Two For One Pizza: Sounds Like A Good Idea, Right?
A fond memory: Aposto's, the narrow Italian bistro where we ate the other night, was once a far grubbier pizza joint called 2 For 1 Pizza, and the deal was this: when you ordered one pie, you got two pies for the price of that one-- in theory this was a good deal, but the same absurd dialog comprised every order . . . I'll take two pies . . . okay boss, two pies . . . so that means four pies? . . . you want four pies? . . . no, no, because then I'll get eight pies, right? . . . you want eight pies? . . . no I want four pies . . . okay, four pies . . . yes, so I'm only ordering two pies, so I get two for one, like the name, right . . . yes, then you get four pies . . . okay, just ring up two pies, okay . . . okay . . . okay . . . okay . . . just to be sure, I'm going to walk out of here with four pizza pies, right? . . . right . . . okay . . . right . . . okay.
Remembrance of Zills Past
The Doppelgangers is a Bad Name for a Sitcom
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree . . . Alex likes to use the right word for things, a fairly useless and frustrating characteristic; yesterday in the stroller, we passed by the house that has the same model and color Subaru as we do, and Alex reminded me of his fantasy about the family that lives there: that they are our twins in most every way-- number, age, appearance, etc.-- and then he asked me what we called them and I said, "I don't know" and made up a nonsensical rhyme of our last name and he said "No, not that kind of name" and then I remembered what word he was looking for . . . "our doppelgangers?" and he said, "Yeah, doppelgangers, they're our doppelgangers!" and I'm hoping he doesn't bring this up at pre-school because he's already weird enough.
Dad Shame
Sometimes when my children find other kids to play with at the park-- which is happening more and more often-- I get bored, and sometimes when I get bored, especially if I've forgotten something to read, then I toss whatever balls we've brought in the wagon at my kids; I did this the other day with a Nerf football, I chucked it over the top of the jungle gym, hoping to surprise little Ian, but my aim was too precise and I hit him in the side of the face, and so he turned to me and said "Daddy, you hurt me" and then went back to playing . . . and then I noticed that another father caught the whole thing, and his look of disgust for me was priceless.
He Hates to Say It . . . But He Loves to Say It
You're not supposed to like saying "I told you so" but in his book The Black Swan, all Nassim Nicholas Taleb has to say about the current financial crisis is: "I told you so"-- and there's nothing more enjoyable than saying "I hate to say it, but I told you so."
Caster Disaster
Last Saturday, I was that asshole: I chose a shopping cart at Target with a bad caster that alternated between making a loud clattering sound and a high pitched shriek, and I was too lazy to switch carts, instead I suffered the frowns of employees and shoppers alike-- it was early-- AND I got into the "express" lane at the grocery store and before I realized that I had more than twelve items, there was a line behind me . . . I thought I didn't have much but I did -- six bottles of seltzer, four cans of SpaghettiOs, two things of lunch meat, rolls, a loaf of bread, hot pepper rings, two packs of paper plates and a pack of paper cups-- for a grand total of eighteen items-- 50% more than the limit; once I realized my transgression I turned bright red, and all I could do was bag really fast and race out of the store, the shrieking caster broadcasting my shame.
Greek Myth = Wet Kids
I thought reading the kids some Greek myths would be at worst innocuous (and a bit boring) and at best a nice basis in the most common allusions in literature, but when we were out splashing in the rain the other day, I turned around to find both my children lying in a large brown puddle, faces in the water, making some kind of kissing fish sound; I asked them what they were doing and Alex said: "I'm that guy, Narceesusus, looking at himself in the water!"
