1/6/2009

Yesterday was certainly the Monday to end all Mondays, but here's a fact to get you through: by the end of the month, the sun will be rising thirteen minutes earlier than it did yesterday (7:08 instead of 7:21) and it will be setting twenty nine minutes later-- 5:15 instead of 4:46 . . . so there are bright times in all of our futures.

1/5/2009

If it wasn't for playing Rock Band on the Wii, I would have never known that Mick Jagger sings "war children" during "Give Me Shelter"-- I thought he said "whooooah."

1/4/2009

It's worth reading The Northern Clemency just to hear the British slang term "hairy bucket" used in context (the picture has no relevance, it popped up when I Googled the phrase).

1/3/2009

During our trip to Vermont, Ian (three years old) slept in the same room as Catherine and I; one night he woke us with the exclamation My Monkey is Dead! . . . and after he said it he immediately fell back to sleep, but it took me longer, I just couldn't stop thinking about it.

1/2/2009

A friend got an iTouch for Christmas, and now, like Marion Barry was on crack, she is on the internet-- you can't say two words to her before she's Google-ing something you said-- so my 2009 prediction is that this information super-highway will turn humanity down a bad road; it will be used for pornography, gambling, identity theft, mindless frivolity (such as a video of a dude playing Europe's "The Final Countdown" on a kaz00keylele-- you've got to check it out) and worse, far far worse.

How Big Is Your Set?

My New Year's Resolution is 1080p, yes my set is bigger than Notorious B.I.G-- I'll plagiarize his rap because his words don't miss . . . "when I was dead broke, man, I couldn't picture this/ 50 inch screen, money green leather sofa/ got two rides, limousine with a chauffeur/ phone bill's about two G's flat/ no need to worry, my accountant handles that"-- so thanks to DLP technology and the miracle of deflationary tech-pricing, I'm living like a dead rap star.

So True

In the middle of the night, nothing tastes better than a glass of cold tap water.

The Top Two Movie Lines of 2008!

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath, and it's finally finished . . . Dave's Top Two Movie Lines of 2008 (one of the movies isn't even from 2008, but I saw it in 2008 and that's what is important) and so, here they are, in no particular order:

1) I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!  (from There Will Be Blood, delivered by Daniel Day Lewis)
  
2) Isn't it beautiful? Even though it's where everyone died (from Battle Royale, said by the girl that survived a three day organized slaughter-fest on a deserted island, she delivered it as they drove away on a speedboat-- it's one of those movies you have to see to believe: totally compelling, though the premise is ridiculous, and it's directed by a really famous Japanese director, Kinji Fukasaka, who you'd think is too old for that sort of thing-- he's 71-- but he's good at seamlessly and effortlessly mixing genres, like Bong Joon-ho does in that South Korean movie The Host, which I also really liked).

Double Parallel Movie Madness

Two recommendations with parallels: Slumdog Millionaire is like City of God, but in Mumbai instead of Rio de Janeiro-- I give it sixteen million blinded child beggars out of a possible eighteen million; and Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency is like a Richard Russo novel-- omnipotent, sprawling, and generous-- set in the suburbs of England-- I give it nine moors out of a possible ten.

Three Firsts

Three firsts yesterday:

1) Alex's first brazen and convincing lie . . . it was six A.M. and we were building the new Lego table and Alex and Ian were helping me, and Alex had already told Ian that it was "no time for talking" and then when Ian said something while Alex was busy holding the side of the table, he turned to him and clearly said, "Shut up, Ian" and when I confronted him he said, bawling "I said 'sun up!' because the sun is coming up!" and he pointed outside and, of course, the sun was coming up, but I know what he said and it wasn't "sun up" and who the hell says that anyway-- he claims he "forgot" to say the other words (the, is, coming) 

2) Alex's first use of sarcasm . . . we were building a huge rain forest puzzle and it was hard and I said, "Who got us this puzzle, it's hard" and Alex said, "Santa" and I said,"Santa must have heard you were smart" and Alex said, "I guess he didn't hear that you weren't smart" 

3) the first time a giant hawk smashed into our new bay window and sat stunned in the little pine tree in our yard for a while and then flew away.

Clever Incompetence

Catherine decided to make chicken scarpariello for our giant Christmas Eve party-- it's chicken and sausage, with bell peppers, sweet and hot cherry peppers, onions, all in a wine sauce, but you have to cut thighs and whole breasts into parts, and cut through bone, which is more difficult than it looks on television-- and she was having trouble with our knife, so I told her she should be using a cleaver (which is where the word "clever" is derived from, but she didn't want to hear this) and that if she was clever enough to use the proper tool, she wouldn't be having so much trouble, and I even offered to go buy her one-- but instead she wanted me to chop a few pieces, though she knows I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to cutting chicken (and this wasn't a chicken breast out of the package, this was skin and bones and gristle) and so she was sarcastic and emasculating about my ginger cutting style (I really don't like touching raw chicken, it's slimy and gross) and so I took a good chop at it and broke the cutting board in two (a big chop just like I see the chefs do on TV-- and Catherine said to me, "Do you see any cameras?") and then she relieved me of cutting duty, but she wasn't very happy with me . . . so, against my better judgment, despite the fact that I knew I might lose a digit, I got her a cleaver for Christmas.

