Things You Might See in Donaldson Park at 5:45 AM

An older man in all white, with a headband, hitting tennis balls rather poorly . . . tennis balls being served up to him by a giant boxy robotic tennis ball serving contraption (and you'd think someone with that outfit and that contraption would have a much better stroke).

What The Kids Are Watching

Here are some YouTube videos the high school seniors recommended; despite the age gap, I still found them entertaining.

Watch Out Guys . . . Here Comes Maya, Carrie and Sarah!

Zero Dark Thirty is intense and usually feels very real (although at times some of Maya's dialogue is action-movie schlock . . . "I'm the motherf*cker who found him . . . I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op and then I'm going to kill bin Laden") but I think Kathryn Bigelow's previous war movie -- The Hurt Locker -- is much better . . . Zero Dark Thirty recounts an event, and lets us watch how that event unfolds in a most gratuitous fashion, but there's not much beyond that, while The Hurt Locker has a lot more going on under the surface; on a more interesting note, I think there is a new archetypal character in the world of drama: the obsessive and intelligent female working in a world of men, who is the only one who believes in an idea, and is considered far too crazy and too risky to ignore, though no one wants to side completely with her because she's a neurotic, anti-social bitch . . . The Killing, Homeland, and Zero Dark Thirty are all fueled by a female of this archetype: Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison -- the bipolar CIA officer; Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden -- the obsessive and paranoid Seattle detective; and the aforementioned Maya, the young CIA officer who becomes obsessed with stalking bin Laden.

The Answer Is . . . No! Not Even a Little Bit!

It was really hard to feign excitement when the boys ran into the house and shoved a yogurt container under my nose and said:"Hey Dad, do you want to see the giant spider we caught?" and it was even harder to get into the spirit of things when the spider jumped out of the container and hid under the carpet . . . but the one positive from this incident is that I have been trying hard not to pass my arachnophobia to the boys, and it looks like I have been successful.

Internuts

You know how sometimes you go on the internet for one reason (to look up how to marinate octopus before you grill it) but you end up doing something completely different (watching Brazilian ghost-prank YouTube videos) and then you totally lose your train of thought and forget why you even went on-line in the first place (I still don't know how to marinate the octopus).

Nothing But Terror

Yesterday, I finished teaching Henry James' ambiguous ghost story "The Turn of the Screw" and I also finished reading The Looming Tower: Al -Qaeda and the Road to 9 / 11 . . . and while both works focus on the theme of terror, they are a study in contrast: 

"The Turn of the Screw" is purposefully obtuse, and relies on the reader's imagination to create the terror, while Lawrence Wright's account is definitive, comprehensive, and precisely detailed . . . and though you know exactly what happens at the climax, his description of 9/11 is so photo-realistic that it brings back all the terror of that day; in short, when you finish "The Turn of the Screw," you know nothing -- except that human perception is a bewildering puzzle to untangle, while at the end of The Looming Tower, you know why Osama bin Laden  was able to get his jihadis to die for him (and now I understand that Arab man who approached my wife and I when we were at a gas station in the vast desert between Syria and Iraq and said, "You like bin Laden?" and then handed me his cell phone, which had a cartoonish graphic of the World Trade Center getting hit by a plane and collapsing, followed by a caricature of bin Laden smiling . . . creepy, especially when you are taking a service taxi, so you can't leave the premises until the driver is done buying candied dates) and now to complete my month of terror, I am going to finish watching Zero Dark Thirty and then watch Argo, both of which I have on Blu-ray from Netflix.

As a School Teacher, I Am Sad to Admit That This Doesn't Make Me Feel Confident At All

Airborne . . . created by a school teacher?

Maximum Testosterone

I agreed to dog-sit two dogs over Memorial Day Weekend -- Norman and Sniffer -- essentially turning our house into a dog park, and though this was a bit chaotic for Catherine and me, my children thought having three dogs really increased the awesomeness of the house . . . as we increased this most-significant ratio to 6 to 1.

I Am Not Sure Which Alternative is More Disturbing

Lawrence Wright's dense and definitive book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is full of disturbing stuff (and I'm only halfway through) but nothing comes close to this: after an assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's life,  Egyptian security forces made a concerted effort to rid Egypt of radical islamists, and to obtain information about Mohammad el-Zawahiri -- one of the leaders of the al-Jihad movement -- they captured Ahmed Sharraf, the thirteen year old son of Mohammed Sharraf (a high ranking al-Jihad member) and then they drugged the boy and sodomized him, and when he awoke they showed him photographs of his homosexual activity and threatened to show this to his father, if he did not cooperate . . . which, of course, he did -- and the security force did this to several children of radical Islamists in order to turn them into "boy spies," and while I obviously don't condone this fiendish but effective method, I am curious: did the sodomizer and the photographer take turns, or was one security agent always the sodomizer and the other always the photographer?

I Suppose You Had to Be There

Though I doubt many of you care, I beat Dan (the Unbeatable Dan) on Thursday night: I shot an 8 in the 9th to beat him by two -- 42 to 40 -- an unprecedented event which no one cares about except me, and needs to be noted here so that I can refer to this when I am very old, as it will probably never happen again.

Stryper Never Made It to Saudi Arabia

One of the most disturbing things I have learned while reading Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11 is that if Osama Bin Laden heard music, he would literally plug his ears, and he declared that "music is the flute of the devil."

