Polar Plunge 2012: Time to "Mose Up"
I have reported before on my wife's tendency to mix metaphors-- and she's been in rare form lately, creating new idioms such as shit in the wall (a mixture of "hole in the wall" and "shithole") and screw yourself into a corner ("paint yourself into a corner" and "screw up") but my favorite is the one she used at this year's Polar Plunge . . . she said that next year everyone has to "Mose up," combining the phrase "man up" with my buddy Dave's nickname "Mose," as Mose was the clear victor of the Polar Plunge again: last year he plunged three times and this year we thought we lost him in the crowd, only to find him swimming around in the frigid ocean . . . he was probably in the water for close to ten minutes, and when he finally emerged from the water-- surprise!-- he was wearing a Speedo, which he hid under a long pair of bathing trunks until moments before the mayhem, so that none of our group saw his outfit until he came out of the water . . . and as he strode out of the sea, pale and red-skinned, we rushed over to get pictures with him and found it difficult as he was painfully cold to the touch, so the bar has been set once again and next year we are all going to have to "mose up," and if my prose wasn't enough for you, scroll down for a special event on Sentence of Dave that we like to call The Sequence of Mose.
Attention Lorne Michaels: Free Comedy Sketch!
My friend Igor wrote a scathing critique of The Grammys the other day, and it gave me an idea for a gut-bustingly funny comedy sketch . . . here's my pitch: you have a bunch of grandmothers-- a.k.a. the grammys-- discussing the biggest hits of the year, rapping hip-hop lyrics, trying to sing Adele a capella, and then ultimately deciding who winds the awards-- somehow these women, these antediluvian grammys, like the Greek Fates, have all the power in the industry . . . I'm chuckling already, thinking about old ladies breaking, locking, and popping to "Watch the Throne."
What Do Todd Margaret And Tommy Saxondale Have in Common?
The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret is another TV program that belongs in the "Dave Thinks It's Hysterical But His Wife Thinks It's Too Silly" category, along with Saxondale and The Alan Partridge Show.
Would This Happen If I Were Driving A Mini-Van?
Someday I'm going to man-up and buy a new car-- most likely a mini-van-- and although it will be convenient and wonderful to have sliding doors, a cup-holder, heat, A/C, doors that lock, and other modern features, I'll miss the things you can't buy in a car: case in point, the other day I was walking out of the public library with my new books, and I was thinking about a million things and not paying very close attention to my surroundings and when I pulled on the door handle of my Jeep, I was surprised to find it locked-- and I rarely lock it because I don't have power locks-- so I pulled a bit harder, and then I was even more surprised when a face appeared in the window; after a moment it dawned on me-- this wasn't my Jeep! it was an identical 1993 forest green Jeep Cherokee with the same rust marks and peeling plastic trim, and so I shrugged my shoulders and gave my best "I'm not a lunatic smile" and pointed to my Jeep, which was parked next to the doppelganger Jeep and the guy inside, an older African American gent, followed my muted logic and laughed as well . . . two days later, I parked next to him again, and he rolled down his window and introduced himself to me-- his name is Bill and his Jeep has 187,000 miles on it and his wife had one that got 380,000 miles before she got into an accident on Industrial Avenue and since the mistaken identity incident we've talked several times as he's always reading in his car in the library parking lot (which is a bit odd, but maybe he's so attached to his Jeep that he prefers to sit inside his car rather than sit inside the library) and I doubt that anything like this will happen once I purchase a Toyota Sienna.
One of the Benefits of Growing Old
Twenty years from now, my only hope is that people will refer to me as a "character" instead of an "idiot."
This Is Why I Don't Drink Milk or Argue With Women
The other day in the English office, my friend and colleague Rachel claimed that her breast milk "turned green" when she ate a lot of salad, but I was skeptical and told her that she must have been hallucinating-- but I guess I don't know much about breastfeeding (and I have no problem admitting this) and so I did some research on-line and certain foods-- especially yellow and orange foods loaded with carotene-- can tint breast milk; Rachel has also tasted her own breast milk, which I find extremely gross, and when I tried to express this she countered with a very rational remark: "I taste everything my child eats," and that gave me time to process and NOT say what I was going to say next, which was, "Well, I don't drink my own urine," which doesn't make a lick of sense, but momentarily seemed like a powerful rhetorical flourish to my argument.
Christmas Serenity . . . for Now
Though I loved this particular piece of anti-Xmas art, I am proud to say that I had no annual Christmas melt-down this year-- I may have ranted a bit to my students about wrapping paper, but that was just to bait them into discussing consumerism and American culture-- but I delivered no full out angry anti-Christmas monologue to family members or colleagues, so either I am mellowing out or things are building to a head behind my calm exterior and we are going to have a "serenity now" scenario soon (on the other hand, I do readily admit that I despise Valentine's Day, especially the whole kids being forced to give every single classmate a Valentine thing-- the card industry is "training" them to be guilt-ridden materialists and we're all encouraging it).
Six of One, 3.85 Fixed Rate APR of the Other . . .
Though the result is essentially the same, I think I'd rather rob my bank rather than go through the hassle of refinancing my mortgage.
Does A.D. Mean Alcohol Dependent?
And without the discovery of fermentation, would we have already conquered the stars?
Does B.C. Mean Before Caffeine?
Without the benefits of coffee, would mankind still be in the dark ages?
Alan Moore: Predictable and Amusing (Just Like Me)
DC Comics is planning to release a seven comic book mini-series prequel to the unparalleled comic masterpiece Watchmen, and (according to The New York Times) creator Alan Moore is-- you guessed it!-- outraged and calls the new venture "completely shameless" and the article reports on Moore's typical pompous grouchiness, and explains that he has "completely disassociated himself from DC comics and the industry at large," and this sounds like a lot of fun-- to completely disassociate oneself from something, so here are a few things that I am now involved in that I plan to completely and indignantly disassociate myself from in the future:
1) doing the dishes
2) picking up dog poop
3) tying my children's shoes
4) wearing underwear
5) flossing
6) blogging
7) canker sores
8) Boardwalk Empire
9) driving
10) Canada.
1) doing the dishes
2) picking up dog poop
3) tying my children's shoes
4) wearing underwear
5) flossing
6) blogging
7) canker sores
8) Boardwalk Empire
9) driving
10) Canada.
Sometimes You Need To Take Yourself For A Walk
I am browsing through Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems, which is written by Cesar Milan-- the "dog whisperer" himself (no relation to the slightly lesser known "dog hollerer") and Cesar believes that walking your dog is the "single most powerful tool" to connect with your dog's mind, as "fish need to swim, birds need to fly . . . and dogs need to walk," and I think this might be true for humans as well, but the difference is that humans don't need to walk in a pack-- obediently following the pack leader-- humans need to walk themselves . . . we occasionally need to be alone and moving with complete autonomy-- I think this taps into our hunter-gatherer roots . . . perhaps it's why women like to go shopping; I certainly walk to relieve stress and my friend Whitney recently reminded me of a perfect example of how well this works: several years ago Whitney and I drove from Virginia to Colorado for a wedding, and we were supposed to get a good night's sleep and start the drive bright and early, but instead we stayed up until three in the morning drinking beer and playing darts, and then we spent twenty-two hung-over hours in the car together, and when we arrived at our destination in Boulder and parked the car, we had a brief argument about the best way to walk downtown-- where we were meeting a friend-- but the argument was more about being in the car too long with each other, and so, without any formal good-bye, we simply parted ways, and I took the high road and Whitney took the low road, and twenty minutes later, we met at the bar (I think Whitney got there first, but we actually didn't speak of our separation or the argument until hours later) and after each of us had our "walk," we were able to tolerate each other again . . . and even cooperate with each other: we bought a wiffle-ball and bat and when we crossed the continental divide, we took turn pitching to each other in a very civilized fashion until Whitney hit one over the edge of the continent: the ball plummeted over a cliff and onto a snowbank and we were quite pleased with ourselves-- but then, to our surprise, some high school kids clambered down the cliff and formed a human chain and "rescued" the ball and returned it to us, so we had to hit it off the divide again.