All the Cute Girls Live in Canada

I've been telling this story to whoever will listen: a teacher who will remain nameless was walking around his class with a spur on his shoe (it had something to do with teaching True Grit) which the class found weird, but one of the girls simply said, "he's a single guy, he can do what he wants" and the teacher-- who is dating another teacher in the department-- said, "Actually, I'm not single--I have a girlfriend," and the girl looked and him and just laughed and laughed, sincere laughter, the laughter of someone who's heard a clever and surprising and completely absurd punch-line, and he said, "No, really, I do" and she said, "Well then, what's her name?" and he was about to say it but then realized they might recognize it was a fellow teacher, and he didn't want to spill that information, so-- and this is my favorite part-- he genuinely stuttered (you can't fake that unless you're a trained actor) and this teacher is NOT a good liar, so after some hemming and hawing, he finally said, "Uh, I can't say" which made everyone laugh even more, and finally he retreated to the classic response when cornered about a girl . . . "uh . . . she lives in Canada."

Low Rider on the High Ground

Just finished reading Thomas Friedman's new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution-- and How It Can Renew America . . . and so Merry Christmas carbon-producing, wrapping paper using, dirty fuel abusing (and so terrorist funding) American materialist pigs-- and I say this with greatest affection as I'm in the club as well . . . until I build my enclosed electric recumbent commuter tricycle, because then I will have the moral high ground.

Denetia? Internesia? Netheimers?

I started to type "can you get HDTV with rabbit ears" into Google, but when I got as far as "can you get," Google listed suggestions, such as "can you get pregnant on the pill" and "can you get pregnant from pre-cum" and "can you get pregnant right after your period" and "can you get pregnant on your period" and "can you get pregnant right before your period" and one non pregnancy-related topic: "can you get mono twice"-- and this distracted me so much that I forgot what I was going to search for in the first place (there needs to be a sniglet for when you go on the internet and get distracted and never get to and/or forget what you initially went on-line to do in the first place . . . internesia?)

Shoeless Muntazer

The best thing George Bush has ever done, and I mean ever, is dodge those shoes-- but if I threw them, one of them would have found its target, and I'll tell you why: Muntazer al Zaidi missed because there's very little snow in Iraq, and so it stands to reason that Muntazer had very little snowball fighting experience, because if he had, he would have perfected the time honored high/low tactic, and he would have lobbed his first shoe, thrown it weak and high like a wounded bird, and while Bush watched it (thinking to himself: that's hardly a throw . . . because A-rabs don't play good old fashioned throwing sports like baseball and football, they just kick things around . . . forgetting that at Andover, he himself was cut from the baseball team and had to become a cheerleader) and while W. was lost in thought, staring up at the shoe floating in the air, that's when I would have whipped the other shoe at him.

The Laugh Track is Wack

A student with good taste in television (The Office, Madmen, Curb Your Enthusiasm) convinced me to watch The Big Bang Theory; I turned it on and the physicists had built a time machine in their apartment, and were racing forwards and backwards in time . . . and it might have been a funny bit, but I couldn't enjoy it because there was a laugh track-- and it made me realize that I can no longer watch any new show with a laugh track (but I can watch an old show with a laugh track, like Seinfeld or Joanie Loves Chachi . . . why is that?)

A Good Retreat Is Better Than a Bad Stand

It started funny but by the middle I just didn't get it, and so-- despite glowing reviews by James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene-- I have given up on Flann O'brien's cult classic At Swim Two Birds; although I did learn what a Menippean parody is (and that anyone who knows what a Menippean parody is and is also a fan of this book, might also be an elitist wanker) and judging by the tone of the reviews for the book, I am wondering if anyone really gets it-- or if it's so bizarre and baffling, but also so highly regarded in learned circles, that no one wants to be the first to say that it's rather tedious and borders on nonsensical (or perhaps I wasn't reading carefully enough, but I'm way happier now-- I'm reading the Amazon.com pick of the year: The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher . . . so maybe I'm just middlebrow all the way).

To 1080p or Not to 1080p?

1080p or not 1080p, that is the question . . . and though it is far less profound than Hamlet's meditation on self-slaughter (but who would want to commit suicide anyway now that there's Blu-Ray?) this technological dilemma is far more pressing than thinking about what dreams may come when I shuffle off this mortal coil-- and those dreams probably won't be in HD.

Special Cake

So my friend took this screwed up cake that his girlfriend was going to toss in the trash, and he decided to decorate it with whatever candy was around her apartment-- and he ended up creating an "animal parade" complete with marshmallow observers, a street paved with jimmies, borders done with candy canes and gum drops, dead marshmallow people that had fallen off the cake, pretzel gates, etc. etc. and though that sounds pretty elaborate, I cannot stress how tacky and awful and downright retarded this cake looked, and when I walked into the office, I had not heard the story of the cake yet . . . all I heard was the very sweet, very nice, very motherly Special Ed. teacher talking to my friend like he was some kind of special needs student, and the more I insulted the cake, the more she complimented him for his "imagination" and cleverness, and really, the whole thing was so cloying that it made me sick (both the cake and the compliments).

Nerding It Up

Here's an example of the nerdy humor in my Shakespeare class-- and to get an idea of the kind of kids in this class, imagine this: once, during a discussion of Taming of the Shrew, I mentioned Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, and Bach, and two students were so excited by this reference to their favorite author of meta-philosophical conundrums that they actually high-fived each other; and so we are discussing Act IV of The Winter's Tale and the incorrigible rogue Autolycus is describing some of the ballads he can sing, and they are uniformly bizarre, but our favorite was the sad tale of a singing fish: previously, when the aforementioned fish was a lovely maid, she would not "exchange flesh" with the one who loved her and so as punishment for her prudery she was "turned into a cold fish"-- so I said the title of the ballad should be "To His Coy Fish-tress" but then a student thought of an even better pun: "To his Koi Mistress" . . . and perhaps you had to be there . . . or perhaps you had to be there, and be a real nerd.

