You Get The Ads You Deserve
The final lesson in Michael J. Sandel's book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets is that although a "fire hydrant with a KFC logo still delivers water to douse the flames" and "children can learn math by counting Tootsie Rolls" and fans still root for their home team in Bank of America Stadium, that doesn't mean that markets don't leave their mark . . . when ads appear in schools they undermine the purpose of education: critical thinking; when a person gets a tattooed body ad it demeans them; product placement corrupts the integrity of art . . . when everything is for sale it leads to the "skyboxification" of American life . . . we live and work and play in separate realms and this is not good for democracy . . . and so I am discontinuing my line of tampons with Sentence of Dave emblazoned on the penetrator, and instead I will try to allow my sentences to penetrate people's consciousness the old fashioned way.
Spearguns Aren't As Dangerous As You Think!
If you were wondering if it's okay to allow your children to play with spearguns, the answer is: go for it! . . . because even if your kid shoots himself right through the skull, he very may well survive, as Yasser Lopez did . . . so don't deny your children the fun and good times of spear-fishing . . . and I am definitely going to give my parents a piece of my mind, because every Christmas I put a spear-gun on the top of my list, and Santa never delivered one.
Costa Chica!
In contrast to the all-encompassing logic of yesterday's post, today I will give some exceedingly specific and local advice: if you live in the New Brunswick area, and you like authentic Mexican food, then try Costa Chica Mexican Restaurant and Pizzeria . . . it's right in the middle of the barrio, on Handy Street, and everything we ate there was delicious . . . excellent chips, salsa, and fresh guacamole; tender and spicy marinated pork in the tacos pastor; great verde sauce; spicy chicken mole (although the chicken was on the bone, not a breast, but still super-delicious) and we had some kind of weird sweet tamale for dessert, which was also tasty . . . the place was loud and crowded, the waitress spoke a little English, and the chairs are especially festive and brightly colored.
All Encompassing Logic
Some people believe Everything Happens For A Reason, but other people are annoyed by this philosophy-- so if you'd like, you can buy a t-shirt with Everything Happens For No Reason emblazoned on it-- but logically, both these statements are identical . . . if everything happens for a reason, then nothing that happens has any greater reason than anything else . . . the fact that you spilled your coffee and the fact that thirty volcanoes erupt simultaneously on your birthday are both equivalent-- in fact, if everything happens for a reason, then everything is already determined and laid out in some sort of clockwork pattern and the universe is deterministic . . . and if everything happens for no reason, that doesn't mean that things are random and meaningless, because it's statistically impossible for every single thing to happen without reason, so it must mean that the universe was set rolling and now it's just proceeding like a column of dominoes, one event knocking into another in a chain reaction, without individual meaning . . . but possibly in some master pattern . . . so really the only interesting variant of these statements is Some Things Happen For A Reason, and Some Things Are Totally Random because that means there's something out there that can control things, and this thing occasionally takes an interest in the affairs of the universe and occasionally falls asleep at the wheel . . .
Into The Wild With Condoms
Cheryl Strayed's new memoir Wild: From Lost To Found On the Pacific Coast Trail is the female version of Into the Wild, John Krakauer's story of Christopher McCandless (a.k.a Alexander Supertramp) . . . both hikers change their names to something apropos and both Strayed and Supertramp escape their lives in the wilderness . . . and both find that the wilderness is no place to escape-- Strayed thinks she will reflect on her mother's death, her own divorce, and her flirtation with heroin addiction . . . but all she ends up thinking about is her boots, her heavy pack, rattlesnakes, and bears . . . luckily, her story ends happily, and there is some romance along the way-- my only complaint is that Wild drags on some at the end , Krakauer tells McCandless's more epic and more tragic tale concisely, but the books are still complementary and good reads for the summer if you like to get outdoors and hike (and I am still wondering if my prediction will come true about my wife's book club).
