6/23/2009

Our anniversary day in New York City started well, but then the Mexicans got their revenge on me: we ate at a great Thai place for lunch (Pam Real Thai on 9th Ave) and saw Avenue Q (which was pretty funny, but, like British writer Geoff Dyer, nothing makes me happier than having no interest in the theater-- I don't have to read reviews, sit in cramped seats, buy tickets, ask people what shows are good, etc.-- so though I laughed, this will be my last play for a long long long time, and even though the songs were funny and satirical, they sounded too much like what they were satirizing, that slick forgettable Broadway sound . . . but the Bad Idea Bears made me laugh) and then the rest of our day was full of lessons; we walked fifty blocks up to the Guggenheim to see the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, but we wanted to wait until 5:45 because then it's "pay what you want" so we had a few minutes to kill, but up by the Guggenheim there are no bars just very fancy restaurants, very fancy children's clothing stores, and apartments . . . then we learned that a LOT of people want to cheap out and pay four dollars to get in the Guggenheim, so we abandoned the gigantic line to catch the train to Newark to eat at what was supposed to be a great authentic Mexican page and we got off the express train home to walk to it in Newark and though I had read recent reviews and the place has a web page, it was boarded up and CLOSED--el restaurante está cerrado-- and I am sure that this is now a Mexican curse and conspiracy (avid readers will remember a similar dilemma several weeks ago) and so for our anniversary dinner we got take-out from "Hansel and Griddle" in New Brunswick, took it home, and watched The Shield . . . but we didn't feel so bad about our foiled plans because we got to listen to a great cell phone conversation between a bitter middle aged balding dude and his mother: one son just got arrested on five counts of burgarly and he was mad because his ex-wife was "protecting the kid with a lawyer when he needed to be punished, to be sent to boot camp, mom" and his other son just got his second violation for underage drinking and now his ex-wife wanted him back in the picture to control his sons, who he feared might hurt the wife and had "lunged at her" but he had to move to Houston to a radio station there, because his time at CBS was coming to a close and he couldn't handle the four hour commute-- so like we learned from Avenue Q, sometimes a little shadenfreude is a good thing.

Bowling and Vietnam: Both Are Better To Read About (Than Experience)

I'm finally getting deep into the shit of Denis Johnson's Vietnam novel Tree of Smoke, and along the way I ran across a fantastic sentence about bowling, the best sentence about bowling that I've ever read-- so good, in fact, that it almost makes me want to go bowling, but not quite, because bowling is only fun for three frames, then it gets painfully boring-- and so, without further fanfare, here is the superb bowling sentence: 

"Skip had never bowled, never before this moment even observed . . . the appeal was obvious, the cleanly geometry, the assurances of physical ballistics, the organic richness of the wooden lanes and the mute servitude of the machines that raised the pins and swept away the fallen, above all the powerlessness and suspense, the ball held, the ball directed, the ball traveling away like a son, beyond hope of influence."

6/21/2009

Wednesday was not so great for fishing-- we caught one measly sunfish-- but it was a great day for snaking, perhaps because it was sunny but also chilly, so the snakes were out but too sluggish to react quickly, I had to usher most of them out of our way with the fishing rod; during our two hour hike along the Raritan canal we saw five serpents: two black racers, a fat water snake and a slender one, and a garter snake; Ian spotted the largest one curled in a knot on in the grass on the side of the path, and for the rest of the hike he kept proudly asking, "Was that good looking? Was that super good looking?"

6/23/2009

Between the boil water advisory (there was some kind of main break) and the Swine flu, Middlesex County is starting to remind me of our days in Damascus-- eventually, you give up being vigilant and just get sick because it's easier than the alternative.

6/20/2009

Surfwise, a documentary chronicling the gnarly exploits of the Paskowitz family, takes a predictable turn-- Dr. Paskowitz gives up his straight life as the head of a Hawaiian medical board and gets in a tiny RV with his amenable wife and nine children (8 of them boys) so that they can live to surf-- but he doesn't enroll his kids in school or feed them very much . . . or clothe them very much, though he is a rigorous disciplinarian: all children must surf every day!-- and though at first their life seems transcendent, it turns out (surprise?) not quite as fun as it seems on the surface.

6/19/2009

You can only fake it so much: on three consecutive days, Catherine has shared the same piece of confidential information with me-- each time starting, "Don't tell my mother, but . . ." and each time as sincere as the last-- but by the third time, she could tell by my face that she was repeating herself.

6/18/2009

There goes our platinum credit rating: apparently a 0.0 APR credit card doesn't mean you don't have any payments, there is still a minimum payment of 20 dollars a month (unlike a credit card form Home Depot or Sears) and if you miss these because you only wanted to use the card for one purchase and once you made said purchase, you tossed the card and the statements into a file folder in the desk without reading them, then the credit card company will hit you with a late fee and screw with the interest rate; I straightened this out on the phone (and I tried to plead my case but, oddly, the bank doesn't buy this excuse: "How was I supposed to know I owed twenty dollars-- I didn't read the statement!") and when I explained to my wife what happened, she thought I was blaming her, but, of course, it was my own fault for not understanding the difference between zero percent interest and zero payments-- so I apologized for insinuating that it was in any way, shape or form her fault, but then in a surprising turn of events (and if you know my wife, this is especially surprising) she decided it was her fault . . . because she trusted me to do something on my own without her expert assistance, without checking my handiwork, and she should have predicted this and NOT trusted me-- and though I'm angry about paying the 39 dollar late fee, it might be worth it, because now I think I've proven myself so incompetent in so many areas that nothing is ever going to be my fault again: because I'm retarded.

