F#@%* The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

I'm going to give Guy Deutscher's new book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages a perfect ten gender-neutral pronouns out of ten; first of all, I love how worked up Deutscher gets about things like linguistic relativity-- otherwise known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-- which is the idea that the "character" of a language somehow indicates the philosophy of the culture that uses it (and he quotes from the American Journal Philosophy Today . . . "if English thought is in some ways more open to ambiguity and lack of system, it might be attributed in part to the relative variability and looseness of English syntax," and then he comes down heavy on this idea; here is Deutscher's rebuttal: "It might. . .  It might also be attributable to the irregular shape of hot cross buns. More appropriately, however, it should be attributed to the habit of English language journals to allow the likes of Mr. Harvey free range. . . ") and Deutscher also refutes the venerated Stephen Pinker in several places, but the main reason I like the book is it really does live up to its title in some very specific ways: you learn about the Guugu Yimithirr, a tribe who use no egocentric directions (right/left/behind you/in front of you) and instead only refer to the directions of the compass-- as in: "Can you pass the butter to the North?" and they learn this from an early age because that's the only way to speak, so they always know which way everything is facing-- whether they are in a dark room with no windows or recounting a story several years later, and they do not rely on the sun, they use other clues (and the children master this long before our kids master left and right!) and Deutscher also explains how nouns with gender (as in Spanish and Italian and French) have an influence on our associations about the object and he also answers that age old question: "Do you see the same blue that I see?" or at least he sort of answers it, and the answer is that you might see it slightly differently if you don't have a word for green . . . if you have a word for green then greens are greener, and if you don't then you might refer to the sea as "wine-dark," like Homer did, but what is important is that it is the language influencing the sensory perceptions and not vice-versa . . . if you start making generalizations in the other direction then he's going to go Sapir-Whorf on your ass!

My Time Is Near

The English Department has been hosting some creative parties lately: we had a Minute to Win It Party at my house (this was all Catherine, but still, the party was in the place that I live) and Liz and Eric hosted a Who Can Write The Scariest Story Party (and the stories were quite good and I feel bad for Stacy, who created a beautiful multimedia Case File, which was handed to me to read, but the complexity of the different documents-- fake newspaper articles, photos of a severed hand and a dead cat, an IM conversation, a medical report, etc.-- made me go into an over-stimulated coma, and so Liz had to take it from me, and I probably would have voted for it, if it hadn't stressed me out so much . . . and I couldn't figure out who wrote the other stories and I thought my story was well disguised but someone remarked that only Dave would have the main character eaten by a "series of animals" but I was glad I pulled a vote because the competition was stiff) and Jeryl Anne is hosting a Chili Cook-Off in a couple of weeks and this makes me think that I need to strike while the iron is hot . . . I need to organize my two great party ideas, which I have offered to the world free of charge, and which have been roundly ignored: I am talking about, of course, my YouTube and Survivor Parties, which I once again, offer to the on-line universe, free of charge, and which I expect to see implemented by close friends in the very near future.

My Attention Span is Wack

I didn't make it through The Wackness but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie, it's just a little slow and melancholy and repetitive for my taste, but the '90s hip-hop soundtrack is fantastic (think De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest and Biggie Smalls) and the dialogue replicates and parodies a time when everyone was trying to infuse some rapper chic into their lexicon, leading to the moment when the cool rich indie girl Stephanie gives the dope smoking and dope dealing main character, Luke Shapiro, some advice about how to live life: "I just look at the dopeness . . . but you, it's like you just look at the wackness, you know?"

Denial Ain't A River in Egypt

Most of us are happily in denial (I forget about my receding hairline each and every day, but a look in the mirror shocks me back to reality . . . the hair I had on my head in college has migrated to my chest and back) but here's an example from the new Slavoj Zizek book that will make you feel better about your own mild delusions; the Shindo Renmei, a Japanese terrorist organization that existed in the 1940's in Sao Paolo Brazil, refused to believe the news that Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, and used violence against those that did believe, but, of course, as Zizek points out, "they knew that their denial of Japan's surrender was false, but they nonetheless refused to believe in Japanese surrender" and I am sure they got plenty of other people that knew that the news was factual to believe otherwise, because when the alternative is a violent death, what's wrong with a little denial?

Zizekian Aphorisms

I started watching Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, but it seemed anecdotal in its evidence, without any real theory behind it (although I did like when Vizzini from The Princess Bride-- "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"-- talks about how the American free-market has evolved into something far different than what Adam Smith envisioned) but if you want to tackle something a bit meatier, try Slovenian super-brain Slavoj Zizek's Living in the End Times; here are two of his thoughts on modern capitalist society: "However once we accept that the economy is always a political economy, a site of political struggle-- in other words that its de-politicization, its status as a neutral sphere of 'servicing the goods,' is in itself always already the outcome of a political struggle-- then the prospect of repoliticization of the economy . . . is opened up," and "Today, since workers can increasingly be replaced by machines or by outsourcing the entire productive process, striking-- where it occurs at all-- is more a protest act addressed primarily to the general public rather than owners or managers, its goal being simply to maintain jobs by making the public aware of the terrifying predicament that awaits the workers if they lose their jobs."

High Concept Check-Out

The burly cashier at Stop and Shop told the dude in front of me that his total, $8.68, was a "palindrome," and that sometimes-- once in a rare while-- the total and the change are both palindromes . . . and I should point out that this guy is coaching a youth soccer team; the last time I ran into him he told me there are two kinds of bars: 1) the kind where you look for trouble 2) the kind where you don't look for trouble; he is a font of wisdom.

A Sacrifice I Will Make For My Children

For the next ten years I am going to exclusively listen to jazz and classical music-- no rock or punk-- so that my kids have the opportunity to disparage my lame and antiquated ways, and so that they have something to rebel against . . . you can't really enjoy Black Flag and The Misfits and AC/DC if your dad likes them too.

Ali's Favorite Story About Dave

Here is Ali's contribution to the incredibly popular recurring series I like to call Your Favorite Story About Dave (Fit to Print on a Relatively Tame Blog): we have to travel back to what I call pre-Sentence of Dave . . . it was summer vacation and I was pushing my six month old son Alex from Highland Park to New Brunswick, where I was meeting my wife and brother for lunch, but on the way I saw my friend's grandmother and she wanted to get a closer look at the baby, so I took Alex out of the stroller so she could hold him, and then we blithely continued on our way up Third Avenue and along Route 27 towards the bridge to New Brunswick-- it was sunny so I put up the little awning on the stroller and Alex was quiet, watching the traffic, and I was in that oblivious zone of serenity that you occasionally enjoy as a new parent when your child is content and needs nothing-- when something at my feet startled me-- someone had left a doll on the sidewalk, and I ran over the doll with the stroller and nearly stepped on it, and who would leave a doll on the sidewalk like that?-- but, unfortunately, it wasn't a doll, it was my son Alex, I forgot to strap him back into the stroller after I showed him to my friend's grandmother, and he had slid down the front of the stroller, but my vision was blocked by the awning, so not only did he slide out of the stroller onto the pavement, but he also endured a mild crushing, and after I recognized that this was my son and not a doll, I picked him up to assess the damage: he had skinned knees, and skinned hands and arms, and a skinned nose, and he was crying, but the injuries were all superficial (and superficially ugly) and I didn't have a cell phone and I didn't know what to do, so I pushed him to the restaurant, and I got some odd looks on the way there, but I knew that the only person who would know what to do was my wife, and she was at Makeda, so that's where I went, and I entered in a frantic state but my wife cleaned him up and he stopped bleeding and crying and we ended up having a fairly pleasant lunch.

Paradoxical Activity

When we begin Hamlet in my English classes, I like to assume the role of the skeptical scholar Horatio; I force my students to ask me if I believe in ghosts-- "Go ahead . . . ask me if I believe in ghosts . . . ask me!"-- and when they comply, just to humor me, I chastise them and reply angrily: "Of course I don't believe in ghosts! I'm a teacher! A man of logic and reason! Not a purveyor of fantasy and superstition!" and in a sense there's a grain of truth to my schtick, as is evident here, but an old student pointed out an apparent contradiction in my outspoken doubt of all things spooky: the fact that I found this movie incredibly scary suggests that my words may not accurately reflect my subconscious.

