Highland Park's Charter School Controversy Goes National
Wednesday, The New York Times printed an article called "The Promise and Costs of Charters," which focuses on the Hebrew language charter school debate happening in my town, and the article is very similar to the editorial I wrote on the same subject, both in tone and logic, so I am assuming that this Peter Applebome character got all his ideas from me, but I'm not going to force him to confess, because I got all my ideas from Banksy (actually, I got a lot of my ideas from Diane Ravitch, but it sounds cooler to say I got all my ideas from Banksy).
American Dreaming
American Dreaming by The Density
I have often expressed my disdain for dreams and their significance, but when I opened my mind to their artistic and lyrical potential . . . and when I let some of my colleagues open their minds, I ended up with this song-- I promise you that there's something in here for everyone (and I 'd like to thank Shakespeare, Biggie Smalls, Rage Against the Machine, Martin Luther King, Steve Carrell, Bob Dylan, Tracy Morgan, and-- of course-- any of my colleagues who willingly lent their voice to this half-baked project).
I have often expressed my disdain for dreams and their significance, but when I opened my mind to their artistic and lyrical potential . . . and when I let some of my colleagues open their minds, I ended up with this song-- I promise you that there's something in here for everyone (and I 'd like to thank Shakespeare, Biggie Smalls, Rage Against the Machine, Martin Luther King, Steve Carrell, Bob Dylan, Tracy Morgan, and-- of course-- any of my colleagues who willingly lent their voice to this half-baked project).
The Town is Riddled With Holes
You may have looked at the title of this post and thought to yourself, That's a mixed metaphor and doesn't make much sense, and if you did think this, then do NOT watch the new Ben Affleck film The Town, because this movie is far stupider than my title . . . the film is about a crack team of bank robbers in Charlestown, a neighborhood in Boston, which the film claims is the bank robbery capitol of the universe, but apparently this is not true and there are lots of ominous helicopter shots of "the town," but it's not an ominous looking place-- lovely brick buildings and the picturesque Bunker Hill Monument-- and the movie does a piss-poor job characterizing the setting (despite the Boston accents) so I'm not sure what the purpose of those shots were for, except to spend money, and anyway, this crack team of bank robbers, who wear really cool and inventive masks-- even cooler masks than the gang in Point Break-- they decide to keep robbing banks despite the fact that the FBI is on to them and despite the fact that the "crazy one,"doesn't want to go back to jail, and then Ben Affleck decides he will also fall in love with the bank manager girl they abducted in the last robbery and that she won't recognize any of their voices and despite the fact that the FBI is watching both him and the bank manager girl, he thinks that they should run away together and this won't look suspicious at all, and for some reason we're supposed to sympathize with Ben Affleck and dislike Jon Hamm, though Jon Hamm is just doing his job, which is to catch armed robbers-- and Jon Hamm, who I love as Don Draper, should stick to that show, he's much better at keeping his mouth shut and being cryptic than actually playing an active role-- and these FBI people just can't seem to find any evidence to put away these guys that they know are the crack team of bank robbers and when they get to the bank manager girl and find out about the relationship, then they make her call Ben Affleck while they are listening in, but they all stand in the window with her while she makes the call, so Ben Affleck can see what's going on-- and I'm sure this is some breach of protocol (why does she have to make the call from her apartment anyway?) and in the big shoot out, where the guys impersonate cops but don't shave off their cool stubble and facial hair, people are spraying sub-machine gun fire everywhere, at close range, but oddly, only the fat minor character get shot and killed . . . and at this point I was still watching just to see how stupid it would get . . . and it gets even stupider, so after these guys finish robbing Fenway Park and the other minor character essentially sacrifices his life so the plot can move forward and then things work out pretty well and the bank manager girl is able to make an anonymous donation in the name of someone she didn't know without the inept FBI finding out and Ben Affleck grows more facial hair in the very end and this movie is monumentally cheesy and bad and I'm not sure how it got this good review or even a decent review because it was just awful.
Gut Reaction (Another Awkward Moment of Dave)
In no way do I mean to belittle this awful, tragic story, but when a colleague (young and female) pulled this headline up on the computer in the English office and asked me if had heard about it, I took a moment to read it, took another moment to comprehend it, and then my jaw literally dropped . . . the headline evoked such pathos in me, and-- perhaps because my emotions were so sincere and passionate . . . or perhaps because I imbibed a goodly amount of beer the night before-- I inadvertently let out a loud burp . . . and the timing of the burp seemed to indicate that this was my commentary on the story, and so my young, female colleague said, "That's your reaction to this? You burp in my face?" which was complete hyperbole because the burp was not "in her face," as I was a good five feet away from her face, but still, my reaction probably seemed gauche, but it was actually heartfelt (heartburnfelt?) and happened because the story was so moving, but next time I read about something awful, I will keep my mouth shut (although, as usual, the awkwardness was worth the sentence).
41 Candles
It's become de rigeur in my family to forget to wish me "Happy Birthday" on the morning of . . . as my son's birthday is the day before, so we usually combine celebrations . . . one year my wife called me at school, nearly crying because she forgot . . . one year we both forgot . . . and the year Alex was born there was obviously no remembering . . . but this year I tried to gently remind my wife . . . I asked her if she read my blog and she said yes, but obviously this wasn't enough to make her remember and then I asked her if I need to pick up fish for this, but that didn't do it either, but, finally, she remembered . . . it was so early in the morning that I don't remember exactly how, and so I didn't have to receive a tearful call at school, and then, oddly, when I got to school, ALL my students remembered my birthday, which I may have mentioned once when I was teaching them the "Birthday Problem," . . . someone made me cupcakes and everyone wished me "Happy Birthday," including a random student in the class next door . . . I poked my head through the hole in the folding wall to ask Kevin something and a girl said, "Happy Birthday," and I said, "Do I know you?" and when she was pressed on how she knew it was my birthday, she said, "I just heard"and I think the kids were so zealous in their wishes because they know I hate holidays, parties, and any break in the educational routine, but they also knew that I would be unable to refuse home-made cupcakes on my birthday and I would have to distribute them to the class, or I would look like a total grouch.