Dave (Reluctantly) Gives Away Another Great Idea

This idea is even better than my Second Best Idea Ever but I should warn you that it is also soccer related; one of the biggest problems with training little kids to be skilled soccer players is that at the early ages, skill isn't really rewarded -- size, speed, and the ability to kick the ball far are the most dangerous weapons a young player can have . . . but these abilities lose their effectiveness once everyone gets a bit older and stronger . . . so you have to create drills that are fun, but also slow the defense down in some way -- because when you are little, it's much easier to play defense than it is to control the ball with your feet -- and so my new brainstorm, which I am reluctant to reveal because I don't want other teams using it (but I'm also so egotistical about Dave's Brilliant Ideas that I can't stand to let one stay secret)  is to do this: 1) make a decent sized grid (square) and place three players in it with a ball 2) send a fourth player into the grid carrying a soccer ball in his hands 3) the player with the ball in his hands is the "chucker" 4) in order to NOT be the chucker, the chucker has to chuck his ball and hit the ball that the other three players are dribbling and passing around 5) the chucker CANNOT touch the ball in play with his body, the only way out of being the chucker is to chuck his ball and hit the other ball 6) if you kick it out of the grid, or your pass gets hit with the ball, then you become the chucker . . . but it's kind of fun to be the chucker, because you're just running around chucking a ball at another ball, so kids don't mind it too much . . . and what this encourages is shielding, because you can protect the ball from being chucked at with your body and butt, and it encourages spreading out and controlled passing, in order to get the ball away from the chucker . . . and it eliminates the usual rugby scrum that kids create on defense because instead of charging in and kicking at the ball, the defense has to take their time and line-up and chuck the soccer ball . . . so it affords the offensive player more time to think, which is exactly what they need at a young age to develop the soccer skills that are going to be useful later on in their soccer career (and diligent readers of this blog will realize that this is the third use of the word "chucker" at Sentence of Dave, and each time I have used the word in a different way . . . how will I use it next?)

Silver Screen vs. Silver Book

I was thoroughly entertained by the dysfunctional crew in David O'Russell's movie Silver Linings Playbook -- despite the fact that my wife was obsessing a bit on the differences between the book and the movie (and, of course, in her opinion the book is much better) -- so I had to tell her to stop making comparisons and contrasts, because she was f*@#ing up the juju of the movie for me, and I just wanted her to sit and watch and enjoy it and spend some quality time with me on the couch, eating crabby snacks and home-mades, not saying anything to disturb the good vibe that we had going . . . and eventually, she was able to settle back and relax and enjoy it, and -- of course-- everything turned out great in the end.

You Can Eat an Orange Like an American or You Can Suck It

For the most part, my fellow colleagues in the English Department aren't terribly diverse, but we do have a lovely Jamaican woman named Audrey -- and she has the onerous task of representing "the rest of the world" in our mainly white-bread crew -- so last week, when I saw her take a knife to an orange and skillfully peel off the thick skin, leaving only a bit of white rind around the fruit, and then cut it in half and start sucking on it, I was curious and questioned her method . . . and so she patiently explained to me that "this is how the rest of the world eats an orange," and even though she told me this in a Jamaican accent, I was still skeptical: and after some internet research, I'm not sure that she speaks for the rest of the world on this . . . I think her method is how Jamaicans eat oranges and if you follow the link you will understand why Jamaicans have to do this to their oranges (which are actually green and yellow) but I don't think many other countries do this with their oranges, and the lesson here is that I'm going to be a lot warier when Audrey tells me this is how something works in the rest of the world, because I'm from America and I don't believe anything anyone tells me.

Stern Artistic Advice

I showed my friend John this charcoal drawing my seven-year-old son Ian made and he said to me: "He's a talented kid . . . whatever you do, don't give him any advice."

The Most Racist Show On Earth?

I attended the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus again last week (the last time I went was almost exactly three years ago) and while I am not a huge fan (I sort of agree with the PETA folks who handed my son Alex a pamphlet about elephant cruelty, and the music is downright awful, and very loud . . . and though I looked over my sentence from three years ago, I still forgot to bring earplugs) but one thing particularly intrigued me about the show this time: when all the performers came out for the opening number, I noticed that the ten unicyclists were all African-American, and this struck me as odd, because the rest of the cast was quite diverse -- and also because I imagine unicycling as a nerdy and very Caucasian past-time, but twenty minutes later I realized why they were all black . . . they were a basketball squad . . . and this offended me a little, as a case of reverse discrimination -- it seemed as if Barnum and Bailey was insinuating that only black people play basketball (or perhaps, more logically, the act auditioned as a troupe, and they happened to all be African-American) but either way, I would love to be the token white guy on that unicycle basketball team . . . on another, less racist note, the best part of the night was the meal we had in downtown Trenton, near the Sun National Bank Center, at a Guatemalan dive called Taqueria el Mariachi . . . if you are in Trenton and you love tacos, you've got to try this place: best salsa ever and delicious al pastor and verde sauce.

My Son Was Almost Sensitive

My seven year old son Ian, who generally plays it close to his vest, told me this unsolicited piece of information: "Ben is my closest friend" and I responded, "That's great, he's a good guy and it's nice to have a best friend," but I had assumed too much and gotten it all wrong, and so Ian corrected me: "No Dad,  I don't mean he's my best friend, I mean he lives closer to me than any other friend."