No Surprise Ending Here

This article makes the new anti-addiction drug sound pretty great (no urge! no craving!) but what happens when the addictive people who need to take this anti-addiction drug get addicted to their anti-addiction drug?

Where Good Ideas Come From: Steven Johnson

It took someone far smarter than me-- the polymath Steven Johnson-- to explain what I am doing here at Sentence of Dave . . . though you would never guess, I am actually continuing a 17th and 18th century intellectual tradition . . . seriously . . . in Johnson's new book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, he discusses the English Enlightenment habit of keeping a "commonplace book" full of inspirational quotations, desultory thoughts, reactions to one's reading, opinions on current events, and a "vast miscellany of hunches," and most of the commonplace book keepers (such as Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Joseph Priestley, and John Locke) attempted to index their varied writings . . . but none of their indexing efforts worked as well as the internet, which Johnson believes has the right balance of organization and chaotic tension to spur new thoughts . . . and Johnson uses various "long view" examples-- including an awesome four squared grid categorizing two hundred major inventions from antiquity until now-- to show that good ideas often take a long time to form, with help from lots of different people and events, some serendipity, and often without the constraints of patents and corporations, and without the need for a single solitary genius who sees far beyond all others of his time; on the last page of his book he advises us to "go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent."

I Realize I Have Learned Nothing

Note to self: do not eat a salmon burger before a night soccer game (and you'd think I'd have learned my lesson about heavy meals before athletic events in college, when I went to the Wendy's SuperBar before an intramural football game and stuffed my belly full of tacos and pudding, and then got burned play after play by a tall wide receiver who probably ate a banana or a granola bar or something  like that before the game, and waited until after the game to have a celebratory meal) but though our adult league game was a grueling battle-- I nearly puked-- we lucked out with a Diego Maradona "Hand of God" style goal in the waning minutes for the tie . . . and so we remain undefeated at 5-0-1.

Governor Christie Needs to Read His Shakespeare

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the characters are bound to each other both by their inherent status and by the contracts they enter-- this is what generates the conflict in the play (Shylock cannot escape his status as a vilified minority so he clings to his contract for a pound of Antonio's flesh; Antonio maintains his status as the merchant of Venice despite forfeiture, yet he will not break contract because Venice thrives on business, Bassanio has the status of a gentleman so Portia enters into the marriage contract with him despite his insolvency; Portia is bound by an odd contract to her dead father; Shylock's daughter Jessica would like to erase her status as a Jew by entering a marriage contract with Lorenzo; etc.) and whenever I teach the kids this, I start to apply the terms of status and contract to the world around me (the status of being someone's teacher is a an excellent one-- no matter how smart, famous, and powerful my students become in the future, I will always be able to say to them, "I taught you everything you know," and this is similar to the status of "coach," as no matter how far my players go in soccer, I can always say, "I got them started") and so here is my new application of the terms: the reason Governor Christie has incited so much anger and rage among the teachers of New Jersey is because he ignored (and sometimes assaulted) the status of being a teacher-- which is the reason most people teach: to be a respected individual in the community, to make a permanent connection with generations of students, and to feel as though you are doing something positive with your career . . . it's certainly not for the money-- so when he said teachers were using students like "drug mules" and that schools grant tenure to anyone "still breathing", and then immediately turned to financial and contractual issues, teachers took incredible offense, and, predictably, like Shylock, when they were robbed of any status, they clung to their contracts and refused a pay freeze . . . perhaps if he were more diplomatic with teachers about their status in the community, they would be willing to cooperate with him . . . but apparently he hasn't read his Shakespeare.

Stacey's Favorite Story About Dave

We recently reviewed Terry's Favorite Story About Dave, and today we will tackle Stacey's Favorite Story About Dave, and this story occurred P.S.D. (Pre-Sentence of Dave) so it may a be a new one for some readers but it is essential knowledge if you want to understand The Persona of Dave, so pay close attention: after swimming a set of grueling sprints in the LA Fitness pool, I stumbled out of the water, grabbed my towel and headed for the shower-- but in my oxygen deprived state, my brain on auto-pilot, I mistook the first shower-head I saw for the privacy of the Men's Locker Room, whipped off my bathing suit and started rinsing off . . . but, to my chagrin, I wasn't even near the Men's Locker Room, I was in the public shower in the window-surrounded pool area . . . stark naked and visible from the fitness floor as well as the outside world, but thank God a dude rounded the corner from the Men's Locker Room, and his odd expression alerted me that I was doing something very wrong; I snapped back into reality, grabbed my towel, wrapped it around my recently exposed genitalia, and ran to the safety Men's Locker Room-- blushing and humiliated-- and ducked into a curtained shower . . . how I mistook the pool shower, with its lack of curtains, for a locker room shower still boggles my mind, as does the fact that if a woman emerged from the hallway, fresh from the sanctity of the Women's Locker Room, she would have strolled into a hairy naked man in the pre-swim rinsing shower and I would have lost my gym membership and perhaps my job as well.

Dave's Key to A Happy Marriage

The key to a happy marriage is this: when you hear your wife pull into the driveway, get off the couch, race to the kitchen, and start doing the dishes . . . so that when she walks in the house and says "Hello?" then you can say to her, sincerely: "Hey, hon, I'm here in the kitchen . . . doing the dishes."

A One Sentence Review of a 562 Page Book

John Franzen swings for the fences with his new novel Freedom, and in a sense his Tom Wolfe-esque survey of America-- through the eyes of a disaffected athlete/housewife, an angry environmentalist, and a holier-than-thou indie rock star-- is spot on; he lampoons, ridicules, and skewers pretty much everything about modern language, relationships, liberalism, conservatism, sex, and-- of course-- freedom . . . it's a very, very long version of the REM song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" but the book needs an editor, it eventually folds back unto itself and becomes repetitive and Franzen pushes a narrative trick too far, but even though I skimmed the last hundred pages, there is a wonderful set piece at the end about song-birds and feral cats and I will give the novel eight cerulean warblers our of a possible ten, for its realism, its scope, and its archetypal characters that invite you to compare your own modern philosophy to theirs . . . but I should warn you, although there's a bit of a pay-off at the end, most of the book is mired in an existential irony that will make you question the significance of your life, and perhaps the significance of any human life on this wonderful green planet we inhabit.

Is This A Joke?

A Jordanian, an Indian, a Cop, a Slovakian Chemist, a Sicilian, and Red Headed White Guy walk into a bar . . . but it's not a joke; it is my adult league soccer team out for beers after a 10-3 win: improbably, we are now 5-0.

Kids These Days

So I'm eating lunch in the English office and this kid walks in without knocking-- which is totally unacceptable-- and he picks up this huge oblong case with a handle and a faux-alligator skin exterior, and I say to him: "Hey, what is that? An accordion?" and he says: "Yeah, it's an accordion," and he walks out without complimenting me on my correct guess, and-- in my eyes-- not acknowledging my guess was even ruder than not knocking on the office door because there could have been anything in that case, it could have been a type-writer or a set of silverware or a geode collection . . . but I guess that's how it is with the kids these days . . . or maybe that's how it is with accordion players these days.

Listen to Uncle Genghis

In Imperial Grunts, a fairly positive review of American special forces around the world, Robert Kaplan does remind us that we could have avoided our misadventures in Iraq if we would have remembered what Genghis Khan said: "Conquering a country while mounted is easy, but dismounting and building a nation is difficult."

Sometimes My Wife is Retarded Like Me

My wife had a long stressful day at work on Monday (she went to the wrong school for her work shop, and then when she finally found it, it turned out to be boring and useless) and then we had to coach our K/1 soccer team (and they were especially insane, perhaps because it was Columbus Day and they didn't attend school) and then she dumped the silverware all over the floor, and then-- despite her long and stressful day-- she set up at the kitchen table and started grading papers-- and after a few minutes, I asked her what she was doing with the chicken and she said she was going to have it for dinner and then five minutes later her mistake dawned on me, and I asked her if she thought she had put the chicken in the oven and she said, "Don't tell me I left it on top of the stove," and I said, "You left it on top of the stove," and she said, "Dammit, can you put it in the oven for me?' and I did and I was glad to do it because once in a while it's nice to see her act as retarded as me.