If You're Rich, You Can Shoot A Walrus
Michael Sandel examines the inevitable corruption of ethics in a society where market mentality is pervasive in his new book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets . . . and while you may have heard that hunters can pay 150,000 to shoot a black rhino in South Africa-- and that this seemingly vile practice has actually increased the endangered rhino's population manifold, because now it's worth it for South Africans to protect the creatures from poachers-- you may not have heard that you can pay an Inuit guide six grand and he will will allow you to shoot a walrus . . . the Inuits have a walrus quota and the Canadian government allows them to sell the rights to shoot the walruses to "hunters" . . . though it is hardly a hunt-- journalist C.J. Chivers describes this practice as "a long boat ride to shoot a very large beanbag chair," and if these anecdotes disgust you and you can't stand the fact that everything has a price on it, then perhaps you should move to Finland, where they want to preserve the moral rectitude of a speeding ticket-- they don't want the wealthy to view a ticket as a simple fee to be paid for the right to drive fast, they want the ticket to be viewed as a fine that is levied because you did something dangerous and wrong-- so when you show up in Helsinki traffic court, your ticket is a percentage of your salary, and so Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki-- who earns seven million dollars a year-- was fined 217,000 dollars for driving 80kilometers per hour in a 40 km/h zone.
Commencement Anxiety
The high school where I teach holds their graduation ceremony down in Trenton, at the Sun National Bank Center, and every year I forget how long a drive it is to get there and how much traffic piles up around the arena . . . this year I actually did an illegal u-turn over a grass divider when I realized that was the way to avoid the long line of cars trying to make a left off of Hamilton Street . . . but though I ineptly timed my trip to the arena, once I got into my robe and sat down to listen to the names of seven hundred and fifty graduates, I improved: as the enunciators started their arduous task, I took a few samples, made some back of the envelope calculations-- without an envelope!-- and added my figure to the current time posted on the large red digital clock hanging from the arena ceiling . . . 46 minutes plus 12:04 . . . and I announced to the students around me that the reading of the names would be done at exactly ten of one . . . and forty-six minutes later, the last of the students lined up at the foot of the stage, waiting to be called, and I started getting nervous . . . it looked like I might be right . . . my palms started to sweat . . . one of my students said, "I think you're going to hit it on the nose" and the other students in my vicinity starting saying things like "Hurry up" and "Come on" and, though there was nothing on the line, I really, really wanted my prediction to come true . . . but, alas, there must have been some small flaw in my calculations, because the last student was announced at 12:51 . . . but the kids were nice about it and one consoled me: "That was still a really good guess."
It's Not Like I'm Trying To Be A Gymnast
I Neglect My Family for the Good of the Blog
My wife had the audacity to suggest that I ought to have gone grocery shopping yesterday afternoon, instead of taking my paddleboard out for a spin, because we had recently discussed the grocery list and the house was lacking in several basic items . . . and if she would have told me to go shopping, I would have done so without complaint, but there's no chance that I would take initiative and do something like that on my own, especially since the kids were at their respective after school programs and I had the opportunity to paddle around on the river . . . and think of what I would have missed if I went to the grocery store instead of the river yesterday: some of my best real-time content ever.
Urban Paddle-boarding Emergency! (A Ridiculous Riparian Adventure)
I took my stand-up paddleboard out on the Raritan this afternoon-- it's a dirty river, but the boat launch is only a couple hundred yards from my house, so despite the dead seagulls, I try to enjoy it as best I can-- and while when I paddleboard on the ocean, I hope to see dolphins and other beautiful sea life, I don't expect much on the river . . . however, today proved to be very, very different: three minutes after I shoved off from the dock, three fire trucks and an ambulance raced into the park, followed by several other vehicles; one of the fire trucks backed a small boat into the water, loaded with firemen, and they zipped past me and headed towards the nearby Donald Goodkind Bridge . . . and there were emergency vehicles up on the bridge, lights flashing, and a number of people looking down into the water . . . so I yelled to one of the firemen "What's going on?" and he told me that someone jumped off the bridge, apparently following in the footsteps of Detective Vin Markazian-- who leapt to his death off the same bridge in Season 1 of The Sopranos-- so once I found out this information, I kept paddling towards the scene, of course, despite the fact that I had to battle the wake of several boats, because when do you get to see an emergency situation on a stand-up paddleboard?-- and then a boat chugged past me headed the opposite direction, towards the way I came, so I turned and followed it: it was a small fishing skiff with a tiki hut and several corny flags flying that said things like COLD BEER and THE BAR IS OPEN and GONE FISHING . . . but it turns out this unlikely vessel fished the man out of the water, and delivered him to the dock, where he was taken into the ambulance waiting at the foot of the boat launch . . . and I find this slightly sad (and a little ironic) that whoever decided to end their life didn't have a more regal delivery from the murky waters of the Raritan, but I guess that's what you get when you jump off a bridge in Jersey . . . it's no Viking funeral, but it could have been worse . . . he could have been dragged in by a curious dude on a stand-up paddleboard (and I later found out that the man survived, and was actually treading water when the "Good Samaritan" boat rescued him).
