future and the past-- and then I can blog my way back through the birth of my children, dial-up access, The Presidents of the United States of America, etc.

The Natives Are Getting Clever

Watching Who Killed the Electric Car made me very angry last night, but my children cheered me up this morning-- the first thing Alex said to me today was "I'm not bored of you yet, Daddy, I still love you" and then later, during breakfast, Ian couldn't make up his mind about which cereal he wanted, so rather than wait at the beck and call of a two-year old, Catherine and I both left the kitchen-- and as I was about to write this sentence Alex yelled "Oh no, we made a big mess" and Ian concurred and I started cursing: "God dammit, you can't leave them alone for a second" and when I went into the kitchen looking for a puddle of milk Alex said, "We tricked you, we didn't make a mess, Ian just wanted some cereal."

I Behave In A Mature Manner

Despite the fact that Catherine and I have been arguing about the merits of my push lawn-mower-- she claims my beloved push-mower doesn't really cut the lawn-- this morning when I read in Wired that a gasoline-powered mower emits eleven times more pollution than an automobile-- get this-- I didn't even mention it to her . . . I made a very mature executive decision not to open that can of worms on a peaceful Saturday morning while we were drinking our coffee (but I can't promise that I won't mention the fact at a later date).

A Good (Bad) One

We finished the BBC series Jekyll last night, and I give it four thumbs up.

Dave Does His Civic Duty (Begrudgingly)

Jury duty effectively combined a trans-Atlantic airplane flight, the DMV, and a Kafka novel: I sat on an uncomfortable seat in a stuffy room with strange people for eight hours waiting for my number to be called, but it never was-- which is good, because I don't have to serve on a trial, but my eyes still hurt from reading so much (if I owned a cell-phone I could have called random people and talked about my daughter's science project, like the guy next to me) . . . I read an entire novel (Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies-- very funny and appropriate title for the day) and as much as I could handle of The Cosmic Landscape, but then it got too hard and I bought a random magazine about science culture called Seed at lunch.

Just Look Serious For the Camera

After three hours of tension, nothing much happens at the end of The Good Shepherd-- but I will hand it to Matt Damon for picking the easiest three hour movie script to memorize in the history of cinema: he's on-screen for then entire epic, and I think he says ten lines.

First World Decisions

I think we're going with the Magellan green quartz counter-top.

Teenagers . . . They'll Eat Anything

Last week, I took some store-bought beef jerky and put it in a crumpled plastic bag, and told my philosophy class it was Alex's pet rabbit "Hoppy" and that had died over the winter-- his hutch got too cold-- and that in order to teach Alex about recycling, we gutted Hoppy, jerked the carcass, and then ate some of him . . . I expected a dramatic emotional response, perhaps even a threat to call DYFUS, but no one thought anything of it and a handful of kids actually ate some.

It's Hard to Be a Straight Man

Friday night there were a couple of Rutger's football players sitting next to us at the bar, and the blond girl sitting with them with was so distractingly good-looking that I wished she would leave so I would stop leering (but, of course, she didn't leave, and instead took off her sweater so then I had to avoid the temptation of leering at exposed cleavage as well).

Grolar vs. Pizzly

Like string theorist Leonard Susskind, I prefer the sound of "megaverse" to "multiverse," but I also prefer the moniker grolar bear rather than pizzly bear-- and we all know what happened with that one.

Super Extra Serendipitous Good Luck Bonus Sentence

On the way to work this morning-- and, appropriately, it was raining-- I passed by a tractor trailer double stacked with concrete sarcophagi.

My Son Already Has a Higher Rank Than Me?

While we walked to get some falafel Alex formulated an intricate plan to spring loose the baby pig he visits with my dad at College Farm-- he's seen Charlotte's Web and he knows that if he doesn't rescue the little swine he will end up as bacon; the plan includes an alarm to wake us in the middle of the night, a midnight bicycle ride, a bell Alex can ring if he needs me to pedal faster, a lantern on a stick, a knapsack to put the pig in, and-- most important-- a promise . . . that I won't say, "Oh, man!" when Alex gives me an order.

Parrot vs. Human

I just read an article in the New Yorker about this African gray parrot (who, unfortunately, just croaked) and he seems to know his colors and shapes slightly better than my two year old son.

Vocab Lesson

I just raced to the finish of Richard Price's new novel Lush Life, and along the way I learned a few new words and terms: want cards, a whistle, a bump, shirred, wits, paradiddle, etc.

Solar Flare Blues

If you're feeling down and you don't know why, it could be a solar flare bombarding your pineal gland with electromagnetically charged particles . . . or you might want to try to get more sleep.

Happiness is Having More Fun Than Your Brother

Alex lost video-watching-privileges last night because of his recalcitrance at the smoothie place, but while Ian was watching Dinotopia we had heard lots of rustling and stacking in his room; when I went up he showed me the castle he had built with his blocks and he made sure to tell me that he had built a "gigantic base" so it wouldn't fall, and that he used "different materials"-- both pieces of advice I had given him, so this was his subtle way of making up with me, and then he added, "so I had more fun than Ian."

Death By Venom Is Funny

Last night, Ian found someone willing to turn every page in his animal encyclopedia (she was ten) and with each animal he had a dire warning: "if you go near that crocodile, it will bite you and you will be dead . . . if you go by that bug and touch it, you will be dead . . . if you go by that snake, you will be dead" and although the animals he pointed out certainly are very dangerous and have probably killed many people throughout the world, it's still funny when it comes from a two year old.

Juno Impregnated My Brain (With a Desire For Orange Tic Tacs)

Yesterday, on my way to happy hour, I did something very uncharacteristic: I made an impulse buy . . . I had watched Juno the night before and I had a desire for orange Tic-Tacs which was obviously generated by the clever product placement in the film; normally I never make any frivolous purchases-- especially ones dictated to me by the media-- but I was feeling wild, and they were only a dollar (they tasted so good that I finished the entire box on the way home).

The Good, The Bad, The Lies, and a Booger

Alex told me that at school yesterday, "a tear went down my face and plopped onto the ground at lunch because I missed you so much" which is total bullshit but he knows that I love to hear it; a moment after, Ian handed me a booger.

Could You Demonstrate That Once More, Please?

Alex was in a creative mood yesterday: he told us how he had to call the police on Catherine's mom because she crawled under the couch and punched him in the eye when he wasn't looking-- "she sneaked up on me and when I was turned the other way she went like this . . ." and then he would pretend to punch himself in th eye, which we got him to do over and over by saying, "Wait, how did she do it? (and I think Catherine's mom was upset that he was making up this awful story about her, but we found it hysterical).