Fifty Percent Canine/ Fifty Percent Feline

In the early chapters of Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher contrasts the difficulty children have obtaining the names for colors with their powerful pattern recognition algorithms . . . they may have trouble discerning the difference between blue and green but they never mix up a car and a boat, or a dog and a cat; this makes me recall a particular example from our adventures in Syria, we were staying in a hotel at the foot of the largest, most impregnable, and best preserved crusader castle in the world, the Krak des Chevaliers, and, once darkness fell, a weird, keening screaming began echoing in the hills-- it sounded like hordes of frightened children-- and when we asked one of the hotel employees what produced the wails, he said, "the chucker . . . it is half dog and . . . . . . . half cat," and though I loved imagining these cryptic and impossible creatures, we later learned they were jackals.

A Wheelbarrow?

Last Friday was one of my strangest afternoons as a soccer coach: though the sun had been out for days, our field was still a mess-- there was standing water full of goose-shit all along the near sideline-- but luckily there was a pile of sand near the goal . . . so all we needed was a way to carry the sand over to the puddles so we could fill them in; I asked my players what we could use to move the sand and one of them suggested "a wheel barrow," which I told him was a great way to move sand, but unfortunately, we didn't have a wheel barrow (and honestly, would I have even asked that question if I had a wheel barrow?) but then in a flash of coaching brilliance I realized I had enough orange practice cones to give every player two, and so we formed a cone brigade and filled the puddles fairly quickly, but apparently this wasn't the best way to warm up for the game because we gave up three goals in the first half (we were playing into a strong wind and trying to score on the muddy side of the field and they had a big fast kid with a mustache, but that's still no excuse for giving up three goals) and then we gave up a fourth goal early in the second half and I was getting ready to call it a day when we finally knocked one in . . . but 4-1 in soccer is still pretty much insurmountable (even with some wind) but then one of my players literally ran a ball into the goal with his chest and our kids realized that they could score and so we knocked in two more to tie it up, and had the ball on their goal line twice in the last minute, and you've never seen kids so happy about a tie.

Terry Recalls the Best Story About Dave

Like all people, I am both intrigued and apprehensive about how others perceive me, and so-- during an office conversation on the interplay of genetics and socialization in establishing gender roles-- Terry asked to the new teacher: "You want to know the best story about Dave?" and though she didn't seem to want to know The Best Story About Dave, it was intriguing to me, because I didn't know The Best Story About Dave, and so I asked Terry to enlighten me (and I was hoping it was one of my great teaching moments or when I saved that crippled kid from the rampant bear) but unfortunately it was one of my more embarrassing moments (in a long string of them) but the point of this sentence is not to recount this embarrassing incident-- an incident that Terry had a particularly good view of, so that he saw my face when I screwed it into the grimace of an angry three-year old-- the point of this sentence is that Terry said, "And that was pre-Sentence of Dave, so you should write a sentence about us talking about what happened so you can tell the story," and I agreed that it was a good idea, just the sort of content that I put on the Sentence of Dave, but the incident was not pre-Sentence of Dave . . . it was post-Sentence of Dave and here it is.

Some Kids Just Don't Get My Brilliance

Last week I was teaching my students the importance of beginning their college essay with an engaging opening, and I decided to illustrate this with a contrary example; I began my class with an elaborately planned weak opening: I drew an inscrutable diagram on the board, gave vague advice, asked nebulous questions, ignored students when they answered, sorted a folder, took an awkwardly long drink of water, asked a student for an example and then while they read it I rummaged through my cabinet looking for a non-existent hand-out, complained about how late the Giants game went, asked the class if anyone had gum, took a piece of aforementioned gum that a student proffered and took my time unwrapping and chewing it, sat down in my chair and took my glasses off and rubbed my face, stuck my finger in my ear and then looked at the wax while a kid was trying to talk to me, and then-- finally-- started laughing and told them what I had been doing and had them connect the way they felt during my weak opening to how a reader might feel when reading the start of their narratives (they were especially cluttered, vague and weak) and I was quite proud of my brilliance and my convincing acting skills until one girl said, "I really didn't notice anything different than normal."

Sometimes Music Makes You Feel Guilty

Ian has learned how to work a CD player and loves to listen to music, and so I gave him my CD collection (which is housed in one of those giant black books full of plastic CD sleeves) and, of course, he found GodWeenSatan: The Oneness and played "You Fucked Up" and I had to confiscate that one; during his explorations, he had a musical epiphany-- he came into the kitchen and told me, "Different songs make you feel different ways," and then he left the room several times to queue up particular songs, and for each he reported back to me on how they made him feel: "This song makes you feel cool . . . and this song makes you feel sad . . . and this song makes you feel like you did something really bad."

Ian Likes to Move Around . . . A Lot

I did not go to Back to School Night for my kids (since I go to school every day, I don't have to attend) but Catherine reported that Ian's kindergarten teacher likes to teach using music and movement . . . and Catherine was early, so she had a few private words with Ian's teacher, and Ian's teacher euphemistically told Catherine, "Ian really likes to move around a LOT . . . I like to have the kids learn with movement, but Ian really likes to move around . . . a LOT," and this sounds a bit ominous as far as Ian's behavior goes, but-- as I pointed out earlier-- I'm trying not to think about what goes on in that building (although my wife did advise Ian to stop illustrating the demise of Jenny Jump at school so he doesn't get sent to psychological services).

Cold Weather: An Ode

I like it when the weather turns cold because then I feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of our house.

The Usual From Zizek

I am making my way through Slovenian super-brain Slavoj Zizek's new book Living in End Times, and interspersed amongst the neo-Marxist philosophy are aphoristic gems such as "religious idealists usually claim that, whether true or not, religion can make otherwise bad people do good things; from recent experience, we should rather stick to Steve Weinberg's claim that while without religion good people would do good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things," and then Zizek notes the violence inherent in the New Testament and he cites plenty of scripture to back this up; there are too many passages to cite them all, but here's an example from Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" and another from Matthew: "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword . . . for I came to set man against his father, and a daughter against her mother-in-law and a man's enemies will be the members of his household . . . he who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" and this makes me want to read the New Testament again and see exactly what's going on in there.

I Am Not Vacationing in Colombia Any Time Soon

The ESPN documentary The Two Escobars traces the rise and fall of the Colombian national soccer team and drug king-pin Pablo Escobar; it is easy to see how both Escobars come to be venerated in a country without rule of law or government service, the poor will take money from anyone who will provide it, and soccer is their diversion; for an update on this country and what America is doing there, read Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground; it is typical Kaplan, he gets down and dirty in places few journalists dare to travel, and he has the connections to meet the most important (if not the most highly ranked) people and the interviewing skills to get them to talk: in Colombia, he's embedded with the U.S. Army Special forces that are training President Uribe's Colombian Army to combat FARC, narco-terrorists, kidnappers, and the jungle cocaine lords that have replaced Pablo Escobar, and it is a frustrating job because their ROE (Rules of Engagement) prohibit taking initiative . . . they can only fight if someone attacks them, but these salty Green Berets are ready and willing to sustain casualties in order to lead by example; fortunately or unfortunately, our government isn't as ready or willing as they are, and so the hyper-competent American forces have to watch the not so competent Colombian forces they have trained try to accomplish the impossible: bring order to a fragmented, bosky, mountainous and inordinately poor and corrupt land.