Dave's Favorite Story About Dave
Other readers have shared their Favorite Stories about Dave, and most have these have been in the Awkward Moments of Dave genre, but I would like to tell my favorite story about Dave, and it's not awkward at all, in fact-- believe it or not-- I am the clever hero of the story, in the tradition of cunning tricksters like Odysseus, Loki, and Br'er Rabbit, but don't worry, this theme won't be a recurring feature because it never happened again, so enjoy the one time I came through in the clutch: several years ago, when my two boys were quite young-- just able to walk and talk-- and we took a trip to the Newark Museum, which has a mini-zoo, art galleries, a fire museum, and a natural history section . . . and we were walking from the mini-zoo to the elevators, and the only way was through the art galleries, and so I was making the best of it, pointing out things my kids could recognize in the paintings, boats and cars and colors; the museum was empty-- a ghost town-- and so the guards, who were probably bored out of their minds, started chasing Alex and Ian around a bit, which my kids loved . . . Ian went one way and Alex ran the other, and I chased Ian because he was younger and then I heard BEEP BEEP BEEP from the room next door and when I got in there, I saw Alex touching a large painting, and this had triggered the alarm system-- so I told him you couldn't touch the paintings and apologized to the guards, but they weren't upset at him, of course, since they had instigated the running around, and when we finally got to the elevators, there was a post-modern sculpture next to the doors-- it was an intimidating pile of seven or eight televisions, and the top and bottom screens showed a silver Buddha head floating on the ocean, being buffeted by the waves, and all the screens in the middle showed the same rotating Buddha head, but each screen was tinted a different color-- red, green, blue, yellow, purple-- and right next to the tower of TV's was a video camera and a rotating Buddha head-- the same Buddha head that was on all the TV screens-- and so I wondered if the camera was actually filming the head and sending a live-feed to the televisions, or if they were just playing a loop of film, so-- naturally-- I stuck my hand in front of the camera (I also wanted to see if my hand would appear in a different color on each screen) and I was rewarded with both the image of my hand on every screen and the BEEP BEEP BEEP of the alarm-- like a child, I had set off the system, but when the guard jogged in to check out why the alarm was going off, I pointed to my son Alex and said, "Alex, I told you, you can't touch anything here-- it's a museum!" and then we got into the elevator and made a clean getaway; this is the only time in my life I was able to think on my feet and say the right thing at the right time, and-- even though I threw my eldest child under the bus-- it felt wonderful.
Dog Thought #2
They say you have to bond with a new dog, so that it feels like part of your family, and-- as everyone knows-- the best way to bond is to have something in common . . . luckily, Sirius and I do have a common thread: parasitic worms (and you'd think since I once had some of these critters living in my intestines, I would have been less grossed-out when I "discovered" them in his stool, but they were still wriggling, nearly causing me to faint in the park).
Even Hamlet Can't Compete With a Giant Wasp
Like most teachers, I get very wound up and excited when I start Hamlet -- it's the ultimate piece of literature, totally engaging and entertaining, and full of comedy, tragedy, controversy, ambiguity, and supernatural fun -- but no matter how exciting the opening scene is, from the initial "Who's there?" to the ghost's entrance, it can't compete with a giant wasp, but that's been the recurring situation for the past few days, I start a lesson and then a wasp appears . . . I think there might be a nest somewhere in my ceiling . . . and once a wasp is hovering around, there's only one thing for students to look at , and it's not their Shakespeare text, and so the wasp must be killed, and one period that got pretty ugly-- I was smashing a stool into the ceiling tiles at one point-- but later in the day, when another giant wasp appeared in a different class, instead of killing the wasp-- which was time-consuming and distracting-- I incorporated it into the scene: I was playing the role of the Hamlet's scholarly friend, Horatio, who is enlisted to speak to the ghost, and so I made the wasp play the ghost and I yelled my lines at it "Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to me!" and this seemed to appease it, so maybe it's not a living wasp at all, but the ghost of a giant wasp that I killed in the past.
Dog Thought #1
One of the ways I blow off steam is by walking around-- but I always feel a bit like a lunatic if I'm walking around completely aimlessly, without any ostensible purpose, so I usually "create" a perfunctory errand: I go buy cold cuts or a cup of coffee or some beer . . . but, of course, it's more about listening to my iPod and getting out of the house, alone and unfettered; one of the benefits of owning a dog is that now I don't have to invent a task for myself, I can just walk around aimlessly with the dog, and people look at me and think: he's not an itinerant wandering lunatic, he's just out walking his dog . . . but the only down side to this arrangement is that you have to talk to the Dog People you meet and I'm horrible at Dog Talk . . .
Dave: That's a beautiful dog . . . what is he, a Basset Hound? A Pekinese?
Dog Person: She's a Great Dane . . .
Dave: Oh, right . . . how about that one? A Shar-pei?
Dog Person: That's a cat.
Dave: That's a beautiful dog . . . what is he, a Basset Hound? A Pekinese?
Dog Person: She's a Great Dane . . .
Dave: Oh, right . . . how about that one? A Shar-pei?
Dog Person: That's a cat.
Who Cares? Not Tom Ripley. Not Banksy. You.
The talented Tom Ripley is at it again in Ripley Under Ground, the second book in Patricia Highsmith's "Ripliad" series-- this time his victim is an unlucky art patron named Thomas Murchison, who rightly suspects that the painting he has bought is a forgery-- unfortunately he has stumbled into one of Tom Ripley's sophisticated con games-- and because he can't adopt Ripley's amorality, he ends up a corpse, but Highsmith has bigger fish to fry than just murder: Ripley asks Murchison, "Why disturb a forger who's doing such good work?" and this raises one of my favorite artistic/philosophical debates, which is portrayed in both the documentary My Kid Could Paint That and Banksy's perplexing film Exit Through The Gift Shop . . if there is any way to objectively judge art, then it shouldn't matter who painted the picture-- if it's good, then it's good-- but, of course, our brains don't work like that; art buyers want to be sure that it is prodigy Marla Olmstead that painted the canvases they spent so much money on, not her dad, and when Oprah revealed that James Frey's "memoir" A Million Little Pieces is actually part fictional, people were outraged-- including me!-- and so I suppose I should come clean here and reveal that Sentence of Dave is actually written by a trained donkey, not a computer program . . . but I'm sure you all suspected that from the start.
How Did This Happen?
I am an introverted person who enjoys being alone for long stretches of time-- I like to read and play the guitar and write sentences and listen to music-- and I have trouble thinking about more than one thing at a time, but somehow I've gotten myself into the absurd position where I have to: 1) be the boss of over a hundred kids during the school day . . . I constantly compel them do things that they would never do on their own: read Shakespeare, write essays, perform skits, and draw horses (I especially love compelling kids to draw horses, because if you can't draw-- and the bulk of the population in America can't draw-- then drawing a horse is especially comical) and then 2) after school I have to lord over my own children, and compel them to do homework and clean-up their shit and eat their dinner and brush their teeth and stop fighting, and now 3) we've added a dog to the equation, and I've never had a dog, but everything I've read explains that you have to establish yourself as the alpha and show the dog who's boss and my friend John gave me this advice: "Dog training is easy, you just need to establish that you are the master," and that makes sense, of course, but I often wonder: How did this happen? because I would be perfectly content being The Boss of No One and The Master of Nothing.