Legos . . . They Are a Trap

I'll bet there's a negative correlation between time spent playing with Legos and "handiness"-- as a kid, I loved playing with Legos: they snapped together so easily, they could be built into durable and intricate structures without any other medium to hold them together, and you could start building without any structural plan and end up with a masterpiece, and my sons love them as well-- but, of course, real world materials don't behave anything like Legos-- it takes time, patience, forethought, and an understanding of how substances bond, stretch, crack, break, expand contract, and react to make anything lasting and aesthetic around the house or in the yard . . . something I don't have the patience for; and I'm afraid that my sons are traveling down the same path, as they blithely snap together spaceships, schooners, and castles with the greatest of ease.

Unnatural Action

Two animal encounters: over the weekend:

1) while I was running along the Raritan, I saw a blue heron acting in a deranged manner, listing from side to side and then finally collapsing into a heap, where it eyed my warily like some miniature feathered reptile-- and so when I got home I called several numbers until I reached Ranger Headquarters, and I told them the situation, and the next day the heron was gone, but I want to know what happened . . . I should have told the dispatcher to call me back once she had a full report of the incident so I could have some closure . . . can a heron get West Nile disease?

2) last night, our contractor went into the crawl space to retrieve some of his tools and he found a big fat raccoon in there, so he flushed him out, and after the raccoon went down the red and yellow plastic kiddie slide in our yard he climbed over the fence and into the neighbor's yard-- but not until one of the workers tossed a soccer ball at him.

Science!

Last night I learned that the best free thing ever (besides sex, which is never really free, but that's another sentence) is the annual Michael Faraday Physics Demonstration at Rutgers: they must have done fifty experiments in an hour and a half, to a packed lecture hall; it was entertaining enough to keep Alex and Ian's attention for long past their bedtime: imploding chemical drums, flaming balloons, floating magnets, the Bernoulli effect, the physics of lying on a bed of nails, a professor in an old time football helmet on roller skates propelling himself with a fire extinguisher, and, of course, everyone's favorite . . . liquid nitrogen.

Xmas Anxiety Reprieve and Return

While Catherine was away on her fifth grade camping trip last week, I felt like a Hindu or a Muslim or a Jew-- no Christmas anxiety; the kids and I never spoke of Santa or presents or lights or decorations or a tree, and I certainly didn't think about shopping or the forty people that are coming to our house on Christmas Eve . . . but on Friday Catherine returned, and so did reality-- I wanted to put my feet up and rest (I was a single dad for a couple days!) but she was all about making a list and checking it twice and getting down to brass tacks with all the Xmas bullshit (and I know I shouldn't complain, since I don't do much, but I think that makes the anxiety worse).

Reading Time!

We sold our TV last night-- and the kids were pretty good about it, considering they were right in the middle of "The Black Cauldron" when the guys came to take it away.

Who Is That Dancing Bald Man?

Tropic Thunder is best viewed without knowing the cast: it took me half the movie to recognize a couple of the actors (and, despite Ben Stiller, the movie is quite funny).

Plants/Birds/Rocks/Things/Heat/Hot

I was feeling pretty bad about the quality and content of yesterday's sentence, until I turned on the radio and heard the second worst song in rock and roll history-- the worst is Jethro Tull's "Aqualung," of course-- but the two chord classic "Horse with No Name" by America is a close runner-up; hearing their infamously vague lyric "there were plants and birds and and rocks and things" made me feel so much better about my own writing-- as did the phrase "the heat was hot" . . . but what can you expect by a band named after a geographic location, as they fall in with such ilk as Asia, Boston, Chicago, Alabama, Kansas, Europe, The Georgia Satellites and Styx.

I Go Out On A Limb . . . A Nerdy Limb

I know it's controversial, but I told my students anyway because I'm that kind of guy-- if I have an opinion, I speak it and let the chips fall where they may: my definition of science fiction is when the setting-- whether it's based on technology, set in the future, or simply a logical alternative to our own history-- is the main character of the novel or movie-- so that excludes and Star Wars and Godzilla, but does include Soylent Green and The Matrix.

Talking With Himself

I assumed once the addition was done and we were able to use the new dining room, our children would start saying things like "Mother, could you pass the treacle pudding" and "Father, this aspic is divine" but it wasn't that way at all; instead of talking to us, Alex had a forty-five minute conversation (if you call lunatic ramblings, Jim Carrey-esque facial contortions, and out of control giggling "conversation") with his reflection in the bay window and Ian shrieked with laughter at his witty brother.

Peeing Etiquette and a Peeing Paradox

A woman in our department (Kristyna) is pregnant with her first child-- and it's a boy-- and she's definitely the feminine type, so I was giving her some tips on how to raise boys (always be developing their reflexes, constantly challenge them to physical contests, emphasize competition, compliment them on feats of flatulence and gluttony, stress the importance of athletics over intelligence, etc.) but the one thing she said her boy would never do is "pee on a tree"-- because it seems my boys, if they are more than seven yards from a bathroom, find it completely appropriate to drop their pants and water whatever flora is available; this led to a debate about when to and who can pee on a tree, someone claimed that if you let your kids pee on trees once they are over the age of eleven, then you are a degenerate, but I pointed out that if you drive over to Metuchen Country Club and wander onto the golf course, then you'll find well-to-do men over the age of eleven peeing all over the trees.

The Evolution of Beer Pong

Catherine and I played beer pong for the first time on Friday night (or the new version of the game, I remember a game we played with cups of beer on a ping-pong table in college, but we used paddles and if you lost you had to take your shirt off and the other team got to whack you with the ping-pong ball, which didn't hurt much, but it did leave a little welt that lasted for a few days . . . I think we called the game "pong-ping") and Catherine was good.

Bow Down to the Master Dave

Once again, I bow to the master: David Sedaris is the King of the Sentence; though I must admit that at the start of his new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, I wondered if he had run out of good stories to tell, but that's certainly not the case-- I could read Sedaris-brand sentences about a boil, or a cab ride, or the details of his relationship with his boyfriend Hugh, and they would still make me laugh (and, of course, they did).

