Somewhere Between The Matrix and Inception I Learn How To Communicate With Women
Twelve years ago, my future wife and I went to the movies to see The Matrix, and during the film my future wife expressed her confusion with the plot, and so I whispered a long-winded explanation to her: beginning with Plato's cave, mentioning Tron and Lawnmower Man, citing William Gibson, and finally explaining how this ancient theme of living in a world of created shadows was being used by the Wachowski brothers . . . and I don't think this explanation helped her enjoy the film and, looking back, I'm sure she thought I was an annoying wind-bag, but she still married me, and--get this-- I have IMPROVED myself; last weekend we started watching Inception and because I had the flu, my wife had been minding the boys all day, so she was exhausted, and after about an hour of watching, she started falling asleep and she called the movie "stupid" and "full of itself," and I had been paying very close attention and I could have explained exactly what was happening, but instead of attempting a long-winded explanation, I AGREED with her, because she was right-- the film is full of itself, and she just wanted some validation of her emotions-- and the next day, while our kids were at the movies with my parents-- she let me explain the plot to her and we sat down and watched the rest of the movie together and had a great discussion about it afterward . . . and so, slowly but surely, I am learning how to communicate with women.
My Very Own Original Thoughts on Inception (I Think)
There is nothing new I can say about the plot of Inception that isn't said here or here, but I do have a few tangentially related points that I'm pretty sure originate from my own consciousness . . . although I can't be completely sure . . .
1) In both of his 2010 films, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a role where he is married to an insane woman who detaches herself emotionally from her children . . . I think his agent should recommend a romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston, not only to lighten things up a bit but also to prevent him from being type-cast as a guy who's always married to a deranged child neglecting filicidal woman;
2) Like Memento, Nolan's other mind-bending film, Inception is a far better idea than movie-- it's more fun to reflect on it than it is to actually watch it . . . and for pacing and action in this genre, I prefer The Matrix, and for shared dreams, I prefer Dark City;
3) None of the aforementioned movies is as good as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the reason is this: if you are going to be trapped in someone's mind, it's far more entertaining to dash about with Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey than to knock around with Leonardo DiCaprio and his somber crew.
Bonus: I Write Something Serious . . . Blechh.
I spent yesterday venting my anger towards our Governor by writing this editorial about charter schools-- I'm sending it to our congressmen and the Home News, but I suppose it's just as easy to post it on the internet and see who stumbles on it; tomorrow I will return to my usual stupidity (and there is a petition to sign with the letter, if you want to get involved).
My Public Service For The Month
From time to time, I like to ask my students general knowledge questions, both to get an idea of what they know and to make them more "culturally literate," and so last week I asked them to estimate the population of the United States and while a few students were fairly accurate (and some had heard the census results on the news) the range of guesses was rather astounding; it went from 600,00 to 300 billion, and there was even a teacher who guessed way over the top (9 billion) . . . and so in a self-less and truly philanthropic effort to promote number sense-- an effort that should warrant some sort of award or at least coupons for free meals in the Prytaneum-- I have filched the graphics from Greg Mankiw's Blog-- he's an economics professor at Harvard-- and they illustrate, in terms of 100$ bills, what a million dollars, a billion dollars and a trillion dollars (note the little dude on the left to get the scale) look like; you can read his whole post on this here.
The Professor and the Madman Lives Up to Its Subtitle
The subtitle of Simon Winchester's book The Professor and the Madman is "A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary," and it comes through brilliantly on all accounts; there is a mysterious murder in the "louche and notoriously crime-ridden" London neighborhood of Lambeth Marsh; there is a detailed account of American military surgeon Dr. Minor, who-- despite his paranoid fantasies of Irishmen and pygmies living beneath his floorboards, depraved folk waiting until dark to come out and commit lewd and indecent acts on him-- manages to be the most significant contributor to the OED; and, as any book that is about making the OED should, it has some really hard vocabulary words, here are a few that I had to look up: louche, tocsin, breveted, and (warning! spoiler!) autopeotomy.
Test Your Chronological Acumen
This YouTube clip (thanks Adam) contains fairly ancient Super 8mm footage of the high school where I work . . . and the question is this: using only hairstyles, cars, and clothing . . . what year was it shot?
Roger Ebert Screws Up (And I Catch Him!)
My wife and I watched another art documentary (and this one, though very well done, isn't as gripping as Exit Through The Gift Shop . . . Catherine feel asleep for a portion) but The Art of the Steal certainly documents a complex story in a fairly comprehensive-- albeit one-sided-- way; Albert C. Barnes amassed an incredible collection of post-impressionistic art (valued at 25 billion) and created a trust and and what seemed to be an iron-clad will with the purpose of keeping these paintings in the art school he created in Merion, Pa-- outside the hands of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the art establishment that he despised-- and the film documents the political machinations that will finally lead to the art being moved to a new building in downtown Philadelphia . . . from the perspective of the Barnes Foundation it is a sad story, but here is a alternate view to the one the documentary presents . . . and though the film is pretty complex, I was able to make it through the entire thing, unlike Roger Ebert, who either fell asleep or didn't finish watching: he claims in his review that the paintings are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, although they are never going to end up there . . . and as of this moment they are still in Merion and you can make an appointment and visit them so while I usually think Ebert is right on about movies, he botched this one (but I'll give him a break since he's certainly had his troubles for the last four years and it's impressive that he's still churning out the reviews).
True Grit
Though I wanted to see True Grit, the plan was to see The Fighter: I think the ladies wanted to watch Mark Wahlberg with his shirt off, but The Fighter was sold out, so we had to settle for True Grit, and Jeff Bridges did not take his shirt off, which was probably a good thing, because he appeared to be pasty and fat under his dirty long-johns, but he was an excellent Rooster Cogburn and Hailee Steinfeld played his vengeful fourteen year old sidekick Mattie Ross pitch perfectly and Matt Damon (who also did not take his shirt off, but did pull back his vest to reveal his Texas Ranger badge) was surprisingly droll as LaBouef and Barry Pepper (who reverse eponymously played Lucky Ned Pepper) and the rest of the bad guys looked as snaggle-toothed and depraved as they should have; the movie is faithful to plot, language, drama, and dry humor of the Portis novel and the images of the aged Mattie Ross are unforgettable . . . ten corn dodgers out of ten (my only complaint is that Mattie never said, "Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone," which is my favorite line from the book).
Super Sad True Love Story Is Not A Love Story
Gary Shteyngart's new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, presents itself as such, but, like the great film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it is actually not a love story at all, it is science fiction (if you use my definition) and though the romance between Lenny Abramov (another Russian Jew, but nearly as cool as Misha Vainberg) and Eunice Park fuels the plot, it also fuels Shteyngart's satirical view of the near future; Lenny is embarrassed that he is nearly forty and growing old, that he still likes books and has trouble with the credit rankings and "F*ckability" scores that everyone is receiving on their "äppäräti,"that he occasionally enjoys alcohol and carbs, and that he can't live up to his boss Joshie's dream of eternal youth, while Eunice-- the youngster-- has trouble "verballing" with Lennie and her parents and her sister, can't imagine a place for herself in a rapidly failing America, can't decipher an actual text-- she majored in Images at school and is effectively textually illiterate, though she can read to mine data-- and loves to shop at "AssLuxury," though she doesn't wear translucent "Onionskin" jeans . . . I give it eight credit poles out of ten.
