1/8/10

One of my favorite things to think about is that brief (archaelogically speaking) period of time when modern humans shared the European landscape with Neanderthals . . . maybe 25,000 to 30,000 years ago . . . you could be walking along the plain with your fellow hunters and see off in the distance a similar group of creatures, doing similar things, but so alien, so distant, so different . . . but maybe not so alien to be repulsive, if you know what I mean (Captain Kirk knows what I'm talking about).

Don't Read This Post (or Watch This Movie)

Two works that will make you feel bad about being a member of the human race: 1) Hunger, the story of IRA leader Bobby Sands' hunger strike to gain political concessions for Irish prisoners-- though the movie is a bit one sided and hagiographic in its portrayal of the Irish prisoners in The Maze . . . it forgets to mention that the IRA bombs were often blowing up innocent people, but that is another story for another film . . . and I'm sure that will be an even worse indictment of humanity  2) the first three essays of The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2009 (you can guess the tone from their titles . . . Faustian Economics, The Ethics of Climate Change, and Is Google Making Us Stupid?).

1/6/10

While driving to the Snydersville Diner-- on our FAMILY vacation-- Catherine noticed a billboard that read "Spread Eagle Realty: a full service real estate firm" and I've done some research and this is not a hoax, Spread Eagle Realty is a venerable institution (established in 1989!) and they aim to provide their customers with the highest level of professional experience when "transacting real estate" . . . I assume they mainly sell brothels, bordellos, and massage parlors and you can imagine the occasional misunderstandings about the name, because if I came home and said, "I just met the woman at the house and I like her position, you know Spread Eagle really does the job," my wife would throw a frying pan at me.

This Movie Should Not Be Rated G

Don't believe the previews, Up is not a movie to see with your kids (only because it's disturbing for them to watch a grown man cry).

1/4/10

If it were possible to patent a party concept, our neighbors should patent this one: on New Year's Eve they had six or seven families over, all with youngish kids, and they set their clocks ahead so that all over their house, at 8 PM they would read midnight, and they recorded last year's ball drop in Times Square and put it on their TV (there was a moment when someone paused the countdown so that all the kids could get organized, but no one suspected a thing) and we convinced all the kids that it was WAY past their bedtime (in my opinion, this is even better subterfuge than Santa Claus) and so not only was it the first time my kids rang in the New Year (with noisemakers, lots of popping balloons, kiddie champagne, and plastic wrap to pop . . . the noise made me want to curl up into the fetal position under the piano) but I also managed to tie one on from 5 PM to 9 PM and pretend that I made it to New Year's as well . . . which I haven't done since we were in Bangkok seven years ago.

He Turned Them Into Newts! It Gets Better . . .

War with the Newts by Karel Capek falls into a small but illustrious category: Super Excellent Books I've Read by Czech Authors (the other five books that reside there are Kafka's The Castle and his parallel work The Trial, Josef Svorecky's The Miracle Game, Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk, and Milan Kundera's The Joke) and I would have never heard of this one if it wasn't for a random recommendation by a friend over at Gheorghe (thanks Zoltan!) and I'm not sure how I made it nearly forty years without reading this . . . it's about a race of intelligent salamanders that undergo a population explosion due to the meddling of humans and the social, political, and geographical consequences of enslaving these newts so they can perform undersea construction, and then eventually educating, arming, and trading with the newts in a natural progression of amphibious advancement until-- in the last four chapters-- the title finally becomes an inevitability; the book was published in 1936, and it satirizes the post World War I political milieu as well as just about everything else, and it is loads more fun the Brave New World, and satirical like Vonnegut, and humorous like Charles Portis and David Foster Wallace, and-- as Monty Python can attest-- no matter how many times you hear the word "newt," it's always funny.

1/2/2010

We survived our first ski trip with the kids-- including packing (snow pants, gloves, hats, long underwear, fleeces and lots of socks); a 12 degree day with high winds (we went to an indoor water park-- it was even pretty cold in there, but they had a cool tube slide and Alex got hit with the 500 hundred gallon water drum and it pulled his bathing suit down); their first ski lessons; three nights paired with the kids in double beds, and driving home in a blizzard-- but in the end it will all be worth it, because our kids will be proficient skiers and what could be better than that . . . they will addicted to a sport that is not only dangerous, expensive, and contingent on the weather, but also may well disappear with the advance of global warming.

A Very Contextual and Very Specific Resolution

Happy New Year . . . and, in the spirit of the future, I'd like to come clean about the past: that apt end of the year quote I posted yesterday was not said by Yogi Berra; I made it up, and it actually doesn't make sense at all, not even in a Yogi Berra sort of way (unlike the unerring logic of this Berra maxim: "Nobody goes to that place anymore-- it's too crowded") and so I'd like to apologize, and you'll be happy to know that I've made a New Year's Resolution and it is this: in 2010, I pledge to try my best not to invent quotations and speciously attribute them Yogi Berra, thus denigrating his good name.

Yogi Guru

Another perfect sentence not written by me, and an apt one to end the year on-- this one is attributed to the timeless quipster Yogi Berra: "I'll tell you about the future tomorrow."

A Sentence in Which Dave Does Not Plagiarize

Here's a perfect sentence that I wish I could claim as my own (and honestly, if I had flat out plagiarized it, you probably wouldn't have known better, and the guy who said it-- film producer Samuel Goldwyn-- is dead, so I very well likely could have gotten away with, but I've decided to do the right thing and give credit where credit is due) and so here it is: "Anybody who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined."

Remaindered

Tom McCarthy's novel Remainder is only worth reading if you like movies like Adaptation: on the surface, the book is a compelling read, and it's hard to predict the twists and turns produced by the narrator's damaged mind, and it's got a great droll British sense of humor about it . . . but as you read it, you will start to wonder if the book is not actually about the events it delineates, but instead about fiction itself, and reading specifically, and this might ruin any enjoyment you get from the very strange story that the narrator tells about his mysterious incident and the large "settlement" that he receives because of it; I'll give it seven and a half million pounds out of a total of eight and a half million.

No Idle Eskimos

It takes a long time to build an igloo.

Canker Diet

Your body works in mysterious ways: just before break I wished that I could lose a few pounds because I knew of the holiday gluttony ahead, but of course, I didn't act on this wish-- I just hoped it would come true, and, in a way, it did, because I got several horrifically painful canker sores under my tongue and was unable to eat anything but yogurt and noodles (you should have seen the spread of cookies, cake, cupcakes with bright red hyper-sugared icing, and candy that I ate NONE of, despite being within arm's reach of these goodies for several periods-- normally I would have DESTROYED a table full of food like that) and so I lost five pounds (which I'm sure I've gained back by now, but still, at least I'm breaking even).

R.I.P. Celebrity Hailing From Edison

We were discussing the death of Brittany Murphy in the English office the other day-- she was raised in Edison, New Jersey-- and the impact a celebrity's death has on people, and I decided that there is no particular celebrity, no matter how much I appreciate their art, that would make me sincerely grieve if they kicked it-- unless I happened to be friends with them (and I am not friends with any celebrities) and while I might pre-emptively miss the future films, music, paintings, cartoons, and/or books they were going to produce, but usually, if I already like a celebrity, their best years are behind them (and, as I wrote earlier, it might actually pique my interest in them: David Foster Wallace's suicide didn't make me sad, but it did make me read 680 pages of Infinite Jest).

