My Kids Did Not Take the Expected Journey

The Hobbit is a totally entertaining film -- though a bit over-the-top with the visual effects (especially the battling stone giants . . . did Peter Jackson really need them?) -- and now I know that if a movie is good enough, my children can sit still for over three hours, without having to urinate.

It's A Free Country Part II

In America, you have the right to put a slice of pig on your veggie burger, and you also apparently have the right to drive a twenty year old Bonneville with a plastic garbage bag as a rear window, a bumper sticker that says: "I don't believe the liberal media," and a giant wedge shaped sign protruding from the roof advertising a furniture liquidation sale . . . and you have the right to drive this vehicle thirty miles under the speed limit, on Route 1, while chatting on your cell-phone (Pennsylvania plates, of course).

It's a Free Country

Sometimes, I put a couple slices of ham on my veggie burger.

Emo Finally Defined

Ironically, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the first book I have read entirely in electronic format (on my wife's Kindle) . . . and if you haven't read the book, then you might not see the irony -- but the book is the opposite of cold digital technology, it is a sweet, sensitive, and emotional first person account of a boy's freshman year in high school -- and despite themes of suicide, sex, rape, closeted homosexuality, drugs, molestation, insanity, and depression, the book has a light touch-- due to Charlie's narration . . . and though this book has almost nothing I can relate to -- I am notoriously insensitive . . . and my children are following suit -- I am still glad that I read it (though the scene where Charlie gives the perfect present to each of his friends simultaneously amazed me and made me want to vomit) because it reminds me that some people are extra-sensitive, and it's good to be aware of this, and the book also finally defines the term that has remained undefinable: "emo" . . . although when I told my students this, they all said, "NO! Charlie's not emo!" but I think they do this to adults just to drive them crazy -- so Charlie is my personal definition of "emo" and as far as the whole Kindle reading experience . . . I am giving it a reserved "thumbs up,"  the screen is a bit small and I felt like I should have been reading a sci-fi novel or Wired Magazine, instead of a nostalgic high school favorite, but I give the device excellent marks for those who like to eat, read, and drink at the same time, as it lays perfectly flat, and you can turn the page with one hand, while eating or drinking with the other.

Sometimes It Takes A Decade For Closure

If you are frustrated by the incomprehensible school shooting Newtown, Connecticut, I highly recommend that you take a step back in time and read Dave Cullen's book Columbine -- the book took nearly ten years to write and dispels practically every assumption that was first asserted by the media about the massacre in Colorado . . . and it is an excellent reminder of the futility of trying to follow a news story in real time; I consciously avoided reading or watching anything about the Newtown shooting for this reason (and because the story was so damn disturbing) but reading about Columbine is working as a diversion -- I feel like I'm engaged with what is happening in our nation, but I'm not participating in the sensationalizing of a tragic event; unfortunately, no matter how long I wait, I may never know what made Adam Lanza tick, but Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were remorseless enough to have left behind a treasure trove of film, journals, criminal incidents, Web pages, and transcripts from the various counseling they went through, and this information allowed FBI Agent Dwayne Fusilier to paint a complete picture of exactly why the boys did what they did . . . and it had nothing to do with the "Trench Coat Mafia" or  being bullied or jocks or targeting specific ethnicities or cliques: Eric Harris was a psychopath, who believed that he was superior to all other "robots" and his motive was to kill as many people as possible  in the most terroristic, fearful way he could conjure from his unsympathetic and damaged mind, and Dylan Klebold was intelligent and sensitive, but also a malleable, seething bipolar depressive who got sucked into Eric Harris's vortex of hate  -- and though it is frustrating to read about the various strands of both of these kid's lives that indicated that the were planning this horrible event -- hindsight is 20/20, of course -- and that they were really capable of pulling it off (although if it went as actually planned, then it would have been far, far worse -- Harris was determined to rack up a bigger body count than the Oklahoma City bombing -- but his bombs didn't detonate) but Dave Cullen constantly reminds us that psychopaths are notorious for pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone around them-- especially authority figures -- as they can mimic normal human emotions, including the all important ones like repentance, guilt, and resolution, and so it would have been very difficult to separate Harris from a typical rebellious teenager who was trying to turn over a new leaf . . . but the most disturbing detail of the book isn't even about the killers, it is about the rest of us and what we desire, which may not be as violent as what Harris and Klebold desired, but it is equally as sick and weird: soon after the massacre, "tour operators were quick to capitalize . . . the buses would pull up in front of the school, and tourists would pile out and start snapping pictures: the school, the grounds, the kids practicing on the athletic fields or milling about in the park."