Boot Tasting

As I was getting home from work last week, I caught the tail end of a message from the school nurse . . . something about my son Ian being bitten in school, and so I picked up the phone and the nurse told me what happened: my son Ian had gotten into a scuffle with another student and that student bit Ian on the foot . . . but Ian was wearing a rubber rain boot . . . so there was no harm done, either to my son's foot or his rain boot, but there must be some law where the school has to call if a child is bitten or something . . . and perhaps Ian has a little crush on the nurse because he was down there the next day as well because he got hit in the face with a jump rope handle . . . when asked about the boot incident Ian simply said, "he tasted my boot," and that confuses things further . . . is that a euphemism for something else? . . . did the other kindergartener actually want to see what Ian's boot tasted like? . . . and I'm thinking it is best not to think too hard about what goes on in that building.

Sometimes It Pays Not To Put Your Balls Back in Their Proper Place

Stacy needed my crate of assorted balls for a philosophy class activity, and she came to my classroom to remind me (but she could not bring herself to say "I need your balls" in front of my senior composition class, instead she said: "I need that box of sports equipment") and though she also called me over the weekend to remind me, I still forgot to put them in my car; so, on Monday morning, when she asked me for my balls, the only solution that came to mind was that I had a couple of flat soccer balls she could use in my Jeep (which is STUFFED with soccer equipment: cones, bags of balls, pug goals, discs, bags of pinneys, etc.) but when we went out to get the ersatz balls, we found what I was supposed to bring in the first place . . . the crate of assorted balls . . . it had been in my car since the last time she needed them: last year . . . and so the moral of the story is that sometimes it is best NOT to put your balls back where they belong.

Victory?

My adult soccer team improved its record to 3-0 the other night, and once again we beat a team that was younger, more fit, and more skilled than us (they were a group of Irish and British ladies and lads, and the ladies were as good as the lads/ one of them nearly nailed me with a shot in the nads) but two minutes into the game I stepped in a hole and hyper-extended my already bad knee (on a super-excellent move that froze the opposition, you should have seen it, it was graceful and explosive, until I stepped in the hole and my knee buckled and I angrily kicked the ball out of bounds and hopped off the field, muttering things about turning forty) but after some stretching I was able to return and play (though rather lamely) but my knee injury paled in comparison to what happened at the end of the first half on a fairly innocuous play in the box . . . the opposing keeper came out for a through ball and his own defender pushed our player into him and he somehow knocked his head, either on our players knee or the ground, and the play concussed him and/or hurt his neck and he could barely speak and the EMT's had to be sent for and they back-boarded him and taped his head to the neck brace and the whole nine yards and then-- after that long ugly, awkward, delay-- we continued the game but they were a man down and things had soured as far as having some fun on a Wednesday and the injured player's dad went into goal (I think his sister rode in the ambulance to the hospital with him) but then he stomped out of goal when one of our players came close to him (but did not touch him) on a play in the box and part of me was wondering: what the hell am I doing out here when I could be at home having a beer and participating in some safe activity like watching TV or playing my guitar or shingling my roof.

The Paper Heart

Last week, a large wasp found its way into my classroom and the students had the usual reactions-- panic, terror, and the rapid fluttering of arms-- but despite this flurry of activity (and my attempt to lure it out the door by shutting off the lights) the wasp landed on the sleeve of a sophomore boy . . . but he did NOT panic, he remained calm and gingerly held the fabric of his sleeve away from his arm so the wasp couldn't sting him and waited patiently until I flicked it off his shirt and then I swatted it dead with my folder (heavy from freshly collected essays) and so, for his grace under duress, the next day I presented him with what I called "The Paper Heart," an official certificate of bravery that I scrawled on a piece of scrap paper, but I'm not sure anyone got the joke.

When is the Last Time You Felt the Ionian Enchantment?

Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw's new book Why does E=mc² (and why should we care?) comes close to achieving their goal . . . making you feel that at its heart the universe is orderly and simple because has an underlying simplicity (this is the Ionian enchantment) and the book does it by deriving fairly simple formulas from the Pythagorean theorem to show that the general weirdness of relativity (time progressing at different speeds, nuclear bombs, the universal speed limit, motion affecting size, the four dimensions of spacetime, CERN ) does make logical sense and is a helpful in creating a model of the universe that applies to more than the tiny Newtonian sliver in which we reside (and though this sentence should not be compared to Einstein's earth shattering equation, I would like you to note that I did figure out how to make the two in his formula superscript, which is a pretty damned impressive accomplishment in itself).

Years Later, The Truth Comes out

While we were drinking beers at the local Hooters, my friend and colleague Stacy made a confession: her first year she asked me for a clever way to illustrate and teach personification, and I recommended playing the They Might Be Giants song "Birdhouse in Your Soul"  for her students . . . months later she played the song for her class and announced to the office that it was a success, and I said, "Wow, I use the same song for personification, what a coincidence," and she didn't really know how to tell me that I had told her to use the song and just figured I was a dopey, spaced out guy and then she forgot all about it and didn't remember until the other night, but now it is all straightened out and it turns out I don't even remember the first part of the incident, so perhaps I am a dopey and spaced out guy.

Just Trying To Live My Life (Dave Style)

So I'm just living my life, stealing some printer paper from the boss's office and printing some stuff that I need to print, and leaving a stack of paper on the common table in the office while I'm printing my stuff that I needed to print, when I realize that I need to bolt, that time is of the essence, but while I am in the process of bolting out of there, I hear this voice, a voice with a reminiscent tone, a voice layered with subtext, a voice that is dripping with an undercurrent, an undercurrent which I know exactly how to decipher and this voice says, "Are you done with this paper?" and I look and see Liz holding the stack of paper that I tossed on the common table and I recognize that her tone is the same tone as when Catherine, my beloved wife, holds up a used yogurt container that I have left on the counter and says, "Are you done with this yogurt container?" and I know what this really means is: "You are a fucking insensitive slob who thinks women have been placed on this earth to clean up your shit, but I have been placed on this earth to teach you a lesson, and the lesson is this: women are not here to clean up your shit, and you are going to learn to clean up your shit, and you may learn this sooner or you may learn it later, but you will eventually learn this, and this tone is essential to you learning this lesson because it is a tone that is antithetical to the way you want to live your insensitive, self-centered, egotistical, selfish life and eventually you will hear the tone before the words are even spoken because the tone will live in your head and then you will realize that the tone has won and the Way of Dave has lost" and while I can see where both Liz and Catherine are coming from, sometimes you just want to live your life the way you want and leave a bunch of shit all over the place and clean it up later, but maybe I was born in the wrong place and at the wrong time and maybe I'm never going to get to live my life this way.

If You Think It, It Will Come

Some of the little girls we know are fascinated by the baby-making process . . . one girl gave our boys a basic tutorial on the birds-and-the-bees and another asked her mom, "How long does the boy have to leave it in there?" but our boys haven't had much interest in this process, and I am pretty sure that they both believe that if a woman thinks she wants a baby then it happens, in their minds there is no need for the male; here is a conversation between Ian and my wife that substantiates this . . . Ian: Mommy, I want a better family; Catherine: I think our family is pretty good; Ian: No Mommy, I want a bigger family; Catherine: We have a big family, Grammy and Poppy and Nanny and Uncle Marc and Daddy and Mommy and Alex . . . Ian: No, more people in the house . . . you can make it happen Mommy, you can make it happen in your tummy-- if you want to.

I Enter A New Age Bracket

In the past, I would occasionally learn that a student had a crush on me-- and this information would be enormously flattering to me: the fact that I could still appeal to the younger set-- but after this year's Back to School Night I learned that things are different now; I overheard a few of the girls in my class giggling and remarking how their mothers thought I was "cool" and attractive . . . I guess I appeal to a different demographic now.

Terry Has Talent . . . I Do Not

Rumor has it that my friend Terry can recognize any song after only listening to a few notes (I do not have this ability although I did recognize the Cheers theme song from one note) and he proved it Thursday night: we were having cheap beers at the local Hooters (I always wanted to write that phrase) and Stacy remarked how much she loved the new Cee Lo Green song "Fuck You" and Terry said that he had never heard it, so I sang a couple of verses (and my voice was even worse than usual, as it had been a very long day: I performed several songs in class, coached a soccer game, and then spoke to all the parents at "Back to School Night," so I was beyond gravelly) and Terry said, "That sounds like Gnarls Barkley," and for a moment my head swelled (after we explained to Terry that Cee Lo Green sang on the Gnarls Barkley hit "Crazy") and I thought that I was a very talented singer, but then Stacy pointed out that I had done a terrible job singing the song and that Terry was the one with the special talent.