Merry Buy-A-Bunch-of-Shit-We-Don't-Needmas

In the spirit of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, I promise to reduce my cynicism by 80% by the year 2050, but until then: Merry Christmas and may the New Year bring even greater tidings of energy use and materialism . . . perhaps this will be the year when our economy gets humming again and we start consuming an even greater amount of the earth's resources.

What Does This Album SOUND Like?

Just a taste of some of the worst album art of the year, as chosen by Pitchfork-- if you have an appetite for more, go here.

Dave Fishes For Compliments (and Catches Flak)

So here's what happens when you fish for compliments: the other day when I went to the doctor's office for a physical and some vaccinations, the doctor noticed the gross skin flap growing above my eye, and before I knew it, I had agreed to let him stick a Novocaine needle in my eyelid and snip off the flap-- and, despite my anxiety, this minor surgery went quite well-- minimal bleeding and hardly a bruise-- so the next morning, when I walked into the English office, I asked the teachers in there if they noticed anything different about my appearance-- forgetting that I hadn't shaved for a few days and I hadn't had time to wet my hair that morning and I hadn't showered since the morning before-- and my friend Stacey said, "Catherine kicked you out of the house, and you slept in the car!" and someone else said, "You're growing a beard," and someone else said, "You're not combing your hair ever again" and after everyone had a good laugh at my expense, I had to point out that the skin flap was gone . . . and then Stacey confessed that she felt a pang of regret for a moment after her witty bon mot, but then she remembered that one Friday when she was dressed casually, and I told her it looked like she was getting ready to do some work in her shed (or maybe I told her she looked like a mechanic, I can't remember) but once she remembered that, she didn't feel bad any longer.

Dave Is Ambitious (For a Moment)

While I was shooting baskets at the gym, I decided on a radical plan of action: I would gradually become a LEFTY . . . I would start doing EVERYTHING left-handed and I would research handedness and keep an account of my journey from right-handedness to left-handedness and the effect it had on my personality,  my brain and my coordination (and perhaps it would even lead to me reverse aging, it might have a "fountain of youth" effect) and then I would write a fascinating non-fiction book about handedness in general and my own quest to reverse my brain's predilection, but after a few minutes of shooting baskets left-handed the ambition went away, which is probably why I only write only one sentence a day-- mainly with my right-hand.

Rhetorical Inoculation

I got into a debate with a student about vaccines the other day in class (because I mentioned I was getting my swine flu and tetanus shot) and I became a bit passionate about the topic, which is always embarrassing-- I try to remain as neutral as possible about most things-- but I ended up asking the class to raise their hands if they were for polio and the death of millions of children, and then I asked the class who was against polio and the death of millions of children-- but I got my just desserts, as my arm really hurts where I got my tetanus shot (but at least I have no chance of getting lock-jaw).

The Radical Elvis

I finished my first Slavoj Zizek book the other day, First as Tragedy, then as Farce, and now I need to read seven other books to figure out what he was talking about (I guess, like most other humans, I need to brush up on my Lacanian and Kantian semiotics) but though his ideas are radical, he's also pretty fun to read in the brief moments you understand him (he's been called "the Elvis of cultural theory") and his main point is that the world global system is not actually capitalism, because every time it melts down, tons of state money is poured into it, and the title indicates how unified we are in this-- he illustrates that the language of post 9/11 (the tragedy) when the nation was unified against terrorism is similar to the language used when the nation bailed out the banks (the farce)-- George Bush, Obama, and corporate America were all on-board-- and we are quicker to galvanize in order to save Wall Street than we are to confront dire environmental and poverty problems . . . and that to combat this attitude there needs to be a radical and violent shift left, because the left is not the left, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not even a threat, and he sees this as true democracy, but realizes that no democracy allows power to the people until they are divided into the liberal and hedonistic intellectuals, the fundamentalist populists, and the outcasts (who resort to religion and gangs and such) and once these people are at odds with one another and have no common space to meet and cooperate, then the government and corporations and rulers-- the hegemony, he calls it-- can get down to business without much conflict from the populous . . . or that's what I got from it.

Half Moon + Half Moon = Full Moon

Just when I'm about to kill my son Alex (his teacher sent a note home because he mooned some kids in the hallway . . . he thought it would be funny . . . and on top of this, lately he's a had a bad attitude and he's been fighting with his brother non-stop) he figures out how the commutative property of addition operates, all on his own-- it's like he knows when he needs to do something really cute or clever to avoid being thrown into the wilderness.

Sexism and Spiders

I was really the woman of the house Monday night: I cooked dinner for both my wife and the kids (Catherine was at physical therapy) and I dealt with Alex's bathroom issues and, worst of all, I killed a giant hairy wolf spider which appeared in the middle of the playroom . . . when Catherine got home she was so pleased to have missed it all.

Dave Can Text!

I had to call my father's secretary to tell her my e-mail address so she could send me a document to edit for him, but when I called she said, "I'm at the dentist, could you text it to me" and I was able to say, proudly, YES I CAN.

First World Problems

Ian woke me up at three in the morning because one of his Spiderman socks slipped off while he was sleeping and his foot was cold.

Bored? Broke? I Have a Solution . . .

The unemployment numbers created by this recession are scary, but I feel better when I remind myself that as long as people keep having unprotected sex, my fellow teachers and I will always have work (and when you're out of a job, what else is as cheap and fun as unprotected sex?)

Magical Parenting Moment . . . Apocalyptic Duet Edition

One of those magic moments with my son that makes all the fecal accidents, loss of sleep, stubbed toes on stray toys, time, money, and struggles with car seats worth it: I was playing that old song "End of the World" (why does the sun go on shining . . . why does the sea rush to shore . . . don't they know, it's the end of the world because you don't love me any more-- bonus points if you can name who originally sang it) and the song is slow enough and the lyrics are simple enough that Alex started singing along while he was playing with his Legos and after two repetitions he had the lyrics memorized (remember when your brain actually worked?) and so he came over next to me (I was reading the lyrics and chords on the computer in the kitchen) and started singing along, so I turned on the iMac's microphone on the and captured an impromptu duet with him . . . but I hope he doesn't start singing the song at school because it is really, really a bleak tune.

Paradoxical Economic Rambling

I should not be the one to point this out, but no one else has: there is an ironic paradox inherent in this economic meltdown because the very thing our government has encouraged and subsidized-- home ownership (how is it subsidized? tax write-offs for property taxes and mortgage payments, tax breaks for capital gains on primary real estate . . . how is it encouraged? the Bush and Clinton administrations pushed banks to offer loans to higher risk applicants and allowed them to offer complex mortgage products and then allowed mortgages to be bundled into tranched funds so everyone could get in on the mortgage funds) has now collapsed, but this was the thing that the was supposed to be the safest way to achieve the American Dream, buy a house and pay for it, and so now that it has collapsed and the foreclosure rate is high and the demand for housing is low because the market is flooded because so many people need to unload mortgages they can't afford because of high unemployment which was caused by the subprime loans to begin with, and we won't pull out of the recession quickly because we are a nation of homeowners, and in comparative studies, nations with lower home ownership weather recessions better because their workforce is more dynamic and liquid, and not locked into areas without work because they can't sell their houses, but since so many of us are home owners who can't afford our homes but can't move to find work because we can't sell our homes, the crisis is feeding itself but I'm not sure why an English teacher is pointing this out, although maybe it is because I can think about the crisis in a more detached manner because my job is relatively safe.