You Just Opened Your Gift!

It's the holiday season again, and normally I am wracked by guilt because I know I need to get people gifts and I never do (my wife takes care of it) and also because I have charitable thoughts that never really come to fruition, but this year I am in the clear because I have been giving the gift of entertainment in the form of this blog-- and so as long as poor people have a friend with a computer and an internet connection, they can enjoy my thoughts and sentences the whole year round!

Hey Joe

At school, a small middle-aged man with glasses has been saying "Good morning Dave" to me for several years now, and this has been embarrassing for me because I didn't know his name and whenever I described him (hey, there's this little guy, with glasses, maybe he's fifty or so, wears a shirt with a tie sometimes, do you know his name?) no one could ever give me a definitive answer and then I would forget all about it until the next time I ran into him and he rudely flaunted his knowledge of my name again, but yesterday near the mail boxes, another teacher (I don't know her name either) said hello to him and she also said his name and his name is Joe (but am I really going to start calling him by name now?)

No Cake For Me

There was chocolate cake in the fridge last night and I thought about eating it, but-- get this-- I did not eat it . . . amazing, but true-- instead of eating cake I took three ibuprofen and went to bed at 8:30 because my back hurt because I'm trying to learn this soccer juggling trick called "Around the World" which involves this really violent leg motion after you flip the ball in the air-- you have to whip your foot all the way around the ball and then flip it back up, and although I'm getting closer to achieving this, I may have to quit trying to avoid serious injury.

What's the Only Thing Better Than One Fox?

While walking back from A&P yesterday, a bright red fox walked across my path (I followed him across the soccer fields just to confirm this-- just to make sure he wasn't a big squirrel or a cat or something, but, of course, it was a fox-- they are unmistakable in their color and gait . . . and a fox's tail sticks out straight and rigid from their body) and the reason I note this is that this is the second bright red fox I've seen in a week; while we were hiking with the boys on Friday one ran right by my feet . . . and if this seems far-fetched . . . if perhaps, you think I'm fabricating this, then think of what an ingenious fabrication it is-- because most people would fabricate one fox so they could have some daily content on their blog, but they would never think to fabricate two foxes-- not that I'm fabricating this-- or maybe I am . . . because that's exactly what someone who was fabricating a story would say.

Mumbai Multitasking

It's official: the Giants are so good they're boring; I yearn for the days of Butch Woolfolk (that was exciting football, in 1983 Woolfolk set the record for rushing attempts in a game-- 43), but I am getting a lot of reading done during the games . . . yesterday I finished Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger-- a first person tale of corruption, entrepeneurship, amorality and perserverance in the jungle of the modern Indian dream: and I give it nine rickshaws out of ten.

How and When to Get Trampled

For the first time in my life, I got up early on Black Friday to try to get a deal on a TV . . . or I thought I got up early (especially with all this talk of a recession) but when I got to Electronics Expo at 6:10 AM, the line already wrapped around the building and they were letting in fifteen people at a time, so I beat a hasty retreat; it turns out I was lucky not to be trampled to death . . . which was the fate of a Wal-Mart employee; I read this story on-line at the Daily News site, and though it was a tragic tale, there was a comic irony to the first comment on the story: a woman expressed her disgust at the futility of the death, and the ignorance of the tramplers-- because she pointed out that the best sales are NOT on Black Friday, they are AFTER Christmas . . . so if you're going to trample someone it should be during a January sale, not a Black Friday rip-off!

Is Dave Spongeworthy?

After a year of blogging, one becomes introspective . . . one wonders: are my thoughts blog-worthy . . . are my sentences special and unique . . . is my perspective worthy of valuable space on the information highway . . . or am I a self-centered egotist who could make better use of his time learning a trade such as air-conditioner repair or dog-grooming?

I Love Coffee But I Hate Tea?

Perhaps it was due to the fog of beer, but it took an inordinately long time to solve Stacey's ridiculous riddle Wednesday night-- she just kept saying things like: I hate tea but I love coffee, I hate cats but I love dogs, I love mice and chipmunks and squirrels but I hate rats, I love love but I hate hate . . . and on and on and on until finally, finally we got it . . . will you?

Back in My Didn't Need to Breathe So Much

Great moment of laissez faire 1960s parenting in Madmen-- Don Draper's daughter walks into the room, her body completely inside of a plastic dry cleaning bag, and her mom says, "I hope you didn't leave my dry cleaning all over the floor-- now you march right back up there and clean it up" and the little girl leaves the room, still enveloped by the plastic bag.

Put Those Clementines Down!

I was spacing out in line in the grocery store, cradling a box of clementines in my arm, and I guess this bothered the old woman in front of me-- though she had put her items down, she was apparently bothered by the fact that I wouldn't put mine down, the fact that I was awkwardly holding the box instead of placing it on the conveyor belt-- because she turned and said, "You can put them down now-- put them down!" and pointed to the empty spot on the conveyor belt . . . and I took one look at her and put them down.

Getting Rich

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my blog-- "Sentence of Dave" has accumulated 31,594 views, which earned me 15 dollars and 37 cents in ad revenue, so I won't be quitting my day job any time soon (and what would I do with my day after I had written my sentence anyway?)

