8/5/2009 Live from Sea Isle City

Some things you don't see every day: 1) two dudes running at a decent clip down the beach, each dude juggling three balls as he runs-- and occasionally, every three steps or so, one dude flips a ball to the other and the other dude does the same, so there is a mid-air juggling exchange, and this occurs without any break in their collective strides, which is quite impressive . . . but I'm not sure if this was flamboyantly gay behavior (not that there's anything wrong with that) or just a couple of circus clowns trying to keep fit 2) a sweaty mesomorphic and hirsute Italian man (yours truly) decides that he wants to swim after his run on the beach, to get near some dolphins, and he decides the beach is deserted enough that he can strip off his shorts and swim in his spandex . . . this was definitely flamboyant behavior 3) the same sweaty hairy man (but with his shorts back on, thank God, but shirtless) walks into the wrong condo unit because he's tired and thought he climbed three flights of stairs when it was only two, sees someone much younger than his wife on the couch, says "Sorry" and quickly retreats.

8/4/2009

Cheers to the chatty old optometrist who gave me an eye exam last week-- when I told him I hadn't gotten new lenses in eight years, and that I had gotten the lenses in Damascus, he said, without missing a beat, "Did the son check your eyes?"-- which is a reference to the fact that Hafez Assad's son, Bashar, who took over the job of supreme honcho just as we arrived in Syria, was originally trained as an ophthalmologist; now perhaps I shouldn't be so impressed, because maybe all optometrists know this little tidbit, as Bashar Assad may be the only oppressive dictator who was first trained in optical medicine, but still, this guy delivered the line so effortlessly (and he was pretty damn old!) that it was almost as if he had been waiting all these years for someone to mention Syria and optometry in the same sentence (this can't be typical conversation, right?) and so I am giving him the coveted Sentence of Dave Off-Handed Quip by Someone You'd Never Expect to Make a Joke Award, which has previously been awarded to no one, because most of the stuff people say (myself included) is drivel.

Live Update from Sea Isle City

Up until 2:30 last night watching the greatest cover band in the universe, fronted by Mike LeCompt, play their usual summer Sunday gig at the Springfield Inn: they played too many songs to list-- Beatles, Stones, The Who (Baba O'Riley, Pinball Wizard, Love Reign Over Me, Behind Blue Eyes) Bruce, Elton John (Levon-- who covers that?) Billy Joel, La Grange, Hamilton, Joe frank and Reynolds-- Don't Pull Your Love, Brandy, You're So Vain, So Lonely, Tom Petty, Styx, Maggie Mae, Suspicious Minds,and many others, unrecoverable because of the alcohol, but I figured out their trick-- they play every song faster, heavier, and better than the original-- I don't like Elton John, but I like LeCompt covering Elton John.

8/3/2009

Although Ipods, Itunes, file sharing, MP3s and digital music are vastly superior to compact disks in so many ways-- storage, accessibility, categorization, etc.-- there's still something to be said about making a snap judgment about someone's entire character from the glimpse of a couple of CD's in their car or on a shelf in their living room: Fine Young Cannibals? Lynch Mob? Steely Dan? Jethro Tull? Yanni?

8/2/2009

Some music commentary: 1) I am wondering if this is the demise of Wilco, though their new album is pretty cool, they get all eponymous and use their name in the first track-- and unless you're a hip hop artist, where dropping your name is de rigueur, this could be a bad omen 2) Charlie Mars alludes to my theory of why Pink Floyd has sold 7.7 copies of "Dark Side of the Moon" . . . on top of it being a great album, it's also a favorite with druggies and stoners, who often lose it while under the influence and then have to buy another . . . because what aficionado of psychedelia can do without it?-- and so the song goes, "If you want to come over, come over and get high, we can listen to the Dark Side of the Moon" but there's nothing in the lyrics about searching to find it while high, which would be a much better and more realistic song.

8/1/2009

Guinness is the only beer that doesn't make me poisonously flatulent . . . thank you Guinness!

7/31/2009

Ian has discovered the joy of lying: last week at soccer camp he had five kids (all older than him) searching the playground for a yellow poison arrow frog-- and I had to break it to the kids that Ian might have been fibbing, and that poison arrow frogs are not indigenous to South Brunswick, New Jersey . . . although, oddly enough, later that day Ian did find a big crayfish in the muddy grass on the soccer field, which isn't as anomalous as a poison dart frog in New Jersey, but it's still pretty weird, so who knows, maybe he did see one.