A Sentence with Very Little Resolve

My 2013 New Year's Resolution has me stumped -- I need to lose a few pounds, but no one cares about that, and I don't feel like restricting myself to a certain kind of food again, though that was fun while it lasted . . . and I haven't gotten too many suggestions for things I should improve in 2013 (which is odd) . . . although I do like my wife's idea: try as many new ethnic restaurants as possible (we have a plethora in our vicinity, yes, that's right, a plethora of Mexican restaurants, El Guapo, plus Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, Indian, Middle Eastern, and just about everything else) but that's not really the point of a resolution, it should be something that leads to self-improvement (and I guess the Taco Count doesn't make much sense either) and I received one fairly insane idea from my friend Ed -- who was so excited that he delivered his plan by phone, I listened to his rambling monologue of my answering machine and then called him back because I had so many questions about the details: Ed thinks that I should allow one of my children -- Ian, the younger and more impressionable one -- unlimited access to premium cable TV, Facebook, Twitter, violent video games, and explicit music . . . set this child up with all these things in his bedroom, and then restrict my other child (Alex) to books, musical instruments, art supplies, and a reasonable bedtime . . . and do this for the course of a year and then note the effect on each child . . . and while this sounds like a worthy endeavor which would certainly provide fantastic sociological data for future parents, it's more of a crazy "Skinner Box" social experiment (and Snopes reports that B.F. Skinner did NOT raise his daughter in a Skinner Box) than a New Year's Resolution, which is something that I don't want to get involved in . . . I don't need any future lawsuits from my children . . . so unless someone comes up with something brilliant and quantifiable, then my resolution for 2013 is going to be "more of the same, with minor improvements" . . . I hope to be able to keep writing sentences, contribute to Gheorghe: The Blog a bit more often, finish some of the music I've been recording, coach my children, teach my students, lose my temper less, be kind and sensitive to my wife, make it to the pub on Thursdays, appreciate all the great family, friends, and colleagues that I have in my life, and finally sample human flesh.

These Might Be the Best Sentences of 2012

I just finished reading "The Year in Review" section of The Week magazine, and -- wow! -- Sentence of Dave did not tackle any of the big issues this year . . . in fact, I'm not sure I mentioned anything of significance that happened on the planet earth in 2012, but just because the content wasn't especially noteworthy, it doesn't mean that the style doesn't deserve recognition; so, without further ado, these just very well might be some of the best sentences I wrote last year . . . so take some time and savor them, as this is the closest you'll ever get to the brilliant and shining mind that is Dave:

1)  The Best Compare/ Contrast Sentence

2)  The Longest Sentence Ever Written About Chili

3)   The Longest Recurring Theme (with a Big Thanks to My Wife)

4)  The Best (and Simultaneously Most Disturbing) Photo Montage

5)  The Best Story With the Most Irrelevant Comments

6)  Grossest Title: "A Good Walk Spoiled (By My Dog's Anus)"

7)  Best Title (and Worst Idea): "The Potato Apostrophe Catastrophe"

8)  A Good Review of a Bad Movie

9)  Dave's Best Ideas Ever

10) The Most Impressive Streak of 2012

11) My Wife Is a Superhero 

12) Wildest Paddleboard Adventure

13) Dave and His Dog Nearly Die

14) The Most Emotional Sentence of the Year

15) The Least Emotional Sentence of the Year

16) The Best Book of the Year

17) The Most Inspirational Image of 2012

18) Dave is Dumb

19) And Dave is Awkward

20) But Dave Still Triumphs

Chevy Chase Moment . . . With Blood

My parents needed some help getting the Lionel trains to run in a circle around the tree, and so I volunteered to troubleshoot the track -- which involved crawling under some furniture, as the tree was placed in a tight space -- and this didn't turn out very festive, as I banged my head on the underside of a desk, on a very sharp point of wood; I relieved some of the pain by yelling "motherf*cker," and I felt badly about this for a moment because my parents had company over and my children were in earshot, but when I emerged from under the desk, I found that i was bleeding from an ugly gash on my head, and then I no longer felt guilty about the use pf profanity . . . it was warranted.

Succulent Suffixes (Dave is Back! With a Topic That His Dog Would Enjoy)

If you affix the word "chop" to any type of meat -- pork chop, veal chop, turkey chop -- then I don't find the dish appetizing at all (and the same goes for "shank") but if you add the word "barbecue" to the end, then whether it is pork or chicken or beef or turkey, it sounds delicious (and I'm not literally back, I am still in New Hampshire, but Sirius has gone on strike).

Union Logic, Woof!

In a situation where there is global competition, such as the auto industry and other manufacturing, it's going to be tough to defend the unions . . . or if you do something that can be outsourced -- like graphic arts  -- but if you are in an industry that relies on trained humans that can't be outsourced . . . whether it's waiting tables or stitching wounds or doing electrical work or teaching English or working at Wal-Mart, then your best hope for a living wage is an organized union . . . not that I deduced this myself, this is just something that my Master told me one time when we were out walking, but it does make a certain sort of sense (but what do I know, though my Master grants me health benefits, he  doesn't even have a pension plan or a 401K set up for me).

