How To Use The Self-Checkout Kiosk At the Library

They have a new self-checkout kiosk at the library, so you can borrow a book without having to undergo the scrutiny of the librarian . . . now you can take out all those racy romance novels and sex manuals and hemorrhoid treatment tomes that you were previously too embarrassed to hand to the old lady at the desk, for fear that she'd make some small talk about them; I didn't go for anything particularly racy, instead I checked out Anne Coulter's newest book Demonic . . . I was curious as to what she has to say, but never wanted to be seen holding one of her books . . . I only read a few chapters, but I think I got the idea of the theme-- she creates a portrait of a typical liberal and then attacks that portrait, and in this book she paints a liberal as someone belonging to a mindless and dangerous "mob," which strikes me as funny, because-- according to Paul Krugman-- I am certainly a liberal, and maybe even a lazy progressive, but, as anyone who knows me knows, I hate mobs (unless I'm 19 years old and moshing to Primus) and absolutely refuse to take part in them . . . I get claustrophobic and anxious in large groups, hate chanting and marching, and I won't even do "the wave" at a sporting event, and so it's like an outer body experience reading this book-- as I know Coulter is attacking me, I'm right in her wheelhouse . . . I drive "the third most liberal car in America" and I think gay people should be able to get married, I think women should have free reign over their vaginas-- including the right to vajazzle-- I think drugs should be legalized, I think assault weapons should be illegalized, I think we should fund the arts, and I think the environment is more important than the economy, and-- though I am loath to admit it-- I think that I should probably be taxed a bit more and people that make a boatload of money should be taxed substantially more, so that we can make the infrastructure of this country as great as possible . . . and that probably completes someone's stereotype of a typical "liberal," and I'm sure I've got my own composite of a stereotypical conservative-- though none of the conservatives I know fit into that composite . . . Coulter occasionally attacks these run of the mill beliefs with inside jokes and sarcasm, but mainly it's this other thing: conservatives aren't the crazy racist zealous mob, liberals are! liberals are afraid of science! (unless it's evolution, I guess) liberals are the KKK! etc. and though I wish I had the patience to make it all the way through, because it's important to see both sides of the political spectrum, even the radical political spectrum, I found it much more politically enlightening to finish George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords . . . he is the conservative of the fantasy genre, concerned with realpolitik, finance, defense, and tactics, instead of happy elves.

Get Real, Duracraft

I think the "low" and "high" settings on my Duracraft window fan are accurate, but I'm not sure if the "super" setting is warranted-- if a fan has a "super" setting, then you should be able to fly a kite indoors or dry a soggy dog in minutes, not just rustle the curtains.

Anyone Feel Like Drawing This?

Here's a cartoon idea that is too difficult for me to draw: Samuel Jackson is waiting in line at the airport security check, and there's a number of pictographs depicting the things you can't bring aboard the plane, using the classic red circle with a line through it to depict this . . . there's one banning liquids and one banning aerosol cans and one banning produce . . . and the last red circle with a line through it contains a snake.

Don't They Have Levitating Magnetic Bullet Trains in Japan?

You'd think the recent explosion in digital technology would have rubbed off on public transport, but train conductors are still punching away with those handheld hole punchers, clicking some inscrutable pattern of holes onto your ticket and every other ticket on the train . . . you'd think they'd all have carpal tunnel syndrome.

A Drink Hooper Would Enjoy

During my trip to see the collegiate sevens rugby tournament, we impressed a school bus driver into our service and tried to get her to take us back to center Philadelphia from the stadium in Chester, but the driver could only take us to the airport-- so we decided to make the best of it and retire to the airport bar . . . and Gus suggested a tequila shot called "the stuntman" and I like tequila well enough, so I agreed to have one . . . and Gus said we needed lime and salt, which always works with tequila, but when you do a "stuntman," instead of licking the salt, you snort it up your nose-- which hurts!-- and then you shoot the tequila, and then you squirt the lime into your eye (but luckily I was wearing glasses, so unlike the other "stuntmen," I didn't burn my retina).

It's Hard To Look Menacing On A Scooter

I was walking through the park and I saw a couple of teenagers that looked like trouble-- black ski hats pulled low-- despite the warm weather-- saggy jeans revealing their boxers, surly expressions on their faces-- but they were zooming along on kick scooters and they weren't scrawny thirteen year olds, they were older teenagers . . . pushing twenty, and-- though I didn't have the heart to tell them-- once you hit a certain age, it's really tough to look like a bad-ass on a scooter.

Unfortunately, The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

Of my two sons, Alex reminds me more of myself-- impulsive, talkative, and just shy of smart . . . in college, my friends called me "the poor man's Galileo" because of my half-baked theorizing, and Alex is following suit; several days ago, in the midst of one of his interminably long monologues, he had this epiphany: "Dad! I know how they can let you eat the strawberries when you pick them! Because mom said we couldn't eat them when we went picking! They could weigh you before you start picking! Then they could weigh you after you're done picking! And if you gain like .5 or something, then you pay for .5 strawberries!" and I loved the idea, of course, but that's not saying much, especially since I remember back in college, when I worked for the Middlesex County Election Board in Roosevelt Park, and they had a scale in the break room-- one of those accurate old-school balance scales-- and so on Fridays we would weigh-in before lunch and then go to the all you can eat Sizzler buffet and then weigh ourselves again after lunch, and the person who gained the most weight would win ten dollars (I vaguely remember gaining seven pounds during one of these gluttonous sessions).

The Beach Is A Good Idea

One of man's greatest inventions-- and I'm not being sexist here, as I am pretty sure that it was a man that designed the bikini-- is the beach . . . it's the one time that we outsmarted womankind; we convinced them to wear their underwear in public in broad daylight and all we offered in return is our hairy torsos . . . and if you've seen my back hair recently, then you will agree that we men are definitely making out on the deal.

My Dog Is Like A Dog But I Am Like A Cat

Let me preface this by saying that my dog Sirius is a good dog, but sometimes good dogs do bad things . . . especially if there is a bunny involved . . . I was biking in the park with Sirius at my side, using a product called the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash, which is an innocuous enough sounding name for what is essentially a metal stick with a bungee cord running through it that clips under your bike seat and juts out perpendicular to your frame, but a better name for the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash would be The Sling-Shot Canine Powered Kiss Your Ass And Your Family Good-bye Because You’re Never Going to See Either of Them Again Unless There Is An Afterlife Rocket Bike Attachment, and as we were biking along using this inaptly named product, a bunny rabbit scampered across the bike path and Sirius-- who is a good dog, but still, when all is said and done, a dog-- jetted sideways after the rabbit, putting him on the right side of two garbage pails and my bike and me on the left side of the two garbage pails . . . and so the stretched bungee cord and the metal rod hit the cans, abruptly stopping the bike and propelling my dog's head right out of his collar; the two garbage pails flipped over and I shot over the handlebars of my new mountain bike (and as this happened, I thought to myself: why aren't I wearing that nice new helmet that I just bought?) and I flew through the air and landed on all fours, just like a cat-- completely uninjured, with eight lives to spare . . . a minor miracle if there ever was one-- but despite the miracle, I still had the awkward job of brushing myself off, righting the garbage cans, putting all the bottles and cans back into the garbage cans, getting my dog's collar back around his neck, getting my dog reattached to the Walky Dog Hands-Free Bicycle Leash, and all the while three women at a picnic table watched me do this, and I felt like Kitty Genovese because they never offered to help me-- nor did they applaud my agility or passionately swoon at my feet in celebration of my feline landing-- instead they simply chuckled at me once I got rolling again (which I needed to do quickly, because my six-year-old son was ahead of me and never saw the crash, so he just kept on biking).

Loss of Essence

Trying to teach with laryngitis is like being a super-hero with no super-powers.