Beans, Beans, They're Good For Your Heart . . .
Catherine made some delicious yellow lentils with sauteed onions and butter in the crock-pot a few days ago, and I took the remainder to work with me yesterday, but because of my lack of Tupperawareness, I packed far more than a single portion into my container, and I also had a sandwich (baked chicken and hummus, which is delicious, but hummus is also made from a legume . . . this will be significant later) so I decided to eat the lentils during my snack-time (around 9:15 AM) and I held up the medium sized Tupperware container-- which was filled to the brim with lentils-- and said to the new teacher, "There's no way I can eat this many lentils this early," but every spoonful was so smooth and buttery and delicious, and so fifteen minutes later the lentils were gone; I felt as if I had swallowed a medium sized tortoise, shell and all, but I had to go teach Henry IV, and I guess I didn't realize that lentils are in the bean family and have the same digestive effect, and it probably didn't help that later in the day I threw the chicken and hummus sandwich on top of this mound of beans, but luckily it wasn't bitterly cold outside and I was able to open my classroom windows, so no students suffered the consequences of my gluttony and I have learned a valuable lesson.
I Finally Impress My Son
This blog is usually about my social failures, awkward moments, and general nerdiness but-- although I know it's not as entertaining-- I would like to write about a moment of triumph, so please bear with me; we took our children to the H20 Waterpark in the Poconos over the break and one of the attractions is the Komodo Dragon, which is defined as "an indoor Flowrider for Riding Waves"; it's a plastic hill with water jetting across its surface and you can boogie board or surf on it while the people in line watch you wipe-out . . . the surfing is especially non-intuitive and difficult and of all the people we watched, no one was able to remain on the board (except the employee running the thing) and after my son Alex rode on the boogie board, I tried my hand at the surfboard and I was able to remain on it for quite a while-- perhaps because of years of skim boarding and snow boarding, although everything worked opposite as far as turning and balance-- and my generally grouchy six year old son, who is rarely moved by anything his parents know or do, said, "I was impressed Dad, you were the only one who didn't fall."
Do Me A Favor
I wouldn't mind if two particular possessions of mine were stolen: 1) my snowboard . . . which I got at a Burton factory sale for fifty dollars eight years ago; the board features now defunct strap-less bindings and I hate them because I never know if I'm completely locked in and sometimes I find out that I'm not locked in while I am hurtling headlong down an icy mountain 2) my 1993 Jeep Cherokee Sport, which features no A/C, no cup-holder, self-hiding seat belt buckles, a driver side door that does not open when the temperature drops below freezing, a ripe smell, several colonies of spiders, no driver side sun visor, a burned out differential which creates a lack of Quadra-Trac four wheel drive, and a foam ceiling that is peeling away in strips.
Here's Something Fun To Do If You Live In The Northeast
Unresolutions for 2011
I am proud to say that I successfully complied with my 2010 Resolution-- not once did I create an ersatz Yogi Berra quotation in 2010 . . . so I have kicked that habit; for 2011, I am going to pay homage to the great Geoff Dyer (who wrote the ultimate un-book, Out of Sheer Rage, which is ostensibly a biography of D.H. Lawrence, but actually a treatise on procrastination and motivation; he never actually writes the biography-- although it is found in the BIO section of the library) and instead of resolving to do things this year, I am resolving to not do things, and Geoff Dyer put this better than me in this passage-- you should read the whole thing-- but if you're lazy, he essentially boils it down to this aphorism: Not being interested in the theatre provides me with more happiness than all the things I am interested in put together . . . and so here is my list of things that I resolve to remain "not interested in" for the year of 2011:
1) The theater (expensive, time-consuming, and it's for old people);
2) Golf (ditto);
3) The NHL;
4) Reality TV (even Jersey Shore);
5) The phrases "It is what it is," and "You know what I mean";
6) Tron nostalgia;
7) Going to PTO meetings (thanks Catherine!);
8) Baking;
9) Organizing the crawl space (thanks Catherine!);
10) Oprah's Book Club.
1) The theater (expensive, time-consuming, and it's for old people);
2) Golf (ditto);
3) The NHL;
4) Reality TV (even Jersey Shore);
5) The phrases "It is what it is," and "You know what I mean";
6) Tron nostalgia;
7) Going to PTO meetings (thanks Catherine!);
8) Baking;
9) Organizing the crawl space (thanks Catherine!);
10) Oprah's Book Club.
These Might Be The Best Sentences of 2010
After seven minutes of half-assed deliberation, I am awarding The Best Sentences of 2010 to this sentence, this sentence, and this sentence . . . hope you enjoy them the second time around.
Some Advice For Giants Fans
It is the job of the athlete to forget what the fan will always remember . . . so maybe the Giants can forget the last two games and beat the Redskins next week and-- with help from Chicago and New Orleans-- make the play-offs, where the season begins anew . . . but as a fan, it's going to be tough to forget the past two seasons of Giants' football (a 41-9 elimination loss to the Panthers last year and this year's collapse against the Eagles and 45-17 loss to the Packers with everything on the line) and so my advice is this: to enjoy the rest of the season, invoke the spirit of John Starks, who never let the past rattle him, even after five awful shots, he chucked the rock at the hoop again-- with no memory of what came before; root like an athlete, not like a fan and perhaps the Giants will gain new life in the play-offs.
Whitney's Favorite Awkward Moment of Dave
Today we'll take a trip down memory lane and visit another Awkward Moment of Dave; this is Whitney's favorite and it took place in college . . . Whitney and I needed to volunteer for six hours of psychology testing in order to get credit for a Psych 102 class and it was coming down to the deadline so we signed up for what was available: an experiment for people who claimed to be "date anxious"; we convinced the professor that we were indeed "date anxious," which was probably true since neither of us really did much "dating," and as part of the experiment we actually went on "dates" with other "date anxious" folks and then filled out surveys about the experience; for our first "date" we picked up some underclassmen in Squirrel's little dirty car and our plan was to take them to the movies to see Harlem Nights-- which seemed to be an easy way to ensure that we wouldn't have to talk to the girls, which was important because we were both quite hungover from some serious partying the night before-- and it was extremely cold and the ground was covered with snow and ice, so we were all bundled up, Whitney driving, me sitting shotgun, the girls huddled in the back-- wondering about the two terse strangers that they were now at the mercy of-- and I must point out that sometime in the late night partying the night before, I had consumed a 7-11 microwave burrito, which I had doused with 7-11 chili and 7-11 jalapenos and 7-11 cheese, and I was having some stomach troubles and so I found it necessary to open my window and let some fresh air into the car, some very very cold fresh air, but also very very important fresh air, if this date was to continue without incident, but the girls in back took the brunt of the cold wind and yelled at me to shut the window, and Whitney turned and asked me what the hell I was doing and all I could think to say was: "Just wanted to check how cold it is out there."
The Tivo Parallax Effect (Do Jets Fans Love Braveheart?)