Our Children Are Crushing Our Spines

I took the kids to the Museum of Modern Art (the Joan Miró exhibit-- good for kids and doodlers alike) and FAO Scwartz (not the best place for a claustrophobic, but the kids had a good time jumping on the Big piano) and it marked the end of one era-- we no longer have to bring diapers when we go anywhere, and it's nearly the end of another era: the Stick the Kids in the Backpacks and Run Really Fast to Catch the Train Era, because the snap broke (brittle from the cold?) on our fancy foreign-made super-sized child-backpack and so I had to carry all child weight on my shoulders, and by the time we got on the subway to go back to Penn, Alex was compressing my spine (he was fast asleep and so was Ian, so they were both dead weight and now they're big enough so that when they fall asleep and lean to the side they often bang their heads against door frames and such) and so now I think I'm only 5'8" . . . so no more free ride for him-- next trip he will have to walk every step of the way . . . and judging by how Catherine's shoulders were feeling by the end of the day, Ian may have to hoof it as well.

Girls Are Too Clever For Their Own Good

Last week, one of my students tried to involve me in a web of lies and deceit: we have been reading and writing process analysis essays and she apparently started writing an essay with the working title "How to Survive a Post-Menopausal Mother" but then she gave up on it-- but she left the notes out and her mother found them (and was suitably offended at her daughter's choice of topics and tone about her mom) so the student, quick on her feet, said that "post menopausal mother" was just one humorous topic of many in a satirical essay I had given her and not her idea at all; the next day, she came in and told me that if I received an e-mail from her mom asking about this, to just go along with it and say that somehow the topic was my fault but I told her "I'm not lying to your mother-- don't get me involved in this!" but luckily it never came down to that: the crafty mom simply asked her ingrate daughter for a copy of the satirical post-menopausal essay and the student confessed that she had made it up . . . but what I was really impressed by was the fact that the girl thought of that excuse in the first place-- a guy would never think that quick on his feet, he'd just say, "What essay? I didn't do it."

A Vivid Geographical Simile

From a student's poem about Newark, New Jersey: "285,000 people . . . 12, 400 people per square mile . . . tight like a virgin."

Electronics and Water Don't Mix

I had an appointment with a "genius" yesterday at the Apple store, a moniker found unbearably offensive, but this particular Young Einstein had enough common sense to spot an idiot-- he busted me for water damage, which is not covered under the warranty (apparently there is a sensor inside the Ipod that can tell if the player has been subjected to liquids) and what could I say . . . I didn't have a leg to stand on, because I had taken my Ipod swimming numerous times and obviously my Otterbox was not one hundred percent waterproof . . . so swimming with music was fun while it lasted, and now I have to try to fix my Ipod by myself (which should be fodder for another sentence).

Entomology 101

Two Oscar-winning performances by yours truly last week in class: 

1) at the start of our process analysis unit I demonstrated how to help someone get rid of the hiccups (my preferred method is to pretend that there is a bug in the hiccuping person's hair) but I guess the girl I was demonstrating on didn't realize that it was just a demonstration-- and apparently she's really frightened of insects-- so when I went to pluck the imaginary bug out of her hair, she slapped my hand and screamed . . . and all the students were very happy that she hit me;

2) the next day, to illustrate a point in an essay called "Honey Harvest," I pretended that I had a bee in a cup and that I needed a volunteer to be stung in front of the class as an initiation rite (to what stupid club I can't imagine) and again, the same girl got very upset-- you'd think she would have caught on by now-- and a few other girls actually got out of their seats and ran when I turned the cup over onto the volunteer's arm (I've been doing this for years and, oddly, someone always volunteers to be stung by the imaginary bee) but then all that fluttered out of the cup was a yellow piece of paper . . . but a student gave me a good idea for next year, I'm going to get one of those joke pens that shocks you when you touch it and put that in the cup.

Mrs. Parham Will Get Back to Us

As we walked along the Raritan River in the park by my house, my son Alex described his day at school-- specifically the class Thanksgiving song-- and so I mentioned to him about how Lenape Indians had lived right here next to the river by our house and he said "Daddy, that's a bad word! Mrs. Parham said that you can't say that!" and I tried to explain to him that "Indian" wasn't a bad word, that it was just a misnomer, and that in some contexts, you can still say Indians (no one wants to play Cowboys and Native Americans) but he didn't seem very convinced by my argument-- he said he would check with Mrs. Parham and get back to me.

Bonus American Education Week Update!!!

Today, compliments of the East Brunswick Education Association (in conjunction with the East Brunswick Parent Teacher Association) in honor of American Education Week, we received a green band-aid dispenser pre-stocked with five (I counted them) non Band-Aid brand band-aids.

Hiking Q & A

Question: how do you get your kids out of the woods after hiking in a bit too far and getting sort of lost; answer: promise them ice cream if they can lead you out.

UFC . . . The Sour Sociology

My first investigative sentence: in order to dispel claims made by frequent commenter (Al Depantsdowno) that UFC fighting is akin to the WWF, Catherine and I went to a friend's place and watched Randy "Still Juicy at Age 45" Couture defend his belt against Brock "I look sort of like Drago from Rocky IV" Lesnar-- and I can assure you, UFC fighting is very real (we watched the snot get knocked out of a guy's nose in slow motion) and it can be exciting and I was definitely unable to turn away for a second, but there is a lot of gripping, bending, grimacing, and generally ugly rolling around on the mat-- Catherine, who had a few glasses of wine at dinner was vociferously against the whole idea of "tapping out" when you get your arm barred, and she quickly and painfully demonstrated how easy it is to bend someone's arm back (on your intrepid investigative sentence writer-- it hurts) and if boxing is "the sweet science" then UFC fighting is "the sour sociology."

More Popular Than Sex!

I'm reading Bill Tancer's Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters and the premise is this: Tancer is the general manager at Hitwise, an internet intelligence company that sifts through millions of internet searchers in an attempt to understand the world's subconscious; for example, when people search "how to" do something, it usually involves sex . . . from "how to make out" to "how to get pregnant" but the number one search in the United States is "how to tie a tie" . . . but that's not number one in Britain (school uniforms) . . . and my favorite is the sixth most searched "how to"-- it seems people really want to know how to levitate.