I'd Like To Have My Face Digitally Scrubbed
There is an obvious irony to The Social Network: the guy who created the modern template for friendship doesn't really have any friends, but if you want a film about the ramifications of on-line life, this movie comes up short; on the plus side, Jesse Eisenberg does a great job portraying a geeky nerd and Justin Timberlake does a great job portraying a cool nerd and Armie Hammer does a great job portraying the Winklevoss twins-- another actor had his face "digitally scrubbed" so that Hammer could be in two places at once-- and he steals the show . . . the twins are villains in the '80's style . . . reminiscent of Drago and The Shoot, with a dose of Yuppie blood, and the digital effect is so well-done that my wife and I had no idea they were played by the same actor while we were watching the film.
V For Paranoia
When I read Alan Moore's Watchmen, I thought to myself: I should write the script for a graphic novel, it would be awesome if someone turned my words into really cool pictures . . . but then I got a look at the actual script for Watchmen and thought better of this idea (here is the link to the script and though you have to download a PDF to see it, it is worth it to see the nearly insane attention to detail Moore takes for each frame of the graphic novel . . . you'd think someone with this kind of visual acuity would want to see the film version) and if you want more of Moore's insanity, read V for Vendetta, which isn't as dense as Watchmen, but has a clearer story-line, and if you want to get a feel for the tone of the book, read the introductions: the first is by David Lloyd, the illustrator, and he recounts an anecdote in a pub . . . he is sitting, drinking his pint, and the TV is blaring one insipid "cheeky and cheery" sit-com after another, and then a sports quiz program, but when the news comes on, the bartender shuts the TV off, and Lloyd finishes ominously: "V for Vendetta is for people who don't switch off the news," and then comes Moore's introduction, in which he predicts that Margaret Thatcher will create concentration camps for AIDS victims (it is 1988) and he describes vans with cameras on top, and police and their horses wearing black visors, and he says that England has turned "cold and mean-spirited," and he's getting his seven year old daughter out of there (although according to the internet, he's still living in Northern England, twenty three years later) and while I think the two of them are paranoid nut-bags, I also think you need people like this, predicting the worst, to remind us of what Arthur Koestler called the darkness at noon, so while I prefer to live blithely and unaware, someday Moore will be able to say: I told you so.
Treading Water in the Shallows
Tacos Trump Enchiladas
My wife suggested enchiladas for my birthday meal and I agreed heartily, but then she asked, "Do enchiladas count as tacos?" and I told her that if I was going to do things honestly, then they did not, so instead she made fish tacos (which I also love) and I ate five, which really ups my 2011 Taco Count, but now I'm in a weird world where I am eating more tacos just because I am counting how many tacos I am eating . . . and I know this applies to something statistical in the real world, but I'm too full to make the connection.
34 Years To Go! (For An Average American Male)
Today is my birthday,
me and the Seuss--
I'm now forty-one,
and still feeling loose,
but if life is a train,
I'm near the caboose.
Who Is The Biggest Loser?
At work, a number of my colleagues are participating in a Biggest Loser Diet Contest-- they all put money into a pot and the person that loses the most weight (determined by a percentage of the original starting weight) wins all the money-- and I'm not sure how I feel about this because some of my co-workers are starting to look really good . . . which is nice-- it's nice to be surrounded by slender, sexy, and attractive co-workers-- but there's part of me that hopes everyone comes out of this contest so ravenous that they eat until they are grossly overweight, because it's also nice to be surrounded by people fatter than you are . . . it's good for your self-esteem (in fact, women don't need to be anorexically skinny to be happy with their body, they just have to have a lower BMI than their mate) so I guess whichever way the scale tips, I'm a winner . . . or a loser, depending on how you look at it.
I'd Better Pace Myself
Governor Christie promises he will pay into the state pension fund if a number of his demands are met (that's how collective bargaining works now in New Jersey) and one of his prerequisites is to raise the retirement age for teachers to sixty-five . . . and while I realize that 65 might be a typical retirement age in the private sector, it is not what was promised if you dedicated your life to education-- when I started teaching, the retirement age for teachers was fifty-five: it was one of the alluring things about the career-- and although the age has been raised periodically for new hires, it hasn't changed if you were "grand-fathered in," but the new proposal states that anyone with less than 25 years teaching experience must work until they are 65 before they can receive their pension, and I understand that the Governor is trying to balance the budget, but I am not sure that he's thought about the ramifications of this proposal:
1) Though it won't be so bad for this generation of kids, the next generation of children will rarely have the joy of a new, young teacher, idealistic and fresh out of college . . . instead they will be taught by old, bitter and wilted hags and crones, eking out those last few years before retirement and the big sleep . . .
2) It will be extremely difficult for new teachers to get jobs, because the old teachers won't be able to retire . . . and teaching is a young person's job-- it requires an incredible amount of energy and endurance-- so health care and logistical costs will sky-rocket because old teachers will be taking loads of sick days and using far more health care than young teachers . . .
3) The only time students will get a new, fresh, young idealistic teacher is when their old teacher dies, and this will inevitably happen in front of students, and the psychic toll this exacts on our population-- the collective trauma our youth will share, that they all have seen a teacher fall over in the middle of class, croak out a last bit of wisdom, and then die in front of them-- will off-set any budgetary benefits from the proposal;
4) On the plus side, this makes the rest of my life very easy to figure out . . . I don't have to worry about thinking about early retirement . . . what I might do with myself, where I might want to live . . . I will be in the same spot for the next twenty-five years, doing the same job, watching my colleagues grow old and wrinkled, living in the same house in the same town . . . and enjoying a higher quality of living that the vast majority of the humans on the planet . . . and there's something comforting in that, as long as I pace myself.