Sometimes It's Best Not to Know

We had an "energy assessment" done on our house, and apparently it's a big sieve with an ancient leaking furnace underneath it . . . but despite this troubling news, my kids enjoyed the part with the infra-red camera. 

It's Not Like I Know What A Hoosier Is

I wish I liked hockey, but I just can't muster up any interest in the Stanley Cup Finals . . . but I am interested in how many people that do not hail from New Jersey are familiar with the legend of the Jersey Devil . . . and do the people who don't know the legend think that the team is run by a bunch of Satanists?

Redefining the Terms

According to Paul Krugman, in his book The Conscience of a Liberal, I should define myself as a "conservative"-- because liberals have now become conservative in that they want to preserve public schools, Medicare, unionized workers, collective bargaining, separation of church and state, Social Security, and government regulations on Wall Street and the environment . . . and I should also define myself as a "progressive," because I think there should be universal health care (and the book really educated me on health care and its costs . . . we pay more than double what Canada, France, Germany, and Britain pay per person on health care, and have the lowest life expectancy among them . . . and a large portion of the costs of healthcare is the bureaucracy of the system, which would vanish if the government was the primary insurer for everyone . . . as it is for Medicare . . . read the book, it's too boring to summarize here) and I am also progressive because I wrote an editorial on how we should preserve our public school system instead of privatizing it and because I think taxes should return to the levels they were at in the 1970's . . . and the current movement conservatives should be defined as "radicals," as they want to dismantle the New Deal, government programs, regulation over finance, public education, Medicare, unions, collective bargaining, the estate tax, and other traditional American programs, and have us enter some weird new version of The Gilded Age.

The Avengers Are Not As Super As My Wife

The Avengers is certainly action-packed, but the heroes are too super for me . . . when the characters are invincible, there's not much on the line (plus they stole the ending from the movie version of The Watchmen) but my wife, on the other hand (who is a mere mortal) did perform a super-heroic feat while we were watching The Avengers and she did it with everything on the line . . . my son Ian said, "My tummy hurts, I think I'm going to throw up," and in a split second, with her super-human reflexes, my wife whipped out the giant bag of potato chips that she had smuggled into the theater, got it perfectly positioned in front of Ian's face as he yakked-- in the dark! the the fucking dark!-- and then calmly took Ian and the bag of potato chips/vomit to the bathroom, tossed the latter, cleaned up the former . . . and brought him back so he could enjoy the rest of the movie . . . I'd like to see Natalia Romanova pull that off.

The Great Political Paradox

The great mystery in politics is why anyone poor or lower middle class would vote against their own interests-- against social services and public schools and a clean environment and unionization and regulation of big business and more taxes on the wealthy-- but, of course, this happens across broad swaths of our nation, especially in the mid-west and the South . . . Thomas Frank tried to explain it in his book What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, and while it is a great read on how Republicans used so much more than hot-button issues to distract voters from economic realities, and actually built a brand-based belief system and ethos into the party-line; Paul Krugman, in his 2007 book The Conscience of a Liberal, wonders if that is truly the heart of the matter . . . he acknowledges that hot-button issues such as abortion and national security are partly to blame for the paradox, and also details how movement conservatism has galvanized the evangelicals (or is it the other way around? are the evangelicals using the movement conservatives to create a new kingdom of heaven on earth? either way, I'm going to hell) but Krugman feels the nexus of Republican power over the lower class voter stems from race, and explains how race was exploited in the deep South to bring those voters over to the GOP; while this is an awkward issue-- in the 1940's, when Harry Truman tried to create a universal health care system, his main opposition came from the American Medical Association and Southern whites, who feared integrated hospitals . . . and most of the fears of lower class Republican voters-- who are predominantly white-- are fears of redistributing income to undeserving minorities, black or otherwise . . . but America is becoming less racist and America is becoming more diverse and America is becoming economically more unequal . . . and so I am wondering how the GOP will gain these votes in the future . . . Kansas is still Kansas, according to the New York Times, but this movement conservative absurdity-- this radical and bi-partisan divisiveness that is at best a fringe in every other developed nation-- this can't continue forever, can it?

My Sixth Grade Teacher Was Passive Agressive AF

I found my sixth grade "yearbook" and this is what my teacher-- who will remain nameless for her own protection-- wrote to me . . . and notice the tone shift, it's almost like she couldn't help herself:

Dear David,

Good luck next year . . . I'm very happy you were a member of my class . . . you have been a great sport thoughout the year, your sense of humor was a bright spot many times . . . now all you have to work on is your talkativeness . . . we helped your organization (and that was a chore) and I believe you can master your talking mouth . . .

and then she had the gall to write: I'll miss you very much, please come back and visit . . . and when I was younger, I would have probably thought this was a relatively sweet note, but now that I am a master of the female tone, I get the big picture . . . I must have been a royal pain in her ass, but I was too skinny and nerdy to scream at, so she had to express it passive aggressively in that note.

Sometimes Technology Doesn't Improve Things

Art History in Two Pictures

I've got a scanner and I am determined to use it . . . sorry . . . maybe it's just a phase that I will outgrow (or maybe I should stick to scanning my six year old son's art, which is far better than mine).

Rimshot

I had pizza last night, but I'm not going to tell you anything about it . . . it was personal.

Confessions of a Lazy Man

I've finally gotten my new printer/scanner hooked up (check out my six year old son Ian's abstract art-- he could give Marla Olmstead a run for her money) but that wasn't the only package from Amazon that I received that day-- there was another one, a smaller one, and I figured it contained a book or two, but I didn't get around to opening it for a few days and when I did, I found two books inside, neither of which I ordered: An Eyewitness Guide to Spain and a history of Shea Stadium . . . so I looked at the outside of the package, and it wasn't addressed to me, it belonged to the house several doors down, and so I put the package on top of the scanner, informed my wife of this, and went on with my life . . . two weeks later my wife noticed that I never returned the package to the rightful owners and she chastised me (and I didn't tell her what I was thinking: I figured you would return it . . . smart move on my part) and she told me I needed to walk it over to the neighbors immediately, so I took the dog for protection-- because I figured this was going to be embarassing, since I had opened the package and then neglected to return it to them in a timely fashion, and I was hoping Sirius would drag me to safety if things got to awkward (or at least dispel the awkwardness with his powers of cuteness) but luckily no one was home . . . which means they were probably wandering through Spain without a guidebook.

A Fun and Easy Way To Spice Up Your Diction

I learned a technique from a student last week that might be Generation Y's greatest contribution to our culture-- it's not age exclusive, it's more entertaining than Facebook and Lady gaga combined, and it's easy to learn but difficult to master . . . so here it is: you add the acronym "AF" to any statement that would benefit from the additional modifying phrase "as fuck," but by using the acronym, you avoid the profanity and still get your point across . . . and make yourself feel better to boot (although I'm not sure if it has the same effect on pain as actually swearing) because nothing relieves stress like an expletive . . . here are a few examples to get you started:

1) it's humid AF in here . . . I used this one yesterday in class yesterday when my knees started sweating and my pants reflected this . . . really gross . . .

2) it's hot AF in here . . . complementary to #1 and a set-up for #5

2) you're late AF . . . also wonderful to use in class . . .

3) that was rude AF . . . useful in class and all of New Jersey . . .

4) I am hot AF . . . use this immediately after #1 and #2, especially if your pants have knee-sweat stains, and you're sure to get a laugh from teenagers.

Next Time I Will Hire Someone

I'll build a bike shed under the deck, I thought, all I need to do is level out the dirt under there . . . just go under the deck and level out the dirt because it looks like there's a bit of a slope . . . ha!

Old School

There is no question that the world has changed drastically since I was a kid, but some things never change: last week, my son Alex got in trouble in school for shooting spitballs, playing with scissors, and administering noogies.