Funniest Thing I've Read Since The Big Short

This article is hysterical.

Do It! Do It! Redux

I should probably point out that I am more sympathetic to my son Alex's behavior on the bus than my wife is, because I succumbed to peer pressure in a similar (but even dumber) situation: I was in sixth grade and had just gotten braces installed to correct an overbite, and I was riding the bus home, playing one of those old school handheld video games with the blipping red dashes, and I took the nine volt battery out of the game, held it up, and said, "I wonder what would happen if I touched this to my braces" and before I knew it kids were chanting for me to "do it! do it!" and so I stood up, faced the back of the bus, and stuck the battery terminals to the metal on my top and bottom teeth, completing the circuit, shocking myself profoundly, and knocking myself back into my bus seat, where -- once I came to -- I revelled in my glory . . . I did it!

The Platinum Age of Bewilderment

Wired Magazine explains why television is better than it ever has been . . . and the Netflix original series House of Cards is certainly an example of "platinum quality" TV: the show is so good, I don't understand it (and neither does professional Entertainment Weekly summarizer Hillary Busis, who -- in her episode four recap -- doesn't mention a word of Frank Underwood's complex political stratagem hinging on the collective bargaining chip in the education reform bill, and instead concentrates on the easy, romantic stuff . . . I had to search around until I found this post, and I still don't think that Nathan Matisse understands the plot any better than I do).

Spooky Serendipity

I finished Henry James' ambiguously supernatural novel Turn of the Screw Sunday morning and not an hour later, while walking back from our secret salamander spot, my son Ian -- unprompted -- told me that "the boy's bathroom at school is haunted" and then he explained that while he was going to the bathroom, the door inexplicably locked of its own volition and that this "happened to another boy," and so I asked him my favorite question (Do you believe in ghosts?) and he said, "not really" and I said that I felt the same, and suggested that maybe it was the wind that locked the bathroom door, and he countered, "How could wind get inside a building?"

Do It! Do It!

In class right now, we are studying the ethical implications of some classic psychological experiments . . . Milgram, Asch, and Stanford prison --  and the main lesson from these is that humans can be quite obedient -- whether to a group or an authority figure or social pressure-- once we are put into a "state of agency" . . . and so it was hard to totally blame my son (though he suffered some consequences) for what happened on the bus ride home from his class trip on Friday: he had picked up a bottle cap, as boys are wont to do, and brought it in the bus, and some girl had the bright idea that he should throw it out the window and the other students started chanting "Do it! Do it!" and so he did it.

Our Dog Is Male

Wednesday night, my seven year old son Ian made an observation and then reacted to his observation, all in the same sentence: "We have four boys in the house and only one girl . . . it's awesome."

A Riddle My Nine Year Old Son Created (I Didn't Get the Answer)

What bites but has no mouth . . . and has wings but cannot fly?

I Give Up!

Diligent readers of Sentence of Dave know that I believe that Neal Stephenson is one of the greatest writers of our time -- he combines the best qualities of Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson -- and so it is with much regret that I report that I am quitting his gigantic philosophical novel Anathem . . . perhaps this is a case of what Thoreau said: "It is not all books that are as dull as their readers," as I have certainly become more dull of wit in the past year, because my life has become extraordinarily busy, but whatever the reason, I have been stuck in the forty percent zone on my Kindle for weeks (and I even took out the analog version from the library to see if that was the problem) but it looks like I'm never going to finish this incredibly speculative and meta-physical novel, and so I started something more concrete-- The Looming Tower-- and I was able to read forty pages before I fell asleep (a great contrast to Anathem . . . I couldn't get through two pages before nodding off) and Lawrence Wright's book on the origins of Al-Qaeda and 9/11 is well written and full of great research, including this quotation from essayist E.B. White, who was trying to get a grip on the dawn of the nuclear age . . . before we learned to stop worrying and love the bomb: "In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm."

Technology is Cool/Scary

Cool technology: lidar (it's like radar . . . with lasers!) and it is being used to discover load of archaeological sites in the dense, impenetrable jungles of Mosquitia . . . scary technology: algorithmic high-frequency trading . . . it's like investing . . . with lasers!

Warning. This is Gross.

If you aimlessly scratch at a pimple behind your earlobe, it can bleed a lot.

One For the Actuaries

I am assuming, from an insurance compensation stand-point, it is better to wait for a windy day and let your tree get knocked down by nature, rather than pay a certified arborist out-of-pocket to do it ahead of time.

Very Fine Gradients of Class Warfare

I know this isn't the best trait -- as a coach or an athlete -- and it has probably been handed down to me from my father . . . but whenever my team has away game in a town that appears to be much richer than my hometown, I ineluctably feel extra-motivated to give them a beatdown, and so as we entered lovely Basking Ridge, and drove past the rolling hills of Basking Ridge Country Club, I said to my son Ian, "We've got to kick these rich kids' butts today" and then -- as punishment for my classism -- when we got out of the car and Ian took a look at the opposing team, he said, loudly, in front of several Basking Ridge parents: "they don't look like rich kids" and I had to explain to him that we shouldn't say things like that (even though I did) but still, I am happy to report that we did indeed kick their butts, a great victory of a lower-upper middle class town over an upper-upper middle class town.

