9/7/2009

Neill Blomkamp's new movie District 9 should be a TV show: like the new Battlestar Galactica, the movie uses sci-fi to explore politics, bureaucracy, racism, and the character of someone thrust into a leadership position (but Wikus van der Merwe is no Laura Roslyn, he's pretty much a chipper bumbling idiot) and the first forty-five minutes are awesome-- tense, satirical, and like City of God in their gritty depiction of a shanty town, but then the movie has to end, and it becomes a Hollywood action flick . . . but if it were a TV show, instead of a blockbuster movie, then they could have kept going in the same vein, instead of blowing up things for an hour . . . but what can you do-- except write, produce, and direct your own sci-fi movie?--and it is certainly worth seeing so I give it seven cans of cat food out of a possible nine.

9/6/2009

Another reason not to pay 100 bucks for a Broadway show: these performers are so polished it's not really live, there's little to no chance of improvisation or sloppiness or a major screw-up . . . in fact, it's closer to watching a video, except without all the comforts of home; would you see a band in concert if they sounded exactly like the album?

This Land is My Land, This Land is Methland

So I started this great book by Nick Reding, Methland: the Death and Life of an American Small Town, right? and it was so gripping that I wanted to just read and read and read, so I went and saw my man and then, it was like I couldn't stop reading, like I was a super-reading machine, like I knew the end of the sentence before I started, like a train, like a rolling stone, like a greased up hog on a luge coated with Vaseline, because the story was so compelling, just wild, the ma and pa labs, the single batchers, the superlabs, the Mexican DTO's, the ephedrine laws, the pseudoephedrine chemistry, the ins and outs of the dealers and the traffickers and the narcs and the informants, it was just great, but then it got a little complicated, and I started to slow down, lose focus, get a little edgy, you know? because it was convoluted . . . the political take on big agriculture, Monsanto and Cargill, the demise of family farms, the socio-cultural underpinnings of doing a drug that essentially makes you feel so good that you WANT to work, whether it's meatpacking or agriculture, and the book, there was something wrong with the pages, too much friction maybe, because when I turned the page it was so LOUD, like talons on a chalkboard, like a dentist's water-pick, like a billion gnats in a megaphone and I couldn't read well anymore and I kept seeing severed heads out of the corner of my eye and then, right when I started to understand the drug lobbyists' complicity in the epidemic, I saw a black helicopter hovering above my house . . . they knew I was getting to the truth and they were ready to pounce on me, so I got under my bed and read with my flashlight and finally, finally, I turned that last page and there were no more pages, just a crazy looking picture of the author, one of those pictures where it looks like he's looking at you no matter where you turn, like that Uncle Sam Poster, and that's when I knew I was done . . . and I give the book one trillion canisters of anhydrous ammonia out of one billion gallons of Coleman lantern fluid.

9/4/2009

Alex transmogrified the Sister Sledge chorus "We are family" into a ditty about the long-pig . . . "Eat your family."

Methland

If the Tom Arnold story isn't for you, then perhaps you'd prefer his sister Lori's rise and fall . . . I just learned about her in Nick Reding's new book, Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town-- apparently she went from high school drop-out to the nation's most successful meth dealer in several years, buying from enormous amounts of the drug from the Mexican mafia and then building her own super-lab, and laundering her profits with a bar, a car dealership, and fifty-two race horses (plus horse farm, grooms, jockeys, etc.-- hiding drugs in a horse trailer is a great way to smuggle) before it all fell apart and she went to prison.

9/2/2009

For two weeks at Sea Isle City, we watched the same odd scene enacted over and over in front of the life guard stand: the same burly blond wild man would emerge from the ocean, perhaps by kayak, perhaps not, run towards the stand and do his signature move, a forward roll/flip (no mean feat for a guy this size) and then he would talk for a moment or two to the cute female lifeguards, but soon enough he would erupt into a dance/karate routine, complete with moves running from the crane to the sprinkler to the spin and hair flick-- and I have to remind you that this is a big guy, shaggy haired and burly-- and he would continue the dance routine for a number of minutes, one time even dancing his way backwards into the ocean until he disappeared . . . and our kids thinks he lives in the ocean (Poseidon's retarded son?) but we can't figure what his story is, but it has been an added amusing bonus for vacation, and I'll miss him if we're at a different beach next year.