My Son Ian Says The Right Thing (But Probably For the Wrong Reasons)

Last week, my two sons and I were walking on the Asbury Park boardwalk, in search of a video arcade, and my son Alex said, "I would do anything for video games!" and then his younger brother-- ever the opportunist-- told him, "You shouldn't say that," and then Ian looked at me and said, in his sincerest voice: "I would do anything . . . for my family."

Exciting Technological Times

I am excited to announce that we have a new printer/scanner (but I am loath to admit that it is still inside the box it was delivered in . . . it's been sitting on the kitchen table in that box for nearly two weeks, and though each and every day I announce, "We're going to set up the scanner today!" we never seem to get around to it . . . and my worry is that if I don't do it soon, it is going to become obsolete).

City of Bohane

Even though it meets my definition of true science-fiction, I gave up on Irishman Kevin Barry's new novel City of Bohane, but I did like this bit of description about how the place where you live affects your personality: "too little has been said, actually, about living in windy places . . . when a wind blows in such ferocious gusts as the Big Nothin' hardwind, and when it blows forty-nine weeks out of the year, the effect is not physical only but philosophical . . . it is difficult to keep a firm hold of one's consciousness in such a wind . . . the mind is walloped from its train of thought by the constant assaults of wind . . . the result is a skittish, temperamental people with  tendency towards odd turn of logic," and it makes me wonder how different a person I would be if I was born in Argentina . . . would I have many lovers? be able to dance? wear leather pants? walk around with a rose between my teeth? . . . unfortunately, I will never know . . . there is no escaping the fact that my genes were forged and tempered in that crucible known as Central Jersey.

Canine Economic Boost

Now that we have a dog, our consumption of duct tape has gone way up.

Don't Monkey With the Monkey

Sometimes you've got to shock the monkey . . . unless you actually are a monkey . . . then you are far less likely to shock a fellow monkey, even if it means starving to death . . . while, as Stanley Milgram certainly proved, we humans are quite willing to shock each other, for little or no reward . . . and I certainly won't put myself above this behavior, as I'm quite willing to shock my students-- in fact, one way I like to shock them is by repeatedly playing "Shock the Monkey" while they try to write an analysis of Milgram's experiment . . . especially the part that goes "monkey monkeyeeeeeee," and, I must tell you that kids today find it shocking that "Shock the Monkey" was a popular song that made the charts back in the '80's, but-- of course-- the '80's were a pretty shocking decade,

I Am a Man (and so Is Connell)

My wife and I went out with our friends in Asbury Park last weekend, and if you haven't been there recently, you are in for a surprise-- the boardwalk is renovated, full of attractions, and it is thriving . . . after downing a few beers, we started walking towards the restaurant (Stella Marina-- really good) and we passed one of those old fashioned high striker games-- the strongman test where you swing the mallet and try to shoot the puck up to ring the bell; it was on the boardwalk and unattended-- you were supposed to throw a dollar in the jar for two tries, but the guys in front of us took more swings than that and they were unsuccessful-- and they were big guys-- but the thing was antiquated and looked very rusty . . . Connell and I took turns at it, and after several tries I was able to ring the bell by incorporating a little jump in my swing, and then Connell followed suit, and rang the bell and it's a good thing he did because if I rang the bell and then he didn't, then he would have had low self-esteem for the rest of the evening and his wife would have probably left him, which would have been sad since we were celebrating their anniversary.

Children of the Carp

I was walking the dog last weekend through Donaldson Park, and it was foggy and drizzling slightly, and as we passed the little pond next to the river, I noticed a number of large boils and splashes . . . closer inspection revealed that these were giant fins and tails, brown and gold, breaking the surface all over the pond . . . so I ran home and got my children and we watched the giant carp for a while-- they were leaping and breaching and finning . . . incredibly active for very large fish-- and so we decided we would fish for them the next morning (our poles weren't set up and Alex had a soccer game so we couldn't take immediate advantage of what was happening) but Sunday morning was windy and clear and the carp were gone . . . we missed our chance.

Diamonds Are a Girl's Worst Nightmare

My friend Stacy showed up to work last Friday with a big cut on her forehead, and I asked her how this happened and she said she scratched herself while she was sleeping, but after further interrogation I discovered that she scratched herself with her diamond engagement ring, and that she wears the ring while she sleeps . . . and this practice is shocking to me-- to go to bed with a sharp object made of the hardest stuff on the planet attached to your finger-- but apparently a lot of women do this (but not my wife, so this sentence is truly altruistic) and so once again I am giving a free idea to whatever entrepreneur happens upon this desolate corner of the internet . . . these compulsive ring-wearing women need  "ring covers" . . . soft little Velcro wrappers that can attach to a ring, kind of like a grill cover, and thus prevent them ring doing any damage to the wearer during sleep (better yet would be to abandon this crazy practice of strip-mining stones from the ground  and presenting to women as a symbol of love, a symbol loaded with financial implications-- but I doubt that's going to happen any time soon).

Tick Streak!

Business as usual around here, as far as minor miracles-- this time it's a Tick Streak, and while I'm not closing in on Dimaggio's unassailable record, I still think it's an impressive chain of consecutive events: the last four times I've gone running in the orchard near the high school, I later discovered a tick crawling somewhere on my body . . . and I can see why I am attractive to a tick, as my legs are thick with hair, but still-- how long can this streak continue?-- I would like to go eight for eight since a tick is an arachnid and has eight legs (and I am wondering how long the streak has to go before it is considered a major miracle and I am canonized as the patron saint of ticks).

Oops . . .

My wife was fishing for a compliment about her use of proper English-- at my behest, she's been instructing our dog to "lie down" instead of to "lay down," but I may have ruined my credibility when I told her, "Yeah, you've been doing really good at that."

The Waitresses Might Know What Boys Like, But I Know What Teachers and Coaches Like . . .

I have been a coach and a teacher for many years and this is the deal: on the playing field, we want girls to act more like boys . . . while in the classroom, we want boys to act more like girls.

How To Get A Beautiful Young Stranger Into Your Kitchen

So last weekend there was a beautiful twenty-five year old girl in my kitchen-- she was blonde, blue-eyed, taller than me, wearing next to nothing, and I didn't know her from Adam . . . and you're probably wondering, "How do I get beautiful, winsome young strangers into my kitchen?" and so I will tell you:

1) you need to live on a steep hill;

2) you need a friendly visiting brother-in-law, who should be a bachelor, and he should be outside working on replacing your bay window;

3) you need a nasty skate-board crash to happen on the steep hill in front of the aforementioned friendly brother-in-law, who will then chivalrously offer medical aid to the girl (possibly motivated by her stunning good looks and skimpy outfit) and suddenly you've got three twenty-somethings in your kitchen and you're fetching peroxide and ointment and bandages, and watching as one girl tends to the other and wondering if anyone should ride a skateboard with that much skin exposed because, though it's very appealing to look at, it's rather dangerous (and funny thing, my wife missed it all . . . she was napping, and I'm not sure if she really believes the story).

Question of Culpability

Once again, I've got a legal question for all the litigators out there: if someone working for Jan's Boutique places a glossy Prom 2012 flyer under your windshield wiper and you don't notice this flyer until you start driving and you have no interest in the $25 in FREE Accessories or the FREE $20 Compact Mirror or the FREE $10 Hair Pin, and so you turn on your windshield wipers in order to remove the flyer because it is obstructing your vision, and the flyer goes flying . . . is this considered littering?