Caster Disaster

I hate it when I pile seventy copies of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man onto my wheeled chair so I can roll it down the hall, into the elevator and up to the book room, only to find that I've neatly and carefully stacked the books onto my regular desk chair-- which does not have wheels.

6/16/2009

The day after Ian's chaotic, rainy birthday party, I got the award for worst neighbor on the block-- but what could I do?-- I had to return the bouncy castle to the sketchy amusement place I rented it from so I could get my 100 dollar deposit back, and it was soaking wet from the rain: so I inflated it at seven in the morning (and the generator makes quite a bit of noise) and then tried to dry it with the leaf blower (which makes even more noise) and then the boys got inside and bounced around with some towels, but it was still wet, heavy, and really hard roll up and get back into the Jeep . . . I'm sure my neighbors were quite pleased when I drove away.

6/15/2009

Technology has ruined us: on our camping trip, Alex, Ian and I sat and meditatively watched the fire transform from a smoldering pile of wood to a steady rapid blaze; just as the flames became hypnotic, Alex commented, "It's burning fast now, it looks like . . . it's like when you fast forward through the previews on a DVD."

6/14/2009

While I was pushing my kids in the stroller, they independently developed the "I Crush Your Head" game-- made infamous by the Kids in the Hall skit of the crotchety man who sits on the roof adjacent to the hip club and crushes peoples' heads while they wait in line-- and I'm not sure if this means my kids are comedic geniuses or if the Kids in the Hall are juvenile morons . . . but either way, when Alex said, "Your head is flat," it was pretty funny.

6/13/2009

Although my sample size is only two, I'm concluding that (despite the current wisdom) depriving your children of TV and video-games actually makes them more violent: instead of crashing digital cars on a screen, my kids crash their big wheels, instead of shooting invaders in a game, they shoot each other, and instead of sitting and concentrating on the screen, they perpetually fight and annoy each other-- but as Ian turns four today, I'm assuming that soon all that will change, and both my children will become civilized, mature citizens (like me).

6/12/2009

One thing is for certain: I would make a great detective . . . let me give you an example: on Wednesday, June 10th at 12;55 PM, I walked into the school cafeteria and immediately noticed something odd-- the place reeked of smoked meat-- and so I verified this sensory impression with another teacher, and then, just to be certain, I verified it again with a student; all agreed, the cafeteria smelled like someone was jerking beef; then, out of the blue, just minutes later, my mind, the steel trap that it is, solved the case-- I remembered that earlier in the day, in fact, five periods earlier, a student informed me that the ceramic class was doing their annual outdoor firing project, they kiln pots in open fires, and this year they were doing it in a new location, out back behind the cafeteria . . . case closed!

6/11/2009

Sometimes it's best not to know: I noticed wet clumps of toilet paper strewn about the bathroom floor and asked Alex what had happened; he said, "Ian wanted me to wash his back."

This Land is Your Land, This Land is Dick's Land . . .

If James Ellroy wrote a history book, it would probably read something like Nixonland: like an Ellroy novel, the book is dense, strategic, tactical and terse-- I highly recommend it, though it's nearly 800 pages and the font is tiny- it took me two months to read it (with many breaks to read lighter stuff along the way) and when I finished, I felt like I needed to start all over again.

6/9/2009

Three things I learned later than everyone else on the planet: 1) the Geico lizard is a gecko-- get it? Geico . . . gecko-- I didn't; 2) 9/11 has the same digits as 911, which is the number most people in America call when there is an emergency-- coincidence? who knows, but it never dawned on me; 3) the "re:" that shows up in e-mail headers stands for "regarding," I'm not sure what I thought it stood for, maybe "reply," but mainly I ignored it-- and I just learned this fact last Friday.

6/8/2009

Took the boys camping for the weekend while Catherine ran the garage sale and sold all their toys; highlights include seeing the on site wolf reserve, going to the bathroom, seeing the rescued bobcats, going to the bathroom, catching snails and tadpoles, going to the bathroom, hearing the wolves howl at nigh in the tent (which also woke the boys . . . and then they had to go to the bathroom) miniature golf, picking ticks off the boys, learning how a fox gets rid of fleas-- he goes swimming with a stick and submerges himself so the fleas head for higher ground, then releases the stick-- not showering for two days, not brushing our teeth for two days, and not changing my t-shirt for three days: I pulled into the camp on Friday in an East Brunswick soccer t-shirt and left wearing the same shirt-- I don't know what I was thinking, but I only packed one t-shirt (and I'm not sure if wearing it even constitutes packing it . . . but it was kind of cold and rainy when we left, so I packed a heavy shirt but never took it out and instead wore the same shirt from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning, when, ironically, I changed out of it to go play soccer, because I didn't want to smell).