My Master is Good

I am very, very sorry for my poor typing yesterday -- my paws are large and clumsy and my vocabulary is rather limited, but after hours of intense practice, I have learned to accurately slap the letters on the keyboard with my neutered penis . . . Master, I hope you can find it within your pure and bountiful soul to forgive me, and when you come home, I will come to the door, greet you, and then roll unto my back, prostrate, and wiggle in obeisance to your greatness and munificence; I also miss both the sub-master (who I sometimes believe to be your master, but who is not my Master, which confuses me greatly, despite my knowledge of the transitive theory) and the two tiny-masters . . . though they are often cruel to me for no reason . . . but I stray from my point (stray . . . ha!) which is that you are a great master and that I will sit in complete deference to you when you arrive back from your vacation, though you did not take me, though you know that I love the snowy mountains . . . but you are a virtuous and wise master, and must have your reasons why you left me home, and who am I to question you, my Master, and plus, this gives me plenty of time to lick my testicles, which I know you don't want to see or hear . . . and so I will take advantage of this and get it "all out of my system" while you are gone, and then return to perfect behavior once you return.

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Sentence of Dog

While I am on vacation in New Hampshire, my dog Sirius has volunteered to write a sentence each day for the blog . . . he is guarding our house (with the help of my brother) and he should have plenty of quiet time to compose his thoughts; I must warn my readers, though, I am relinquishing complete control of my blog for the next few days and I can't guarantee you that the content will be as intellectually stimulating as it usually is -- on the other hand, I hope Sirius doesn't prove to be a better writer than me, as that would be very embarrassing; anyway, Sentence of Dave wishes you a Merry Christmas . . . I hope you got lots of presents, presents encased in layers of cardboard and plastic, tied together with twisty wires, wrapped in even more paper, and I hope you spend lots of quality family time disposing of all that stuff, and that you have a little bit of time after you've finally disposed of all the packaging, to actually play with your gifts (or at least assemble them and find the proper type of battery for them).

We Have A Lot of Spoons

Thirty two, to be exact, and I'm talking about adult, silverware type spoons -- I didn't include any of the kiddie spoons with plastic handles -- so if we just acquire three more plastic cups, then we can put a metal spoon into every plastic cup in our house . . . when we lived in the Middle East, we often hiked over midden piles of ancient cities, and they were essentially giant mounds of pottery chips, but our garbage doesn't really crumble back to dirt -- it lasts forever (I still have a rubber Tribe keychain from college) so my New Year's Resolution should be to sell and recycle all this junk accumulating in my house, but that's even less exciting than my 2012 Resolution . . . so I am taking suggestions for a 2013 Resolution, and, of course, I want it to be as engaging and popular as The 2011 Taco Count.

My Children Do Not Obey The Laws (of Gravity)

Often, when I am sitting in my kitchen, drinking a beer and reading a book, and my children are upstairs, getting ready for bed, I wonder: how can skinny little boys who barely weigh fifty pounds make such tremendous, foundation-shaking THUNKS?

Every Two Years . . .

There are some topics of conversation that don't come up very often -- and my two favorites, which are related and appeal to the same sub-set of nerdom -- only surface in my life at two year intervals . . . I'm talking, of course, about "the singularity" and the geek-classic Godel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid . . . and I'm not even going to attempt to explain either thing, but back in 2008, there was this incident and then in 2010 I had this shining moment, and now, in 2012, a girl brought in Godel, Escher, and Bach  as her independent reading book, and when I mentioned that I had read it, she got very excited and told me that i was the first person she had met IRL (in real life) that had read the book and knew about the singularity, and then she confided in me that she had a "whole other life on-line" with folks that were keen on these concepts, and she mentioned Eliezer Yudkowsky . . . and if you like this kind of stuff, then I recommend checking out his hypotheses.

Dave Suffers For the Children of the World!

I am usually pretty lame at soliciting charitable donations from the students for our annual holiday gift drive -- especially in comparison to some of the female English teachers, who get their kids to donate mad amounts of cash, usually by bribing them with the offer of home-made cookies or brownies for the class that gives the most money -- but I can't bake, nor am I sincere and emotional enough to get kids to donate through sheer rhetoric, so this year, in the spirit of Christmas, I offered this prize: the class that donated the most money would get to pelt me with water balloons from a close distance on a cold winter day . . . and that day was yesterday, and you never saw happier children, hurling water balloons at the man that assigns them essays, and I am sure the students were pleased that the ordeal was more painful than I imagined, because the balloons weren't terribly full (to insure they didn't break during transport) and so while some broke on impact and soaked me, others bounced off my head and body, and were thrown again and again, until they finally hit a spot with enough force to burst  . . . in the end, I suppose it was worth it, because I did raise more money than I usually do (but it still wasn't as much as the women . . . so just imagine how much the women would pull in if they offered to be bombarded by water balloons).