Absolutely

On the way into Highland Park, we drive past the VFW and there are two old Howitzer cannons in front of the building and we pass these things often enough that my four-year-old son Ian took notice of them, but I had no idea what he was imagining until the other day, when he asked me, "Daddy, are those guns there to protect the planet?"

Dave Finally Comprehends His Own Blog Title

Although I'm an English teacher, I'm pretty slow on the uptake when it comes to puns and symbolism (it took me years to figure out that the Geico lizard was a gecko . . . get it? Geico . . . gecko . . . they sound similar) and so I just realized the ironic pun in the title of my blog: I have effectively sentenced myself to write exactly one sentence per day for the rest of my life.

Right Back To It

I knew our two-day respite from the kids was officially over once we started loading them into the car-- I had to turn off the Howard Stern Show before the boys heard something they might repeat, and, once again, found myself struggling with my fucking nemesis . . . Ian's car seat, the belt never threads through cleanly and it constantly has to be pulled back in to release the mechanism that allows it to stretch long enough to reach the seat belt socket, which is difficult to reach because you're leaning over a child and the car seat, so even though I turned the Howard Stern off, the kids still heard things they shouldn't have-- but instead of coming from the satellite radio, they came from my mouth (and then to really cement our return to reality, Ian peed in his bed).

Trip to Tuckerton

Things we saw on our weekend trip to Tuckerton (without the kids): three bald eagles, the Saturday bluegrass jam at Albert Hall (highly recommended-- for five dollars you get to watch hours of bluegrass music, mainly played by really old Piney dudes who have been gathering for decades . . . lots of banjo and fiddle and mandolin and songs about old times and adultery-- you'd never know you were in New Jersey) Batsto Village-- a restored village in the middle of the Pine Barrens that once produced bog iron and glass-- Allen's Clam bar which has the best clams casino I've ever had, the Pine Barrens themselves, which are huge, the largest tract of forest on the East Coast from Boston to Richmond, again, you'd never know you were in New Jersey; things we didn't see: a Pine Barrens tree frog (too cold) and the Jersey Devil (too fictional).

It Tastes Better If It's Secret

So if you are anything like me (clueless) then you probably didn't know this, but I occasionally learn things from my students, and so I will pass on my new, hip, knowledge: Jamba Juice has a "secret menu" containing items with salacious, unhealthy names such as "Dirty Orgasm" and "Thank You Jesus" and "Fruity Pebbles" and "Penis Shooter" and "Pineapple Anus" (actually I made the last one up, but the rest are real) and while the employees have the recipes for all of these, they will not mention them or answer any questions about them-- but they will make them for you if you ask . . . I'm not sure if you have to whisper and I'll probably never be brave enough to order one of these, but it's still a great marketing campaign .

It's Hard to Pee Standing Up

This morning I observed how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree: my son Alex came out of our bathroom and said proudly, "I got all the pee in the toilet" but then he couldn't leave his story at that, and so he elaborated . . . "well, actually, I was getting some on the side so then I pulled it over a little so it was hitting the water but then it was going too low, so I had to move it up a little higher, and THEN I got it all in," and, just when I thought the tale was complete, he said, "and guess what?"-- which has become his signature phrase-- "I didn't flush!"

Dave = Greatest American (Modern) Hero

My wife called me "her hero" because I figured out that our wireless featureless Apple Magic Mouse (which looks like a space alien's slipper) can be configured to "right click" even though there's no "right click" button-- it just knows when you click on it over to the right (just as it knows to move the cursor when you twitch your finger, it's pretty amazing) but even though the mouse is quite cool, the deflation that feats of heroism have suffered in these modern times is pretty sad . . . imagine her reaction if I slew a fire-breathing dragon that was trying to incinerate our new kitchen (I'm thinking she would still call me "her hero" but there would also be sexual favors and back rubs awarded for the deed).

12/5/2009

For the past six years I have saved every piece of photo-copied paper possible in my classroom; the students give me back every article, poem, story, and question sheet that they haven't destroyed and then I file them so I can use them the next year, and I use a LOT of outside sources (because I teach several electives that really don't have a text plus I bring in anything new that I've read) so I've got several file drawers full of stuff that I recycle year to year, and I have done this without praise or thanks, and I have saved the high school money on paper and ink and saved the taxpayers of East Brunswick money and I do this without being asked and without telling anyone (except my readers) because I am the Lorax and I speak for the trees.

Hey Now . . . The Dream Is Over

During my Sunday morning soccer game, tempers ran a little high and two players started bickering over a foul, but a cooler head prevailed: a local youth coach told the two men who were arguing, who were both pushing forty, "Hey guys, the dream is over," and since then, these words have proved inspirational to me: whenever I get frustrated because Greasetruck isn't producing any music, or my kids are acting extra-annoying, or I've taught a lousy lesson, or I've written a cruddy sentence, or I've gone for a particularly slow run, or I'm angry because I haven't invented anything remotely cool or useful . . . I just remember, "the dream is over," and that I'm not going to be rich and famous or a rock star or a four minute miler or father brilliant prodigal geniuses or invent anything like Stretch Armstrong or illustrate my own long running syndicated cartoon strip, because those dreams are over BUT I do own a house (sort of, or I own a mortgage!) and I have fathered two kids (and their dreams-- which seem to be centered around professional wrestling and RC car racing-- are still alive) and I have held a job and paid taxes for many years, so I have helped innumerable poor and unemployed people, contributed to the maintenance of National and State Parks, and even helped build loads of weapons for military misadventures in the Middle East . . . which I never, in my wildest imagination, dreamed of doing at all.

12/3/2009

One of my students said her Jewish grandmother's advice about boys was this: "Goyim are for practice," and though Goyim is pejorative, it still sounds like fun to be practiced upon in this manner.

12/2/2009

Almost lost my five year old son Alex in a Darwin Award-esque accident: he said, "Look Dad!" and with a lollipop in his mouth, tried to stand on two soccer balls, one foot on each ball, and did a face plant, nearly impaling himself with the pop . . . and so, like any rational parent, I have banned all lollipops from my house until the children are old enough to drive to the store and by them on their own.

12/1/2009

Apparently people think I am causing my wife hypothermia because I keep our heat on 65 degrees; yesterday was her birthday and TWO people gave her a "Snuggie," which is pretty much a blanket with sleeves (but luckily one is leopard skin, so now she has one for upstairs . . . we don't even turn the heat on in the bedroom, it's on a different zone . . . and one for downstairs.)

Ian And Frank Sinatra Will Survive Manchuria

My four year old son Ian is very stubborn, and although this is trying, it will come in handy if anyone ever tries to brainwash him; last weekend, while we were waiting for our Mexican food at Aby's in Matawan (I mention this only because I created such a good Mexican joke about the locale: what's a Matawan? Nothing . . . but somebody stole my taco) and I played some word games with the boys to kill time-- I made them say "post" and "boast" and "host" and then I asked, "What do you put in a toaster?" . . . Alex fell for it and said, "toast" but Ian calmly said, "bread," and then I pointed to several white objects and asked them to name the color and they said "white" several times and then I asked, "What do cows drink?" and Alex fell for this one too and said, "milk" but again Ian refused to be tricked by my silliness and he looked at me and staidly said, "water."

