A Tough Fruit to Digest
I highly recommend Tyler Cowen's e-pamphlet The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better . . . it is a quick read with a powerful thesis: we are not as rich as we think we are . . . and the stuff that made us feel rich in the first place, the low hanging fruit we grabbed and ate, is pretty much a thing of the past -- there is no more free and cheap land, the major strides in public education happened last century (at the beginning of the 20th century, very few people went to school or university -- intelligent or not --and Cowen argues that we have reached an age of diminishing returns in education . . . now everybody goes to school) and there haven't been many life changing scientific breakthroughs recently -- aside from the internet, which is a special case, because though it eases the shock of the stagnation, it is mainly free, and wonderful for those folks who are "intellectually curious, those who wish to manage large networks of loose acquaintances, and those who wish to absorb lots of information at phenomenally fast rates," and so though we still have our Constitution and relatively cheap fossil fuels, they are only two of the five . . . and in areas of great gain, such as financial innovation, these innovations do NOT translate into gains for the American people (and might translate into losses) as "recent and current innovation is more geared toward private goods rather than public goods," unlike the innovations of the 20th century: refrigeration, transportation, sanitation, mass communication, electricity . . . I agree with this, though the internet is super-neat, it pales in comparison to an indoor toilet, and I will still pay my plumber more to fix my pipes than I will pay for an internet connection.
Transitions? WTF!
Last week, my wife texted me the following message "U need to pick up the boys from your parents' house on the way home; I took out meat meat for tacos for dinner" and I told her I would pick up the kids and then I chastised her for not using a transition between two very different ideas -- thus creating an abrupt non sequitur of a message -- and I sent this message despite receiving advice NOT to send it from the women in the English office . . . because I thought it was humorous, but my wife thought it was "kind of annoying" and so I suppose that transitions are unnecessary in texts and I won't bring it up again (and of course, my wife used a period, not a semi-colon, in her text but I don't want to ruin the integrity of Sentence of Dave and so I made that slight adjustment . . . I apologize to all parties for being "kind of annoying").
Cheap Electrical Fun
Just before I go to sleep on a cold, dry winter night, I strip off my black fleece sweatshirt so I won't get hot once I am under the covers, and the last thing I see before I close my eyes is a pyrotechnical festival of static electricity, caused by the fleece rubbing against my head, made all the brighter because I am inside a tunnel of black fabric . . . and if you haven't experienced this, I suggest you try: it's inexpensive, safe, and a suitably dreamy image before you settle into a cold and comfortable night's sleep (and this is in direct contrast to what happens before bed on a hot, humid summer night . . . I peel a sweaty t-shirt off my hairy torso . . . and instead of receiving a visual treat, I am punished with an odorous olfactory slap in the face).
Saving It . . . Forever
This smart and spot-on post about amateur art by my friend Rob made me realize that the reason I have never actually tried to paint a picture -- though I love the idea of slapping some colors on a canvas -- is because I secretly think I would be an awesome and amazing painter, and I know the only way to ruin this pleasant fantasy is to actually try painting . . . there are several other things in this very particular category of "stuff I am purposefully avoiding so that I don't find out that I'm not as good I would imagine I would be" that I can share with you: for instance, I just know I would be a natural at curling -- so I'm never going to visit Bemidji, Minnesota and try my hand at the sport . . . I'm also positive that I would be an excellent actor, and the best way for me to preserve this opinion is to never try out for a play . . . and I am as certain as certain can be that if I took the time to buy some new clothes and actually put some effort into dressing myself, that I would be the most fashionable guy around . . . and as long as I continue to wear fleece pants out in public, I'll never have to worry about this theory being refuted . . . so what are you avoiding on purpose so that you don't have to face the sad reality that you aren't a natural at it?
The Human Memory is Strange, Wondrous, and Stupid
Though I most definitely saw the film, if you were to ask me "Do you remember Remember the Titans?" I would have to say no . . . but I do remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Total Recall, and Memento quite well (and Dark City is an odd, in-between case).
I Am Mean (But Not Golden)
My friend Stacy and I each both teach Philosophy this year, and we were talking about Aristotle's Golden Mean . . . Aristotle says for every virtue there is a deficiency and an excess (so for the virtue of courage, the deficiency would be fear and the excess would be recklessness) and he says that it is admirable, but very difficult, to find the "golden mean" of each virtue -- the exact right amount of each thing you should be; we challenge our students to choose a virtue and apply this philosophy, and we usually do one ourselves: I decided that I needed to work on the virtue of "patience" -- and I definitely have a deficiency of patience . . . I lack patience when I drive, when I walk the dog and he won't poop, when I walk through the hallways at school, when I am eating, when I go to live music shows, when I go out to dinner, at the theater, when I am ready to leave a party, when I am tying my kids' shoes etc. etc. and Stacy was nice enough to offer to print out a question sheet for this assignment that she had saved from the previous year . . . and as the paper slid from the offic printer, and she tried to hand it to me, I grabbed it out of her hand, and read it . . . and it said "Please return ASAP" and nothing else, and before I could turn my filter on, I asked my friend Stacy this question: "What kind of asshole are you?" and then I realized that this was simply the flip side of a piece of recycled paper, and that the question sheet was on the other side -- but by this time it was too late . . . luckily Stacy has a great sense of humor, and she thought my horribly rude response was very funny, and not only that, she hopes that I do NOT succeed in improving my patience because she gets great enjoyment from my inappropriate spontaneous and ridiculous behavior, and -- of course -- the irony was not lost on either of us that if I can't be patient even while I am designing a lesson about my own patience, then I am probably not going to imrpove it anywhere else in my life either.
If You're Reading This You Are Probably WEIRD
In his new book, Jared Diamond explains that the human subjects studied in the vast majority of psychology experiments are WEIRD, and that may be skewing the results -- and you are probably WEIRD too . . . Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic . . . and if you are WEIRD, then you might learn a lot from The World Until Yesterday, and I highly recommend it: nine mongongo nuts out of ten.
Setting the Youngsters Straight
Every year, it seems that I have one annoying class . . . it's usually a large class in the middle of the day, just before lunch, when the kids are fully awake, but also have low blood sugar -- and every year, when I am expressing my annoyance to this annoying class, one of the students kindly asks me if I am having a bad day . . . because these students aren't annoying individually, they are annoying as a horde of thirty boxed-in teenagers . . . and so they can't believe that they would ever be annoying; and every year, I have to explain to this annoying class that if I am in a bad mood, and expressing this to them, it is not from some outside influence -- because I am a consummate professional -- and the reason I am in a bad mood is a direct result of their annoying behavior. . . and this always shocks them a bit, and makes them laugh: I think it is human nature to think that if someone is in a bad mood, it's certainly not my fault, there must be some other reason, some reason outside of me, because why would anyone ever be angry at me?
Tickets, Time, and Anxiety
I am not a big fan of live events -- a shortcoming of mine -- and this is because I'm not a terribly flexible person and I don't like the lack of control a live event entails . . . so last weekend was quite a test for me; Friday night, I saw Louie CK at the State Theater, and despite having to wait until the 10 PM show, which is far past my bedtime (unless I'm throwing darts in a bar) it was well worth it -- Louie killed and he did entirely new material and performed for ninety minutes . . . a long set, but he pulled it off (though it was a bit dry and hot in the theater, not this hot, but still, it made me sort of parched, and I couldn't pause the show so I could get a drink, another reason I don't love live performances) and then on Saturday night, Whitney and his step-brother picked me up and drove me up to Chatham, where we were meeting a bunch of guys and then going to Montclair to the Old 97's/ Drive-By Truckers show . . . but when I got in the car and asked Whitney what I owed him for the ticket, he said, "I don't have a ticket for you" and after some heated discussion and a review of texts sent (he texted "I'll check on tickets" and I misinterpreted this as "I am getting tickets") I realized that I didn't have a ticket for the show, which made me very nervous, as I don't like live performances to begin with, and I especially don't like them when I'm unsure of some component (I'm still angry about trying to scalp INXS tickets at the Spectrum 1987, and instead buying expired '76ers tickets) but luckily the show wasn't sold out, and I was able to get in . . . but then I had the opposite problem . . . there was no leaving: both bands were great, though I was more partial to the Drive-By Truckers . . . but the show was FOUR HOURS LONG . . . which is really testing my attention span, and another reason I'm not a huge fan of going to a live performance (and these night-time live performances were bracketed by two daytime travel soccer games, one of which I coached . . . in the snow . . . and I didn't plan very well for this live-weather event and my young son nearly froze, as my wife was getting her hair done and so I dressed him for the weather, but I dressed him the way I would dress, and I am a 190 pound hairy man, and he is a fifty pound hairless seven year old).