Bonus!

If you don't care about the Giants, but you love all things "Dave," then head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for a book review and some self-indulgent psychological assessment . . . and, if you're not careful, you just might learn something that will save your offspring from abject failure.

It's Best Not To Have Any Expectations

I was incredibly excited about the Giants/ Falcons game last weekend, because my parents were taking the boys for the afternoon, and it was a rainy day . . . so not only was I going to watch a 1 PM game in total peace, but I also wouldn't suffer the weird pangs of guilt that I always have if I sit inside and watch sports on a day when I should be outside doing sports . . . but, alas, the best laid plans: the Giants weren't in the game for a single play, and were demolished so severely (34-0) that I didn't receive one moment of pleasure from watching the game . . . but I recouped my losses by taking a nap.

Girls Are So Much Smarter Than Me

You could have given me a million years, and I still wouldn't have come up with the word "limiting" as a less abrasive synonym for the word "immature" . . . but it only took a female colleague thirty seconds to massage my tone in an e-mail to an administrator, with that simple substitution . . . I guess I need one of these "smart thesauruses" implanted in my brain so that I don't extemporaneously say or write anything stupid, but then, of course, I wouldn't be Dave anymore.

I Am So Much Smarter Than My Students

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a science-fiction short story by written in 1973 by Ursula Le Guin, and if you've never read it, you certainly should -- it's one of the most memorable sci-fi stories ever written -- but it is not a lot of fun; it is a philosophical allegory about a perfect city, Omelas, and the heavy cost of having such a society . . . because Omelas can only continue its existence if a single child is keep in squalor, ignored and isolated in a dark cell . . . and everyone in the city knows of the existence of this child, and knows that Omelas can only exist if the child is kept in this desolate state; most citizens of Omelas can live with the mathematics of this hedonistic calculus, but there are those that can't . . . those that "walk away from Omelas" because they cannot bear to live with this utilitarian bargain; so I made my students write about this and come up with examples of people who "walk away from Omelas," and though they came up with some decent examples (the Amish, Thoreau, people who join the Peace Corp) they couldn't compete with my examples -- I think I would do very well if I took my own English course! -- and so here they are: 1) becoming a vegetarian . . . most of us know that some animal was kept in a tiny cell, just like the child in the story, so that meat can appear on our plates, and we are willing to live with the system because meat is cheap and plentiful, but there are those that opt out for ethical reasons and stop participating in meat consumption 2) the genteel Southern plantation . . . women in fancy dresses, men smoking pipes and discussing issues of the Enlightenment, while the slaves worked the fields out back . . . some freed their slaves, but even great men like Thomas Jefferson couldn't walk away from that peculiar Omelas 3) the hippie I was talking to in Vermont at Thanksgiving, who lives off the grid in a solar powered house with a propane powered refrigerator, he spent six months at luthier school building his own guitar . . . and when I asked him if he liked to snowboard, he made me feel really bad about my lifestyle, because he said, "No, me and my girlfriend like to sled," and then he went on to describe all the sledding they do by their house, which is on a Class IV road, and I felt very bad about myself, since I require large corporations to tear apart a mountain, build giant trails, funiculars, bars, restaurants, snow-making equipment, and all sorts of other infrastructure before I can go and have some fun in the snow.

I Am Average!

The average American male's self-reported weight has increased from 180 pounds in 1990 to 196 pounds in 2012 . . . and I am wondering if I am the only person they used to complete this study . . . because that is a fairly accurate appraisal of my weight in 1990 and my weight in 2012 (I am usually a few pounds under 196, but after the holidays that's about right).

The Tent is Like a Castle

So far, the new Dave Eggers book A Hologram for the King reminds me of a modernized version of The Castle, by Frank Kafka; Alan just can't seem to make contact with Karim al-Ahmad, his liaison to the Saudi King, and so he and his young companions sit listlessly in the presentation tent, wondering if they will ever get to make their business pitch . . . just as K. -- the land surveyor -- spends the entire length of the Kafka novel fruitlessly trying to gain access to the eponymous castle . . . in the end, he never gets to meet with his contact authority, Klamm, and instead has strange adventures in the village, on the outskirts . . . and while it is hard to recommend the absurd Kafka novels The Castle and The Trial because (spoiler alert!) the protagonists never gain any satisfaction, closure, or knowledge about their predicaments, I will give the Eggers novel a tentative thumbs up -- though I am only half-way through and have no idea if there will be a similarly frustrating finish -- but my thumb is up because Alan has a penchant for telling cheesy long-winded jokes, so though you feel as if you are waiting eternally in an infinite sea of sand for something to happen, at least there are a few punch-lines along the way.