Market Panic! Buy! Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell! Sell!

Michael Lewis's new book Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity is fun to read from the sidelines (especially if all your money is in your new kitchen addition, so while there may be some abstract money lost in the housing market, you don't feel it because you're eating at a big table surrounded by windows) but the lesson is that though hind-sight is 20/20, no one really understood exactly why Black Monday or the Foreign Credit Crunch or the Dot.com Bust or The SubPrime Mortgage Crisis happened in real time (except maybe John Paulson) and even if you did understand it, and you wanted to hedge your bets and weather the storm, other people in the herd that mirrored your position could cause a market run anyway-- and if you don't feel like reading the book, which is edited by Michael Lewis and contains articles written by a wide variety of analysts (including himself and Dave Barry) then you could probably reach the same understanding by watching the episode of Thirty Rock where Tracy Jordan, who is being interviewed by Larry King, causes a financial crisis all by his lonesome self.

11/28/2009

Nothing makes me happier than the canned pumpkin shortage-- I hope this is the first of many retaliatory measures Mother Nature levies against our materialistic culture, and I commend her for her timing, as it is especially effective when these apocalyptic omens occur around the crassly consumptive holiday season . . . I would suggest to her that she also bring a cankerous blight that decimates mistletoe and nog.

Klosterman and I Agree About Madmen

It took me a day and a half to ingest Chuck Klosterman's new book Eating the Dinosaur, and though there were some new ideas for me to devour-- on Kurt Kobain vs. David Koresh and ABBA and Ralph Sampson and Garth Brooks and laugh tracks and the inability of Ralph Nader to lie and why this is a problem in politics and the paradoxical identity of football (which appears to be the most conservative sport-- think Brett Favre and Vince Lombardi-- but is actually the most dynamic and liberal in nature . . . as it has evolved from the forward pass to radios in quarterbacks helmets, from rugby-esque to the read option and the spread offense, etc.) but the scary and entrancing and ultimately annoying bulk of the book is about things that I already love, such as the time travel movie Primer and Werner Herzog and Erroll Morris and the Unabomber Manifesto and Stephen King and Arrested Development and David Foster Wallace and Weezer and Madmen and this is ultimately annoying because he feels the same way as me about these things (and many more) but his ideas about them are more clever than mine and they are better articulated, because he's a professional pop-culture critic, so while on the one hand I am fascinated by what he is saying, on the other, I'm annoyed that I didn't think of it myself-- it's about Weezer, for Christ's sake, not the human genome!-- and for me this was most acute in his essay entitled "It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened" where he dissects a press release from Pepsi and then makes some comparisons to Don Draper and Madmen and he transcribes and analyzes Don's monologue about the Kodak carousel and nostalgia-- and this is my favorite moment in TV history . . . it's the end of season one of the show, and no one else appreciated it at my workplace, but at least Klosterman did-- but then it made me wonder about this whole other idea, which is: is Klosterman just predicting what the faux cool nerdy hipster types who also like athletics like to read and watch and listen to, and are we that easy to predict and thus he writes about those things because he knows this is what will sell?-- it crossed my mind for an instant, but if that's so then the joke is on him, because he has embraced these things so fully and thought about them so deeply that whether he's joking or not, he is sincere.

How Fat Is Funny?

Saw another great Patrice O'Neal show the other night, and although there was no brawl like last year, he did kick out a table full of cops for heckling-- we thought it was a joke, until then they filed out the exit, but O'Neal's girth raises another point, and this also came up during my Shakespeare class while we were discussing the humor of Falstaff: how fat is funny these days?-- I've noticed a slimming of the fat funny guy-- remember the grossly obese funny men of the past? John Candy and Fat Albert and Chris Farley and Sam Kinison and Natalie from The Facts of Life, of course, Falstaff were all obscenely fat, but Jack Black is really just plump compared to these guys, and though Patrice O'Neal can hold his own with the old school mesomorphs, you don't see as many really, really fat comics and--check out the pictures and judge for yourself-- I think Santa Claus has slimmed down over the years as well.

Let's Build a Time Machine and Listen to Past Dave Swear a Lot

I shudder to think what Past-Dave would say about Cell Phone, iMac, and Facebook Dave.

11/24/2009 TWO YEARS OF SENTENCE OF DAVE!

Today is the two year anniversary of Sentence of Dave, and I would like to thank my fans for their support over the past 730 days, as it is your words of encouragement that have kept me plugging away . . . comments like "this dopey-- even for you" and "typical" and "I find it odd that you own three towels" and "Dave, you're getting sloppy, Earth Day is actually tomorrow" and "So you snookered a couple of teenage girls-- you should be proud of yourself" and "this is the worst sentence I've ever read" and "this sentence is canned" and (from my lovely and always supportive wife) "NO ONE wants to hear about your dream!!!"

Wiffle Fun

I try to run my kids through the usual educational, artistic, and athletic paces-- chess playing, drawing, music appreciation, storytime, soccer and bike riding-- but while I was cleaning up the yard I saw what they'd rather be doing if I left them to their own devices: each of them wielded a thick plastic wiffleball bat, and, without any prior discussion, they began pounding out an atavistic rhythm on the lawn furniture while chanting "Ooga looga, booga looga, omooga looga, ooga looga" and they kept this up for five minutes without fighting, which is the longest time they've ever done anything cooperatively without adult supervision.

Does the Lorax Use TP?

I hate December because I constantly think about all the trees that have been cut down to be used as wrapping paper, which is hardly an honorable way to be used-- to be the thing that obscures the other thing-- and then I think about all the trees I've murdered by assigning essays and it makes me not want to assign any . . . but at least that can sometimes be an honorable way for a tree to die, you might shuffle off this mortal coil as an "A"-- and then, of course, there is the least honorable way of all to exit, unrolled from your tube, desecrated, and then flushed.

Suspicion Haunts the Guilty Mind

Last Friday the English teachers had some fun at my expense: Stacey made an educated guess and decided that I probably hadn't read the email from the principal "reminding" us in a rather stern tone that we needed to check IDs, attend all necessary meetings, give students hall passes before they left the classroom, and not "kill the messenger" when we received phone calls during class from the nurse or guidance or attendance . . . and she was right, I hadn't read this e-mail, and so when Soder remarked that he had received less than usual in his pay-check and I went down to my mail-box to check on mine (greed is partly to blame for my downfall) and I found a letter addressed to me from the principal and it was this exact email . . . addressed personally to me, I fell for their ploy hook, line, and sinker-- and I would like to think that I did not disappoint my audience (who captured my reaction on camera) as I read the letter and line by line refuted each accusation-- "Okay, so I missed a few meetings, but I had soccer!" and "I'm always nice to the ladies from Guidance when they call! In fact, Mrs. Balogh just told me how nice I always am on the phone!"-- until, finally, I decided to write a nasty note to the principal demanding that he high-light which infractions I had committed because it was ridiculous that someone didn't just tell me to my face what I had done wrong and instead gave me a long-winded letter with a host of crimes that I had not committed (or been caught at) and good thing I was too consumed by my the eating of my sandwich to actually go down and deliver said letter because no one was going to stop me from doing so and finally someone walked in who wasn't in on the joke and when I showed her the letter she said, "Wasn't that an email? I got that email," and the gig was up.