Ouch . . . Huh?

They say women forget the pain of childbirth, and I believe it, because once again, I forgot the pain of early morning basketball-- some teachers and randoms play at the high school every Friday morning, the game starts at 6:00 AM sharp-- and I played yesterday morning and by the end of the school day, I had a raging headache from dehydration and hunger and oxygen deprivation, as there were only eight of us, so it was full court four on four and two of the players are marathon runners-- and so, unfortunately, my students were shorted any kind of education and I was thinking all day never again, I'll never do this again . . . but in a month or so, I'll probably do it again (and a bunch of women will have more children, although it might take a bit longer for them to forget the pain of passing a baby through their peliv bones and vaginal opening).

These Puzzle Pieces Are All Edges

Because of this blog, I neglected to write a best-selling novel; now instead of a thick and valuable manuscript, I am stuck with several hundred desultory sentences-- and no matter how I rearrange them, they never form the first chapters of a best selling novel.

Hard Work and Soft Rock, Perfect Together

One of the more annoying things about having work done on your house every night until 8 PM (besides the banging and sawing and the living in one cramped room thing-- we have to move the couch every time we want to watch TV so both of us can see around the refrigerator) is the fact that I can't choose what music to listen to-- the workers listen to a soft rock station . . . yesterday I heard Bryan Adams and Blue Oyster Cult's "Burning for You"-- while this is generally annoying, it's occasionally entertaining, like when Leo was signing along to Peter Gabriel in his heavy Mexican accent: "eenyereeyes, eenyereyes, eeenyereyes, eenyereeeeyes."

Sometimes You Need to Lie to the People in White Coats

The main reason I hate going to the dentist is because I am forced to lie: for the past few months (as usual) I've forgotten to floss on a daily basis, and-- judging by past behavior-- I'm never ever ever going to remember to floss on a daily basis, but they're so earnest about flossing over there at my dentist's office that I can't stand the disappointment in their eyes, so, once again, I swore to them, that NOW, FROM HERE ON IN, I AM GOING TO FLOSS, but I know in another six months it will be the same pathetic ritual.

Reading Makes You Annoying

If you value your marriage, you won't read More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, a Freakonomics style book with fascinating analysis of why shopping carts have increased in size, why daughters cause divorce, and why our jury system is so screwed up (and a hundred other knotty problems-- it's not as thorough as Freakonomics but it's entertaining in its breeziness) because apparently no one cares about these things, especially my wife, and while your friends and acquaintances will simply steer you away from your new found useless knowledge into other topics-- I brought up the fascinating conundrum of how shopping carts have been growing larger and larger each decade, and how no economist can pinpoint exactly why this is happening and my friend didn't even attempt to follow . . . he started talking about how some carts will tip when you jump up and lock your arms while other won't-- but your wife might tell you flat out that you're annoying (she might even tell you flat out that the only reason you read these books is for attention, because you love to know stuff other people don't know, and that's also the reason you voted for the Green Party, but that's another sentence).

First Things First: Football

An ambiguous (and poorly delivered) teaser on NBC before the Giants game last night: "Police search for a fourteen year old boy's killer . . . after the game."

Snotgreen and Soggy

This was a lame week off for me-- we didn't go anywhere because we had to supervise the kitchen construction (and we're broke and Catherine didn't have off Monday through Wednesday but I did) and it was cloudy and rainy all week, but I played soccer and watched soccer in the rain and drank plenty of beer and got our lawn to grow in nice and green where the workers filled in dirt and we took the kids to the beach on Saturday and it was foggy and misty and the sea was snotgreen and scrotum tightening and we've been living in one loud cramped room with our wee bairns so I'm going to pretend that we spent the week in Ireland.

Alex: A Young Hypocrite

Because Highland Park did not have a week off for fall break but I did, I caught a glimpse of my son's secret life at school: when his class lined up after recess, Alex was last, he barely made it before Mrs. Parham made her count and brought everyone inside, but once he did get in line he wasn't afraid to yell to the front, "Move it, move it-- let's go!"

Bang Pork Hump Sluice

While making plans for Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale I ran across two useful Shakespearean phrases: 

1) a rarely used but graphically descriptive term for making the beast with two backs-- "sluiced" . . . as in "I didn't think Mike had a chance with that leggy blonde he was talking to at the bar, but the next day he told me that he sluiced her in the supply closet" 

2) an excellent name for a nature documentary featuring animals humping and sluicing: "Bawdy Planet."

At Least Give Me A T-Shirt

I'm working my way through War and Peace for the second time, ostensibly because there is a new translation by the masterful Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, but also because I was slightly miffed that none of my "friends" threw me a party the first time I finished the book, as is traditional, so I'm hoping once I finish this time this oversight will be remediated.

Chuck D For President

My wife thinks I should be more excited about the historical significance of today's election results-- that I should reflect on the fact that African Americans began their American journey in chains and now a black man is going to reside in the White House-- but I guess I don't really see Barack Obama as a black guy . . . it's not like we elected Richard Pryor.

Put Me in Coach, I'm Ready to Pave, Today

JV Paving is an poor choice for a business name, especially when the sign is on Summerhill Road, across the street from the high school's junior varsity soccer field; when you're dealing with hot asphalt, you go with the varsity paving team every time.