The Most Athletic Thing I've Ever Done (and Possibly The Most Athletic Thing ANYONE Has Ever Done)
You may have completed a triathlon or done a "tough mudder," or perhaps you've scored a hole-in-one or climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro . . . and while these are all impressive athletic feats, they pale in comparison to what I did late Saturday night (actually early Sunday morning) after a long evening of beer drinking with the boys -- Zman was nice enough to let us crash at his house after the Old 97's/Drive-By Truckers show, but Zman was not nice enough to adult-proof his house . . . and I thank him for this (and his very young son . . . if Cole were a girl this probably wouldn't have happened) and so here's what hapened: while I was carrying an open jar of Grey Poupon mustard to the living room -- for use on some pepperoni and cheese -- I stepped into the box-bed of a Tonka toy dump truck, and when the truck rolled forward, with my foot on the bed, this propelled both my feet into the air, so that my body was three feet aloft and horizontal to the ground -- and it was in this moment, parallel to the hardwood floor, that I thought to myself: "the mustard! I can't spill the mustard!" because I didn't want to get Zman in trouble with Zwoman, because his insensitive fraternity brother stained the couch with mustard . . . and so instead of breaking my fall with my hands, I took one for the team, fell flat on my side (with a resounding thump which brought everyone running) and I spilled not one drop of mustard . . . nor did I suffer any lasting injury, and though I don't remember this, Zman reports that in my stunned state, I said to him: "I just did the most athletic thing anyone has ever done."
Another Note to Self . . . This is How to Create an Infinite Loop
An easy way to hear my wife use profanity is to spill some granola on the counter, and then instead of cleaning it up, simply sweep it off the counter and onto the floor where "the dog will get it" but the dog gets scared when my wife uses profanity, so this created a infinite loop of me calling the dog over to lick up the granola, my wife yelling at me for my slovenly habits, the dog skulking away because he thought he was in trouble, the granola mess still being on the floor, and so -- once again -- I call the dog over to eat the granola, my wife yells at me for my slovenly habits, the dog skulks away because he thinks he is in trouble, the mess still on the floor . . . and so finally I swept it up, and I won't do that again (in front of my wife).
Why Are We Living Like This?
Americans can't sleep as it is, yet we spring the clocks ahead so we stay up later, consuming more fuel and stuff, and get alarmed even more than usual by our alarms -- and then there's the children, of course, who we claim to care about -- but we send them to school at an ungodly hour to begin with (a school district in Minnesota that switched to a later schedule found many positive benefits, including a boost of over 200 points in the tope students average S.A.T. scores) and then we screw them even further and wonder why they can't pay attention, and then, to top it all off, we put the Superbowl on late at night on a Sunday . . . why, Chronos, why?
It's The Fortnight of Time
Due to a serendipitous confluence of influences -- including the annual "spring ahead" of Daylight Saving Time, the fact that I'm a few hundred pages Neal Stephenson's epochal science fiction novel Anathem, the coincidence that Stacy and I just showed the most realistic time travel movie ever made (Primer) in philosophy class (it's also the most difficult time travel movie ever made -- it's fun to team teach something that neither teacher understands . . . and then we have the students read Chuck Klosterman's time travel essay, where he confesses that he didn't understand the movie either) -- anyway, due to this convergence of time-themed stuff, my mind has been preoccupied with all things chronological . . . and so when I asked my class on Monday "How is today an example of time travel?" they instantly got the answer: that we had all travelled into the future an hour because of Daylight Saving Time . . . and in some more rational parallel universe, where they don't practice such absurd manipulation of the clock -- we were all still sleeping in our warm beds or perhaps just waking up and sipping coffee, instead of sitting in class, bleary eyed, wishing we had time machines so that we could go back in time and sleep more . . . and I'm probably going to keep obsessing on this theme, and my wife won't let me talk about it any more at home -- the blog is my only outlet -- so I apologize, but there is probably going to be a fortnight's worth of time posts.
My Children Need to Visit New Guinea
Jared Diamond, in his new book The World Until Yesterday, claims that among New Guinean hunter gatherers, the Andaman Islanders, and the Piraha Indians of Brazil, children of nine or ten years old often leave their families to journey to other villages and live with foster parents, cousins, or other various allo-parents -- these children are autonomous, entrepreneurial and adventurous . . . meanwhile, my kids can barely tie their own shoes.
Strategic Birthday Logistics
When carpooling children to a birthday party, always offer to do the drop-off -- it's much smoother than pick-up, when things can run late, and you have to deal with goody bags and social niceties (I learned this the easy way last weekend, when we got a text from our friend Ruth, who was picking up Ian -- the party was supposed to end at 7:30, but we got a text from her at ten of eight that said: "things are running late here" and I thought to myself: sucks to be her . . . trapped in a room full of eight year olds hopped up on sugar, while the wife and I are starting an episode of Game of Thrones).
A Plea to Cronus: Obliterate Daylight Saving Time
Monday morning, I had to use the light from my cell phone -- which prominently displays the time -- to locate my dog's poop so that I could pick it up . . . and, of course, two mornings previous, at the same time, I was able to accurately locate my dog's poop without the aforementioned device . . . Cronus, Greek Titan of Heaven, strike down the mortals who have profaned your domain!
My Kids Are Weird (and not with the program)
Basketball season has come to an end, and soccer has begun -- despite the snow -- but you wouldn't know it in my house . . . for the past two weeks, my boys have spent every moment of their free time shooting mini-basketballs at a nerf hoop on the closet door; they really should have been doing this all season, as they are a couple of chuckers (but they can both handle the ball and play defense, so I can't complain) but, oddly, during basketball season all they wanted to do was toss around the football (and since Ian's soccer game was cancelled on Saturday account of snow, we went out and played tennis).
This Metaphor is not for the Weak of Heart
In my "Year as a Week" metaphor, we have entered Thursday -- Spring Break is around the corner and then there's just the sloppy slog through the last two months of the year -- Friday! -- and the weekend is here (summer vacation) . . . but in my "Career as a Week" metaphor, I'm only in the middle of Wednesday: I've got to work as long as I've already worked before I can even consider retirement, and that's only if the pension system remains self-sustaining -- if it collapses, then I'm probably still in early Tuesday in my "Career as a Week" and I will never reach the weekend (retirement) and instead will simply work until I keel over and die in front of a class full of teenagers (who will most likely have the internet implanted in their brains, so they can text each other telepathically, while I am trying to teach them Hamlet).
Dumb Phone
I am being technologically taunted into getting a smarter phone; when my friends send a barrage of group texts, my phone only gets "receipts" of the messages, but can't retrieve them -- and this is worse than not receiving the messages at all, because the receipts alert me to the fact that everyone is making plans and making jokes about the plans, but (unless I annoy people for a summary) I'm not privy to the actual information.
I Don't Care If You Can Find Your Hometown on a Map, But You Should Know This . . .
If I were able to get one message across to the people of America, it would be: the left lane is for passing.
Does This Make My Property Value Rise Or Plummet?
To make up for yesterday's ultra-nerdy post, today I present you with something visceral and easy to understand -- a sea monster! -- the creature pictured above was caught two years ago in the Raritan River, the same river which flows a few hundred yards behind my house -- and the horrific beast is called a "sea lamprey"; they are apparently fairly common in the murky waters of New Jersey's least scenic river and while my children think this photo is the bee's knees, I'm not sure if it's a selling point for the location of my house -- I will have to ask my realtor.
