There was a big crowd this year for Liz and Eric's Third Annual Scary Story Contest, and I was feeling some anxiety because I wanted to defend my crown . . . last year, I lucked out because two excellent stories were read back-to-back and, coincidentally, these two excellent stories were very similar in plot -- so I think they cancelled each other out, and so I was able to take the cash with this gross and silly tale ; this year the stories were all varied and all excellent . . . the theme was "it's the end of the world . . . as we know it" . . . and I was buried at number three in the order, so I didn't think I had a shot to win, but, miraculously, I pulled it out . . . most likely because I got a very good reading from my colleague Adam (and sadly, I repaid him the favor by kind of butchering his story, which he wrote in the dialect of what he described as "an elderly black man" but my interpretation sounded more like Benjy Compson from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury . . . oops!) and so I won Best Story and took home the big cash prize -- and this despite the fact that my voice was easily recognized, the anonymous reading made no difference . . . on one of my ballots it said, "This is so Dave, I hate you Dave, and I hope you don't win again" . . . but the person still felt compelled to vote for my very silly story . . . and I am quite proud of the fact that I even garnered a few votes for The Scariest Story (no mean feat for a guy who is extremely skeptical of spooky stuff) and at the end of the night, as a bonus (someone called it "dessert") I read aloud my eight year old son Alex's story-- he wanted to enter the contest and win some money and so he dictated a story to me minutes before we left for Liz and Eric's house -- I think the babysitter thought the whole family was batshit crazy -- and, coincidentally, his story is quite similar to mine, which says something about my depth and sophistication as a writer . . . you can read both stories over here at Gheorghe: The Blog -- and thanks again to Eric and Liz for a fantastic party, and for all the writers, readers and attendees . . . definitely my favorite party of the year, and if you can ever attend, I recommend it: we sit in their spooky wood panelled basement in the dark, sip beverages, and listen to the stories -- and this low-tech fun is entertainment enough -- but then when you add the gambling to the mix, it makes for a truly memorable evening.
Hot Things and Stupid Decisions
Last Wednesday afternoon, my son Ian walked into the small bathroom off our living room,yelled "It's so hot in here!" and then ran out; I went to confirm this and he was right, it was so hot that you could feel the warmth radiating off the sink and toilet porcelain . . . and then I noticed that knob for the baseboard heater was turned up all the way . . . someone had turned the knob ALL the way up and this person must have done it in the morning and then closed the door to the bathroom, so the electric element had all day to roast the room-- and it certainly wasn't Ian, unless he was a very good actor and feigned his surprise at how hot the room was -- so I called over my other son, Alex, and showed him his handiwork, and he said, "I didn't know what it did!" and I said, "Then why did you touch it? Don't you remember when you shut off the furnace?" and though I was incensed for a moment, my anger subsided pretty quickly, because I remembered that several weeks ago, when my wife went away on a Ladies Weekend, I came down to the kitchen one morning and found that an area of our counter was extremely hot to the touch and then I noticed that the seltzer bottles and the coffee maker were also quite warm and this was because I left the toaster on all night (and so I implored my wife to let me get a digital toaster, because I have problems with the analog knob on the one we have, but she was having none of it -- she told me to learn how to use the knob, and I will have to give the same advice to my son Alex . . . and this raises an extremely deep philosophical question: if you are a knob, can you learn how to properly use one?
The Road in the Sky
Peter Heller's new novel The Dog Stars returns to a postapocalyptic world similar to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but this story is a tenth of a percent more fun than The Road, if only because Hig has a loyal dog named Jasper and loyal -- although grouchy and obsessively paranoid-- friend named Bangley, and Hig has infinitely more possibilities than the unamed father and son in The Road . . . though his world and his emotions are limited by the end of all things, he still has his plane to fly and new places and people to discover, even if the places are desolate and people are ruined . . . my favorite scenes are those of him flying, they are detailed and could only be written by somone as actually versed in adventure as the author, Peter Heller, who is a writer for Outside, National Geographic, and Men's Journal.
It's A Miracle That I Convinced SomeoneTo Marry Me
Right now in my English class we are the "Process Analysis" unit, which is a fancy way to describe a "How To" essay -- and so I made the kids get up in front of the class and describe some simple but interesting process to the class . . . how to hit a forehand, how to tie a slipknot, how to do a pirouette, etc. -- and I told them I wanted them to try this informal teaching activity so that they didn't end up like me . . . back when I was in graduate school, I applied to teach for The Princeton Review -- they were paying seventeen dollars an hour back in 1993 -- and I aced the SAT practice test and made it to the second stage of the interview, where you had to teach a group of people some simple process of your choice . . . I suppose they wanted to see how well you could give instructions and interact with a crowd . . . and the folks before me taught simple lessons on "how to cure the hiccups" and "how to draw Mickey Mouse" and then I got up in front of the room and taught people about "the evolution of the wing," a topic that always fascinated me . . . because half a wing doesn't seem to confer much of an evolutionary advantage to an animal, but an entire wing opens up entirely new vistas for a species to thrive in . . . and there are several theories on how this came to be -- one involving heat-regulation -- and, needless to say, this turned into a typical Awkward Moment of Dave . . . the room fell silent, in awe of my pathetic geekiness and my complete misinterpretation of the assignment, the audience, and what other human beings like to learn about . . . and (also needless to say) I did NOT get the job.
Good Thing This Belt Wasn't a Bunny Rabbit
My black leather belt got stuck in one of the loops of my blue jeans, which really annoyed me, and so I gave it a Lenny-esque yank and ripped it in half.
Little Nozzle Hides Out in My Kitchen For Three Years!
Three years ago, we completely remodelled our kitchen, and there are still some features that I haven't utilized . . . because I haven't noticed them yet; one such feature is a little silver nozzle on a hose that lives on our sink: you can pull it out and spray water at something from close range . . . and if I didn't see my wife using it the other day, I probably would have gone to my grave without noticing it.
The Sandy Seven
The "freshman fifteen" has been debunked, but I can attest that the "Sandy Seven" is real . . . I'm wearing it around my middle -- I attribute the weight gain to the concurrence of several unavoidable events 1) I had to finish all the food in my refrigerator before it spoiled 2) living in darkness results in alcohol abuse, laziness, and over-sleeping 3) once a few people in town got power back, it caused a chain reaction of dinner invitations, and so, as a direct consequence, more gluttony and alcohol abuse 4) once we got our power back, it was reason for celebration, which, of course, involved over-indulging in every way possible 5) the post-traumatic wind-down from the stress of Hurricane Sandy involved even more drinking and bingeing on Halloween candy (and if you could pro-rate Sandy's weight gain over an entire year, you'd be talking about the Freshman 180).
A Cinematic Analogy Both Succeeds and Fails in the Same Moment
I liked The Brothers Bloom, but I didn't love it -- it is definitely a film with more style than substance, which also describes the brothers themselves, who are extremely adept con-artists; we tour Eastern Europe with them, and the scenes are shot beautifully, but they happen so quickly that they actually lack drama . . . and for me to say something moves too fast means it must really be moving fast, because I don't have much of an attention span for slow films (Stalker almost killed me) but there is one thing I did love about the movie: Stephen's running gag -- when he meets someone, he always asks them to think of a card, and then he whips out his deck, cuts it, and presents the person with what should ostensibly be the card -- but it never is, he's not telepathic and he's always wrong, and so his brother asks him why he constantly repeats this pathetic failure of a trick, and Stephen says, "If I do it enough, someday it's going to work on someone, and then it will be the best damn card trick in the world" . . . I love this statistical approach to magic; I use the same method when I see an old student: I always take a guess at their name -- whether I am confident about this fact or not -- and while I often miss the mark, when I do get it right, they are always impressed . . . the other day in the library, I recognized a "kid" that I taught long ago . . . I recognized him despite the fact that he was a good thirty pounds heavier than when I taught him, and was also sporting a beard, and so I took a shot at his name and said,"Sebastian?" I said, and he turned his head and smiled, impressed that I remembered his name; it turns out that he's now thirty years old, which is wild in its own way, but when I explained my philosophy on guessing names and my analogy to The Brothers Bloom, I think I totally confused him . . . and, of course, I was breaking a cardinal rule of magic: a good magician should never reveal his tricks.