Stress at the Stress Factory
Sometimes the comedy club isn't funny-- like when the table next to you can't stop chatting and you ask them repeatedly to please be quiet because you can't hear the jokes, and the waitress asks them to be quiet, and finally, you lose your temper and tell them to shut up and the young guy at the table-- put in the awkward position of having to defend his womenfolk, stands up and yells at you and then Patrice O'Neal stops the show and asks what the fuck is going on and your wife tells him and-- when O'Neal questions the offending table-- the annoying and loud drunk lady says (seriously) to Patrice Oneal "I didn't know I couldn't talk while you were doing your act" and Patrice Oneal lays into her and her table for a while and then on the way out a member of our table asks for an apology and soon enough there is a scuffle and a very effective brother/ sister tag-team pins the young guy who yelled at me to the floor and we throw several other folks into the tables and chairs and then we make a quick exit before the police detain us-- Catherine knew the hostess and so they let us out without delay-- and we retreated to the Corner Tavern, where we watched the police cars race past, on their way to a comedy club melee.
My Son the Half-Assed Telepath
My four year old son Alex told me that "in school you have to say everything out loud, you can't just talk in your brain, because the teacher can't hear what's in your brain" and then Alex claimed that HE could read my brain and he told me to count to a number in my head-- but not to say it aloud-- and, miraculously, he guessed it (the number was five) and while that was nifty, Alex then failed on the next seven tries at this same trick and so when I asked him to concede that he could not read minds he said "What about the five!" and he decided that he could only read minds "a little bit."
Words Are Worth 1000 Pictures
Yesterday, Catherine and I went to our first Back-to-School Night, and Alex's classroom had pictures the students drew on the walls and the pictures had captions written by the teacher-- but the captions were recited to the teacher by the students and then she transcribed them -- so the pictures were rudimentary and childish: you had blobs at the park, stick figures with happy balloons, dots on crooked mountains, etcetera-- but the captions were neat and legible; Alex's picture consisted of two stick figures next to some sort of jagged squiggly thing and the caption read: "My little brother Ian and I are running away from the poisonous lizard."
Football Conquers Chores
Whenever you have a lot of chores to do, and you've been sitting on your ass all afternoon watching football because you're sore from playing soccer, invariably, the Giants game goes into over-time-- and then what are you going to do . . . stop watching and start vacuuming after you've already invested three-and a half hours?
Prepositional Ponderings
This has been bothering me: Vincent Chase is the star on "Entourage," but I don't think he's the star of "Entourage"-- Ari Gold is . . . or is he?
Roslin > Palin
I was going to continue in the political vein with a sentence about the Sarah Palin/Laura Roslin Battlestar Galactica analogy-- Palin does look like Roslin (and Tight looks like McCain) has but the analogy is so obvious-- and also very flawed, Palin is way dumber and way more conservative than Roslin-- so instead I'm going to remind you that it's really hard to coach a soccer game in a civil manner when you're ahead 4-0 in the first half (but I'll still provide a photo of Tricia Helfer).
I Go Off on a Tangent (About the Propriety of a Name)
Sarah Palin's children are named Track, Willow, Bristol, Piper, and Trig; Trig is her child with Down Syndrome . . . and the condition was diagnosed prenatally, so you'd think the Palin family would have had plenty of time to come up with a name that's a little less humiliating . . . kids without Down syndrome have a hard enough time spelling "trigonometry."
Ring the Bells, Let It Be Known: Dave Fixed the Toilet
Let it be known: yesterday-- Sunday the twenty first of September . . . the first day of autumn-- I FIXED THE TOILET; I replaced the fill valve (incorrectly at first, although I didn't know it, but when I returned from soccer there was a small flood in the bathroom and so, after deciphering the many pronged directions, I was able-- with much blasphemous profanity-- to fix it) and the purpose of this sentence is to record this feat for time immemorial so that six months from now when I have lapsed in my household chores once again-- as is inevitable-- then at least when my wife tells me that I never do anything around the house, I can pull up this post and say, "Once, not so long ago, I FIXED THE TOILET!"
I Wear Bad Idea Jeans
Another bad decision in a long line of them: during our 8th grade soccer pre-game warm up (and I feel that it's crucial to have a crisp looking pre-game warm-up) the kids playing the crosses were a bit sluggish, and so I gave them a little defensive pressure to get them up to game speed-- I ran from one side of the field to the other and made them cross the ball around my body, but I forgot that I was carrying a fresh, hot 16 ounce cup of coffee from WaWa . . . until a cross nearly grazed it and I realized that if the ball was two inches lower I would have suffered second degree burns (and completely ruined any semblance of a professional pre-game warm-up).