A Very Nerdy Connection
Here's one for all the dorks out there: I was reading Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? . . . and not only that, but I was reading it on my new Kindle -- and so I made an electronic bookmark when I ran across this passage: "a traditional tactic without parallel in modern state warfare is the treacherous feast: documented among the Yanomamo and in New Guinea: inviting neighbors to a feast, then surprising and killing them after they have laid down their weapons and focused attention on eating and drinking" because it reminded me of the infamous Red Wedding in George R.R. Martin's third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series . . . and my internet research revealed that Martin's Red Wedding (not to be confused with Billy Idol's White Wedding) was inspired by an actual historical event -- the Black Dinner , a treacherous feast in Scotland in the year 1440 . . . indeed!
Lunch of Champions?
Note to self: after the kids stay up far past their bedtime on Saturday night and need a two hour nap before their basketball game on Sunday, do NOT feed them cake (and only cake) for lunch to "wake them up"-- Ian played defense with one hand in his pocket, and Alex -- after we won the game -- got in a kid's face from the other team and taunted him (Alex does claim that the kid made fun of him for his dimunitive stature at school, but it was still very embarrassing for me, as I am his father and the coach of the team and thus feel a twofold responsibility for his behavior).
A Reason to Endure Static
I am a fan of FM radio -- despite the fact that I end up hearing a lot of sitar music (WRSU) and pleas from Alec Baldwin for money (NPR) and dissonant noise-jazz (WPRB) and classical flute (WQXR) and (even worse) Jethro Tull style flute (Q104.3) -- because once in a while you hear something so wonderful and unpredictable that it makes your day; Saturday morning on the way to the gym, I was listening to Newark's jazz station (WBGO) and I heard this tremendous couplet, in a song by Bobby Rush called "What's Good for the Goose" . . . in which a woman makes a calm ultimatum to her cheating husband: "Eye for eye, tit for tat/ if you give away your dog, I'll give away my cat."
Honors High School Students Say the Darndest Things
I thought the line of the year (from one of my high school students) occurred when I was teaching an excerpt from The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis, and we were reenacting the play when Lawrence Taylor cracked Joe Theisman's femur in half -- we had a football and a number of students set-up to execute the infamous flea-flicker, and I asked the class which way the running back should go and a fashionable little senior girl yelled, "Backwards!" and when I questioned her as to why the running back should run backwards, she said, with total sincerity: "He's the running back . . . running back" and we laughed about that for a few days, but I think I've got a line to top it; I was doing a bit of improv slapstick while teaching Hamlet, and during the portion when Hamlet instructs the players not to laugh at their own jokes, I spilled some water on myself -- and kept a straight face when the class laughed -- and then I misplaced my water bottle too near the edge of the desk, so that it spilled all over the floor . . . and then the students realized that I was doing this on purpose, to mirror the words in the play, and another student realized that there was a puddle on the carpet in another section of the room -- because I had done the same thing third period -- and one concerned student, yelled -- before thinking it through: "But now you spilled all your water . . . how are you going to do it last period?" and I got to explain to this eighteen year old honors English student that we have running water in our school -- in both fountains and faucets, and so there was plenty more of it to spill on the floor.
Me and the Doctor: Together Forever
If Seuss were alive, he'd be very old,
one hundred and nine years I am told;
I doubt very much that I'll make it that far --
but I have a tattoo of a fish in a car!
Dave Coins a New Verb
Tuesday after school, while I was walking the dog, I blair-witched myself in the small patch of woods between Donaldson Park and the Donald Goodkind Bridge . . . but after twenty minutes of walking in circles, I was able to extricate myself (and my dog) before Rustin Parr slaughtered us in his shack.
Consumer Reports: Good to Have and Easy to Cancel
I would like to give Consumer Reports a five stars out of five product rating; not only was the site extremely useful for buying a used car, but it is the easiest automatic payment to cancel in the history of the internet (and it still allows you access to the site until your subscription runs out, but it doesn't automatically renew unless you jump through a bunch of hoops . . . this is how things should be on the internet: convenient, useful, and efficient . . . unfortunately, this is not the case for Sentence of Dave: if you stop reading regularly and cancel your relationship with the site, then a little gremlin will come to your house, sneak into your bedroom, and read the sentence aloud in a screechy voice at 4:30 AM each and every morning, until you convince seven other people to start reading the blog on a daily basis).
The Tree Grows Close to the Apple
Andrew Solomon's book Far From the Tree explores astonishingly difficult ethical dilemmas, such as:
1) should parents have the rights to genetically choose a child with a disability? . . . essentially insure that their child is deaf like them, or a dwarf like them . . . a process which might be regarded as the reverse of having a "designer baby"
2) when should a parent abort a child? . . . is a disability a burden? something to be dreaded? or is it something unique that should be celebrated?
3) what is a disability? should we be able to screen our children for being gay or on the autism spectrum? and then be able to terminate them?
but despite these heavy questions, the final message of the book is a positive one: most parents do not want any other children than their own (though Shakespeare's Henry IV does wonder if some "night tripping fairy" has swapped his ne'er-do-well son with the heroic Hotspur . . . but in the end, he learns that Hal is the son for him) and parents will undergo mental gymnastics and passionate displays of emotion to love and enjoy and connect to whatever offspring they bear . . . Solomon ends saying "sometimes, I had thought the heroic parents in this book were fools, enslaving themselves to a life's journey with their alien children, trying to breed identity out of misery," but then he comes to the conclusion that all parents do this, they all seek some connection with their children, but also celebrate their individuality, and somehow see their children as different from all other children -- and so the tree that the proverbial apple doesn't fall far from is like an Ent, it may move closer to the apple if necessary, as the miraculous parents in this book did -- in figuring out how to care for deaf kids and the schizophrenic kids, kids with autism and severe disabilities, kids that commit crimes or are the product of rape, transgender kids, astounding prodigies, and kids with Down syndrome -- this is an intelligent and inspirational book and it will change the way you view the world, but it's super long, so you may have to read it in sections or choose the chapters that interest you; still, give it a shot, it is ground-breaking and heart-breaking, and it keeps things very real.
1) should parents have the rights to genetically choose a child with a disability? . . . essentially insure that their child is deaf like them, or a dwarf like them . . . a process which might be regarded as the reverse of having a "designer baby"
2) when should a parent abort a child? . . . is a disability a burden? something to be dreaded? or is it something unique that should be celebrated?
3) what is a disability? should we be able to screen our children for being gay or on the autism spectrum? and then be able to terminate them?
but despite these heavy questions, the final message of the book is a positive one: most parents do not want any other children than their own (though Shakespeare's Henry IV does wonder if some "night tripping fairy" has swapped his ne'er-do-well son with the heroic Hotspur . . . but in the end, he learns that Hal is the son for him) and parents will undergo mental gymnastics and passionate displays of emotion to love and enjoy and connect to whatever offspring they bear . . . Solomon ends saying "sometimes, I had thought the heroic parents in this book were fools, enslaving themselves to a life's journey with their alien children, trying to breed identity out of misery," but then he comes to the conclusion that all parents do this, they all seek some connection with their children, but also celebrate their individuality, and somehow see their children as different from all other children -- and so the tree that the proverbial apple doesn't fall far from is like an Ent, it may move closer to the apple if necessary, as the miraculous parents in this book did -- in figuring out how to care for deaf kids and the schizophrenic kids, kids with autism and severe disabilities, kids that commit crimes or are the product of rape, transgender kids, astounding prodigies, and kids with Down syndrome -- this is an intelligent and inspirational book and it will change the way you view the world, but it's super long, so you may have to read it in sections or choose the chapters that interest you; still, give it a shot, it is ground-breaking and heart-breaking, and it keeps things very real.
Highly Unlikely (But Very Awesome) Ways to Die
According to The Week magazine, on average, an asteroid larger than 250 feet in diameter penetrates our atmosphere once a millenium -- and I have decided that instead of living in fear of this, I am going to embrace death by asteroid as a wonderful way to die -- in the same category as being eaten by a large carnivore or spontaneously combusting . . . I watch my diet, exercise regularly, and try to avoid using tobacco (with various amounts of success) because I don't want heart disease or cancer or diabetes, but we've all got to go, and it might as well be quick, relatively painless, and really awesome (and I suppose the best way to go would be if I got hit by a spontaneously combusting large carnivore from another planet that somehow got propelled into space and penetrated our atmosphere).