11/20/2009

Exciting time at Donaldson Park last night: I walked down there with the boys for a game of game of hide-and-go-seek and we heard the sounds of donuts, peel outs, and power slides coming from the far parking lot-- when we went to investigate the cute blond park jogger said, "he's been doing that for forty five minutes" and so when he sped out of the lot, I jogged down the bike path and intersected him on the road, and he was kind enough to stop and wave me across the street but I STOPPED in the middle of the road (HA HA HA!) and memorized his license plate ( NN 81 9L -- I made mnemonic) and then when the park policeman drove into the park to lock the bathrooms, the kids and I walked over to report the plates, but as we approached his SUV, it started moving . . . but he was inside the bathroom, and so I figured there was someone in the passenger seat inching the vehicle forward, but actually his car had slipped out of gear and was heading on a driver-less collision course with the brick wall of the bathroom-- but first it hit and crushed the metal garbage can, which absorbed the blow, and by this time the ranger had gotten out of the bathroom and was able to jump into the car and put it into park, and it was after this bit of reckless non-driving that we were able to report the reckless driver (and it turns out Catherine also grabbed this guy's plates when he was speeding up and down Valentine Street so he is a menace, but perhaps he will get his comeuppance and hopefully it won't be as bad as the kid in the purple Camaro who sped up and down the streets of North Brunswick when I was a youngster, until that fateful night when neighbors of ours that lived near Route 130 heard intermittent beeping all night long and couldn't figure out why, and it was because the local hot-rodder had flipped his Camaro into a drainage ditch and was trapped inside, slowly bleeding to death while he beeped his horn to no avail).

Stacy Inadvertently Prevents Me From Making a Really Stupid Decision

My friend Stacy is kicking herself, because during a discussion on back-hair maintenance, I told her that it might be time to resurrect my idea for a giant tattoo (the great undersea battle between the squid and the whale) because then I would no longer have to maintain my back hair, as hair does not grow through tattoos, but she said, "Hair does too grow through tattoos!" and I checked and she was right, so getting ink all over my back isn't the solution-- but now Stacey is angry because if she didn't open her mouth, then I would have learned the hard way.

11/18/2009

Sometimes I get so angry because we'll never know what colors dinosaurs were.

I Am a Libertarian Paternalist

Sorry for all the book reviews, but I read a lot when I was in Florida: Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness is a good one for people who are disillusioned with the axioms of liberalism and/or conservatism, and the authors offer a third way of doing things, which they (Thaler and Sunstein) call "libertarian paternalism," which sounds like an oxymoron, until you accept their thesis that there is no way to set up a neutral choice situation, and that all choices are somewhat influenced by the context in which they are made (the book begins with an apt example from a school cafeteria-- students most often choose food items that are placed first and eye-level, so how do you arrange the food? do you put the healthiest items there? or the most profitable? or is it fairer to do it at random? no matter what you do, you have an influence . . .) and they explain that for many choices -- in the realm of health care, preserving the environment, increasing retirement savings, etc.-- there are ways to increase people's liberty and freedom of choice while also using defaults to nudge people towards decisions that will lead to better lives and a cleaner planet . . . but honestly, their ideas make so much logical sense that I can't imagine America ever implementing them, we'd rather be mired in an eschatological red state/blue state battle until the end of time, when God's rapture will finally sort out the sinners from the saved . . . that's just how we roll in America.

Fresh Tech . . . Ahhhhh

If this sentence seems especially shiny and wonderful, it is because I typed it on my new iMac, which is utterly beautiful and judging by the fact that it hasn't crashed in the last fifteen minutes and required re-imaging, an unbelievable upgrade over my last computer-- but I will say that it was really weird to cave in and just go buy something without doing months of research, comparison shopping, eBay bidding, etc. because a mac is a mac and it's actually cheaper just to go to the store and show your teacher ID card (for the discount) and just buy it on the spot, as is, and the very, very nice guy at the store (am I going to become nice now that I've got an Apple?) wanted to tell me lots of things and sign me up for Apple classes and help me, but I just wanted my computer and I wanted to say to him: I just re-directed my 16 pin PCI card digital audio converter pre-amp through IRQ line 11 so it wouldn't conflict with my NVIDIA GEForce 9500 video card, which is on IRQ line 10 and seems to have driver problems when you lower the resolution and defer it's power to background processes so that you don't have audio drop out, despite the fact that it's set in a quad core chip set, so just give me my computer and let me figure it out myself.

11/15/2009

Shakespeare wrote the maxim "brevity is the sole of wit" but he had that blowhard Polonius deliver the line, so I don't think Shakespeare believed that at all, because he was never brief, especially not in Hamlet and when you think of witty people, they usually aren't terse like Clint Eastwood or John Wayne, they are usually voluble, like George Carlin or John Stewart or me.

Bee in a Cup

Perhaps it was because of smelling the sandwich stench or maybe, just maybe, it was the voice of God, but while I was building a prop for one of my lessons (a bee in a cup-- it's a rite of passage essay about harvesting honey, and the main character has to get stung numerous times to build resistance before he can take part in the harvest, and so I tell the students that I've caught a bee and I'd like a volunteer-- someone who isn't allergic and won't go into anaphylactic shock-- to be stung in front of the class, and I always get a volunteer and there are always plenty of students who believe I've really got a bee, but I wanted to increase this percentage) and so I had a little paper bee and a semi-opaque cup and I was going to tie the bee to a string and let it hang from the top so it appeared to be flying, and when I walked in the English office to find some string or twine or something and I saw a bunch of yakking women, a voice spoke to me and that voice said: Use Human Hair! and so I asked for a piece of hair and my request was immediately granted and I tied the paper bee to the lid with that tiny piece of filament and it worked like a charm, nearly every student believed there was actually a bee in the cup and the best part about the lesson is that I don't think anyone learned anything.

11/13/2009

Jim Haner's book Soccerhead: An Accidental Journey into the American Game further reinforces what I have wholeheartedly come to believe: there is no better sport than soccer-- and although I can't and probably wouldn't take back the time I spent experimenting with other sports-- golf, football, rugby, mountain biking, road biking, tennis, ping-pong, pong-ping, track, swimming, marathon running, rock climbing, snow-boarding, fly fishing, wrestling, hiking, kayaking, surfing, basketball, skim boarding, and yes, even roller-blading (insert gay joke here)-- I sort of wish that I had just focused on the beautiful game alone . . . I certainly would have saved a lot of money on gear; but the book also presages my future and it might be monotonous and bleak-- in between coaching the eighth grade boys I'll be coaching my own kids on their travel teams, and my '92 Jeep, which is already full of soccer equipment for half the year, will become a full time soccer storage facility for PUGS and corner flags and balls and cones and ripe smelling pinneys, we won't be able to go on vacation or do anything else because the kids will always have games and tournaments and practice and eventually soccer will replace life, and so part of me wonders if my future would be more relaxing, fun, and enjoyable if my kids join the chess club instead (but this doesn't seem likely-- now that my school season is over, my backyard is full of cones and balls and I run a short fun soccer clinic for Alex and Ian every day).