Circular Logic
My ninth grade math teacher said if you drew a perfect circle free-hand, then you would immediately go completely and irrevocably insane-- and so, of course, we spent hours of time trying to do this when we should have been taking notes-- but although I'm not sure if that's true, I am sure that if I write a perfect sentence and you read it, you will go completely and irrevocably insane.
What Not to Say to My Wife
My wife got placed on the jury of a criminal case, and while she's not thrilled because she has to miss work (and she has to go to court on Rosh Hashanah, even though she is off from school on those days) she is still kind of intrigued by the case-- but PLEASE do not give her any advice on how to get off a jury, it seems EVERYONE has been telling her their various theories on how to get out of jury duty, none of which have been tried, and none of which work when you are actually face to face with a judge.
George Bush and My Wife Battle Rude Shoe-Throwers
People can be so rude . . . or so my wife tells me-- people aren't usually rude to me, but they are constantly being rude to my wife-- for example, the other day when Catherine was putting our kids in the play gym before her spinning class, some other kid was having a temper tantrum and this other kid threw his shoe at his mother, but it missed and whizzed straight at Catherine's head and she had to duck to avoid being brained and neither the mother nor the child apologized to her.
Hermit Crab, I Name Thee Lazarus!
A miraculous resurrection in our house-- and we're not even near Easter; Catherine threw away the corpse of our pet hermit crab two weeks ago, but we never broke it to the kids (as they rarely looked at the thing) but, creepily, even after the crab's demise, the shell would occasionally change locations in the tank, and so Catherine figured that the kids were playing with the shell, but it turns out that she threw out the empty molted shell of the crab, and though it suffered through two week of no food and water, it is still alive and well (and still the worst pet ever, but far easier to take care of than a dog).
Dave Feels Lucky (But Not THAT Lucky)
After having a bad day Saturday (high fever, constricted throat, tonsillitis, car accident that was pretty much completely my fault) I had a good day yesterday-- the insurance guy was very helpful: instead of admitting the car into the official Geico body shop-- where they would have replaced the bumper, the quarter panel, the headlight, etcetera-- he wrote me a check for the estimate-- which was five hundred dollars over the deductible, and then he told me of a cheap Asian body shop on Woodbridge Avenue-- a stone's throw from my house-- where they fixed my car for several hundred dollars, and so the money from the insurance paid for this and covered the cost of the 85 dollar ticket (with a little something for my troubles) and he said my rates wouldn't go up because it was my first claim ever and a small claim, so with all this good luck, I thought I would capitalize and play the lottery, but the woman in front of me at the convenience store, obviously a lottery "regular" because of her rapport with the cashier, bought thirty one dollars worth of scratch-offs, and it was so sad that I couldn't bring myself to follow suit and so I didn't buy a ticket.
Kids . . . It Would Be Convenient If They Were All the Same Size
Catherine explained to me in so many words that my household chore contributions of late have consisted of playing the guitar and reading (somebody has to be in charge of these) and that nothing on my "to do" list has been crossed off since June, and so, in order to earn my keep, I decided to put away the laundry; this was easy enough for my clothes, I put them in whatever drawer had room, but it was slightly harder for Catherine's clothes-- she has separate drawers for different kinds of clothing and they all look the same to me-- and it was damn near impossible for the kids . . . Alex and Ian's clothes differ by a few millimeters and the only way to check is by looking at the little faded tag, which is nearly inscrutable (but the millimeter difference in size is important-- it's the difference between Ian's pants falling down or not) and so I'm thinking that it might be easier to stunt Alex's growth a little-- deprive him of essential nutrients and allow him to smoke a couple of cigarettes a day (filtered, of course), and bulk up Ian a bit with a high calorie diet and some steroids or creatine-- so that the two of them wear the same size and can share clothing.