This Land Is Herland, This Land Is Your Land . . . and You Can Have It
Recently, my colleagues and I have been speculating as to what the world would be like if women were in charge, and I lamented that no great sci-fi book or movie has explored this topic; a friend suggested that I read Herland, a utopian novel from 1915 written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman . . . and so I did: three male adventurers discover an isolated land where a group of women have created a civilization without the influence of men -- their last contact with men was thousands of years earlier -- and now these women reproduce by parthenogenesis, or asexual reproduction -- virgin birth -- and they don't seem to have any sexual desires or miss fornicating with men . . . and sorry Cliff Clavin, these ladies do NOT "hail from the Isle of Lesbos," all their sensual emotion is directed toward the exaltation of motherhood . . . and religion, society, education, economics, science, and all other fields spring from this motherly philosophy, which has nothing to do with coddling children and everything to do with raising them . . . and if you're not good enough to raise a child, the village takes the child away from you . . . and if you're not good enough to have a child, then you are required to not bear young . . . and while this world is peaceful, logical, educated, practical, rational, and successful, it is also rather boring, especially the drama of Herland, which lacks conflict and originality, and art in general -- which seems conspicuously absent -- and the complete void of competition, whether in sports, business, or society . . . Gilman shows her lack of understanding of men when the three adventurers "marry" three women of Herland . . . as two of the three men are able to adapt rather easily to the fact that their mates are more like sisters than lovers, and have no sexual desires, only a yearning to reproduce sexually and become venerated as mothers of a new stock . . . I don't think most men are advanced enough to shed their sexual instincts; the third man, Terry, tries to rape his bride, and he is banished from Herland, and here Gilman shows at least some understanding of the male anatomy, as when Terry attempted to have his way with Alima, she kicked him in the nuts in order to subdue him . . . as a novel the book is rather boring, but as a window into how a fin de siecle feminist imagined a perfect society, it's very revealing . . . and it seems Charlotte Perkins Gilman is in agreement with my wife as far as a "final solution" for men.
"How Music Works" Explains How Music Works
David Byrne's new book How Music Works is impressive on many levels: the book itself is a work of art -- it has a black and white minimalist cover (which is slightly mushy to the touch) but inside there are all sorts of color visuals: photos and lyric sheets and pie charts and medieval sketches -- and Byrne covers it all . . . how context affects music; a history of CBGB's; the recording methods of The Talking Heads; a precise breakdown of how much money he made on his last two albums, with pie charts and all expenses and profits laid out for the curious reader; a tutorial on what elements are necessary to create a music "scene"; plenty of music theory and philosophy; some art history; a quick history of recorded sound, from Edison to MP3's . . . and his writing is clever, precise, and clutter-free . . . plus he got me to start listening to King Tubby . . . ten burning houses out of ten.
A Blogging Miracle!
Yesterday, my editor over at Gheorghe: The Blog commanded me to write something -- and I suppose he had a right to do this, since my school was closed for the ninth day in a row and I was home all alone . . . and so I prepared by taking a two hour nap and then I sat down and wrote a post about The Three Types of People You Meet During Hurricane Sandy . . . and then I checked in here at Sentence of Dave and I found this comment from the prodigious commenting machine known as Zman . . . a bona fide blogging miracle! . . . while I was categorizing all humans into three classifications, Zman had done me one better and divided humanity into a mere TWO groups . . . and he did it on my home turf -- and beat me to the punch by several hours -- while I was completely unaware, obliviously posting my thesis over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . and if this doesn't qualify as a genuine blogging miracle, then I will live on a pillar for the rest of my life . . . like this guy.
Bonus! Dave Categorizes All Humans!
If you're like me, then you like when people simplify things enormously . . . so head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog, where I use my incisive observational powers to explain The Three Types of People You Meet During Hurricane Sandy . . . perhaps you are one of them.
There Are Job Openings in Oooguruk!
I highly recommend Jeanne Marie Laskas' new book Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make the Country Work, and my favorite facts from the book are:
1) that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleaders -- who must attend two grueling practices a week, and must "make weight" at each practice weigh-in if they want to make the squad that will be on the field that week -- get paid a paltry seventy-five dollars per game;
2) there are ten polar bear cages placed around the Pioneer Natural Resources Oil Rig on Oooguruk Island, which is just off the shore of Alaska's North Slope . . . but the cages aren't for the polar bears . . . they're for the people working at the camp :if you see a polar bear, you ring the alarm and then scurry into a cage and lock yourself inside so you don't get eaten;
and my favorite opinion in the book comes courtesy of Joe Haworth, who works at Puente Hills Material Recovery Facility and Landfill; he said, "Look, environmental consciousness is not a religious thing . . . it doesn't have holy precepts that say you can't touch a plastic bag or you're a horrible person; it's more: get a grip and find a balance . . . life's organic, it's smelly and gooey . . . get past it, it's just science; I think as we get more people reconnected to science through recycling, we get them to understand the magic of this planet . . . they've forgotten the magic, and the truth is, it doesn't take that much connecting to go WOW! . . . it' like lying on your back in the mountains, looking at the stars . . . being able to go WOW! and holy mackerel! . . . it really doesn't take a lot of study to appreciate this place."
Dave Feeds Hurricane Refugee!
In the days after the hurricane, the lines were long at the grocery store, as most people didn't have power and could only buy a little bit of food at a time . . . and so when the woman in front of me started to panic because her credit card wouldn't swipe, I stepped forward and saved the day . . . I said: "Why don't you put your card in a plastic bag and then swipe it?" and both her and the cashier nodded their heads -- they had heard of this technique, but I am assuming that because they were so traumatized by Sandy that neither of them thought of the "bag method" . . . otherwise known as the Aiken biphase modulation scheme -- and so the cashier gave the desperate woman a grocery bag, and she encased her card in the grocery bag and then swiped it and BAM! . . . credit was granted and there was much rejoicing; when the woman thanked me, I humbly said, "No problem," but, of course, everyone in that grocery store knew that they were in the presence of a true hero.
Meet The Neighbors . . . Yikes.
Hurricane Sandy inspired much communal sentiment in our neighborhood -- we live in a small town and so we are already friendly with the majority of our neighbors -- but folks really came out of their shell in the aftermath of the hurricane . . . and so when I rounded the corner with my dog and walked past the grouchy old man's house with the immaculate lawn and giant RV, I wasn't particularly surprised when he walked out of his garage and spoke to me -- though he had never gave me the time of day before this -- and I took him up on his offer to "give my dog a biscuit," which he pulled out of a bin in his incredibly crowded but organized garage, which was full of ham radio equipment, tools, and miscellaneous unidentifiable clutter; it turns out that he is a Lab lover and recognized that my dog was part Lab, and so these biscuits in his garage were reserved only for folks with a Lab (he had no dog of his own, and in retrospect, this strikes me as odd that he had a large container of MilkBones at the ready) and then he lured us into his backyard -- he said, "You want to see something?" and, of course I did, and he showed us a raccoon he had recently trapped, which was in a cage and had one weirdly cataracted blue eye and he said as soon as gas was available, that he was going to drive the raccoon out into the country and release him, and then he told me that he had trapped "at least five hundred possum" over the years and that he had taken on a mission to "keep the borough clean," and that meant trapping squirrels, possum, skunks, raccoons, and other wildlife and then driving this captured wildlife far away -- even to different states! -- in his RV and releasing the wildlife back into the wild . . . and about this time I was beginning to feel like that raccoon in the cage, and I was wondering if the old man was going to trap me and drive me far away in his RV, but while we were talking the power, which had returned for twenty minutes, went out again, and so we had to talk about that, and then he started confiding in me about his neighbors, who were maliciously channeling their gutter spigots at his property, in order to wash away his yard, and then he showed me the retaining wall he was building to thwart their evil plan, and then-- finally!-- I was able to make my escape . . . and I'll be glad when this catastrophe is over and people go back to their normal, misanthropic ways.
Seven Reasons a Snow Day is Better Than a Hurricane Day
1) You can't sled on wet leaves;
2) you can't make a rain-man (unless you're Dustin Hoffman);
3) kids are tempted to swing Tarzan-style on downed power lines;
4) you have to walk the dog;
5) drinking hot cocoa is more fun than trying to consume all the seafood in the freezer before it defrosts;
6) it's embarrassing when a giant limb from your tree falls on your neighbor's house;
7) no power means no TV which means your children will eventually suffer a head injury (seriously . . . and now not only does Ian have a giant lump on his head -- Alex slammed a door into it -- but he also scraped all the skin off his Achilles tendon when he stepped into a hole that was obscured by leaves and contained a very sharp drain culvert . . . school needs to reopen!)
2) you can't make a rain-man (unless you're Dustin Hoffman);
3) kids are tempted to swing Tarzan-style on downed power lines;
4) you have to walk the dog;
5) drinking hot cocoa is more fun than trying to consume all the seafood in the freezer before it defrosts;
6) it's embarrassing when a giant limb from your tree falls on your neighbor's house;
7) no power means no TV which means your children will eventually suffer a head injury (seriously . . . and now not only does Ian have a giant lump on his head -- Alex slammed a door into it -- but he also scraped all the skin off his Achilles tendon when he stepped into a hole that was obscured by leaves and contained a very sharp drain culvert . . . school needs to reopen!)
Hurricane Sandy Zeugma
Hurricane Sandy survivors in my neighborhood have decided that the best coping mechanism for a cold dark powerless house is to find someone with electricity and drink all their cold beer . . . so Hurricane Sandy has not only severely damaged New Jersey's infrastructure, but it has also severely damaged our livers.
I Hate When People Say This
Anyone who says they like every kind of music doesn't like any kind of music.
Blueberries grow in Maine, but where do Boo Berries grow?