Can Someone Explain This?

So if everyone is inside catching up with their TIVO and playing XBox and poking around on Facebook-- because we are addicted to technology and no one has any money to spend because the economy is bad and unemployment is high, then why is there so much fucking traffic?

God is Rooting For Us

My adult league soccer team rolls on, despite our age and infirmity; we won 1-0 Wednesday night against a team that was definitely half our age, and we got some help with the weather . . . ten minutes into the second half the game ended early due to lightning.

Daddy Needs a New Pair of Shoes, So Keep on Burning Those Fossil Fuels!

I am rooting for global warming, because the government can't prop up housing prices forever, and when several million people in New York City realize that they are going to be flooded out by a rising ocean, they will head on over to New Jersey and want to buy my house.

An Alternative Use For a Hand Dryer

Camping confession: I didn't shower during my camping trip last weekend, but it was pretty humid and despite changing underwear several times, I still felt pretty rank, and so the couple of times that I walked to the bathroom with plumbing, I pulled open the front of my pants and directed the hand dryer so it was blowing directly down them; this effectively dried my nether regions, but I was really concerned about someone walking in while I was doing this because my camping pants cinch at the ankles and I looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Chastity is Hard to Define to a Five Year Old

Jenny Jump State Park is named after a colonial girl who was being chased by Lenni Lenape Indians and when they finally cornered her at the edge of a cliff, her father instructed her to jump (which she did, and she died) in order to save her chastity . . . and it was rather hard to explain to the younger kids on our group camping trip why she jumped, I told them it was because her dad didn't want his daughter to have to marry a Native American . . . and that was enough explanation for my son Ian, who then resumed naming various sticks "Jenny" and then tossing them off the rock outcropping while simulating suicidal screams.

Hang Around Me And You Might Lose an Eye

I couldn't find my hatchet while we were breaking down our campsite, so I had to figure out some other way to pry the tent stakes from the ground; I decided to use one thick yellow tent stake as a lever to yank the stuck tent stake out of the ground, but when I yanked the plastic cracked and half the stake went flying and hit Ian in the face, which made him cry, but I was glad he didn't lose an eye . . . and then later that day when I was showering off all the camping grit, I decided my hair needed some conditioning, but the conditioner bottle was jammed with dried conditioner, so I squeezed and squeezed-- but to no avail-- the dried chunk would not dislodge, and so I put the conditioner on the shower floor (clogged hole pointing up) and stepped on the bottle and-- of course-- conditioner shot up in a geyser and went into my eye, temporarily blinding me, and making me feel, just for a moment, like one of those rabbits or guinea pigs that had to endure similar lab tests for months on end.

The Coming Years Are Going To Be Trouble

I was known as "The Poor Man's Galileo" in college for my generally idiotic hypotheses, but perhaps my son will not be as ersatz: Friday night we were in a rush to get to Jenny Jump State Park to set up camp before dark, and I told Alex and Ian we were "racing the sun" to get there on time, but Alex corrected me, saying:"Actually, Dad, we're racing the Earth, since it's the Earth spinning that makes it dark . . . the sun doesn't move," and I had to admit that he was correct.

I Am The Grim Reaper

There is nothing worse than telling a kid they didn't make the eighth grade soccer team (except being told you didn't make the eighth grade soccer team).

And That Makes It All Worthwhile

I am playing in an adult soccer league in North Brunswick this fall, and we played our first game on Wednesday night and defeated last year's champions 2-1; I've been having knee problems (my knee-cap popped out again when I took an especially hard and wild left-footed shot last week) and so I was rather gimpy, but I wrapped my knee with an Ace bandage and put a brace on it and I was able to run, albeit slowly (and this team, which was half our age, made it very clear how slow I have become) but my slow motion play helped us win . . . as I had a hand in our first goal because I slowly weaved my way through their defense and found myself with space in the penalty area but as I moved to shoot one of their players hit me from behind and I was awarded a PK, which I did NOT take, I left that to a guy named Trilok, who had a PK as intimidating as his name, it was a change-of-pace-you-think-it's-going-to-be-righty-but-it-turns-out-to-be-lefty shot that froze their keeper, and then I assisted our star player Mario for the second goal-- I chipped one over the defense into space and Mario ran onto it, took a dribble, and poked it to the right of the diving keeper, and then the game got a little ugly because last year's champions weren't used to losing and they got mouthy with the ref and received a couple of yellow cards, and I could barely walk on my knee the next day and my calf was swollen and there was quite a bit of traffic getting to North Brunswick for the game and sometimes I think to myself: this is ridiculous to still be playing a kid's sport, but it was all worthwhile, not because we won, but because after the game, when I got home, my wife said I looked "sexy" in my uniform (although I'm afraid if I run my Large uniform shirt through a dryer cycle, I won't look "sexy" any longer, I'll look like a hairy stuffed sausage . . . note to self: I am an Extra Large).

Some People Just Don't Appreciate Magic

At work, I tend to lose things and then spend lots of time looking for these things that I've lost (your tax dollars at work!) and my usual method is to wander around to various places in the school and ask people things like: "Hey, have you seen a manila folder?" and usually the thing turns up (though it is often in my bag or desk or someplace like that, but the wandering around gives me time to remember where I might have put it) but last Tuesday when I couldn't find the folder with all the emergency contact forms, after a minute of asking my students things like "Hey, do you guys remember what I did with that folder yesterday?" which is an absolutely ridiculous question because what student would even be watching where a teacher placed a manila folder, but after a minute of this nonsensical behavior, I took a moment and really thought about what I might have done with the folder-- which was not in my bag or in my desk-- and I remembered that on Monday, I had lifted my big desk calendar up and tore "September" off and tacked it to the cork-board, and then, and once I remembered about lifting up the calendar, then I knew that the only place the folder could be was under the calendar and I told my class this and there was this magical moment before I lifted the calendar up to see if I was right where I was just so happy that I had logically deduced where the folder was . . . and, remarkably . . . astoundingly . . . miraculously . . . it was there, it was right under the calendar, just like I thought, and I tried to explain to my students how wonderful this moment was for me, and how much they should have appreciated being there to see me experience this joy, but it was early in the morning and the magic was lost on them.

The Recognitions: 956 Dave: 595

It's official: The Recognitions, a dense novel by William Gaddis, has defeated me; I put up a valiant effort and nearly reached the 600 page mark before I shook hands with this allusion filled Modernist tome; the book seems to be about art forgery and counterfeiting and religion, but there's obviously some deeper theme which I have failed to recognize . . . and I'm not going to to kid myself and say that I'm just taking a break and I'll pick it back up this winter, because now I'm reading the new Slavoj Zizek book (Living in the End Times) and it seems clear and logical, as compared to The Recognitions . . . and when a book makes Slavoj Zizek seem clear and logical, then it is certainly beyond me.

Again, Me with the Smrts!

I am on a roll with correct answers . . . two weeks ago I named the country with the highest ranked education system, and Saturday night (after lambasting several men who were watching Men's Tennis . . . who watches Men's Tennis?  I can see watching the women, but the men?) I went out on a limb and said that Women's Tennis was higher ranked on TV than Men's Tennis, a rare state of affairs in most professional sports-- besides figure skating and gymnastics-- and the tennis fans vehemently disagreed, but once again, I get to type the most pompous and annoying three word phrase in the English Language: I WAS RIGHT.