6/7/2009

So I go to sleep before Catherine-- she's downstairs watching the some reality show-- and the next thing I know there's an intruder coming through our bedroom door-- so I sit bolt upright and yell "Aaahghh" and then the intruder yells "aagh!" and so I yell "aahgh" again but as I'm yelling "aagh" I realize that Catherine isn't next to me in bed, she's the intruder-- and that I must have been have dreaming when she came into the room, and it scared me half to death, my heart was pounding for a half an hour and neither of us slept well, and then I told my classes the next morning and the AP Psychology kids scared me even more: they told me I had REM sleep disorder and, because my muscles don't enter a paralytic state while I'm sleeping, I would probably walk off a cliff or strangle my wife, but I looked it up on-line and I don't have the symptoms-- it seems I just got startled while I was in a hypnagogic state, but I tell you, it was the scariest thing that happened to me since I watched The Devil's Backbone.

6/6/2009

A Micturation Mystery: Ian comes out of the house crying and Ian says that he peed in his pants, and when I go inside, I see pee on the carpet and then Catherine traces a trail of pee across the playroom to just outside the bathroom-- so we assume that Ian held it too long and couldn't make it to the bathroom and Catherine goes upstairs to clean him off and help him change-- but when she comes back downstairs she realizes that the bathroom door was LOCKED and Alex has a track record of locking it shut so we revised the solution; Ian tried to make it to the bathroom but found the door locked and then peed his pants coming back outside to tell us, so I put Alex in time out for the time it took me to unscrew the doorknob, but then once I got the bathroom open, there was pee on the carpet INSIDE the bathroom so Ian wasn't locked out, he got in, but he claims he didn't lock the door and Alex thinks he DID lock the door, but that doesn't make sense, because then how did Ian get into the bathroom?

6/5/2009

It's an honest mistake, especially if you're fresh off the boat and think that an intense Indian burn to the lower back is good for the kidneys . . . and I suppose "That spot's sore" could sound like "do it stronger," which is what the lady at the Asian massage place heard, so that instead of letting up a bit on my neck, she gave me a Vulcan nerve pinch.

6/4/2009

Today is probably as good a day as any to tell you this: this blog is a complete hoax . . . I don't have a wife or any children, I haven't read any of the books I mentioned or seen any of the movies I reviewed, and I didn't bang the back of my hand on a doorknob-- actually, I am holed up in a single bedroom apartment in Milltown, and I have covered all the walls and windows with tin foil, but I'm despite this, I'm going to continue with the blog . . . I hope this doesn't change anything.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far, But Maybe It Should

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Alex was reading a Fantastic Four comic book when he noticed that a character in the comic book was reading the very same comic book-- he was so excited that he called me over to see it-- and then we talked about the possibility of a guy inside the little drawing of the comic reading a tinier version of the comic book, and the even tinier guy inside the tiny comic book doing the same thing, ad nauseum; maybe this will blossom into a predilection for meta-fiction like Tristram Shandy and if on a winter's night a traveler . . . maybe he will end up just like his dad, nerdy and well versed in novels that no one else has read.

Dave is Annoying

Certainly one of my most annoying habits is that I am overly competitive, especially when I am drinking-- but what can you do?-- at a recent co-worker's party I was DOMINATING at indoor corn hole, poking that sack right in the hole . . . and though I had drank several shots of Jagermeister, they had no effect on my potency, but eventually no one would play me because, like I said, I'm really annoying when I'm drinking and playing games, but still, it must be noted that I WAS really good.

Gluttonous Incident 328,457

We went for a hike on Saturday morning with the kids at Woodfield Reservation, a reserve a few miles west of Princeton, and the sole reason we went hiking there is so that we could eat lunch at Tortuga's Mexican Village, the best Mexican place around-- but after a long overgrown buggy hike (and I was praying Catherine didn't get poison ivy again, she's just getting over a nasty case of it) where we had to lure the kids out of the woods with the promise of ice cream . . . they walked for over 2 1/2 hours, partly because we got lost, but we did see a big rock, Tent Rock, but it just seemed big because it had a name and because the rest of the hike was comprised of hacking our way through shrubbery, so after all this we get to the Mexican Place and it is CLOSED for lunch, and we knew it was closed for lunch on Sundays but now it is closed for lunch on Saturdays as well and we were very angry and sweaty and hungry but we remembered a little Mexican place on Route 27 on the way home so we stopped there, and in my rage I decided to exact my revenge on Tortuga's Mexican Village by eating an insane amount of food at Casa de Tortilla, which made logical sense to me at the time but makes absolutely no sense now because Tortuga's doesn't even know I cheated on them with the lesser Mexican place because they were closed and unless I write them a letter or they read this blog, they're never going to find out (although I must say, Casa de Tortilla was quite good, especially the grilled shrimp tacos and the chicken quesadilla, which was in soft bread instead of a tortilla . . . I also had a chicken taco and a ground beef taco and black beans and a side of guacamole and a shitload of chips).

A World Without Knobs

I banged the back of my hand really hard on one of our glass doorknobs . . . and I blame society.

The Sixth Sin is the Best Sin

Gluttonous incidents 327,967 and 327,968: this week on the way to school I ate BOTH cashew granola bars that were intended for lunch and snack (yes, I am a grown man who needs to bring a snack) thus leaving me with no recourse when faced with the giant chocolate cake in the English office, and since there were no plates, I worked my way around the outside of the cake, just eating the icing, which was coated with chocolate flakes . . . which leads me to wonder how skinny I would be if there wasn't always random food sitting around the office (and my house and my parent's house and the grocery store).