Chapter Two of Jeanne Marie Laskas' new book Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make the Country Work describes how migrant workers "rake" wild blueberries in Maine . . . this is the jackpot of migrant piece-work: a good raker can fill one hundred boxes on a good day, and at $2.25 a box, that adds up to over $1300 dolars in a week -- far more than a migrant can earn picking peaches in Georgia, or oranges in Florida, more than gathering mushrooms in Pennsylvania, or tomatoes in New Jersey -- so the migrant in the "East coast stream" dutifully picks those other crops, but Maine is the prize at the end of the rainbow . . . and the odd thing is, in the area of Northern Maine where the picking happens, the unemployment rate is 12%, yet no natives pick . . . they used to pick, it was a communal, agrarian thing, but now the work is considered too hard, and though the money is good, it is left to the migrants -- who are supposed to be documented . . . but it's rather easy to fake documentation, as one said, "E-Verify is a joke," and so the increased security on our border -- the beefed up border patrol and federal agents -- actually has a paradoxical effect: it keeps migrants in America longer, because they are afraid to go home and visit, for fear that they won't be able to get back to work in America, or that it will be too costly to sneak across the border . . . so this often homeless underground of migrant workers that provide us with such cheap produce are trapped here, making pretty good money and wiring much of it home to Mexico or Peru or wherever . . . Eric Sclosser details the West coast version of this "shadow economy" in his book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market and it's the same situation, strawberry picking is good cash, but no white folk ever last more than a day at it . . . and the thrust of all this is that I really shouldn't complain about the seventy descriptive essays I have to grade (but maybe if I got paid by the piece, I would work harder and faster at it).
F*&king Failure and F*%king Triumph
I was very angry Saturday morning -- I tried to do some music recording, but my MIDI keyboard was creating some kind of massive feedback loop in my Sonar X1 digital recording software, and so I tried to look up how to fix it, but all I ended up doing was swearing a lot . . . and so I tried to fix my son's ceiling fan -- he decided to swing from his bed on the light fixture's pull chain and ripped it out of the switch and broke the fixture, but the replacement fixture did not fit into the fan . . . so I brought the broken fixture to Home Depot and a nice dude helped me, he actually went and got a screwdriver and took apart my fixture and showed me how to insert the new porcelain light mount into the old metal fixture (my favorite part of the the tutorial is when I asked if I needed to change the wires to the pull switch and he said, "You don't need to fuck with those, they're fine as they are," and so I followed his instructions and didn't fuck with them and he was right, they were fine) and, thanks to his help, I was able to fix the light (I was never so excited as on my trip up the stairs, after flicking the fuse back into place in the basement, when I thought I noticed extra light coming from my son's room . . . I was actually scared to get to the top of the stairs and find that I might have failed, but my instincts were right, it was extra light . . . f#%*ing triumph!) and then, perhaps inspired by my first mechanical victory, I realized that perhaps it was my drum tracks, which were routed through the MIDI Omni port, that were bleeding into the the other tracks and creating the crazy noise loop, and my instinct was once again correct, and I fixed that as well . . . and you might consider this miraculous, that I fixed two things in one day, but it wasn't higher powers at work; it was all me . . . I was skillful, adept, and persistent, and I'm pretty sure this will never, ever happen in my life again.
Ask a Stupid Question, Get a Stupid Answer
You'd think the question "What color is the inside of a coal mine?" wouldn't need asking, but -- according to Jeanne Marie Laskas in her new book Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make the Country Work -- the inside of a coal mine is bright white (when you're shining your torch, of course . . . which you should never shine in another miner's eyes) because coal dust is highly explosive, especially when mixed with methane gas -- which naturally leaks from excavations deep beneath the earth -- and so the coal face needs to be coated with crushed limestone, which is the opposite color of coal and gives the mine a much more cheerful appearance than if it were all dark black . . . but this belies the fact that every time you go down there, you are taking your life into your hands . . . a fact that the miners deal with in a cavalier fashion, like the tone of that Jim Carroll song "People Who Died."
Dave Resolves His New Year's Resolution!
Until last Thursday night, I was performing quite poorly on my quest to "Care More About Canada," but then, in an amazing turn of events, I scored hundreds of thousands of Canada points in one long evening at the Park Pub, because we played a game that you might call "What is the Canadian Analogue For That American City?" or even "What is the American Analogue for that Canadian City?" and while I can hardly remember all the analogous pairs we determined, I do remember that when our friend Adrian walked into the pub -- a bit late -- everyone yelled this question at him: "WHAT IS THE AMERICAN EQUIVALENT OF MONTREAL?" and he said, "New Orleans?" and we all screamed "YES! HE GOT IT!" and then we found out that one of the regulars is actually Canadian, and we tried to check our answers with him -- Calgary and Dallas; Quebec City and St. Augustine; San Francisco and Vancouver; Toronto and Washington DC; Saint- Louis du Ha! Ha! and Hohokus; etcetera -- but he was having none of that because Canadians don't play those sort of silly American games . . . and the rest of the night was centered around discussions of Canadian comedy, Canadian bands (and some BAD Canadian music was played on the jukebox: Barenaked Ladies and Loverboy) and Canadian and Ukrainian geography (Roman always manages to sneak some information on the Ukraine into whatever topic we're discussing) but despite this dramatic comeback in my quest to "Care More About Canada," I'm not trying anything this difficult next year . . . instead I think I'm going to eat more pizza.
To Pep Or Not To Pep?
Last Friday was the Fall Pep Rally, and the football coach was the MC and he was amped -- he wore a school football uniform, with half his face painted green and the other half painted white, and had a hoodie undershirt so that his already unrecognizable (and quite scary) face was also obscured by a hood that protruded from his green and white jersey -- and not only did he appear psychotic, but he was also yelling into the microphone at an ear-shattering volume . . . so I was happy when, after a deafening: "AND HERE'S THE BOYS SOCCER TEAM, THAT HAS A STATE GAME ON MONDAY!" that he handed the microphone to my friend Terry -- the varsity soccer coach -- because Terry took the pep down a few million notches; he said, calmly "We play Sayreville on Monday . . . unless it rains too much and the game is cancelled," and then he announced the names of his players . . . and then there was more screaming and yelling from the football coach, until the girls varsity soccer coach was handed the microphone -- my friend Kevin -- and he made a rather eloquent and heartfelt speech about the dedication of the athletes on his team, but this was way too long and coherent for a pep rally and I think most of the kids lost focus . . . so it looks like coaching soccer and teaching English is a good match, but coaching soccer and teaching English and having a lot of pep might be impossible (and, of course, Terry was right about the rain).
Of Urine and Tupperware
We had to bring the boys to the doctor for a well-visit and flu shots, and the office requested urine samples, and so we dutifully had the boys pee into a couple of plastic containers . . . a couple of decent reusable plastic containers . . . but I didn't ask for them back and they didn't offer to return them . . . but I would have taken them back and washed them and used them again, though my wife wasn't too keen on doing that.
Dog Anti-Humor
If I were more inclined to juvenile humor, I would call the act of walking our dog in the morning and picking up his excrement "Dog Duty," but I really don't care for that sort of puerile, scatological humor . . . so I don't call it that.
Like Father, Like Dog?
Dear Abby . . .
I have no genetic stake in my dog Sirius, nor did I have anything to do with his breeding -- we adopted him -- yet I take great pride in how fast he can run, how athletic and acrobatic he is, and how well he races alongside my mountain bike . . . in fact, I often brag about him to the other "parents" at the dog park . . . and so I am wondering: am I insane?
Signed,
Proud Father to an Extremely Hirsute Four-legged Boy.
I have no genetic stake in my dog Sirius, nor did I have anything to do with his breeding -- we adopted him -- yet I take great pride in how fast he can run, how athletic and acrobatic he is, and how well he races alongside my mountain bike . . . in fact, I often brag about him to the other "parents" at the dog park . . . and so I am wondering: am I insane?
Signed,
Proud Father to an Extremely Hirsute Four-legged Boy.
Use Your Illusions
I wanted to make a good impression during parent/ teacher conferences, so I cleaned my desk -- but I deliberately left my Merchant of Venice DVD out in a conspicuous location because I thought it was a good intellectual prop . . . perhaps a parent would inquire about it and I could explain that I teach the Shakespeare class -- which sounds pretty impressive -- or at the very least, they would notice it and think that something intellectual was happening in my classroom; on the other hand, I made a point to put away the other video which was lying on my desk in plain sight, a battered VHS tape of Godzilla vs. Mothra . . . I like to show "the death of mothra" as an epic contrast to the subtextually symbolic Virginia Woolf essay "Death of a Moth," which was published posthumously and is essentially a suicide note . . . we watch the first minutes of the movie The Hours, which shows Woolf's suicide by drowning and talk about the tone of that act, and then we categorize "moth" essays -- which are introspective and emotional -- and then the mood really needs to be lightened, and so so we go over "mothra" essays, which simply recount an epic event, such as when Godzilla defeated "the mighty thing" that the tiny twins from the wood box summoned . . . but there's no way I was explaining that to an adult . . . and even if I did, it still might not justify why I show a Japanese man in a rubber lizard suit fighting a giant moth marionette in an honors composition class.
