Nuts Sparring By The Fire
The charming Hotel Vienna of Windham, New York boasts a lovely breakfast room where they serve fresh baked cheese and raspberry danishes and croissants for you to eat before you ski, and they have large family style tables and even a fireplace, and I felt serene and relaxed while eating aforementioned danishes, contemplating a day of snowboarding with the family, while the other families around us did the same, and once our children finished their breakfast they asked if they could sit in front of the fire, and I said, "Of course," happy to be able to finish my coffee and Alex sat in the Adirondack style chair right in front of the fire and Ian sat just to his right and within minutes they were in a fist-fight over the chair that was right in front of the fire and I had to break them up and I couldn't beat them both senseless because there were these other peaceful families eating yogurt and granola and drinking tea surrounding us and observing us, and so I calmly and logically talked it out with them, and we agreed that they could take turns in the seat directly in front of the fire but that didn't work so well either because once Ian got his turn the good seat, he bonked his chair over and nudged Alex further away and tried to control both armrests and they got into another fight and I had to remove them from the quaint breakfast room and drag them back to the hotel room, where we proceeded to get dressed so we could enjoy a relaxing day on Windham Mountain.
How Smooth Is Smoov?
On the walk home from a very late night out, which began at the Stress Factory in New Brunswick, where we watched JB Smoov of Larry David fame do his especially bawdy form of minimalist prop comedy (he "birthed" himself through a white t-shirt, had sexual intercourse with a chair for a LONG time, and used a microphone and the cord as phallus and ejaculate) we got into a debate on how much he would tailor his material if he was playing to A) an all white crowd or B) an all African American crowd . . . and this was precipitated by this observation: the Stress Factory employees seated all the African Americans up front, and JB Smoov worked his rapport with them more often than with the other folks in the crowd-- now we don't know if this was intentional or just a coincidence, but it was apparent . . . and if anyone has seen JB in hypothetical crowd situation A or B, please leave a description of his act in the comments.
This Could Be The Idea That Allows You To Retire in Style
This weird hair discussion at G:TB reminds me of an idea a friend and I had about making a documentary where we interviewed people about the strange and rapid growth of unsightly body hair-- that crazy white hair that sprouts in the middle of your forehead or the curly gray hair that grows in your ear in the span of a nap-- and the "money shot" would be a time lapse segment of one of these hairs actually sprouting during the night, it would take thousands of hour of film to capture this, and it would be analogous to getting footage of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot . . . so does anyone have some venture capital they want to invest?
Small Pleasures
There's a certain joy in kicking a ball-- it's a similar pleasure to throwing something and hitting the thing you wanted-- but there's the added satisfaction that you did it with your foot . . . and my five year old son Ian understands this: the other day he spent a great deal of time and concentration trying to punt a soccer ball over the tennis court fence, which is an impressive feat for a forty pound child, and then once he accomplished it, he tried to do it again and again . . . and this reminds me of one of my favorite kicks of all time; it took place in our fraternity "pit," a carpeted area with benches and a television-- I was putzing around with a soccer ball-- and Kenny Bloom borrowed Brian Fogg's motorcycle helmet, sat on the bench, put on the helmet, and said to me, "Kick it at my head!" and I complied and I hit it hard and clean and perfect and it hit the helmet and snapped Kenny's head back and knocked the helmet clean off his head, and he looked at me, stunned, and said, "Remind me never to do that again."
I Am Put In My Place
For a Friday diversion, I like to create a "Life Quiz" for my students: ten general knowledge questions that I think they should know (my last quiz consisted of these questions-- 1) What was the first permanent English settlement in North America? 2) How many strings do the cello, violin, and bass guitar all have? 3) What is the vernal equinox? 4) Who said, "In the future, everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame? 5)What does a seismograph measure? 6) What does a Geiger Counter measure? 7) To what country is the platypus indigenous? 8) In Greek mythology, who was mesmerized by his own image in the pond? 9) What planet is Superman from? 10) Who holds the record in Major League Baseball for most consecutive games with at least one hit?) and, for some reason, the students find this fun-- perhaps because it isn't graded and I encourage them to challenge someone each time we have a quiz . . . and I find the quizzes fun as well because I make them up from my head to insure that they are "common knowledge" and I get to reveal all the answers and feel smart as I explain them, and I try the quizzes out on the other teachers, who often do quite well, but rarely go ten for ten, and then I feel smart because I knew all the answers-- but last Friday, after I tested the teachers, another teacher pulled out her fun Friday activity, a logic puzzle in this vein, that included an incomprehensible little chart to "help" you with the information and aid you in getting a solution, and she started in on the puzzle and Stacy did as well, and before long they were filling in the chart and making insane statements like "You know the Fuentes can't be Munoz because there is no appointment before 5 PM, so that only leaves California because we eliminated Michigan because Lukas isn't until 6 PM" and while I tried my best to join in, I was essentially just copying off them and not understanding one bit of the method, even when I did fill in the chart, and it wasn't fun for me at all and really lowered my self-esteem and it makes me feel bad for the kids who don't get any answers correct on the "Life Quizzes," but I guess you can't be good at everything (unless you're Einstein) and maybe I need to start with something simpler, like an easy Sodoku and work my way up to full blown logical thinking, which was certainly never my strong point, and why I was known as "The Poor Man's Galileo" in college.