Christmas Rant #1,032,293

Something to consider when over-consuming during the holiday season, Costco and Trader Joe's pay their employees a living wage, while Wal-Mart does not.

A Good Lesson: Fake It

According to Paul Tough's new book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, the most important thing that kids learn in school is not knowledge, but how to improve character traits such as resilience, the ability to delay gratification, and diligence . . . and so the most important lesson I've taught my students is probably not one related to essay writing . . . my best guess is that the most valuable thing they will take away from my class is a policy I instituted last year, a protocol on how to approach me after being absent from my class; you may not come up to me before class and ask, "What did I miss?" because I won't remember, and even worse, you can't say, "Did I miss anything?"because then I'll make you read this wonderfully sarcastic poem . . . so what you must do is provide one piece of information about the lesson you missed, which you must acquire from a classmate, so that you can make a statement like this: "Dearest teacher, I know we read an essay about bee-keeping yesterday, and I heard that we had a quiz, so I was wondering what I should do to make this up?" and though I know the process is complete baloney, and that I am forcing the student to pretend they care about something they don't care about, I think this is an important skill to have: the ability to pretend you that care, and I am always surprised at how adept they are at it, how quickly they adapted to my demand . . . in fact, sometimes they are so convincing with their facts and queries that they actually fool me, and I truly believe that they care about what they missed.

What the F#$@ Does Dave Know About The Higgs Boson?

Though I am completely unqualified to say anything regarding physics, this hasn't deterred me at all; I have now written two pieces about the elusive Higgs Boson: the first was when I scored an exclusive interview with this rare and rather profane particle, and the second is a feature article in my friend's new magazine, which is called Lifewild Quarterly and which is billed as a "science, wildlife, and nature publication designed, written, and illustrated by folks who have no business talking about it in any professional quality"; I'll bet my high school physics teacher would be very proud of my endeavors . . . if I actually took physics in high school, which I didn't (paradoxically making me even better qualified to write for Lifewild than most of the other contributors).

Lost in the Fun Home

Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is by far the best existentialist illustrated Joycean tour-de-force bildungsroman about the coming of age of a artistic lesbian living in a Victorian home perfectly and obsessively restored by a closeted gay dad/ mortician who may or may not have committed suicide by stepping in front of an eighteen wheeler (truckicide?) setting off a recursive labyrinth of a narrative that ends where it begins like the Ouroboros . . . in fact, if I were a coming of age lesbian, I would be so intimidated by the artistry of this thing, that I would take up some other art form, like abstract steel sculpture or origami, instead of trying to compete with the brilliance of Bechdel's insight, allusions, and aesthetics.

Catfish Smells Fishy

I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about the documentary Catfish, but the story seems too neat, too contrived, and too perfectly captured -- every important moment is caught on film, everyone in the story bestows "documentary gold" into the hands of the filmmakers, and Vince's metaphor about the catfish keeping the cod nimble may be a parallel for Angela "schooling" the city boys . . . schooling them in a sad manner, but deceiving them for enough time to make them confused and embarrassed . . . but it may also work in the way that the film fools us . . . in the end, it doesn't matter if it's real or fake, or some odd combination of both (which is probably the truth of the matter . . . I think the creators knew there was something rotten in Ishpeming at the start, when they were "opening" the box that contained first painting) because the film isn't brilliant or all that moving, and it doesn't raise profound aesthetic questions, like its kissing cousin, My Kid Could Paint That, but I still think it's worth watching Catfish: though Nev is immature and annoying, his chest hair is something to behold.

Chucker vs. Shooter

Sometimes, when I am in an existential mood, I wonder: Am I a chucker or a shooter? but this is one of those intractable philosophical conundrums, because no one possesses the exact percentage when a shooter turns into a chucker, and -- as the old saying goes -- every chucker has his day . . . and then, however briefly, he imagines himself a shooter, until The Law of Averages exacts statistical revenge and The Scales of Justice are balanced once again.

The Gospel According to Alex

According to my eight year old son, the three wise men brought the baby Jesus "gold, Frankenstein, and myrrh."

When In Doubt, Blame It On Your Wife

I certainly have no problem blaming things on my kids that are actually my own fault, but there are times when it's much more logical to throw your wife under the bus; last week, I had to take my mini-van to the dealer to get a key transmitter -- and it's already humiliating enough for me to deal with mechanics, because while I teach kids how to write poetry, mechanics get to use powerful pneumatic tools and have extremely manly work-clothes -- but to add insult to injury, when the guy in the overalls asked for my registration and insurance card so he could take down the VIN and some other information, I couldn't find either . . . I searched the glove compartment, the cup-holders, the ashtray, and the floor . . . but no luck, and I finally told him, "My wife drives this car and I don't know what she did with everything," but that's not true, I drive the mini-van, but I had no idea where any of that stuff actually was, and (after I called my wife) what I didn't realize is that there is a second glove little glove compartment above the big glove compartment, and that's where we keep that stuff . . . and the bright side is: at least this ignorance didn't occur when I was being pulled over by a cop for a moving violation.