Awkward Dave is on an Awkward Roll . . .
Terry, Mike and I were having a literary discussion in the English office about The Catcher in the Rye, and I said that one of the lessons that Holden has to learn in the novel is that things can't stay the same forever-- Holden wants to catch all the children running in the rye and save them from falling over the cliff of adulthood, which he equates with corruption . . . he wants put everything in a museum -- behind glass-- and, of course, this just isn't possible . . . he struggles most about his sister growing up, that she might eventually have sexual desires like Sunny the prostitute and he's also crushed that Jane Gallagher -- the pure and innocent girl that he platonically loves -- also has sexual desires and goes on a date with the studly Stradlater . . . and it was just the guys in the office and so I expressed this idea very succinctly . . . I said: "Holden has to learn that girls want to get out there and bang people too!" and -- Murphy' Law -- just as I said this the student teacher -- who is young and sweet and female -- walked into the room, and gave me an odd look, and so instead of just letting the comment hang there . . . which was awkward enough, I made the situation even more awkward by turning to her and saying, "Right?" and so now I had put her on the spot and she had to reply to this stupidity, and so she said "Right" in a not-so-sincere manner and then rushed out of the office . . . and then Terry described with great relish how incredibly awkward I made the scene, and I guess that is because he is a big fan of Awkward Dave.
Dave Is Awkward on a Bus!
Back by popular demand, the recurring feature you never thought would recur again, has, of course, recurred again . . . it's time for yet another Awkward Moment of Dave -- this time the setting is a school bus, on a rainy day . . . and both the 8th grade boys soccer team and the 8th grade girls soccer team have been stuffed onto this bus (because our home field flooded) and it's now 6:00 PM and I've been with this screaming horde of pubescent maniacs for over three hours and there's not a seat to spare on the bus . . . I'm squashed between several kids and a pile of equipment and the girl's coach is up in the front of the bus trying to help the bus driver navigate home, so I don't even have an adult near me to commiserate with; the kid next to me is screaming in my ear -- high pitched, shrill screaming because his voice hasn't changed yet -- he is trying to convey some sort of primitive message to the girls team, and I ask him to stop once, then twice, and then I finally snap and tell him: "You're not allowed to yell until your voice changes -- it's so high pitched that it's breaking my eardrums" and this frank statement got him to stop yelling in my ear, but it also brought him to tears -- and so I learned that 8th grade boys can be very sensitive about their feminine, screechy voices . . . the kid in front of him tried to console him, he said, in a high pitched voice: "My voice is high too, and I know it" but it didn't help, the kid that I insulted, who was sitting extremely close to me, (making this an especially Awkward Moment of Dave) was despondent -- head down, holding back the waterworks -- and though I tried to apologize, it was an exercise in futility, and when I talked to him after we got off the bus -- and this was a chore, he was so pissed at me that he didn't even want to hear my apology -- I realized that he was so upset because there were girls present -- and he thought they heard my comment (though I doubt they did, the bus was extraordinarily loud) -- and I am sure this kid will forever think of me in the same way George Costanza thought of his mean and grouchy gym teacher, Mr. Heyman, who always pronounced George's surname "Can't stand ya!"
What Do Francis Ford Coppola, My Dog and I Have In Common?
I love the smell of dog poop in the morning . . . and I'm pretty sure my dog loves the smell of dog poop any time at all; my dog and I also love the documentary Hearts of Darkness . . . he loves it because of the behind-the-scenes look at puppy-sampan scene, where a boatload of Vietnamese civilians get slaughtered, but the puppy survives, and I love it because I can see myself in the hyper-driven genius auteur Francis Ford Coppola; the parallels between Coppola and me are fairly obvious, but I'll point them out for you anyway: just as Coppola completed his great but flawed film Apocalypse Now despite weather, creative problems, and a drug-addled staff -- just as he illustrated that at the hearts of all men, no matter how civilized, there is a dark jungle creature . . . in the same manner, against all odds, in all sorts of weather -- even rain!-- I pick up my dog's poop -- and though my attempt to scoop all the poop is usually flawed and futile, as you can never get all of it into the bag, some always returns into the earth from which it came -- I still try to capture it as best I can, I try to remain civilized and keep the heart of darkness at bay and I do this rain or shine, wide-eyed or hungover, in darkness and in light, taking some stab at civility, but knowing I am one step away from a shit-stained sneaker.
Uncertainty About Uncertainty
The lesson I took away from Nate Silver's excellent book The Signal and the Noise is one that Donald Rumsfeld pointed out during the war in Iraq: "there are also unknown unknowns -- there are things we do not know we don't know," and Silver -- who believes this -- interviewed Rumsfeld for the book . . . though that chapter is rather anti-climactic, the rest of the book is comprehensive, entertaining, logical, and enlightening; Silver believes that the science and math behind forecasting is improving, and that our predictions are improving as well -- but the way we frame and use these predictions is growing more political, polarized, and manipulative . . . and so we need to realize with all statistics and predictions: political polls, numbers about the economy, the weather, sports, etcetera, that these numbers are simply a stab -- not a stab in the dark -- but a stab with a particular likelihood of hitting the target and eviscerating the truth from it and a particular likelihood of missing the target completely . . . and if you can think that way, you should become a scientist, and if you can't, then you should become a politician.
If an Alien Watched the Debate (an alien from space, not an illegal alien)
If an alien from space watched Tuesday night's presidential debate, she would think we live in a dictatorship, and not a government like this.
You Can Get Away With Bad Acting in the Dark
At work recently, we have been speculating on an alternate reality . . . a world where females are not only in power . . . unequivocally in power . . . but also have been in power for a long, long time -- we have been wondering how culture, architecture, religion, laws, warfare, sex, art, and the media would reflect this change . . . it's a difficult and very hypothetical question (and I started the discussion because I was lamenting the fact that there is no great sci-fi movie or book on this subject) and while we haven't come to any definitive conclusions, it is a great conversation starter . . . so I asked my wife what she thought the world would be like if women had been in the political, economic, and cultural driver's seat for a very long time, and she said the question was almost unfathomable, and she would have to think about it, and so I took the dog for a walk while she cleaned up dinner (typical gender roles!) and he defecated on someone's lawn around the block, so I pulled the little poop-baggy from my pocket, but -- try as I might -- I couldn't get the mouth of the bag open, and it was dark and rainy, and no matter how much I rubbed my fingers together with the bag between them, no matter how much I picked at the plastic -- I couldn't pull apart that opening . . . and so I finally made an executive decision and gave up . . . and so I pretended to pick up my dog's turds with the malfunctioning poop-bag -- which wasn't really a bag . . . it was a two dimensional square of plastic -- and once I had pretended to pick up the poop, then I picked up the bag and pretended to hold it as if it contained poop; once I got a block away, I checked to make sure no one was following me, and then put the bag back into my pocket; when I got home, I told my wife what happened (and as I told her the story, of course I got the defective bag to open right up -- and so I looked like a complete idiot) and my anecdote must have triggered an epiphany in my wife's brain, because she suddenly had the answer to my earlier question: she said, "You know, if women were actually in power, they would get rid of all the men and become lesbians, because of behavior like this."
Fishing For Anything
Last week at the dentist, I had to endure a full ninety minutes of drilling, pinching, poking, clamping, and lip-stretching, plus an additional ten minutes of biting into gooey and gross substances, and -- to make matters worse-- I wasn't in the good hands my normal dentist, a family friend who's been doing my teeth since I was six and still calls me "Davey" . . . or "Marc," if he mixes me up with my brother . . . but he was swamped and so I was given to the other dentist in the office . . . a young Asian lady who works with her own assistant . . . but this didn't faze me because I had adopted a new dental persona for this visit (though I nearly chickened-out and skipped the appointment entirely . . . I almost drove by the Milltown exit and started towards the beach . . . I really didn't want to waste a day-off at the dentist's office) but once I got it into my head that I was actually going to this appointment, despite some serious white-coat anxiety, then I decided to conquer my cowardice and become a new patient, a bad-ass patient, and so I kept saying to myself: Behave as if you are a bad-ass . . . a veteran of the war in Afghanistan . . . a member of a motorcycle gang . . . a guy who wrestles alligators . . . a not a guy who likes to play soccer and tennis and reads poetry out loud for a living . . . and I pulled it off, I did a damn good job of it, I didn't complain, I only required one break (when I had to cough) and I didn't require any laughing gas or extra novocaine . . . and this was despite the fact that my dental team offered no encouragement whatsoever during the procedure -- these two were all business, they gave me no time frame -- unlike my dentist, who is constantly bantering, saying things like "Halfway done, Davey, just two more roots in there" -- but these two never said "boo," except when they chastised me for not raising my left hand high enough when I had to cough because I was drowning from my own phlegm . . . and so I endured ninety minutes of drilling without complaint, and when it was finally over, I expected a little something for the effort . . . maybe not total consciousness on my deathbed, maybe not a lollipop, but something . . . some acknowledgement that what I went through was painful, tedious, and uncomfortable, and that I handled it like a seriously bad-ass dude (but I guess a real bad-ass doesn't need confirmation that he's a bad-ass) but I got no such praise -- no compliment on my stoic attitude and uncomplaining mien -- and so I tried to fish for a little bit of appreciation . . . I said, "I hope I can talk tomorrow, or I won't be able to teach class," but this didn't work -- the mean assistant said, "You can talk now, you'll be fine," and then she left, and I realized that these two had no appreciation for my work, and probably expected people to behave the way I did . . . and so I will never behave that way again; next time I'm going to rinse every three minutes, take bathroom breaks, hit the gas, request a radio station, and generally bitch and gripe to my heart's content.