Boogers Part II (in 2-D)

While not nearly as epic as this booger story, this is a cautionary tale for students and teachers alike: I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that every educator has lost a student's assignment at some point . . . whether it was misplaced or tossed aside by another student during peer-editing or fell under the desk or got picked up by another teacher . . . so I always give kids the benefit of the doubt when they tell me that they handed something in; this scenario was playing out last Wednesday, and so I did the first thing I always do, which is check the pile of papers -- because sometimes I forget to grade one, or a student mistakenly staples another kid's paper to his own . . . and we found the girl's paper in the pile, but it was connected to another student's (graded) paper not by a staple, but by a booger -- or I'm 75% sure it was a booger, I didn't any testing to determine exactly what it was, but it sure looked like a booger, and we don't use rubber cement in high school.

Killing Is Worth It!

The first two seasons of AMC's The Killing focus on two Seattle homicide detectives trying to solve the murder of a high school student -- Rosie Larsen -- and the writers kept me guessing until the  last moments of the last episode of the second season . . . I think the ending of the case rivals that of the best final TV episode ever made (The Shield) . . . the solution is both surprising and perfectly logical; Mireille Enos plays Sarah Linden perfectly . . . she's a homely, unmedicated and possibly more neurotic (but in a realistic way) Seattle version of Clare Danes in Homeland . . . and though the show is dark, rainy, and bleak, unlike Danes, Linden has someone she can rely on, her partner -- Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) -- and they bring the buddy genre to new levels of weird awkwardness (and since I'm making absurd analogies, I will also say that at times Holder and Linden look and act like the bizarro world Moulder and Scully).

My Son Successfully Sails the Seas of Cheese

We commanded our children to make my grandmother a hand-made card for her 91st birthday, and in less than a minute my nine year old son Alex came up with this corny Hallmark-style stanza:

No matter how old,
no matter how young,
I will always be
your great grandson.

Dave's Weather Report (Including the Sinuses)

Unusual weather for central New Jersey today: sunny and dry, with clear skies and low humidity . . . and a 70% chance of boogers.

What Did Birders Do Before the Internet?

There is a bird in my yard that says "cheeseburger! cheeseburger! cheeseburger!" and it only took me three minutes to learn that it is a Carolina Wren (and not a black-capped Chickadee) though both these birds say "cheeseburger," but the Carolina Wren says it much faster and clearer . . . but why I am I wasting my time using langauge to explain this . . . watch the Youtube video!

That Point Doesn't Count . . . The Ball Was Dead and I Wasn't Ready and the Sun Was in My Eyes

My seven year old son Ian is the king of the "redo," which is short for "do-over," which is short for "I love to cheat."

More Fun Things About Owning a Dog

That's a strange ball in the middle of the living room . . . I don't remember the kids playing with that . . .  it's kind of oblong and fleshy-looking . . . and it smells really good in here . . . I think I'll take a closer look . . . hmm, that's not a ball . . . it's a chicken carcass, stripped to the bones . . . I suppose the lesson here is that if you own a dog, you can't leave the house for more than ten minutes if you've left a rotisserie chicken on the counter (and I won't go into detailed consequences of this feast, but I will say this: the next day, when I arrived home from work, I had to carry the rug outside and hose it down).

Graveyard for Resolutions

Every so often I notice that I still have two failed New Year's Resolutions prominently displayed on the top of the sidebar (to the right of this sentence) and while I was going to remove them, I have decided to keep them for the time being because I like the reminder that most of our "deep plots do pall, and that should teach us"; I may not have become an expert in Canadian culture, or committed a 100 songs to memory, or become a virtuoso at the banjo . .  and I may not continue to fast on Mondays and Wednesdays for the rest of my life, but the important thing is that I gave it "the college try" and not only that, I learned a few things about Canada (and also learned that I have oceans of ignorance about our neighbor to the north) and I memorized the chords and lyrics to a few songs, and I discovered that even though I don't play my banjo any longer, my wife won't let me sell it, because she likes the way it looks on the wall . . . and so I will attempt to eat nearly nothing on Mondays and Wednesdays, though I know that most days, I am doomed to fail, as are most people are when they make resolutions, but that's okay . . . we would be a sad species if we never made them at all.

Dave Cannot Assess the Situation (Even Though He Refers to Himself in the Third Person)

I have gotten so busy living my life, that I don't consume the same amount of literature, television, film and pop-culture as I used to . . . and I'm not sure if this is making me wiser and more experienced, or simply tired and dull.

Weird Hair Day

There are days when I always feel like I have a spider in my hair.

Dave Learns Something! Maybe Even Two Things!

Although I am a self-proclaimed Master of Vocabulary, every so often a student stumps me with a word (and I'm not talking about slang . . . I learn slang from the kids all the time -- my favorite new term this year is "ratchet") but last week I learned about word that's in the actual dictionary that I never dreamed exist -- a girl in my Creative Writing class wrote a poem about working in a shoe-store (she actually works in a shoe-store) and she used the word "brannock," and apparently a brannock is the device used to measure someone's shoe size.

My Children Are Both Overachievers

I didn't think my boys were capable of it, but this year's school pictures are the worst yet.

Third Grade Forensics

My son Alex gave me the lowdown about what was being debated on the playground Monday: cougar vs. owl in a fight to the death . . . and the setting was "the plains" and this occurred "at night," probably because both animals are crepuscular (Alex didn't use the word "crepuscular," but judging by his conversational topics, he will be soon).