Where Men Win Glory: Jalalabad, Not Dallas

Jon Krakauer's new book Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman tells more than the story of a free-thinking, hard-hitting strong NFL safety that sacrificed his fairy-tale life in order to fight Osama bin Laden; it also tells the story of the Bush Administration and the American military's "perception management" of the two wars that we are still entangled in . . . and Krakauer uses the words of Hermann Goring to explain, "Naturally, the common people don't want war . . . that is understood, but after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship . . . voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders; that is easy-- all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger . . . it works the same way in every country," and that summarizes what happened in our country, and because Tillman kept extensive journals, not only do you see the lies, deceit, and obfuscation that Rumsfeld and crew had to perpetuate in order to galvanize the country behind their Neo-conservative mis-adventures, but you also see how Tillman, who wanted to do the right and honorable thing, slowly realizes the truth of the wars, and after he is killed by his own men, because of negligence from many places, both high and low, how his brother (who was in the same Ranger unit as Pat) and finally, his family, slowly realize the truth about Pat's death and the military cover-up of that event: ten Purple Hearts out of ten.

These Modern Times Are Complex

Sometimes-- when we have a sink full of dirty dishes-- I open the dishwasher, in order to load it up, and then start washing all the dishes in the sink by hand, because I have forgotten that there is a such a device as a dishwasher, but eventually, I'll glance over and see the open dishwasher door and remember what I set out to do: load the dirty dishes into a labor and water saving device . . . does anyone else do this?

Two Boys on Bikes: You Know Where This is Headed

I couldn't have been prouder than I was last week when my youngest son mastered the two-wheeler and the three of us went biking through the park . . . I wonder if this will lead to the inevitable:  the two of them drunk and needing to be somewhere in a hurry so they "borrow" a couple of bikes, ride them to the bar, and dump them on someone's front lawn . . . I had forgotten about this practice (which was popular when I went to William and Mary) but my friend reminded me about it when he told me his bikes were stolen in Sea Isle City and the cops told him that was usually the reason for bike theft . . . and sure enough, they found one of his bikes on a front lawn near a bar (which is better than in Amsterdam, there when the joy ride is over, the thieves toss your bike into the canal).

I Wisely Keep My Mouth Shut

On the first day of first grade, a boy made fun of my son Alex . . . he called his lip-balm "lipstick" and that evening Alex asked us for advice on how to handle this taunt, and my wife responded with some very practical advice; she told him, "Just put your Chapstick on in the bathroom," and good thing she said something quickly, because it gave me time to NOT say what I wanted to say:"Just tell the kid you got the lipstick from his mother . . . after you finished banging her."

I Am So Smart! Or At Least I Was For One Brief Shining Moment . . .

During our inspirational start-of-the-school-year workshop, which took place in a dark, damp, sweltering room stuffed with English teachers, the Australian woman running the show asked if we knew which country has the highest ranked educational system in the world (if you want to know, click here) and while others hazarded guesses, I confidently said the answer (and received a literal pat on the back from my colleague Kevin) because I had read Diane Ravitch's excellent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System and for one brief and wondrous, but completely ephemeral moment, I felt really smart . . . for one second I felt like all my desultory reading was worthwhile . . . but I'm pretty sure that's going to the highlight of my life, as far as correct answers go; I am afraid it will be all downhill from here on in.

This Snake IS a Plane

Saturday morning we snaked our way along the Northeast Corridor and under the Hudson River and then  North and West on the Blue Line in order to get to the Museum of Natural History to see the new exhibit "Lizards and Snakes: Alive!" and though the exhibit was well done and comprehensive, the best creature was not present in the flesh, but instead on a piece of documentary film: called the Paradise Tree Snake, and otherwise known as the Flying Snake . . . the film showed just how this wingless snake (it's much more utilitarian than Quetzalcoatl) glides; the snake launches itself from a branch, and then spreads its ribs which flattens its body into a curled glider . . . it's fun to imagine this snake landing on the head of your worst enemy . . . and then there was more snaking along train lines on the way from the Museum to the Lego Store, because of the byzantine ways of the NYC Subway System (why, on the weekends, is there no B train?  wouldn't the weekends be the time when lots of people would want to get from the Museum to Rockefeller Center?  so why not run the B train? or why not stop the D train at the Museum? or why not put this information on a sign? and why is it so fucking HOT down there when it was such a beautiful day?) and when we got to the Lego store there was one more serpentine treat: a giant Lego snake that wove its way in and out of the store and finally culminated in a fanciful Chinese dragon head . . . and then we wove and snaked our way through hordes of people with two boys who are now too cool to hold our hands and also too cool to hold the pole on the Subway, but we made it home alive and well and we'll do it again once we forget what a sweaty hassle it is to get around on NYC public transportation.

Cop? Cop. Cop? Cop? Can? Can. Can? Can.

The boys and I were fishing at the river, and we saw a guy with an impressive rig setting up along the bank, and I asked him what he was fishing for and he said (with a Scottish accent) "cop" and I said "cop?" and he said "cop" and I said "cop?" and he said "cop" and and I said "cop??" and he said: "cop" I said "Oh . . . carp!" and he said "Yeah, cop, they get quite big," and I asked "What are you using for bait?" and he said "can" and I said "can?" and he said "can" and I said "can??" and he said "can" and I said, "Oh . . . corn!"

Bonus Post at G:TB: Yes, Even You Can Attain the New Cool

If you've got some time to kill and feel like "reading" a visual essay (it's a bunch of YouTube clips and pictures flimsily strung together with captions) then head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for my visual essay entitled "Yes, Even You Can Attain the New Cool."

What Have the Romans Done For Us?

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, by Australian critic Clive James, is a comprehensive guide to art, politics, and everything else worth knowing about the 20th century, and he structures the book as 110 biographical essays, ranging from Camus to Margaret Thatcher (including lots of folks I have never heard of:  Paul Muratov, Virginio Rognoni Dubravka Ugresic) and he includes several figures from before the 20th century, most notably Tacitus, who has given us the tools to analyze, skewer, and debunk the ruling tyranny; I love how Tacitus (a Roman) thought the Germans perceived Roman rule: they make a desert, and they call it peace . . . and this aphorism is certainly reflective of how many people feel about our policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and, in a general sense, as James puts it, is a "harbinger of twentieth-century state terror" . . . but, on the other hand, we must not forget what the Romans have done for us . . . they did give us the aqueducts . . . and the roads . . . and the wine, oh yes, the wine . . . and medicine . . . and it's safe to walk the streets at night . . .

Feeling Happy? Watch This.

Robert Greenwald's documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is depressing in such a globally mind-blowing way that it almost evokes detachment . . . the low wages that Wal-Mart pays its "associates," the government subsidies for Wal-Mart stores and infrastructure, the slave wages paid in Honduras and China, the reliance of Wal-Mart employees on government programs for food and medical care, the union busting, the misogyny, the crime in the parking lots because of lack of security, the coercion techniques Wal-Mart managers use to get the "associates" to work unpaid overtime, and the sad demise of family businesses that inevitably cave to the competition . . . and though there is a "happy ending" tacked on, which details how certain communities rallied and saved their down-towns and local business and blocked Wal-Mart from their towns, you know in the back of your mind that there's always another down-town down the road that will be destroyed instead and though I will never shop at Wal-Mart again (not that we go there for much, just for worms for fishing because the local bait-shop is gone, but I guess we'll dig out own now, because Costco doesn't sell live bait) but even if Costco and Target are marginally better, it still seems that we are headed down a strange path where giant corporations will choose what we buy, how much we are paid, and how we organize as laborers . . . but we'll have loads and loads of cheap and fluffy toilet paper.

Late Start

I wish Sentence of Dave covered my entire life because it's gotten to the point where if I can't search and find an incident on the blog, then I'm not sure if it really happened to me.

Beach Reading?

I ambitiously packed two weighty tomes for our week long trip to the beach:  The Recognitions by William Gaddis, which-- though I've read five hundred pages-- I barely understand, and Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, a collection of 110 biographical essays ranging from Terry Gilliam to Tacitus, and though I recommend the latter book, neither of these works are beach reading . . . what was I thinking? . . . and so I eventually borrowed something from Dom that was more fun to read: Crash Course: The American Auto Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster and while I need to finish it before I can offer a comprehensive one sentence review and rating, I will say this:  it makes me want to watch the movie Gung Ho again, because I definitely didn't understand it when I was sixteen.