Specific Demographic
My friend Ann believes there is a very specific advertising demographic profile which consists of: 1) men in their late thirties and early forties 2) who use the digital music service Spotify 3) and run while wearing Vibram Five Fingers (those goofy looking "shoes" that have individual slots for each toe, and simulate the experience of running barefoot . . . sans glass shards, tetanus, and trichinosis) and she may be right . . . and I may be a member of this demographic, but all I can say in my defense-- which is exactly what the advertising folks want me to say-- is, "I love Spotify!" and "I love my Vibram Five Fingers!" and "I can't wait to see what they sell me next!"
Neal Stephenson Cares About Canada . . . and by the transitive property, so do I
The first seven hundred pages of Neal Stephenson's new novel Reamde take place in exotic locales such as Xiamen, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the MMORPG T'Rain, but the last three hundred pages follow international terrorist Abdullah Jones as he makes his way through the mountains of British Columbia towards the U.S. border-- and though the Canadian portion of the novel is a bit slower paced than the rest, it is well worth the wait until the entire international cast of characters descend on the inaccessible and mountainous border of Idaho and Canada-- Stephenson has a miniature war play out there, and his detailed, steady description of multiple plot threads is so arresting (not to mention that after 1000 pages you're rather attached to the characters) that your heart will race, your palms will sweat, the outside world will vanish, and when you finish the final page, you won't believe that the experience was NOT virtual, not generated by any sort of technology, and simply the result of well-placed squiggles on the white pages of a very thick book.
Hey Michael Lewis! In A Book Titled Boomerang, Shouldn't You Visit Australia?
In his new book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, Michael Lewis is more cavalier with is opinions than he was in his last book, the longer and denser The Big Short . . . Boomerang is more of a travelogue with some finance thrown in, and at times you get the feel that he's winging it, relying on his good name in each country, but he's an engaging writer and the book is a lot of fun-- considering it's about a depressing topic-- because for each country he visits, he tries to link their national character to the type of financial disaster they are experiencing: corrupt and tribal Greeks refuse to band together for the sake of their country; feral Icelanders treat high-risk banking the same way they treat fishing in the cold and dangerous waters of the North Atlantic; stoic Irishmen shoulder their country's debt with tight-lipped penitence, though they should have acted shamefully and defaulted; rule abiding Germans don't notice the filth under the sheen of the bonds they have bought (and here he takes a scatological side-trip into "the German's longstanding special interest" in "Scheisse (shit)" and tries to extend the analogy to the financial crisis, claiming that the Germans "longed to be near the shit but not in it," and although this is entertaining, I think his logic is stretched thin and that you could find loads of "Scheisse" jokes in every culture-- Mr. Lahey from Trailer Park Boys comes to mind-- so even Canadians stoop to this sort of humor); finally Lewis ends up in America, searching for the state that is the biggest financial disaster . . . and banking analyst Meredith Whitney determines this by invoking the logic of "the tragedy of the commons," she explains: "companies are more likely to flourish in stronger states; the individuals will go where the jobs are . . . ultimately, the people will follow the companies . . . Indiana is going to be like, NFW I'm bailing out New Jersey . . . those who have money and can move do so, and those without money and cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance," and Lewis asks her, "What's the scariest state?" and I hoped her answer wouldn't be New Jersey, but she "only had to think for about two seconds" and then she said, "California."
Sodom and Gomorrah and Explosions
Everyone knows that "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions"-- including my favorite "cool guys," the silent and scary Mexican cartel assassins from Breaking Bad-- but I have a hypothesis as to why this trope is so common: it is actually a subtle Biblical allusion to the the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; Lot and his wife are commanded by the angels NOT to look back at Yahweh's explosive destruction of the depraved cities but Lot's wife disobeys the angel's instructions and looks back and she is turned into a pillar of salt . . . and so not looking back isn't just about being cool, it's also about obeying God's will and showing humility when something is justly and purposefully destroyed-- and I had this epiphany while showing my children the story of Sodom and Gomorrah on a site called The Brick Testament, which is an illustrated Bible depicted with Legos . . . it is comprehensive and incredible; on the other hand, if something is being randomly destroyed in a movie, then people watch it in fascination (such as the colossal train derailment in Super 8).
North Brunswick Alumnus Scores 102 Yard Goal
Tim Howard, Premier League and U.S. National Team goalie, is arguably the most famous North Brunswick High School Alumnus (he's competing with Glen Burtnik of Styx and two comedians: Jim Norton and Aries Spears) and this goal certainly helps his case.
Movie Trivia (Answer in the Comments)
What film contains cameos by Dom Deluise, Charles Durning, James Coburn, Milton Berle, Elliott Gould, Madeline Kahn, Bob Hope, Mel Brooks, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Telly Savalas, and Orson Welles?
Basketball vs. Soccer: Microcosmically
1) for soccer, you need to bring a white and a dark shirt-- so that you can wear the same color as your team-- but for basketball, you have to memorize who is on your team-- this is fairly typical and I suppose it is because in soccer you are looking down more and have to make longer passes and might not be able to recognize someone's face from that far away, but my eyes aren't great and I wouldn't mind if the basketball game adopted the soccer policy;
2) in the soccer game, if you have to sit out a game because there are too many players, you are guaranteed to play in the next game-- even if someone from the winning team needs to be relieved-- but in the basketball game, if there are more than five players, and you miss your foul shot, you will NOT play in the next game . . . as the winning five always get to stay on;
3) because of this rule, more fouls are called in the basketball game and the score is more important;
4) the soccer crew has an email group but the basketball group does not;
5) if the weather is decent, the soccer group will play outside, while this has never happened with the basketball group . . . even when it was 95 degrees in the gym in the summer;
6) more advice and strategy is dispensed by the experienced basketball players, and it is more often accepted, or at least entertained and discussed . . . while during soccer if anyone mistakenly attempts to give someone else advice, it usually results in a vehement argument (which may happen in a language other than English)
7) sometimes at soccer, while we are warming up, we talk world politics . . . this never happens at basketball;
8) there are a couple of women that occasionally play in the soccer game-- and they can hold their own-- but I have never seen any women at the basketball game;
9) you can bring your kid to the soccer game, and if you get there early then he might get to play some-- my seven-year-old son once played for a while before everyone got there . . . but I've never seen any kids at the basketball game;
10) the soccer game has people with names such as Mario, Gio, Jose, Guillermo, Felipe, Mohammed, Javier, Yorim, Ahmed, Yusuf, Ari, Josi, Bruce and Mike . . . the basketball game has people with names such as Al, Keith, Ben, Tom, Chris, Anthony, Richard (Cob), Eugene, Bruce, Isaac and-- of course-- Mike.