More New Music from The Moving Rocks

The Moving Rocks are on a roll -- here is the second song from the very-low concept album I am working on; it's called "Many Lives" and the lyrics are over at G:TB . . . I recorded this song after reading this book and so my recording process was different than usual -- I started out by creating some rhythmic loops and interlocking them in various patterns, and once I had this musical framework, then I wrote the lyrics and added the guitar -- and this theme was certainly an influence as well, but that's probably obvious.

Spring Issue of Lifewild

Spring is here, and with it a new issue of Lifewild Quarterly . . . an online magazine that my friend Adam puts together . . . I have written a carefully researched article about Canadian geese and their feces, and there is a piece by my friend Eric as well, along with some cool art: check it out if you can (there's also a Winter Issue).

Beer Might Be Like Jazz

My new favorite beer in the universe is Switchback Ale, a delicious amber brewed in Burlington, VT and sold in 22 ounce bottles -- and I was surprised that BeerAdvocate gives it a fairly run-of-the-mill review, but then I remembered tasting this highly reviewed "world class" beer, which was way too hoppy and bitter and fruity and spicy for my primitive palate . . . and so I think my taste in beer, like my taste in jazz, might not be that sophisticated . . . I love Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, but have some trouble with Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman; if you are unsophisticated as well, then I highly recommend Switchback: it is smooth, delicious, high in alcohol, unfiltered, and has a scent and flavor vaguely like Magic Hat #9, but not as fruity.

It's a Great Time for Wealth Inequality and Music

Unemployment is high and the the environment is going to hell in a handbasket, but if you like music, then times couldn't be better: I heard a snippet of some rhythmic Latin jazz on WBGO  Wednesday morning, but didn't hear who the artist was . . . and forgot about it until Thursday, and then I went to WBGO's web-site and found the playlist and learned that it was an Eddie Palmieri song called "Listen Up" and so I popped that into Spotify (which now streams at my workplace) and I was suddenly immersed in some phenomenal Latin jazz by an artist I had never heard before . . . this is a vast improvement over the methods we used when I was a kid (putting a cassette in the boom box, and then racing to the radio to hit record whenever a good song came on) and while I know there are folks that will lament the loss of the mixed-tape or the album . . . or even the investment of paying for a record, which forced you to really listen to it, I still prefer the magic of the internet over those antiquated auditory customs (and I'm sure there are those hi-fi purists who hate the fact that most music is listened to on crappy computer speakers these days).

It's Hard to be a Man in the 21st Century

Last month, I helped a female teacher create a "Manliness Survey," and making the survey was so entertaining that we discussed the issues in my English class -- it was fitting because we were in the middle of Hamlet, and while there is no question that Hamlet is intelligent and eloquent, there is debate over his machismo -- and this resulted in another student and me having a one-armed push-up competition in front of the class, and during this display of unbridled masculinity, the girls were yelling "We don't care! This is stupid!" and the guys were yelling "It's all about push-ups!" and while this was a lot of fun, it made me remember that on that same weekend, Catherine made me take the kids to Target, in order to shop for the two birthday parties that they were attending, and we bought some Squinkies and Pokemon cards, and while I was doing this, I saw my friend Rob, with his kids, doing the exact same task . . . and we said "Hi" to each other and then went our separate ways without commenting on how unmanly we were behaving . . . it was Saturday morning and we should have been chewing tobacco and using power tools, but instead we were both pushing shopping carts at Target, and I was learning the distinction between Squinkies and Zinkies.

Two Choices Make Things So Much Easier

If I could be the star of any TV show, there are only two choices that come to mind -- I would either want to steal David Hasselhoff's role on Baywatch or be Jeremy Wade on River Monsters . . . and I'm pretty sure that for heterosexual males, these two choices are the archetypal options for this hypothetical question -- they've got everything covered . . . you can either travel the world, hooking into giant freshwater fish with a rod and reel, with a dedicated staff helping you find the action . . . or you could run around with a bevy of hot lifeguards, saving the day every episode, with the added bonus of beautiful California beaches and weather . . . so which do you choose?

Same Dave Under a Different Name

I have grown tired of Greasetruck as my fictitious band-name, and so I am changing it -- it's not like I have to consult with anyone! --and so the name of my new (also fictitious) band name is The Moving Rocks (The World's Second Greatest Rock Band) because I like the origin story of this name . . . anyway, here is my first song under this new moniker -- I am hard at work on recording a Moving Rocks album, and perhaps if I am extremely motivated, I will find some real live people to actually flesh out this project, but until then, this is nothing but Dave (and I've replaced the usual rambling psychedelic monologue with a guitar solo!)

It's Fun to Eat Junk Food and Watch a Lot of TV

Sometimes it takes an injury to remember how wonderful it is to eat salty and sugary snacks in alternation, while getting completely sucked into a TV show . . . especially when every episode is available on Netflix . . . I have watched thirteen episodes of The Killing since last Thursday, but season one doesn't wrap everything up in a neat package, so I need a new injury so that I can watch season two equally as fast.