Short Attention Span Literature

It's nice when an excellent author writes something easy and fun . . . so though you may not have had the literary endurance to digest Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece Suttree, at least you can breeze through No Country for Old Men or The Road . . . and I never made it through Denis Johnson's Vietnam epic Tree of Smoke but I whipped through his new one, Nobody Move, a dead ringer for a classic Elmore Leonard novel (complete with precise Leonardesque vocabulary, the car door squeaked because the bushings were shot).

Birth School School Death

Back in the 80's I thought The Godfather's tune "Birth School Work Death" was dark and funny, but now that I'm 75% of the way through the song, it's more than a little scary, especially because if you're a teacher-- as I am-- then the second and third stages are essentially the same: Birth School School Death (unless you insert summer vacation in there-- Birth School Summer Vacation School Summer Vacation Death-- and then things don't seem as grim).

Midgets? Hieronymus Bosch?This Just Might Be The Film For You

If you like midgets, medieval architecture, old-style Quentin Tarantino flicks, and Hieronymus Bosch, then In Bruges is tailor-made for you-- I give it six canals out of a possible seven-- but I do admit that I may be biased because I love medieval architecture, old-style Quentin Tarantino flicks, and Hieronymus Bosch . . . and I certainly don't mind a movie with a midget or two (or more, just watched Time Bandits the other day with the kids).

Here I Am to Save the . . . Ugh, Sorry . . .

Awkward Moment of Dave #21,987: walking towards the cafeteria, I heard one of the school aides chastising someone-- the aide was standing in the door frame talking firmly to a person just beyond the door, saying, "That's not how you act, even if you're having a problem, you don't behave like that!" and so I decided to step in and give her a hand with this recalcitrant student-- since they often don't treat the aides with the same respect they afford the teachers . . . so I opened the other door and stepped through like Superman, and said in my most resounding baritone, "What seems to be the trouble here?" and then realized that the older aide was talking to another lunch aide, about some personal problem, I suppose, because she looked at me funny and said, "I think we can handle this" and I had no coherent reply ready, so I beat a hasty retreat.

Thinking on Pink

If you say the word "pink" to me, I think of the color pink, and feel a little fruity, but if you say "Pink Floyd" I think of the cover of Dark Side of the Moon and don't feel fruity at all-- why is that?

Near Death Pun

Yesterday, I was pushing Ian in the stroller to the post office, and while we were in the middle of the street (in the crosswalk, I might add), a car with handicapped plates didn't wait for us to finish crossing-- he revved his engine and crossed South Third, so he was essentially heading right at us-- but all I could think was "if this guy hits us-- a dad and his kid in a stroller walking within the confines of the crosswalk-- after running through a STOP sign, then when we go to court, he's not going to have a leg to stand on."

Hmmm . . .

Yesterday, a student was falling asleep in class-- let's refer to him as John Doe-- and so I told him to take a walk and wake up or I would have to "send him to the nurse"-- which is a euphemism for send him to get drug tested-- and a few minutes after he left class a student said, "There's John Doe in the courtyard, he's sleeping!" and there he was, in a state of complete repose on the grass, headphones in his ears, asleep just outside my classroom window.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Tree

My tree was wilting but once I irrigated the root ball and dribbled in some water, it sprung right back up (seriously, I'm talking about an actual tree here!)

I Might Need to Make a Big Poster

There is a propagandistic war going on in our house: Alex noticed a fruit roll-up wrapper on the floor and asked me who threw it there and I said, subtly, ever so subtly: "I don't know, maybe mommy" and he said he didn't think so because I like to "litter" and throw wrappers and garbage on the floor of my car and that all I do is "eat and litter, eat and litter, eat and litter" and even though I was the one who threw the wrapper on the floor (it was during a VERY exciting movie) I still don't think a five-year-old should be making assumptions like that-- especially since he rarely rides in my car so obviously he didn't get this information first-hand (even though it's true) so I'm going to have to step-up my disinformation program.

5/19/2009

Tell No One is a sharp, emotionally draining French thriller in the vein of The Fugitive, and I give it sixteen croissants out of a possible seventeen . . . but the only complaint I have is that the Frenchman who plays the lead looks WAY too much like Dustin Hoffman, to the point where at times I thought Dustin Hoffman was making a cameo in the film, but then I would realize that it was just Francois Cluzet again-- this was very distracting, and I'm not sure what the remedy is-- maybe the foreign film market is only big enough for one of them, and they should shoot it out at high noon or maybe they should only appear jointly in movies where they always play separated twins, one raised in France and one in America . . . the odd thing is, everyone seems to know about this uncanny resemblance (thus the split image, it popped right up on Google) BUT NO ONE HAS DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

5/18/2009

While I was driving back from Wawa, I saw a mailman look at a piece of mail, then throw his hand in the air, then look back behind him angrily-- but then, get this, he didn't turn around and walk back to where he looked: so that piece of mail is definitely in the sewer.

5/17/2009

Young people having sex is pornography, old people having sex is slapstick: what kind of movie are you in?

5/16/2009

After Catherine deduced what happened with the Magic Bullet, she said she might need to start a blog titled "Sentence About Dave" but she's obviously not an avid enough reader of my blog-- because it's already been done (although it wasn't very long-lived, but how many of you can say you both write a blog and have had a blog written exclusively about you? how many of you? none of you! unless your name is Paris Hilton . . . so I'm in good company).