First Things First

The last night of our beach vacation, we took the kids on a ghost crab hunt, and before we went I told them a spooky tale to set the mood . . . once long ago there was a particular ghost crab that was killed by a shark, and he still haunted the beach to this day . . . he was the ghost of a ghost crab . . . and the kids, who had been watching Scooby Doo, assigned themselves characters (but no one wanted to be Velma) and decided to get to the bottom of this "ghost of a ghost crab" mystery, and while they were formulating the plan-- which involved an "invisible trap"-- my son Alex, whose personality frequently wavers between earnest and zany, stood and said, in his sternest voice "Okay, first things first! To make an invisible trap, we need a force field . . . who has a force field?"

Just When I Thought It Was Safe . . .

Just when I thought it was safe to go to the beach . . . safe to sit down and read my book or chat with other adults or skim-board a bit or maybe even take a quick nap . . . while my kids played in the light surf on their boogie-boards or dug in the sand or collected shells, with their new-found ability to make their way back to our towels and umbrellas unaided . . . this was going to be the year . . . the year my kids were self-sufficient, able to grab a snack on their own, able to amuse themselves without supervision . . . except, like all best laid plans, that's not how it turned out . . . instead of conforming to my idyllic vision, my boys transformed themselves into aggressive ocean swimmers, which is ridiculous, considering Ian barely weighs forty pounds and Alex is two pounds heavier, but, oblivious to these considerations, they now both now stride into the water without looking back to see if anyone is following or watching, and then kick out well over their heads into large surf, where they try to body surf and are often pummeled and sucked under (although Ian did body surf a wave three times his height, which was both scary and hysterical to watch, and when I chastised him for being in water that was too rough, he said, "Why?  I didn't flip," which was true, and while I'm on this subject I should also point out that Alex wandered along a tidal river and got completely lost and we didn't even know he was lost because we had assumed that he knew where our stuff was, but apparently he did not) and so we are now back where we were a few years ago, trailing our kids down the beach and into the ocean, because they aren't smart enough to look out for themselves.

A Hard Habit to Break

One of the purposes of this blog is to foster and promote human rights across the globe, and so I must implore any of my readers that are witch-doctors, or truck with witch-doctors, to please stop killing albinos and selling their body parts for use in magical potions . . . I know it's hard to abort a well-planned kidnapping and I know albino body-parts fetch a good price on the open market, but if you could substitute black rhinoceros horn or Bengal tiger kidney in your recipe, instead of albino body parts, you would be doing people of no color a great favor.

I Do Not Heed My Own Advice

Recently, I advised my readers that it is easier to invite everyone, but then, while on vacation at the beach, I neglected to follow this advice, and did not invite a particular guy to Guy's Night Out (and I asked my wife if she mentioned Guy's Night Out to this guy's girl-friend when she was out with her, and my wife said she did NOT mention Guy's Night Out so I thought this was a safe play) but then, in the fashion of Curb Your Enthusiasm, we ran into the uninvited guy and his girl-friend and all their kids while we were waiting in line at Mike's Dock and it was apparent, both by our state of inebriation and the fact that we were without wife and kids, that we were having a Guy's Night Out, and the guy made it clear that he knew we were having a Guy's Night Out and that we should have told him about it, which was pretty awkward, and all I could think of as a reply was, "It was kind of slow to develop," and so in the future I will follow my own advice.

Am I Liable? Or Just Unreliable?

I've just walked out of the ocean with my son Ian, and I'm looking up the beach to where my other son Alex is sitting, wrapped in a towel eating a snack . . . and it's low tide, so Alex is a good hundred feet away from me . . . and then, without warning, sand fills the air over my son Alex's head and a micro-burst of wind, some rogue convection cell, crashes through our beach set-up and rips two umbrellas from the ground and whips MY umbrella high up into the air . . . and when I say high up, I mean really high-up . . . it flies over the life guard stand and it continues to go straight up until it's fifty feet in the air and for a moment it hovers and it's like Mary Poppins should be attached, but then it starts to plummet and people are holding their heads and ducking and screaming (Connell said it was like when a dragon swoops down and scares all the townsfolk) and it finally crashes into the ocean-- along with one of our beach towels which also got swept up in this miniature tornado, and they are both less than ten feet from where Ian and I are standing, and so we go retrieve them (but if the umbrella would have impaled someone, I think I would have walked the other way, because I don't want to get jailed for involuntary manslaughter because of shoddy umbrella installation . . . you don't garner much respect with the inmates for that crime) and our beach area was devastated, our belongings were scattered everywhere and Nicky was crying, unhurt but scared, but here is the strange part . . . the burst of wind did absolutely no damage to any of the surrounding beach equipment, just to our little area: weird.

Modern Life: An Aphorism

There is magnificent irony in searching for the best parking spot at the gym.

That Was Easy

I locked myself out last week because I reminded my mother-in-law to be more vigilant about locking the side door that leads to her apartment in the basement . . . there's been a few break-ins in our neighborhood . . . but this was fortuitous and I recommend that you lock yourself out on purpose and then see how long it takes to break into your own home;  it took me three minutes to figure out that if I lifted the screen on the side window, I could then slide up the unlocked window and reach over and flip the dead-bolt on the side door, and thus get in without climbing anything, breaking any windows, or using any fancy equipment (skeleton keys, lasers, glass cutters, plastic explosives, genetically modified super-termites, etc.) so now I have a good idea of how secure my house is . . . and if you're thinking of robbing me now because you want to steal my new skim-board, you'll have to figure out a different way in, because now that window is locked.

You're Telling ME to Wear Sneakers?

So I walk into LA Fitness and the mousy girl working the desk-- if she had handles I could have dead-lifted her-- tells me I can't work out while wearing sandals . . . though I've been working out at LA Fitness for five years now while wearing sandals, as they are convenient foot-wear if you also want to swim or shower after you lift (plus I have a problem getting socks on my feet when it's humid, probably due to their hairiness) but she's insisting that I can't wear an "open toed shoe" while I lift weights, so I ask her about Crocs-- which are not technically open-toed-- and she considers this back-talk and says, "You want support when you work-out, so wear sneakers . . . okay?" and I'm about to get into the whole barefoot running thing and how I DON'T want support when I work out and how I often shoot baskets on their court barefoot, but I decide it's not worth it . . . and, finally, she did allow me on the floor with my sandals . . . but I had to promise that next time I would wear sneakers . . . and now I'm seriously considering getting some of those Vibram Five Fingers minimalist running shoes just to fuck with her.

A Short Review for a Long Movie

Avatar is a Disney movie for adults: thematically simple, visually stunning, full of melodramatic cheesy music which nearly ruins the entire film, and an absurdly happy ending . . . three hammerhead rhinoceros thingies out of a possible four.

Live From Sea Isle City . . . Another Embarrassing Moment in a Long Line of Them

Sunday night we went to see LeCompt, the best bar band in the universe, at the Springfield Inn, the best dive bar in the universe (cash only) and during "Born to Run," Mike LeCompt got on the bar and pointed the microphone at the girls in front of me, ostensibly to get one of them to sing the ONE TWO THREE FOUR, but then I realized he wasn't pointing the microphone at them, he was pointing the microphone at me, and so I took the natural course of action and started backing away, but he was relentless with his pointing, and then Ed gave me a firm push from behind and I stepped up and yelled, "ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!" in my best Bruce voice (which was pretty good because of the amount of drinking we had been doing) and then the girls in front of me high-fived me and twenty minutes later another guy congratulated me on my ability to count to four, and they were all sincere in their accolades, which I found ridiculous and I wanted to tell them that I was half-way through The Recognitions by William Gaddis, one of the densest works of literature known to Western culture and that counting to four wasn't much of an accomplishment, but The Springfield Inn didn't seem like the place to bring this up (and then on the way out, to add further insult, when we complimented LeCompt on another great show . . . they did a fantastic cover of David Bowie's "Starman" . . . LeCompt told me it was okay that I couldn't figure out what to do with the microphone for a while . . . he said, "It's alright man, I have ADD too").