Zombie Priorities
If you haven't seen the AMC series The Walking Dead, then by all means do so-- it's not just about zombies, in fact, the zombie gore is secondary to the human drama (despite the fact that the zombies eat a horse in the second episode) and the true theme is not supernatural at all, but more about how humans respond and adapt to a new and stressful situation, but before you watch the series, you should get your priorities straight and read the comic books first: Robert Kirkman has taken Rick and his son Carl to such a dark place that I don't think the television series can follow, and-- I assure you-- reading the comics doesn't spoil the plot of the series: in fact, if you read the comics first then it is more stressful to watch the series because you'll be constantly expecting things to happen and they won't . . . and though there are differences in plot, the theme of both works are the same-- both rely on the fact that they are an open ended series of episodes, not a graphic novel or a movie, or even a series like Lost, where the apocalypse will be solved and resolved, instead, the only resolution will be death, but they question how people might live along the way, in a world irrevocably destroyed, a world where there is no solution to the problem . . . the zombies will not be vanquished . . . and judging by the end of season one of the AMC series, they understand this and are going to stay true to the comic books in this regard . . . but what do I know?
You Learn Something New Every Day
So I always assumed that everyone who has seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail finds the film at least moderately funny, but this is not true, and, in fact, there's a sort of reverse-Dane Cook Effect going on here . . . some people consider the film horribly unfunny . . . and think it is for nerds and hipsters to share with one another; I learned this in class the other day, when some of my students and the neighboring teacher banded together against the Python fans in a pointless debate (because it is impossible to convince someone that something is funny . . . you see it's funny because he is no longer a newt . . . you see it's funny because they forgot to hide inside the Trojan Rabbit . . . you see it's funny because he forgot to say "three" and "four") but I can assure you that when I was watching the movie repeatedly with my dirt-bag high school friends, we were certainly not cool enough to be hip or smart enough to be nerdy . . . and so-- as a rare fan of both Dane Cook and Monty Python-- I urge you not to make hasty generalizations about taste in comedy and character.
I Can See Why People Are Pissed But . . .
Ha Joon Chang, in his book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, explains how in a quest to curb inflation, the free market package known neo-liberal policy, emphasizes greater capital mobility (rich people can move large amounts of money quickly so they can make a killing on arbitrage and investment without penalty) and greater labor market flexibility (the ability to outsource, avoid unions and labor regulations, and essentially make jobs insecure) and these policies are wonderful for those who hold large liquid financial assets and like to move them quickly to avoid having them degraded by inflation and this also allows for large companies to be restructured quickly, but it doesn't help if you own a house or don't have loads of liquid assets or a large business, and the threat of some inflation essentially pales in comparison to job losses and foreclosures and economic instability, especially when people are stuck in houses they can't sell, so they can't take advantage of the greater flexibility companies have in moving jobs (my cousin who works at Pfizer says this is the "new normal," you can be laid off at any time) and because of this instability in the job market, people are pissed at teachers, cops, and firemen because we have a union and collectively bargain for our salaries and benefits (although legislation in New Jersey is trying to abrogate these rights) . . . essentially we have old time jobs that are stable . . . the kind of jobs most people in America don't have any longer . . . but instead of being pissed at us, why not be pissed at the neo-liberal policies that made this happen?