Motivation?
Sometimes it's hard to get up early on a Saturday morning and go to the gym -- but when you walk into the locker-room and smell that pungent sweat-stink, and see an old Japanese man drying his testicles with the community hair-dryer . . . if that doesn't inspire you, then nothing will.
Something Gained . . . and Something Lost
The New York Times ran an article last March about the "new model" for soccer in the United States, and as a coach I have been seeing this idea slowly being implemented in New Jersey . . . essentially, the United States Soccer Association wants to "uncouple high school soccer and the training of top youth players," and so these potential stars will not have the option to play for their town in the fall, instead these players must train and play year-round on regional Development Academy teams . . . so a good player essentially has to choose whether he will play for his school, or play on an elite team (and he also has to choose soccer as his only sport . . . no lacrosse or tennis or golf in the spring . . . no hoops in the winter . . . it's got to be soccer, soccer, soccer) and while this may help us compete with Brazil, Argentina, and Germany on the world stage, and while this may be good for the highest level of U.S. soccer, it's not going to be particularly good for acquiring a girlfriend . . . which is what playing high school sports is all about . . . because you're never going to impress a girl by explaining to them that you play on a Development Academy team-- a team that plays games in some faraway place against some other abstract Development Academy Team . . . most high school kids can't even communicate with the opposite sex well enough to ask someone on a date, let alone explain that nonsense . . . so while our soccer skills may increase, and while these players will certainly be able to focus completely on soccer -- because they won't have any girlfriends -- there is something terrible being lost here (and it's certainly not anyone's virginity).
Some Forecasts Are All Wet
Nate Silver's new book The Signal and the Noise: why so many predictions fail -- but some don't details his methods of assessing statistical probabilities of future events -- and he comes to the same conclusion as Yogi Berra: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future" and while this advice isn't groundbreaking, his treatment of it might be . . . he reminds us that we have a fantastically large amount of information available now, yet the accuracy of many of our predictions don't necessarily reflect this added information-- we still can't sift "the signal" out of the chaos, and so we need to know what "noise" to ignore -- and often the most significant information comes either in the tiny details, at the "more granular" level or in the big story . . . at a largely philosophical level (his explanation on how Standard and Poor's and Moody's blew the CDO risk assessment and contributed to the financial crisis is excellent) and while his explanation of how he built PECOTA -- an algorithm designed predict the success of baseball players over the course of their career -- is engaging and fun, my favorite chapter so far explains the truth about weather forecasting: the National Weather Service does a great job, but Weather.com and your local weatherman have a "wet bias," because the worst thing a weather service can do is NOT predict rain . . . so if there is a 5% or 10% or 15% chance of rain, Weather.com will say that there is a 20% chance of rain -- to avoid the ire of folks who might get rained on when they didn't think that there was a chance in hell it was going to rain . . . and since rain makes such good TV, on your local forecast, if they predict a 100% chance of rain, the rain only occurs 66% of the time . . . it's kind of like setting your clock a few minutes ahead so you're not late for work . . . you're fooling yourself for your own good.
My Son Alex Is So Skinny! How Skinny Is He?
Alex is so skinny that he when he wears skinny jeans, he looks like MC Hammer.
Sometimes You Have To Acknowledge What Is
I was moving towards the register at the Wawa when an absolutely stacked, off the pages of a magazine, Playboy Playmate quality woman -- the kind of woman that doesn't belong in East Brunswick, New Jersey, let alone a convenience store -- strolled in front of me . . . and at first I noticed that she was wearing tight corduroy pants and an even tighter sweater, and then I noticed her high cheekbones and silky hair and then I noticed what she was carrying . . . an entire box of 100 Grand Bars . . . and she placed the entire box of 100 Grand Bars on the counter; she then proceeded to count out ten bars, aloud: one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten . . . exactly one million dollars worth . . . while the cashier and I ogled her . . . and then she paid for them and walked out of our lives forever . . . but she left the box on the counter, as a reminder that she really was just there; once she was gone, the cashier looked at me and said, "That was the strangest and best thing that happened to me all day."
iPod Touch Justice
Last weekend, when my wife was preparing an overnight bag for my children (because they were slated to sleep over my parent's house) she discovered my iPod Touch in the sweatshirt pocket Alex had already packed . . . and so my wife realized that Alex was attempting to smuggle the device out of our house so he could play Angry Birds or Samurai Fruit or whatever else he has on there . . . and this was nothing new, as he had already been caught smuggling the iPod to school (I guess this is what you get when you don't have cable or a video game system) and so my wife decided to teach Alex a lesson . . . she surreptitiously removed the iPod Touch from the sweatshirt pocket and then finished packing the bag; Alex discovered that the iPod Touch was missing that evening when he was at my parent's house, and he assumed that he lost it, and that all holy hell was going to rain down on him . . . which was the exact effect that Catherine intended -- but there was one problem: she did not inform my parents that she unsmuggled the iPod Touch, and so they had to deal with Alex's misery as a reality . . . and he was really miserable because he knew he had royally screwed up . . . but when my parents called us to break the news, we were in the basement of Tumulty's -- which gets no cell-phone reception -- and we got home late and never checked our messages, so it wasn't until the next morning that Alex and my parents found out the truth; we all learned a lesson about the power these devices have over us, and if I wasn't committed to writing this stupid blog for the rest of my life, perhaps I would completely unplug myself and my family from all of them . . . iPods, laptops, televisions, cell-phones, toasters, microwaves, alarm clocks, digital watches . . . all of them!
Sensitive Student Saves Teacher's Job
Last week, I was moved from my classroom for several days because of make-up HSPA testing -- and so when I informed my classes of the change of venue, I also told them that this was a "test of their memory," and if they showed up late to class because they originally went to our normal classroom, then they had failed the test and would have to do ten push-ups . . . and I told them that I was certainly in jeopardy of failing the memory test as well, and many students confessed that they thought they were definitely going to fail . . . because it's really hard to escape "the clutches of the bell schedule" and then I had a great idea, and I told my students that I was going to make a big sign to put on the door with the correct classroom information and the addendum: "YOU FAILED . . . YOU FAILURE" and everyone thought that would be really funny and a great idea, and everyone was speculating on who was going to screw up and have to suffer the sign . . . except one student, who said, "I don't think you should do that because the kids taking the make-up test are going to read the sign and think it's directed at them and it's going to make them feel really bad," and I took a moment to process how stupid a mistake I almost made, and then I thanked the kid profusely and we all agreed that he did me a great service.
No Sex or Drugs, and Not Even That Much Rock'n'Roll
If you're looking for something similar to Hammer of the Gods, then do NOT read David Byrne's new book How Music Works . . . there are no sordid tales of fish-sex, drugs, and hotel orgies . . . instead Byrne offers his theories on how the context and setting of music is just as important as the composer, and he peppers his insights with anecdotes from his long, varied, and very experimental music career . . . here is an exercise that his dance choreographer, Noemie Lafrance, used during dance auditions, when they had to whittle a room of fifty hopefuls down to three lucky winners:
Rule #1) Improvise an eight count dance phrase to the music playing;
Rule #2) Once you have an eight beat phrase you like, then loop it . . . repeat it over and over;
Rule #3) When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it;
Rule #4) When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over;
Byrne said it "was like watching evolution on fast forward" . . . the room started in chaos, and then pockets of order formed, and finally certain pockets "went viral" and within four minutes, the dancers were moving in perfect unison . . . and I feel like I could use this in class -- maybe with verbal chants and/or hand gestures rather than dance moves -- and it also sounds like a fun game to play at a party or in a bar (if you could get everyone to participate) and I tried to search on YouTube for an example of dancers doing this, but I had no luck . . . so if anyone has any ideas on how to implement this in a classroom, or does the exercise at a party or in a discoteque, please inform me of the results.
Meta-Debate
I missed the presidential debate last Wednesday -- The Walking Dead trumps politics . . . and remember, there won't be any politics once the zombies come . . . as Sheriff Rick says, "This isn't a democracy anymore" -- but I did enjoy the aftermath of the debate, especially the debate about who won the debate, and I even started a debate about who won the debate about who won the debate.