A few weeks ago I decided to join some Jets fans to watch the Jets/New England Monday night game, and you probably know how that turned out (it's interesting to listen to Jets fans while they watch a game, they have prodigious memories for past failure . . . someone actually made a reference to Richard Todd, and there is a fatalistic sense of futility which you don't find in Giants fans, because the Giants have managed to get to the big show often enough that their fans know it is always a possibility) and it was the first time I ever watched a game on Tivo delay-- I think it was fifteen minutes behind real time because of late arrivals to the party-- and some guys were checking their phones to find out the score in real time while I was trying to enjoy the delayed reality of Tivo Time and then a guy walked in late in the first quarter and made an ominous comment, like Cassandra might, and I urged my friend to fast-forward to real time, because-- unlike Slavoj Zizek-- I couldn't handle the parallax effect that the different perspectives were creating in my brain . . . but in the end it didn't matter because the game went horribly awry for the Jets and we ended up watching some Braveheart, which is a movie I've never seen (and it looked kind of cheesy but everyone urged me to see it . . . maybe Jets fans really like Braveheart).
Thierry Guetta Is Like Marla Olmstead (Except Not As Cute)
A Christmas Version of the Nipple
You may remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine sends out a Christmas card with a picture of herself (taken by Kramer) that inadvertently exposes her nipple, and now our life imitates Larry David's art: Catherine had some trouble getting jubilant shots of our kids for this year's Christmas card, so instead she sent out a more realistic card with our boys engaged in their typical mischief, but she did get one joyous shot in front of the tree, but when Shutterfly sent us the finished cards, we noticed that in that in the one photo full of holiday cheer, Alex is exposing a runny booger . . . it's tough to see on the computer, but like the nipple, it's pretty obvious when you look at the card.
Feliz Say What?
So I'm playing a game of darts at the Park Pub with my friend Mose on the Eve of Xmas Eve and the jukebox plays the song "Feliz Navidad," but it's not the typical Julio Feliciano version, and when the singer sings the eponymous opening I distinctly hear him say "Feliz s*ck my c*ck," which totally throws off my throw and I turn to Mose and he's laughing and I say: "Did you just hear that?" and Mose confirms that he heard the same festive invitation to fellatio that I heard, but upon further investigation it might have been some weird acoustical anomaly-- that when this particular song is played on the jukebox and you're standing near the dart-board at the Park Pub and certain shows are on the television and the bar is packed to a certain density, then that's what you hear . . . or maybe it was an Eve of Xmas Eve Miracle . . . either way, I'm certainly glad Mose was there to corroborate the incident, because when we went and sat down with the rest of the group at the bar and asked them if they heard what we heard, they looked at us like we were crazy.
I Love/Hate The Goon Squad
Like Billy Pilgrim, the characters in Jennifer Egan's new novel A Visit From The Goon Squad have become unstuck in time . . . spastic in time, and like a Vonnegut novel, there are elements of post-modernism and sci-fi interwoven through the loosely connected (both in form and plot) tales of The Flaming Dildos and their associates; the book covers over forty years-- from the late 1970s into the near future-- and it covers this time-span in forms as various a story told in PowerPoint slides and an article written by one of the characters in the style of David Foster Wallace; the novel is rich and the though the plot is sometimes difficult to follow because of the form, the theme is apparent and powerful: time is a goon and it's coming for all of us, and, especially in the ever-changing styles and tempos of the music world, our inevitable decay will be shocking and painful, but maybe the wisdom we gain will make it all worth it: ten slide guitars out of ten.
Raise Your Hand If You've Done This
Occasionally, when I am waiting in line to pay for groceries, I start ogling the cleavage of the cover models of magazines such as Vogue and Cosmo, and often I forget that these are not real three-dimensional women, and crane my neck to try to see further down their skimpy blouses . . . only to realize that I am looking at a two-dimensional representation and that no matter how I tilt my head, I'm not going to see a nipple.
Bonus Picture! The Spooky Shack
A student showed me how to send a picture from my cell phone to the computer: here is the spooky shack.
A Bike In The Woods Is Scary
Yesterday I decided I would return to the strange little cabin I found in the woods because I wanted to snap some pictures-- and despite discussions of the Long Island serial killer in the English office at the end of the day, I steeled myself for my hike-- but when I got near the downed trees I saw a black bicycle parked against a tree, and like the sticks and stones in The Blair Witch Project, a black bicycle-- which isn't very scary on the street, in context, is a good deal scarier when it's standing against a leafless tree in the middle of the woods . . . but, with nerves of steel, I approached the bike, which was weathered and had a duct taped seat and some weird contraptions on it, and then walked past it and into the downed trees; I figured that the hobos had company, and that was why the bike was parked a bit outside their hidden dwelling, and so I shut off my iPod and crept closer, to the entrance-way of the fort, snapped some pictures of the house with my cell phone . . . and then I got out of there; I'm not sure if anyone was home or not and you're going to have to wait to see the pictures because I can't figure out how to connect my cell-phone to my computer to download them (and I have a new plan: I'm going to go there after the first snow and then I'll know if there's anyone inside because I'll see footprints) so this story is to be continued . . .
I Discover Something Strange
Two weeks ago I was taking a walk by the lake near my parents' house and the trail was blocked by some fallen trees, which I climbed over and then I had to traverse a little dirt hill over a log and duck my head under a branch and then I turned a corner and-- suddenly . . . almost magically-- I was inside a little fort of downed trees and there was a low slung house hidden in this fort, about two feet high with a shingled roof and steps down to a dug out door, probably four feet down into the earth, so if you were inside the house, the ceiling might have been at the height of a grown man, and there was a little basement style window set in the wood walls but no light was on (which I pointed out to my wife as proof that no one was home, but she countered with this statement: "It's not like the house has electricity!" and I must admit that she's right) and when I first saw the house I was listening to a creepy techno song by Daft Punk from the new Tron soundtrack and I didn't have the common sense to take off my headphones, and so I kept thinking someone was behind me and I left the fort fairly quickly and started to walk back to my car, but then I turned around and went back, I felt a weird and anxious need to check it out more, though it reminded me of the final scene of The Blair Witch Project (or a meth-lab or the Unabomber's cabin) and so walked back-- with my headphones still blasting-- and I took one more good look: there were several bicycles and an assortment of bike parts within the confines of the fort and a rusty boat hull attached to the roof with a bike lock and there was a padlock on the solid looking wood door; finally, I got out of there, but I still feel compelled to go back and check it out again so if I disappear without a trace, you know where to start the search.
I Retire From Professional Sports
I have always been a Giants fan, but after yesterday's epic fourth quarter meltdown (why did Matt Dodge punt it to DeSean Jackson?) I have decided to stop watching professional sports altogether, and only watch sports movies, where the team you are rooting for either wins the big game (Hoosiers, Invictus, and almost every other sports movie) or if they do lose the big game (Rocky and The Bad News Bears) then they learn a valuable lesson . . . but there's no way I can watch another event where the plot summary is this: a team led by a dog-torturer persists against all odds in the fourth quarter because of heroic play by the aforementioned dog-torturer . . . that's an absurdly unsatisfying twist with no clear theme, moral or lesson . . . and I hope it's not a resurrection of this Absurd Miracle, which was a harbinger of hard times ahead.