Philadelphia: The Cheese Isn't Just on the Steaks

I took the kids to the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday, which they enjoyed-- there is a good collection of armor and halberds and pikes and swords and old guns and a decent sampling of all the masters, modern and ancient, including a great painting of Prometheus with his liver being eaten by a giant eagle-- and they also enjoyed the famous view of Philly from the terrace, but when I showed them the clip from Rocky when he runs up those same steps, they didn't seem to enjoy that very much-- maybe because the 70's keyboard in the theme song is exponentially cheesier than you remember.

5/14/2009

Apparently, to get the Magic Bullet to actually chop anything, you have to attach some kind of sharp spinny thing-- otherwise, it just makes an annoying noise (another lesson learned during my week of preparing dinner . . . that was my mother's day gift to Catherine, I thought it would be easy but it's going to kill me).

Ian Gets Stung While Wearing Pajamas

Rough week for Ian: he got bit on the arm by a kid at school-- the biter's teeth made vampire fang marks but luckily the kid had all his shots; Ian also has a cut under his foreskin; and, on top of that, last night, while he was in his pajamas, after story time, moments before he was about to snuggle up in bed, he stepped on a bee that found it's way into out house (probably on my clothes while I was planting a tree) and so we went from serenity to hysteria; I grabbed the bee off his foot and threw it, but I couldn't find the stinger, and then I couldn't find the bee and wondered if someone else was going to step on it . . . but Catherine managed to locate it, and it was dead, and the stinger was lodged between Ian's toes-- a tender spot and hard to get at (kid's toes are tiny!) but he handled it like a little man and definitely know he's not allergic now.

5/12/2009

Wisdom from a jaded five year old to his younger brother: after a LONG Sunday, the boys finally finished their dinner and Alex asked if he could have a treat; I told him that his treat tonight was a shower, and while he was stomping up the steps he said to Ian, "This treat is a rip-off."

Godzilla Movies Are Funny Because They Are Dubbed

Catherine and I started watching the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In and it was dubbed, so after a moment I switched the audio to Swedish and put on the sub-titles; Catherine then called me "the most annoying person in the world," which I said was a little extreme, and then I told her that everyone switches from dubbing to sub-titles if it's available (except the Italians, who demand all movies be dubbed-- they can't stomach hearing any language but their own) and we made a ten dollar bet about what audio setting the person who recommended the movie used, so this sentence is TO BE CONTINUED (but I am correct, right-- no one listens to the dubbing, do they?)

5/10/2009

I told Alex that some clovers have four leaves and that these are considered lucky, and for a while he searched for one, but was unsuccessful . . . and then he told me that "luck wasn't real, anyway" so it didn't matter (so now I suppose I have to tell him the story of the fox and the grapes).

Use Soap?

At our faculty meeting there was discussion about the swine flu and certain concerns were expressed-- including one woman who brought up the fact that to procure soap from the dispenser, you must touch the metal pump with the palm of your hand . . . and that this could be a vector of H1N1 transmission: despite this possibility, I'm going to follow Tom Hanks' odd and on-the-nose advice to Tawny Kitaen in Bachelor Party . . . he tells her: "Have a fun shower-- use soap!"

5/8/2009

Charlie Kaufman's new film Synecdoche, New York is tragic, but it reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite in one important way: both movies are kind of tough to sit through, but definitely entertaining to think about once you've watched them (but I still prefer Eternal Sunshine and Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, which are fun both to watch and to think about).

5/7/2009

A few weeks ago, Catherine must have put the floss away in the little box that holds deodorant and brushes and I didn't see it in there until this morning . . . so for the past couple of weeks, out of sight truly was out of mind, in fact I had forgot that there was even such a thing as flossing-- normally I look at the floss and feel guilty about not flossing (but rarely floss) but once the floss was removed from my line of sight, it actually disappeared from my brain as well.

5/6/2009

I like to think that I try to do a small part for the environment: I've stopped drinking out of disposable plastic, I try to abstain from eating large mammals because of the waste they produce, and--when possible-- I walk instead of drive . . . and I try to convince my students that these small differences make a big difference when everyone changes their behavior, but occasionally I push my luck, as I did last week when I tried to convince my creative writing class--composed mainly of females-- that they should buy one dress that they can use for the prom, their wedding, and any other formal occasion-- and, to drive the point home, I may have even lied and told them that we made my wife's wedding dress into a set of napkins and a bedspread, but, though the idea was met with disgust and repulsion, perhaps it will germinate in their heads and one of them will start a revolution which will cripple the fashion industry but cut consumption of clothing exponentially (and at the very least, this creative writing class, which started out very shy and quiet, to the point that I wondered if they would ever talk, has now become vociferous, outspoken, and often verging on violence because they have bonded in order to attack a common enemy-- which is me).

My House of Cards is Impregnable!

I'm a couple hundred pages into William D. Cohan's book House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, a minute by minute account of Bear Sterns financial apocalypse-- and while I can't really recommend it, it's technical with a lot of big numbers and the wretched excess and hubris is pretty understated, when compared to The Winter's Tale or King Lear-- I will say this: it seems if that if people think there's a problem with your brokerage house-- if the stockholders or the repo people or the overnight credit people or the analysts or the ratings companies or the SEC or the banks or FED or the writers at Fortune or the rumor-mill or anyone else even entertains these thoughts, then the thoughts can create a mathematical reality and a meltdown can happen at the speed of an idea . . . and the other thing I learned while wading through the numbers, which are all in the billions, is just how funny it is when Dr. Evil tries to hold the world ransom for "one million dollars."