New Jersey Is Not San Diego
Every summer, I make grand plans for our back deck; I envision installing a retractable awning, or screening it and adding a roof, or even simply buying a pair of those giant, heavy duty umbrellas . . . but I never get to it, and then summer ends and I realize that the weather in central New Jersey is so disgusting that there is never a good time to sit on the back porch anyway . . . it's either too hot and humid, or too damp and humid, or too buggy, or too cold . . . and so we have this wonderful back porch, but the only resident who uses it much is the dog, who isn't as particular as the rest of us, and there's no way I'm buying a thousand dollar umbrella for him.
PAH!
As of now, I am still the sole member of PAH! (Parents Against Halloween!) but please take a moment and reflect: are we really going to do this again? the sugar meltdowns? the costumes? the aimless wandering around the neighborhood? the eating of all the extra candy? the diabetic comas? . . . and I'm willing to negotiate with the children . . . I'm willing to offer them firecrackers and BB guns and an go-carts, if they are willing forego this "holiday" . . . I'll even buy them a couple of candy bars-- but let's put our collective feet down -- they're only children and we can stand up to them and give All Hallow's Eve back to the witches and satanists . . . I'll even carve a jack'o'lantern . . . but I just don't want to deal with that giant bowl of processed sugar . . . I can't handle it and neither can they. I'll even give them 100 bucks!
Sometimes You Need To Let Your Head Breathe
I don't have a problem with wearing a visor, and you shouldn't either.
Exotic and Spicy Mystery Story
Last weekend, we got Indian food delivered from Delhi Garden, which is usually very accurate and reliable with to-go orders and delivery . . . but this time, when I brought the food inside, I noticed we were missing our uttapam, our nan, and one of our samosas . . . and so I sprinted out of the house, accompanied by my faithful dog, and caught the delivery guy before he drove away; I told him the story and showed him what we had, and so he called the restaurant, and then he called some of the other houses on his delivery run -- thinking that he gave someone an extra bag of food, but no dice-- and so he had to drive back up Route 27 to fetch the rest of our food . . . and the next morning, Catherine "solved" the mystery when she found a bag of Indian food in our vestibule; she assumed that one of the neighbors realized they had an extra bag of food and left it on our front porch, and that I had stupidly put it in the vestibule -- which already smells awful because of the piles of shoes, cleats, neoprene braces, and shin-guards -- but she assumed that when I got up to walk the dog that I didn't think about the malodorous combination I was creating, and instead of tossing the old Indian food into the garbage, I lazily chucked it into the shoe pile . . . but this was not the case . . . no one returned that bag of food: it was there the entire time, and then I remembered that I was late getting to the door to pay for the food, and the delivery guy opened the screen door and went into the vestibule, and then I opened the door, and the dog was running around, and in the confusion of the transaction -- I'm not really sure when, he must have put that bag down, or dropped it, or I put it down to pay him, and then we both forgot about it . . . I'm not sure if I ever noticed it at all, and he certainly must have forgotten that he handed me two bags, but that fact of the matter is that Delhi Garden was reliable in its order and delivery and we got an undeserved sack of food . . . but unless they read this blog, they will never know the truth.
At Least There's a Name For It
I was going to look up the weather on the internet -- to prepare for my son's soccer game -- but, as usual, I forgot where I had planned to drive on the digital super-highway, and I got lost on a back road and found this incredibly appropriate sniglet . . . Netheimer's: when you go to do something on the internet but forget what you were going to do.
Tracy Morgan Is NOT Tracy Jordan (Or Is He?)
The actual comedy of Tracy Morgan has very little to do with the endearingly bumbling sack of non sequiturs that 30 Rock calls Tracy Jordan . . . or at least that's what I surmised from Morgan's show at The State Theater in New Brunswick last week; Morgan's material is too profane for me to quote on this blog, and while it was very funny at times, and Morgan is astounding mimic -- whether he is singing Michael Jackson or the theme song from Good Times -- the show also had some remarkable low points . . . some strange Michael Richards-esque rants (which Morgan is known for) and a monologue where he came off as just shy of crazy (he seems to sincerely believe that the Moon landing is a hoax and that dinosaurs never existed . . . and there were no punch lines to this portion of the "comedy" act) and while I didn't love the show, I did love the conversation Connel, Craig, Anne and I had at Tumulty's after the show . . . but that was even filthier than Tracy Morgan's brand of humor, and so I can't transcribe it here either . . . but there was plenty of discussion about bestiality, swinging, and this amazing Dear Prudence column (also, Morgan's body refutes the old wive's tale that the camera adds twenty pounds to one's figure . . . he looks much fatter in person).
Stop Reading This And Go To Bed!
Here are some of the things I learned while reading David K. Randall's book Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep . . . and while his lessons are often commonsensical, he provides descriptions of how these truisms were scientifically proven:
1) We often dream about what bothers us;
2) We often dream the same thing over and over;
3) While dreams don't have symbolic meaning, they can help us solve actual problems in a creative fashion;
4) Better to sleep than to cram;
5) The West Coast team has an advantage when playing Monday Night Football;
6) You need sleep to synthesize new information;
7) If you are deprived of enough sleep, you die . . . from lack of sleep;
8) Friendly fire deaths in the military are most often caused by fatigue;
9) The biggest hurdle in the military is not technological, it is sleep deprivation;
10) If you didn't get a full night's rest, take a nap;
11) You can kill someone in your sleep, and depending on the interpretation of the law, you might either get life in prison or get off scot-free.
12) Teenagers have different Circadian rhythms than adults;
13) Highschools that pushed their start time to 8:30 had higher SAT scores, better attendance, less fights, and a number of other quantifiable improvements;
14) Some popular prescription sleeping pills don't actually improve sleep all that much, they just give the sleeper temporary amnesia, so that it improves the perception of how one has slept;
15) The electric light, the TV, and the computer are enemies of sleep, because they fool our brains into thinking it is still daylight, and thus ruin our Circadian rhythm;
16) Before the advent of the electric light, the computer, and the TV, humans had two sleeps: a first sleep from when the sun went down until around midnight, then there was an hour or two of wakefulness, where people often ate or fornicated or talked, and then a "second sleep" until morning;
17) Sleep apnea is scary . . .
and the final thing to take away from this book is that sleep is really, really important for humans-- important for our health, our minds, and our stress levels-- yet even though we know this, married couples usually share a bed that is too small for the two of them and sleep together despite snoring, flatulence, kicking, blanket-stealing, late night reading, and general disruptions . . . and studies found that women primarily do this because they want to feel safe and that men do it because you never know when you might get lucky, and nothing improves your luck more than proximity.
Sweet Dreams Are Probably Not Made Of This
Last Wednesday night, when I checked on my children to make sure they were tucked into bed, doing some reading before lights out, I found my younger son reading a large age-inappropriate biology text . . . and he was studying-up on vampire bats -- there was a photo of a vampire bat sucking on the teat of a cow and several repulsive close-ups of squashed vespertilion faces and pointy vespertilion incisors -- and so I gave him a kiss on the forehead and made a quick exit . . . I don't need to look at stuff like that before bed . . . and then I crossed the hall to check on my other son, and he was reading a book called Gross Body Facts and he told me he was looking for the chapter about "stinky armpits" and I pretended to be proud of his curiosity and inquisitive disposition, and then beat feet out of his room as well . . . and I am happy to report that neither child had a nightmare . . . nor did I (but my children never have nightmares . . . even after catching giant spiders and then reading books about giant spiders . . . which makes me wonder if they are actually part spider; that would explain a lot).
That Look . . . You Know, That Look . . .
I am sure all of you are familiar with the sensation of getting "that look" from someone who passes you by in the hallway at work . . . that look that says: hey, there's something off about you, but I'm too polite to say what it is, and so you'll just have to interpret this look and figure it out . . . so you inspect your nose for boogers, make sure your fly is zipped, and ensure that you don't have semen in your hair (a.k.a. "There's Something About Mary Syndrome") . . . but when I received "that look" last Tuesday morning from a colleague, it was directed at my chest and so I was able to dismiss the usual suspects and instead assumed that I had a stain on my shirt . . . and when I looked down, I did see an odd "U" shaped stain on the right breast of my burgundy golf shirt . . . but upon further inspection, this turned out to be stitching-- I was wearing my shirt inside-out . . . and neither my wife nor several other teachers noticed this, and if it wasn't for "a look" from a random dude, I would have taught first period wearing my shirt in this ridiculous manner (because once you start teaching with your shirt on inside-out, there's no turning back . . . because though it's embarrassing if your students tell their parents that their teacher wore his shirt inside out, you don't get fired for doing that, but if a student goes home and tells his parents that their teacher took his shirt off in class -- whatever the reason -- you are getting the axe).