The Wit of the Staircase
Bill Bryson, in his new book At Home: A Short History of Private Life , gives several pages of startling statistics on the most dangerous place in the house (and the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States, behind car accidents but ahead of shark bites, flesh-eating viruses, and impalement) and if you guessed the kitchen or the bathroom, you are wrong . .. the most dangerous spot in your house is the stairs (and if you've seen the excellent documentary series The Staircase then you may have known this already) but I find this paradoxical because having stairs in your house is good for your heart and heart disease is the leading killer among men and women in the United States . . . so do you live in a ranch and miss out on the benefits of walking up and down stairs every day . . . or do you risk mishaps and live dangerously . . . I don't know the answer, but mainly what I wish is that we had an English word for this French phrase: 'esprit d'escalier, which generated the plot of a fantastic Seinfeld episode.
Greg Gillis is Girl Talk is Music
The greatest sequence in mash-up history begins at 1:24 in Girl Talk's rather profane song "Smash Your Head," when Biggie Smalls raps "Juicy" over Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," but that was only one moment (although all of Night Ripper is fantastic) and it seemed to me that this frantically looped and layered mash-up genre would be impossible to continue in an original, coherent, and listenable sense but Greg Gillis has done it again with his new album, "All Day," which is longer, more accessible, full of identifiable hooks and beats and lyrics and layers, amidst loads of clever and cleverly dirty hip-hop samples . . . and for a while I couldn't figure out what it all meant, all these samples twisted and distorted and smashed together in perfect rhythm and harmony, but on my tenth listen it hit me . . . Girl Talk means this: humans like music, lots of music, we remember it in pieces, we like it in fragments, and-- and this is in no way an insult-- maybe all the genres of popular music that we like-- from country, to hip-hop, to dance, to pop, to punk, to metal-- are more similar than we think.
Some Modicum Of Fame
So perhaps I had my fifteen minutes of fame last week; I was watching the Jets/New England game with some friends and I brought up the documentary American Teen and one of the guys said, "Oh yeah, I just read something about that," and then he thought for a moment and concluded, "on your blog," and I thought this was pretty cool, but not as cool as when a female co-worker, who is pretty hip and is my age-- so we're not talking about some young, naive student teacher here-- prefaced a story about her children with the phrase "I think this is sentence-worthy," which means that I think it's good enough to appear on your blog-- and the story certainly was sentence-worthy (it was about how her husband had to leave their four year old twins unattended in the audience of a soccer banquet while he spoke about his team, so he read them the riot act about being good, but when he looked out at them in the audience, they were touching tongues . . . not tongue kissing and not being terribly bad, but, nonetheless, sticking their tongues out-- ostensibly to measure them-- and touching them tongue-tip to tongue-tip, and apparently it's really hard to give a speech while watching your twin boys do this) but what I'm more interested in is the fact that when people speak to me now, they are trying to say something so entertaining that I feel compelled to use it on the blog, which is really nice because there are times when people bore me, so if there's some incentive to be more entertaining around me because of the modicum of fame that this blog creates, then I am all for it.
What Do George Washington and Cleopatra Have in Common?
In his new book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson points out that the paints that the colonial Americans used weren't muted as we would expect-- the time when George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were decorating Mount Vernon and Monticello coincided with the advent of bright pigments, and so to show off how rich you were (remembering that houses were lit with candles) you wanted walls as bright as possible-- and when Mount Vernon began restoring the interiors to their original colors, people were appalled, and Bryson says that now Washington and Jefferson "come across as having the decorative instincts of hippies," and this reminds me of when I was in Egypt, traveling down the Nile and touring the many ancient, eroded and sun-bleached temples covered in faded hieroglyphics, and then got to enter Nefertari's tomb in the Valley of the Queens and see the perfectly preserved hieroglyphics, which were brightly painted and detailed, and, of course, had the same revelation: the place looked like a hippy trip-out den, far from my dusty imaginings of ancient Egypt . . . will historians eventually have the same epiphany about fashions from the 1980's?
Considering We Don't Have Cable, Where Does He Get This Stuff?
On the car ride to Coco (the delicious Malaysian restaurant down Route 27), my six year old son Alex entertained us with an I Am Legend themed monologue: first he explained to his younger brother the devastation that nuclear bombs would cause if there was a war between spies, but that he had a plan: he would escape death by hiding under water and when he came out of the water there wouldn't be many animals left, except rats and he would have to eat the rats for a while, but luckily, but they would "evolve into other things that would get tastier and tastier."
Bonus: A Gheorghe-mas Song at G:TB
I received a request to write a "Gheorghe-mas Song" over at Gheorghe: The Blog (we do The 12 Days of Gheorghe-mas there every year) and this was an assignment I couldn't refuse, especially because I could express some of my Xmas Anger in the lyrics: so check it out, if you dare.
At Home With Bill Bryson . . . A Short History?
1) Thomas Jefferson bought 20,000 bottles of wine over one eight year period;
2) in the 1700's, English country clergymen subsidized by taxes and tithes had relatively few religious obligations-- and no one went to church-- and so in their spare time they produced an impressive array of intellectual accomplishments including my one of my favorite books-- The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy-- and other notable works such as An Essay on the Principle of Population (Thomas Malthus) and Bayes's Theorem (Thomas Bayes) until the The Church of England finally cracked down on them;
3) the ignorance of the female anatomy among medical men in Victorian England was so profound that Mary Toft, an illiterate rabbit breeder, convinced medical authorities that she was giving birth to live rabbits and perpetuated the hoax for a time before she admitted the fraud;
4) the baseball box score was invented by Henry Chadwick and "K" is short for "struck," which ends with a "K"
5) the treatment of working class children was abominably poor in nineteenth century England and this is exemplified by the fact that the founding of the Society of Preventing Cruelty to Animals preceded the founding of the parallel organization for children by sixty years;
6) in the 1790's it was all the rage to wear artificial moles, called mouches, and at the height of this mania, people's faces looked as if they were covered with flies, and in the 1780's it became "briefly fashionable to wear fake eyebrows made of mouse skin,"
7) I have pushed the boundaries of the sentence to its limit here, but the book is excellent, detailed, and long and deserves such a lengthy treatment . . . and in the end it reminds you that we live in wonderful times, as Bryson's main theme is that for most of history, the poor lived in horrible conditions with death looming around every corner of their dwellings, and the rich often lived absurdly, governed by bizarre styles, fashions, and social rules . . . and they didn't escape death, disease, unhygienic conditions, and general discomfort either . . . so-- if you can-- enjoy a hot shower and some clean water and a warm, lice free bed tonight with the knowledge that this wasn't always the case, but also knowing that all this convenience comes at a price-- it takes a citizen of Tanzania a year to produce the carbon emissions that the average American produces in twenty-eight hours.
Kids Misbehaving? F#$@ Santa Claus. Just Have Them Watch Shutter Island
Did I Ever Really See Dark City?