This Court is Supreme

I am reading The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court because I'm a sucker for any book that promises to unveil a secret world . . . then I will know about the secret world and you won't (unless you read the book of course, but you probably won't, because you're lazy and maybe that's not even the title of the book and maybe it's not even about the Supreme Court)-- and also because it covers a period of time when I couldn't have cared less about the news-- my twenties, when all I cared about was me . . . and what bar I was going to-- so now I'm catching up with Clarence Thomas dissents and Clinton politics and Sandra Day O'Connor's lean to the left, AND I'm also learning cool facts: the gym on the top floor of the Supreme Court Building, where the clerks and interns (and Clarence Thomas, until he hurt his knee) often play hoops, is known as the "highest court in the land."

Did You See Saw?

Did anyone see Saw . . . I never saw Saw . . . I should see Saw . . . did y'all see Saw II . . . I should see Saw II too.

Fuck Quotations (and Typing)

Good news and bad news-- the bad news is that I am giving up on Dave's Quote of the Day (despite some help from my friends-- and I thank them-- it's no longer the project I envisioned: a log of the best things that I stumbled on in my desultory reading that I could look back on ten years from now, because I didn't have the patience to keep it up and I can't type fast enough to make transcribing text enjoyable plus Patrice O'Neil said that typing is kind of gay) but the good news is that now I will put ALL of my limited intelligence into the Sentence of Dave and this will mean better, clearer, wittier, and less stupid sentences for you, my loyal audience, and if you have made it this far into this sentence then you certainly are a member of my loyal audience, because no one else in their right mind would continue reading this atrocity.

Can't Buy Me Love (Or Waterboarding)

According to most figures, the Iraq war has cost us nearly 600 billion dollars, and in the end it may ultimately cost us in the neighborhood of three trillion dollars, but if you want to know the true cost (and you aren't squeamish) then watch Standard Operating Procedure, the new Erroll Morris documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

You Had to Be There (But Here It Is Anyway)

Two big laughs in the English office this week, but you probably had to be there: someone put a quotation on the public whiteboard in reference to Todd Whitaker, the slick positive-thinking Evangelical-style presenter the district hired last Friday (he gets 10 grand plus for a day's work and his licensed DVD costs $449)

"a good teacher complains about the price of staff development, but a great teacher shuts up and gives me her fucking money"

and another teacher drew (and colored!) a very funny comic, but again, you might need to be an English teacher to appreciate it-- the conceit is that a fetus in a jar has come after school to make up a quiz on Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" and the teacher tells the fetus to "take as much time as you need."

Why Is My Wife in That Cabinet With That Guy?

Nothing is cuter than a toddler's malapropism (Daddy look, I scissored the paper!) but what about when your wife, after a drawn-out negotiation with the cabinet guy, says "I really smooched him" instead of "I really schmoozed him"-- is this a cute Freudian slip or should I take it as an admission of infidelity with a woodworker for the sake of a discount?

Dave's Economic Knowledge Goes Out the Window . . .

I had to read every paragraph twice, but I finished David Smick's The World is Curved: Hidden dangers to the Global Economy (The Mortgage Crisis was Only the Beginning) and for two hours after I completed the book, I understood securitized mortgage assets and the value of hedge funds and the trillion American dollars China has hoarded and the importance of transparency and an investment system that encourages entrepreneurial risk and a whole lot of other economic information, but no one had the common sense or curiosity to ask me about it during my "window" of knowledge, and I wasn't able to bring it up in conversation-- my wife doesn't fall for that ploy (hey honey, while I was taking out the trash I started thinking about what would happen if Japanese housewives tied up their savings in illiquid investments . . . did you ever wonder how that would affect the global economy?) so now the knowledge is gone, it has floated into the ether, along with other useless things I have read like the history of the Vikings and the mathematics of island geography.

It's Best Not To Complain

If you read yesterday's post, then you'll be happy to know that when I ordered two eggs and cheese on a roll (salt pepper ketchup) at the White Rose System, and the cook misheard me and gave me TWO entire egg and cheese sandwiches (I thought it was weird that it cost $4.49 but didn't say anything) instead of one sandwich with two eggs on it, I didn't give the extra sandwich back-- instead I remained silent and ate them both.

I Like Porkroll Too . . .

It's always disturbing to see someone who was once in shape and now has grown obese; for example, I saw the full-lipped red haired aerobics instructor from the now razed YWHA-- who, back in the day, was semi-attractive, despite her liberal use of lipstick, and certainly filled her spandex outfits provocatively (if your taste is a bit zaftig)-- but now she's obese, she waddled up to the counter at The Park Deli and ordered THREE pork roll egg and cheese sandwiches, I thought there but by the Grace of God goes I.

Somewhere, The Future Has Passed

I've been busy writing songs-- in anticipation of getting a new computer so I can get back into home-recording, but when I slotted this lyric in for an easy rhyme I really thought I had stolen it from another song: "and the future is someone else's past," but I Googled it and it's not . . . is it possible that no one has used this cliche as a song lyric?

The Joy of Paraxene

My four year-old son Alex experienced the joy of getting his first allusion-- he knew that the music playing during the start of Chicken Little, while the water tank rolled juggernaut style through the town, was a reference to Indiana Jones and the infamous boulder, and I understood and empathized with his joy, the joy of getting the joke, the joy of seeing the light, the joy of Paraxenes once he found his way out of the canyon.

Soffit Talk

This is what I have learned from our kitchen addition/dining room/bathroom/playroom renovation project: when your house is really really cold in the morning, even the most hyper-active of children sleep late (I have also learned that the soffit is the "armpit of the house).

Beefing Up The Language With a New Sniglet

If the women in my wife's book group are truly serious about this whole organic thing, then they need to do some cowpooling (which is like carpooling, except that instead of piling in a car to save gas and allay traffic, you buy an entire grass fed cow and then cut it into parts and everybody takes a piece home . . . and unlike tupperawareness, I did not coin this word: I learned it in this month's issue of Wired).

My Wife, The Queen of Sheba?