Overwhelmed By Sand
After a recommendation from a friend, I started in on a novel that has the four elements that I generally can't stomach: 1) a map 2) an appendix 3) a glossary 4) lots of made up words with apostrophes . . . I'm talking about "Science Fiction's Supreme Masterpiece" . . . yes, that's what it says on the cover, and like everything else in this book, it is said without irony . . . this is the blurb for Frank Herbert's Dune and, surprisingly, I made it through 400 pages of sand, the highly addictive life lengthening spice-drug melange, imperial plots for the aforementioned spice drug, wild religious prophesy among the Fremen, water reclaiming stillsuits, Sardaukaur, the coming of Muad'Dib, a ride on the maker (a sand worm), crys-knife fights, treachery, desert ecology, and all the rest . . . but I finally skimmed the last hundred pages or so, because-- despite the complexity of the world, the fantastic development of the characters . . . both in mind and lineage . . . and the well-paced and multifarious plot-- after four hundred pages of reading you deserve a joke or two, something funny or at least ironic, but like in the Bible and Lord of the Rings, the tone of Dune is epic, and during this epic and very dry time on Arrakis, nothing remotely humorous happens, nor should it I guess . . . this is a place so desiccated that when you die, they render your body for its water, and the pages and pages of sand finally wore me out (and from what I've heard, the movie is not so much fun to watch either).
I Had My Reasons (They Just Don't Make Sense)
I was nervous all day Tuesday, my mind turning over the possibility that my 1993 Jeep Cherokee would not pass inspection and I would finally have to spring for a new car, and so on the way to the inspection station, I alternately drove really fast, in order to blow out the catalytic converter, and very slow-- to test the brakes-- which might be a bit suspect, and I occasionally beeped my horn, which has been known to stick, and only beeps if you punch the upper lip of the device-- and I'm sure I was an odd sight, accelerating and braking down Fresh Ponds Road, occasionally tooting my horn, but luckily I didn't pass any police, and then when I got to the inspection station I learned that-- possibly due to budget cuts-- they don't employ very many people there . . . it's a ghost town and the only thing they inspect now are emissions (most cars have a chip, so they just plug a cord into the chip, but my car is so old that they had to hook up all these EKG monitor type devices to the outside and inside of the engine) and the gas cap for leaking fumes . . . they don't test the brakes or the doors or the blinkers and they don't even beep the horn, and so the positive thing is that I can legally drive the Jeep until 2013 but the negative thing is that I can legally drive the Jeep until 2013 (and God knows what other barely serviceable vehicles are passing inspection with flying colors, so be careful out there!)
Proud Parent
So Ian is taking art lessons from an artist up the street, and she's been quite impressed with his work-- he's the opposite of his older brother who would rather talk about his artistic visions, but can never work up the gumption and patience to render them well-- Ian is quiet and patient and methodical when he works, and he's willing to revise a line several times until he gets it exactly right; he also has the ability to look at a picture of something and draw it and capture it's essence-- when he draws a penguin, you know it's a penguin (and the same with a dolphin or a scorpion or whatever) and this makes me very Proud as a Parent, that my young son has some Talent, and maybe, if I am very lucky, he will go to a good Art School and really learn to draw and paint and also make abstract steel sculptures-- for the low, low price of 30 grand a year-- and become an Artist and live at home until he's thirty (or maybe forever, like Emily Dickinson).
The Exception
As a rule, I never lick anything that been sitting in my shed (mice live in there) but, if a soccer ball or basketball needs air, I don't think twice before inserting the pump needle into my mouth, no matter where the pump has been-- nestled among mouse droppings, on a shelf in a filthy garage, among the detritus on the floor of my car-- simply because of the instructions: "Moisten needle before inflating."
Just A Hypothesis
We all know the idea of a gateway drug-- some habit forming substance that might possibly lead to addiction to a harder drug-- but I pose this question: is coffee a gateway drug to speed? or is drinking coffee a "prophylactic drug," as opposed to a gateway drug, because your coffee addiction prevents you from needing speed . . . and I think you could use this logic for other substances as well, especially if the assumption is that reality is so screwy that most humans will need some sort of controlled substance to deal with it, and that there's very little possibility of zero drug usage (note the abject failure of various prohibitions on controlled substances) and so we shouldn't be worrying about the danger of "gateway drugs" and instead we should be trying to foster controlled and responsible usage of the least addictive and harmful of these substances.