1) Though it won't be so bad for this generation of kids, the next generation of children will rarely have the joy of a new, young teacher, idealistic and fresh out of college . . . instead they will be taught by old, bitter and wilted hags and crones, eking out those last few years before retirement and the big sleep . . .
2) It will be extremely difficult for new teachers to get jobs, because the old teachers won't be able to retire . . . and teaching is a young person's job-- it requires an incredible amount of energy and endurance-- so health care and logistical costs will sky-rocket because old teachers will be taking loads of sick days and using far more health care than young teachers . . .
3) The only time students will get a new, fresh, young idealistic teacher is when their old teacher dies, and this will inevitably happen in front of students, and the psychic toll this exacts on our population-- the collective trauma our youth will share, that they all have seen a teacher fall over in the middle of class, croak out a last bit of wisdom, and then die in front of them-- will off-set any budgetary benefits from the proposal;
4) On the plus side, this makes the rest of my life very easy to figure out . . . I don't have to worry about thinking about early retirement . . . what I might do with myself, where I might want to live . . . I will be in the same spot for the next twenty-five years, doing the same job, watching my colleagues grow old and wrinkled, living in the same house in the same town . . . and enjoying a higher quality of living that the vast majority of the humans on the planet . . . and there's something comforting in that, as long as I pace myself.
Costco on a Weekday! This Is How It Feels!
I went to Costco after school last week, and it was surprisingly satisfying . . . it wasn't crowded so I didn't have my usual panic attack (if I go with my wife on the weekend, I normally have to leave and go sit in the car) and instead I got this wonderfully primal feeling, a manly feeling, as I wandered through the cavernous space of goods, grabbing thing for my family, providing for my family . . . I felt like an ancient hunter/gatherer . . . hunting and gathering and occasionally stopping to eat a sample (the samples were crucial to this good feeling as they kept my blood sugar at a reasonable level) and when I got home with large packages of salmon and sausage and fruit and granola, I felt as if I had had wandered the earth and brought back a cornucopia for my family to eat and we would live to see another day, and possibly even another generation, as long as I could continue to forage with such a high rate of efficiency and variety.
Banksy and Alan Moore Should Hang Out
Banksy, the acclaimed and aggressively anonymous street artist, was invited to the Oscars for his debut film Exit Through The Gift Shop but the Academy Awards denied his request to show up in disguise, and so Banksy says he will not be attending, which is more in character for him since he "does not agree with the concept of award ceremonies," though he is "prepared to make an exception" for awards which he is nominated . . . and my suggestion is that instead of trying to crash the ceremony in some covertly overt way, instead Banksy should hang out with Alan Moore on Oscar night and not watch the Oscars and not watch Watchmen and not watch anything at all, but instead have a serious discussion on the gullibility and naivete of the sort of people who like to look at things, like art and movies and award ceremonies, and how instead of looking at things, these people should make things that other people like to look at, like stencils and comic books, unless these people are Thierry Guerra, who maybe shouldn't be making art at all-- because Guerra makes terribly, derivative and kitschy crap-- unless Guerra is a creation of Bansky, and then his art is doubly ironic, and therefore significant.
Fins Are For Fish
When I am swimming laps in the pool at the gym, I pace myself against the swimmer in the adjacent lane, and I am a decent swimmer so unless the person is excellent, I can usually keep up with them, but nothing is more annoying than struggling to catch up with a swimmer that appears to be swimming at a leisurely pace, only to find that that they are wearing fins . . . I feel like these people need to wear little flags on their goggles that protrude above the water and read "I Cheat," so that you know they are swimming faster than they normally can.
No One Understands My Brilliance
It is very frustrating when you have a sudden and fantastic synaptic burst that results in a brilliant idea, and it goes unappreciated; for example, my son Alex was given an assignment for "Hundred Day"-- a day that simultaneously celebrates the number one hundred and the one-hundredth day of school-- he was instructed to attach one hundred objects to a large sheet of oak-tag in some creative manner, and we were brainstorming ideas and I came up with this one: he could use green marker to make the oak tag into a dollar bill and then glue one hundred pennies around the border or in some other pattern on the bill . . . so the project would not only fulfill the "Hundred Day" requirements, but it would also be a model of how many pennies are in a dollar: it would be creative, aesthetic, and educational on several levels, but Alex spurned my idea and instead glued a bunch of colored beans into a stupid and ugly spiral pattern, and I will never forgive him for this.
The Bar is Raised at the 2011 Plunge
The bar was raised in numerous ways at this year's Sea Isle City Polar Plunge: 1) Due to more people on Friday night and more members of LeCompt present for the pre-plunge gig, Friday night partying was more intense and lasted far later into the night than last year-- we closed the Springfield Inn (and for the second time, I "sang" the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! count out of the bridge of "Born to Run," and I thought this was a very odd coincidence, since this happened in the summer as well, but Connell said he locked eyes with LeCompt and sent him a telepathic message to shove the microphone in my face again and, unbeknowst to me, Dom was behind me pointing at my head to help Connel's telepathy . . . and I was glad that on Saturday this was not repeated for the third time, because I do not want my claim to fame to be that I am the 1-2-3-4 guy) 2) due to warmish (though very windy) weather and an ocean temperature near forty degrees, one plunge into the sea was not enough to prove your manhood . . . I was lured back in by Ed, who went in once but didn't dive under and get his hair wet, and decided he had to do the full dunk (and I didn't realize he was very drunk and I didn't want to seem less macho than him) and I was glad I did a second plunge and was feeling quite tough, but then Mose outdid everyone with a third full submersion 3) pre-plunge inebriation was at a record level perhaps because we are veterans now so we weren't nervous about the effects of very cold water on the body but mainly due to the twenty-something crew and the twenty-something at heart couple (Mel and Ed) 4) the bar was raised on plunge style . . . Catherine and Lynn plunged with polar bear hats and one of the youngsters plunged in a bat girl costume and another dressed as The Joker 5) LeCompt's guest guitarist raised the bar on insanely great guitar shredding and the Springfield raised the bar on how crowded it could get . . . the town itself was packed because of the unseasonable weather, so lots of money for Autism 6) I raised the bar on humor so high that the hung-over people Saturday morning couldn't even process the brilliance of my joke and I had to repeat it when some fresh people showed up later in the day . . . I told everyone that I went to the registration tent and that we had the wrong weekend . . . this wasn't Polar Plunge Weekend, it was Bi-Polar Plunge Weekend, and that it was really crazy out there . . . and instead of laughing and complimenting my A-list material, everyone just stared at me blankly, but the second time around a few people chuckled . . . it's hard to explain, I guess it's one of those jokes where you had to be there, and even if you were there it wasn't very funny . . . so I guess you had to be me to appreciate it.