Trilemma of Dave

I read to encounter new stories, new ideas, and new words, and I found all of these in Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 . . . I read stories of economic disaster in Latin America, Japan, and Thailand; I read that the global crisis of 2008 might not have been completely caused by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act (which was put in place after the Great Depression and ensured compartmentalization between commercial banks and investment companies) and might have been more the result of a "run" on the completely unregulated "shadow banking system" . . . which wouldn't have been regulated by the Glass-Steagall act anyway; and I read the word "trilemma," which Krugman used to explain the problem with national monetary policy . . . you can either let your money "float" and fluctuate on the exchange rate, which fights recession but adds a great deal of uncertainty to your economy, or you could fix the value of the rate and attempt to guarantee that the currency would never be devalued, or you can maintain an adjustable peg . . . and he explains the defects in all of these and calls the problem a "three-cornered dilemma" . . . a "trilemma" and the only trilemma in my life right now is not particularly exciting . . . it's not like Heidi Klum, Karolina Kurkova, and my wife are all battling for my affections . . . but there certainly are three corners to my problem: I have a knee injury, but it's not a terribly bad injury-- my knee cap popped out of place and I sprained the inner ligaments and my bursa sac is a bit swollen, and so I can either: 1) rest it properly until it heals . . . which is what I should do, but is rather impossible since I have two active boys, a dog, and I am hyper-active 2) I could do light exercise . . . jog, walk, play with my kids, lift weights, bike, and swim . . . which alleviates my hyper-activity but is rather boring, or 3) I can tape myself and wrap myself and brace myself and keep playing basketball and soccer until my knee explodes and my plantar fasciitis returns.

Three Reasons Dave Will Be Remembered For Eternity

In no particular order, here are my three greatest contributions to society:

1) The "Don't Eat It" Psychological Mind Trick 

2) The Zombie Soccer Drill

3) The Year as a Week Metaphor . . .

and while I've explained the first two ideas here at Sentence of Dave, I've never bothered to write about the "Year as a Week" Metaphor because it's only applicable if you're a teacher . . . but because of recent developments, I feel obligated to set the record straight; fifteen years ago, in the infancy of my teaching career, I developed a metaphor to help the staff make it through the grind of the school year, and it works like this: the first day of school is also the start of a monumental, macro-cosmic year-long school week, so the first day of school is simultaneously the first minutes of the macro-cosmic first period . . . and once we've made it to mid-terms-- the exact center of the school year-- then we are smack in the middle of Wednesday in the macro-cosmic Year as a Week metaphor-- and once there are thirty-five days left in the year (slightly less than 20% of 180) then we have entered the Friday of the the Year as a Week . . . this metaphor is motivational for both students and teachers alike, and I often calculate "convergences," or when the Year as a Week and the actual school week coincide-- this is very exciting, because then the way you feel about the microcosmic week mirrors the way you feel about the macro-cosmic week-- for instance, we just had a Friday convergence at the start of second period and we all felt pretty good about that-- anyone can make it through Friday; the summer, of course, represents the weekend, and it's the reason the metaphor works well for teachers and students . . . perhaps workers with less time off could create a Career as a Week metaphor, with summer being retirement; it usually takes students a while to "get" the metaphor, but most of them eventually grasp the concept (although there are always a few students who just can't think analogously, and when I say things like "It's finally Friday!" on a Tuesday, they stare at me in confusion) but this year, for the first time ever in my career, when I explained the metaphor, a student raised her hand and said, "I do that too!" and she explained that she had developed the exact same metaphor as me, and I thought that was cute and funny until last Friday, when I was explaining to a different class that we were having a convergence and a student said, "Where'd you get that from?" and I told him that I invented The Year as a Week Metaphor many years ago, and he said, "You know Student X does that? Are you sure you didn't get it from her?" and I told him that I invented the Year as a Week Metaphor before Student X could talk, so though I admired her creativity, the credit still had to go to me for the invention of the metaphor, and there's no way I'm doing a Darwin/ Wallace thing with this as I thought of this way before this girl, and so hopefully now I have set the record straight.

Take Shelter is a Movie, Not A Rolling Stones Song!

Take Shelter-- an excellent film which I will sadly admit that I referred to as "Gimme Shelter" on several occasions-- is well-acted, tense, and thrilling; and essentially, it asks this question: if you you act paranoid, delusional, and batshit crazy about something you think is going to happen . . . something no one else believes will happen . . . and in the end, that insane thing actually happens, then are you still utterly batshit crazy?

No Country For Old Sissies

I was discussing my mother-in-law's various medical problems with one of her friends, and she offered me this aphoristic gem, which she claims her father coined: "Growing old is not for sissies."

Jersey's Finest

New Jersey has the best pizza in the world, the fattest governor in the world, and the best surrealist-post-modern hyperkinetic meta-fiction writer in the world . . . his name is Mark Leyner and he's just written a new novel, called The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, after a fifteen year hiatus (his last novel was The Tetherballs of Bougainville) and I won't even try to summarize the "plot" but I believe it's a send-up of how religious texts are transmitted to mortals, edited by mortals-- think Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicea on Ecstasy-- and finally canonized . . . with major digressions about the worship of celebrities and the female anatomy-- but a synopsis does the book no justice, so I will simply present you with a long sample passage, verbatim (the ellipses are Leyner's) because this is the best way for me to review the book . . . if you like this passage, then go for it:

 --the flowing auto-narrative of the basketball dribbling nine year old who, at dusk, alone on the family driveway half-court, weaves back and forth, half-hearing and half-murmuring his own play-by-play: ". . . he's got a lot going on that could potentially distract him . . . algebra midterm . . . his mom's calling him to come inside . . . his asthma inhaler just fell out of his pocket . . . but somehow he totally shuts all that out of his mind . . . crowd's going ca-razy! . . . but the kid's in his own private Idaho . . . clock's ticking down . . . badass craves the drama . . . lives for this shit . . . Gunslingaaah . . . he can hear the automatic garage-door opener . . . that means his dad's gonna be pulling into the driveway in, like, fifteen seconds . . . un-fucking believeable that he's about to take this shot under this kind of pressure, with the survival of the species on the line . . . and look at him out there--- dude's ice . . . is this guy human or what? . . . his foot's hurting from when he stepped on his retainer in his room last night . . . but he can play with pain . . . we've seen that time and time again . . . he's stoic . . . a cold-blooded professional . . . Special Ops . . . Hitman with the Wristband . . . hand-eye coordination like a Cyborg Assassin . . . his mom's calling him to dinner . . . the woman is doing everything she can possibly do to rattle him . . . but this guy's not like the rest of us . . . he is un-fucking-flappable . . . he dribbles between his legs . . . OK, hold on . . . he dribbles between his legs . . . hold on . . . he dribbles . . . hold on . . . he dribbles between his legs (yes!) . . . fakes right, fakes left, double pump-fakes . . . there's one second left on the clock . . . and he launches . . . an impossibly . . . long . . . fadeaway . . . jumpaaah . . . it's off the rim . . . but he fights for the offensive rebound like some kind of rabid samarai . . . throwing vicious elbows like lethally honed swords . . . the severed heads of opponents litter the court . . . spinal cords are sticking out of the neck stumps . . . but there's no ticky-tacky foul called, the referees are just letting them play . . . there's somehow still .00137 seconds left ont he clock . . . now there's a horn honking . . . might that be the War Conch of the Undead?"