You Talkin' To Me?
I was walking my dog in the rain, and as I passed the Stop and Shop parking lot my son's soccer coach stopped his minvan to talk to me about the dramatic double-overtime high school basketball game we both watched at the RAC on Friday night (East Brunswick vs. St. Joe's) and while I was chatting with him, a rather decrepit looking bag lady strolled by, pushing a cart full of stuff, with her wet and bedraggled dog, and my dog -- as dogs are wont to do -- sniffed her dog's ass, but apparently this was some holier-than-thou bag lady and she took extreme umbrage at my dog's canine perversion and so she yelled at me . . . though it's not like I sniffed her ass (nor would I want to) and I know that I am responsible for my dog's behavior, but I don't think I can get him to refrain from sniffing other dog's anuses, and so even though I was taken aback when the old hag yelled, "HEY! WATCH IT!" to me, I guess if you're possessions are limited and your main companion is a dog, you'd be very protective of him, rear end and all, and so if I see her again, and I am with my dog I will steer clear.
My Son: Gross Out Comedian
Overheard from my son Alex in the shower: "Mommy, that zit hurts . . . oh, here's another zit . . . squeeze . . . oh no, that's not a zit, that's my nipple!"
Some Things That Are Expensive
Through a discussion in the English office, I learned that all of these things are quite costly: replacing your old windows, redoing your aluminum siding, installing a new front door, and making a high quality lasagna.
The Paradox of Being a Teacher and a Parent
I am a hypocrite, because I hate when my kids bring home a lot of homework, yet, as a teacher, I am a contributor to this problem . . . luckily we are reading Hamlet right now in class, and he offers two easy solutions to this dilemma: 1) I could commit suicide 2) I could put on an "antic disposition" and feign insanity, thus excusing me from both helping with homework and assigning it . . . and the bonus with the "antic disposition" solution is that you get a vacation from life -- paid for by your health insurance -- but you have to be a really good actor to pull it off (which I am not).
Ask A Philosophical Question . . .
The other night my son Alex, as he was stepping into the shower, asked me "What controls our brain?" and I normally wouldn't be prepared to answer such a puzzler -- but I had just read over Marvin Minsky's book Society of the Mind in preparation for the philosophy class that I teach this semester -- so he received an extemproaneous lecture on consciousness, how it might be produced by various independent modules in our brain, how it leads to self-reflexive thought etc. etc. and I am certain he'll never ask that question again.
No Plunge For 2013
For the first time in several years, we did not attend the Sea Isle City Polar Plunge -- the house we normally rent for the weekend was flooded out and we didn't find another place; instead we went to Philly for a night with several other couples and had a very different, much more civilized experience: we stayed at the historic Thomas Bond House, visited the art museum, ate fine Italian food, shopped at the markets, and saw a cover band that was the polar opposite of LeCompt . . . LeCompt is gritty, Jersey, weathered, and exceptional -- and this weekend made me realize how excellent they are; the only good thing I can say about the band we saw this weekend -- their name is Lima Bean Riot and they are heralded as one of the best cover bands in Philadelphia --is that they sound like the radio . . . they play horrible music, might be lip-synching, and incorporate a large number of medleys into their infinite set list of crap-pop, but if you turn your head, you wouldn't even know there was a band in the bar -- the auto-tuned noise coming from the PA speakers could have been WPLJ.
The Real Question
Looking back, I have decided that I phrased yesterday's too moralistically . . . too much in the manner of Immanuel Kant's "ought," and the real question should be: how much do you help your children with their homework?
A Sentence Request From My Wonderful Wife
My wife would like me to crowdsource this question, as we have an ever-so-slight difference in opinion: how much help should parents give their children on their homework?
3 +1 = Anger
So this is the scene: Ian is putting something in the kitchen garbage, I am getting coffee out of the microwave, and Catherine is fiddling with something on the counter -- which means all three of us are in one tiny area in our wonderful, large kitchen -- we are all jammed into the entryway between the kitchen and the eating area . . . and it is through this area that Alex tries to wedge himself, though he could have gone the other way; the result, of course, was anger.
Cooking Strike Day 13
Due to unappreciative children and an empathetic spouse, my wife went on a two week "cooking strike" -- and the first night was a wonderful reverse of the typical: I slaved away in the kitchen, making portobello mushrooms stuffed with shrimp and diced peppers, baked with cheese on them; and then felt like January Jones in an episode of Madmen when Catherine called and said she was going to be late for dinner because she was at happy hour with some friends -- she's damn lucky that nothing got burned -- but as the days wore on, I lost my appetite for exciting meals, especially because of the planning that cooking entails -- and so in a manner of days my cooking became perfunctory (including this incident, when I simply defrosted some soup that Catherine made weeks ago) and I am looking forward to when the strike finally ends, and I can enjoy my wife's cooking again . . . and I want to state -- for the record -- that I have learned my lesson: though I was a picky eater when I was a child and know what it's like to have to eat something that you can't stomach, I will never side with my children again on one of these issues because I don't want to suffer a labor dispute like this ever again.
Puuuuuuuullllll iiiiiittttttt . . .
It's that time of year again -- the time of year when, because of Hamlet, I entertain all topics supernatural, and challenge spirits to manifest themselves in my classroom . . . and this always gets students talking: a girl was kind enough to share a story of her own encounter with an apparition; she was playing Bop-It with her cousin, and the batteries ran out, so they took the batteries out of the Bop-It in order to replace them, and suddenly -- without batteries -- the Bop-It started speaking . . . and since I always play the role of the skeptical Horatio in these matters, I asked her how the Bop-It intoned the commands once the batteries were removed . . . but then I answered my own question; I whispered in a low, drawn out voice: "twiiiiiiiiiist iiiiiiitttttt . . . puuuuulllllll iiiiiiiittttttt . . . boooooooooooooooopppppp iiiiiittttttt" and now I can't stop using this haunted Bop-It voice . . . every time I see a Bop-It toy or someone tells a ghost story, I feel compelled to speak as I imagine a haunted toy might speak (perhaps I am possessed?) and the appropriate parallel is that I feel like Jerry, on Seinfeld, when he gets addicted to using the "Hellooooo" voice and sacrifices his girlfriend for the voice.
Can't Afford $24.95? Go to H-Mart!
If you don't feel like driving all the way to Camden, and then shelling out nearly twenty-five clams for admission to The Adventure Aquarium, but you still want to see Korean mudfish, abalone, sea squirts, tilapia, giant crabs, and snails -- all alive in tanks and tubs (plus piles of dead octopus and smelt) then head to the Edison H-Mart -- the Korean version of Wegmans -- the boys and I went last week, and in some ways it's better than an aquarium . . . because you can eat your souvenirs (I actually bought a few baby octopi, which I marinated and then grilled: delicious, and only $3.99 a pound).
Grand Opening of an Absurd Acronym
The long vacant building in Highland Park that once housed Charlie Brown's is finally reopening, as a Korean BBQ Chicken place, but apparently in Korean, BBQ doesn't mean barbecue . . . it means "The Best of the Best Quality," and BBQ Chicken is a chain, with 2800 stores in Korea, 157 in China, and many others scattered around the world -- including two in Mongolia! -- and, judging by the web page, I think we Highland Park folks are in for a really bizarre treat . . . I can't wait to sample "the best of the best quality chicken" and the "Sausage Set," which features "the highest level of delicious smoked sausage" . . . THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF SAUSAGE! . . . NO SAUSAGE HAS EVER ACHIEVED A LEVEL HIGHER THAN THIS SAUSAGE!
Blonde People Got No Reason To . . .
My son Alex -- who does not really look like my son, as he has a beautiful head of blonde hair -- noticed that all the protagonists of his favorite books and movies are NOT blonde: Harry Potter, Batman, Dr. Who, just about every anime character in existence, etc. and this led to him complaining about his lack of choice for Halloween (why he's thinking about Halloween in Februruary is beyond me) but he is right, his only options from his pantheon is Draco Malfoy or Luke Skywalker, neither of whom appeals to him.