Clay Shirky, You Are My Nemesis!
I am reading War and Peace for the second time right now-- and that's not counting the time I read six hundred pages and and then quit, so really it's my third time reading the first half-- and it is even more absorbing and epic than ever (partly because of the new and excellent translation and partly because now I recognize all the insanely long Russian names) but according to internet theorist and "digital media scholar" Clay Shirky, this is not possible . . . because he infamously wrote in 2008: "No one reads War and Peace . . . it's too long, and not so interesting," and people have "increasingly decided that Tolstoy's sacred work isn't actually worth the time it takes to read it," and although I know that Shirky was probably grandstanding when he wrote that and isn't actually that stupid, I'm going to treat him literally and challenge him to a Tolstoy era duel . . . our weapons will be appropriate-- I will fight with a copy of War and Peace, which at 1200 pages is hefty enough to cave in the soft skull of an academic, and he can defend himself with his lap-top . . . so Clay Shirky, I will be waiting by the "smoker's gate" after school today and every day until you arrive, with my weapon in hand-- which I can also read while I wait (one of the benefits of a large book) . . . this library isn't big enough for the both of us.
I Can Neither Read Nor Cook
I learned something about couscous the other day: I was trying to time dinner so that everything was ready exactly when my wife and kids got back from swim lessons, and so I followed the instructions on the couscous box and prepped the mixture ahead of time so that it would be ready to cook at a moment's notice . . . I mixed the flavor packet and the couscous and 1 1/4 cups of water and left that on the stove while I chopped up stuff for salad and then when I went to boil the water, I found that the couscous had absorbed soaked it all up, though the stove wasn't on, and when Catherine got home I told her what I had discovered: that you need to cook couscous right away or it absorbs all the cold water, and she said, "It says to add the couscous to boiling water," and I disagreed, but we checked the box and she was right . . . I must have read the instructions wrong, which is weird because I'm an English teacher.
The Damned United is Damned Good
The movie The Damned United, which portrays Brian Clough-- England's most celebrated, enigmatic, abrasive and outspoken soccer coach-- is probably much more fun to watch as a clueless American . . . I have heard Clough's name mentioned by my British friends, but I didn't know his story: his great and bitter rivalry with Don Revie; his ups and downs with the brains of the operation, Peter Taylor; and the saga of his coaching career . . . the film also contains excellent archival soccer footage and lots of kitsch from the late sixties and seventies: cars, uniforms, wall-paper and style: ten footballers out of a perfect eleven.
I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery
Once again, I discovered my gym bag in the closet upside-down, and I was not the one who did this-- because I never put my gym-bag away, nor do I ever zip it shut-- but my wife often throws it into the closet and if it lands upside-down, then my gym equipment falls out of the bag: my goggles and socks and deodorant, etc.-- and though I noted this with frustration for years, it finally dawned on me . . . perhaps my wife was throwing the gym bag into the closet upside-down because she hated the fact that I always left it out, unzipped, with it's bowels exposed . . . because if she was just tossing it into the closet without any passive-aggressive anger, then 50% of the time it would land right-side up and 50% of the time it would land upside-down, but the gym bag ALWAYS seemed to land upside-down and, as I said, this had been happening for years so I had a decent sample size to evaluate, so I approached my wife about this and after a moment of denial she admitted that perhaps it did end up upside-down more than probability might dictate and that perhaps she was angry about my habit of leaving it out all the time, and so I told her I would try to put it away, and she promised not to throw it into the closet upside-down and the moral is: the key to a good marriage is clear communication and a grasp of basic probability.
I Am A Winner (And I Didn't Even Know It)
Each year San Jose State University sponsors the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where entrants are challenged to write the worst beginning sentence to a novel . . . and I usually get my Creative Writing students to enter and I send a sentence of two myself, and I last week Googled myself (you've got to Google yourself every once in a while, right?) and, although I was never informed of this great honor, I found one of my entries in the Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions but if you don't want to read through them all-- though I recommend this because they are funny-- I have copied it here for your convenience: As always, that morning he awoke to the melodious sound of a stream of water cascading into a still pool, punctuated by several ominous silences-- and he could judge, by the length of the silences and the volume of the cascade, just how much of his three-year-old son's urine he would have to wade through to get to the sink.
Louie
Though the Seinfeld gang led pathetic and shallow lives, they could always turn to each other for camaraderie-- even at the end in their jail cell-- and Larry David's misadventures in Curb Your Enthusiasm are even more awkward and painful, but at the end of the day, Larry still has Cheryl and Jeff by his side (until Cheryl leaves him) but in Louis C.K.'s hysterically funny and sincerely sad and depressing FX comedy Louie, Louie has no one except his young daughters-- and they tend to add to his anxiety rather than assuage it-- and aside from them, there are no other recurring characters that appear in every episode . . . Louie faces his depression alone, whether it be during the opening theme when he joylessly inhales a slice of pizza; or on stage doing his stand-up, which seems to be the only happy time in his life; or on his various adventures in New York . . . and he is doing the show on the cheap, so FX has given him carte blanche to do what he wants, so the show goes from clever to bawdy to surreal, often in one twenty minute episode: ten gallons of ice cream out of ten.