The Scream is so 90's . . . 1890's

Some lunatic paid 119.9 million dollars for Edward Munch's "The Scream" last night, and I don't think that's a very wise investment, as the image-- which was the ubiquitous icon of anxiety and angst for the 20th Century-- has lost its relevance . . . that screaming face doesn't do it for us in the 21st Century, because we don't have that kind of emotional energy to waste, we don't have the wherewithal to scream at the multiplex of horrors we face every waking moment-- horrors from our own lives, horrors from the lives of others, horrors from around the world, digital horrors multiplied a million times over . . . a constant barrage, an infinite deluge of horrible, contradictory, complex, awkward and terrible information . . . Joseph Kony is abducting children! Greece is going to default! My LDL cholesterol count is 340! Angelina and Brad are on the rocks! Eddie Money is still touring! I need to refinance! The sea levels are rising! . . . we'd be screaming all the time . . . we'd lose our voice; in fact, we don't have even have enough emotion left to utter a Homer-esque "Doh!"-- that's so '90's--  instead the essential reaction to the 21st Century, the facial expression for our times is Jim Halpert's ironic half-smirk . . . one of these : /  because how else can you react to the inconceivable? . . . I am afraid that the "The Scream" is destined to be lumped with King Lear and Oedipus Rex: an evocative piece tragic art, but also full of antiquated outpourings of melodrama and emotion . . . I wish I could paint so I could update the idea-- I would call it "The Smirk"-- not that there needs to be more parodies of this thing, which-- like I said-- has run its course, but I really do wish I could paint (mainly so I could paint a giant squid battling a sperm whale on my bedroom wall, a suggestion that my wife vetoed, probably because I can't paint).

Michael Chiklis and Andrew Strong are the Same Person

The proof is in the pudding: Andrew Strong never made a guest appearance on The Shield, and Vic Mackey never breaks into song after he tortures a confession out of a bad guy (because then you would identify the voice, that distinctive set of lungs that made The Commitments transcend the "band in a movie" genre . . . and I guess Shawn Ryan didn't want to give Mackey a sensitive, soulful side-- imagine if he sang his final confession-- but I think he missed a golden opportunity to make Vic Mackey even more disturbing  . . . Hitler was a failed painter, and that doesn't make him any less frightening, but it does add a strangely human touch to his evil).

Some Good Movies and TV You May Not Have Seen #6

Watching video of something extinct is poignant, nostalgic, and sad . . . but the knowledge of the subject's impending demise imbues the viewing with something special-- for example, check out the video above to see one of the last living thylacines, soon after this film was shot (in 1933) the "Tasmanian tiger' was eradicated by humans; the seminal TV series Freaks and Geeks evoked the same feeling in me . . . as by the time I watched it, it had already been cancelled (only super-hip people watched the show when it was broadcast) and so each episode-- no matter how excellent-- was a countdown until extinction; and once again, my wife and I are in the same predicament, this time with the 2009 sitcom Better Off Ted . . . it's funny, smart, satirical, fast-paced, and rather lighthearted send-up of business ethics, research and development, technology, and office politics; the jokes are clever, and Portia de Rossi is perfectly cast as the cold and callous dragon-lady boss, and though it was critically acclaimed, apparently no one watched it . . . we've got ten more episodes before it dies in front of us, never to be queued on Netflix again.

Cryptonomicon

I finally finished Neal Stephenson's 915 page tour de force of a novel Cryptonomicon, and a number of superlatives are appropriate: Pynchon-esque, epic, prescient (the book predates Bitcoin by a decade), sprawling, comprehensive, dense, mathematical, and extremely intelligent . . . but I should warn you that it doesn't really pick up until page 850 . . . although if you make it to page 546, then there is a break from the text in the form of some lovely charts, which explain the relationship between code-breaking genius Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse's clarity of mind and frequency of his ejaculations-- including the difference in the sawtooth pattern between visits to the whorehouse and onanistic release and an explanation of how the graphs are differentially complicated by the arrival of his love interest Mary Smith . . . priceless stuff but you have work for it; ten gold bars out of ten.

America: Home of the Grill, Land of the Knave

Only in America will the pimple-faced grill guy from Lowe's-- whose camouflage boxers protrude conspicuously from his pants-- advise you that the $350 Ducane Affinity 4200 is "a great grill for the money" but that he prefers (and has somehow found the cash to purchase) the $1000 all stainless steel Weber model.

My Son Ian: Creative Genius or Incorrigible Weirdo?

Last Tuesday, I confronted my six year old son Ian at 5:05 PM about the inordinate number of Cheez-It brand baked snack crackers he was consuming, but he told me not to worry-- he would have no problem eating his dinner because he possesses "a treat tummy and a regular tummy," but I didn't buy this line of logic, and confiscated his giant bowl of Cheez-It brand baked snack crackers, and so he decided to go upstairs and "do some art," which I figured would consist of drawing or coloring, but he broke out the acrylic paints and made a big mess-- but I didn't want to yell at him and stifle his creative energy-- and then I noticed a metal fountain pen, broken in half, on his desk, and I calmly asked him . . . that's right fucking calmly-- because I'm no longer losing my temper, no matter how pissed I get at my kids-- so I asked him calmly what had happened, and then I noticed that he had broken the pen's ink cartridge in half-- snapped it in half, like some sort of lunatic with no respect for anything in his place of residence-- and he had mixed the blue ink from the pen cartridge with blue acrylic paint (and he had produced a lovely scenic painting) and once again-- though his desk, the floor, and his hands were stained with indelible blue ink-- I didn't want to stifle his artistic ambitions, or oppress his experimental little brain, so I got him cleaned up, complimented his attempt at mixing mediums, and told him that next time he should paint at the kitchen table (I am trying not to lose my temper with my kids these days, unless one child maliciously harms someone . . . and it's a fucking challenge).

The Descendents > The Descendants

If you have the choice, you're much better off listening to Milo Goes to College, rather than watching The Descendants . . . though the movie is well-acted and well-directed, it is also rather tedious, and very, very depressing (despite the all Hawaiian shirts and island music).

Learning to Let a Sleeping Cat Lie . . .or Lay . . . Whatever She Prefers

Last week I corrected my wife for using the word "lay" instead of "lie," and when she questioned me about the proper usage I made the mistake of saying, "You call yourself a teacher?" and then I attempted to explain the difference between "lie" and "lay"-- that "lay" always takes a direct object, which is why you lie down in your bed, but a chicken lays an egg-- but she was hearing none of it; she was rightfully indignant over my contemptuous tone (I need to work on that) and I realized that this was a sleeping dog that I should let lie . . . so I didn't mention it again until yesterday, when I heard her repeatedly telling our dog to "lay down," and so-- being very careful of my tone-- I yelled from the kitchen, "Are you trying to annoy me, or what?" but apparently my attempt to use a warm and playful tone didn't work because she yelled back, "No . . . I guess I'm just really stupid!" and even I could recognize that she was being sarcastic . . . so though it offends the English teacher in me, I think I'm going to have to live with this one fault that my wonderful, beautiful, generally flawless wife possesses, and consider myself lucky that this is my only grievance in an otherwise blissful marriage.

Far Better Than The Corn Palace

It makes sense that the world's largest kaleidoscope is near Woodstock, New York and it also makes sense that the eleven minute show is a psychedelic history of the United States . . . the kaleidoscope is housed in a grain silo, and because my family and I were the only folks partaking in the show, we got to lie down on the floor and stare straight up the barrel of the silo at the giant, fragmented images . . . and if that's not exciting enough for you, then you can let your kids browse in the high end section of the gift shop, which contains "toys" that run from the hundreds to the thousands of dollars; there is a sign that says only "responsible adults may handle them," and I'm sure this is warranted-- as this place must be a fun stop for irresponsible adults making a pilgrimage to Woodstock; anyway, if you are in the vicinity, it is definitely worth the trip, far more exciting than the Corn Palace in South Dakota (which I was so excited to see that I got a speeding ticket on my way into Mitchell-- I offered the cop my PBA card and he laughed at me-- and then I was sorely disappointed with the attraction).

Hey Sylvia Plath! Get Your Act Together! April is National Poetry Month!