The World Will Never Know
I wonder what kinds of fantastic and creative ideas I would come up with if my consciousness was not constantly being interrupted by my children (mainly my son Alex, who is apparently scared of silence and feels the need to constantly fill it with his half-baked thoughts, which isn't so far off from the premise of this blog, so I can't really chastise him for the habit, except when he says, "Daddy? Daddy? Daddy? Daddy?" even though I am looking at him-- eyebrows raised-- waiting for him to finish the thought, but he keeps repeating my name until I say, "Yes Alex?" and by that time he has usually forgotten what it was he wanted to say and I have forgotten about whatever I was thinking as well).
For Once In My Life, I'd Love To Be On The Inside
The first half of Charles Ferguson's documentary Inside Job is a clear review of the causes of the 2008 global financial crisis-- the film explains collateral debt obligations, synthetic mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, highly leveraged banking, banking deregulation, the merging of investment and traditional banking, and sub-prime mortgages . . . if you haven't done your reading, it's a good primer on these subjects, and there is some excellent footage of Iceland as well-- but the second half of the film spirals into less focused frustration and anger (despite some inspirational and slightly cheesy narration by Matt Damon) and the big players either refuse to be interviewed (Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke) or hem and haw under aggressive questioning, which is satisfying in one sense, but really doesn't help to explain anything, and then the film explores high salaries and bonuses for Wall Street traders and the culture of excess-- there's some rather pointless gossipy chat with a high-end escort who serviced numerous Wall Street employees . . . but, honestly, as long as the system gets fixed, I could care less how the traders spend their money; despite these flaws, the movie is certainly a must see and I'm going to teach it to my students during the business ethics unit (I'll use it instead of the Enron documentary-- The Smartest Guys in the Room-- which, though it's a bit dated, has better music and a more insular and resolved story . . . though it also gets a bit off topic when it rather gratuitously explores Enron exec Lou Pi's fascination with strippers . . . I guess when you've got a documentary with a lot of numbers, you need to throw in some T&A) and another advantage of Inside Job is that it is relatively non-partisan: the film also criticizes the Obama administration for appointing the usual suspects to fix the problem (Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers) and the film claims that Obama's new banking regulations lack teeth, and as far as I know the facts are fairly accurate . . . or as accurate as you can be when you try to make a movie about something as complicated as this.
Costanza-esque
I don't know about you, but when I say, "I'm really hungry, does anyone have any food?" and a colleague says, "Oh no! I just threw a Pop Tart into the trash!" then I go into the trash and fish out that Pop Tart (which was still protected by it's foil wrapper) and eat it, because otherwise it would be eaten by rats in Edgeboro Landfill, and who wants to be defeated by a rodent?
An Analysis of My Netflix Queue
My Netflix queue has swollen to 233 films, and though I'm never going to view these films, they do reveal quite a bit about about my hopes, dreams, personality, and aspirations . . . and if you head over to Gheorghe: The Blog, you can read a Close Reading of the list.
I Am A Bad-ass
I was going to take my kids to the pet store and let them each choose a fish for our new fish tank, but they get into a fist-fight while getting into the car (they were arguing about who was going to get in and who was going to have to walk around the car and get in on the opposite side) and so I said I wasn't taking them as a consequence for fighting about something so stupid, and instead I made them pick up sticks and bark in the backyard (and the worst part is that I was looking forward to going to the pet store and getting some new fish, so I had to punish myself as well as them, but as I indicated, I am a bad-ass parent who will not back down when it comes to fish).
The Giving Ski
Humble Buffet
I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students
The difficult thing about family vacations is that you're out in public, so you can't hit your kids.
You Make The Call
The United States spends 1.1 percent of the budget on foreign aid, the lowest percentage of any wealthy country besides South Korea . . . yet in absolute terms the 39.4 billion dollars that we donate to other countries for humanitarian, economic, and security concerns is the largest absolute amount allocated by any single country-- so the question is: are we stingy or are we generous?
Olfactory Query
My five year old son Ian asked a fair question last week: "Can you smell over the phone?" and-- considering the smell of most people's breath in the morning-- it's a lucky thing that the answer is "no."
El Cambio es Bueno
Hola, mi nombre es Juan, y aquà es una frase excelente para que usted pueda disfrutar, y me gustarÃa dar las gracias a David por la externalización de algunos de sus trabajos para mÃ, y le aseguro la calidad de este blog no van a sufrir a pesar del hecho de que yo va a hacer la mayor parte de la escritura ahora.