Miracles: I Generate Them

While zealous fanatics of Sentence of Dave know that I am no stranger to miracles, I realize that some of my more skeptical readers question the authenticity of these wondrous happenings, and might even doubt my hagiographic qualities . . . but this example will certainly sway them: last Wednesday night, while playing basketball, my leg popped out of the hip socket -- or that's what it felt like -- and I knew to stop playing, but it didn't seem like that bad of an injury, but the next morning it felt much worse, and by mid-day Thursday, much to the amusement of my colleagues, I was curled in a ball on the floor of the English office, unable to find a position to relieve the excruciating pain in my right hip and leg -- and so I had to do the unthinkable . . . cancel soccer practice AND miss pub night, and despite taking Advil and Aleve, I couldn't sleep and my hip kept getting worse and worse, so I took off work on Friday and went to the doctor -- who despite having a very calm bedside demeanor, still scared the crap out of me, since he kept mentioning X-rays and MRI's and physical therapy and possible surgery . . . but the first step was to get an X-ray, which was an epic trip in the rain, considering I needed the use of a cane to get in and out of the car, but luckily all that showed up on the x-ray was a bone spur and lots of wear and tear, so he thought it was probably just a bad "bone bruise," where bone hit bone on the spur, and then everything swelled up, and so I spent Friday in incredible pain, taking a prescription anti-inflammatory drug, and I was unable to sit up, or walk very far . . . and in order to get off the couch, I had to undergo ten minutes of weird gyrations (including a step when I had to crawl on the floor) and I was feeling pretty low -- like I was done playing sports forever, even with my kids, and probably wouldn't even be able to attend Ian's soccer game on Saturday, let alone coach it, but when I woke up Saturday morning, I was able to get out of bed without a problem, and though my hip was sore, it didn't hurt . . . and I now realize the acute difference between those two states, and so I was able to walk the dog, coach the game (we won! Ian scored!) and rejoin the ambulatory world . . . and now I have a new lease on life, an appreciation of the simple things, and I have sworn to take it easy until I am fully healed and not jeopardize my health and the well-being of my family and myself by vainly taking part in adult athletics, because I am long past my prime . . . unless . . . unless . . . this miraculous recovery is a sign from the powers above that I should continue to recklessly participate in sports aimed for people many years younger than me, and I am sure that my stupid brain will slowly rationalize the latter logic, and I will act just like Steve Martin's character Davis in Grand Canyon.

That's a Killer

Though my injury sucks,  it is allowing me to watch and enjoy the first season of the AMC's Seattle noir murder mystery show The Killing . . . and I especially enjoyed it when local senator Ruth Yitanes tells councilman Richmond that his mayoral bid is over, because of his association with the murder of a high school girl, and that soon he will be "the punch line of a dirty joke."

The Medium Might Be a Message

 Neal Stephenson's ponderous, otherworldy and philosophical novel Anathem may be the perfect book to consume on an e-reader -- although it's disturbing not to know exactly how far I am through the book (30% . . . but 30% of what? I don't know how many pages it is) but I can see the monastic avouts in the concents of Stephenson's world carrying around a similar gadget . . . still this book isn't for everyone, as there is more description of architecture than there is conflict, which is probably why the electronic version is only $1.99 on Amazon.

The Looming Specter of Death and a Tonka Truck

I re-injured my groin/hip playing pick-up basketball Wednesday night, and part of me wonders whether I am getting old and should give this kind of stuff up, and the other part of me wonders whether getting drunk and stepping on a Tonka truck did more damage than I thought at the time.

Bags, Cans, Baskets, Etc.

During our vacation in Vermont my wife got to spend more time than usual with me, and so while she got to see how I operate out in the world, I had to endure her criticism -- which was always warranted, but I'm used to doing things in my own particular style, and when she's not there to witness my own particular style, then I think everything is going just fine; here are three examples from the trip that come to mind:

1) I have a poor sense of direction, but I like to drive -- especially in mountainous terrain, because controlling the car keeps me from getting carsick -- and over the course of our week vacation, we took quite a few drives -- for lunch, to snowboard, to shop -- every single time we approached the town of Weston, I had to ask my wife which way to turn (left) and if she asked me which way I thought I had to turn, I would yell, "Just tell me!"

2) we had to take the trash to the dump, because there was no garbage service at the house -- and I put the trash can in the back of the mini-van -- but the seats were folded down -- and so I tried to use the seat-belt to hold the garbage can in place, but every time I stopped short, the can tipped over, spilling garbage juice into the car, and the first two times the can tipped I told the kids to unbuckle their seat-belts and run back there and right the can -- which they thought was awesome . . . "We're walking around in the car while it's driving!" and I was thinking, "Welcome to 1978" and then my wife ended the party by asking, "Why didn't you put on of the seats up and put the can in the well?" and I told her that sounded like a great idea, and that I wasn't sure why I didn't think of that (perhaps I am an idiot?) and when I stopped the car and went back there and tried it, the garbage can fit perfectly and did not spill;

3) at the grocery store, I noticed that Switchback Ale was only $3.99 per twenty-two ounce bottle, instead of the $5.99 per bottle price at the beer store, so I brought six bottles up to the register, along with a frozen pizza and a rotisserie chicken -- and the old lady scanned the beer first, and put the large bottles in three little paper bags -- two beers per bag, and while Catherine was getting out money to pay for everything, I decided that my part of the transaction was over, and grabbed one of those little plastic grocery baskets and put the beer in it, and the old lady gave me a funny look and said, "You're going to bring that basket back, right?" and I said, "Of course, I'm just afraid if I carry these bags loose I'll have an accident," and then left, but my wife got to see her slow head-shake of disapproval at my strange behavior, because she was going to put those three paper bags into another plastic bag, which I didn't anticipate, because I have no patience and very poor communication skills (unless I'm talking about something I just read).