The Greek Economy is Ik (Michael Lewis Thomas)
One of the economically devastated countries Michael Lewis describes in his new book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World is Greece, and his tale is a sordid one of corruption, tax evasion, and systematic cheating and abuse that is so endemic to the culture that it is difficult to fully quantify-- he finally concludes that Greece "does not behave like a collective . . . it behaves as a collection of atomized particles, each of which has grown accustomed to pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good," and this reminds me of a Lewis Thomas essay about anthropologist Colin Turnbull's infamous portrayal of The Ik, a displaced Ugandan tribe; Turnbull's observations-- in his book The Mountain People-- give a firsthand account of the Ik's selfish and highly individualist practices-- which include defecating on each others doorsteps, leaving the old and sick to fend for themselves, and having no collective spirit whatsoever-- and this makes Turnbull question the goodness of human nature . . . but Lewis Thomas dismisses this pessismism and the Ik behavior-- insisting that The Ik society has essentially gone crazy-- and as a solution to the insanity, each individual Ik has formed a "group, a one man tribe on its own, a constituency," and Thomas says this is not all that unusual, as it is how nations behave, and "for total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is no match for a nation."
Is Something Wrong With Me? Besides the Obvious . . .
A Fact I Will Never Reveal To My Children
In this months issue of Wired magazine there is a tiny article called "Three Smart Things About Boogers" and one of the smart things is that "boogers are good for you" and apparently mucophagy-- or the act of picking one's nose and eating the results-- has a long and fruitful history and may bolster the immune system . . . but I'm not reporting this to my children, nor am I telling them that my descriptions of the horrible consequences of eating your boogers are completely wrong.
Things Start Making Sense
My work today is over at Gheorghe: The Blog-- and, unfortunately for those of you with limited patience for my rambling, it is more than one sentence long-- as I have written a rather existential essay about how my life is starting to resemble one of my favorite songs: "Once in a Lifetime" by The Talking Heads.
The Tragedy of Dave Learning About The Tragedy of the Commons
Biologist Garrett Hardin famously used the idea of "the tragedy of the commons" as an environmental principle that explained how individuals will inevitably deplete a shared resource-- such as a common pasture-- because no one owns the particular resource, so no one is invested in protecting it; the simple solution is to allow people to own the land, because then they won't let their animals overgraze-- unless they are stupid-- and the tragedy of the commons explains why public bathrooms are filthy and why it's difficult to get kids to clean up their trash in the school cafeteria and why it's impossible to get nations to subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol, and it is also a wonderful rationalization if you feel like littering in your local park or don't feel like scooping up your dog's excrement or if you stain a library book with chocolate fingerprints or if you feel like tossing some trash out your car window . . . if someone looks at you askance, simply shrug your shoulders and say, "tragedy of the commons, what can you do?"
Corrupted Blood Incident: A Good Name For A Screamo Band
It's Good To Give Your Children Concrete Goals To Strive For . . .
The other day I promised my son Ian-- the budding artist-- that if he draws something cool enough, I'll get it tattooed on my back.
I'm Going to Read Me Some REAMDE
I am half-way through Neal Stephenson's gigantic new novel REAMDE, and it reads like a 1000 page Wired Magazine article, a Wired article with a thrilling plot and a multitude of well-drawn international characters, but a Wired article nonetheless, and this makes my review pretty simple . . . if you like Wired Magazine, I recommend the novel . . . and if you don't, then I don't; you also might like the novel if you appreciate the word "albedo," which is a fun word to challenge people to define, but also a word I have never seen in a novel, but Stephenson had no problem working it in: "modern paper, with its eye searing 95 percent albedo, simply ruined the look that was coming together inside the walls."
My Sentiments EXACTLY!
Carrie Brownstein-- of the sketch comedy show Portlandia-- was being interviewed on "Fresh Air" a few weeks ago, and when Terry Gross asked her to describe her tattoos, Brownstein said something that I agree with wholeheartedly . . . as I possess some really stupid tattoos that I do not wish to talk about (why couldn't I have gotten a cool science tattoo, like these people?) and not only do I completely and unequivocally agree with what she said about tattoos, but I also think she used the perfect analogy to develop her opinion . . . she said: "Telling people about your tattoos is worse than telling people about your dreams."
12th Man = Chili
So I have made Giants play-off chili three times in my life, and all three times have resulted in good luck for the Giants-- but Sunday was the first time I actually had good luck making the chili . . . to explain: the first time I made Giants play-off chili was in 1991-- the Giants played the Bears that afternoon in the NFC divisional play-off game, which they won 31-3, and then they eventually went on to beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl-- and I had recently received a crock-pot as a gift from my parents, once they discovered that I went off the William and Mary meal plan and pocketed the money, and so I was cooking for myself (which consisted of eating fast food, catfish we caught in the Chickahominy River and microwave burritos) and I decided to inaugurate the crock-pot by making some chili so I bought some beef and peppers and onions and chili powder and tossed it into the pot and left it to simmer for a few hours, but when I returned there was a slick of viscous golden liquid atop the chili and there was so much of it that I couldn't scoop it off, it had permeated the entire batch and the chili was disgusting and quite inedible and by this time my roommate Jason had returned and he took a look at the concoction and asked, "Did you brown the meat before you put it in?" and I said, "Brown the meat?" and he said, "You didn't brown the meat and drain the fat?" and that's when I learned that you need to brown the meat before you put it in a crock-pot and by this time the game was nearly on, so I put the top on the crock-pot full of fat saturated meat and peppers and unplugged it and . . . I forgot about it, I suppose it got lost among the detritus on the floor of our room and I "discovered" it a few weeks later; the chili was dry, irremovable, and covered with blue, green, and yellow fungus and so I did the only thing we could-- I tossed the crock-pot off the third floor balcony to the bricks below and a cheering crowd watched it explode into shards of pottery, chunks of chili, and clots of fungus; the second time I made Giants play-offs chili was in 2001, we were living in Damascus and the Giants played Minnesota in the NFC Championship game, which they would win 41-0 and then go on to lose to the Ravens in the Super Bowl (which my friend Drew and I watched at the U.S. Marine house in the middle of the night) and while I was cooking this batch of chili-- and I should mention that I browned the meat-- the power went out, which was a common occurrence in Damascus, so I had to cook by candle-light and I thought I might have to carry the chili to Drew's apartment for the game, because his power was still on, but miraculously, my power came back on an hour before game-time; unfortunately, while I was cooking in the dark, I over-salted the chili, and I soon learned that you can't erase the taste of salt with more spices, and so by the time my wife got home, it was nearly game time and I was close to tears and I hysterically beseeched my wife to help me-- I worked so hard! my chili tasted awful! more chili powder didn't work! more cumin didn't work! more cilantro didn't work! help!-- and my wife looked at me in disbelief and said, "Why don't you brown some more meat, and add a couple more cans of tomatoes and beans and dilute the salt?" and I realized: this was why I married her! this was brilliant! utilize ratio and proportion! more chili and the same amount of salt=less overall salt! and so I was able to save this batch of chili, and everyone enjoyed it as well as the resounding Giants victory; and the third time I made Giants play-off chili was, of course, on Sunday, and the Giants throttled the Packers 37-20, and not only that, but I finally got my culinary act together and made an excellent batch of chili (in a crock-pot) and so I think this bodes well for both the Giants and future batches of my play-off chili.
Is This How Lenny Bruce Got Started?
My seven old son Alex invented this riddle last week: "What does a lady cat carry around? A purrrrrrse," and I thought it was quite clever-- though his delivery was atrocious-- but I assumed that although he "invented" it, that someone else had already thought of this previously, but I checked the all-knowing internet and did not discover its existence . . . so when I explain what a pun is to my students, I will use his example, and give him credit (I normally use the classic "what happens when you step on a grape? it lets out a little whine" as my example).