The Yellow Birds: Catch-22 Without the Jokes

The Yellow Birds, a novel written by Iraqi War veteran Kevin Powers, has a scene reminiscent of Catch-22: as I raced to the finish of the story, I couldn't help but think of when Yossarian shows up in formation butt-naked to receive his medal because Snowden has bled all over his uniform . . . and Powers' novel also has a Snowden-like scene of graphic gore and violence at its heart, but while Yossarian moves through a mock-epic collection of eccentric soldiers, insane officers, and colorful whores in a picaresque and often hysterically funny manner, Powers' narrator John Bartle reminds me more of a detached and lost Hemingway character, who has become unhinged by war and can no longer relate to anyone who hasn't been there . . . Catch-22 is a lot more fun, but the last eighty pages of The Yellow Birds is powerful, vivid, and memorable . . . it makes the slog through the earlier chapters well worth it.

One of the Many Wonderful Things About Knowing Whitney Even Longer Than I've Known My Wife

I recently pointed out that one of the wonderful things about being married is the verbal shorthand you have for memories -- a short and simple phrase can evoke an entire scene -- but I should also point out that I have known my friend Whitney even longer than I have been married to my wife, and Whitney's memory is nearly as prodigious an an elephant's . . . but, unlike the relatively unbiased elephant, Whitney seems to remember the things you'd most like to forget . . . so he recently reminded me of another "bringing stuff back to the table episode". . . my wife was in India with some of her lady-friends, and I met up with John, Whitney, and Mose in Amsterdam; we were catching up in a cozy tavern, sitting at a little wood table in the corner, and it was my turn to buy a round; I walked up to the bar, purchased four pints of beer, turned and saw my friends deep in conversation, and decided I didn't need any help carrying the four pints -- so I nestled them into a square, put my hands on each side of the square, applied a bit of pressure, and lifted . . . and (miraculously!) the square of four pint glasses, held together firmly, and so I proceeded across the barroom floor in this manner, happy with my independence and my aptitude, until I got several feet from the table; at this point, John, Mose, and Whitney simultaneously looked at me, and their combined facial expressions conveyed so much anxiety and disbelief, such a unified and abject lack of faith in my endeavor, that I doubted myself and slightly adjusted the pressure I was placing on the four pint glasses -- despite the fact that I had applied the perfect amount of pressure for ninety percent of the walk -- and with this slight increase in pressure, the pint glasses shattered (and so did my ego, but not my ability to create zeugma) and then I had to endure much humiliation and ridicule, despite the fact that it was their facial expressions that caused the entire mess, and then, just when I had forgotten the entire incident, I had to relive it not once, but twice: when Whitney brought it up in the comments, and when I took the time to describe it here.

Things Overheard in the Hallway

One sophomore said to another, "You're like a shrimp . . . you're a shellfish" and this was such a strange phrase that I couldn't ignore it, and so I asked the sophomore why he said it, but the reason he gave for making this odd simile was far less interesting than the phrase itself . . . so I won't ruin it and tell you his explanation.

A Fun Game (if you like loud noises)

A few weeks ago, we converted our spare change into an Amazon Gift Card, and this has led to some impulse purchases . . . the latest is a Cajon Box Drum, which is a large wooden box that doubles as a stool, and you whack it in various spots to get various tones; my family invented the Cajon Box Drum Game, in which several family members play the drum in succession and a person in another room -- who cannot see the drum and the player -- tries to guess who is beating on it . . . oddly, this was easy to do in my family; my wife didn't have much rhythm, my son Alex hits it a bit randomly, Catherine said it sounded like I was "thinking about it too much," and Ian -- the little bastard -- is a natural.

One of the Many Wonderful Things About Marriage

On our way up to Vermont this Thanksgiving, we stopped to eat at Roy Rogers, and my wife said, "Remember what happened at Roy Rogers?" and this was all she had to say, and my mind travelled twenty years into the past . . . when we were returning from a Williamsburg road trip and stopped at The Maryland House to eat; it was very crowded, so Catherine snagged a booth while I put all the fixin's on our burgers at the Fixin's Bar, and then -- while I was carrying a tray of fully fixed food across the wide open brown tiled space between the Fixin's Bar and the booth Catherine had snagged, I had what is affectionately known as a "wardrobe malfunction" . . . I was wearing a pair of shorts that I had stolen from the most notorious clothing thief in our fraternity, so I was quite proud that I had righteously filched these shorts from him and beat him at his own game, but he was thicker than me, so the shorts were loose around the waist, and they didn't have a button, so I was using a safety pin to keep them cinched . . . and the safety pin snapped . . . and the shorts fell to my knees . . . and I couldn't bend down to pull them up, because I was carrying a tray of fully fixed food . . . and at this juncture, I should point out that I didn't bring a whole lot of laundry on the road trip, and I had run out of underwear, so I was "going commando" under the shorts . . . so once they fell to my knees I was, as the English say, doing the full monty (or, as the Japanese say, "sporting wang") but luckily, the only people who saw this were my wife and a fat old black woman -- and both of them immediately burst out laughing as they watched my shuffle as fast as I could to the booth, where I put the tray down and pulled my shorts up; I learned a valuable lesson that day: if you're not going to wear underwear, make sure your shorts fit correctly and have a sturdy fastener . . . and one of the wonderful things about marriage is that it only takes a couple of words to evoke a moment like this, once you've been with someone for twenty years you have a kind of verbal shorthand to access all of these most excellent and humiliating events.