Complaint or Humblebrag?

I should count my blessings that I have complaints like this one about my children: sometimes my older son gets so wrapped up in listening to audio books that he doesn't pay attention when people talk to him (right now he's really into Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series . . . it's sort of like Harry Potter crossed with mythology).

This Sentence Was Written Under Duress

I apologize for the poor quality of this sentence, but I am feeling light-headed because of the stupid fad-diet that I have vowed to adopt for the rest of my life; it's called the 5:2 Diet and it started in England -- the gimmick is that you "fast" two days a week and eat what you like the remaining five days . . . but it's not really fasting, it's just eating very limited calories two days a week (600 calories for men) and the craze for this diet serendipitously coincided with my reading of Jared Diamond's new book about hunter-gatherers and the success of their feast and famine diet . . . so I am going for it, and I don't do things half-assed (actually, yes I do) so I made the promise in the English office that I would fast on Mondays and Wednesdays for the rest of my life -- and I'm writing this late Monday afternoon, and so the fasting is really catching up with me (though I correctly spelled "serendipitously" on the first attempt!) but if I can hold out another couple of hours, with just a salad for dinner, then I can go to sleep and really pig-out tomorrow (and one of the problems with this diet is that you need complete control of your environment . . . two weeks ago, I had made it through the bulk of Wednesday, but my wife walked int he door with two delicious smelling pizzas and I broke down and ate four slices).

I'm Really TRYING to Be Enlightened . . . Really, I Am

If you haven't seen the HBO series Enlightened, starring Laura Dern, then be sure to check it out -- it's funny and horribly awkward, and Dern -- who has a nervous breakdown at work in the first episode and attends a life-changing holistic rehabilitation center in Hawaii --returns to her old life, sort of . . . she's been severely demoted and has to move in with her estranged mom, but despite this, she is trying to become a better, calmer, less-materialistic, less bitter, more optimistic and hopeful person -- an "agent of change" -- but most people don't want to deal with this sort of person, and not only that, she's barely holding on to this new persona . . . I often feel this way when I vow not to lose my temper because of my children -- I can usually hold it together a few days (Serenity now!) and then I explode; the show alos reminds me of the Nick Horby novel How to Be Good . . . most of us our trying to be good people, but we wouldn't want to live with one (and I just read that the series was cancelled due to low ratings, despite critical acclaim, and that is actually a perfect end for the show).

Dieting Rule #487

It is not your duty to finish all leftover slices of pizza in the refrigerator.

Am I Misanthropic or Merely Grouchy?

In some respects, I'm glad the weather has finally turned spring-like, but the downside is that all the amateurs crawl out from hibernation and get in the space that has been mine all winter . . . these fair-weather folk clog up the sidewalks and the park and the tennis courts and the ball fields.

Two Very Very Important Questions

The house we rented in Vermont last week had Playstation 3 and Rock Band set-up in the basement, and after many hours of playing (and I must say that I am a pretty good Rock Band guitarist and drummer) two questions come to mind . . . one of which the internet answered: Question #1 . . . Are actual rock stars good at Rock Band? -- and there are loads of YouTube videos proving that actual rock stars usually CANNOT play their own songs on Rock Band . . . Question #2 is . . . Why don't they have a Jazz Band module for Rock Band? and while I love jazz, Bruce McCulloch answered that question long ago: if you like jazz, then you, sir, are my nemesis!

My Children Are Animals (and I am Inured to It)

Yesterday, I picked my kids up from school (plus an extra kid, as a favor) and I made the mistake of trying to talk to a friend for a moment, which gave my kids and their friend time to start wrestling, tackling each other, and slamming each other to the pavement -- which I noticed but didn't really address, because that's how they generally behave -- but because this was right in front of the school, two school aides and a teacher rushed down, to break up the melee, and I had to walk over and claim the children -- two of whom I explained, were "brothers" and then when I tried to finish my conversation, they started in again, and by the end of this round, Ian was kicking Alex in the head -- and my friend had to yell at Ian . . . and while this was horribly embarrassing, it was good for me to see how others view my children's behavior -- behavior which I am so used to that it doesn't faze me -- and all I could see on people's faces were expressions of horror.

I Hate to Say I Told You So . . . or Do I?

I hate to say "I told you so," but I told you so (and actually, like everyone else, I love to say "I told you so") and it wasn't me telling you anyway, it was someone far more respectable -- Diane Ravitch -- and she had the backing of Campbell's Law . . . so no one who reads this blog should be surprised as to what happened at Beverly Hall's school in Atlanta.

The Jungle is Low in Sodium

If you don't want to change your ways, then do NOT read the chapter on diet in Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday . . . like Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, it reveals some eye-opening dietary facts . . . except that Pollan points out the dangers of adopting a modern diet of corn 2 and corn syrup, and Diamond reveals the dangers of staple food laced with sodium and sugar, two ingredients that hunter-gatherers in the jungles of New Guinea do without -- and they have no incidence of stroke, diabetes, heart attack, coronary disease, and many of the other modern illness that plagues civilized man -- so I am going to try to eat less refined sugar and less sodium, which is difficult, because they both seem to be in everything -- but these are the only habits I am going to adopt from hunter/gathers, because while I agree with Wilfrid Oakley that "man may be captain of his fate, but he is also victim of his blood sugar" I don't think I am ready to abandon the elderly in the forest once they cannot move with the tribe, or commit infanticide if a child is born too close in age to the oldest child who is still on the teat, or adopt the treachery ideal of southwestern New Guinea, where it is even better to invite your enemy to share food and kill him than it is to kill him on the battlefield . . . "tuwi asonai makaerin!" (we have been fattening you with friendship for the slaughter!)