The E-Reader: Pros and Cons
I am certainly what the tech-world calls a "late adopter," for example: I only recently got a cell-phone, and that's because my wife purchased it for me, brought it home, and said: "You have two kids . . you need a phone," and then handed me a slim, white, lime green gadget that my students described as the phone a "12 year old Asian girl would have"-- and so, well behind the rest of the reading world, I have finally started knocking around the idea of getting an e-reader . . . but, as I am a disciple of Neil Postman, I always think about the pros and cons of any technology before I allow it access to my life . . . and the pros for an e-reader are pretty obvious:
1) I like to read multiple books at the same time and some of them are hefty, so it would save a lot of space and clutter,
2) I hate small font, and so I could adjust this on an e-reader,
3) my book-light would be attached to the e-reader, so I wouldn't always lose it,
4) when we travel, I like to bring a lot of books . . .
but I have decided, for now, that the cons outweigh the pros, and here they are:
1) I like to take books out of the library because (duh) it's free,
2) I like to buy cheap used books off Amazon and Half.com,
3) I don't want to spill coffee or soup onto an e-reader, while I don't care if I spill coffee or soup onto a library book,
4) this one is the most important: if I read on an e-reader, no one can see what I'm reading, and-- if these things become ubiquitous-- I won't be able to see what other people are reading, and maybe I'm obnoxious, but I like it when people see me reading the new translation of War and Peace, and I liked sharing a knowing glance with the dude I saw last week on the exercise bike at the gym reading Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From . . . and if that dude was a cute female, I might have even said a word or two about how much I liked the book . . . so really what it comes down to is that I have enough trouble making conversation, and I don't need the one topic that I am knowledgeable about taken away from me, made obscure by a convenient technology-- I'm still recovering from the switch from boom boxes to personal stereos . . . who knows what the kids are listening to on those head-phones?
1) I like to read multiple books at the same time and some of them are hefty, so it would save a lot of space and clutter,
2) I hate small font, and so I could adjust this on an e-reader,
3) my book-light would be attached to the e-reader, so I wouldn't always lose it,
4) when we travel, I like to bring a lot of books . . .
but I have decided, for now, that the cons outweigh the pros, and here they are:
1) I like to take books out of the library because (duh) it's free,
2) I like to buy cheap used books off Amazon and Half.com,
3) I don't want to spill coffee or soup onto an e-reader, while I don't care if I spill coffee or soup onto a library book,
4) this one is the most important: if I read on an e-reader, no one can see what I'm reading, and-- if these things become ubiquitous-- I won't be able to see what other people are reading, and maybe I'm obnoxious, but I like it when people see me reading the new translation of War and Peace, and I liked sharing a knowing glance with the dude I saw last week on the exercise bike at the gym reading Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From . . . and if that dude was a cute female, I might have even said a word or two about how much I liked the book . . . so really what it comes down to is that I have enough trouble making conversation, and I don't need the one topic that I am knowledgeable about taken away from me, made obscure by a convenient technology-- I'm still recovering from the switch from boom boxes to personal stereos . . . who knows what the kids are listening to on those head-phones?
Can Someone Explain This?
I'll go to the gym and exercise until I am sweaty, lightheaded, and about to puke . . . but moments before I leave, I can't work up the effort to carry a laundry basket full of folded clothes up the stairs.
Thomas Ripley: Believe It or Not . . .
So this may be the most cliche thing you can say about a classic novel adapted for film, but-- sorry-- it's true; The Talented Mr. Ripley is a decent movie, but the book is better . . . because in an attempt to make Tom Ripley's actions less calculating and his motives for murdering Dickie Greenleaf less premeditated-- in order for the audience to be able to empathize with him a bit more-- he loses his charm . . . in the film he stumbles on his nefarious plan, while in the novel, part of his charm lies in his calculation, like Shakespeare's Richard III, the fun is that he lets us in on his evil but completely understandable machinations . . . so if you've only seen the movie, and sort of liked it, then I highly recommend the book (by Patricia Highsmith) which is different to a degree in plot, character, and tone and for once in my life I agree with Matt Damon, who said, "I'd like to make the whole film all over again with the same cast and same title but make it completely like the book."
I Draw a Line in the Sand . . . and Then Erase It: Arguments Against The Digital First Down Line
You may think that the digital first-down line is an unassailable target-- that your football watching life is much improved by this benevolent technical wonder-- but I have dismantled venerated targets like this before, so head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog to read my logically sound, rhetorically reasonable, and profoundly persuasive argument on why there should be no digital lines intruding upon our football viewing experience . . . I promise your mind will be changed.
Knobs, Jugs, and Other Titillating Household Items
I was very proud of my post-Christmas sentence entitled "Best Christmas Gift Ever: My Wife Got New Knobs!" because my wife actually got new knobs, but not the silicone kind-- after I went to bed she replaced the pointed cabinet knobs in the kitchen that always ripped my pants with rounded knobs-- and I thought this was not only very thoughtful but it also provided a humorous sentence title . . . except that she didn't get the joke, and when I informed her that "knobs" were not just a cabinetry accessory, but also a slang term for female breasts, she said, "I never heard that one," and this reminds me of a wonderful story from when we taught in Syria; it was 2003, our last year in Damascus, and our school finally had an internet connection, and so the computer teacher, a native Syrian rather unfamiliar with on-line technology wanted to make sure the students couldn't access any pornographic sites, and so he tried to block every pornographic search word BY HAND and once he was done, he confidently went to our director and said that the computers were safe for the children to use and our director went to the computer room and typed the word "jugs" into the search engine and he received a plethora of naked breasts as a reward for his creativity, and the computer teacher said, "Oh, I didn't know that one," and then the director typed in "hotballs" and within moments they were staring at people copulating, and so the director-- also not a computer wiz-- went to my friend Kevin, a young guy, and asked him to make a list of sexual slang terms they should block, and Kevin had the rather awkward job of telling both the director and the computer teacher that there was cheap software that could do what they needed without any hassle or manual listing of offensive terminology.
Pamela Anderson is Canadian?
I'm giving myself several "Caring About Canada" points this week because of the massive amounts of discussion on Canada I have generated recently; this isn't easy because Canada isn't in the news all the time-- Canada isn't media-sexy like Mexico (aside from Pamela Anderson, I learned that she's a Canadian!) and so you don't have easy, controversial topics to fall back on, like the drug wars or hot vacation spots or kidnappings or narcocorridos or snakeheads and coyotes . . . but, despite this, I have forged ahead and I have discovered other educated people who could not name the capital city and I have educated them, I have learned that "Arcade Fire" is from Canada (and so Canada has "suburbs," which is also news to me-- I thought Canada was comprised of cities, hamlets, and moose preserves) and I have completed my first assignment given to me by an actual Canadian-- I learned what "poutine" is, and it sounds delicious (I would start a "poutine" count because it would be a perfect complement to my 2011 Taco Count, but I don't think you can get it in these parts).
Everybody's Doing It . . .
Students and adults alike were recommending Suzanne Collins's novel The Hunger Games, and I figured: if everybody's doing it, then it's got to be cool, right? and I didn't want to feel left out-- that's not good for my self-esteem-- I never got over the year I wasn't allowed to play in The Reindeer Games, that really hurt, and what if everyone was going to play The Hunger Game and I didn't know how? so I bullied a student into giving me her copy and I whipped through it in two days, and certainly enjoyed it, the cliffhangers kept me reading at a furious pace, but the experience was more like playing a video game than reading a novel . . . all the knowledge about the dystopian world of Panem is conveyed through high-octane action, and there is some cheesiness, especially at the end, but the book was intended for young adults, so I really can't be critical . . . I'll give it eight cornucopias out ten (but I should subtract another cornucopia because the idea is a bit of a rip-off of Battle Royale, a Japanese novel made into a fantastic and disturbing film by renowned filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku).
