One Hundred Years Ago, It Was Still Humid

Although I can't relate to the parties that Gatsby threw in West Egg, or the way the Gormers eschewed social conventions in Edith Wharton's House of Mirth and -- in a precursor to Gatsby --"started a sort of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs," but what I can understand is that going to one of these parties will be a good deal better than suffering "a broiling Sunday in town," as both The Great Gatsby and House of Mirth contain the palpable heat and humidity of the East Coast -- and this was long before the idea of global warming-- and both novels put forward the very advanced idea that no civilized person should stand this sort of weather.

True (but boring) Confessions #1

I haven't done a crossword puzzle in a LONG time.

Two Moving Rocks Are Better Than One

Two new songs from The World's Second Greatest Rock Band . . . one about community college and the other about not getting to have a midlife crisis; lyrics and more over at Gheorghe: The Blog, of course.

Psychiatric Tales Are More Fun If There Are Pictures

Darryl Cunnigham's eleven graphic stories about mental illness -- simply titled Psychiatric Tales -- is a terse and powerful reminder that we are not in control of our own brains, and that mental illness is just that  . . . an illness that is often beyond the control of our willpower and consciousness; the late great Mitch Hedberg said: "Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only one that you can get yelled at for having," and you can substitute any of the disorders from the book in that sentence and get the same result . . . a quick read and worth checking out.

Obviously

It's more fun to brush up on Richard Pryor, then it is to brush up on Espanol (and I'm understanding a lot more of the content).

Is This Genius or a Flaw?

We are coming to the end of the BBC series Top of the Lake and some bad stuff is going down in the New Zealand bush, but the show takes place in such a breathtaking setting -- snow-covered rocky mountains surrounding a deepwater mountain lake, that I'm often just looking at the scenery and thinking: I'd really like to go on vacation in New Zealand instead of being concerned for the people in peril on the show . . . and so I am wondering if this is a flaw in the show, or if it's done purposefully, in order to create some weird paradoxical friction in the audience, some detachment from the characters, some sensation of their puniness in the landscape.

I Wish I Thought of This

My friend Adam passed along this list of "28 "Favorite" Books That Are Huge Red Flags" and I find it accurate, funny, and applicable; I am suspicious of any adult who advertises their "favorite" anything, and while I have sworn to finish Infinite Jest this summer, I'm not going to let anyone see me reading it, because that's just pretentious and annoying (like this blog).

Gas is Funny

I was listening to the news on NPR, and when Soterios Johnson explained that the NYPD released some harmless gas into the subway system it made me laugh out loud in my car, which is pretty juvenile for a 43 year old man.

My Summer To-Do List

Here are some of the things I want to accomplish this summer -- and I think if I complete half of them, I'll be quite proud:

1) Brush up on my Spanish while walking the dog,

2) record an album,

3) move the arbor vitae from the back property line to the side property line,

4) install a fence on the back property line,

5) plant some screening shrubs or bamboo in decorative containers on the back property line,

6) get some steel or wire shelving units and organize the sporting goods in the study,

7) get my body fat percentage down to 12%,

8) strengthen my core,

9) get new lenses for my glasses,

10) restring my tennis racket,

11) finish Infinite Jest,

12) attend the 20th Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip,

14) get over my triscadecaphobia.

Would You Rather (a Transcript of the Dumbest Dialogue Ever Held by Cognizant, Literate Human Beings)

We are eating dinner, and my eight year old son Ian says to me: "Would you rather get baked in an oven or eaten by a donut?" and, idiotically, I answer him . . . the rest of the conversation goes down like this: "Eaten by a donut? . . . yes, eaten by a donut, instead of you eating the donut, the donut gets revenge and eats you . . . well, I definitely don't want to be baked in an oven, so eaten by a donut . . . me too, eaten by a donut, you might live ten seconds more of your life in its stomach . . . wait, how big is this donut? . . . as big as our house, so even if it eats you, you might still be alive in its stomach . . . okay, then definitely eaten by a donut."

Elisabeth Moss Is Not a Kiwi

I am enjoying Top of the Lake, a moody crime-drama set in the wilds of New Zealand -- the tone and structure of the series is similar to The Killing . . . a troubled female detective obsessively investigates one crime over the course of an entire season, and while there is some comic relief . . . Holly Hunter plays a bizarre empowered wild-woman named GJ and the small town folk of Glenorchy are creepy and amusing, but what really threw me for a loop is that Elisabeth Moss -- who plays Peggy Olson on Madmen -- is not a New Zealander, she's only pretending to be a New Zealander . . . and she fooled me (for more on this, watch the video . . . Sir Ian explains it quite well).