Was Dave One-Upped or One-Downed?

When I mentioned that my dog Sirius requires two bags for his morning walk, my friend Stacey -- who is taller than me, but has a much smaller dog -- one-upped me and claimed that her dog Norman fills THREE bags on his evening walk . . . and while I'm not sure if this "one-upping" or "one-downing," I loved the conversation, because instead of "humblebragging" -- an act that I detest -- we were actually bragging, which is something I love (even if the topic is the amount of fecal matter our pets produce).

Bigfoot vs. Ram Bomjon

There are two types of people: 

1) people rooting for a conclusive Bigfoot encounter . . . and if you are one of these types of people, then the Provo Canyon Incident is as believable as they come 

2) people who believe Ram Bomjon (the Buddha Boy) was able to meditate for months in a tree without food or water . . . 

and I am sorry, but you can't have both, as to ask for both these supernatural miracles to be true would be extraordinarily greedy, so you have to choose; as for me, I am rooting hard for Team Sasquatch.

Just Living My Life, Dave-Style

As I was walking out the door on Wednesday morning, I realized that I had forgotten my cell-phone, and so I went back into the kitchen to retrieve it . . . and as I walked by the counter I noticed an overturned yogurt container, a spoon, and an open magazine-- it took me a moment to process the tableau-- and then I realized that this was my mess, that I was the culprit, and I told my wife that I couldn't believe I could be so rude and slovenly -- which made her laugh-- and the odd thing is this: I was genuinely surprised that I didn't clean up after myself, and -- before I saw the evidence-- I certainly believed that I cleaned up after myself once I was done with my breakfast; if someone interrogated me, I think -- even under the strain of torture-- that I would have insisted that I had rinsed out my yogurt container and threw it in the recycling bin, put my spoon in the dishwasher, and put my magazine away in some acceptable magazine storing location . . . yet I did none of this, and so I am starting to wonder about the ramifications of Just Living My Life, Dave-Style.

The Car: Much Faster Than A Horse

This Thanksgiving, we were able to resurrect an old tradition -- one we haven't done in a few years-- we hightailed it out of Jersey to visit our friends in Bolton Valley, Vermont . . . and, as usual, I was astounded by the amount of traffic we had to endure in order to escape New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, and I was also -- as usual -- astounded by how much the terrain, culture, and weather can change during a seven hour drive; Rob and Tammy don't live IN the mountains, they live ON the mountain -- five miles up a treacherously steep road . . . their house is even in elevation with the ski lodge . . . and so on Monday, we essentially drove from winter back to fall . . . when we left their house, it was a near blizzard, and several times we nearly slid and fishtailed to our death, but by the time we got back to Jersey, it was fifty degrees and sunny, and we were able to hit some tennis balls down at the park.

My Team Is Losing . . .

In Hanna Rosin's new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, she uses the stark contrast between how her son and how her daughter get organized for school as the anecdote that illustrates her copious statistics . . . girls are far more equipped to handle the rigors of modern education than boys, and so while her daughter makes to-do lists for tasks that lie weeks in the future, Rosin is doing everything in her power "not to become her son's secretary," and this dichotomy now continues from elementary school right through college, where women outnumber men on almost every campus and certain elite schools are practicing "affirmative action" for the boys, so that the male/female ratio doesn't get incredibly skewed (and I can already see this trend in my own house -- I have two boys-- and the rule is that "the homework isn't done until Mommy checks it" because Daddy is incompetent, overlooks things, and doesn't read directions).