2012: More of The Same . . .
Catherine began the New Year in her own typical fashion: she called our home phone from a park in Milltown and I listened to her message and attempted to call her back, but I couldn't find our land-line handset-- I even pressed the "Find Handset" button, but no luck-- so I called her back with my cell-phone and by this time she was driving back down Route 1, and I asked her about the handset and after a long pause she said, "I think I left it on the roof of the car," and-- miraculously (and I don't use that word lightly) the phone was still on the roof of the car when she arrived home-- it survived two trips on Route 1 and crossed both the Donald and the Morris Goodkind Bridges . . . an astounding journey, especially considering most of the other objects Catherine has left on the roof of our car have not fared so well . . . and devout fans might remember that the first Sentence of Dave dealt with this same topic, all the way back in 2007, and things haven't changed much since.
Mystery Solved!
So I spent several periods on Thursday wondering why my shoe felt so loose, almost as if I was going to walk right out of it and leave it behind me on the floor . . . I wondered if my right foot had shrunk or if my plantar fasciitis insert was to blame . . . but then-- after a good two hours of this nonsense-- I had the bright idea to actually lift my pant leg up and look at the shoe, and-- wonder of wonders-- it was untied.
Awkward Moment of Connell
I Pass The Lasch Test
I feared what I would find between the covers of The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch's classic 1979 indictment of America, and while his criticism of both American style capitalism and the progressive liberal agenda of replacing the traditions and hegemony of the nuclear family with that of the state and government bureaucracy certainly still rings true, I was more concerned with falling into the category of a "pathological narcissist" and then having to stop writing this blog to treat the condition, but apparently I don't fit his definition at all-- he sees the dissolution of traditional values, awareness of others, and civic mindedness a result of "fascination with fame and celebrity, the fear of competition, the inability to suspend disbelief, the shallowness and transitory quality of personal relations, and the horror of the death" and, first of all, I don't have any sort of fascination with fame and celebrity-- in fact the reverse is true-- and I certainly love competition for its own sake and continue to compete for absolutely no reason (his chapter The Degradation of Sport is worth reading as a stand alone . . . he explains how antithetical it is for sports to have ulterior "character building" purposes, when actually-- as Heywood Hale Broun succinctly put it-- "sports don't build character-- they reveal it" and so they have a deeper significance than teaching kids to get along with their peers) and I don't make transitory friendships (nor do I have that ability, as I make a terrible first impression, and a pretty lousy second, third, and fourth impression as well) and I don't see too much horror in death and aging, as my mental age indicates . . . and even though I'm in the clear, I still highly recommend this book: Lasch is regretful in respects to what we have lost as a culture, but he lambastes both liberals and conservatives in how they have attempted to combat this, and his prose is oddly prescient, and reminiscent of Marshall McLuhan-- full of sentences like these: "Modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions-- and our own-- were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time" and "What unifies their actions is the need to promote and defend the system of corporate capitalism from which they-- the managers and professionals who operate the system-- derive most of the benefits . . . the needs of the system shape policy and set the permissible limits of public debate; most of us can see the system but not the class that administers it and monopolizes the wealth it creates."
Know Your Audience
Last Thursday night-- after much celebration-- we were blessed with the opportunity to play with a "musical staircase" at a law office in New Brunswick, and Lynn pounded out an aerobically taxing and rather avant-garde version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and I made this clever joke: "I'm going to be like John Coltrane and skip every other step," in reference to his use of the whole tone scale on his classic album "Giant Steps" but I had forgotten that there were no jazz-heads in this particular group of friends, and so the joke fell flat and had to be explained . . . which is a terribly annoying habit; the next time I'm about to make a joke about an obscure musical scale, I will consider my audience more carefully.
Bonus! 2012: The Year in Review . . .
2012 has been a wondeful year-- full of excitement and drama-- and if you want to read my comprehensive review of the biggest stories, head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog.
More Thoughts on Drinking
So I recently reported that when I stopped drinking beer and ate healthy food for a week that I noticed a number of salubrious effects, but this isn't always a good thing-- because I find that it's easier to play with my kids if I'm a little hungover . . . it's easier to enjoy Bulls-Eye Ball or pulling apart stuck Lego pieces or flying a kite, if you're brain isn't operating at full capacity.
So Funny?
Many people have written about the difficulty in expressing tone in electronic communication, and I will add an example to the list; a few weeks ago my son Ian had to go to the dentist to have an infected tooth extracted and I was too squeamish to accompany him, and so I sent my my wife . . . later that day, while I was eating lunch, I had a moment to check my cell phone and read the text my wife sent: "Ian was really brave but it was pretty bad and there was a lot of blood and he cried some . . . I grayed out from migraine effect and had to lie down . . . so funny" . . . so funny? I didn't think this sounded funny at all, in fact, it sounded horrible-- horrible enough to trigger this absurdity-- but, in retrospect, I guess it could have been worse-- my wife might have blacked out (or, if you are a fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, she could have "browned out") and in the end, Ian was quite proud of himself and the gaping hole in his mouth and his extracted tooth . . . in fact, he was so proud of his extracted tooth-- which he placed in a little plastic box for safekeeping--that he didn't want the tooth fairy to take it from him-- but he did want some money-- so I suggested that he draw a picture of the tooth and put that under his pillow and see of the tooth fairy accepted the drawing as fair currency, and wonder of wonders!-- the tooth fairy did accept the drawing, which raises some serious questions about fungibility in the fairy world.
Bonus: Stunningly Ironic New Year's Resolution Development!
The 2011 Taco Count is over (I ate my 200th last night) and I have moved on to a more abstract resolution for 2012-- to Care More About Canada-- and I gave myself one "Caring About Canada Credit" simply for writing a sentence about this topic, but apparently-- according to an actual flesh and blood Canadian (Thanks Melody!) I spelled "Ottawa" incorrectly in this sentence where I vowed to profess a sincere interest and curiosity in the giant country just north of us, and this irony is not lost on me, and so I am resetting my Caring About Canada Counter down to zero, where it belongs, and I will humbly proceed from there . . .
Loath and Loathe Revisited
Two things I should be loath to admit that I do not loathe: 1) spinning class-- because of plantar fasciitis, I am going light with the soccer and basketball for a few weeks, and so my wife convinced me to try spinning while I am healing, and I must admit the time goes very quickly and the work-out is intense-- though I feel very goofy biking to the beat 2) the Marky Mark song "Good Vibrations," which I was actually pleased to hear during the aforementioned spinning class.