The First Rule About Fight Club Is You Do NOT Blog About Fight Club
Read any article about how to write a successful blog and the first tip will be something like this: STAY ON TOPIC or CHOOSE A UNIQUE TOPIC or DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO BLOG ABOUT . . . and perhaps that is why Sentence of Dave is not particularly successful, because the Topic is "Dave" and that's not very specific . . . but there are certain areas where Sentence of Dave excels -- according to the Blogger Statistics-- and so here are the most popular searches that lead to this godforsaken corner of the internet: trigonometry, peccary, Chatham Bars Inn, balls, emo, Andrew Strong, giant wasp, and . . . drum roll please . . . elephantitis.
You Never Know How Big A House Is From The Outside
After my son Ian surprised me with his ability to read a rather difficult book out loud, he explained, "My head is little, but my brain is big."
Horror and Meta-Horror All Wrapped Into One Movie
The Cabin in the Woods is the horror movie you've seen a million times before, except that it's not . . . so don't be fooled by the B+ actors and B+ plot . . . this movie turns out to be what The Hunger Games should have been; it's in the same satirical genre as Scream, but I liked it better, mainly because of two memorable scenes: one shows what happens when a confluence of elevators arrive at a particular floor-- a confluence of elevators full of an astounding bestiary-- and the other juxtaposes a celebration of technicians and hilly-billy zombie beatdown in a ironic cinematic kaleidoscope; nine mermen out of ten.
Anticlimactic Clinking
My wife was in a "I'm-going-to-get-a-lot-of-shit-done" mood over the four day Rosh Hashanah weekend . . . and in the midst of getting lots of shit done, she decided to take our two big jars of change to Stop and Shop; they have a CoinStar machine there and if you choose to get a Stop and Shop gift card, then you don't have to pay the 9% counting fee . . . you receive one hundred percent credit for the change you dump in the machine, an admittedly good deal, but this defeats the purpose of a change jar -- which is supposed to be "mad money" to be used for something frivolous (such as a pet monkey or the world's largest chocolate bar) -- to spend it on food . . . especially mundane grocery store food disappointed me (perhaps if we spent it on some kind of exotic food, like a dozen century eggs, then I would have approved) and so to make the event slightly more exciting, we all guessed how much money the jars contained: Alex said fifty dollars, Ian said sixty, I guessed two hundred and twenty dollars and Catherine -- ever the optimist -- estimated three hundred and seventy five . . . but when my wife returned from the store, she said that the machine was broken, and she couldn't cash in the change, and I am regarding this as an omen, and hoping that we will get to use the money for something more fun . . . perhaps I will finally get this (and if you don't think the title of this post is a great name for an indie band consisting of two nerdy percussionists, then you are a fool and I pity you).
How To Not Read George R.R. Martin
So I am still on extended leave from the new George R.R. Martin book, A Dance With Dragons-- I am three hundred pages in but I keep picking up other entertaining titles that keep me from Westeros . . . the latest is a four hundred page thriller by Gillian Flynn (who is far cuter than George R.R. Martin . . . I know this because when my eyes get tired, I invariably open to the back flap of library boks and look at the author . . . and I'm aways amazed when someone cute has written a book, because you'd think they'd have better things to do) and I read this rather thick novel, called Gone Girl, in two days-- partly because of a quad pull, but mainly because it's a true literary page-turner; the book is detailed and realistically written; the narrators have sharp, witty, and unreliable voices; the chapters are short and always significant; the prose is perfectly written; and the plot is preposterous . . . you know the twists are coming, but they are difficult to predict in their entirety, and in the end, despite its realism, the book is good macabre fun: ten Punch and Judy dolls out of ten.
Dreamy Coincidence
I was up early reading Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, and I was reading the chapter entitled "Sleep On It," which detailed the research on how our brain often solves problems creatively while we are sleeping . . . there were anecdotes about Jack Nicklaus realizing his grip was off in his sleep, Albert Szent-Gyorgi figuring out how to isolate vitamin C in a dream, August Kekule dreaming of a snake with its tail in its mouth and relating this to the structure of benzene, Paul McCartney waking in a girlfriend's bed with the entire melody of "Yesterday" in his head, and -- of course -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge rising from an opium induced nap with the poem "Kubla Khan" in his brain (though he was interrupted by a visitor while he was transcribing his masterpiece and forgot the ending) and just as I finished this chapter-- coincidentally (or miraculously . . . that's for you to decide) my son Ian stumbled down the stairs, half-asleep, and mumbled: "I had an awesome dream . . . I have an idea for art" and he grabbed a piece of paper and drew a many-headed hydra-like beast, and he did this even before he went to the bathroom, the urge to draw what he had just seen was so strong . . . and the moral is, of course, if you need a good idea, take a nap.
Possum Week
I was walking my dog early in the morning-- before sunrise-- and it was foggy, moonless, and still; suddenly he lunged at a gray cat on the sidewalk . . . I was able to yank him away before he got too close-- but this cat reacted oddly, instead of arching its back and hissing, the cat collapsed into a lifeless lump, and upon closer inspection, I realized it was not a cat, but a possum, and it was actually playing possum . . . I had the urge to kick it, to see it come back to life, but I couldn't get any closer because my dog was going bananas . . . so later that day I told the tale to my kids, who were fascinated with this odd marsupial that lives among us, and then two days later-- miraculously-- when my wife and children were visiting "Field Station Dinosaurs," a leafy park in Seacaucus filled with animatronic dinosaurs (I couldn't go because of my stupid pulled quad muscle) my son Ian was selected to "play possum" during a live action dinosaur show; according to my wife, the MC asked for a volunteer who knew how to "play possum" and Ian raised his hand and he was chosen to come on stage . . . and when the MC asked him to "play dead," my wife said Ian closed his eyes and stiffly fell over backward and then never moved, despite the investigations of a giant T. Rex . . . and though Ian claims he wasn't scared at all, my wife has her doubts (and, if you look at the above photo of Ian being nuzzled by the T. Rex, that thing is damned scary).
Immobile Dave Is Useless
Over the four day weekend, I was laid up because of a pulled quadricep muscle, and this gave me time to reflect on my life . . . and I realized that the only good I do on this earth is contingent on me being ambulatory: I am not wise enough to teach from a chair, so I try to be animated for my students; my coaching skills rely on modeling-- I play with the kids to show them how to do it; and my chores around the house consist of things such as walking the dog, teaching the kids tennis, taking the kids for bike rides, taking the dog for bike rides, carrying the laundry baskets up and down the stairs, and watering the garden . . . so when I can't walk, I am a major detriment at home, at work, and on the field . . . and so if I ever come up permanently lame, I guess it would be best to take me out back and treat me like Old Yeller.
Dave Pays For His Stupidity
So after spending eighteen hours last weekend at a travel soccer tournament, and then coaching five days of eighth grade boys try-outs, two travel practices, and one travel soccer game, I decided a fun way to relax on Sunday morning would be to go over to the turf field and play some pick-up soccer . . . and, of course, I snapped a muscle in my fucking quad: why didn't I take a walk? or go roller-blading? or take a ride on my stand-up paddleboard? or a bike ride? am I that stupid?
Coach Dave Executes the Best Play of the Day
Though my U-8 travel soccer team took a beating at the hands of a deeper, more experienced Bloomfield soccer squad on Saturday, there was one exceptional play made by a Vulture: but it didn't happen during the course of the game . . . it happened during the car ride home, I was driving and my son Ian and his friend Jesus were wrestling in the back seat of the mini-van, but despite this distraction, when I went to exit the Parkway (Exit 130) and I noticed a massive pile-up of traffic for the Southbound lane, I instead took the Northbound lane . . . so like a good soccer player, I found the open lane and went North to go South . . . and so I drove up Route 1 North away from Highland Park, but into open space, turned by the Woodbridge Mall, caught Woodbridge Avenue and had a traffic free drive the rest of the way home (though when I told my wife about this amazing and creative play into open space, she reminded me that if I had gone one more exit to 129, then I could have caught Woodbridge Avenue there, as we had done many times before . . . but this is irrelevant, because in the heat of the game it's hard to remember things like that, and you just need to appreciate my brilliant move in the context of that particular car ride).
Evite Etiquette
Dear Abby . . . when you reply to a party invitation on Evite, shouldn't you make a clever comment? -- for instance, if someone goes through the trouble of naming their pig roast "There Will Be Pork," then shouldn't you reply with something funny that acknowledges this allusion, such as "we will drink your porkshake!" --- or, as my friend Tim suggests, is this quick-witted wordplay pretentious, annoying and gauche?
Loathsome Logic
My seven year old son Ian-- who should be old enough to know better-- picked up a whistle he found on the ground at last weekend's soccer tournament and immediately put it in his mouth and started blowing it . . . and so I told him that he shouldn't put things that he finds on the ground in his mouth and I tried to scare him straight by describing the snot-mouthed disease-ridden hobo that was using the whistle just before he stuck it between his lips, but this didn't faze him, and after a moment of discussion with his brother Alex, the two of them decided that no one was more disgusting then they were, and so the real problem was not with them . . . it was with whoever used the whistle next . . . because they were the grossest people on earth and so no one should put anything in their mouth once they had.