April is the month to celebrate poets and poetry, and so I will share one of my poems here (and please don't be intimidated by how good it is, as I teach creative writing, and so I have unbelievable creative powers) and I should warn you that this poem contains an "allusion" and that if you don't know how Sylvia Plath offed herself, then you might not understand all the "layers" of this masterpiece, which not only did I write myself (without the use of the internet) but I have also memorized in toto so that I can recite it to my classes after we read "Mirror":

Some Advice for Sylvia Plath


Get your head out of that oven
and cook us up another poem.

The Potato Apostrophe Catastrophe

So last week, I thought to myself, if I were able to speak to a corporation, this is what I would say: "Hey Herr's . . . how about making the outside of your personal sized potato chip bag less slick and flashy, and instead do something useful with it, like make it more porous and corrugated-- more like the consistency of a napkin-- so that when I'm done eating your chips, I can wipe the greasy jalapeno dust off my fingers and onto the bag" but when I mentioned this genius idea to my students, they quickly saw the flaw in my plan: the bags would get incredibly dirty before they were sold . . . from the factory and the shipping and wherever they're stored, and I had to agree, as I could see someone working up a sweat, loading chips, and using one of the new "napkin bags" to wipe his brow, or blow his nose or worse . . . so this is not going to go down as one of Dave's Great Ideas, and I'd like to revise what I would say to the Herr's corporation: "Hey Herr's . . . keep up the good work on those delicious jalapeno chips!"

Ergonomic Canine Generated Plectrum

My dog chewed on one of my guitar picks, and now it fits perfectly between my finger and thumb (which makes me wonder if I can train him to do this while I am at work-- I could run a cottage industry creating ergonomic plectrums-- and I know my dog has plenty of free time while I'm at work, as I closely observed him over Spring Break, and he's very unproductive during the workday . . . he basically lies in the sun and naps . . . and his Buffalo Blue dog food doesn't come cheap).

How to Cultivate a Green Thumb

Watering my wife's garden would be monotonous, if it weren't for the magical powers of beer.

Some Good Movies and TV You May Not Have Seen #5

David Cronenberg's eXistenZ came out at the same time as The Matrix, but it wasn't as popular-- possibly because it's easier to spell "matrix" then it is to spell "eXistenZ"-- but Cronenberg's film is weird and fun and the acting is certainly more entertaining than what Keanu Reeves had to offer as Neo . . . Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh wade through multiple levels of a video game which may or may not be reality, and they run into Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe and lots of really gross props along the way.

Life Isn't Fair (But You Don't Have to Rub It In)

My son Alex got in trouble for punching his younger brother in the head yesterday, and I am partly to blame-- Ian was telling us about his day at school, and he mentioned that his class had some sort of party and he got to eat M&M's and this really pissed his older brother off-- Alex immediately wanted some M&M's . . . because it wasn't fair that Ian got M&M's and he didn't get any-- but we didn't have any M&M's (and even if we did have some, I wouldn't have given him any because his logic was ridiculous, which I tried to explain-- the fact that occasionally his class had parties and got treats and that Ian's class did not get . . . but he wasn't buying it) and so, since he wouldn't listen to reason, I decided to taunt Alex a bit, and so I said to Ian, "I love M&M's! I'll bet those M&M's were really good, and it's nice to get some M&M's at school," and Ian agreed with me . . . but all this M&M talk was more than Alex could handle, so he popped Ian right in the forehead and then got sent upstairs-- but I should have been sent upstairs as well, as I exacerbated the situation.

Nostradavus (If You Are A Member of My Wife's Book Club, Do Not Read This!)

Using my magnificent powers of clairvoyance and divination, I am going to make a stunningly useless prediction: in the near future, my wife's book club will select Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail as their book of the month . . . Karen Long called it a "tougher, more feral" version of Eat, Pray Love and it's already got a long request queue at the library . . . I am planning on reading this book-- if I ever finish Cryptonomicon-- but I will in no way recommend it to any members of her book club (and hopefully they won't read this sentence) so that we can see if my prophetic acumen is accurate.

Meme Song (Dave Coins an Essential New Phrase!)

From the same mind that brought you the eternally delightful and eminently practical word Tupperawareness, comes another hand-crafted, home-made, and absolutely essential addition to the lexicon . . . once you hear it, you won't be able to live without it; so imagine the scenario: you've just heard a memorable melody, a snatch of a song, just a wee bit of music . . . and you can't forget it-- it's ideal, archetypal, and exemplary, like the Da Duh Da Duh from Jaws or the Dah De Neh Na, Neh Na Nuh from Indiana Jones or the Da Na Nuh Na Nuh Nuh Na Nuh Nuh from Star Wars (Darth Vader's entrance) or the Dah Nah Nah Noo Nah from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and you need a name for this bit of music, and, thanks to Sentence of Dave,  here it is: a meme song (and I can't believe this term doesn't already exist, it makes me wonder if the internet is dumber than I thought).

Hiking + Amphibians = Happy Children

Happiness is flipping over a rock and finding a salamander . . . but you've got to flip a lot of rocks before you hit the jackpot; we tried our best at the Mohonk Preserve, but it proved salamander-less, but the next day, while we were hiking to Awosting Falls in Minnewaska State Park, I tried my luck in a drainage gully that ran alongside the trail, as it was damp and full of rocks . . . and there was a salamander under every stone . . . sometimes even two or three salamanders, but only the red-backed and Jefferson varieties, not the elusive yellow-spotted salamander (although we did find a yellow striped mimic millipede).

A Dirty Family Secret

When we go on vacation, we let our boys watch cable TV.

No Escape From the Theme

So Wednesday night my wife spent eight hours in the emergency room with her mother, who needed an emergency nephrostomy, and then she spent the entire following day in the hospital, conferring with doctors and and keeping her mom company . . . and by Thursday afternoon things finally started looking up (her mom's creatinine levels went down) and so my wife and I took a break the hospital (and our kids, who were at my parent's house) and went to Coco-- our favorite Thai/Malaysian place-- for some much needed food and beer; we were hoping to take a deep breath and relax, but this was not to be, we had barely dug into our papaya salad, when an older guy sitting at the table next to us slumped forward in his seat . . . we saw his eyes roll back into his skull and drool run down his chin, and the woman with him explained that he had a heart problem, so they laid him out on the floor and put a jacket under his head and some lady who seemed to know what she was doing checked his pulse and cleared his mouth (she turned out to be a nurse) and he was still out cold, so I figured I should use my CPR training, though I had never executed it on a real human, and so I knelt down next to him-- he definitely wasn't responding-- and so I put my hand on his chest and measured the proper distance from the sternum and just as I was about to start doing the compressions (to the beat of Stayin' Alive, of course) the guy came to . . . I think he may have had a small stroke or maybe he fainted-- who knows-- but in a moment he was fairly coherent, groggy, but able to talk-- so we went back to our "relaxing" meal-- and this guy was especially lucky that it wasn't a life-threatening emergency, as the waiter who called 911 must not have been very clear on the phone . . . the police took an inordinate amount of time to show up, and the ambulance took even longer-- because the police didn't realize it was a medical emergency and instead thought it was a customer dispute . . . so though we tried to take a break from the stress of the hospital, the medical crisis came to us, and remained there on the floor the entire length of our dinner, and the moral of the story is this: if you're at an authentic Asian restaurant and you're having a medical emergency, make sure someone who can speak fluent English makes the 911 call.

Some Good Movies and TV You May Not Have Seen #4

If you haven't seen The Shield start to finish, then you are really missing out; from the fantastic pilot that sets the plot arc for the remainder of the series to the arguably the most perfectly appropriate closing episode in the history of television, The Shield delivers . . .  especially during the Forest Whitaker and Glenn Close seasons . . . and now Walton Goggins-- the actor who played Shane Vendrell-- is on another show call Justified, which I also highly recommend.