11/12/2009

Greg Grandin's new book Fordlandia recounts Henry Ford's epic attempt to build a model American town and rubber plantation deep in the Amazon jungle, and while their foray is a disaster, it is a valiant disaster-- one in which Ford tried to introduce hygiene, good diet, and economic stability to a disease-ridden, corrupt region-- but the moral of the story is this: once Ford introduced assembly line capitalism and consumption into the world, there was no way to bottle up the genie, and although he failed to "civilize" the jungle, capitalism is doing a pretty good job of it now, and there are huge free trade zone cities in the Amazon, and all the pollution, poverty, waste, and environmental devastation that come with big cities, but since there's nothing we can do to stop this, our only recourse may be to give up and deforest as we please until it is all gone and we have consumed everything green on earth, and then the human race will finally extinguish itself in a blaze of materialistic glory and magnificent and unexpected new flora and fauna will rise from our rotting corpses . . . but until then, live it up!

11/11/2009

Yesterday a teacher thought she discovered the source of the foul stench in the English office refrigerator (a moldy wrap in a plastic clam shell) but she didn't want to infringe on anyone's food rights and toss it (the last time she cleaned, people complained) and so I heroically volunteered to open the container and smell the sandwich and then offer my expert opinion on whether or not the stench was emanating from this particular piece of food-- and so I put the container right under my nose, clicked it open, and took a deep whiff . . . and suddenly I was euphoric . . . light headed . . . I had never felt so alive, the horrific odor raced through my nasal passages and deep into my sinus cavities, and then finally, directly into my brain, it was better than twenty cups of coffee, better than two snorts of crystal meth, it was a mind blowing, life changing smell-- but no one else wanted to smell it, and when I ran to the trash to toss it, everyone in the room yelled, "Outside, throw it outside!" and so I did, but I will always wonder: what have we lost?

11/10/2009

The documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil doesn't just allude to This is Spinal Tap, it is This is Spinal Tap, except that it's "real," or sort of real, because obviously director Sacha Gervasi is as much paying homage to the greatest of mockumentaries as he is telling the story of an absurd (but well regarded in the industry) heavy metal band . . . and if you are a fan of Spinal Tap, then the film becomes weirder and weirder as the scenes grow more literally parallel-- and some are obviously constructed this way: such as the montage of ridiculous Anvil album covers and the knob in the studio that goes to 11, but when the two founding members of Anvil!, who were childhood friends, nostalgically hum the riffs to "Thumb Hang," one of the first songs they wrote together, and the scene happens in a deli, you can't help but think of Michael McKeon and Christopher Guest riffing on "All the Way Home" and it just keeps getting more and more like Spinal Tap-- there is a scene at Stonehenge and a disastrous tour and the drummer's name happens to be Robb Reiner, until, finally, in the last scene (which I won't spoil) you wonder if the whole thing is an elaborate joke-- but apparently it isn't, so sometimes life mimics art, and sometimes art mimics life, and sometimes I think I've seen Spinal Tap more times than is good for me.

11/9/2009

Ian slept on the floor in our room on our vacation in Florida and when I mistakenly kicked the spring door stopper it made a long lasting wacky sproinging sound which Ian took a liking to (Catherine wondered why anything in a bedroom would make such a sound) and then EVERY time he entered or exited the bedroom he kicked it and laughed . . . even at 3 AM when he went to the bathroom, although that time he only gave it a little poke with his toe, so although we were annoyed by the sound, we were impressed with his late night decorum.

11/08/2009

We are back from Florida but our laptop is still broken, so I haven't been following my blog-- but I know you have all been waiting for my son Ian's first experience with chewing gum; we gave him some on the plane ride home because his ears hurt, but he very quickly swallowed it and claimed" it went down the wrong tube and got in my ear."

11/7/2009

It is really hard for a competitive person like myself to "let" my kids win when we play a game, so I have to handicap myself: for example, when we play Hulk Operation, I remove the Hulk's organs with my left hand, which is actually pretty tough, and then if I win, I'm proud of myself, but more often than not, I lose, and I'm not acting . . . I really lost.

11/6/2009

I quit James Ellroy's new book four hundred pages in, which made me a bit sad, but I really couldn't give a fuck what happened to anyone in the novel and reading it was like a second job, and so I started Zeitoun, Dave Eggers' non-fiction account of a Syrian contractor that remained in New Orleans after Katrina hit in order to maintain his properties and equipment-- it's an apocalyptic story that seems to take place in a third world country rather than America, and I highly recommend it: thirty-nine starving dogs out of forty.

11/5/2009

They need to "fall back" earlier-- because the dark morning were absolutely killing me, and then they need to "winter back" another half an hour as well-- once we're inside for the cold season, who cares when it gets dark?

PAH!!!!!!

It is odd that adults don't get together and ban Halloween-- I can't even begin to imagine a more annoying holiday and it all hinges on the complicity of adults: if we didn't buy the candy, create the costumes, and man our houses with free sugary treats, then we wouldn't have to put up with the melt-downs, the pedophiles, the razor blades, the sugar high, the weight gain (because who actually eats all that candy?) and the inconvenience . . . and really, isn't Christmas enough . . . and so I am starting a new organization, named PAH!!!! (Parents Against Halloween).

11/3/2009

Our lap-top caught a virus from the internet (and no, I wasn't looking at softcore pornography, it was actually my wife who did it, when she clicked on "self-cleaning ovens") and we haven't had internet access at home all week; this has made me feel very anxious and disconnected from the world (meaning: I actually have to interact with my wife and children instead of looking up interesting facts and statistics, pirating music, browsing used books, and organizing our Netflix queue).

11/2/2009

I recently read that daydreaming may have important cognitive functions, especially in regards to processing long-term memories and deciding on . . . . what was I talking about?

11/1/2009

By this time, my family and I should be in West Palm Beach, and unfortunately, my laptop died and we lost everything (I really SHOULD back things up) so I won't be able to give you any fresh sentences from the beach (but who wants to hear about somebody's beach vacation anyway) but don't worry there will still be sentences, and although they won't be quite as fresh as usual, they will not be stale either.

10/31/2009

I should really back-up my files more often, I really should.

I Learn A Lesson (That I Should Have Known)

Last Sunday I decided to free myself from the traditional constraints of breakfast (we had a dinner party Saturday night, so there were lots of leftovers) and so I ate a bowl of shrimp salad, a couple of pierogies, and a large slice of chocolate cake . . . and then I went to play soccer: needless to say, the traditional constraints of breakfast are traditions for a reason and I am back to eating a bowl of plain yogurt with grape-nuts in the morning.

10/29/2009

I would like to commend all the people in my life that have made it into a Sentence of Dave-- because I am so self-centered, this only occurs rarely-- most of the time I'm living in my own little world, where Dave is King and his Decrees are Holy . . . so if you penetrated my consciousness deeply enough that I wrote about you, you must have done something extraordinary.