I watched Dark City on Blu-Ray the other night . . . possibly for the second time . . . it's a science-fiction film directed by Alex Proyas that is strangely similar to The Matrix (though it was released a year before in 1998) but more interesting than this comparison is the fact that I felt as if I was living parallel with the movie while watching it-- the movie begins with a naked man in a room (Rufus Sewell) with a murdered call-girl, and he has no memory of what happened to the girl or of the last three weeks of his life and he has only very dim memories of his past, and he slowly realizes-- as he makes his way through his very dark city, that aliens are manipulating not only his memories but the actual world he is living in; the movie is excellent and really looks spectacular on Blu-Ray, but I could only vaguely remember watching it in the past, and not when or where, and then Catherine came home and she couldn't remember watching it with me, and I rarely watch movies alone and it's not on my Netflix history nor have I rated it and there were only certain things that I remembered . . . like Shell Beach . . . and so I am wondering if I never really saw the movie at all, and if Kiefer Sutherland inserted it into my brain with one of his steam-punk memory injections, but now that I've got it recorded here on this blog, I'll be able to refer back to this post and foil the aliens that have been manipulating my brain (and there are the usual internet theories about how The Matrix stole from Dark City, but I find this highly unlikely, since the script for The Matrix was finished when they were shooting Dark City, and as one nut pointed out, all these ideas originated with the movie Tron . . . but at that point you might as well say that all of these type films-- ranging from The Game and The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense all the way to Bladerunner-- are an allegory for Plato's cave and forget who stole what from whom and just enjoy the special effects).
A Candid Answer To A Pressing Question
A lot of youngsters want to know what people did before the existence of the internet and cell-phones and Facebook and texting, and I'll tell you what we did: we lit things on fire.
I Am Tested On My Promised Yule-Tide Cheer
Soon after I promised my wife and students that I would exhibit more Christmas spirit, I was sorely tested on my pledge-- and I would like to think that I passed with flying colors: first, when I went to my parents to pick up my children, my mom roped me into setting up their new plastic tree . . . which I did with minimal grumbling (and without mention of the environmental hazards of PVC, dioxin, ethylene dichloride, vinyl chloride, and lead poisoning) but my mom did not like the new tree once it was erected, so I then disassembled the new tree, fit it back into the box, put the box in her car so she could return it, and lugged the old plastic tree up from the basement and assembled that one; second, after surviving that ordeal without a meltdown, I then returned home to find my wife struggling with a string of lights-- she had wound them around the porch and shrubs only to find that when she plugged them in, they did not all light, and I counseled her to simply buy some new lights and-- so I wouldn't lose my patience and melt down-- I used a scissors to remove the non-working strands and tossed them in the garbage, and then when the new string of lights my wife purchased did not all light, I removed each tiny bulb in the string until I hit upon the dead bulb and I replaced that one with a live bulb, fixing the entire string, and again, I did this with minimal grumbling so Santa Claus better bring me a lot of good loot this year because I deserve it.
This Is Why KitKat Is Spelled With A "K"
I was showing my son Ian how the name "KitKat" utilizes the double "K" sound when his older brother Alex reminded us that "Cat" is usually spelled with a "C" but in this instance, the candy-makers spelled it with a "K" to ensure that you knew you weren't "eating a dead chocolate-covered hairless cat."
Christmas Rant #2,894,987
Some of my students were appalled the other day when I revealed my Grinch-like attitude towards Christmas; I don't remember what set me off, but it always happens, the littlest reminder can send me on a long rant about wrapping paper and Christmas trees and the environment, about how Santa Claus has defeated Jesus and how awful music has defeated them both, about consumption, materialism, and the pressure to buy everyone some sort of unnecessary object, etcetera . . . and I'm not allowed to mention these feelings anywhere else-- I try to keep them from my kids and my wife will punch me in the face if I mention them to her and no one in the English office needs to hear these opinion again so I end up preaching to a captive audience . . . but my students have convinced me to have a better attitude and I even promised to help Catherine with the lights and I'm going to try to buy non-material gifts, although I did have a great idea for a personalized gift that doesn't waste any resources or cause any extra pollution: I present all of my loved ones with a personalized list of Dewey Decimal numbers that refer to books I think they would like to read . . . e.g. I might give myself Dewey Decimal number 813.54 21.
What Is The Opposite Of Nostalgia?
At times Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen seems staged, and it times it seems like Mean Girls, but eventually the film makes you remember just how dramatic high school really is-- the romance and sports and college application process and cliques-- and just how heavy the future and the past (i.e. parents) weigh on the American teen; perhaps the scenes that appear to be contrived are actually just awkward, painful, and melodramatic, and from the perspective of age, they feel too raw and ugly to be real . . . you'll have to watch it and judge for yourself, but beware of the feelings this movie will dredge up: nostalgia and it's ugly counterpart, regret.
The Carousel is a Merry-Go-Round
After watching the first season of Madmen, I made the claim that the scene when Don Draper renames the Kodak wheel slide projector the "carousel" is the greatest moment in TV history-- but I am prone to hyperbole-- so it was a pleasant surprise when my friend who called me "insane" when I originally made the claim, said that he recently heard Dennis Miller interview Jon Hamm, and Miller expressed the same sentiment about that carousel moment . . . but I think Dennis Miller is kind of annoying . . . so I'm changing my greatest moment in TV history to when the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia did a live performance of "The Nightman Cometh."
A Dismissal More Paradoxical Than Rhetorical
During a heated and chaotic debate in my English class, a student tried to introduce the results of a psychological study but she was rebuffed by this statement: "All psychologists are crazy!"
A Tutorial on How To Emulate David Foster Wallace
I have taken the first post of Sentence of Dave, "I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car," and followed the instructions I found on kottke.org called Growing Sentences with David Foster Wallace and here is the Wallacized result: "I am going shopping for a shiny new camera--a shiny new digital camera to replace our shiny old perfectly good digital camera-- because-- and this has happened before-- my lovely and beautiful spouse has a predilection for delicately balancing things between the roof and the billeted struts of our car, such as her keys, a hot cup of coffee, a memory stick full of MP3 and RTF files, and a Styrofoam container of left-over Chow Fun, and then blithely driving away, the aforementioned thing precariously perched until she changes her speed rapidly enough and the object's momentum pitches it forward or backward onto the pavement, where it is destroyed by other vehicles," and I recommend that you take one of your sentences and try it; you'd be surprised how easy it is to be obscure and convoluted (and some fans of this blog might say-- and they might be right-- that I have drifted in the direction of David Foster Wallace . . . my earlier posts were certainly more concise and perhaps this exercise will send me back on the path of precision and austerity . . . or perhaps not).
Ian Admits Defeat
My five year old son Ian has some cute verbal peccadilloes: he says "usually" instead of "actually" as a transition (e.g. usually, I have to pee right now . . . usually, I'll have a cookie instead of licorice) and when we play chess and he inevitably starts to lose badly-- he's great at setting up the pieces and moving them correctly, but he gives away a lot of material in suicidal attacks-- then his eyes fill with tears and he says-- repeatedly-- "I'm done for, I'm done for," which makes me wonder if this is good for him mentally . . . but there's no way I'm going to let him win . . . I handicap him three or four strong pieces, but he still has no end game, so I tell him all the suffering and defeat will be worth it in the end, because, maybe, someday (like my friend Rob) he'll be President of the Chess Club (see the image above for the kind of babes you can pull as a high-ranking chess club official).