There Is More Than One Female Singer Hailing From Canada
A few days ago the Final Jeopardy! answer was "THE BESTSELLING ALBUM OF ALL TIME BY A FEMALE IS A 20 MILLION SELLER BY THIS WOMAN WHO STARTED SINGING AT AGE 8 IN ONTARIO" and I confidently yelled "Who is Celine Dion!"-- pleased that I knew she was from Canada-- and all three Jeopardy contestants also wrote down "Who is Celine Dion?" but we were unanimously wrong . . . the answer is Shania Twain, and so once again, I realize Canada is more deserving of my attention and care.
Motivation
Running before work is risky, because if you get tired or injured miles from home, you've still got to get back in time to teach first period (I realized this Friday morning when I was three miles away from my house and my knee started to hurt . . . why I didn't realize it sooner and stay closer to home is a testament to my stupidity).
I Am A Coward When It Comes To Loud Noises
Blowing up a balloon is kind of scary . . . there's no pressure meter to tell you when to stop.
The Times They Are a-Chargin
I carry cash, and associate this with being a man-- a man should have some green in his wallet, so he can pay quickly and fluidly, without a lot of mucking around . . . because if the shit goes down, you're going to need cash, and a man should be ready for when the shit goes down . . . my wife, on the other hand, rarely carries a lot of cash, and uses her credit card for the bulk of her purchases, and I associate this behavior with females (Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble cry "Charge it!" when they race off on a shopping spree) but I am beginning to realize that transactions these days are actually faster and cleaner if you use a credit card . . . and so it's the women who are quicker on the draw now, but despite this knowledge, I can't seem to switch over (especially for a cup of coffee at WaWa; I'll use my credit card for larger purchases, but can't pull the trigger for smaller items).
My Dog Gets Treats But My Children Do Not
My dog bolted one time and learned his lesson . . . so last weekend when he popped loose from his collar, next to a busy road, and I told him to "stay," he did; he sat calmly and waited for me to reattach the leash-- it's wonderful, you tell him something once and he actually listens . . . on the other hand-- and this happened in the same day, making the contrast all the more apparent-- my children and I were planning on going on a family bike-ride, but they were too impatient to wait for me-- though I am clearly part of the family-- and while I was in the house getting a water bottle, they took off on their bikes, crossed the street they are not allowed to cross, and then got into a furious race with each other, all through the park-- never looking behind to see if their dad was accompanying them-- and when I finally found them, fifteen minutes later and a mile and a half away, they were still racing, weaving in and out, and Ian cut Alex off and Alex crashed and scraped his elbow, knee, and hand, and some woman stopped to tend to him, but I put an end to that and told him to get on his bike and ride home-- injured or not-- and so the dog has been earning treats left and right, but my kids have lost them for the week.
Someone Needs To Calibrate This Stuff!
While the "super" setting on my window fan is hardly that, the "medium spicy" setting at our local Thai restaurant is absurdly spicy-- lip numbingly spicy, cold sweats in the night spicy, ring of fire in the morning spicy . . . we need a Better Bureau of Calibration for this stuff.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)