7/30/2009

I love this fact and now I've read it twice, so it must be true: the first personal computer was sold by Neiman-Marcus and it was called the Honeywell H316; it was intended for sorting recipes-- this was 1969-- and the thing had built in counter space, cost 10,600 dollars and had no monitor-- just toggle switches, so to categorize your recipes you needed to learn hexadecimal code.

7/29/2009

Catherine bought an antique dresser from the town furniture man (although she can't remember how old it is-- so who knows if it's really over a hundred years old . . . and I'll tell you what: if I bought something old I would at least inquire how old, just for conversation's sake) and he refinished it with a two tone marble type finish, tan with deep red fractal streaks and cracks, which looks pretty cool until your child says, "that dresser looks like a person bleeding with so many cuts" and then it looks more like something that belongs in The Amityville Horror (I've included an actual picture of the item, in case anyone wants to purchase it, as I can't really think of it as an inanimate object any longer).

7/28/2009

I've finished Robert V. Remini's slightly liberal A Short History of the United States (336 pages short) and I'm working my way (481 pages of 1000!) through Paul Johnson's much longer and slightly conservative A History of the American People, which is fun because it's from a British point of view, but for those of you who don't feel like reading 1300+ pages of American history, I am offering here, for the first time ever, a very special presentation from the people here at The Sentence of Dave . . . that's right, you guessed it, a One Sentence Summary of American History, so without further fanfare, here it is: once upon a time, there was a country filled with natives, but then new natives came and killed the old natives, and then the new natives killed the people who wanted them not to be native and then the new natives killed each other, and then they freed the natives from another place, and then more new natives came and worked hard and got everything organized when the old natives prohibited booze and a whole mess of the natives went overseas to help out and lots of them died and then folks were content for a while but then a bunch of new natives kept on coming but the old new natives didn't like that so much so they built a wall, but it didn't matter so much and then Britney Spears shaved her head.

The Real Hangover

I think Catherine and I were the last people on earth to see The Hangover, but no one ruined the gags-- and the movie is a rare thing, a comedy that is genuinely funny and also has a great plot, but I must warn you: it is extremely unrealistic, I am not sure if the writer of this movie has ever had a real hangover, it is difficult to make a cup of coffee, let alone drive a stolen police car . . . and (spoilers!) you never hook up with Heather Graham when you're in black-out mode, it's usually someone of lesser quality and greater mass, plus you can't take a punch from Mike Tyson the night after you've tied one on; so I'm thinking of writing a film called A Real Hangover, which will be very low budget and very boring, mainly consisting of a guy who spends a long time in bed, then moves to the couch to watch TV, then finally walks to a convenience store and manages to buy a bottle of ginger-ale, despite having the shakes, drinks it and takes a fitful nap-- who wants to finance it?-- I think all the budget calls for is a lot of beer and camera.

7/26/2009

Here's something funny to try: after your wife cooks you an elaborate (and delicious) meal and you've finished gulping it down, take a look at the kitchen and say, "Well, you made this mess, time for you to clean it up."

7/25/2009

I clearly remember learning about the Boston Massacre in Mr O'Connor's class in junior high-- especially Crispus Attucks-- but I don't remember learning about the trial, and for this alone it is worth watching the HBO John Adams mini-series-- and from what I read on Wikipedia, the show is fairly accurate (although it left out the loop hole Adams used to get the remainder of the Brits out of the murder charge-- if you could read from the Bible, you could get your sentence reduced from murder to manslaughter, and so instead of hanging, you get a branding on your thumb-- a good deal!)

7/24/2008

Two things that I'm glad are no longer living on my body: 1) my award winning OBFT mustache -- for a look at it, visit http://gheorghe77.blogspot.com/ and scroll down a couple posts 2) my award winning OBFT jock itch, and it's too late to get a look at that, although I think the guy who cleans our gutters might have seen me applying some spray to the aggravated area, so you could always ask him about it.

Reading on the OBFT?

I was able to polish off a book and a play on the Outer Banks Fishing Trip XVI: As You Like It by Shakespeare and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, and despite the obvious differences-- As You Like It is a comedy and a light one (despite banishment, lions and wrestling) with plenty of funny banter, cross dressing, and trans-gender courting and The Three Stigmata is a precursor to The Matrix and Vanilla Sky and eXistenz, only trippier, with more religion and drugs and transcendence-- but they both have one thing in common, whether you're tripping in an eternal hallucination on Chew-Z or hanging out in the forest of Arden, you're doing it to escape the passage of time, the reality of your body and the status to which you are constrained-- and who doesn't want that once in a while?