These Might Be The Best Sentences of 2011
Last year I introduced the "These Might Be The Best Sentences" feature, in which a completely biased and rather lazy judge (me) hastily attempts to choose the best sentences of the year . . . and though this year I am still just as biased and just as lazy, I am introducing a number of categories and a Grand Prize Winner to make this feature seem more dramatic and legitimate:
1) in the "Generating The Most Passionate Discussion" category-- all of it vitriolic and all of it directed towards me-- my "miraculous" sentence 'What Balls May Come?" earns a spot on the list;
2) the winner of the "Personal Revelation" category is "I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery";
3) "I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students" wins the "Pithy Maxim" award;
4) "No Principles=Happiness" is the hands down winner in the "My Wife Is Just A Little Bit Insane" category;
5) The Mystery of the Year is "A Brief But Inconclusive Tale of a Tail";
6) we have a tie in the Best Idea of Dave category between "Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!" and "Peacock Tail= 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Tail Fin";
7) in the Best Idea of Dave That He Can't Remember Conceiving Due to the Influence of Alcohol category, the winner is this gem of a sentence;
8) in the When the Odds Are Against You, Make A Sperm Joke category, the winner is this inspirational tale;
9) in the For Once Dave Actually Deserves an Apology category we have a rather prolix masterpiece, entitled "The Potato Chip Incident";
10) Krystina's Best Idea Ever wins the Best Idea by Someone Other Than Dave;
11) The Most Awkward Moment of Dave is this hypothetical and unusual entry;
and the Overall Grand Prize Winning Sentence (and also the winner of the prestigious Sentence That Made T.J. Make the Same Comment Over and Over Award) is not a single sentence, but instead an over-arching category of sentences that thematically dominated Sentence of Dave in 2011 . . . the award goes to The 2011 Taco Count! (and my wife is making tacos tonight as an appetizer for the party we are attending, and so-- God willing-- I should eat my 200th taco of 2011 sometime this evening).
1) in the "Generating The Most Passionate Discussion" category-- all of it vitriolic and all of it directed towards me-- my "miraculous" sentence 'What Balls May Come?" earns a spot on the list;
2) the winner of the "Personal Revelation" category is "I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery";
3) "I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students" wins the "Pithy Maxim" award;
4) "No Principles=Happiness" is the hands down winner in the "My Wife Is Just A Little Bit Insane" category;
5) The Mystery of the Year is "A Brief But Inconclusive Tale of a Tail";
6) we have a tie in the Best Idea of Dave category between "Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!" and "Peacock Tail= 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Tail Fin";
7) in the Best Idea of Dave That He Can't Remember Conceiving Due to the Influence of Alcohol category, the winner is this gem of a sentence;
8) in the When the Odds Are Against You, Make A Sperm Joke category, the winner is this inspirational tale;
9) in the For Once Dave Actually Deserves an Apology category we have a rather prolix masterpiece, entitled "The Potato Chip Incident";
10) Krystina's Best Idea Ever wins the Best Idea by Someone Other Than Dave;
11) The Most Awkward Moment of Dave is this hypothetical and unusual entry;
and the Overall Grand Prize Winning Sentence (and also the winner of the prestigious Sentence That Made T.J. Make the Same Comment Over and Over Award) is not a single sentence, but instead an over-arching category of sentences that thematically dominated Sentence of Dave in 2011 . . . the award goes to The 2011 Taco Count! (and my wife is making tacos tonight as an appetizer for the party we are attending, and so-- God willing-- I should eat my 200th taco of 2011 sometime this evening).
O Canada!
Counting tacos was fun, but it did get a bit tedious (plus, I prefer tamales to tacos, and there were a few times when I had the opportunity to order tamales and would have preferred to eat tamales, but I ordered tacos just to up the count . . . the sacrifices I make for this blog!) and so for 2012, I am resolving to do something a bit more abstract, although I will still attempt to assess my progress here at Sentence of Dave . . . and the reason I choose this particular resolution, which I will reveal shortly, is because of an embarrassing conversation I had with my son's soccer coach-- who is Canadian-- in which I revealed a shocking ignorance of Canadian geography and culture, and-- when I was pressed-- I could not name the capital of Canada (and I am not retarded geographically-- I can name loads of obscure capital cities from countries such as Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc. and I present myself as fairly well-traveled individual, which made this exchange even more embarrassing) and so, for my New Year's Resolution in 2012, I swear to Care More About Canada and I will keep a counter of times when I care about something Canadian . . . when I research a fact about Canada or make an attempt to listen to a Canadian musician or watch a Canadian film or TV show or follow some part of Canadian politics or sports or culture . . . and I am confident I can care more about Canada than I did in 2011, when I did not care about Canada even once (I did care about friends that I have in Canada-- I taught with a number of Canadians when I was in Syria-- but that doesn't count . . . I'm going to try to care more about Canada itself, the nation just to our north with which we share a 3,987 mile border).
The Second Hardest Working Man
Lest you think I stumble upon all the great books that I review here, or, as I have been accused, simply give a fantastic review to every book I read, let me explain to you how hard I work to find something good to read . . . and I realize this "hard work" is probably easier than changing over the children's clothing, or putting up the Christmas lights, or painting an "accent wall" in the living room-- all of which I neglected to lend a hand with because I was "working hard" on finding a good book to read, but we all have our special skills . . . but before I raced through The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith, which I will a perfect give ten scuttled boats out of ten-- this thriller from 1955 is a hundred times more thrilling than the ubiquitously popular The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and you get to travel to places more scenic than Hedeby and Stockholm . . . Ripley is a combination of Richard III and Dexter-- before reading this masterpiece, I read hundreds of pages in other books, all of which were pretty good but none of which completely captured my imagination and to prove this to you, I offer you a list of Recent Books I Bailed On:1) Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (beautifully written but too many dead turtles); 2) Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search For the Origin of Species (excellent mix of science and the adventurers who made it possible, but too much biographical minutia for my taste); 3) Inferno, The World at War, 1939-1945 (I wanted to read an overview of WWII but this book is for the WWII buff, a massive tome beyond my scope); 4) The Beauty and The Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War (a great concept, tell the story of the war through common people, but again, I need to read a clear overview before I read this one); 5) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (I always love Steven Pinker and this one is no exception, but the font is small and the book is huge, and some of it is a review for me, so I doubt I'll finish it before it's due back to the library); 6) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations (extremely insightful classic from the seventies, but I'm afraid if I finish all 250 depressing pages, and truly understand the book, then that I'll have to stop writing this blog).
Young and Confident
The other morning my wife and I were doing a "reverse Gatsby"; we were discussing when the shortest day of the year-- the Winter Solstice-- would occur, and this confused my son Ian, and so he asked, "So today isn't forty-five hours long?" and he spoke with such confidence that I really had a hard time breaking him the news that there were only twenty-four hours in a day.
Best Christmas Gift Ever: My Wife Got New Knobs!
My wife is an incredibly thoughtful gift-giver, and this year was no exception . . . she got new knobs! what more could any man ask for! a set of new knobs! . . . perhaps I should be more specific, she got new knobs for the kitchen cabinets, because the old knobs had sharp corners, which my shorts would catch on, resulting in several torn pockets, and I constantly complained about these pointy knobs and often called them "an accident waiting to happen" and so-- after I went to bed on Christmas Eve-- she installed the new knobs, and I was pleasantly surprised by them on Christmas morning.
If You Believe They Put A Man In The Moon . . .
My kids and wife insist they see someone, but I just can't make out the "man in the moon."
Holiday Wishes
So the other day I watched my son Alex mule kick his younger brother in the privates, and when I made the mistake of trying to get the bottom of the incident, this is what I learned: Alex claimed he was retaliating because Ian punched him in the face and Ian said he punched Alex in the face because Alex said he was "never going to be friends with him again" and Alex explained that he said this to his younger brother because he-- Alex-- had put a Lego set on his Christmas list and then Ian copied him and put the same set on his Christmas list and Alex told him to erase it because there was no way that they were going to get two of the same Lego set and that he had claimed it first but Ian refused to erase the Lego set from his list and so that exchange caused the chain reaction which resulted in all the hitting and mule-kicking and I would love-- just once-- to give my kids nothing but coal on Christmas, so that they think there is some credibility to this whole "naughty and nice" list . . . because it's obvious that no one is checking this thing "twice" for accuracy.