Sick is No Way to Drive
If you need a doctor on a Saturday, you're better off living in a third world country; I went to PromptCare on Easton Avenue, and I am amazed at the audacity of their name (they should go with something a little less ambitious, like JustBeforeYouExpireCare): two hours later I was diagnosed with acute tonsillitis (the doctor was really impressed by how swollen my tonsils were) and then, in my feverish delirium, I hopped into my car, excited to go home and finally get some sleep-- I was up all night because my throat closed up-- and I promptly rear-ended the woman in front of me, denting her trunk and screwing up my fender, so then I had to wait for the police but I was so sick that it was like being in a dream-- and I couldn't even get that angry at myself for my stupidity (although the lady in front of me did stop very short, she did one of those false starts into traffic, where you accelerate a bit and then decide you can't merge and stop suddenly).
Dave Sharpens His Axe
Wednesday, in the English office, because of a challenge, I bounced the giant-liquid and glitter-filled super-ball off the floor, off the wall, over Jeryl Anne's head, and hit the magic marker on top of the dictionary-- and it only took two tries (the ensuing try by another member of the department resulted in spilled coffee); I also made a long hook shot into the trash with my aluminum foil ball; and we determined that if you put quotes around a phrase like "sharpening my axe" it becomes dirty-- and, my apologies, because in retrospect, this sentence is pretty useless . . . honestly, you had to be there.
Dave Could Be a Middle School Soccer Star . . . If He Wasn't Thirty-Eight
I know I shouldn't be proud of this (but of course I am); at eighth grade soccer try-outs I timed the kids in a typical dribbling and sprinting exercise-- they had to weave in and out of eight cones, speed dribble to a far cone, play a lofted ball to a target, and then sprint forty yards to the finish, and, believe it or not, I posted the fastest time, edging out a speedy and ambidextrous thirteen year old by two tenths of a second (19.1 to 19.3 if you want to try it at home).
Not Eating Candy = The Terrorists Win
On a day as tragically infamous as this one, it is important to remember things you love, but often forget about, such as:
1) Guidance day for seniors (no teaching!)
2) black licorice.
Rooting For Whatever
I must admit that I was rooting a little bit for Chad Pennington to complete one into the end-zone at the end of the Jets game-- I normally try to find it in my heart to root for the Jets, but I wanted to see Pennington stick it in their face . . . I think I'm also a Ricky Williams fan, especially now that the Canadian football league has made a special Ricky Williams rule based around his early retirement from the NFL.
Good Sandwich = 403B
Waking up early and taking the time in the morning to make a really good sandwich for lunch is like investing for retirement; you are acknowledging that there is a time beyond the present and that you will exist in this time in the future and that it might be nice to have something pleasurable when this time arrives.
It Can Always Be Worse
It's Monday morning-- the first full week of work-- and the weekend flew by so fast that I barely remember it, plus I'm coughing up yellow phlegm and about to lose my voice (and I'll certainly lose it at try-outs this afternoon) and this is most likely because of the mold that's been growing in the humid jungle we call our classrooms, but I know I shouldn't complain, as there are worse things: for example, a case of hemorrhoids growing on my tongue.
This Is Fun, Right?
The first day of eighth grade soccer try-outs was yesterday, and I forgot how much I missed coaching; also, I can certainly see how Napoleon kept advancing into Russia, it's just so enjoyable to run your troops ragged while explaining to them that this is what they signed up for.
Good Morning, Kiddies!
Work Makes Dave Weary
This business of going to work is exhausting: Thursday night, I slept from eight P.M. to six A.M. (and I took a nap on the couch from 6:30 P.M. to 7:30 P.M., while the boys watched The Iron Giant).
Deep Regrets
I would like to apologize for my rash statement several weeks ago-- one of the problems with blogging is that you don't have the time to revise and filter raw and sometimes very offensive thoughts . . . and so in a fit of irrational prejudiceI claimed that I had no need for the Dorian mode, but now that I reflect on this, I'm afraid that I was being a modist-- I was judging the mode from superficial characteristics-- but with the right explanation (from a music theory text) I realized that I use the Dorian mode all the time, I just didn't know I was using it: it's a scale that starts like a minor but ends like a major (with a raised sixth) and it's highly useful when playing the blues.