Life Can Be Funny (Not "Ha Ha" Funny)

One moment you may find yourself in aptly named High Falls, New York-- standing beneath a waterfall with your wife, watching your boys skip stones into a pool of clear water-- but a cell phone call and a couple hours later you're back in New Jersey, cleaning your carsick son's vomit off a comforter while your wife spends eight hours in the emergency room with her mom, who is waiting for a nephrostomy because her one remaining kidney is not functioning properly (and apparently if you spend eight hours in an emergency room you witness some wild things: a sixteen year old who nearly OD'ed on oxycontin; a ninety-four year old woman who felt fine and wanted to leave and so pulled out all her tubes and made a break for it; an angry drunk who needed to be subdued by eight security officers, etcetera . . . ask my wife for details).

Some Good Movies and TV You May Not Have Seen #3

I love pretty much everything documentarian Errol Morris has done, but if you're going to get into his work, you might as well start at the beginning, with Gates of Heaven-- which Roger Ebert claims to have seen over thirty times and makes his short list of the ten best movies ever-- it's ostensibly about pet cemeteries, but I'm sure the meaning of life is buried somewhere in this film: "There's your dog, your dog's dead . . . but where's the thing that made it move? It had to be something, didn't it?"

Some Good Movies and TV You May Not Have Seen #2

This clip of David Cross selling Thunder Muscle energy drink is NOT SAFE FOR WORK . . . and if you find this sort of thing funny (my wife does not) then you will love The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret . . . Todd Margaret is utterly despicable, with no endearing qualities-- we are talking beyond Kenny Powers despicable-- but he is funny.

Special Vacation Update!

Shockingly, they have Wi-Fi in the Catskills . . . so I am on vacation and I am on-line; I even managed to write a complete post over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . Dave's Definitive List of Seven Movies That Are Better Than the Book.

Some Good Movies and TV You May Not Have Seen

My family is heading to the Catskills for Spring Break, but I don't want to leave all my dedicated fans in the lurch . . . so each day I'll give you a clip from a movie or TV show that I highly recommend-- and though I'm certainly no film buff, which is probably a good thing, as I won't be recommending anything really artsy or obscure-- I will try to suggest things that you haven't seen, and all of these movies and shows have the DAVE GUARANTEE . . . my personal stamp of approval . . . so if you watch one of these recommendations and don't enjoy it, I will refund your time in full; my first recommendation is The Third Man . . . it's a classic movie with a modern pace-- I usually don't have the patience for black and white movies-- but I like it better than Casablanca . . . awesome zither music, excellent footage of war torn Vienna, and a fantastic cameo by Orson Welles . . . check it out, you won't be disappointed.

Melancholia Makes My Wife Angry (Except For One Brief Moment)

Melancholia, a pretentiously artsy film about depression and the end of the world, did not have the intended effect on my wife . . . instead of making her melancholic, it made her very angry-- the slow pace, the random unexplained images, the self-absorbed and despicable characters-- these finally grated on her nerves so much that-- after an epithet laced hour-- she quit watching, but she got the point: it's a film about the earth's demise, but because you have no emotional attachment to the people in this movie, you don't feel much anxiety as the end approaches; though the characters are awful people, living pathetic, anxiety-ridden lives, I wanted to see their final disintegration, and so I pressed on until the end, but really the most fascinating images are at the beginning of the film, and so while I certainly can't recommend this slog through Lars van Trier's imagination, you might try the watching the montage at the start and the horribly awkward wedding scene . . . Kiefer Sutherland is great, though Kirsten Dunst is rather annoying as a melancholic . . . but I think she got a boob job, so there's that to look at . . . and the one thing that my wife and I both liked about the movie was more of a happy accident than something intentional-- during the generally disastrous wedding, there is one romantic moment: the guests make Chinese sky lanterns and launch them into the night, and this was a helpful scene for my wife and me . . . after we saw The Hunger Games, when we walked out into the dark parking lot, we saw some odd, spooky lights in the night-sky, rising rapidly in formation and then burning out, and after much speculation and discussion, we determined that they must have been Chinese sky lanterns and now, after seeing them up close in the film, we are certain that is what we saw . . . and so for that, and for that alone, Lars van Trier, my wife thanks you.

I Seek Wisdom From the Crowd

Several years ago, my friend Whitney and I  laid an interesting wager on a game of darts-- this was very late at night and after many beers-- and the bet was this: the winner could make the loser wear any t-shirt he chose for one day of the OBFT (as long as this t-shirt was not horribly profane, as we spend a long portion of each day at the wrap around bar in a family seafood joint) and I won the game of darts, but I have yet to "collect" on this bet, as I've never determined what t-shirt I want Whitney to wear . . . and I kind of like holding the possibility that I might show up with a ridiculous t-shirt over his head each year, but I feel it's time for Whitney to pay up and so I am going to take a page out of James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies, and Nations and see what you have to offer . . . so Internet, I call on your wisdom, give me an idea of how I can humiliate my friend in the form of a t-shirt.

Breaking News in the World of Cheap Mexican Food!

For as long as I can remember, Burrito Royale was a sketchy but constant staple on Route 1 in South Brunswick; I often got food there when I was waiting tables at Rumbleseats . . . and though the food was mediocre, I always appreciated the aesthetic charms of the joint-- amidst a corridor of chain restaurants, strip malls, and big box stores, this shack withstood the test of time (35 years!) but it has finally closed, to be replaced by . . . drum roll please . . . Burrito King . . . long live the King, hopefully as long as the Royale, which certainly had its share of cheese (and if you are the rare soul who needs more on this story, then click here).

This Is a Peccary (No Relation To A Pessary)

I will never understand the mysteries of the internet, but apparently people are coming to Sentence of Dave to look at a picture of a peccary, but when they arrive, they find no information about this lovely subtropical mammal, which is also known as "the musk hog" and has self-sharpening tusks, and instead these good folks, innocently surfing the web-- these javelina aficionados-- they find information on the use of a "pessary," which is a whole different can of worms, and I just want to make this perfectly clear to avoid a lawsuit, you may NOT use a peccary as a pessary . . . I do not advocate this, and while I am not a doctor and I have no idea if inserting a peccary into your uterus will prevent prolapse, even as a layman, I realize that the certain injury you will sustain from shoving a large odiferous mammal through your cervix can't possibly be worth the benefits . . . and for those of you who are researching the peccary, I will give you a tasty little factoid about this most beautiful of all of God's creatures: it is also known as "the skunk pig."

Chris McDougall vs. Dr. Kates (Literature vs. Podiatry)

It's a showdown remisicent of Godzilla versus Rodan: my foot doctor advised me not to run until the lab finished making my orthotic shoe inserts, but Chris McDougall, the author of Born to Run, told me that not only are orthotics bad for your feet, but that I shouldn't even wear traditional running shoes, as these will weaken my feet, and instead I should run barefoot . . . and I don't know who to listen to . . . I ran barefoot the other day, despite Dr. Kates warning, and my plantar fasciitis felt okay . . . but I don't want to push it and run too far, especially because of what happened to Caballo Blanco-- the problem is that I need a clone of myself, so that one of me can run with orthotics and one of me can run barefoot, and then my clone and I could truly judge which works better (and there's RockTape to consider, as well . . . so perhaps I need a third Dave).

Unreasonable Expectations

Though he had the best intentions, my brother set up my son Alex for much future disappointment; he gave us tickets to see the Red Bulls' home-opener and the seats were in the sixth row, on the end-line near the corner flag, so it was hard to see diagonally across the entire field, but it was a great view of the goal . . . and I warned my son-- who is eight and doesn't usually have the attention span to watch sports for very long-- that you have to pay close attention to a soccer game or you might miss the only goal . . . and then the game began and the Red Bulls scored two goals in the first six minutes, right in front of us . . . it was wonderful and spectacular, we got to see Thierry Henry score and assist, and this kept my son riveted to the game (despite the fact that it got quite slow-- when you take a 2-0 lead that quickly, then you just sink back and knock it around) but in the second half we also got to see Colorado score an excellent goal in front of us as well . . . and while this was a superb first professional sporting event for my, son I think he now has a skewed and unrealistic view of soccer, and doesn't realize just how slow-paced and boring the game can be; I will have to take him again to set things straight in his mind (this brings to mind my first Yankee game . . . or games, as my father thought I would enjoy a double-header, but I think my attention span was exhausted by the end of batting practice, which made for a long afternoon).