Heady Topper: I Am Undecided

On our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Bolton Valley, Vermont, there was much mention of the legendary Heady Topper Imperial I.P.A -- a locally brewed and canned beer -- and everyone seemed to have an opinion on it; most folks loved it and were willing to rush over to the tiny Alchemist Cannery in order to grab a few cans before they sold out, but others were vehemently opposed to this beer that "tasted like a pine tree" and so I decided to try it for myself . . . we swung by the brewery, but they were sold out (of course) so I had to make do with a sample, and while I certainly didn't feel that it was "world class", I did like the first few gulps, but then it got a little sharp and hoppy for my taste . . . I prefer New Jersey's Hopfish IPA . . . which is ALWAYS available at Pino's in Highland Park, and so though it doesn't have the legendary allure of the beer that is impossible to buy (the demand for Heady Topper is so great that it costs $3 for one can and $72 for a case, there's no price break for bulk buying) I like the fact that I don't have to plan my day around an alcohol purchase . . . which seems like a pathetic pursuit for grown man with a wife and two children.

Hurray For Zman! Hurray for Man!

It's a good thing Sentence of Dave super-commenter Zman recommended that I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian feminist novel Herland, because otherwise when Hanna Rosin asked the question "What does the modern-day Herland look like?" in her new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, I would not have understood the allusion, and I would have felt like one of the men she was describing: disempowered, penurious, and uneducated . . . I would have felt like a man in one of the 1,997 metropolitan regions of the country that James Chung studied (out of 2000) where young women had a higher median income than young men (and if you want more statistics like that, read the book, as it is chock full of them).

There are Two Types of People

No matter how stupid the idea is, I love it when an essay start with the premise "there are two types of people" and so I will follow suit; there are two types of people: 

1) people who talk during movies 

2) people who don't . . . 

and I am number one all the way: movies are MUCH more interesting when accompanied by my insightful commentary.

Five Years Of Sentence of Dave!

I have been writing this blog for so long, that I can't really remember much that happened before its inception (I refer to these events as pre-Sentence of Dave) and along the way I have evolved my style from its simple and clutter free roots to my current prolix bombasticity . . . my syntax has gone from grammatically correct to convoluted elliptical absurdity, and my diction -- which was once precise -- now often includes superfluous lexical garbage, such as repeated usage of the word ersatz and repeated misusage of the word miracle . . . and all this time, my dedicated fans have stuck with me, and so I would like to offer my sincerest thanks . . . I hope I can wring five more years of material out of the theme "Dave" . . . more fragmented logic and half-baked ideas, more awkward moments, more useless opinionated capsule reviews . . . I'd like to thank all the guys at Gheorghe:The Blog for inspiring this "spin-off" and especially Zman for his diligent and persistent commenting over here; and I'd like to thank my wife, children, and colleagues, both for providing material and for pointing out when I have done something really stupid, which is always the best content of all.

One Man, Two Bags . . .

My dog has gone from being a one bagger to a two bagger, and while this is a good thing in a baseball game, it's NOT such a good thing during his 5:30 AM consitutional . . . if my stomach wasn't empty, that second load would certainly cause an early morning upchuck.

Happy Thanksgiving

For the greatest Thanksgiving monologue in cinematic history, you need to watch Pieces of April and learn why Eddie has changed his name to Tyrone (I can't find the clip on YouTube) but it's a great movie -- simple, elegant plot and an excellent ensemble cast.

First World Problems

Now that our power is back, I am happy to say that the worst problem in our house is a universal one -- and though I didn't flush the toilet with malicious intent Monday evening, I was quite pleased to hear my seven-year old son Ian, who was in the shower, use the proper tone -- the tone his Dad taught him --when he screamed, "WHO'S USING THE WATER?"

The Nerds No Longer Need to Get Revenge

I asked my son Alex what he was doing on the playground with his friends, and he told me -- without any shame-- that they were playing a game they invented called "Dalek tag," which had a number of rules, all revolving around references to Dr. Who . . . my boys love the new version of the show and so do a few of their friends, but the rest of the kids had never seen it, yet they were still willing to join in . . . this is a big change from when I was a kid-- back then, if you made up a game based on campy sci-fi television, then you didn't advertise this to the entire playground (unless you wanted a serious beat-down).

Weekend of Dave!

Catherine and I attended two parties over the weekend . . . Friday night was the Third Annual Scary Story Contest and Saturday night was a Beer Pong Birthday Party -- and I won Best Story at the Story Contest and at the Beer Pong Party, I held the table for several hours with my silent and stoic partner Bob, who was prone to diving on the floor for difficult shots, and then when we were finally unseated, my wife and I returned and held the table until the party ended . . . so quantifiably, this was pretty much the most successful weekend of my life, as it was rather easy to measure how well I did at each party . . . I wish all of life was so concrete and simple, with transparent rules and immediate gratification, but now it's back to the confusing, ambiguous daily grind of life, where there is no apparent way to keep score and no easy way to figure out if you are holding the table or winning the contest . . . by the way, would anyone like to play darts with me at the Park Pub on Thursday?

Did Dave Defend His Title?

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!)

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.

Hurricane Update!

My parents have power in North Brunswick, but it is still dark in Highland Park.

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.

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.

Hooray! Hooray For Me! Now Please Kill Me.

I'm getting better and better at parking my mini-van.