Cold and Cutting Logic
Everyone has a theory . . . including the wrinkled old lady at the Shop-Rite deli counter-- I requested that she slice my cold cuts thin, because that's how my wife prefers them, but before she began slicing the meat, she asked me a question: "Is your wife thin?" and I said, "Yes" (but I should have put her on the spot and said, "No . . . she's morbidly obese and can't fit in the shower") and then she explained why she asked: "Thin people usually ask for their cold cuts sliced thin, I guess they don't like to eat as much meat."
Kids . . . Sometimes They Sound Like Marlon Brando
After the kids went up to bed and Catherine and I were watching Friday Night Lights, we heard a strange voice from the top of the stairs . . . Alex had gotten out of bed and was whispering to us . . . "Mom, could you do me a favor? could you get my . . ." but his whisper was so deep and scratchy that he sounded like Marlon Brando in The Godfather so we started making him whisper things like, "If you could do this one thing for me" and "Mom, can I arrange to meet with you this one time" and "please kiss this ring" then after we good laugh at his expense, we let him come down and get his Star Wars comic.
Can You Wash a Fart?
Ian has unlocked the door of juvenile humor: go with a gross image and beat that horse until it's dead; yesterday in the car he asked-- sincerely-- if he could wash his hands because they were covered in playground mulch, and then he asked if he could wash his feet, and then he asked if he could wash his butt and then he asked if he could wash his farts and then finally he settled on washing his snot, and for the rest of the car ride home he riffed on his mucous: "can you wash my snot . . . can you wash my snot . . . I can wash my snots . . . can you wash your snot?"
Can You Handle the Truth?
I think you can handle it, so I'm going to tell you the truth, and though it may be grotesque and incomprehensible, it may also save your life: Vic Mackey (The Shield) is the television version of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup (A Few Good Men).
One-Uppers Are A Downer
Last night, just after discussing the infamous "one-upper" that now works with us (this Emilio, he is more than famous for his "one-upping"-- for example: when a co-worker mentioned that he made some guacamole, Emilio claimed that he was growing an avocado tree in his closet) my friend Eric described a house he was landscaping and he mentioned the well-maintained garden with its plethora of pepper plants (a plethora, oh yes El Guapo, we have a plethora) including a beautiful Thai hot pepper bush with tiny colorful hot peppers growing all over it-- and I then remarked that I owned several such beautiful Thai hot pepper bushes when we lived in Syria and I kept them on our porch, where they served as a decorative spice rack and Catherine looked at me and said, "I think someone is doing some one-upping" and she was right.
Pop Art Paradox
Like the Harry Potter series, Feed the Animals -- the super mash-up album by Girl Talk -- is totally entertaining and completely derivative, but the question is: when you skillfully put the same old elements in a new context, is it great pop art or is it a comment on the fluid and disposable nature of pop art?
Sports . . . Better Than Reality
There comes a time in a man's life when he realizes that sports are not a metaphor for life; that sports, in fact, are far simpler, reductive, and easier to master than life; and that he should give up pursuing success in life and simply concentrate on sports (perhaps I'm realizing this because I'm reading Richard Ford's The Sportswriter).
I Could Have Played The Dead Body
In my quest to see the movies everyone else has already seen (you may recall my failed attempt to watch Top Gun) I finished The Big Chill last night, and my favorite piece of trivia about the movie is this: when the guys battle the bats in the attic, Harold (Kevin Klein) hums the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark . . . another film written by Lawrence Kasdan (the second best piece of trivia: Kevin Costner played the dead body).