Half Wit

I finished Elmore Leonard's new one, Road Dogs, which wraps up Jack Foley's story-- the guy George Clooney played in Outta Sight, and when I turn forty-two, I hope I'm half as sharp as Elmore Leonard is at 84: nine Cuban cocaine dealers out of ten.

7/21/2009

My friend Rob manages a silk-screening office and I gave him a great suggestion, so let's see if he follows through-- and I thought of this extemporaneously!-- ready? here it is: authentic Plaxico Burress football pants with a bullet wound and blood silk screened right onto the fabric, so you always appear to have just shot yourself in the leg . . . maybe it wasn't such a great idea.

OBFT XVI

A few Outer Banks Fishing Trip highlights (in no particular order) 1) Bill sings karaoke to a teeny-bopper song he doesn't know the words to while doing a little jig in between the two other members of the karaoke sensation, The Shenanigans 2) games of "corn-hole" on the deck at Mulligan's and repeated use of the verb to "corn-hole" for the entire weekend 3) man vs. paddleboard: I got hit on the head with it, but surprisingly, it didn't kill me 4) Rob's prediction that the long crew at Tortuga's would be driven home by Lacy, which was exactly correct 5) Chris knocking down Jerry's neatly stacked poker chips 6) Dave getting seven bull's-eyes in a row at darts 7) Dave getting seven of eight washers in a row 8) Bruce sleeping on the roof 9) T.J. and his healthy snacks -- the apple 10) Dave winning the mustache contest 11) seeing all the mustaches around the horshoe bar at Tortuga's 12) trying to figure out who people looked like with their mustache 13) Whit coming out of the surf with his hair slicked back and his mustache 14) many other things I can't recall, but thanks again Whit!

7/19/2009

Driving and swimming have something in common: for most, once they are adequate, they consider themselves expert, and they never seek instruction for the rest of their days (unless they are forced by the Department of Motor Vehicles . . . but there is no such governing body for poor swimmers).

7/18/2009

The Rutgers Swim Club is already a retro-looking place, with a flat roofed blue and white pool shack and a tether-ball court, but when my son Alex started hurling a Track-ball (purchased by a friend at a Kay-Bee Hobby close out sale) with his buddy, I felt like I had been teleported back to my own youth in the '70's.

7/17/2009

My father went overboard and bought a fourteen pound lobster, which the man at the fish market said was over a hundred years old-- and it was delicious-- but I can't imagine how stringy and tasteless a hundred year old human would taste, even if you marinated him.

7/16/2009

There will come a time-- in a dozen years or so-- when it will be tempting to teaching my students the wrong things, as this will give my own children a better chance at getting into college . . . I'll have the power to make the competition appear stupid; I could tell my students the wrong definitions of difficult words so they bomb the SAT's, I could give them poor advice about their college essay topics (mention the time you committed arson! show them you learned a lesson!) and I could even screw up their sense of time and history . . . this is going to be a difficult ethical dilemma, I hope I make the right choice.

My Wife Does This Fairly Often

Two successful hikes on the Cape: the first was to Coast Guard Beach in Eastham-- which is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore-- and we were rewarded with high sandy cliffs and seals in the water, and the second was to the edge of the spit on Lighthouse beach in Chatham, and again we saw several seals up close and, as a bonus, a kind old man gave us a sand dollar, which Catherine left on the roof of the car . . . we learned this when it fell off as we turned onto Main Street so she made me stop the car and I got to watch her in the rear view mirror as she ran into the intersection to retrieve it, slightly chipped, and I mention this for the rabid fans of The Sentence of Dave, as this incident hearkens back to the very first entry of this blog.

7/13/2009

I totally forgot about the scene in E.T. when E.T. gets drunk on Coors and his brain is connected to Elliot's brain, and so Elliot, who is wasted by proxy, frees the frogs that are about to be dissected in biology class (like they would make sixth graders watch frogs die in a jar!) and then stands on top of the bully and kisses the tall blond girl-- in the 80's movie genre, everyone under the age of 17 was always big trouble.

7/12/2009

For the first time ever, I had a beer at the Chatham Bars Inn, which I suppose has the best view in Chatham, but it always seemed too elegant for me, and I certainly didn't feel at home there-- there were cloth hand towels in the bathroom and lots of wood paneling and sitting rooms and old couches-- but Catherine really liked the lotion in the bathroom and one of the girls we were with caught a woman applying it to her legs; I suppose I have to remember that I am thirty nine and no longer look like trouble, but I couldn't get rid of the feeling that I was going to be asked to leave.