5/4/2009

I'm thinking of creating a spin-off blog titled Fragment of Dave, where I

5/3/2009

I'm giving the second season of The Riches one million bloody hammers out of a possible five: Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver and all the other actors are great, and it is the most stressful show to watch-- while still being funny-- since Deadwood (and it has that same method of starting each show ten seconds after the last show ended).

5/2/2009

After the fat man heard about the shark attack, he puffed his big cigar and said, "That's why I don't swim."

5/1/2009

Little did she know, but the young lady in the lane next to me (who was certainly a college-level swimmer, or possibly a professional swimmer, but most likely some kind of cyborg government swimming experiment-- genetically modified with certain part replaced by machinery) was in the race of her life . . . against me, just a regular human, not even wearing a Speedo-- and that is why I am so sore today.

Last Wishes

I would prefer not to die of the "swine flu," as there is nothing more embarrassing than people repeating "swine flu" over and over at your funeral (if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be eaten by a large carnivore) but there is a more humiliating way to "shuffle off this mortal coil" than swine flu: testicular elephantiasis.

4/29/2009

I guess it is unusual for a dude to buy fabric by the yard at Wal-Mart, but I needed some thick material to staple to the plywood walls in my little music studio to deaden the echo . . . the girl who worked in the sewing and crafts department was so amused by my awkwardness that she gave me an "extra spin" (which is not nearly as dirty as it sounds-- it just means she rolled an extra yard around my bolt of fabric without charging me for it, actually-- that sounds dirty as well).

4/28/2009

I see the appeal of Dancing with the Stars: the girls are really hot and scantily clad, so you can't stop watching because you want to get a clear look at them but you can't get a clear look because they move their bodies so quickly, convincing you that they are wearing less than they are actually wearing, but then once they stop, you realize they were wearing more than you thought while they were dancing-- or maybe some people actually like to watch dance?

4/28/2009

So my students are presenting various ethical dilemmas and how to resolve them, and a group of boys is presenting a case about plagiarism and the kid who is talking has on the exact same green and white striped golf shirt as me, so I very dryly ask him: "But how far do you go with this idea, for instance, if someone were to wear the same exact shirt as someone else, could that be said to be plagiarism? would it be intellectual theft? to wear the same shirt?" but he didn't get it, and neither did anyone in the class; in fact, one smart girl said, "Mr. Pellicane, I don't think that's a very good parallel to their dilemma" and so finally I had to point out my joke, which is not very funny at all . . . and then we had to backtrack and let the boy reiterate what he said because I wasn't paying attention to him, I was just thinking about setting up my brilliant joke, which obviously wasn't so funny.

4/27/2009

Enough of this hot weather, I'm ready for winter again.

King of the Road

I like to think that I'm a pretty calm driver, but this must not be genetic (or else my kids inherited some bad driving genes from my wife) because my children are absolute assholes on their big-wheel tricycles: the other day at the park, Alex nearly ran over a dog, and I think he may have intended to hit it; Ian actually ran a little Asian woman off the path and into the mud-- and I know this was with intent-- I watched him go out of his way to accomplish this; and after I took Ian's big-wheel away and made him walk, Alex who Catherine had instructed not to drive through a deep puddle, went ahead and did it anyway, and then tried to zip around Catherine and Ian, but cut it too close and ran Ian over, giving him road rash on his arm and knee . . . and this was just one particular ride on one particular day and we do a couple laps around the park with similar results every day . . . so the question is why do I continue to embarrass and torture myself and the answer is that I have a very short memory, because every day that it's not raining it seems like a good idea to me to take a relaxing cruise around the park: hope springs eternal in my optimistic mind that today will be the day that everyone behaves in a civilized manner.

4/25/2009

Our neighbors (who were in their kitchen eating lunch) got a treat this weekend when they saw me trick Catherine into cutting my hair-- she thought she was giving me my usual, a number one head shave, but I had grown my hair out over break and wanted her to trim the sides with the angled attachment for the clipper, but she insisted she couldn't do it and I had to resort to vociferous and loud persuasion until finally she took a swipe at me and cut a gouge in my head, which made her very angry and she refused to cut the other side and even it out and by this time we were both yelling and I took the clippers and cut the other side myself, without a mirror because we were in the backyard and I pleaded with her to cut the rest but she refused and told me to go to the barber, which I did, but it was Sunday and the barber was closed, so then the whole thing started up again, still in the backyard so the Coens could watch and I finally got her to shave my head in the usual style and now I'll probably never grow my hair out again even though there is some hair up there, but I'll never get to enjoy it because I'm too cheap to go to the barber (even though in the midst of our argument Catherine told me that I don't care about my appearance and asked how I would like it if she acted like that and then she threatened to get really fat and not wash or comb her hair-- but I knew this was an empty threat because she's too vain to actually go through with that just to punish me).