In Afghanistan, Happiness is a Warm Poppy
Eric Weiner's book The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World won't give you any definitive answers about how or where to find happiness, but it is an incisive and entertaining tour of how some cultures reach contentedness: in the Netherlands the method is tolerance; in Switzerland it is democracy, cleanliness, nosiness, boredom, and stability; in Bhutan, Weiner is advised to think about death five minutes a day . . . but this is also a country where they feed marijuana to pigs because it makes the "pigs hungry and therefore fat"; in Qatar easy money does not bring happiness; and in Moldova, comparing oneself to the Swiss and other Europeans makes Moldovans sad; in Iceland, darkness, failure, generous state-subsidized health care and unemployment benefits, and binge-drinking make for good times; in Thailand, it is best to think less; in Britain, muddling along is good enough (especially if you live in Slough); in India, to be happy you need to embrace the mysticism and the chaos, the wealth and the poverty, the yin and the yang, the thing and the anti-thing; and in America, sometimes in our search for happiness we forget what actually makes us happy, friends and family, and focus too much on money and materialism, so the next time you are unhappy, don't go shopping, go out binge drinking with your friends and then muddle along through your next day of work without thinking.
Saxondale: A Show To Watch When Your Wife Goes Out
As a rule, I never watch television alone (unless it's a sporting event, because then I feel like I'm with the crowd at the event) but the exception is made for Steve Coogan shows-- generally my wife and I have similar taste, but Steve Coogan is where we agree to disagree (although we both watched Hamlet 2 in its entirety, and while I can't really recommend the movie, the final play is pretty funny, especially the big musical number "Rock Me Sexy Jesus") and I already knew this from past events: for example, I loved "Knowing You Knowing Me," the fake talk show hosted by Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) but my wife didn't find it all that funny, and now Coogan's new show, Saxondale, is beyond the pale in its alienation of the fairer sex; Tommy Saxondale (Coogan) is an ex-roadie-- he toured with all the huge rock bands in the '70's, except Led Zeppelin, which is his life's biggest regret-- but now he's an aging rocker who lives in the suburbs and runs a pest control "business" (he employs one other person) and loves his muscle car (a Mustang) as much as his chubby live-in anarchist girlfriend Magz-- though he still has anger issues about his ex-wife and the general decline of his coolness . . . and I can identify with this: these day I can't really stomach listening to Deep Purple and Jethro Tull any longer-- I've outgrown them and so has Tommy (to be honest, I've always hated Jethro Tull) but I still love jokes and references about them and all the other bands and the muscle cars and I can relate to Tommy's confrontation with his age and his inability to rock-out any more, but my wife could care less, and I can kind of see why . . . so this will be a show to watch when she goes out with the ladies.
Best Intentions
When I first started teaching, I thought I was going to be one of those teachers who rewarded kids with candy, and so I bought a bag of Hershey's miniatures and put it in my desk, but then I ate them all during my off period (it's really hard not to eat while grading essays) before I could dole them out as rewards, and instead now I'm the kind of teacher that scrawls "Metaphor Contest Champion" on a piece of scrap paper and hands it the winner, who then says: "This isn't even a whole piece of paper . . . it's got a chunk torn out of it!"
Literary Psychoanalysis
I am more like Hamlet and my wife is more like Fortinbras . . . and this works out well.
Are You An Orchid or a Dandelion?
The most powerful essay in The Best American Science Writing of 2010 is called "The Orchid Children," and the author, David Dobbs, explains a metaphor that has recently cropped up in psychology-- that of "orchid children" and "dandelion children"-- the orchid children being those that have a genetic disposition to certain negative behaviors including depression and ADHD, while the dandelion children do not-- and the research is being done particularly with regards to ADHD and a particular "risk allele," but the findings that are explaining these alleles in an evolutionary sense and turning behavioral science on its head is the fact that these "orchid children" with the shorter allele and proclivity towards ADHD, also have the potential-- when raised in a secure and fruitful environment-- to excel beyond the "normal" weedy children . . . the dandelion children are more stable, and they generally don't exhibit the negative behaviors however they are raised, but the "orchid" children are a genetic risk: they are more sensitive to their environment, positive or negative . . . when they are given positive interventions (I'm not going to describe all the experiments but Dobbs does) they have a greater increase of success; the author bravely gets his alleles sequenced and finds out what he knew-- he's an orchid-- but he doesn't want to know about his kids, it's enough for him to be aware that when he "takes his son trolling for salmon, or listens to his younger brother's labyrinthine elaborations of his dreams," that he is "flipping little switches that can help them light up," but I suspect that my kids might be dandelions, and I think I'm one too-- we all remain remarkably consistent in our habits and our behavior, and we all pay very little attention to our environment, and honestly, despite the amount of time I spend with them, my kids rarely pay attention to me . . . I try to flip some switches, but I think I may just sound like the parents in Peanuts to them.