My wife crossed the line last night, that invisible line between civility and despotism . . . the invisible line that runs down the middle of our bed; I got up to get a drink of water, and when I came back to bed she was stretched out like the Queen of Sheba (I have no idea if this allusion makes any sense in this context) and I had to wedge myself into the oblong space she left for me-- but I took solace in the fact that it was bigger than the bed Jan made Michael Scott sleep in because of her "space issues."

Thus Endeth the (Middle School Soccer) Streak

Thus endeth the streak: after coaching thirty-plus eighth grade soccer games without a loss, we suffered a 1-0 defeat at the hands of our arch-nemesis (Hillsboro) -- a big strong team that made some of our players look malnourished, but we ran hard and controlled much of the play so I can't complain too much, and I think I will only cane the players once or twice for ruining my unblemished record.

Jack Donaghy Demonstrates A Useful Technique

I never remember my dreams, but last night I had a vivid one wherein I hooked a giant marlin and . . . sorry, I almost broke my own rule-- everyone knows there is nothing more boring than hearing a grown man recount an incoherent dream; when Liz Lemon starts to talk about her dream on 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy picks up an imaginary phone and says to her, "Sorry Lemon, I have to take this."

An Orange in Iowa Was Once a Miracle

This will be my last post on this blog (and in fact, my last interaction with the Internet) because I have been reading Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, a memoir by Mildred Armstrong Kalish; I'm so enthralled with the camaraderie, self-reliance, and rugged civility of these farmers that I have decided to go to Iowa by covered wagon during the Great Depression and start a farm so that my spoiled suburban children learn to treat their own maladies with spider webs and vinegar, slaughter a chicken by age six, and enjoy the hell out of an orange.

Middle School Boys: They Don't Listen

I probably didn't look like the most compassionate coach in youth athletics when I strode over to my player (who was lying fon the sidewalk crying and clutching his ankle) and I started yelling "I told you! Didn't I tell you!" but you really had to see what happened moments earlier . . . I passed by the same player on my way into the building and told him "Stop juggling the ball in your cleats on the pavement-- YOU ARE GOING TO GET HURT, if you have to burn off some energy and jump around, do it on the grass-- DO NOT GET INJURED BEFORE THE GAME" and then I walked inside, happy that I had given an eighth grader some clear and concise coaching advice, so when I came out of the building and the girl's coach-- young, concerned and earnest-- rushed up to me and told me one of my players was injured and that he had rolled his ankle on the curb, I was, of course, in no mood to play the role of Florence Nightingale.

Know Your Audience

This is the kind of joke that only gets a laugh in a room full of Shakespeare geeks-- some student left a CAPITALISM SUCKS pin on a desk in the back of the room, so I held it up and said to the class, "Someone left a CAPITALISM SUCKS pin here . . . would anyone like to buy it from me?"

Don't Count Your Giants Before They Play

My friend from Ohio promised me that the Giants would destroy the Browns, so I didn't even attempt to stay up and watch the game . . . and that's the last time I trust anyone from the Midwest

Steady as He Pees?

Sometimes, in the early morning, I hear the sound of a stream of liquid cascading into a pool of water . . . punctuated by several ominous silences, and the number and length of those silences determine how much of my son Alex's urine I will have to wade through in my bare feet to get to the sink.

Am I Getting in Good Shape or Full of Intestinal Parasites?

I don't mean to get all Brigitte Jones on you, but between playing lots of soccer, running around with my kids, coaching and having no kitchen, I'm down to just a shade over twelve stone (186 pounds) and I've been on a reverse diet-- plenty of ice cream and candy and pizza-- so I'm very happy with the weight loss, but of course, there's the chance that I have giant intestinal roundworms again.

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

We didn't get the message, and so Alex wore his Darth Vader shirt on school picture day-- and if he becomes infamous or famous in some way, you can bet someone will dig that photo up and attach some sort of symbolic value to it.

Thirteen Goals is Much More Fun Than Nil-Nil

Those of you who don't think soccer is high scoring enough would have enjoyed my team's eight to five victory over Old Bridge-- and this was a real score, not one of those games in which the score gets padded when the subs go in-- it was five to five several minutes into the second half.

Great Moments in Teaching Episode #287

                                        

I told my Creative Writing students to get up and make a big circle so we could play a memory game-- and so all the kids stood up and started arranging themselves: pushing desks out of the way, and shuffling between them-- except for one girl, who did not stand up-- she sat in a desk in the middle of the circle, head down, doing something in her notebook; finally, she picked her head up and looked around at everyone standing around her . . . and with a sheepish grin she held up what she had been so diligently working on-- she had taken my directions literally and drawn a circle.

The Earth, She is a Swiftly Tilting Planet

Yesterday signified the end of something: we went to the beach and the day started cold, rainy, and windy but by noon it was sunny and the ocean was freakishly warm and both boys got completely wet, and after I changed them we went to Pete and Elda's for pizza and then they slept all the way home . . . it was hard to remember that soon enough we're in for a long dark winter.

A Very Cheap Buzz

If you're an eighth grade soccer player on the bus after a game, then the height of fun is to sniff the inside of a fellow competitor's cleats.

Dave is a Rejuvenated Cucumber (or melon)

This morning, I was feeling tired, and so when I showered I used some of my wife's Cucumber Melon Rejuvenating Body Wash, and it was very refreshing: almost instantly I felt like a ripe and fresh cucumber (or melon) sitting plumply in a spring garden, dew dripping down my firm and smooth cucumber (or melon) skin and-- just like a rejuvenated cucumber (or melon) I was ready to face the day.

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.

Huh?

Republicans: the party of financial regulation.

Remembrance of Zills Past

There's a tambourine in the back seat of my car, but the only time I remember it's there is when I hit a bump.

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.