I Issue A Challenge

I am a skeptic of all things paranormal, but I'm willing to keep an open mind . . . and so by the powers invested in me as the author of this blog, I hereby challenge all ghosts, spirits, and other denizens of the spectral world: MANIFEST YOURSELF! MAKE ME BELIEVE!

A Biblical Allusion Illustrated

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Shylock the moneylender explains to his nemesis Antonio that entrepreneurship dates back to Biblical times and he uses Jacob's successful business ploy as an example; in short, Jacob and his uncle Laban were shepherds, and the deal they made with each other was that after the rams and ewes bred, all the "streaked" lambs would go to Jacob and all the white ones would go to Laban-- which would seem to ensure a fairly equal split of the brood-- but Jacob secretly put striped wands in front of the ewes while they were engaged in the act of copulation, and, according to Biblical biology, if you look at something striped while you are engaged in the dirty-dirty, then your offspring will be striped, and (in the Biblical story) that is exactly what happened, they were all "pied," and so Jacob was rewarded for his business acumen . . . this is a tough section of text, but apparently if you draw it, as I did above, the kids really understand and appreciate what Shylock has to say (they liked my graphic so much that they took photos of it with their cell-phones, so perhaps I should make a t-shirt).

10/26/2009

My wife is a great cook, and I am a great eater of what she cooks . . . this is like the zen koan about the tree falling in the forest, except that food tastes better than trees.

10/25/2009

Note to self: the two dollar margaritas at Charlie Brown's on Tuesday nights are worth exactly that.

Dig on This Semi-Historical Trip

So it seems silly to write my typical run-on sentence about James Ellroy's new novel, Blood's A Rover, since his sentences run five words max, but if you feel the need to read a book that's closer to working an extra job, because of the number of plots, the number of characters, the number of betrayals, the number ambiguous motives and the number of pages, and you want to learn lots of subterfuge slang-- the "bagman" and the "cutout" and "giving snout" and you want to travel back to the sixties and meet everyone from Nixon to "the old girl" J. Edgar Hoover to "Dracula" (Howard Hughes, who likes to inject heroin into his genitals) to the members Mau Mau Front, all done Ellroy style, plus his usual host of fictional scumbags, mercenaries, peepers, private dicks, and revolutionary women, then this is the book for you-- but I still liked the non-fiction Nixonland better, during this decade, the times were so interesting that you don't need any conspiracy theories.

10/23/2009

It's gotten cold and one of my favorite things to do when it's cold is put on baggy fleece pants and eat a shitload of food, but luckily I've discovered a new dieting technique; I call it "dieting through better posture" and essentially all you need to do is this 1) NEVER weigh yourself, it's not about what you weigh, it's about how you look 2) whenever you look in the mirror, stand up nice and tall and suck in your gut-- this makes you look ten pounds lighter, so that you can sit back and enjoy winter like any good mammal should.

10/22/2009

So here's my idea for a great party: it's called a "YouTube Party" and everyone who comes is allowed to play one YouTube video and then everyone votes on the best-- so you really have to do some research on YouTube to find a video that's excellent but also a video that no one has ever seen-- and once this preliminary tournament is over, which should take long enough for everyone to get drunk, then the winner gets to be the director for the rest of the night and he can realize his or her own vision of a brilliant viral YouTube video using the people at the party as his "actors"-- I know this is a brilliant idea but i'm giving it away for free here at The Sentence of Dave and all I want is the credit when this becomes a national sensation . . . hopefully this party will come to fruition sooner than my "Survivor Party" idea, where every twenty minutes or so someone is voted out of the party and they have to go hang out a boring designated spot until everyone else is voted out of the party . . . that idea never seemed to catch on, but the YouTube Party is a surefire success, in fact, maybe I'll make a YouTube Video of a YouTube party so people can see how it works (but then at some unexpected point I'll hit an unsuspecting partier in the nuts with a volleyball).

10/21/2009

Although I regard cable television as an evil time squandering monopolistic specter, I may have to get it for social reasons-- we were all having a great time in the new kitchen last Friday when it came time for the Rutgers/Pitt game, and my 56 inch HD television, which I use to watch documentaries and award winning movies and high quality television (such as Battlestar Galactica and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) on DVD, so that I have control over when I watch and don't have to be influenced by commercials (except product placement) was suddenly useless, and we all had to trek out to New Brunswick to see the game, essentially abandoning my wife (but luckily some lady friends came over who didn't care about the game, which assuaged my guilt) and more than anything it just makes me angry that I don't have more control over what I buy from the cable company . . . I would love to be able to buy a channel for a day, or even choose five extra channels beyond 2-13 but apparently everyone wants a hundred channels to scroll through despite the fact that we are all pressed for time as it is and don't read enough or play enough amateur music or spend enough time with our kids or friends or families or travel to Europe enough or cook enough healthy meals, despite all this, no one wants any control over the amount of media that pours into their house and so I'm going to get stuck with the Cartoon network and QVC and the Game Show Channel and a thousand other complete wastes of time that will invade my families consciousness and suck them into a void of pixels.

10/20/2009

So I've been using my the patch of poison ivy on my forearm as a teaching aid (if you get the answer wrong, the threat is that I make you look at it up close, but no one has been subjected to this torture . . . I guess the method works) and it started kind of gross and bubbly, but now it has crossed the line into full suppuration-- I put my arm down on a napkin and I left a wet mark, which is beyond gross and into the repugnant neighborhood, and the pus is matting my arm hair as well, and I can't stop looking at it and in some strange way, I'm going to miss it when it's gone.

10/19/2009

My Asus Gigabyte motherboard has some compatibility issues with my NVidia GE Force 9500 video-card, possibly because the video-card shares an IRQ line with the sound-card, and so I had to restore the Vista sytem to a previous date, lower the resolution and the refresh rate and switch the priority of background services because I was experiencing drop-outs during audio recording . . . and this, cross my fingers, has seemed to work so far; I have also placed three smooth stones from a chicken's gizzard (which I then coated with my own blood and chanted over for two straight hours) inside my DVD drive.

10/18/2009

If you're looking for a drama about a high school teacher that's a little more intense than Welcome Back Kotter (even more intense than Head of the Class!) then check out Breaking Bad, which stars Bryan Cranston-- the bumbling amiable dad from Malcolm in the Middle, as a regretful chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer and needs to resort to cooking meth with a delinquent ex-student (Aaron Paul) to pay the bills and leave something for his family, as his wife, Anna Gunn-- from Deadwood-- is pregant and they also have a crippled son . . . and to add to the fun, Cranston's brother-in-law is a DEA agent; it sounds like a grim show and at times it is, but it's also deeply and darkly funny and there's chemistry lesson in every episode (hydrochloric acid will melt a dead body to jelly but it won't eat through a plastic container!) and so I give it nineteen Erlenmyer flasks out of twenty.

10/17/2009

The past two days my sentences have been egregious, and so to reconcile with you, my loyal audience, I will provide a sexy picture of Farrah Fawcett for you to enjoy . . . despite the fact that she is now food for worms, and her lovely body, which was riddled with cancer when she died, has liquefied by now into a viscous jelly . . . but a very sexy viscous jelly.

Meta Failure

This is hardly a sentence.