More Parent Abuse
My eight year old son Alex, who believed he was being unfairly forced to clean up a mess that his brother Ian created, when asked by my wife what he wanted for breakfast, replied: "a small dish of relaxation."
I Taught That Kid Everything He Knows!
So I'm reading Andrew Solomon's tome Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, and I'm plugging my way through the "Autism" chapter when I run across two familiar names in the same sentence: Temple Grandin and Ari Ne'eman; Temple Grandin is a well-known author, professor, and designer of humane cattle-handling equipment . . . and she is also autistic and a major advocate for autism . . . and Ari Ne'eman is described as "the founder of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network," but that's not how I know the name . . . I remember the name because several years ago I taught a student by that name, a very very smart student with Asperger syndrome, who not only could wax eloquent about politics and the law, but was also very aware of his social difficulties, and knew how to compensate for them with various strategies and techniques . . . and so with the help of the almighty Wikipedia, I now realize that this student is enormously famous in the world of autism advocacy -- and not only did he found the aforementioned autism network (at the ripe age of nineteen) but President Obama also appointed to serve on the National Council on Disability, and so he is the first person on the autism spectrum to ever serve on the council; Ne'eman is mentioned several times in Solomon's book, and I'm glad I serendipitously discovered this, as I may have never known how far he's gone (and no one else in our school knew this either, which is mind-boggling) but it's also a bit daunting when a student I taught several years previous has already done more in his short life than I will probably do in the entirety of mine . . . but I can always resort to the ancient theme prominent in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice . . . the idea of status and contract . . . no matter what Ari Ne-eman accomplishes, no matter how many accolades he accumulates, I will always have the status of being his teacher, and I will always be able to say: "I taught that kid everything he knows."
Parent Abuse
I told my son Alex that he needed to eat some more of his mother's delicious home-made chicken soup (which he ate without complaint two nights previous) before he could leave the table and get back to his homework . . . it was one of those ugly Tuesday nights . . . and so Alex put his spoon down, dipped his index finger into his soup bowl, licked his index finger -- which in his mind counted as "eating some more soup" -- and then he excused himself from the table, and I'm proud to say that once I processed what he did -- which took a moment -- I did not strangle, beat, spindle, or mutilate my firstborn son (but my head nearly exploded and there may have been some yelling).
Italy vs. Holland vs. Beirut
To describe raising her child with Down Syndrome, Emily Perl Kingsley wrote an inspirational modern fable called "Welcome to Holland" and her conceit is this: when you are expecting a child, it is like preparing for a trip to Italy . . . you buy guidebooks, learn some phrases, anticipate seeing the Colosseum and Michelangelo's David. . . but if you have a child with a disability, the plane lands and the stewardess says, "Welcome to Holland!" and this is quite a surprise, as you were expecting to go to Italy, and all your friends are in Italy, discussing Italian sights and sounds . . . but you will eventually realize that though Holland isn't as flashy as Italy, it has its merits (tulips and Rembrandts) and you simply have to adjust . . . but this metaphor isn't for everyone: I am still plugging away at Andrew Solomon's magnificent and gigantic book Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity and one mother of an autistic child wanted to clarify that for her it's not like this at all, and so she penned a fable for the parents of children with autism and called it "Welcome to Beirut."
Cast Your Vote For the Best Robot
While we were waiting for the check at my favorite local Mexican restaurant, Costa Chica, my son Ian and I had a robot drawing contest, and we were with a large group of people, who nearly unanimously voted for the wrong robot -- my son's robot -- but I am thinking that everyone was logy from excess of food and drink, and possibly in error . . . so please be serious and remember every vote counts: which is the better robot?
Apples, Trees, Ducks, Llamas, Bop It, etc
My wife and I were watching Girls on Friday night, the kids tucked away in their respective beds, but every so often, from up the stairs, we heard a "Whoo . . . whoo" and then a pause, and then another "whoo," so I lowered the volume on the TV, and then we realized the sounds were coming from my younger son Ian's room -- he was still playing "Bop It," the version where you occasionally have to yell into a little microphone to keep your streak going . . . lately, he's been obsessed with it, he's mastered the expert level where you also have to react to sounds that correspond to each action -- he actually got over one hundred on that level and it moved to some super-advanced level where there are corresponding colors as well as strange sounds and the usual "pull it!" and "twist it!" commands; he now holds all the records on the contraption . . . and it's hard for me to argue with his dedication, because I behaved the same way the other day with the stupid phone app "Llama or Duck" and while this obsessive behavior for simple physical tasks may be an annoying habit, or even pathological if taken too far, it's probably not the worst character trait to possess . . . though Ian will learn soon enough that no one else cares very much how many points you score in Bop-It or Bulls-Eye Ball or darts or corn hole or any of these other minor diversions: it is in your mind alone that you are the victor.
It Did Have Two Holes In It
Phone call from who my son calls "second in command" at his school -- apparently Alex and his buddy found a broken board in the auditorium, and they thought it was really cool because it was "painted black and had two holes in it," and so Alex and his friend concocted a plan: they would smuggle it out of the auditorium and into his locker, so then he could then bring it home (to do God knows what with, even he can't answer that question) and so Alex asked to go to the bathroom, and successfully filched the broken board, but when he tried to stuff it into his locker, he got caught red-handed; his consequences were no recess for the the week, for lying about having to go to the bathroom and taking something that wasn't his . . . and I hope he's learned his lesson, and the next time he sees a really cool broken board with two holes in it, he gets his friend to steal it (although that might not matter, because Alex's accomplice also lost recess for the week).
Seven Reasons Kids Should Watch Rocky
I just watched Rocky with my children, and I highly recommend it for young boys, as the film contains some valuable life-lessons for them:
1) if you stop smoking and run around carrying bricks, you will get back into shape;
2) breaking fingers for a sleazy loan shark will get you nowhere;
3) when you get as old as Mickey, no one will understand what you're saying;
4) turtles can choke on moss;
5) working in a meat packing plant is depressing and may lead to arthritis and alcoholism;
6) it's nice to have a recurring theme song;
7) and finally, even if you don't win, as long as you stay on your feet and get beaten to a brain-damaged bloody pulp, then it's still a moral victory and you should be proud of yourself.
Awkward Dave Returns in the Form of a Duck (or a Llama)
Awkward Dave reared his ugly head last Tuesday, and if it wasn't for my colleague Chantal, things might have gotten really awkward, but she heroically stepped in and saved the day; to understand the situation you need a bit of backstory . . . fifteen minutes before this Awkward Moment of Dave, I was introduced to a very silly game on Kevin's phone, called "Duck or Llama": the game is simple but frustrating, you are shown a picture of a duck, or a picture of a llama, and you must press the appropriate button -- "Duck" or "Llama" -- VERY quickly, or you lose; I was terrible at first but once I got the hang of it, I got quite good and scored sixty correct answers in a row . . . more than double what anyone else got; the pictures get more and more ridiculous and abstract: there are line drawings and close-ups and llamas with sunglasses and duck-butts and rubber ducks and stuffed llamas, and everyone has the same stupid story at the end of their round . . . either, "I was doing really well, and then I mistook a duck for a llama!" or "I was doing really well, and then I mistook a llama for a duck!" and this is the sort of thing that I can get obsessed with, which is why I don't have a video game system in my house, and so when a woman from another department, who runs a committee that I am part of, totally went out of her way and came upstairs to the English office solely to help me sign-up for a workshop at Columbia University, I really, really tried to pay attention to her; she showed me some forms and explained how to fill them out . . . but then, without realizing it, I picked up the phone -- determined to get one hundred correct answers in a row -- and started playing "Duck or Llama," and I guess this nice woman, who totally went out of her way to help me out with this project, made quite a face, but luckily my friend Chantal saw the face, and was a good enough friend to yell at me and tell me to focus, and this was enough to break my obsession with the game and allow me to finish the now rather awkward social interaction with the woman who had gone out of her way to climb the stairs and find me in the English office and help me out.