In Retrospect, This Will Be The Moment When We Lost Control of Them
My son Alex was eating at his usual lethargic pace-- everyone was long finished with dinner and he had barely started-- so I said to his younger brother Ian, "Let's go see if we can stream The Life of Mammals on Netflix," which I hoped would motivate Alex to finish his dinner, but instead he went into hysterics and Ian, feeling bad for his brother, whispered to him that he was going to stall the video by going to the bathroom for a really long time (Catherine overheard this plan and told me and we thought it was cute that he was actually doing something to help his older brother) but after Ian got out of the bathroom Alex still wasn't done with dinner and Ian was ready to watch the video but he couldn't find the piece of Halloween candy that he had selected so he coerced me into helping him look for it and I couldn't find it either, which was ridiculous, because he was just holding it and I said to him "You're driving me crazy! Where did you put it?" and finally he found it under a pillow on our little saddle stool-- which is a really weird place to leave your candy-- and it wasn't until later (with help from my wife) that I realized that this ruse, the candy-losing ruse, was also part of his stalling plan, but Ian was such a good actor that I didn't realize that I was actually falling for his plan . . . and the next morning when I asked him about it, he confessed that it was all a ruse (although he did not use the word ruse) and I am sure that when we look back, this will be the moment that we lost control.
Pain Free? Ha!
If you are annoyed that I my last few posts have been reviews of movies and books and not the usual displays of my stupidity, I am sorry, but I haven't been on my normal peregrinations because I pulled my soleus muscle with ten minutes left of my last adult league soccer game-- this is after surviving two and a half months of coaching two teams, playing pick-up on Sundays, and playing Wednesday nights in the adult league-- so it's rather annoying that this little muscle chose the waning minutes of the semi-finals in which to snap (we were tied 1-1 when my soleus went "pop," but minutes before our youngest player pulled his hamstring and our star had to leave at the half to pick up his wife at the airport, so I was covering two for two slower and older players in the center, and after I went down the opposing team scored two goals and knocked us out . . . there's always next year, if this thing ever heals) and everyone has a different opinion on how to fix this muscle-- stretch it, don't stretch it, use it, lie in bed for a week, massage, don't touch it, be careful of your Achilles tendon, if your Achilles is taut don't worry about it-- but I'm trying some exercises from a book a friend recommended, called Pain Free by Pete Egoscu, but the weird thing is that I ordered the book before I got injured, simply because of my friend's description-- the stretches and exercises in it sounded helpful-- and the book arrived the day before my play-off game . . . like a postal premonition . . . very creepy . . . so I will be keeping a close on other omens and harbingers that appear in my mail.
Tarsem Singh's The Fall: Keeping It Real
Tarsem Singh's visually rich movie The Fall is The Princess Bride on acid . . . on acid, steroids, meta-amphetamines, crack, psilocybin, and-- most significantly-- morphine; it is morphine that fuels the double plot of this frame tale, set in the 1920's in a hospital where a depressed, desperate, and seriously injured stunt-man tells fantastic stories to a little girl in order to persuade her to steal morphine pills for him . . . something else the movie has in common with The Princess Bride is that it uses no digital effects to produce its wonders: Singh traveled the world (the film is shot in 28 different countries) to find the exotica in the film: the intricate forts and castles, the sweeping deserts, the scenic islands and floating palaces, the labyrinthine villages, barren mountains, and verdant jungles are all real . . . you can look them up on Orbitz and go visit them; despite all this spectacular imagery, the story isn't as touching or enthralling as that of The Princess Bride, but the movie is worth watching simply for the images . . . I give it nine swimming elephants out of a possible ten.
Ghetto Kite
Sometimes you need to step back and think about what things look like from the outside; last week my son Alex woke up with a mission: to build a kite from scratch using a "Harry Potter" plastic bag as the body; he used a toilet paper roll and some cardboard discs he cut from a pizza box as the spool, wound it with twine, built a frame with sticks from the backyard and, as luck would have it, the next afternoon was a blustery one, so we went to the park-- my son Ian with his store bought fish kite and my son Alex with his home-made plastic bag kite-- but Alex's sticks immediately blew off the "body" of his kite and he was left pulling a black plastic bag on a string (he could get it five feet off the ground if he ran fast enough) while Ian was having a blast swerving and diving his fish kite in the wind . . . and when I took a moment to assess the scene, I realized we looked like a family that could only afford one kite, so that the pariah of the family had to fly a ghetto kite with a toilet paper spool, but the funny thing was, Alex was quite content dragging around his ghetto kite because he made it himself.
These Are A Few Of William Gibson's Favorite Things
Science fiction writer William Gibson once said, "The future is already here-- it's just unevenly distributed," and the characters in his new novel zero history definitely live in the positive agglomeration of the futuristic present . . . rhenium darts, penguin shaped floating surveillance drones, and ekranoplans are all de rigueur in this universe; in fact, things, especially fashionable things linked to the military, play a more important role than people in the book, which makes the novel hard to follow . . . the people are bystanders to the fashion, technology, intrigue, and marketing that surrounds them . . . and, appropriately, people in the book are constantly "Googling" things because they are beyond their ken, and they are worried that their knowledge of these secret, obscure, often technological things might be ersatz, and meanwhile, in my less futuristic present, I was Googling things in the book as well, to see if they were real or not: I'm glad I finished the book, I've read everything William Gibson has written and I don't want to stop now, but this is the weakest effort in the "present-future" trilogy (the other two are Pattern Recognition and Spook Country).
What Is the Plural of Barf?
Get Him to the Greek is the first movie I watched on my new Blu-Ray player, and it's worth watching the first half in beautiful Blu-Ray clarity, as Jonah Hill does a fantastic job portraying a regular guy who has partied beyond his means; he looks and acts the part of a hungover, sleep-deprived man perfectly-- and this is because of his assignment: a very funny Sean Combs has given Hill the responsibility of getting rock star Aldous Snow (from Forgetting Sarah Marshall) to a concert in Los Angeles-- and despite multiple barfings, Hill accomplishes this, and then the movie goes seriously downhill . . . it's like director Nicholas Stoller forgets what kind of movie this is and decides to suddenly make Aldous Snow into a Character in a Film about Conflict and Relationships and Emotion, even though all I wanted to see was more high-definition yakking: six Jeffreys out of a possible ten.
Two Trippy Kids Movies (With No Singing!)
I give my kid-friendly thumbs up to both Ponyo and Secret of Kells-- they are animated in the old-school style and contain no musical numbers; Ponyo is the usual from Hayao Miyakzaki . . . a trippy story about an adventurous boy who falls in love with a gold-fish princess, with environmental overtones, and watching The Secret of Kells-- an Irish/French/Belgian collaboration-- is like walking through a medieval illuminated manuscript (the animation looks like the The Book of Kells) and the mood is equally as trippy as Ponyo and there is an equally adventurous orphan boy who ventures outside the walls of his monastery home to collect ink-berries for a George Carlin-esque monk who is trying to illuminate the most beautiful manuscript ever made, but outside the walls of the monastery lie pagan gods and Vikings, and both are equally scary . . . the Vikings are something out of Pink Floyd's The Wall and his battle against the dark pagan god Crom Cruach is spooky and epic; I enjoyed both of these as much as my children and you've got to see The Secret of Kells on Blu-Ray, the detail in the animation is fantastic (I think I am becoming a Blu-Ray snob).