Big Announcement!

I loved our vacation in southern Vermont so much that I have convinced my family to abandon their hectic central Jersey lives and move with me to the Green Mountains -- and, of course, we will be living off the grid, growing our own granola and tofu, sugaring our own maple syrup, and doing without the internet . . . so no more Sentence of Dave, instead I will be keeping a daily journal, and I will write this journal with a quill pen, on hand-made vellum, and I will lock this journal in a wooden chest, which I will bury under our sugar-shack, and long after I am dead and gone, perhaps someone will exhume it, read it, and enjoy my posthumous wisdom.

Snowshoeing = Snowshoeing

I went snowshoeing for the first time in my life last week, while we were on vacation in Vermont, and I must say that the experience of snowshoeing is exactly as I imagined it . . . it was no easier or harder than I imagined, and I sank into the snow the exact amount I have always imagined I would sink into the snow while wearing snowshoes, it was exactly as exciting as I imagined (not very, compared to snowboarding, but very practical and relaxing) and so while I recommend snowshoeing -- it's exactly as fun as you imagine it to be -- you don't actually have to get out into the snow and do it, you can just think about doing it and it's pretty much the same experience (besides the cardiovascular benefits, of course).

Circus Peanuts Beware

The Vermont Country Store in Weston is over-priced and full of kitsch, but these minor faults are overshadowed by the vast array of free samples: dips and chips and salsa; local cheeses and pepperoni; fudge and cookies . . . if you're trashy enough, you could skip paying for lunch next door at the Bryant House (the associated restaurant) and just graze your way through the enormous store, which is actually several connected old buildings; the candy section fills one of these structures, and it is a joy to behold, several hundred square feet of every kind of chocolate, sweet, and confection possible -- arranged in a maze of jars and bins and cases . . . and from this horn of sugary plenty -- to avoid gluttony -- we decided to each choose a small scoop of ONE item -- Ian filled his bag with candy blackberries and raspberries; Alex chose candy Lego bricks, Catherine got dark chocolate covered cranberries, and I had a hankering for black licorice -- but there was a LOT of black licorice to choose from: ropes and strands, dog shaped licorice, swirls, rounds, twizzlers, etc. -- I finally decided on some smallish rhombus shaped pieces with the word "ZOUT" stamped on each piece . . . I assumed this was the brand of the candy, but when we got into the car and sampled our treats, I nearly had to spit mine out -- it was incredibly salty . . . and I soon learned, after doing a bit of research, that zout means "salty" in Danish, and I had purchased the infamous Dutch double-salted licorice, which might not be a candy at all, and instead some sort of folkloric remedy for sore throats . . . some folks on the Internet mentioned eating it as a "rite of passage," and all this is fine and good -- you might know that I am a fan of the circus peanut, and not because of the taste of course (circus peanuts taste horrible, like disintegrating Styrofoam) but simply because they exist at all and people continue to buy them and someone must be eating them . . . but I do believe there should be some sort of warning on this Danish double salted stuff, because now I have a bag of them, and the only way to unload them is to foist them off on unsuspecting people who don't speak Dutch.

Bonus Post! Good Friday? The Best Friday

I am about to pour a triumphant local Vermont beer: we survived four days of family snowboarding without mishap (though my children nearly died several times sledding in the yard of our rented "cabin," which is actually nicer than our real house) and while most of the time when I am on vacation, by the end of the week I am getting that "this place is real nice but I'm looking forward to going home" feeling, I am NOT getting that feeling this time -- and that is probably because we lucked out with the weather . . . could be the nicest week of spring weather in the history of Southern Vermont.

Comparing and Contrasting Insane People (with an extra dash of irony)

While I recognize the irony of someone like myself judging lunatics who write lots of words on the internet, I still can't help offering my two cents: last Spring Break we ate an amazing little taco joint in New Paltz called Mexicali Blue, and while the Yelp reviews are generally quite positive, there are also some fascinating narratives sprinkled in the mix, about mischarges for guacamole and enduring loud music -- long competent narratives with loads of details . . . in fact, if they weren't written on a restaurant-review web-site, these people might pass for educated and normal . . . and we spent this Spring Break in Southern Vermont and when I drove through Ludlow, on my way to get some new bindings for my snowboard, I saw a little shack called Taco's Taco's (that's how it is spelled on the sign) and I love tacos, so I checked the Yelp reviews and while I will definitely never visit this restaurant, I am glad I visited the reviews, because while they are bad, they are also wonderfully written, informative, entertaining, and quite funny . . . especially "Tasteless Tacos, Bogus Burritos, and Nasty Nachos," written by David K from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who describes his "first taste of nachos at Rye Playland Ice Skating Rink" and says that they were "totally better" than the nachos at Taco's Taco's . . . he also calls their Spanish Rice "one word: disgraceful" and claims that the rice is not only an insult to Spanish people, but to all people "of Hispanic descent."

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).

Circadian Writers Block

I am too tired to write a sentence: insert daylight saving time rant here.

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.

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).