Battle Royale > The Hunger Games (Book) > The Hunger Games (Film)

If you feel the need to see a bunch of teenagers slaughtering each other in an organized contest, then watch renowned Japanese director Kinji Fukasaka's stylized and beautifully ludicrous Battle Royale rather than The Hunger Games-- an ersatz version if I've ever seen one; while Battle Royale whips through plot-arcs and violence effortlessly, elegantly and humorously characterizing the teenagers before they are killed in beautifully graphic scenes of blood and mayhem, The Hunger Games stays very close to its main subjects-- Katniss and Peeta-- much of the camera-work is done in the faux-documentary Blair Witch-style . . . but the film ignores what the book did well: the deft characterization of the other tributes-- most notably the fox-faced girl; it ignores the survival aspects of both living in District 12 and living in The Hunger Games arena . . . the hunting, gathering, camping, and sleeping in trees, and it glosses over the tactics and strategy the game-- including the best sub-plot of all: whether Peeta really loves Katniss and vice-versa, or if the romance is only a strategy to gain sponsorship . . . also annoying: the kids always look fresh-faced, made-up and coiffed, even deep into the games . . . after Katniss sleeps on a pile of leaves for two days, comatose because she was stung by poisonous wasps, she awakes scrubbed and clean, looking like she just got a facial, and her caretaker, Rue, looks the same-- no mud and grit and dirt-- even when Rue dies, she is cute and unblemished . . .  and I should also warn you that the acting and the dialogue are both extremely cheesy . . . but I shouldn't complain, the movie is for teenagers, not adults, and I watched it just so I could have something in common culturally with my students (who are going to stick me with a pair of scissors when I give them my review, but even if the movie is for teens, it shouldn't defy physics . . . how can you outrun those "muttation" dogs in a straight race, and there is no attempt to explain them-- unlike the book, in which they are genetically created from each dead competitor and resemble their human counterpart . . . in the movie, a lady generates one on a 3-D computer screen and then the creation instantly springs from the earth, fully formed and alive, and I would think if this miraculous technology existed then the Capitol Panem would have no use for fish and coal and whatever else they get from the 12 districts, as they would be gods that could create anything from nothing and I'm very disappointed that Roger Ebert gave this poor excuse of a movie three stars-- although most critics were in his camp-- but there are a few voices of reason on Rotten Tomatoes that noticed the many shortcomings of the film, especially David Denby, and I'm glad for that, because if my wife and Denby hadn't agreed that the movie sucked, then I might have doubted my sanity).

We Love You!

Just wanted to give a big shout out to all the fine people who can't seem to park their vehicle in between the lines . . . and I'm guessing you're the same fine people who are doing this sweet move as well (and a related question for all the litigators in the house: if I "accidentally" ding the car next to me in the parking lot when I open my door, but the car isn't parked between the lines, am I culpable?)

sentence of e e dave

i will no longer use caps 

and/or punctuation in my 

sentences 

(and they
will be
much more
artistic
because
of this)

i hope you like

the new format

but if you don't

then
you
don't get it

This Food Is Not Yet Rated

The Surgeon General needs to institute a food rating system; macaroni and cheese would be rated G, as not only is it is bland, but-- even better-- the individual pieces of macaroni stick together because of the sauce, so it's easy for a kid to get it from the plate to mouth without making a mess . . . sushi would be R, as it is spicy and raw, and couscous would be PG-13 . . . there may be some parents who think that, with supervision, their children have the fine motor skills to scoop up those little grains without making an unholy mess, but as for my kids-- I'll let them watch Temple of Doom and Super-8-- but they're not getting another shot at couscous until middle school.

Sometimes You're Soft and Sometimes You're Hard

So everybody likes to say they are "hardcore," whether you claim to be a hardcore surfer, hardcore mountain climber, or hardcore shopper . . . but what if you're not hardcore? . . . what if you're just moderately into the thing you are talking about-- I purchased a new mountain bike the yesterday and I told the guy at the bike store that I used to mountain bike, but I didn't tell him I was a "hardcore" biker because that would have been exaggerating-- I certainly took my bike to a lot of difficult single-track and rode often, but I wasn't "extreme" or a "gear head" . . . so I suppose I was a "soft-core" mountain biker, but I'm not sure if you're allowed to say that in any context other than the pornographic-- telling someone you're a soft-core mountain biker makes it sound like you do niche films with lots of bikes, oil, and spandex-- so I didn't say this . . . but perhaps someone braver than me will try out the phrase . . . perhaps you can tell the guy at the camera shop that you're a "soft-core" photographer or tell the Boy Scout den leader that you're a "soft-core" camper . . . I think if we all cooperate we can make this phrase as permissible as it's more explicit companion.

Creepy Surveillance Contest: U.S. vs. Syria

Here is one of my favorite stories from my time in Syria, and it sounds like America is following suit: my friend Drew-- a Canadian-- was on the phone speaking to a friend from home, who was French-Canadian, and his friend switched from English to French, as French-Canadians often do, but after he spoke a few words in French to Drew, another voice-- a deep voice-- interrupted their conversation and said, "Please continue the conversation in English," and so they did, as no one wants to be "disappeared" like Dunbar . . . and though it was no surprise that our phone-calls were being monitored, as we had all been forewarned about the methods Syria's oppressive police-state infrastructure employed, it was still pretty damn creepy, but-- according to this Wired magazine article-- the United States is far beyond this in terms of surveillance (though there's nothing more effective than a creepy voice from nowhere as a scare tactic) and soon nearly everything we say over the phone and everything we do on-line will be stored in the NSA's massive Utah Data Center, an innocuous sounding place five times the size of the U.S. Capitol that will specialize in data storage and breaking encryption-- so watch what you say, as it will come back to haunt you, especially if you are one of the one million Americans on the terrorist watchlist . . . or if you know one of those people, or if you've ever been in the same room with one of those people . . . and while this is scary, intrusive, and certainly some violation of our First Amendment Rights, it's also kind of nice to know that someone will always be reading Sentence of Dave-- a built in fan base-- so here's a shout out to all those folks at the NSA that are saving these words for all of digital eternity . . . and if I'm not on the watchlist, then please sign me up, because I spent three years in Syria and I loved it! 

Anti-social Notworking Part II

Facebook has advanced one step closer to the idea I pitched to them in 2009 (and by "pitched" I mean wrote it on this blog and posted it on the internet, where anyone, including Mark Zuckerberg, could read it) because they have now added a feature where you can demote your not-so-close friends to the status of Acquaintance . . . but they still haven't gone whole-hog and added the "Enemy" status that I suggested . . . and, now that Facial Recognition software and language decoding filters actually work, this Enemy feature would be a lot of fun; you would only see Enemy updates on your News Feed if it were bad news-- only statements like my dog got hit by a cement truck today:( would activate the filter-- and the facial recognition software would ensure that you only saw ugly, asymmetrical pictures of your "Enemies," . . . perhaps a certain BMI could also activate the feature, so if one of your enemies put on some weight, you'd be alerted . . . and imagine if you could "Enemy" the celebrities you hate . . . Zuckerberg, you know this idea has legs, so thank me in the comments and I am still available for hire, although I only work a maximum of six hours a day and I require summers off.