Peccary vs. Pessary

The Group (by Mary McCarthy) is a frank book about eight Vassar girls in the 1930's who speak candidly about men, sex, contraception, finances, and sexism-- and though I pride myself on my extensive vocabulary,  I had to look up the word "pessary". . . and I'll bet that you don't know what a "pessary" is either, and we are not talking about a "peccary," we are talking about a "pessary"-- and believe me, they are not interchangeable at all.

You Fix One Thing . . .

Let it be known that my bookshelves are done and painted-- but that means I have to remove the boxes and boxes of books that I stashed under our beautiful handmade Syrian sleigh bed, which is a creaking, sagging piece of crap-- the boxes of books are holding the mattress up-- and so now I will have to fix THAT.

A First For Dave (and Possibly All Men)

I am very pleased with what maintenance did to the thermostat in my classroom during Spring Break; when I came back there was a note on the white board that said "The slider now controls the room temperature" and I like to keep my class really cold (I'm always hot and it keeps the kids awake-- plus human memory works better in the cold, kind of like a computer) and I usually do this by opening all the windows, which generates a lot of complaints, especially from the ladies, and sometimes outright rebellion-- they start climbing on the cabinets and closing the windows, despite my threats-- but yesterday I was able to get the room really cold without opening the windows, and then when my creative writing class, composed mainly of girls, came in and shivered, I pointed to the windows and said, "I know, it's cold in here so I kept all the windows closed today" and they BOUGHT IT and said, "We know, it's not you today, it just feels cold in here" and I'm very proud of this because it is the first time I have ever beaten a bunch of women in a battle of wits.

4/21/2009

So it turns out yesterday was Earth Day, Pot Day (I looked up why, the legend is that a crew of California high school kids in the 70's would always meet at Pasteur's statue to get stoned at 4:20 PM, which was the time detention let out) The Ten year Anniversary of Columbine, Hitler's Birthday and the Day Benny Hill died: which did you celebrate?

4/20/2009

The other night we watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, which was quite good-- the studly Spanish painter teaches you how to pick up two beautiful women at one time, he's quite skillful in both art and love, but even more impressive is my artistic eye . . . we knew nothing about the movie, just took it out of the Netflix sleeve and popped it in the player, but as it started I said, "That's Woody Allen's FONT! They stole Woody Allen's FONT! " and in a moment we learned that it is actually Woody Allen film . . . so I guessed the director by the font of the credits: although my wife wasn't particularly impressed with my precognizant aesthetic sense, I'm sure there are hordes of beautiful young women who will read this and swoon.

4/19/2009

While I was peeling a large ripe mango, my son Alex asked me: "What rhymes with mango?" and I impressed myself with the quantity and quality of my answer-- if you want to play along, stop reading now and see what you can come up with . . . I quickly said, "Durango-- a town in Colorado-- tango-- a Spanish dance-- Django (Reinhardt)-- a four fingered gypsy guitar player--and fandango, a movie website and also some kind of exotic dance" but Alex wasn't that impressed and he said "You forgot 'mango'" and laughed, perhaps thinking of the time Homer Simpson appreciated when his softball team rhymed "Homer" with "homer."

This Guy's Picture Is In The Dictionary Under "Man"

High marks for David Graham's new book The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon Forest (I give it eleven poisoned arrows out of twelve) but I definitely felt lame and civilized reading it on the beach, nursing a Spring break hangover, my toes in the surf, kids digging contentedly in the sand, contemplating which seafood joint we should frequent in between pages-- this guy Percy Fawcett was a man (despite his first name) and though his adventures eventually killed him, he makes Indiana Jones look like a flower sniffer.

4/17/2009

Radio newscasters need transitions: "Beautiful day today, Going up to 62 with plenty of sunshine, unemployment is still on the rise in New Jersey . . ."

Andre the Giant as a Thespian? Inconceivable!

Yesterday, I was behind a green box truck with an official black and white sign on the back that read: INEDIBLE BAKED GOODS . . . this reminds me of The Princess Bride-- when Andre the Giant tells the Evil Sicilian that the word "inconceivable" does not mean "what you think it means."

The Invention of Air: A Solid Review

Steven Johnson's excellent new book The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America is mainly the story of scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestly, who had a Forrest Gump-like ability to be in the right place at the right time (until the rioters burned his house down and he had to seek sanctuary in America) but it's also a reminder, for me, at least, of how radical the founding fathers were as thinkers, and how much science and logic were a part of their thought process . . . to the point where Jefferson expunged all the magic and mysticism out of the Bible and created his own edition and the usually optimistic and chipper Ben Franklin, drawn away from his cherished science and into politics at the end of his life, ended up writing sentences like this (thus making him a compatriot of mine in both opinion and style): "Men I find to be a Sort of Beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do Mischief to each other than to make Reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more Pride & Pleasure in killing than in begetting one another, for without a Blush they assemble in great armies at Noon Day to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can, they exaggerate the Number to augment the fancied Glory; but they creep into Corners or cover themselves with the Darkness of Night, when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of Virtuous Action."

Expectations vs. Reality

The first morning of our vacation I got up early to read, and Alex woke up soon after and he told me his favorite part of the day was sunrise, when the sky was "purplish orange" and he sat down and looked at a book and everything was peaceful and wonderful and then he asked if we could play chess and I said, "Sure" and made him a bowl of cereal and then I went to the car to get the magnetic chessboard . . . and in the two minutes I was gone Alex violently bit his tongue, screamed bloody murder, ran to the bedroom to wake up Catherine, found the bed-room door closed, yanked on it-- not knowing that Ian, woken up by the screams-- was pulling on the other side, got into a tug of war with the door . . . which ended when Ian let go and the door smashed Alex in the face-- and all this happened while I was gone-- so I tiptoed back into the condo with the chessboard to this grisly scene and realized that vacation had officially begun.