7/11/2009

Some numbers to remember: 1) it is over 300 miles and takes five hours to drive from Bolton Valley, Vermont to Cape Cod-- I always think it's less, but it is a haul and it seemed like we traveled even further because we went from five days of cold Vermont rain (and a hailstorm) to a crisp sunny New England day 2) it took me 19 minutes and 38 seconds to run from the condo to Hardings Beach, and seeing the kites and the sand and the waves made me remember how odd it is that we possess motor vehicles and can traverse such vast distances in a day 3) I found a razor with only TWO blades in my travel bag, an ancient, misplaced sad razor with an acute case of blade envy, since I usually use a three blade razor and have contemplated the four blade razor, and even though I had no shaving cream and had to use soap, it shaved me cleaner and faster than my Mach III.

7/10/2009

Our first bowling trip with the boys, and also with Rob, Tammy, Parker and Baby Dominic, was a success, although the boys refused to use the wooden ramp and instead developed various unorthodox methods of chucking their balls, and Ian got his fingers smashed (of course) and I remembered the satisfaction of throwing a strike and the frustration that accompanies pretty much every other kind of throw.

Dave is Legend

I've used this blog to reference the titles of books I've read and movies I've watched, but while we were in Vermont last week, for the first time I used this blog to reference my own idea-- which I forgot, but I knew that I had had an idea; my friend Rob turned on the movie I Am Legend and I remembered that the ending was lame, and that I had come up with an alternate ending, but I couldn't remember what it was . . . so I used this blog as my cyborg memory and looked it up . . . 1/25/2009 if you are interested, but I guess eventually, I'll need a digital version of the blog implanted into my brain.

Would You Adopt This Kid?

It doesn't take much to scare me, and The Orphanage (El Orfanato) was enough to do the trick . . . it's pretty damn creepy and it also has an excellent plot-- my wife and I were still talking about what happened in the closet the next day-- so I'm giving it nine deformed sack wearing bastard orphan children out of ten.

7/7/2009

I was excited to learn the derivation of the phrase "beyond the pale" but no one else was-- my wife and friends had never heard this idiom before-- but perhaps you have, and it comes from when the English were colonizing Ireland-- in th elate 1500's-- there were rules about consorting with the "wild Irish"-- it was generally not allowed, and so the English colonists were not to go "beyond the Pale," a region surrounding Dublin, and into the weirdness that was rural Ireland.

7/6/2009

It's frustrating to read Daniel Boyle's book The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How at age thirty nine, when my myelin production is soon to wane, and realize that I could have been whatever I wanted, a cartoonist, a guitarist, a ballerina, if I had only practiced deep enough and long enough-- that there really is no such thing as talent, only perseverance, failure, time, and persistence-- and that if you put in your 10,000 hours practicing the right way, with the right motivation-- you need to be in a situation that keeps telling your brain better get busy, as opposed to "better watch TV" or "better be well rounded"-- then you will be a world class talent, and people will look at you and think you are "gifted"-- so since it's too late for me to truly master anything (and judging by this rambling sentence, I could use 9000 more hours of writing practice) all I can do is start torturing my kids and it's never too soon to start . . . so what do I want them to master?

A Macho Solution

Now that it's summer, it's time to dig out my roller-blades, and, of course, there's a certain stigma attached to them-- thus the old joke . . . What's the hardest thing about roller-blading? Telling your parents you're gay . . . not that there's anything wrong with being a gay-blader, but I like to look manly in all my endeavors, and so when i presented my dilemma in the English Office, my friend Eric gave me an elegantly simple solution: I'm going to purchase a hockey stick, and whenever I roller-blade, I'm going to carry the hockey stick with me, so it looks like I'm on my way to a roller hockey game, a very macho event . . . and as long as no one ever presses me as to where the game is, the plan is foolproof.

I Hate Residual Glee

I'm sure there are other dads out there with the same opinion, but they're probably afraid to admit it, so I will be the grouch: I hate bubbles . . . I hate bubble-making paraphernalia, I hate bubble-making liquid, I hate the sticky mess, I hate the way the soap kills the lawn, and I don't even like looking at bubbles very much (and since it's Independence Day, I should also mention that I don't like watching fireworks either).

I'll Miss You The Same Way I Miss Richard the Third

Sometimes when a relationship is abusive, it's better if it just ends . . . and I've decided I can no longer be friends with Vic Mackey . . . though there were times when I was rooting for him, especially when Forrest Whitaker was hot on his tail, but the final episode of the The Shield reminded me that hanging out with Vic wasn't good for either of us-- it made us both into something worse than we already were.