My Son Wisely Keeps His Mouth Shut
My six year old son Alex expressed his skepticism over the clairvoyance of Punxsutawny Phil, and he also expressed his disdain for his first grade classmates who believed in Phil's meteorological predictions, but he told me that he didn't say anything derogatory to those classmates about their irrational beliefs . . . and I told him that was a wise decision.
My Lips Save the Day . . . Now Who Will Be My Valentine?
Sunday morning, while playing indoor soccer, I hit a slick patch on the gym floor and my feet slid backwards and into the air, and it happened so quickly that I didn't have time to brace my fall, and so I fell on my lips, which really hurt . . . but good thing I have such juicy and luscious lips or I might have suffered a broken tooth.
My Use of Mathematics Makes A Young Lady Weep
In my composition class, one of the options for the classification and division essay is an assignment I stole from Bess Ward, a science professor at Princeton (I found this in a book by Natalie Angier called The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Basics of Science) and her idea is to take something you worry about and do a risk-assessment on it . . . for example, you eat two cans of tuna a week and you want to figure out if this is actually dangerous so you do the math-- you figure out how much mercury is in each can and you multiply this by what you eat and check the EPA web-site and see if you are consuming a dangerous amount of mercury . . . so first I ask the students to list specific things they worry about . . . and they list things such as: shark attack, tanning too much, not getting into college, dying alone, being eaten by spiders, smoking etc.-- and then I have them classify them into three categories-- Innocuous, Worth Consternation, and Red Alert!-- and then I have them switch so someone can constructively criticize their logic . . . and here I offer some statistics and mathematical strategies they can use when assessing the risk of their various worries . . . for instance, the odds of an American being killed by a shark is 1 in 264 million . . . so maybe you don't need to worry about that as much as drowning or being hit by lightning; so after the class has done this and I'm walking around inspecting lists, I notice a pair of worries that would be instructive for the class, so I ask the student if I can use her list (and this is a student who mentioned when we started this that it might bring up some serious emotions and anxieties) and she says sure (I've had this student in several classes) and so I proceed to explain to the class that the girl's fear of dying in a plane crash isn't statistically likely (over 10 million flights and no fatalities last year) but that her fear of "her college boyfriend leaving her" might be something worth worrying over because there was probably a far greater chance of a high school relationship disintegrating than the hull of a Boeing . . . and I guess my logic was so convincing that it upset her and she broke into tears and needed to take a walk to compose herself . . . but she was laughing about it by the end of class, and because of my previous track record of invented scenarios, the other students thought it was some kind of pre-arranged set-up . . . but I told them it was NOT and I will be more careful with my razor sharp logic in the future.
Zombies Vs. Men In Tights
Last weekend, I consumed 11 volumes of Walking Dead comic books (but now I am back on track with the new translation of War and Peace) and I am completely addicted . . .the plots are inventive, surprising, and very, very dark . . . and I was pleasantly surprised as to how appealing a zombie apocalypse is to think about: it's not like the typical superhero scenarios of good versus evil-- where you contemplate what sort of hero the world needs and what sort of actions that hero needs to implement; The Walking Dead forces you to ruminate on survival scenarios, about how far you would go to continue living and to protect your wife and kids-- it reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road in that sense, but the series is much more fun to read because of the pictures-- unlike Watchmen, they are easy to digest . . . sometimes my eyes would race through an entire page and then I would go back and read the text to see exactly what happened-- and each volume has a serialized pulp feel and ends with a cliffhanger or major event, without ever being especially campy or cheesy: ten lurkers out of ten.
Retreat!
Last Saturday, during the freezing rain storm, Alex and Ian built an elaborate fort in the living room: they covered a card table with an afghan, surrounded their make-shift tent with walls of large pillows, and made beds with camping pads and sleeping bags inside; their plan was to sleep in it Saturday night-- Alex even went so far as to bring clothing down for the next morning, so he wouldn't have to bother climbing the stairs-- and they stocked their fortress with books and flash-lights and other necessary toys so they could entertain themselves . . . I turned the downstairs bathroom light on so they could get their bearings in the dark, but it was a windy night, and twenty minutes after lights out, we heard footsteps on the stairs and Alex told us that both of them decided-- mutually-- that they would rather sleep upstairs, although neither mentioned why they retreated so rapidly and I didn't press them on it . . . perhaps they will be braver next time.
I Am Calling Out Alan Moore (Despite His Scary Beard)
I have mentioned that I can't really understand why fans of the graphic novel Watchmen despise Zach Snyder's movie version . . . I think it's a good rendition of that universe, and after seeing Snyder's previous movie, 300, which is an adaptation of the eponymous Frank Miller graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae, I find the film Watchmen even more impressive . . . because 300 is one of the cheesiest movies ever made (despite some cool battle gore and monstrous humanoid warriors) but I guess some people will never be happy with the film version of anything, such as the counter-cultural icon Alan Moore himself, who wrote Watchmen; Moore claims he has never watched any of the Hollywood film adaptations of his creations . . . this includes V for Vendetta and From Hell and Constantine and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I am calling bullshit on this . . . I think he has seen them and he's not admitting it . . . a man of his intellectual stature and creative powers would be overcome with curiosity about how his art withstood the transformation into film, and despite his hatred for Hollywood blockbusters and all the vapidness they represent, he must have seen a bit of at least one of these films . . . at least a trailer or a YouTube clip or something . . . so Alan Moore, confess, you were curious and you checked out one or more of these movies . . . it's okay, your fans will forgive you.
Plastic Bag Saves the Day!
I was suffering the embarrassment of an "invalid magnetic strip" at the grocery store-- for both my ATM card and my credit card-- and the cashier suggested I encase the card in a plastic bag and then slide it through the machine, and this trick worked . . . though when I asked why, she had no answer for me (better to ask this guy) and so the irony is that although I brought my own reusable cloth bags in order to save the environment (even though they may kill me because of the high lead content) it was a good thing that they had those environmentally awful plastic bags, or I wouldn't have been able to pay.