Sometimes the Apple Falls Horizontally
I am slowly making my way through Andrew Solomon's magnum opus, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity . . . and while everyone likes to comment when the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and the kid acts just like his parents (and my boys certainly fall into this category: I have two little versions of myself running around the house, doing Dave-like things, which can either be exhilarating or extremely frustrating) Solomon has tackled a much wilder event -- when the apple falls "horizontally" instead of vertically; when parents give birth to a child nothing like themselves . . . the book has chapters on Dwarfs, the Deaf, Down Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, Prodigies, Transgender, and more -- and each chapter is nearly the length of a book; Solomon himself is a horizontal child -- he is gay -- and though his parents were accepting of him, they still weren't the same as him, so he writes the book from an unusually personal perspective; I have just finished the chapter on the Deaf, and it made with grapple with an ethical dilemma that I didn't even know existed; when hearing parents have a deaf child, they have to immediately decide if they are going to implant a cochlear implant, which wil give the child an ersatz but workable version of hearing, or instead, immerse him in the culture of the Deaf -- sign language -- or do something in between, with speech therapy . . . and the Deaf community views the implants or the attempt to make a deaf child learn to speak as "the final solution," a way to eradicate Deaf culture, which is apparently rich and thriving . . . some radical Deaf believe that hearing parents with a deaf child should give the child up to the Deaf community, but this strikes me as insanely unrealistic . . . Harlan Lane, a Deaf community advocate, wrote: "the relation of the hearing parent to the young deaf child is a microcosm of the relation of the hearing society to the deaf community; it is paternalistic, medicalizing, and ethnocentric," and so the question becomes -- as technology and medicine and genetic screenings start to eliminate hearing loss -- is the Deaf community something worth saving? . . . and if you think I have the answer to this, then you''re sadly mistaken, as I'm having a hard enough time getting my own children, who have excellent hearing, to listen to a word I say.
A Young Lady Shuts Me Up
I was explaining this pathetic tale to my senior English class -- and I was taking the perspective that I had "accomplished the task given to me," and that my wife should not have been angry that I got a friend to buy the lingerie, but my senior girls weren't buying it: one outspoken and rather clever girl said simply, "If you assign us an essay topic, and we find a really great paper on the topic that someone else wrote, we can't hand it in to you or it's plagiarism . . . you cheated."
My Wife Admits She Erred!
Apparently, my wife has NOT been reading my blog, or she would have remembered this rule to live by . . . but instead of obeying my wisdom, she chose NOT to pack winter boots and clothing for our trip to Norfolk last weekend -- and so she spent the entire trip clutching my arm, trying not to slip on the inch of ice on the ground, which was made all the more treacherous because she was wearing cute, light-weight multicolored treadless running shoes (she also didn't pack a water-proof snow jacket or heavy gloves . . . I hope she has learned her lesson . . . and though I will admit that she looked beautiful in her wedding attire, that's no excuse for not bringing practical clothing and footwear in case of emergency).
That's Really Incredible!
Last Monday, while eating a delicious slice of porcetta (a meal that a friend of ours only prepares on Martin Luther King Day, because she has to buy the meat on Sunday and it takes a day to prepare) I reminisced with the hostess about watching classic reality TV, namely Real People and That's Incredible! . . . and we are both dog owners, and so we were remembering the incredible tales of lost dogs who travelled cross-country to find their families and other such epic canine heroics . . . and now I have my own story to add to these fantastic tales; my dog has never touched a book and our house is full of books -- he chews on shoes and shin-guards and mittens -- but never literature, yet the other day, when I arrived home, I found one book in the middle of the room, completely eaten and destroyed, and he selected this book from a pile of books, but for some strange and incredible and miraculous reason, he selected a very particular book (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and the salient point about this book is it is the first book I've ever checked out from my school library -- my friend Kevin got them to order some new books that we wanted to read, and when we went down to check them out, the librarians were so happy to see us . . . they told us we didn't visit them often enough, were hoping that this was the start of a long-lasting relationship -- and my dog must have gotten some strange scent from this book from a new place, and so he selected it from among other library books, books we own, magazines, borrowed books, and used books, and tore it up; now I have to go back to the library with my tail between my legs, and use the lamest excuse in the world: my dog ate my book . . . and I know I'll put this off until the end of the year, but if I don't clear my library account, then I don't get my year end paycheck, so I'll keep you all posted on what happens.
How Much Campanology Can You Tolerate in a Novel?
I was enjoying Dorothy Sayers' classic mystery The Nine Tailors . . . but eventually all the campanology got to be too much for me and I quit reading it . . . I have only so much tolerance for information about "the casting and ringing of bells."
Coaching Trick
If you stick smelly, damp, and dirty soccer pinnies in the dryer for a bit, then they seem clean (or they seem clean to seven year old kids).
Shocking News in the World of Traffic!
I saw someone on Route 1 start to do the infamous "drive in reverse on the shoulder of a busy highway because I missed my exit and I am too lazy to proceed to the nearest U-turn" maneuver and then actually stop mid-move -- I am assuming they had a sudden epiphany and realized how stupid and unnecessarily dangerous this particular vehicular move is -- and the car merged back onto the highway, do do a legal U-turn somewhere down the road, I assume.
Another Great Free Idea
Usually, my wife folds my laundry -- though I tell her this is unnecessary -- so this time, when she finished the load, I took the basket and threw all the clothes on our bed, and then I was able to grab the socks and t-shirts and sweat pants and other stuff that doesn't need to be folded and put them directly into drawers, and then I put the shirts and pants on hangers . . . and so avoided any intermediate folding stage for those as well . . . but the problem with this method is that you have to do it right when the laundry gets done, and I don't know about your house, but in my house, nobody likes to put away clean laundry; even my wife -- who is perfect in all other regards -- has trouble completing this task in a timely manner.
There IS a Correct Answer to this Question
So Tuesday night at dinner, my eight year old son Alex posed this question to my wife: "Would you rather be bigger or smaller?" and my wife said, "Smaller, of course, women always want to be smaller," and then Alex said, "No, really small, like six inches, or really big, like fifty feet," and then my wife answered the question -- and she gave the wrong answer . . . so take a moment and decide which is the correct answer, and then I'll explain why one answer is correct and the other is not . . . okay, so now you've weighed the pros and cons and you're ready to see how well you've done on this very short quiz -- and, because it is only one question, you will either pass or fail; my wife said she would rather be fifty feet tall, and her reason was, "if you're six inches tall, you might get eaten by a dog," and while I can't deny that, there are many more difficulties to overcome if you are very large: mental, social and physical obstacles that could pose some real problems . . . you would have a hard time finding shelter, especially when it's very hot or very cold (my wife said, "You'd build some kind of shed for me," but judging by how long it took for me to build this shed, she'd probably die of hypothermia before I finished) and you would have a hard time hanging out with family and friends -- you'd be isolated and alienated and alone (even if you were famous) -- and you wouldn't be able to read a book or watch TV or see a movie or go to a party or attend class . . . and everything you did would be very public . . . where would you go to the bathroom? and if you got sick, it would take an incredible amount of medicine to make you well, and you'd have to eat an insane amount each day, and though you'd probably receive fashion endorsement money, it would still be very difficult to manufacture clothes for you . . . but if you were small, you could subsist on very little food and water, and as my friend Eric noted, "you'd only need to buy one bottle of bourbon and it would last the rest of your life," and though you would be reliant on people, you'd be so adorable that people would love to take you places and hang out with you and carry you around . . . you're life would be strange, but not horrible, as you'd still be able to do many of the same things you did before -- you could shrink the font on a Kindle and read a book (you could jump on the screen to turn the page) and a YouTube video on a phone would be like a big screen TV . . . and so I asked my students this question, and many of them got it wrong at first, but then they were generally convinced by these arguments to switch to the small size: did you get the answer correct?
Super Bowl XLVII: The Harbaugh Bowl or The Harbor Bowl?
Everyone and their brother has taken note of the fact that the upcoming Super Bowl is the first time siblings have met each other as opposing head coaches, but John and Jim Harbaugh are not the only noteworthy coincidence of Super Bowl XLVII . . . even more improbably, both participating teams hail from a city with a fantastic harbor: according to Wikipedia, The Port of San Francisco is "one of the three great natural harbors in the world" and, if you believe the much venerated Urban Land Institute, then the Inner Harbor of Baltimore is "the model for post-industrial waterfront redevelopment around the world" . . . and not only that, but the name "Harbaugh" sounds a lot like the word "harbor" . . . and so I will deem this a minor miracle, as you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried (and I wonder if Dwayne Nelson could use the harbor statistics in his foolproof NFL betting system).