10/14/2009

My five year old son Alex let me in on the plan that he and his two friends concocted at school-- they are going to build robot replicas of themselves and send the robots to school in their stead; I asked him why he wanted to do this and if he didn't like kindergarten any longer, and he said, "I still like school, I just get tired in the middle of the day and want to take a nap," which-- I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree-- is exactly how I feel about teaching school.

10/13/2009

So it was a lucky day in the ISS (in school suspension) room-- no students-- so I had an empty room to myself in which to grade papers and otherwise relax . . . in fact, I was so relaxed that I let loose with a bout of flatulence (hard to do anywhere else in the school, since you're always on display) and, of course, like in a bad movie, immediately after I let'er rip, not ten seconds later, the school police officer walked in with a girl that obviously had some major problem and had to be escorted from class and he walked right into my poison cloud and then the girl came to my desk to sign in, and I was half embarrassed and half wanting to giggle like a sophomore, but no one accused me of anything, so I'm hoping they were secretly blaming it on each other.

10/12/2009

At bedtime, I've been reading my kids a children's version of Moby Dick (which, honestly, is hardly a bedtime story-- people die every other chapter) and Ian asked why Ahab wanted to kill the whale and Alex told him, "because the whale ate his leg off" and then Alex made a good point; he said, "Ahab really only has to cut off one of Moby Dick's fins, that would be fair, since Moby Dick only ate one of his legs."

Bonus Sports Conundrum

Can a coach receive a taunting penalty?

10/11/2009

Does everyone cut their cornbread into tiny little cubes so there's more surface area to coat with butter, or is it just me?

10/10/2009

In the office the other day, all the English teachers were lamenting the fact that progress reports were already due, and it felt like school had just started and no progress had been made-- and while it may be true that progress report time did come a bit early this year, it also might be true that we are all getting older, and as we get older our metabolism slows and time appears to rush by, instead of crawl along (like it did when we were children) but when I suggested this, none of the other teachers wanted to contemplate this bleak reality so we blamed it on Labor Day being so late this year.

Adventureland: A Review and Other Thematically Related Stuff

Days after visiting the funky, vintage Knoebels Amusement Park in central Pennsylvania, I watched a movie that looked as if it had been filmed there: Adventureland, starring Jesse Eisenberg (who hails from East Brunswick, his sister-- who is a senior now at the high school--- was the little girl in the Pepsi commercials who spoke like the Godfather when she was served a Coca Cola) and it wasn't as gross and funny as Superbad or as witty as Juno, but in a laid back way it was just as good a film, and the 80's music, cars, clothes, houses, amusement park, and people are as much fun to look at as the sets on Madmen . . . and so I give it twelve partially thawed boxes of corn-dogs out of a possible fourteen, but I'm still putting up a clip of the Pepsi sister because I think she's still more famous than Jesse (although he's also in Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, so I guess he's an A list star now . . . and I hear the sister gets very uncomfortable when teachers or students bring up her past as the Pepsi girl . . . and are either of them as famous as Heather O'Reilly, who is possibly the most famous East Brunswick resident?)

Girl Stuff

There has been discussion in the office of what appears manly and macho and what doesn't, perhaps we dwell on this because we're English teachers and we teach poetry so we're already a little defensive . . . and I claimed that I cannot type because typing is for girls (it's easier to say this than to admit the truth-- I'm spastic on the keyboard) and some folks took offense at this, but then we decided that Ernest Hemingway couldn't type either . . . because he was too drunk (although F. Scott Fitzgerald could put it away, yet I'm sure he could touch-type with the best of them) and now there's a juggling craze in the office because Stacey learned to juggle, and while I was accomplishing an astounding juggling feat (juggling three tennis balls off the wall while standing a good five feet away from aforementioned wall) someone remarked that I didn't look very macho doing this astounding feat-- touche-- and this reminds me (this sentence is so long, why stop now?) last week I saw a guy pull out of his driveway on a unicycle, and it made me want to get a unicycle . . . is a unicycle macho?

Hammurabi's Law Doesn't Apply to Water

My son Alex's kindergarten teacher sent a note home informing us of some inappropriate behavior: apparently, Alex filled his mouth with water from the fountain, and then he spit it on another boy . . . but it's not like you can make the punishment fit the crime-- you can't ban a kid from drinking water, or at least not for long-- so hopefully he'll just stop doing this because it's gross and annoying.

10/6/2009

While I was running in the school orchard last week, I nearly ran into a red fox on the trail-- I was close enough to see the white splotch on the end of his tail before he loped away-- but fans of this blog will remember that last fall I saw TWO foxes in the span of two days, so one fox doesn't really rate a sentence, so I'm going to revise this one: while running in the school orchard I saw THREE foxes . . . and a llama . . . and . . . and Barak Obama and Rush Limbaugh making out behind a shrub.

10/5/2009

I would offer a review of Len Fisher's new book Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, an engaging overview of game theory that doesn't cover much new ground if you've done some reading on this, but does provide lots of excellent anecdotal real world examples, especially in experiment,s the author himself concocted, which often involve pub life in Australia, but why should I offer a review when I don't know if you'll reciprocate and offer me anything in return . . . perhaps I'll do it just this once and test the waters, but if it's not worth it, then I'm not going to continue: I give it seven tits out of a possible nine tats.

Is a Sloth Spooky?

My favorite ride at Knoebels Amusement Park is the Haunted House, as I'm not much for roller coasters (even the kiddie coaster made me green) and my young sons love the haunted house as well . . . Ian was holding on to me for dear life, as it is very dark and spooky in there, with lots of skulls, witches, floating eyes, banging doors, creepy music, talking paintings, etcetera-- the only time the ride loses its spookiness is in the last room, which inexplicably has a tropical theme and reminds me of The Jungle Room at Graceland . . . but the ride is certainly vintage and maybe before Diego kids were scared of the jungle, as they should be . . . we're talking about a place that has fire ants, anacondas, yellow fever, and cholera (and I'm sure kids are scared of Elvis).

10/3/2009

I'm embarrassed to say that my wrist still hurts from an incident this summer-- and if there is such a thing as divine retribution for despicable behavior than it should still hurt . . . after an evening where everyone imbibed a fair bit, and my friend Rob imbibed a bit more than a fair bit, I lost patience waiting for him to get out of the beach house, as we were on our way to see the greatest cover band in the universe, and -- having just read Born to Run and being high on the merits of barefoot running, I said to Dom and Michelle, "I'll get him!" and took off at full speed in my crocs, which was fine for a hundred yards, until I hit a muddy patch of grass in between the sidewalk and our driveway (there was a flood that morning) and my legs flew into the air ahead of my body and I flipped back onto my wrist and it really hurt, despite the beer, and I also got soaked and coated in mud, and so when I ran into the house to tell Rob to get a move-on . . . and also to change my soiled clothes . . . he happened to be coming down the steps and so, in a fit of immature rage, I punched him in the stomach (with my bad wrist) and caught him in the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him . . . and though I apologized profusely, I still probably deserve the wrist pain for my impatience.

10/2/2009

Petting a baby alligator at Clyde Peeling's Reptiland made me think: "That's surprisingly smooth . . . maybe I would like a pair of alligator skin pants."

10/1/2009

Sometimes the best antidote for a mediocre pulled pork sandwich (provided by some church in Watsontown) is a really good pulled pork sandwich (provided by Ali's caterer).