Go Ahead and Squash It
One of my students confessed to having killed a praying mantis when she was young-- and she referred to this bug-slaughter as "committing a felony"-- and I can remember hearing the same thing when I was a kid: that it is against the law to kill a praying mantis, but according to the myth-busting website snopes.com, this is an urban legend . . . so if one of those large green alien-headed critters surprises you while you're on the john and you smash it with a magazine, you don't have to chop the body into little pieces and sneak it down to the Pine Barrens for a a clandestine burial.
Emo Can Be Funny
A student told me this joke last week:
"How many emo kids does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Who cares, let them cry in the dark,"
and I laughed, but I'm still not sure what exactly defines "emo," and if you ask, you get answers like this Wikipedia article: i.e. rambling, imprecise, and always mentioning the band Dashboard Confessional and the sub-genre "screamo" . . . but I suppose this is excellent for jokes, because if you can't define "emo," then it is fair game to make fun of it and use it as the butt of a joke because no one will claim to be offended by the term-- but if anyone has a concise definition, please share.
My Son Alex Explains His Consciousness
My six year old son Alex called me "Mave" the other day-- Mave is a girl in his class that also played on our soccer team-- and then explained his error in a Joycean monologue: "I have all these names smooshed together up there . . . kids in my class and kids at school and kids from soccer all up front, and you and mom in the back, and whichever one is next just spills out."
Graphs, Maps, and Trees! Oh My!
Franco Moretti's book Graphs, Maps, and Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History takes a novel approach to literary criticism: instead of analyzing individual novels, he looks at genres as a whole and uses charts and graphs like these to illustrate his points . . . one of his more interesting charts show the development of clues in detective fiction and how this trait was revolutionary and evolutionary in its birth, growth, competition, and survival, but what interests me is another evolutionary metaphor he uses; he mentions Richard Dawkins' idea that "there are many ways of being alive, but many more ways of being dead" and Moretti shows this with detective fiction and those authors that couldn't figure out how to create and place "decodable" clues in their stories-- these stories became "extinct," and this brings me to my worries about this blog: there are more ways for a blog to die than there are for a blog to flourish, but perhaps if I pursue what Moretti calls the "third voice," that voice that is "intermediate and almost neutral in tone between character and narrator: the composed, slightly resigned voice of the well-socialized individual," then perhaps, against the better judgment of the Narrator, who often wonders what comprises the actual aim of his writing, but wishes to remain artistically and intellectually active, and wishes to fend off early-onset Alzheimer's, boredom, ennui and malaise, and so continues this semi-literary foray in the backwaters of the internet, come hell or high water, critical commentary, and even-- worst of all-- total silence, then perhaps the Narrator will be able to forge ahead into unknown realms, one sentence at a time.
Diane Ravitch Speaks About Education
This Diane Ravitch lecture is rather long and dry (like Diane Ravitch's excellent and comprehensive book, The Life and Death of the Great American School System, which I summarize here) but she summarily refutes the claims of Governor Christie's favorite documentary, Waiting for Superman, and she exposes some of the myths behind data based teacher evaluations, charter schools, No Child Left Behind, unions, market-driven school reform, and tenure . . . I highly recommend the book, but if you don't care enough about our nation's educational system to read an entire book-- which I completely understand, because it's almost Black Friday and you probably need to start reading the circulars-- then you can use this clip (she starts speaking ten minutes in) as a guide, albeit an ersatz one.
I Act In The Same Manner As My Six Year Old Son
I recently reported how my fanged son (he lost his two front teeth) gets distracted any time he sees a reflective surface because he is fascinated with his own image, and now I must inform you that I am equally narcissistic: mysteriously, we found Webcams in our classrooms last week, and once the neighboring teacher showed me how to use mine, I became obsessed with it: I used it to check my nose for boogers during class (always a concern of educators) and I used it to create "infinity" by pointing it at the monitor and then placed parts of my fingers and face in the infinite regression of screens and then, once the kids left, I took out my guitar, strapped it on, and pointed the camera in such a way that I could see my hands and my face, and then played for while mesmerized by how my hands moved on the guitar's neck and how my facial expressions corresponded to what I was playing.
Gran Torino: This Is How The Engine Runs
The characters in Clint Eastwood's film Gran Torino are unrealistic caricatures-- Walt's grand-kids are overly obnoxious, his children are calloused and cold, the gangsters are insensibly cruel, and his neighbors are extraordinarily foreign-- and while I questioned the realism at times during the movie, I now realize the exaggerated characterization is intentional: these people make you just as angry as Walt, which is the purpose of the film, because then you start to feel like Clint Eastwood and want to be tough like Clint Eastwood, because there's no other way to be in a world that is so hard and mean . . . and the movie moves like clockwork, or more like a train-wreck, there's no stopping or pausing, but upon reflection, when it's over, and you hear Clint Eastwood's voice singing the final song, and you remember that Clint Eastwood is 81 years old and has been acting, directing, composing, and producing film for more years than most of us have been alive, and you start to wonder: is Clint Eastwood really that tough? . . . can he really use tools? . . . can he actually fix a sink? . . . can he stare down gangsters a quarter his age? . . . and you realize that though the answer is probably "no" to all of these, it doesn't matter because he looks the part (especially on Blu-ray!) and so I give this film nine push lawn-mowers out of a possible ten.
I See The Future and It Is Yellow
Ian had a couple of night-time peeing accidents just before our trip to Washington D.C.-- he is a very sound sleeper-- and we were worried that after a long day of sight-seeing, he would be unable to wake up to urinate and thus cause major grief with the hotel staff, so we convinced him to wear a pull-up diaper at night . . . I told him that even some adults need to wear diapers and this logic worked like a charm . . . in fact he repeated this to Alex several times, "Even some grown-ups wear diapers!" and he put his diaper on without resistance or shame . . . and this worries me: fifteen years in the future he'll be the one suggesting to his friends that they have a "Depends Party."
Sometimes It Is Good To Vent Your Anger
I skimmed this insane article and it seems that Play Doh really is non-toxic and edible (although there is a petroleum based lubricant in it . . . it could also serve as a laxative) and so I am wondering why Hasbro makes the Play Doh container more difficult to open than a bottle of Percocet; I have strong guitar playing fingers and the colorful plastic tops still cut a deep ravine into my calloused fingers . . . so how are my children ever supposed to be ever to take initiative and become sculptors if they can't open the containers? . . . and while I am on this theme: why did Didier Boursin write a book for children titled Origami Paper Airplanes which-- if you would like to comprehend the instructions and actually complete one of the airplanes-- requires that you have a PhD in geometry and an extensive technical vocabulary (including the understanding of such terms as "mountain fold" and "water-bomb base" and "pleat fold") when he knew it was going to be placed in a elementary school library? . . . I think it might be easier to let my kids play with matches.