I Am Relieved
While walking to a friend's house I thought of a brilliant way to parody the hit Cee Lo Green song "F*ck You" . . . instead of the profane chorus, I would sing Frak You and make the lyrics all about Battlestar Galactica, and so I started composing lyrics as I walked-- "I see you flying round space with the girl I love and I'm like Frak You!" . . . and if you were a Cylon, you'd still be my one, I'd keep you on the ship . . ." -- but when I got to my friend's house, I quickly checked YouTube to make sure no one had thought of this idea, and someone had; the parody isn't great, but it's funny enough and it has muppets at Comic-Con, and to be honest, I was sort of relieved that the parody existed already, because it saved me a great deal of time and effort that I would have spent on something pretty absurd (although considering the song I did recently produce, it's not like I spent my time on something better).
I Share Two Dreams (But For For Good Reason!)
I usually stop listening when someone begins describing a dream, as descriptions of dreams are usually incoherent, fragmented and torturous-- unless, of course, the dream is mine-- so please bear with me, I promise it will be worth it: last week I had two vivid dreams: one where someone rudely stole my swimming lane at the gym and the other where I was rescuing drowning children in a flood at a playground . . . and both dreams had something in common besides water . . . in both, after the event happened, I went to the computer and started composing a sentence about the dream, but I was still dreaming this, so I was composing the sentence in a dream state, thinking what a great sentence it would be for the blog, when the event wasn't actually real, and both times, when I awoke, for a moment I thought I had a good idea for a sentence, but then I realized that it was only a dream . . . and though the dreams did provide fodder for this particular meta-sentence, they also may be telling me that I need to quit writing this blog and take up a more mindless hobby.
If You've Got The Winter Blues, Unbroken Is The Cure
When I am about to complain about things that really aren't serious enough to warrant complaint-- such as this ridiculously ugly winter-- certain stories prevent me from unnecessarily bitching, stories of people that have coped with far, far worse situations than I could ever imagine; inspirational tales of overcoming pain and anguish and hardship and suffering and loss . . . such as the story of Dieter Dengler's escape from a Laotian internment camp (retold by Werner Herzog in the movie Rescue Dawn) and the story of the American quadriplegic rugby team (documented in the film Murderball . . . if my students complain about an assignment, I put this movie in for a few minutes and then ask them if they actually have anything to complain about) and the story of Michael Oher (told by Michael Lewis in his book The Blind Side) and the story of Johan Otter and his daughter, Jenna, who survived a brutal attack by a grizzly bear and, though both were severely injured, they cheerfully tell the tale, glad they survived . . . and now I will add the Unbroken, the story of Louie Zamperini to this list; Zamperini was a wild Italian-American youth who channeled his frenetic energy into running, and who could have become the fastest miler in the world (and run a sub-four minute mile before Roger Bannister) if he didn't have to go to war and fight the Japanese . . . and his epic war story of ocean survival, torture, internment camp starvation and misery, and post-traumatic stress seems to be beyond what a human could actually endure . . . Laura Hillenbrand's book makes you root for the fire-bombing of Tokyo and the atomic bomb, for anything to end the torture that the POW's suffered at the hands of the Japanese (disturbing statistic: 1% of American POW's died in Nazi and Italian internment camps . . . 37% of American POW's died in Japanese camps) and Hillenbrand's writing is extensively researched and full of sensational details, yet she manages to give the narrative a novelistic feel-- you are with Louie every step of the way, during his bombing missions over the Pacific, when he and his raft-mates contemplate resorting to "the custom of the sea," his daily battles with The Bird, and his mental and spiritual battles with loss of dignity: ten shark livers out of a possible ten.
Can Someone Do A Study?
I know this is hard to measure statistically, but I think there has been a marked increase in people who take the wrong exit, realize this moments too late, stop on the exit ramp, and then go in reverse-- against traffic-- in an insane attempt to rectify their mistake, when they could simply drive a few hundred yards down the road and do a U-turn.
The Future of Anxiety?
In the '50's we worried about Communism and in the '60's we worried about Civil Rights and in the '70's it was the environment and in the '80's we worried about nuclear war (remember The Day After?) and in the '90's it was AIDS and in 2000 it was terrorism; these were all serious issues, but I hope in the coming decade we will choose something more entertaining to worry about . . . such as angry poltergeists or giant ants from the center of the earth or Ice 9 because, as George Lang says in Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner: "Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due."
Once Again, I Unleash My Super-Potent Rhetorical Forces
You may be aware of my super-potent rhetorical powers, and I have been forced to use them once again; this time I have unleashed a rhetorical tornado upon Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, in an attempt to get him to move the Super Bowl to Saturday (and also to make it a home game for the team with the best record) and you can read my extremely persuasive missive over at Gheorghe: The Blog-- and I guarantee you will be moved to my opinion on the matter.
Despite My Disappointment, Zack Snyder Probably Made a Good Decision (But What Do I Know?)
I Appreciate Those With A Sense of Style
I had to return a pair of jeans to Kohls on Saturday (I am less fat than my wife thought . . . a 36'' waist is too big) and and this errand made me remember why I generally dress like a hobo: buying a piece of clothing is insanely difficult . . . I wanted to exchange the jeans for a similar pair a size smaller, but they didn't have any that were exactly the same in the smaller size and because the price was different, I had to go to customer service, and she suggested I try the "kiosk" and order on-line-- but this was too difficult as you had to enter your address, credit, and shipping information by selecting letters with a key-pad (and I had already been three places to find some indoor soccer shoes, so I was shopped out) and so I finally elected to get store credit and try my luck on the racks, and I soon found myself lost in piles of 569's and 505's and 520's and 560's . . . and each number had different variations in style-- Loose Fit, Relaxed Fit, Slim Fit, Comfort Fit, Relaxed Straight Fit, Flamboyant Fit-- and also variations in color: distressed, faded, black, blue, blue with weird gold thread . . . which leads to billions of permutations of jeans . . . I tried on ONE of these billions of permutations and got fed up and left the store . . . and so now I see just how difficult it is to have style (unless you're rich and pay a stylist to pick out clothes for you, like Ralph does for Howard Stern) and although I will never have the patience to have style and I will continue to dress like a hobo rather than repeat shopping experiences like this . . . I now truly appreciate what it takes to dress well.