9/1/2009

After a long day of running, skim-boarding, and beach soccer, I made the mistake of complaining about my bad ankle in front of my wife; she showed no sympathy, played the tiny violin, and wondered sarcastically what she should reply to my complaint . . . maybe something like, "I'm so sorry your ankle hurts, do you want me to rub it for you? You're so brave to continue vacationing while injured" but she was punished for her insouciance, the next day at "Boot Camp" on the beach she sprained her ankle, badly enough that the trainer drove her back to our beach house and made her keep her foot in a bucket of ice water until she nearly screamed and we had to take a trip to the medical clinic in Avalon for an x-ray . . . and though we contemplated gettin one of those giant bubble wheeled wheel chairs to get her down to the beach, instead I gave her a piggy back ride, which was fun on the first three trips, but after the pavement got hot and I had a few beers, it might have been ill advised.

Spelling Tarantino Is Hard Enough

In his new movie, Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino extends the Indiana Jones quip in The Last Crusade (Nazis . . . I hate these guys) into a tense, rich, satirical, funny, gory, violent and extremely entertaining two and a half hours-- the movie has nothing to do with WWII, it is a thinly disguised Western, with the Jews as John Wayne and the Nazis as Liberty Valence . . . and though the best performance comes from Colonel Landa, The Jew Hunter-- polyglot Austrian actor Christoph Waltz-- Brad Pitt delivers the best line, when he's told, "You'll be shot for that!" and he replies: "No . . . more like chewed out . . .and I've been chewed out before."

Recommended Eating

While we were on the beach, Catherine gave me the rest of her buffalo chicken sandwich and I ate it while standing in the ocean; I highly recommend this.

Bruce Springsteen Was Born To Drive, The Tarahumara Were Born To Run

Part six: so I'm telling my wife about all the new-found knowledge I've learned while reading Born to Run, and I'm especially amped because I've been training barefoot for a few months now (mainly on the basketball court at the gym) and my experience coincides with Christopher McDougall's-- my feet feel better-- and so instead of talking about the book, I'm making grand proclamations about how I'm not going to buy running shoes any longer and I don't really want our children to wear sneakers because I've been observing them while we play soccer on the grass at the pool-- which we do barefoot, of course-- and their running mechanics look very natural and although I think I am making some sort of logical sense, in retrospect, I now realize that what my wife is hearing is: let's send our kids to school without shoes! humans should never wear shoes! humans that wear shoes are stupid! and I'm sort of reinforcing this by saying things like, "Well, you didn't read the book so you can't argue about it, all you can do is listen to me" which is not only an asinine statement, but it is also very poorly phrased (the theme!) and so we had a "discussion" on how I was presenting my ideas and then I apologized and I tried to objectively explain the ideas in the book  and I also told her that I hadn't finished it yet, which makes me think I'm insane because I was making all these grand statements and I hadn't even read the end of the story . . . but now I have, and I highly recommend the book and I'm about to go for a run over to the track, where I will ditch my shoes and see how I fare.

8/30/2009

Alex swam the width of the pool a few days ago in the four foot section (which is over his head) and he used the dog paddle to breathe and the breast stroke to propel himself-- it's as close to drowning as swimming can possibly be, his main problem is lack of body fat . . . if he's not moving forward or paddling furiously, he sinks like a stone; in other news, Alex can ride a two wheeled bike fairly proficiently . . . I have to RUN to keep up with him in the park-- I'm thinking by next summer the kids are going to be on their own in the water and on the land.

8/28/2009

Part five: Born to Run espouses a less is more approach to running footwear, and makes some well researched and valid claims that bulky expensive running shoes lead to more injuries than running with cheap flimsy shoes or with no shoes at all . . . I'm not going to get into it, if you're a runner you should read it, the theme of this serial edition of The Sentence of Dave is: I need to phrase things better.

I Need to Work on How I Phrase Things (Part 4)

Example number four: after I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I had a meltdown about all the products we were using with corn 2 in them; I freaked my wife out and made her life even more difficult and made her doubt the safety of much of the food we were giving our children . . . and I must admit, I probably went a little overboard . . . especially since there's no way we could feed the entire bloated population of the earth without corn 2 and factory farming, nor can we even afford to switch our entire diet to organic and local stuff, and still have money for the important things in life, like guitars and electronic gadgets.