Another Awkward Moment in A Long Line of Them
As a teacher, you hope that you are forewarned certain things about your students, or else incidents like this and this are going to happen; one of the things that requires a warning is if your student has a twin . . . but I was not warned, and so when I saw one of my particularly clever students on the stairway, and was excited that she had coincidentally used the word "anthropomorphize" in her essay-- because this was a word that came up in class that day and she was the only student who knew what it meant-- I yelled this non sequitur to her: "Anthropomorphize! You used it in your essay! That's funny!" but I did not realize that this was NOT my student, but her twin (because, as smart as my student is, she did not warn me she has a twin, so I blame her for this awkward moment) and so her twin gave me a weird look of non-recognition-- a look that said, "Why are you yelling sesquipedalian words at me, creeper?" and then she gave me the cold shoulder and continued up the stairs . . . but we sorted it out later in the day and now I am on my guard for doppelgangers.
I Apologize to Educators Everywhere . . . But Honestly, What Do You Expect From A Greasetruck Song?
Apparently, biology teachers are showing my animated video "Amoeba Love" in class, thinking it's a cute way to illustrate binary fission, but-- unfortunately for them-- they get a "priceless" surprise at "00:27" . . . and though I know it's not people at my school showing this (Thank God) because we can't stream YouTube videos, I would still like to apologize to all the other educators who were surprised by the direction the song goes (warning! completely inoffensive cartoon depiction of genitalia!) but you have to understand the kind of mental place I was in when I animated this song: it was a snow day and both my children were napping and I had only two hours to record a song and animate the corresponding video and, to my chagrin, in the days previous I had come to the frank realization that I was not going to be a great animator, despite learning to use some pirated animation software, because I can't draw, and so I decided that the only subject I could animate was an amoeba . . . and now things have come to their logical end, my amoeba video has asexually reproduced its digital footprint on the internet and returned to visit me in a place I never expected: my profession . . . and in the end, I think any discomfort I have caused to our nation's biology teachers is probably outweighed by the joy I have given to countless students (and judging by the comments, this has happened more than once, and in more than one classroom . . . for more on this, visit Gheorghe: The Blog).
Bonus: Daryl Bem Owes My Fraternity A Citation!
If you are interested in scientific studies on clairvoyance and a stunning revelation on the true origins of the "genius" Daryl Bem's supposedly seminal paranormal experimentation, head over to my post at Gheorghe: The Blog.
We Convince Ourselves That We Are Improving
My adult league soccer team remained undefeated after a hard fought 1-1 tie on last Monday night, and we convinced ourselves that we were improving with every game, but we all know that this is a bald-faced lie and that any improvement in play pales in comparison to the looming unstoppable juggernaut of our collective ages . . . old age is advancing upon us like a glacier that may occasionally recede a foot or two, but then inexorably slides forward, cold and massive, destroying all in its path, tearing up trees, moving mountains, carving holes into the earth, pushing a moraine of boulders, dead trees and stone and grinding the green and youth from our bones; the team felt the glacier Wednesday night, when we finally lost our first game to a younger and faster team (but I was in Washington D.C., so there is a certain satisfaction, despite the loss, that I wasn't there and therefore, was not to blame . . . or, in another sense, was to blame since perhaps we needed me there to win . . . either way, I am still undefeated, even if the team is not).
It's Hard To Get Angry When I Would Do The Same Thing
My six-year-old son Alex recently lost his two front teeth and while this has caused him no problems at meal-time (he can still eat an apple) we have run into an unexpected distraction; unlike Count Dracula, our fanged child can see his reflection, and it amuses him so much that if he catches a glimpse of himself in anything reflective-- tinted glass on the Metro, the window across from him at the dinner table, a store mirror, the side of a polished car-- then he starts laughing demonically and making various vampirical faces until we drag him away.
Arcimboldo is the Winner!
During our whirlwind four day tour of Washington DC, our kids walked us into the ground: we visited the Baltimore Aquarium, The Lincoln Memorial, The Air-Space Museum, The Museum of the American Indian (best cafeteria on The Mall!), The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Smithsonian Castle, The Museum of Natural History, The National Geographic Museum, The National Zoo and the Washington National Cathedral, but our favorite thing might have been a serendipitously discovered exhibit of "surrealist" Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo's major works in the National Gallery; he was the official portraitist of Maximilian II, despite the fact that his portraits are totally bizarre amalgamations of objects piled together as visual puns . . . they are completely arresting, and our family favorite, Water, is both a Renaissance bestiary of fish and sea life, as well as a surreal collection of puns weirder than any Dali painting.
Comment Away . . . You Might Become Slightly Famous
Dueling Definitions
Kevin Kelly juxtaposes two definitions in his new book What Technology Wants; the first is Alan Kay's: "Technology is anything invented after you were born," and the second is Danny Hillis's: "Technology is something that doesn't quite work yet," and the first definition makes me think of that awesome yellow first down line that appears on the television screen during football games, and the second definition makes me think of FoxTrax, television's failed attempt to animate a glowing hockey puck.
A One Sentence Summary of the New Testament
Warning: This Post May Contain Toilet Humor
One of the original motifs of this blog is how much I cherish when my wife screws up, but this doesn't happen very often (thus the cherishing) and last week was a memorable one, so enjoy it: I was fast asleep when Catherine woke me up to tell me that Ian had left some bloody stool in the toilet and she got me out of bed to look at said stool and it did seem bloody, but red blood, which I knew wasn't internal bleeding, and after a quick internet search we determined he either had hemorrhoids or anal fissures, neither of which was life threatening, so I went back to sleep, but then Catherine woke me up again at 4:00 AM to tell me that it wasn't bloody stool at all, it was old vitamins leaking red dye-- she had cleaned the hall closet out earlier that day and had forgotten she tossed them into the toilet.
Almost Forgot To Post!
Invictus is Pretty Good . . . But It's No Ruck and Maul
Clint Eastwood's movie Invictus is just as much about rugby as it is about Nelson Mandela, and although the film doesn't try to explain the rules of the game or make a coherent narrative out of game play (which was smart . . . and if you watch highlights of the actual Springbok/All-Black Final, you'll see the film does a fantastic job of capturing the look and feel of rugby, including the "haka," New Zealand's pre-game Maori war dance) it is a sports movie first and foremost . . . about two underdogs, the inspirational Mandela, who survived a twenty seven year training camp breaking rocks on Robben Island, and the Springboks, a mainly white team (with a token black), upon who Mandela bestows the responsibility of bringing honor and reconciliation to South Africa . . . it is well filmed and well-acted but it definitely sticks to the sports genre: nearly every scene is inspirational in some way, and-- as I am a sucker for sports movies-- it had me near tears multiple times (even a scene of the team running in the early morning before the big game got me choked up . . . but show me a movie where some mom dies of cancer with her kids around her deathbed and it has no effect) but it still portrays the characters with a hagiographic sheen that will make the movie ultimately forgettable . . . unlike The Wrestler, a film that I will never forget . . . and all this rugby and film discussion reminds me of "Ruck and Maul," a rugby screen-play that Whitney and I wrote many years ago which was certainly closer in theme to The Wrestler than Invictus . . . perhaps now is the time to pull it back out and pitch it.
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