It's Really Hard To Eradicate Weeds
The sixth season of Weeds will grow on you, unlike the previous season, where the show nearly withered and died-- it's a return to its earlier, earthier form, mainly because Mary-Louise Parker is in nearly every cramped and dirty scene, and she is the soil that holds the straggling, weedy, and dysfunctional Botwin family together as well as the dramatic, photosynthetic, flourishing center of the show (Kevin Nealon is funny but he doesn't have the roots to hold the show together and neither can any of the other actors and actresses . . . Parker is the pro)-- and their wild road trip comes to a perfect conclusion, as fitting as the end of that unweeded garden in Elsinore, where things rank and gross must finally decay and die. . . but then I learned, that like a perennial, the show has been renewed for a seventh season, and my question is: how?
People Ruin Everything
More from The Best American Science Writing of 2010: Elizabeth Kolbert, in her essay "The Sixth Extinction?" points out that whenever people come to town, all the cool creatures are wiped out; the mastodons, mammoths, giant beavers, dire wolves, short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, toxodons, and saber tooth tigers died out just after we came to the Americas . . . the giant wombats, giant tortoises (as big as a VW Beetle!) and giant ten foot tall kangaroos died out soon after we colonized to Australia; this pattern holds true for New Zealand, Hawaii, and pretty much everywhere else-- the big and cool looking stuff can't survive in the places we colonize, but this is happening with smaller creatures as well-- there is a great die off of amphibians happening right now, notably the Colombian golden frog (which is technically a toad) and bat populations are also rapidly declining-- and Kolbert explains (and demonstrates) that this is probably caused by a chytrid fungus spread by humanity called Bd (actually it's called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, but by the time you finish saying that, another species has gone extinct) but, luckily, some species are not affected, including the hardy salamanders that we discovered in the woods near the litter strewn banks of the polluted Raritan River, but it does make me worry that we might have to stop visiting our "Jersey tough" amphibians.
Did Banksy Create Rebecca Black?
Despite writing this blog, I remain fairly isolated from what's being passed around on the internet-- and I'm sad to report that I learned about this song on NPR-- but even though I was the 38, 945, 234th person to watch the YouTube video of Rebecca Black's "Friday," I think I have something valuable to say about the song (which was written and "created" by Ark Music Factory, supposedly the brainchild of Patrice Wilson and Clarence Jey) and it is this: the lyrics are so unlyrical, the theme is so banal, the music is so auto-tuned, and the video is so literal that this kind of satirical "fun fun fun" could only have been the work of the arch-prankster and super-cool street artist Banksy . . . and I have to admit that the song is very catchy, which is impressive, since it doesn't rhyme, makes no attempt to have a unique voice, coins no new catchy phrase, and contains lyrics about how the days of the week are ordered and eating breakfast cereal . . . unless that line is a veiled marijuana reference: "waking up in the morning . . . gotta have my bowl" . . . only Banksy knows for sure, but this has to be a practical joke on par with the creation of Thierry Guetta (and right now, twenty minutes after I wrote the previous sentence, I still can't get the song out of my head . . . so perhaps "Friday" is brilliant in its stupidity . . . so derivative that it parodies itself . . . Rebecca Black, you are a super-genius in the same realm as Mr. Brainwash!)
The Influence of Digital Media on My Caloric Intake
On the rare occasion that we eat at my favorite Mexican restaurant-- Tortuga's Mexican Village in Princeton-- I usually order a tamale and a chorizo burrito, but Saturday night I got a tamale and a chorizo taco-- and the taco was tasty but not as large as the burrito . . . and I did this for the taco count, of course, but maybe the taco count, which in one sense is an exercise in gluttony, will actually make me eat fewer calories in 2011, because, as I mentioned earlier, tacos are smaller than burritos.
Sometimes, You've Got To Do What You've Got To Do (Despite the Stupid Name)
I put it off for a week, because it's absurd and embarrassing and it has a stupid name and nothing feels more foolish, but in the end, it had to be done, and as usual it cleared up the problem . . . if you're congested, nothing works better than the Neti Pot.