An Unexpected (And Possibly Rude) Request
While I was handing cash to the gas station attendant at Raceway, he made a strange request . . . he said, "Do you have any extra?" and I was confused-- it was very early in the morning-- until I saw that he was looking into the back of my Jeep, where I still had a bag of soccer balls from the fall season, and it took me a second to realize he was asking if I could spare a ball for him, because obviously I had too many balls for one man (despite the fact that a cheap soccer ball costs one quarter the price of a tank of gas) and once I understood his request, I answered: "They're not mine, they're the school's soccer balls," and this seemed to satisfy him . . . but I think this a breach of etiquette . . . when you are paying money for something, the person you are paying shouldn't ask you for some of your stuff, right?
Watchmen Makes You Earn It
I finally finished Watchmen, the heralded graphic novel that treats super-heroes as realistically as a Henry James novel treats consciousness, and it was an engrossing read-- it requires total commitment to get through a page-- the level of detail in the frames is astounding, the shifting genres are always perfect in tone, and the plot is dense and complex . . . and if you suffer through the cold, dark, corrupt world-- including the comic book within the Watchmen universe, the tale of the Black Freighter-- then there is a reward at the end: some traditional comic book fun . . . I can't wait to see how they did it in the film version.
Kids Those Days . . .
Don't expect new book reviews any time soon, as I am re-reading War and Peace . . . super-translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky came out with a new translation a few years ago, and even though I'm familiar with the characters, the first scene, at Anna Pavlovna's soiree, is still brutal: full of French dialogue and explanatory footnotes, historical references, and loads of characters with long Russian names, but if you survive, then Tolstoy rewards you with something more exciting-- a night of drinking and debauchery, including a drinking challenge (Dolokhov chugs an entire bottle of rum while sitting on a ledge) and a prank . . . after the party the Dolokhov, Pierre, and Anatole tie a policeman to the back of a tame bear and toss the pair into the river, so that the policeman flails about while the bear swims . . . and that sets the bar pretty high for drunken idiocy . . . I've never done anything THAT stupid and I doubt my kids will either, so if they ever commit any drunken shenanigans, I'll take a deep breath and remember to compare it to the bear and the policeman.
The Kids Are All Right (Not The Kids Are Alright)
I had a hard time separating the title of this film from the catchy chorus of the similarly named Who song . . . but it only took a moment of viewing before my wife and I were settled into the sun-soaked world of Southern California (the light reminded me of Sideways) and a fairly traditional family drama-- despite a lesbian marriage and a sperm donor; Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, and Annette Bening are such good actors that every beat works; the film is by turns, funny, awkward, dramatic, poignant, and in the end-- despite its hippie sensibility-- traditional: Annette Bening indignantly and rightfully defends her family from an "interloper" . . . nine heirloom tomatoes out of ten.
This Is the Reaction I Expect!
I received a voice-message at work on Tuesday, which is usually something bad-- and the computerized voice said that the message was "80 seconds long," which is a pretty long message, so I was expecting the worst . . . an irate parent or an administrator reminding me of something important I had forgotten, but from the first moment of the message I knew this was going to be different; it was a woman calling to express her rapturous adulation for my editorial opposing charter schools (which had just appeared in the local paper) and it was so impassioned that it made me blush, there were times when she seemed to be at a loss for words, nearly swooning with emotion toward my "cogency," and to confirm my suspicions about the tone, I let a few other people listen to the message (I've been known, on occasion, to misinterpret the female tone of voice) and they all agreed that I was correct in my inference . . . and I can't reproduce the commentary from the other teachers here because this is a family friendly blog, but you can imagine what went on (and I should point out that the woman-- who no longer has any students in the school-- left her phone number, though she said I didn't have to call her back) and, though it made me a bit uncomfortable, I think I'd like more of these messages, so if you read something wonderful that I've written, this is the reaction I will now expect of you.
Kids Love Earwax and Vomit
Our friends went to Disney last week and they brought the boys back some Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans from HoneyDukes Candy Store; some of the beans are tasty: watermelon, blueberry, and lemon . . . some are bizarre: grass, black pepper-- which is actually kind of satisfying-- and dirt (which left a lingering dusty flavor at the top of my mouth) . . . and some are thoroughly disgusting: earwax, vomit, sausage, rotten egg, and soap . . . and the kids kept selecting the gross ones, so they could scream about how repulsive they tasted and then spit them into the garbage.
Impatience and Convenience Go Hand in Hand
Bad Hair Night
Thursday night, minutes before I had to drive my kids to indoor soccer, I noticed some stray and unseemly gray hairs poking from the right side of my head, and I decided that I would trim them with my beard trimmer, but-- perhaps because I was in a rush-- I slipped . . . and cut a dent into my hair just above my right ear, and in my attempts to "even things out," I made the situation much, much worse, but then I felt obligated to make it equally as "even" on the other side of my head, so that at least my new style would be symmetrically bad . . . and in the end, I essentially gave myself a mullet (and a poor one, at that) and though I frantically tried to erase this by trimming randomly around the back of my head, I couldn't fix things and I had to take the kids to soccer and Catherine was at a meeting about charter schools, so I went to soccer looking like a lunatic, which the other parents found highly entertaining, and then when I got home, I was slated to go out for beers, and so I asked my wife if she would fix my hair first but she said, "No way, I'm exhausted, I'll do it tomorrow," and then she laughed at my misfortune and took a picture of the back of my head . . . but I was happy enough to be getting out on the town and so I said, "Who cares what I look like, it's not like I'm going out to pick-up girls," and she said, "Not that you could," and then, luckily (or unluckily for my students, who would have really enjoyed getting a look at my sorry head) we had a delayed opening due to snow and Catherine used a number 1 to shave away my remaining hair and make things look decent again.