The Purpose of Old Friends
When you're selectively remembering how excellent your musical tastes were back in high school and college-- how you listened to The Clash and My Bloody Valentine and De La Soul . . . how you were the first to get into Appetite for Destruction and Shake Your Moneymaker and Louder Than Love and and Paul's Boutique . . . when you are reminiscing about the times you saw Soundgarden and Jane's Addiction and Guns N Roses and The Feelies and R.E.M. -- your old friends are there to remind you about that Judas Priest mixed tape you made for them.
Karen Thompson Walker Uses The Word "Miracle" In a Different Manner Than I Use The Word "Miracle"
Karen Thompson Walker's new novel The Age of Miracles portrays an unusually delicate and precise apocalypse, and her narrator is equally delicate and precise in her explanation of this odd and slow way for all things familiar to end; to explain: the earth's rotation begins to decay, and the days and nights gradually grow longer-- wreaking havoc with both the middle school bell schedule and the earth's magnetic field . . . hierarchies change at the bus stop and people revise their circadian rhythms . . . or some people do (they keep clock time) while a minority refuse and try to adjust to the much longer days and nights-- and I read this book to take a break from George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire," a series which spans thousands and thousands of pages and claims that "winter is coming"-- but if you want winter to actually come-- and summer too-- all in the same day, then read this book: ten beached whales out of ten.
Get It Straight
I'm not bald, I am balding-- it is true that I don't have as much hair on my head as I used to have, but I still have some hair . . . it's a process (also, I'm not old, I'm getting older).
My Miracle Is More Miraculous Than Your Miracle
At our first department meeting, Liz told a story about a "miracle" where she was stranded at an airport with her baby, and she was stressed out and lonely, and for some reason she was thinking about a certain wonderful person named Audrey and-- miraculously-- there Audrey was, sent by God to relieve her loneliness and to give her a much needed break from caring for her baby . . . but this sounds more like a coincidence than a miracle, unlike what happened in my class on Monday: I was making the kids think analogously about how having romantic relationship with a human is similar to having a relationship with a book . . . the students had written down questions they might ask themselves before they decided to "get busy with" a romantic interest and we were assessing the continuum of queries, which started light (do they make me laugh?) and ranged to the profound (would I die for him?) and it was easy enough to wax metaphorically about liking a book that had some humor, or being monogamous with a book, or liking a book with a cute cover, relatable subject matter, an attractive font, and that new book smell . . . but when it came to speaking of art you would die for, I hit a brick wall-- my only example was if one was a complete fanatic for the author or piece of art, and then I made the natural leap to Mr. C., my friend who loves the TV show Battlestar Galactica, loves it so much that he has purchased many, many props from the show-- including a chair from the military conference room, several uniforms, and loads of other bric-a-brac that appeared on camera in the various starships and planets of the Galactica universe-- and moments after I explained this (and my classroom door was closed) and remember, I wasn't thinking about Mr. C., I was talking about him in front of many other witnesses-- so moments after this analogous example, Mr. C. himself walked through my classroom door, and if that wasn't coincidence enough, he was holding a funky microphone covered in blood . . . and he immediately explained that he had made a "new acquisition" and that he had just purchased the microphone that was used just before the "slaughter in the Quorum" in the episode "Blood on the Scales" and so I was able to point to this man and say, "Here is the man that might die for a work of art" and Mr. C. acknowledged that he would take a "heavy wound" for Battlestar Galactica and if Liz is going to call meeting up with Audrey in a strange airport a miracle, when she was only thinking about her, then I am calling this a bona fide super-miracle, because I was actually talking about Mr. C. just before he walked in, and he was holding just the prop necessary to complete my analogy.
New To Me . . .
My friend Rachel told me that her property was " a skosh less than half and acre" and I said, "A what?" but apparently a "skosh" is a real word . . . it is a unit of measurement and it means a smidgen . . . and while I have never seen this word in print, people assure me that it is used in conversation quite often . . . but not with the people I converse with . . . and while I am glad I learned a new word, I much prefer saying "just shy," as in "Dammit! That ball was just shy of hitting me in the testicles! Watch where your kicking!" and if anyone has the testicles to say "a tad," as in "maybe you should drink a tad less beer" then I will punch them in the face.
Some Life Decisions Are Easy to Make
I couldn't decide if I wanted one fried egg or two fried eggs for breakfast, but when I opened the carton . . . there was only one egg left.
I Am a Good Person (But It's a Struggle)
So in the interest of being a good person, I decided to clean up my classroom a bit before the start of this year-- I took a number of American Literature text books that had been sitting in a corner of my room for several years back to the common book room so other teachers could use them and I also found a stack of misplaced World History textbooks on the windowsill (my room is used like a terminal for packages in the summer, so all kinds of strange stuff ends up there) and I found a history teacher and asked him what I should do with the books, and he told me that they were certainly needed and he asked if I could bring them across the school to the history office-- and in the interest of being a good person, I complied and returned the books . . . the next day was the first day of classes, and after I finished teaching my last period and was cleaning up and getting ready to go coach, a harried woman hustled into my room and when I asked her if she needed anything, she said that she was a new history teacher and they had her in five different rooms and that my room was one of them-- which surprised me, because usually my room is empty last period-- and then she surprised me again when she said, "I can't find my text books" because I realized that, in the interest of being a good person, I had totally screwed over this green and rather frantic new teacher . . . those text books that I returned to the history office were hers . . . and so there was a moment when I had to decide if I was really going to be a good person, and confess my crime-- and although I didn't want to because then I was going to have to retrieve the books and it was hot as all hell and I had a million things to do-- but the lady seemed nice and she was in five different rooms . . . so in the interest of being a good person, I told her that I was the culprit, and offered to track the books down and bring them back to her-- which I did (and I met an old student who is now teaching math in the high school and she helped me bring the books back, so it turned out to be more fun than I thought) and now I can honestly say that I am a good person (for now).
A Canine Analogy
Peeing on public property is a dog's version of graffiti . . . but, of course, dog's are working in the realm of the olfactory instead of the visual; perhaps this could be Banksy's next project.
Breakfast Food Woes
I'm not sure which task is more difficult . . . peeling a boiled egg or breaking apart an English muffin.
Does This Count As Fair Use?
For the first time in my life, I used our granite mortar and pestle (it is quite heavy, and so I balanced it on top of our panini maker so I didn't have to squish my panini manually).
Not For Those With Two Weeks of Vacation Time
All you folks with full time jobs probably don't want to hear this, nor will you believe it, but nothing is worse than the end-of-the-summer-holy-shit-I've-got-to-go-back-to-work anxiety stomachache . . . it's an awful feeling (but not so awful that I would choose to work in the summer . . . God bless the agrarian calendar) and my stomachache was compounded by the fact that a tooth of mine cracked off at the crown, and so on the same day that I return to work, I will also visit the dentist for some kind of procedure which I can only imagine to be horrific . . . and the worst part is I can't even whinge about all this because it falls on deaf ears, since most people have been working all summer long and have no sympathy.
Wrestling for a Greased Watermelon is Laborious
Last year on Labor Day weekend, I learned that "wrestling for a greased watermelon with buff lifeguards" is not the theme of an adult film, it is an event at our family swim club-- and this year I learned that last year's melee was rather tame because the watermelon broke open after one round; this year we played best of three and I am proud to say that I scored the first point, hefting the watermelon over the side of the pool from distance . . . but there is plenty that went on in this scrum that I'm not proud of-- ankle grabbing, the dunking of minors, pleading with the almighty that I might be allowed to return to the surface, attempting to drown my friends and neighbors, occasional cowardice, and a general sense of bewilderment that I have never felt in any other sport (besides cricket) . . . a petroleum jelly coated watermelon behaves very strangely in water-- someone said it is neutrally buoyant, so it goes in whatever direction you push it-- up, down, sideways, or all three-- and apparently, you can see where it is from the sidelines, so there is lots of cheering and screaming, and when my tall friend John, from Team 1 (my team!) spiked the melon over the side and broke it, cementing both our victory and the end of the battle, everyone was exhausted and relieved, and I am positive that the event was far more exciting than an Olympic water polo match.
Unpacking VERY Slowly (A Follow Up To Yesterday's Stupid Question)
After a vacation, instead of unpacking one's luggage, is it acceptable to leave the piece of luggage on the bedroom floor and simply take clothes out of the piece of luggage until it is empty?
Probably Not As Long As I Left It Up There
How many days after you return from vacation are you allowed to leave the big sack full of beach stuff attached to the roof of the car?
Breaking Meta-News!
The New York Times claims that 1/3 of all "consumer" reviews of books and other products found on the Internet are fabricated, whether by marketers or the retailers themselves, or by friends of the seller, or even companies that you can hire to write positive reviews.
Glad That's Over With
I finished the fourth George R.R. Martin book in his epic A Song of Ice and Fire series, and all I can say about A Feast For Crows is that I survived it (unlike most of the characters) and I hope the next one is an easier read.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)