Happiness of Dave, Part 2
Happiness is going to the dentist because you think your abscess has returned and it will have to be "scooped out" like last time (and you will have to receive another Novocaine shot to the roof of your mouth) but instead you only need to take some penicillin . . . happiness is also staring at a very large spider on the ceiling, trying to determine how to remove it, but taking no action because your wife is still sleeping, and she is in charge of spiders (yes, despite all my trips to far off jungles and deserts, I am still scared silly of spiders, like the elephant is petrified of the mouse) but when she wakes up and I apprise her of the situation, she grabs a Tupperware and some paper towels-- and with alacrity, with alacrity-- she stands on the table, her face right at giant spider level, and swats it into the Tupperware and then squashes it (I then examined the carcass and concluded that it was not the deadly brown recluse . . . but at first glance I think all spiders are either a black widow or a brown recluse).
Happiness of Dave, Part One
Happiness is stepping on the scale after a two week vacation that was both gluttonous and bibulous, and weighing the same as when you left . . . and we are talking about a very gluttonous week which revolved around food: whether it was pork and broccoli rabe sandwiches, meatball night, Mexican night, Mrs. Brizzle's super-stacked prosciutto and soppressata subs, carnivore night, etc-- and the second week with our friends there was more of a balance between food and drink-- we had Ed to mix drinks-- but the meals were equally as good-- Michelle outdid herself, of course, and we managed to finish all of my wife's meatballs, though we were allotted sixteen each . . . I think the reason I didn't gain weight was that we did a prodigious amount of digging in the sand (and produced two sand sculptures-- a bird and a dragon) and the skim was up . . . or down . . . it was very, very good, so my down time, my time not running around with the kids, was spent sprinting through the shallow surf and jumping on a thin plastic board . . . that's me in the picture, the oldest, fattest, most hirsute skim-boarder on the East Coast).
Kids . . . You Can Send Them on Errands
The number one reason to have children: you can send them off to ask questions of people you would never talk to . . . for example, some dude on the beach had a stuffed squirrel on a towel so we asked Alex to go ask the owner if it was real, and after several trips with various queries from us (he returned with answers like “yes, it's real, but dead” and “no it wasn't a pet," we finally sent him over to ask the big question: "why?" and the answer was "to freak people out") and so our curiosity was satisfied without having to leave the comfort of our social circle or our beach chairs.
Too Much Beach Might Infect Your Penis
We spent the first five days at the beach at the beach-- the boys were at each other's throats in the condo, and so we would get on the sand at 8:30 and stay until 5:00 (and we had to wait until noon before the cousins got out there so Alex and Ian had to find strange kids to play with-- Alex met a kid his age who was right on his wavelength, who, coincidentally, turned out to be the son of an older William and Mary football player who played safety with Mark Kelso)-- but finally by Thursday we were all worn out, and Ian had to visit the doctor because of a fungal infection around the rim of his penis . . . so salt water doesn't cure everything.
I Thought There Were Aliens?
I finished Richard Ford's "Independence Day" last week at the beach-- the book that precedes "Lay of the Land" and I have the sneaking suspicion that I read it when it came out thirteen years ago, but there's nothing definite that makes me sure I read it (and it is nearly five hundred pages) except that I felt a sense of deja vu during the end, which leads me to think that I either A) read an excerpt in the New Yorker or B) have completely lost my mind.
Neither Choice Is Particularly Palatable
I've been thinking about a name for my new music project (which isn't starting for a while, despite the songs being written, because we have to finish the kitchen before I can get a new computer, and my old one melted down) and I am down to two (rather poor) hypotheticals: Rubber Bug and Dave and the Gray Goo.
My Ear-hair is Longer Than My Nose-hair!
Double Baba
Yesterday (and I'm pretty sure very few people in North America can claim this) Dom and I were lucky enough to hear two different bands in the same bar play covers of "Baba O'Reilly" . . . we walked in to the Springfield Inn to hear Mike LeCompt but we had the time wrong, and a different band was playing-- The Juliano Brothers (three very fat guys who appeared to be related; they were very entertaining, especially the drummer . . . imagine Jabba the Hutt behind a drum-kit . . . some part of his belly touched every drum in the kit and he also sang as he played . . . you couldn't turn away) and the second version was by the inimitable Mike LeCompt, who heads possibly the greatest bar-band in the universe-- LeCompt was the lead singer for the hair band Tangier back in the 80s but now he plays every night of the summer on the Jersey shore, and during their three sets-- they played until two in the morning--the band crushed songs as diverse as Carly Simon's "You're So Vain," Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" (who can sing that besides Robert Plant?) Bonnie Tyler's "Clouds in my Coffee," Whitesnake, Styx, Elvis, Brandy ("You're a Fine Girl") and a number of tunes by The Who-- they finished with "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "The Seeker."