I Am Not a Man
Instead of watching the Baltimore/New England NFL championship game on Sunday, my wife and I engaged in a marathon of the HBO comedy Girls . . . and the show is awesome: clever, funny, and prescient in the same way as this excellent and disturbing (if you're a guy) non-fiction book.
Dogs vs. Geese
I hate the park by my house right now -- it's muddy and full of goose-shit -- and the only way to solve the problem (without resorting to violence . . . and I will admit that violent thoughts about these geese cross my mind all the time) is to allow dogs free roam of the park, as the only thing that these geese are afraid of are dogs . . . but this might lead to a park full of dog-shit, or even worse, a headline like this: Wild Dogs Kill Four in Mexico City Park . . . so maybe I should stop complaining and just deal with the goose-shit.
You vs. Speransky
It's often surprising what can generate a good discussion in English class: last week I had the kids read a short passage from War and Peace -- which sounds like the kiss of death for getting kids engaged -- and the passage is fairly abstract, it's about master rhetorician Speransky, who "would never even think of acknowledging the idea that we all have thoughts beyond our power to express them" and I then had the kids compare their persuasive ability to that of Speransky, on a scale of 1-10, with Speransky being a ten, and explain why . . . and this led to a surprisingly lively discussion . . . it's good to think about how well you can express yourself, and how well you can influence others with words, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm not very persuasive at all -- my credibility is suspect (earlier that day when someone was wondering about the difference between dandruff and dry scalp, I proclaimed: "Dandruff is dry scalp! Dry scalp is just a euphemism for people who don't want to say they have dandruff!" and I'm not sure why I claimed this, as I know nothing about either topic, and it turned out that I was completely wrong -- dandruff is caused by a bacterial infection . . . but I have a horrible habit of arguing any side of a topic -- even if I'm not passionate about it, and then I'm quick to concede that I'm wrong and often easily persuaded to the other side and I also have trouble remembering specific examples, and I'm not capable of generating a whole lot of emotion, like those teachers who can tell a class that they are "very disappointed in them and know they can do better" . . . I tried this and the kids just laughed at me . . . so I don't think I would be a very good politician . . . and, of course, when I needed persuade my students to donate money for poor children, I couldn't motivate my kids with words, I had to use this gimmick . . . and I'm also easily distracted, and apt to digress onto longwinded tangents).
If Only He Could Harness His Brain For Good
The other day my son Alex informed me that "if you say tuba backwards, it's 'a butt'"
There Is Definitely Something Wrong With Me
So my older son -- who is eight -- got a Ripstik caster board for Christmas; if you haven't seen one of these things, they look like an hourglass shaped skateboard, and you can use your feet to apply some torque on the connecting joint between the two halves of the hour-glass, and underneath, there is one wheel on a spinning caster in the front and one wheel on a spinning caster the back . . . it is a very strange and ingenious contraption (it won the coveted Outdoor Toy of the Year award in 2007) and at first glance it appears impossible to ride, but my son -- who is very determined (and he's also a good skimboarder and skateboarder) stuck with it, and actually got quite good on it -- though my other son couldn't figure out how to work it . . . and seeing Alex zip around on his board made me very jealous, but he was using the junior version of the Ripstik, which supports a maximum of 170 pounds . . . so I couldn't use his, but I really wanted to see if I could do it -- and when I told my students about it, they claimed that it was nearly impossible to ride one --and this made me want to try it even more, and so I bought the larger model -- which supports up to 220 pounds -- and took it to the park with the kids . . . and I will be honest and tell you that I was very nervous; I knew if I couldn't master the Ripstik, that this would be the beginning of the end for me (I can remember when my brother and I starting beating our dad at ping-pong: he stopped playing with us) but I am extremely proud to say -- though I know this makes me sound mentally ill -- that after a few tries, I was able to get it rolling -- without breaking my neck -- and now I've gotten pretty adept at it: I can make it go and I can turn in either direction, and, if you like to snowboard, then I highly recommend getting one of these things-- it's a very similar feeling (and now both my children can do it, and they have no problem on the larger size, so you can buy that size as a "present" for your kids, when it's really for you).
Holes in the Loop
Not much to complain about with Rian Johnson's new time travel movie Looper -- the visual effects are gritty and realistic, Bruce Willis is still Bruce Willis (though he's a lot older than when he did my favorite time travel movie, Twelve Monkeys) and the plot is far easier to navigate than Primer . . . but it's still a time travel movie, which means when you think too hard about it, it doesn't make complete logical sense . . . I won't get into any spoilers here, but my advice is this: watch it, but don't think too hard about it . . . Bruce Willis gives his younger self the same sort of advice that Al -- the time travelling diner owner in Stephen King's time travel novel 11/22/63 -- gives Jake Epping: "If we start talking about it, we'll be here all day, making diagrams with straws."
Wow.
Katherine Boo's new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity is astounding on three levels: 1) it is a phenomenal narrative of the people of Annawadi, a tiny slum between luxury hotels, near the Mumbai International Airport, on the shore of a vast sewage lake, you follow the stories of Asha the aspiring slumlord, who escaped the clutches of rural poverty; Manju, her beautiful daughter, who is attending college; Abdul, the garbage sorter, who is the main provider for his family; Fatima the One Leg, a promiscuous and angry woman who may have drowned her young daughter in a bucket, and who lit herself on fire in order to exact revenge on Abdul's family; Kalu, the entertaining thief; Sunil and Sonu and Zehrunista and Meena . . . and their stories are by turns bleak, tragic, comic, petty, and sometimes slightly hopeful 2) it is also a courtroom drama, and you follow the criminal cases of the burning and several murders through the byzantine labyrinth and corruption of the Mumbai courts 3) it is a phenomenal work of journalism, and as you are reading the engaging narrative, there is no way not to also think about how all this information was ascertained, and Katherine Boo details this in the afterword: four years of painstaking research, living in the Annawadi slum; many many assistants and translators to help her interview the subjects; and Boo's dogged petitioning of government agencies under the aegis of India's Right to Information act, so that she could peruse over three thousand official documents: police records, court orders, public health notices, political documents, etcetera . . . if you read this book, you will never forget it . . . but I warn you, it doesn't end like Slumdog Millionaire ( and it's a good one to read if you're angry because you've just taken a pay cut, which I think many folks have . . . due to the end of the Payroll Tax Holiday, and for teachers, an increase in health care and pension payments . . . and though Donaldson Park is full of goose-shit at this time of year, it's still a far cry from a "vast sewage lake," so I'll look on the bright side of things).
Alex and I Take the High Road
The other night, I was reading my kids Daniel Pinkwater's awesomely bizarre children's book Lizard Music, and we came to the part when Victor enters the spooky lizard hut called The House of Memory, and he notices that the interior is much larger than it appears to be from the outside, and my older son said, "That's just like the TARDIS on Dr. Who," which is a perfect comparison, and so I told him how clever he was . . . and then my other son, Ian -- who is fairly competitive and can't stand it when his brother succeeds -- said, "I said that too," and we both said to him, "No you didn't" and he said, "Well, I thought of it" and Alex and I paused for a moment, and then I am proud to say that my older son and I quickly made a tacit agreement to NOT argue this absurdity . . . but, though I can't prove it, I don't think that my younger son thought that thought when he claimed he thought he thinked it.
Regrets: If You Don't Have Them You Are Dumb
I try to appreciate all that I have -- which I know is a lot . . . especially because I'm reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity -- but that doesn't mean I don't have regrets . . . and for those people who say they have absolutely no regrets and insist that if they did it all over again, they would lead their lives in exactly the same manner, I say to you folks: then you've never made any big choices and you've got a very small mind . . . I bring all this up because I recently finished the monstrous "oral history" of legendary rock promoter Billy Graham . . . Robert Greenfield organizes a chorus of over a hundred voices, from Ken Kesey to Pete Townshend to Jerry Garcia to the maitre d' at the Catskill hotel where Graham ran back-room dice games, and all these "minor" characters (plus Graham himself) paint a picture of a man who lived life larger than most -- despite his flaws -- and lived this life through some of the wildest times and places of modern America; and so I highly recommend Billy Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out, but with one caveat: there is no question that it will make you have regrets about your own life; it made me have thirteen of them, and I've posted them over at Gheorghe: The Blog if you're interested.