7/2/2009

Along with a sense of accomplishment, there also comes sadness when you finish a long novel: I just finished-- after two tries-- Denis Johnson's Vietnam saga Tree of Smoke and though I'm happy that I'm getting it back to the library on time, I'm going to miss William "Skip" Sands and his rogue Colonel uncle; the novel is certainly Pynchonesque, it has tunnels like V, it investigates information theory-- including propagation, distortion, and chain of command-- and it has an inscrutable quality, like Gravity's Rainbow (but not nearly as difficult and without as many characters) but by the end you understand these people that fell into the cracks of the Vietnam war and want to spend more time with them, 614 pages isn't enough.

Random Idiotic Thoughts

During graduation, while they read the seven hundred plus names of the senior class, you are alone with your thoughts . . . mainly, I thought how strange it was that every speaker had a quote from Dr. Seuss in their speech and that if I ever have to give a graduation speech, I won't quote Dr. Seuss, I will instead quote the Random Idiots song about Dr. Seuss-- you know, the one where the good doctor uses his faux doctorate to open a gynecology clinic and have his way gullible women . . . and that day, of course, will be my last as a teacher.

6/30/2009

Yesterday's sentence was a complete fabrication: we weren't out of eggs, I never went to the grocery store, and no toddler licked the back of my leg . . . sorry about that.

Do The Back of My Knees Look Like They Are Covered With Germs?

Yesterday morning, while waiting on line at the grocery store (it's summer vacation-- now when we're out of eggs, I don't settle for yogurt-- instead I just walk over to the store, get eggs, come home and cook them . . . it's awesome) a toddler toddled up behind me and licked my bare leg-- just above the back of my knee-- and his mother said, "Seth, don't do that, you'll get sick" but she never apologized to me, which I think is pretty rude . . . when my kids do something disgusting to someone, I apologize for them and I make them apologize.

6/28/2009

Mayhem in the kiddie pool on Friday: Alex and his friends were racing around playing some violent game, and at one point Alex yelled "I am chaos!" and then Ian spotted a round chunk and told me he thought it might be poop and so we told the lifeguard, who gingerly netted it, and made a positively negative identification as fecal matter, but it didn't matter because ominous clouds were rolling in and we just made it to the car before the downpour.

6/27/2009

They had a nice spread of donuts and bagels for us at the year end high school meeting, and among the food was a quiche in a glass dish, so I remarked, "It looks like somebody made this," meaning, of course, that it was home-made food among the store bought stuff, and perhaps I didn't say it eloquently-- I was a little hung-over from the year end party-- but a large curly haired woman looked at me like I was a complete moron, and in a Real Housewives of New Jersey accent, said (sarcastically)"YOU THINK SOMEBODY MADE IT, OH YEAH? YOU THINK SO-- YOU THINK SOMEBODY ACTUALLY MADE THAT, A REAL PERSON! YOU THINK A REAL PERSON ACTUALLY COOKED THAT?" which is a strange way to interact with someone you've never met . . . so I just backed away slowly, the way you do from an angry rhino that is about to charge, so she stopped her string of vitriol towards me and made a remark about me probably being a PE teacher to the PE teacher next to her (and I later confirmed that she didn't know this woman either).

6/26/2009

Rolled onto my right testicle while I was sleeping again-- and feeling like you took a knee in the crotch is no way to start the day.

6/25/2009

My four year old son's refusal to use worms as bait "because they are good for the soil and they're alive" has made me take a closer look at my own beliefs; worms are good for the soil and they are alive-- and maybe we shouldn't use them for a recreational pursuit that involves torturing a fish-- unless, of course, we're going to eat the fish . . . but that's a whole other issue: we still haven't eaten anything that we've caught yet and I'm not sure how Ian is going to react to that can of worms.

Greasetruck conquers all!

Greasetruck's new song, "The Bear," is an incredible musical accomplishment because not only is it the greatest rock song of all time, it is also-- simultaneously-- the greatest parody of a rock song of all time, and thus, it is impervious to all criticism -- anything you think is super great, is super great, and anything you think is totally stupid, is actually intended to be humorous . . . you see how this works?-- so save your vitriol for the new Coldplay album . . . also, note the use of heavy metal banjo (which is difficult to record, not because of the banjo playing, which is pretty rudimentary, but because it's hard to use the computer keyboard and mouse while wearing banjo finger-picks . . . I doubt Bela Fleck has this problem, but these are the issues that arise for the home recording hobbyist).

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).