Live Update from the Beach

Sorry to break the flow of the serial story, but here's the quick report on the Lecompt Show at the Springfield Inn: 1) we got to hang out with him for a while before the show, he talked about the Phillies and their unassisted triple play and how when they play in Avalon they have to lighten up their set and how he plowed into someone while using his cell-phone, among other things (in fact he talked so long we wanted him to stop and get up and play, the drummer was waiting) and Dom said he sounded "slow" while Rob said he "sounded like a million other musicians" 2) Lecompt's brother was in town from L.A.-- he is a studio drummer there and he looks to be about fifty five, so Lecompt's claim that he played with Miles Davis might be true, and he played an insane version of "Wipeout" and the regular drummer joined in-- it was like nothing I've ever heard 3) another special guest took the stage (among many, a local cop sang "War Pigs" and some chick sang "Bobby McGee") and the band actually played "Freebird," and when the solo started the special guest, who we later learned played in Lecompt's band Tangiers in the 90's, played the solo in perfect lock-step with the normal lead man . . . and the band did their usual and played until 2:30 AM, and they are playing again Friday night-- so perhaps one more time before school starts?

8/26/2009

Part three: But I have a wife, and she has to live with me after I read a new book.

8/25/2009

Part Two: Sometimes when I read a book, I get really excited and forget there was ever a time before I had read that book, and want to implement all the ideas in the book immediately.

8/24/2009

Part one: I need to work on how I phrase things.

8/24/2009 Live Update From the Beach!

Yesterday, a particularly tenacious Herring gull, attempting to impress the coaches and secure a place on the 65 man roster, blocked a barefooted punt by yours truly, which knocked him into a tailspin, but the scrappy bird recovered gracefully, and was able to continue flying . . . and his effort severely affected the trajectory of the punt, making it land far short of its target.

8/23/2009

My son Ian, who loves the water and has a different swimming stroke for every animal (the caterpillar, the whale, the shark, the squid) often stays in too long, until his bladder is about to burst, but the kiddie bathroom is a bit dirty for his taste, so he insists on putting his crocs on before he goes, which makes for some good comedy . . . watching a kid who has to pee put shoes on, and yesterday, while we watched, Catherine yelled some encouragement: "hold it, hold it" and Ian looked at her and followed her instructions, literally, and grabbed his crotch.

8/22/2009

Whenever you have a party to get rid of excess beer in your fridge, you end up with more than when you started.

8/21/2009

Next summer, in order for Catherine and I to have some peace and quiet, and in order for the boys to have the activities and socialization they need, the boys are going to camp . . . space camp . . . in outer space.

I'm Sure I'll Pick It Back Up . . . or Maybe Not

I needed to take a break from the sardonic wit of Infinite Jest, lest I hang myself like the author did last year, and so I started (and finished, I raced through it, ha) Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: it is the exact opposite of David Foster Wallace's post-modern masterpiece . . . it is non-fiction, it is inspirational, it is clearly written, it is mainly about the Tarahumara, a tribe of Indians isolated in Mexico's trackless Copper Canyons who are notorious as fantastic distant runners, but it is more philospohical than anything else, and I would highly recommend it, especially if you are mired in the self-reflexive meta-futility of post-modern art, as the ideas in Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen will allow you to mentally transcend your body, instead of dwelling on its slow decay.

8/19/2009

62% of the way through Infinite Jest, which is set in the near future, when each year has its own corporate sponsor (Year of the Depend Undergarments, Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland, Year of Glad) and there is a revolutionary new meta-treatment for cancer, the doctors feed the cancer lots of processed food products, encourage the cancer cells to smoke cigarettes and consume loads of Diet Soda, and voila, the cancer gets cancer and dies . . . but the treatment doesn't work on AIDS, because AIDS is a meta-disease . . . and I'm getting sick of reading meta-fiction: I may have to take a break and read something else-- something short and easy-- before I finish.

8/18/2009

When you want to play darts, the standard operating procedure at The Corner Tavern is to trade your driver's license for them-- and hopefully at the end of the evening, you're sober enough to remember to trade the darts back . . . but what if when you ask for your license back the youngster who took it says she can't find it?-- do you get to keep the tattered darts as compensation?-- do you leave, without your license?-- or do you watch the staff search for a while?-- or does someone finally realize that you should take a look at the license they do have . . . which turns out not to be you, but your wife, because she put her license in your wallet two weeks ago on vacation and never removed it, so you handed the bartender THAT license without realizing it, and then when you tried to trade the darts back, she looked for a guy's picture but could only find female license's . . . and so she was worried for her job and you were worried for your license . . . and who solved this mystery anyway, I don't think it was me . . .

8/17/2009

I debuted as a music producer this weekend, and although I wanted to channel the genius of Paul Martin or Brian Eno, or at least wave a gun around like Phil Specter, I ended up mainly getting stir crazy sitting in a chair clicking buttons, but in between the socializing, a diverse crowd (Whitney, Eric, Liz, Mary, Mose, John, Chantal, Keith) laid down a diverse number of tracks: violin, spoken word, melodies, harmonies, screaming, etc. and the final product should be available by Christmas.