Another Rule to Live By
Even if you are going somewhere by car, you should still dress for the weather outside.
And I Thought I Was Living in a Democracy
My wife and I were "debating" over the placement of a piece of furniture, and my younger son Ian overheard this discussion and reminded me: "Mommy has a million votes and you have zero."
I'll Try Anything If It's Covered . . .
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| This Isn't Me, But It's What Happened. |
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| This is me, several hours later. |
North Conway Pros and Cons
Over winter break we took a family vacation to North Conway, New Hampshire and stayed at the Red Jacket Resort, a big family-friendly hotel with a water park inside it, and -- in case you are thinking about a similar trip -- let me offer you some pros and cons of North Conway . . . I'll give you the bad news first:
1) North Conway is really far away -- do NOT believe the Google Maps estimate of six hours and thirty-seven minutes . . . which is where I got directions, it is actually more like eight hours (with stops) and, oddly, Mapquest has a far more accurate assessment of the distance . . . so I learned something: those programs can offer VERY different estimates on how long it takes to get somewhere;
2) once you get to North Conway, which is nestled in the heart of the White Mountains, you would expect the traffic to all but disappear, but because of the narrow set of roads that leads through the valley the traffic is insane, all the time -- so every trip through town is like driving through downtown Manhattan during rush hour . . . which is fine if you're prepared for it, but when you are nestled in the heart of the White Mountains, this is always unexpected -- the number of cars shocked me every time we got on the road, and I don't fare well in traffic, even if I'm prepared for it (at one point, I had to get out of the car and walk alongside it while my wife drove, crawling along in the bumper-to-bumper snarl so that I didn't suffer a claustrophobic nervous breakdown);
3) Cranmore Mountain doesn't have many signs to indicate what trail you are on, so I spent an entire day zooming down a trail that I thought was a Blue Intermediate -- which is my speed on a snowboard these days -- and every time down, I thought to myself: this is awful steep and there sure are a lot of moguls and ungroomed stuff . . . but it wasn't until the next day that I realized the trail was actually a Black Diamond, and that I was in danger of severely hurting myself . . . and by this time, though I didn't realize it, I had the flu -- so I thought I was just sore from snowboarding on moguls, but I was actually delirious with a 103 fever, which made the eight-hour ride home especially awful:
but there are plenty of pros, so don't let the cons get you down:
1) the Red Jacket Mountain View Inn is a great place to stay with kids -- every hotel should have a giant indoor water park -- and my wife and I generated unbelievably dangerous speeds when we went tandem on the water slides, probably due to my incredible density . . . I really liked the fact that people were walking around the hotel either decked out in ski outfits or bathing suits -- it made for some surreal scenes;
2) the New Hampshire beer is excellent . . . I especially enjoyed the Tuckerman's I.P.A and Moat Mountain Iron Mike Pale Ale;
3) North Conway has loads of great restaurants -- the barbecue at Moat Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery was excellent, and Peach's has amazing breakfast and lunch food;
4) it snows a LOT up there, which is a pro both for snowboarding and for hanging out in the water park, which is especially scenic when it snows -- but that's a con for driving home with a 103 fever.
1) North Conway is really far away -- do NOT believe the Google Maps estimate of six hours and thirty-seven minutes . . . which is where I got directions, it is actually more like eight hours (with stops) and, oddly, Mapquest has a far more accurate assessment of the distance . . . so I learned something: those programs can offer VERY different estimates on how long it takes to get somewhere;
2) once you get to North Conway, which is nestled in the heart of the White Mountains, you would expect the traffic to all but disappear, but because of the narrow set of roads that leads through the valley the traffic is insane, all the time -- so every trip through town is like driving through downtown Manhattan during rush hour . . . which is fine if you're prepared for it, but when you are nestled in the heart of the White Mountains, this is always unexpected -- the number of cars shocked me every time we got on the road, and I don't fare well in traffic, even if I'm prepared for it (at one point, I had to get out of the car and walk alongside it while my wife drove, crawling along in the bumper-to-bumper snarl so that I didn't suffer a claustrophobic nervous breakdown);
3) Cranmore Mountain doesn't have many signs to indicate what trail you are on, so I spent an entire day zooming down a trail that I thought was a Blue Intermediate -- which is my speed on a snowboard these days -- and every time down, I thought to myself: this is awful steep and there sure are a lot of moguls and ungroomed stuff . . . but it wasn't until the next day that I realized the trail was actually a Black Diamond, and that I was in danger of severely hurting myself . . . and by this time, though I didn't realize it, I had the flu -- so I thought I was just sore from snowboarding on moguls, but I was actually delirious with a 103 fever, which made the eight-hour ride home especially awful:
but there are plenty of pros, so don't let the cons get you down:
1) the Red Jacket Mountain View Inn is a great place to stay with kids -- every hotel should have a giant indoor water park -- and my wife and I generated unbelievably dangerous speeds when we went tandem on the water slides, probably due to my incredible density . . . I really liked the fact that people were walking around the hotel either decked out in ski outfits or bathing suits -- it made for some surreal scenes;
2) the New Hampshire beer is excellent . . . I especially enjoyed the Tuckerman's I.P.A and Moat Mountain Iron Mike Pale Ale;
3) North Conway has loads of great restaurants -- the barbecue at Moat Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery was excellent, and Peach's has amazing breakfast and lunch food;
4) it snows a LOT up there, which is a pro both for snowboarding and for hanging out in the water park, which is especially scenic when it snows -- but that's a con for driving home with a 103 fever.
I Did Suffer a 103 Fever!
Catherine Boo's new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity -- a non-fiction account of life among the poor in India -- is having the same effect as this book on me, and it's making me feel guilty about complaining so much about having the flu . . . in the first few pages, Abdul -- a garbage sorter in the Annawadi slums, witnesses a boy's hand get "cut clean off when he was putting plastic in one of the shredders," but instead of complaining A LOT, which is one of the few benefits of getting your hand cut clean off -- you have the right to really gripe and bitch and moan about it for a while, because it trumps most other complaints -- but instead of claiming this inalienable right, the poor boy's "eyes had filled with tears but he hadn't screamed . . . instead he stood there with his blood-spurting stump, his ability to earn a living ended, and started apologizing to the owner of the plant . . . "Sa'ab, I'm sorry . . . I won't cause you any problems by reporting this . . . you will have no trouble from me."
Inadvertent Test
I accidentally performed a social experiment on my son Alex last Thursday night: it was soccer clinic night, and Ian was sick with the flu -- so I was just dropping Alex off . . . and he's eight now, old enough to get dropped off at something like this -- but my wife gave him the lecture about never accepting a ride from a stranger . . . or even someone he knew, if he wasn't informed that he was going home with this person -- and Alex asked a legitimate question: "What if you guys have to take Ian to the hospital and can't pick me up?" and so we told him we would definitely get a message to him that he was supposed to ride home with someone else -- maybe by cell-phone or one of us would stop by; so once we got to the clinic, Alex started playing soccer and I got to talking with the parents that I knew, and my friend Pete said that his wife Celine could drive Alex home, because she had to stay and watch her son, who was younger, and so I said, "Awesome . . . that will save Catherine a trip" and I left -- but when I got home I realized that I didn't tell Alex that Celine would be giving him a ride home -- I essentially set up the situation we talked about . . . and so we decided to see what he would do (much easier than going back to the clinic) and, of course, he got a ride home with Celine -- who he knows well, plus she's pregnant -- and you always a trust a pregnant lady . . . and when I asked him if he remembered what we talked about before I dropped him off, he thought for a moment and then laughed and said, Oh yeah" but it certainly didn't occur to him when he was getting a ride from Celine . . . and in retrospect, of course he did the right thing and accepted a ride form a close friend, but I'm also pretty sure that he's easy to abduct.
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).
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.
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