Happiness
My wife was extremely pleased with the Jets after last week's victory, but not because she is a fan . . . her pleasure came from from the spectacle of enormous grown men running around the field with their arms out, pretending to be jet-planes.
Will Success Go To My Head?
My editorial on charter schools was published in both the local paper (The Sentinel) and the regional paper (The Home News/Tribune) and some students told me their parents read it and agreed with my views . . . so the question is: will my successful foray into local activism go to my head? will I become a serious participant in local educational reform? will I start attending PTO and Board of Education meetings? will I continue to write editorials in an attempt to influence legislation? will I continue to fight the good fight? . . . or will I go back to recording psychedelic music with annoying monologues and make videos for them with stop-motion dry erase animation? . . . I would bet on the latter.
Am I A Narcissist?
I always assumed I was a narcissist (exhibit A: this blog) but perhaps I am wrong; Jennifer Senior's article "The Benjamin Button Election" defines a narcissist as someone "impatient, vainglorious, easily insulted, and aggrieved: they'd never dream of making sacrifices on anyone else's behalf, unless it simultaneously advanced an agenda of their own" and I don't really think that describes me at all-- I am certainly not easily insulted and aggrieved, and I sacrifice plenty for my kids . . . but to make sure of this, I took an Online Narcissism Test and I scored a 13 out of 40, which is actually below the average score for an American (15) . . . but I wonder: does taking time to take an Online Narcissism Test automatically make you a narcissist?
Some Aid For Governor Christie
I've been very critical of Governor Christie's treatment of teachers, so in the spirit of fair play, I'll give him some ammunition to wield in his next attack on us: teachers are paid in salary and benefits, but we are also paid in moral superiority and no one accounts for how much this is worth monetarily when they are computing school budgets . . . I know when I'm done teaching a lesson about Shakespeare's Henry IV pt. 1-- one of great works of Western Civilization-- that I feel pretty damn superior; my self-esteem is riding high, my body is full of all kinds of positive hormones, and I feel as though I'm contributing something fantastic to the world . . . and that's worth a lot of money . . . of course, I don't feel as morally superior as one of those doctors without borders or someone who volunteers to work with the homeless or a scientist who has just cured leprosy . . . but I certainly feel morally superior to a gun runner arming a genocide or a guy who tranches synthetic CDO's or an elephant poacher.
An Elegant Grocery Analogy
My wife called the new H-mart on Route 27 in Edison, "Wegmans for Koreans," which is Donald Draper-like in its poetic brevity . . . and I recommend taking a stroll through the store: it's full of weird sea-food (much of it alive!) and exotic packaged food, unusual produce, rows and rows of dumplings, employees giving out free samples, stacks of strange condiments and Asian conviviality.
David Mamet and I Share A Moment
Once you wade through the nautical terms (including the most awkward word in the English language: fo'c'sle . . . and a rope splicing term that will make you blush) then Patrick O'Brian's novel Master and Commander is less about sailing a brig in the Napoleonic Wars-- although there is plenty about sailing-- and more about how Commander Jack Aubrey navigates his great authority over men, while still being under the authority of his ranking officers; it is the first book in a series of twenty-one and I will certainly read more of them, though they are, as David Mamet calls them in a Times article, "Humble Genre Novels," but he argues that they will last longer than any of "today's putative literary gems," and then Mamet decides he will write a fan letter to O'Brian, thanking him for the great series, only to read in the newspaper that O'Brian has just died . . . and this reminds me of when I "discovered" Mitch Hedberg on a comedy DVD from Netflix, thought he was brilliantly funny, and went on-line to check if he was coming to The Stress Factory any time soon, only to find he had just died.
Some Predictions
My clairvoyance is well documented, so pay close attention to my Predictions for 2011: jeans will get even tighter, the accordion will NOT make a comeback, the debate over how much a corporate entity can tranche a synthetic collateral debt obligation will bore people, Americans will forget about soccer until the next world cup, Leonardo DiCaprio will not make a screwball comedy, many people will go on diets, and I will eat more tacos.
Charter Schools and Vouchers: The Math Doesn't Add Up
Once again, I have written an argument against charter schools and vouchers, but this might appeal to more conservative minds, as it deals with the financial consequences of Governor Christie's legislation; please read it, get involved, sign the petition, write letters to the newspaper and your political representatives, and I promise to return to my usual stupidity.
Born on the Fourth of July
Last weekend I watched Born on the Fourth of July-- and though I'm usually not an Oliver Stone fan, except for Platoon-- this film really moved me, and while I was watching I was unaware that it is based on a true story, and so at the end, when Ron Kovic speaks at the the 1976 Democratic National Convention, I thought it got a bit far-fetched, but apparently truth is stranger than fiction; thi film should be shown in high schools throughout the South, to discourage sincere, honorable, well-intentioned youth from joining the service and being used as fodder for the lunatics that start wars . . . Ron Kovic's naive patriotic attitude and gradual transformation to an informed activist reminds me of the more recent tale of NFL safety turned Army Ranger, Pat Tillmon . . . aside from the fact, as my friend Terry pointed out, that Tillman didn't have to deal with his knowledge about the war, because he was killed, not crippled.
Erich Pratt Reminds Us of Our God-given Rights
Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners of America, recently made an interesting claim: "These politicians need to remember that these rights aren't given to us by them; they come from God; they are God-given rights; they can't be infringed or limited in any way-- what are they going to do: limit it two or three rounds?-- having lots of ammunition is critical, especially if the police are not around and you need to be able to defend yourself against mobs," and I'm wondering what other rights God has given us that I've overlooked and not exploited to the fullest . . . certainly He has given us the right to urinate on a tree when there is no bathroom nearby, and I think He has given us the right to eat a slice of pizza from the pie while you are driving aforementioned pizza pie home from the pizzeria, but I wonder if He has given us the right to go without underwear while walking to get bagels before 8 AM . . . I will have to contact Erich Pratt and find out.
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.
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