Alex: 1 Dad: 0

While I was in the midst of one of my typical anti-Halloween diatribes, my wife sided with the boys and reminded me that I liked trick-or-treating for candy when I was a kid, and then Alex chimed in-- rather sagaciously for a six year old-- and told me something that I often forget:  "You weren't born a grown-up, Dad."

A Prison Film More Thought Provoking Than The Longest Yard

Jacques Audiard's movie A Prophet makes you work as hard as the Malik-- the Arab the protagonist-- who is thrown in jail at the start of the film and has to commit a brutal murder in order to curry favor with Luciani . . . the Corsican godfather . . . and this killing is as hard for him to execute as it is for the viewer to watch, but, like Michael Corleone of The Godfather and Tom Reagan of Miller's Crossing, Malik "sees all the angles," and though you may not see what he's planning (my wife and I didn't) and Malik certainly isn't going to reveal it-- he's as taciturn as they come-- that is what makes the film great, you are forced to contemplate how you would play all the angles, or at least speculate what tactics Malik has on his mind as he navigates the Corsican nationalists, the Italian mafia, the brotherhood of Muslims, and the various gypsies, lowlifes and drug dealers . . . a must see flick if you don't mind a little violence:  ten cups of instant coffee out of a possible ten.

Feeling Happy? Here's The Cure.

If you're feeling really happy . . . too happy for your own good, then you might want to read the graphic novel Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story: it's a depiction of when the Christian Phalangist massacred Palestinians while they were under the aegis of the Israeli Army . . . Ariel Sharon allegedly knew what was happening but did nothing to stop the slaughter, and the next time I'm feeling a bit too happy I'm going to watch the animated film that Ari Folman and David Polonsky made of this event, but I don't think it will be in the near future.

Summer Can't Last Forever . . . Or Not In My House

I must remember to wake up early . . . I must remember to wake up early . . . because if I don't . . . if I get up when everyone else gets up and I have to immediately start socializing with my family, then I can be a stubborn grouch-- and this also might be a result of a long, hot summer and a lot of "quality time" with my wife and kids-- and so last week while we were packing for a trip to the Philly Zoo, I got in a full blown argument with my wife about which water bottle to bring . . . but now I'm getting up again at 5:30 AM so I can get some alone time every morning before I have to deal with the other people that live in my house, and I'm behaving in a much more civil fashion.

Communication: Második rész

Now that there are so many myriad ways to communicate with fellow humans, you need to know which method each person prefers-- some people only respond to texts, some people will get right back to you on e-mail, there are Facebook people and Skype people and blog folks and chatters and old fashioned phone call people and communication whores who somehow manage everything at once . . . and if you don't know a person's preferred method, you may never communicate with them-- so I guess my question is this:  are texters only communicating with other texters while the old fashioned phone call people are sticking to their own and the Facebook people are partying down over there (unbeknowst to us bloggers) and the technorati are Skyping or doing something even cooler than that, is this causing some sort of communications clique effect . . . are we herding together because of technological choices and only communicating with people of the same type?

Communications Shakedown

Several members of my family have a long history of calling and leaving messages on our answering machine that contain no specific information other than "call me back," and I think this is a strategy to entice my wife and I to call back to find out what the actual message is . . . but we're not falling for it.

I Review a New Apple Product: The iGod Touched

My metamorphosis is complete, I am an Apple convert . . . read my product review of the new iGod Touched over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . I promise you riches beyond the temporal.

Jeff from Curb is Funny

During a round of golf, Larry's agent Jeff Greene angrily counsels Larry's dopey cousin on how much information you should divulge to your wife:  "I don't tell my wife anything!  I'm at the office right now, not playing golf . . . the only time I tell her I'm playing golf is when I'm with another woman!"

8/16/10 It's Easier to Invite Everyone . . .

Larry David did an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" about the awkwardness of the invitation: Larry can't mention that he's invited to the Greene's dinner party (but of course he does mention it to Marty, who is NOT invited . . . and then Larry gets angry because he's not invited to dinner at a restaurant . . . and his friends are dining on him because he was the one that got Ted Danson the gift certificate, but Larry's friends claim that they didn't invite him because then he would be giving the gift to himself) and this theme manifested itself right in front of me the other night in New Brunswick . . . we were out with a large group of people and one couple revealed they had gotten an invite to someone's beach house (a drunken and late invite, but an invite nonetheless) but no one else had gotten an invite recently-- although one person had gotten the broad promise of a later invite a month before . . . so this was funny enough to discuss, but technology has taken awkwardness to a new and more immediate level . . . everyone started bombarding the non-inviter with texts about the lack of an invitation, until she finally confessed (in text format) that she was a "bad inviter," which leads to my motto of the day:  it's easier to invite everyone, as most people won't be able to make it anyway.

8/15/10 Some Movies Are 3-D!

I took the kids to the 11:05 matinee the other day and it cost twenty seven dollars, which I thought was outrageous, until they handed me a pair of 3-D glasses, and then I realized that Toy Story 3 would be my first 3-D movie (besides some movie with fish I saw many years ago at an Imax theater) and it went beyond all expectations . . . the movie was fantastic, especially the set-up at the Sunnyside Daycare Center (Lotso the Bear is a tough motherfucker and his story, told by Chuckles, a creepy sad clown toy, is priceless) and the metro-sexual Ken jokes are worth the price of admission alone: ten disembodied potato-head eyes out of ten.

Bonus Post at Gheorghe: The Blog

I found an excellent essay about world class athletes at kottke.org and I wrote a response over at G:TB . . . if you have time to read several sentences today, check it out (sorry-- that's a lot of hyper-links).

Sadly, The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

We went camping with old friends in Vermont last weekend and it was like driving to Fall . . . it was COLD at night (low forties) so we were able to do a serious hike with the boys and after some early complaints they performed admirably-- it was the first time we really climbed a steep rocky trail to a peak with them . . . the little summit is called Cantilever Rock and you can scramble out onto a giant boulder with a huge skinny shaft of rock balanced overhead and see all the way to Lake Champlain . . . but just because the boys hiked to the top doesn't mean that they are now self-sufficient or any more mature than they were before the hike; for example, later in the afternoon, I had to stop Alex from barrel rolling down a steep rocky, tree filled hill to what would have been certain death, and while I was mumbling under my breath about his insane choices, my friend Rob said to me, "Just like you at Forsgate," and I had a quick flashback to our last high school golf match,  and what I thought was a fitting farewell: I barrel rolled off the monumental sand trap/cliff on the ninth hole (facing the clubhouse of course) and plunged, whirling away, and several of my team mates followed me (I think, or maybe they didn't) and my coach was very, very angry and embarrassed and I am sure he was mumbling the same sort of things I was mumbling and that was when I was SEVENTEEN years old so it's just going to get worse and I've got to prepare for it.

8/13/10 An Invention Just for You . . . You're Welcome!

I don't do charity work for the homeless or volunteer at the local food pantry, but I do consider this blog and the ideas that I give the on-line universe as my form of community service-- and if you doubt me, let me remind you about conceptual gifts such as this, this, and this-- and so I just came up with a new one, and more power to the person who reads this and follows through with the patenting and production of this invention I am donating to the internet . . . all I want is the ability to say, "You saw it here first" . . . so here it is:  everyone hates putting away laundry-- it's difficult enough to DO the laundry and once you're done there's never any motivation and energy left to actually put away the clothes-- so you make a dresser with laundry basket style drawers, so once you've put your laundry into the baskets, you're done-- you just slide the laundry basket drawers into your dresser and go back to your busy life and once you've worn all the clothes in your drawer, then slide it out, fill it with clothes from the hamper and do some laundry . . . knowing that when it's complete you can put it in your basket and effortlessly slip the drawer shaped basket right into your dresser.

8/12/10 A Comedic Epiphany

This sounds impossible, but my son Ian figured out how to "fart with his neck," as he so eloquently phrased it . . . he raises his shoulders to his ears and creates the suction that is normally generated with the classic "cupped hand under the armpit" fart, but this way he can produce fart sounds when his hands are occupied (and he has found that this only works when the humidity level is over 75%).