The Bright Side
If you believe Hugh Everett's "many worlds interpretation" of quantum physics, then you believe there are an infinite number of parallel universes and that in this multiverse, every alternative history and future exists, so-- though the odds are 1 in 18.5 quintillion . . . or perhaps a bit less, depending on your strategy and how you calculate-- somewhere in one of these universes, you have filled out a perfect bracket . . . so don't despair, look on the bright side (but seriously, Syracuse, Texas, and Pitt? . . . for a brief and shining moment I was in such good shape . . . second place in a 100 plus person pool).
Test Your Child For The ACTN3 Gene and Muscle Type!
Steven Pinker, in his essay "My Genome, My Self," explains that many of the "dystopian fears" raised by personal genome sequencing (think of the movie Gattaca) are absurd because of the complexity and "probabilistic nature" of genes-- especially in light of the various studies explaining how the influence of a particular gene is contingent on the environment, thousands of other genes in your genome-- both known and unknown-- and how we can never account for the myriad combination and influence of genes, random mutations, environment, and "other" that make an individual; Pinker ends the essay with this example: when parents and coaches learned about the ACTN3 gene and muscle type, they started swabbing kids' cheeks for saliva so they could genetically screen them for a proclivity for fast-twitch musculature, and then steer these kids towards football and sprinting . . . but Carl Foster, one of the scientists who uncovered the ACTN3 association, had a more elegant way to "discover" kids with more fast twitch muscles: "Just line them up with their classmates for a race and see which ones are the fastest" . . . the swab will find some of the kids who may have a predilection for fast twitch musculature, but the race will find all of them.
Does This Guy Look 80% Bald?
I'm wading through The Best American Science Writing of 2010 and overarching theme of the collection is this: things are complicated . . . and in Steven Pinker's essay "My Genome, My Self," this slowly becomes apparent, as he analyzes the "genetic report card" he received from the personal genetic sequencing company 23andMe-- some of his genes validate reality: he has the gene for blue eyes and he actually has blue eyes . . . some don't: he has genes that make it highly likely that he will be bald, but he sports a billowing Jew-fro . . . some point at his heritage (Askenazi Jew) and some point towards percentages: the reports says he has a 12 percent chance of getting prostrate cancer . . . but most of what he had sequenced, like the genes for height, which is highly heritable, will barely have any effect (the dozen genes for height only account for 2% of the variation of height among humans-- the rest of the difference is caused by unknown factors) and may mean nothing in his life or everything, depending on all the other genes that weren't sequences, any unusual genes he has that are extremely rare, factors in the environment, and random mutation and affect-- and when Pinker philosophizes on why there is so much variety in humanity because of all these factors, when evolution doesn't require this much uniqueness for survival, he brings up the fact that if there's too much of any one type of personality, then there is a benefit to being different-- if everyone is nice, then it pays to be mean, but once there are enough mean people, they counter-act each other and it is the band of communal folks that will survive-- and he uses a proverb to remind us of the value of variety in a species: "The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
My Vegetable Love Should Grow Vaster Than Empires
The prices at the vegetable market on Route 1 are better than the prices at Stop and Shop, but you have to be more discerning with your selections because the produce is not as consistent as the produce at the grocery store . . . and I find myself following the same inane pattern when assessing what I will purchase: for instance, say that I am browsing strawberries . . . I look at a carton and check the bottom for mold, and then I compare the ripeness to another carton and then I compare that carton to another one and then I compare the best carton so far to yet another random carton, but by this time I have completely forgotten what the first and second cartons looked like, nor do I remember where I put them down, so I usually just select the last carton I picked up, put it in the basket, and move along . . . only to repeat the same idiotic process with the next item on the list (and don't even get me started with avocados . . . I give each a perfunctory squeeze, but I don't even know what my criteria are for selecting one avocado instead of another-- I just take some time before I choose because I don't want to appear naive to the other shoppers).