4/13/2009 I am back from vacation!

Something NOT to do on vacation: go out for many beers with your old college buddies, wake up the next morning and eat two extremely dense made to order donuts, then go to the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island and climb down into the hold of the Elizabeth II, a replica of the boat the colonists came on four hundred years ago-- because it's really claustrophobic down there and it's slowly rocking from the waves-- which is never good when you're hung-over-- and there's fifty eighth graders on a school trip, and, most difficult of all, there are dudes in authentic colonial garb, who talk with accents, and pretend that THEY ARE FROM COLONIAL TIMES . . . and they never break character, even with the adults-- which scares me, it's fine to pretend with the kids, but I don't know who they're trying to fool or if maybe they hire insane people who actually think they're from the late 16th century or what, but I'd like to know where they go at night and if they drive a car there.

Momma Spanx . . . The Director's Cut

When an attractive pregnant woman on the phone in the office politely asks "Do you have Momma Spanks? The full length version?"-- what crosses your mind? . . . because I know what crossed my mind-- a very,very dirty film-- a dirty film with two versions: an extra-long uncut version with LOTS of incestuous spanking and other bizarre sexual practices, and a shorter, edited, and tamer version-- but my attractively pregnant colleague was insisting on purchasing the unabridged and extra-perverse version, and my mind was ripe with curiosity as to why the tamer version wasn't sufficient for her sexual deviance-- but as it turns out, "Momma Spanks" is not a pornographic film . . . it is a type of slimming panty-hose for pregnant women and these "Spanx" come in two lengths, full and half . . . and the lesson here is that I should have never asked, as my fantasy was far more wonderful than reality.

A Rule To Live By

You know you're getting the stomach-ache you deserve when your wife picks up a block of cheese that you left on the counter and says "You didn't eat this, did you?" and you say "Yeah, why?" and she says, "Because it's covered in mold" and your five year old son chimes in with this adage: "You should really look at food before you eat it, Daddy."

4/10/2009

This semester my Creative Writing class is comprised of a bunch of girls: they hate it when I open all the windows and 90% of them know what a "seam ripper" is (a term that appeared in a girl's poem, which I was curious about).

4/9/2009

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree-- Alex said to me, "I don't know everything, Dad, but I know a lot."

4/8/2009

Although the Pulp song "Common People" is one of my favorites, Jarvis Cocker's premise has been refuted: there's plenty of rich folk living like common people in England these days (I mainly wrote this sentence so I could refer to Jarvis Cocker-- that's one of the best names ever, right up there with Dick Trickle and Horselover Fat).

4/7/2009

The Spiderwick Chronicles is pretty good as far as those kind of movies go, better than Harry Potter, but it is definitely not for young kids-- it's actually scary and we're going to have to wait a couple of years before we watch it with Alex and Ian.

4/6/2009

I thought I had a lot in common with my nerdy students, but after seeing last Friday's "Collision" Dance Competition I realize this may not be true-- they can dance (but I also saw that the key to dancing is to have long black straight hair to fling around, so I'm growing mine out).

4/5/2009

Long ago, at a wine tasting festival in Virginia, I got a chance to meet Sam Snead-- I ambled into the tent, said, "Hey Sam, can you still kick out a light-bulb?"-- something i had heard he could do when he was young and limber-- and was escorted outside by the bouncers.

4/4/2009

I was excited that my son Alex (5 years old) was holding his own in a game of chess with an older kid-- it was a new plateau, they were quietly playing in the living room while we talked to our friends-- but obviously Ian didn't see it that way, he's only three and he still doesn't know how all the pieces move, so I guess he felt left out and he expressed his frustration by spitting on the board.

Of Triffids and Chrysalids

Some science-fiction reviews: Danny Boyle's Sunshine is pretty good, lots of slow-paced space scenes like 2001 and some actual science to back it up, but it gets confusing and presses for a big ending; John Wyndham's 1955 novel The Chrysalids is really good, a precognisant story of religion, mutation, and evolution: lots to think about, and it actually has a working plot and realistic dialogue . . . so now I've got to read his other famous one: The Day of the Triffids.

Grown Men Should Not Possess Fruit Roll-ups

Catastrophe averted: I removed a fruit roll-up from my shirt pocket just BEFORE I threw the shirt into the wash.

4/1/2009

Bad news: I'm wrapping it up, I'm packing it in . . . I've got no more to say-- I've run out of ideas and my life isn't interesting or significant enough to continue this blog . . . plus, I've had an epiphany, writing these sentences is self-indulgent and selfish, I should spend more time with my family, or better yet, doing charitable deeds . . . I just can't justify it any longer, and then there's the run-ons, the grammar errors, the lack of punctuation and proof-reading and the images that barely connect to the sentence: so I'd like to thank you all for reading and commenting (although part of me thinks this is all your fault) and I am now on to bigger and better things, spiritual transcendence, perhaps, or just greater humility about my place in the universe.