Time and Your (Blood) Relatives
The cliche is that time passes slowly when you are young, and that each summer day is an eternity unto itself, and that as you get older the days, weeks, and months just rush by, but this is bullshit if you are spending all day with a four-year-old and a three-year-old (and you don't let them watch TV)-- there is some kind of time relativity transference, and their slow perception of time gets transferred to you, which has its pros and cons . . . I'm definitely getting more out of life, but by 3:30 I need to drink a cup of coffee just to keep up with them.
Everyone Has Their Own Special Purpose
Three or Thirty-eight, It's All The Same
While at the science museum, my three year old son Ian and I followed the instructions and positioned our faces next to the monitor and listened to the spooky music and then POW! the sound of a gunshot startled us . . . we were totally duped in the Neurology of Fear exhibit; we thought the display was about spookiness but it was actually a display of our flight or fight response and we were being filmed-- and so the computer played a slow motion replay of Ian and I shitting our pants: grimaces, raised eyebrows, bug-eyes, rapidly raised shoulders--- hysterical.
The Butterfly Effect
190 pound man + very little knowledge of the butterfly stroke + repeated attempts to do the butterfly stroke after reading a chapter in a swimming book + very little self-consciousness or embarrassment about doing something ridiculous (some of you may remember the story of when I whipped my bathing suit off in the shower next to the pool, thinking I was already in the men's locker room, though I still had ten yards to go) + determination in the face of incompetence = miniature tsunami.
There Should Be Three Kinds of Kitchens
Sixteen levels of cabinetry, four levels of granite-- which needs to be tested for radon-- Silestone, Cambria, tile, wood, bamboo . . . the list goes on and on for the options available for the new kitchen, and the permutations and pricing become an endless labor; it would really stress me out if I were the one doing the research (and even knowing Catherine is contemplating all this stuff stresses me out a little, but if I told her that she would hit me).
Of (Senile) Mice and Men
Mice don't get Alzheimer's disease, which is annoying, but luckily, scientists figured out how to genetically alter them so they do-- which makes me feel a lot better, because if I start losing my mind, I don't want to be taunted by a bunch of mice (in fact, if I do get Alzheimer's disease, I wouldn't mind having a pet mouse with Alzheimer's disease that I could forget to feed until it shriveled and died).
The Plan: We're Not Splitting the Inheritance With an Interloper
I'm pretty sure Alex and Ian have come to a tacit agreement that they do not want any other children horning in on their deal, so they've agreed that the only way to preserve their positions in the household is by bringing Catherine and I to our knees each and every day, so we won't even consider having another child-- and although I'm tired, I'm also impressed with their cooperation in this endeavor.
No Snooki In This One
No Sleeping, No Happy Ending
For a good massage, ask for Sabrina at the Chinese Acupressure place on 27 between Third and Fourth Street in Highland Park-- the price is right for an hour massage (48$ and it is a full hour, there's a timer, none of this fifty minutes and a cup of water bullshit) and the massage alternates between relaxing pressure and spontaneous violence: Sabrina will be gently rubbing the nook in your Achilles one moment and then pounding your feet with her closed fists the next, or she'll be straddled over you rubbing your back then suddenly wedging her thumb under your iliotibial band-- it makes for an exciting time, you'll feel like a real man once it's over.
Perhaps I Will Stick to Sentences
I had an idea for a new blog-- One Hundred Portraits of Dave-- but I haven't followed through; the premise is that I draw 100 quick self-portraits on my tablet (no revision, no erasing, no tossing a really bad one) and see if I get any better at it, and this was my first attempt.
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?
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.
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
Reflecting on the Inflection
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
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.
Ocean Miracles
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
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).
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