Hypocrisy

I had a very interesting dream the other night: I was in a car with some college friends and we got lost near the Philly Zoo and then got involved in a jewel heist and had to bury some loot in an industrial zone in what looked to me like Secaucus, but when I tried to describe this very interesting dream to my wife, she silenced me with my own words . . . she said, "Aren't you the one that always says nothing is more boring than hearing someone else's dream?" and I said, "Yes, but this is my dream" and it was a very interesting dream and she's the one who missed out.

8/15/2009

I know it's a remnant of the agrarian calendar and it fuels tourism, but financially speaking, school recess should be in the winter, not the summer, as it is generally far cheaper to air condition a building (you usually only need to lower the temperature ten to twenty degrees to make it comfortable) then it is to heat a building . . . where in the Northeast you're talking about raising the temperature in the building between 30-60 degrees (I hope this happens for selfish reasons-- then I wouldn't have to pay for air-conditioning and I would also do a ton of snow-boarding).

Special Bonus Sentence!

Anticipating a weekend of recording music with Whitney, I partied like a rock star in South Amboy last night with Ed, Stacey, and Quackenbush (you heard me right-- his name is Quackenbush . . . and oddly enough-- and I'm just realizing just how odd this was-- we had a lengthy conversation about pet ducks and not once during the conversation did I make the connection between the content of what we were talking about and his name) and three things of note occurred: 1) a random guy told me he liked my new glasses and that I look good in them and that he wore the same pair for two years-- not that there's anything wrong with telling a random guy that you like his glasses and he looks good in them-- but still, it's a strange way to strike up a conversation with another dude . . . although when I mentioned this to my wife she called me a homophobe 2) I karaoked "Don't Pull Your Love," a song by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds that's known for its melodic chorus and three part harmony, but, unfortunately, I am neither known for singing melodically nor for singing harmonically . . . and so I butchered it, but it was 2 AM and although I was pretty embarrassed by the time I was through "singing" it, I'm not sure anyone even heard me 3) when I walked to the Hess Station to buy a tin of chewing tobacco, I walked past "Bourbon Street," which is apparently, judging by the girls standing outside, a strip club and as I walked into the convenience mart an absurdly large breasted stripper walked out, so on my way back I tried to take a closer look at the girls, but while I was ogling I was also climbing over the metal divider between the parking lots and I banged me knee really hard on the top edge but I didn't even look down to see if I was bleeding because I didn't want to look like a wuss in front of the strippers, so I pretended like nothing happened until I was behind the dumpster and then I checked my knee for a large gaping flesh wound, but it was only scraped.

The Top Ten Montreal Expos

For no other reason than it has come up in conversation twice in so many months, here is my list of the top ten Montreal Expos:

1) Tim Wallach-- for his comment on summer in Canada: "I went 0 for four";

2) Gary Carter-- for the perm;

3) Tim Raines-- because doing a little blow won't keep you off this list;

4) Andres Galarraga-- for his nickname, El Gato;

5) Andre Dawson-- for being a triple crown contender year in and year out;

6) Otis Nixon-- like I said, doing a little blow won't keep you off this list;

7) Pete Rose -- he wasn't there long, but he did get his 4000th hit in Canada;

8) Al Oliver-- for the mustache;

9) Jeff Reardon-- for the beard;

10) Vladimir Guerrero -- for the talent and the Hispanic-Slavic name.

Infinite Rest

It's sick, but I've had David Foster Wallace's lengthy tour de force novel Infinite Jest lying around my house for years and years, and I've started it once or twice, but it's daunting, both in style and size (1000 pages plus end notes) but I've become more motivated to read it since he committed suicide last year-- I'm not sure why, but that's the fact-- and now I'm 43% of the way through (easy to compute because it's out of a 1000 pages) and once you get into the groove, kind of like Gravity's Rainbow, the book is a lot of fun: I just finished the tale of Eric Clipperton, the junior tennis player who played all his matches with a Glock 9mm pressed to his temple and threatened immediate suicide if he ever lost a match . . . the kids always let him win.