Grammar Lessons and Musical Confessions
Looks Can Be Deceiving . . . Or Can They?
Several weeks ago we had an unseasonably warm day and so I took my stand-up paddleboard (or SUP, to you paddleboard aficianados) out on the Raritan River for a final trip before I deflated it for winter storage-- and I assumed the water would look the same as it does from the banks-- brown and murky-- but once I got out there, it was more shallow than I imagined, and I could clearly see the stones on the bottom; this was a pleasant surprise, because my friend Connell was sure that I'd get a case of giardia or worse from tooling around on the Raritan, but, aside from a piece of garbage here and there, the water appeared quite clean . . . but my reverie was ruined when I ran into a dead seagull, rotting and bloated, and then a flock of twenty seagulls took off, and once they took flight, they crapped en masse, and their crap landed on the water and spread in an oily slick, which lapped against dead and rotting seagull, and that is the image I carried with me for the rest of my trip.
An Almost Awkward Moment of Dave
Regular readers may be familiar with the many Awkward Moments of Dave . . . and fans of this recurring feature will appreciate how this incident was almost The MOST Awkward Moment of Dave: before I went running on my free period at work on Monday, I changed my clothes in the women's staff bathroom-- which is next door to the men's staff bathroom and has a similar layout, a square room with a sink and a toilet, but no stall or other feature . . . and both these bathrooms open right into "B-Hall," a busy thoroughfare with many classrooms-- and the reason I use the women's bathroom is because there is furniture: a chair and a bureau-- and so while I am changing, I can put my clothes and belongings on the furniture instead of the urine soaked floor of the men's bathroom; it was cold Monday, and so I decided to wear spandex and while I was slipping out of my boxers, I was simultaneously fooling with my iPod and my underwear tangled around my ankles as I tried to flick it off with my foot and I fell, and because my hands were occupied, I fell hard and nearly hit my head on the toilet-- I was just able to break my fall with my left hand-- but if I didn't, and I knocked myself out, then the discovery would have been horrendously embarrassing, especially if it was between classes . . . a half-naked male teacher lying unconscious in the women's bathroom, with a pair of '90's style headphones tangled around his head . . . I was inches from infamy.
Costco: Highs and Lows
I went to Costco yesterday to stock up on booze and produce and it was a roller-coaster ride . . . at first it was all highs, they had Menage a Trois wine for 8.79 a bottle-- five dollars cheaper than at our local store-- and then-- even better!-- they had cases of Guinness for 28 dollars a case . . . and they hadn't stocked Guinness for months and months . . .but I did not realize that stacking those two cases of Guinness in the undercarriage of my super-sized cart would be the apex of my bulk-shopping happiness, I was cranked up as high as I could go . . . my plummet began when I couldn't get around some very old and very slow Asian ladies, and when I finally spotted some open space and was able to race by them, I got swept up in a giant crowd of people and found myself in the check-out line though I hadn't finished shopping-- but what could I do?-- so I waited and paid, and then while I was packing my goods into the provided boxes-- which, I should add, were all missing a side-- I launched a gigantic Costco sized bottle of balsamic vinegar over the top of my cart and onto the concrete floor, where it shattered, forming a large, amorphous, blood-colored pool . . . and though I wanted to slink away from the mess I had just made, one of the employees was "nice" enough to send a doddering old man for another bottle of vinegar, so I had to wait next to the giant mess I created-- in shame-- while the antediluvian errand boy waded through the maelstrom of shoppers and fetched a replacement bottle for me, and the store started to smell like a salad and everyone who passed me had to take a guess at what I spilled, and so I had to endure comments like "Soy sauce?" and "Is that wine? Should we get straws?" but, of course, I deserved these remarks-- that is how I paid for the extra bottle of vinegar-- and next time I will forgo the treacherously incomplete boxes and bring bags from home.
A Word To The Wise About A Word
This sentence is about a word that I learned you should NOT to call your wife on a Friday afternoon . . . to explain: my vocabulary lesson began Friday third period, when Eric recommended the movie Super 8 to me-- explaining that it was in adventure in the spirit of The Goonies-- and so I asked him if it was okay for my kids to watch (they are 6 and 7 years old) and he said, "Absolutely," and though he has no kids, he does have a baby on the way, and he once was a kid . . . so I trusted his review and went to the local Redbox and got a Blu-ray copy and proceeded to get my children all amped up for movie night-- a movie that not only would they enjoy, but that mommy and daddy would enjoy as well! and we would order food! and watch the whole thing!-- and then my wife came home and I told her my awesome plan-- to order some food and watch this movie that the entire family would not merely tolerate, but actually enjoy, and she said, "Super 8? I don't think that's for our kids . . . I think that's too scary for them," and Alex, Ian, and I claimed it was NOT too scary and that Eric had recommended it, and when my wife pointed out that Eric didn't have kids, we ignored her logic, and then my wife-- who was already feeling a bit sensitive as a parent because that afternoon my mom and some other teachers gave her a guilt trip about our kids not believing wholeheartedly in the whole Santa myth-- looked up Super 8 on the internet and found some reviews that said the film was a bit scary and inappropriate for young children (perhaps that's why it's rated PG-13) but I found a review by Roger Ebert that said it's like The Goonies and then I called my wife a word that I should not have called her . . . I called her a "buzzkill," which she did not take kindly . . . but because we (meaning all the boys) were adamant that the movie was going to be great, we sat down together and watched it . . . and it really is an excellent film, but it is also mildly inappropriate for young kids: there's an F-bomb (Alex turned to Ian and said, "That was the F-word") and there's some drug use and some major violence and suspense and a fair bit of cursing-- all of which Eric remembered when he was reminded about it, but skipped his mind when he offered his endorsement-- and due to this content, Alex claimed it was "the greatest movie ever" and Ian concurred-- though he hid under the blankets during one scene . . . and every time there was an inappropriate part I had to suffer the withering stare of my wife and her sarcastic, "So I'm a buzzkill?" refrain . . . and though I've banned the use of sarcasm in the house, I let it slide this time because I certainly deserved it.
Something For The Moral Relativists
In his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker traces the decline of human sacrifice, and suttee in particular (the now illegal practice of a Hindu widow "willingly" cremating herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre ) and this was British Commander Charles Napier's brilliant retort to this custom: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows . . . very well . . . we also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them . . . build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows . . . you may follow your custom, and then we will follow ours."
The Causal Pathways of Johnny Cash
I am slogging my way through Steven Pinker's new and very thick book called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and it's worth the slogging; for example, after a densely statistical section on the civilizing influence of women in the Wild West, Pinker sums up with this bon mot: "When they held constant all the factors that typically push men into marriage, they found that actually getting married made a man less likely to commit crimes immediately thereafter . . . the causal pathway has been pithily explained by Johnny Cash: Because you're mine, I walk the line."
Well Duh . . .
So this is annoying: for a week, I didn't drink beer and ate only healthy food, and I felt great . . . I had lots of energy, didn't have any flatulence, slept well, woke up early, started recording music again, had more patience with my kids, more energy in the classroom, and lost some weight . . . but I'm thinking it's just a fluke and doesn't indicate anything at all, so I'm going to return to my normal eating and drinking habits.
Long Live Dave's Butt
In a Feature That You Hope Will Never Recur, I take a long and hard look at my buttocks: once upon a time I was strong enough to "press the stack" on many universal weight machines in the gym, but those days are gone; now the only complete stack I can press with ease and for multiple repetitions is on the glute machine . . . my butt is the last castle standing in a once great kingdom.
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