All Searches Lead to the Sentence of Dave
| Here are some of the Google search entries that led people to this humble little corner of the internet: emo, giant wasps, japanese emo, testicular elephantitis, gay roller blade hockey, elephantitis face, child safety, punch a colleague, large swine pig, DAVE IN BACKYARD MONSTER, a pig dick, bubble, awkward dave, marla olmstead now, alan moore banksy, eddie izzard, orfanato, fish and fin sentence, emo light bulb, and bubbles making . . . and being the "go to" sight for these obscure topics makes me very proud, but not as proud as cornering the market on the phrase "residual glee." |
Instant Fish
There are certain things you shouldn't buy used-- condoms, fuzzy toilet seat covers, handkerchiefs, and enema kits-- but as for everything else, it might be worth it to take the risk and check Craigslist . . . my son Alex asked for a fish tank for his birthday and when you add up the price of the tank and all the gadgets you need, the set-up is pretty expensive, so I took a ride to Avenel and bought a tank from a very nice dude named Sooraj-- and for eighty dollars he gave me everything: 29 gallon tank, hood, filter, heater, pump, gravel, live plants, net, siphon, plastic plants, thermometer, a castle, food, chemicals, and even his fish . . . he dismantled it all in front of me, very methodically, and placed everything into bags and buckets, and then I brought it home, set it up in an hour, and so far the fish survived the trip and water change . . . so my advice is this: at some point in their life, just about everyone has a fish tank, and at some point, just about everyone decides that the last thing they want in their life is a fish tank, so if you want a fish-tank, get a used one.
A Question Most Americans Are Afraid To Ask
How many plastic cups does a family of four actually need?-- and I am guessing the answer is NOT twenty-nine, which is how many we have . . . and I am thinking that this number is not particularly unusual . . . so what is your count?
Seven For Seven
Although it might be a bit early to invite a comparison to the greatest streak in professional sporting history-- Joe DiMaggio's magnificent run of 56 straight games with a base hit-- I would still like to make it known that the last seven times I have gone searching for salamanders with my sons in our secret salamander spot, we have been successful in finding this elusive amphibian, and our streak stretches back to last spring, when we found the spot: last Thursday we found three salamanders-- not that it matters how many we found . . . all it takes is one salamander to keep the streak alive-- and Friday afternoon we found a nest of them under a large chunk of concrete, and Saturday we found a few more, and Sunday we only found one . . . and I can already feel the pressure mounting: what will happen on our next search?
More Alan Moore
Although I couldn't make it through Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I loved The Saga of the Swamp Thing . . . the art is fantastic and the content is surprisingly philosophical: though it uses some possibly specious science about memory transfer from cannibalistic planarians . . . the results of the real experiment, which haven't been reproduced consistently, claim that if you train flatworms to run through a maze for food, and then have other flatworms who have never run the maze eat the flatworms that have run the maze, then the cannibalistic flatworms will gain the ability to run the maze without having to experience the maze-- but who cares if the science works-- Moore uses this conceit to explain that his Swamp Thing is not "Alec Holland somehow transformed into a plant" it is "a plant that thought it was Alec Holland"-- he uses the swamp thing to investigate one of the great philosophical conundrums-- if your exact (or even inexact) consciousness was reproduced-- digitally or botanically or with giant gears or whatever-- and this new thing believes it is you and thinks as you do, despite being a facsimile of you, then is it you?-- and who is the real you?-- what if you are given a drug that allows brain cells to regenerate and your brain is split in half and each side regrows in a different host-- then which is really you? or if you were to replace your brain bit by bit with identical circuits, then is the final robot still you, or when did you switch from being you to being an android? or if you teleport and your molecules are disassembled and then reassembled with identical but different molecules in another location, did you die?-- and is the thing that is reassembled just another facsimile of you with a very short break in consciousness . . . and this is the sort of existential question that The Saga of the Swamp Thing investigates . . . it is about a botanical consciousness coming to grips with what it really is (though the philosophy is interrupted by one odd page of the Justice League deciding that they can't do anything about Wood-rue, the Floronic Man, who is enlisting the world's plants to destroy all animals, including man . . . but he is quickly defeated by the simple logic that plants need animals to produce carbon dioxide-- the respiration cycle, and then it's back to the existential crisis) and in the end The Swamp Thing comes to terms with what he is, and the fact that he is not Alec Holland . . . that he is a plant with consciousness and as Fall approaches he has strange fears and anxieties because he is linked to the cycle of the seasons just as many plants are, and at the very end, there's a great frame of him walking into the swamp, holding hands with an autistic kid, explaining how he's afraid of fire and the kid replies, "That's good , it makes me feel better, I mean, if even monsters get scared sometimes, then it isn't so bad, is it?"
Brevity is a Warm Gun
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.
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