8/12/2009

Anyone who possesses male genitals might want to stop reading now . . . last week my son Alex was climbing a tree and he learned a hard lesson when both his feet slipped at the same time, and he fell, crotch first, onto a rough branch and then slid down it-- he bruised the tip of his member, bruised it purple, the sight of it nearly made me pass out, but the doctor said as long as he could urinate, it was fine . . . and this incident reminded me of something that happened to me a few weeks ago that was so painful and embarrassing that I guess I repressed it-- because I didn't tell my wife or write a sentence about it, but describing what happened to my son reminded me: I was in my boxers in the bedroom and I leaned over the dresser to look at something on my face in the mirror, and a drawer was slightly open, and this drawer was groin height, and the tip of my member must have slipped out of the fold in my boxers and into the slightly open drawer, and when I leaned in to look at the mirror, I shut the drawer on the tip of my member, and it really hurt and made a little bruise-- and it makes me wonder about two things . . . one, is this punishment for vanity and two, were Member's Only jackets really intended only for those who possessed a member?

Nothing Cheaper Than FREE

Chris Anderson-- chief editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail-- has written a new book called Free: the Future of a Radical Price; it's about how the cost of many products and ideas is essentially moving towards zero, and that the most effective way to deal with this is to round down-- think Facebook, Google, pirated music Ryanair, drinks at Casino's, naked women at strip clubs, Linux, many web applications, and often, even commodities once they become overly abundant-- and not charge people at all, and then make your money in other ways; this interests me because I write this blog for free, of course, and I'm also often hard at "work" making digital music, which I also distribute for free . . . I do it it for the fame (pretty minor) and because it's fun to have a creative outlet that connects people, but I'm also driving the price down of entertainment people pay for, because people have limited time and there is pretty much an unlimited amount of entertainment, so if you're choosing to read this sentence or listen to a Greasetruck song rather than read or watch or listen to something you have to pay for, essentially you are making those people figure out how to compete with FREE, and the only way to compete with FREE is FREE, and make your money elsewhere . . . e.g. you're famous and everyone pirates your music, so you don't make it there, but you can sell out venues that you never could because you're music has become so popular, the trick is to offer FREE product in a market that has been driven down to FREE and then figure out how to make your money elsewhere-- and this sentence has gone on too long, but you can read Anderson's book for FREE on-line, although I recommend doing what I did-- taking it out for FREE from the library (and, of course, FREE isn't always completely free, when you take a book out of the library, it has been paid for by tax dollars, but again, when you divide the price of the book by the number of tax dollars paid by East Brunswick residents to run the library, it's close enough to FREE that our brain just rounds down to zero, and Anderson, who has experience as an economist and a physicist as well as a writer, explains all this much more coherently than me . . . and he's not constrained by a single sentence).

8/11/2009

There comes a time, when you are older and grayer and your metabolism has slowed, that you need to look in the mirror and level with yourself . . . you need to take a deep breath and say: "I need to shell out some cash for a bigger skim board, as the one I have is too small."

8/10/2009

The six most eccentric pitching wind-ups: 1) Luis Tiant 2) Dan Quisenberry 3) Masatoshi Ishikawa's pitching robot 4) J.R. Richard 5) Hideo Nomo 6) Rudy Stein.

8/9/2009

Sometimes, when I'm on the computer and I don't get the anti-bot code correct (that distorted word puzzle that you need to enter into the box in order to prove you're human-- also known as a "captcha") I wonder if I am a replicant.

8/8/2009

You know you had a few too many the night before when you go to pour a cup of fresh brewed coffee and it's way too weak-- in fact, it's completely clear, because you ground the beans, but never transferred them from the little grinder into the coffee machine . . . and so, in essence, you made yourself a nice steaming container of hot water.

8/7/2009 Live from Sea Isle City

Some bad band names: 1) tonight in Sea Isle City at the Ocean Drive Bar (Fun Food and Music), "Burnt Sienna" is playing-- I suppose their name is in the same genre as Maroon 5, The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Goldfinger, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Green Day, Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, Silverchair, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Crowes, Yellowcard, etc-- but I think they went for too obscure a shade 2) the other night at the Springfield Inn, Mike LeCompt opened with "Don't Pull Your Love," a groovy song from the seventies by a band that no one could properly name, and so I looked it up . . . and I can see why a one-hit wonder band who knew they were going to be a one-hit wonder band would want every member to get his or her due-- but it's not like they could predict the future, although with the name they chose they pretty much insured their future, but still, you'd think that the band would be more optimistic and at least try to come up with something catchier than Hamilton, Joe Frank, Reynolds & Reynolds (and though the second Reynolds isn't included on the youtube video, it is included on the Itunes MP3 version, which my cousin happened to have on his Ipod).

8/6/2009

Alex has discovered the artifice of modern art, and while he claims that his younger brother Ian draws "real things," he now only works in the realm of the "abstract"-- and it's my fault for teaching him the word-- so while his vocabulary is increasing , his art skills are regressing toward the primitive (and he's quite happy about it).

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.