Learning Spanish Is Good For Your Head

One of my summer projects is to brush up on my Espanol, so I am listening to the Pimsleur Spanish course as much as possible -- because learning a second language is good for your brain, and can stave off dementia . . .  and not only is it good for your brain, but it is also good for your head; I was cleaning up after our bbq, and had to put some chairs into the crawl space -- and inevitably, no matter how much I think I am crouching, I bang my head on the low door frame when I am exiting the crawl space, and this time was no different -- I banged my head, harder than usual, but it didn't hurt . . . and then I realized why: I was wearing my old school giant headphones, so I could listen to the Pimsleur Spanish course while I worked, and my headphones are made of thick plastic, sothey protected my head from the bump . . . they protected mi cabeza from the bump . . . and I staved off a little bit of dementia.

Save Your Money AND Eat Well . . .

If you're in the New Brunswick area and want a good meal, you don't need to drop a butt-wad of cash at The Frog and the Peach . . . if you are actually in New Brunswick proper, then my two favorite places are Cafe La Terrassa: delicious Latin American food, ambiance, and reasonable prices (and it's BYOB) and Costa Chica: festive chairs, authentic Mexican (get the tacos al pastor) and pizza . . . and if you are closer to Edison, then try Taqueria La Juquilita on Woodbridge Avenue -- it looks like a little grocery mart -- this place is also authentic Mexican -- the chicken mole is awesome and the chorizo and pork tacos are also fantastic -- get the the tacos "al mano" in the homemade corn tortillas . . . I really want these places to be successful, so please patronize them!

It's Easy To Be Like Dave

To be the most interesting person in the room, you need to have previously spent a good deal of time NOT being the most interesting person in the room (but to be the biggest tool in the room -- my specialty -- you need no previous experience).

A Sentence in Which I Make Too Many Comparisons

John O'Hara's novel Appointment in Samarra is a classic that is actually fun to read -- it contains the dry humor and tragic inevitability of Madmen . . . Julian English especially reminds me of Pete Campbell; it has the drinking and parties and class commentary of The Great Gatsby, but without Fitzgerald's flowery and pretentious prose; it has drunken and picaresque adventures reminiscent of Jerome "Corky" Corcoran from Joyce Carol Oates' excellent novel What I Lived For . . . and while most of these folks need to follow Robert Littell's advice for young men and learn how to drink, that would remove the plot and conflict from all of these works of fiction . . . and while you can run from your appointment in Samarra, you can't hide -- like the dentist, the Grim Reaper will have his due . . . and like I am due for a cleaning, and that receptionist just keeps calling and calling, so too will Death, and just when you think you have avoided him, he shows up at your door, whether you live in Manhattan or West Egg or Gibbsville.

Sometimes Watching an Incident is Worse than Experiencing It

The morning after the end-of-the-year party at Kristyna's house, my son Ian told his older brother Alex that he had a great time, except for "the incident," which is a rather euphemistic way to describe misstepping while getting onto a diving board, flipping over the board, and landing face first on the concrete -- and this incident happened five minutes into the party, but even though Ian scraped off a good deal of the skin on his cheek and eye-brow and reopened a previous bump-scab on his head, this didn't slow him down at all . . . but I wish I hadn't seen it happen, because I think I was more shaken-up than he was (this fits into my theory that childbirth is much more difficult for someone watching the whole ordeal, i.e. the dad).

It's Called Independence Day For a Reason

I love skipping parades . . . I hate skipping and I hate parades, but I love skipping parades.

Dave's Not Here

Dave's not here, man, he's vacationing on the Cape, wearing Nantucket Red shorts and listening to Vampire Weekend, when he could be home listening to Cheech and Chong, the bastard.

Candlepin Bowling vs. Ten Pin Bowling

You'll have to head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for your Daily Dose of Dave . . . I list the 27,000 reasons that candlepin bowling is better than traditional ten-pin bowling, and I also swear a serious sporting oath . . . check it out.

Brain Freeze

The human memory is a black box, we know things go in it, we know that we can sometimes retrieve what we know -- sometimes we know we know something, but we can't retrieve it at the moment, sometimes we forget things completely, and sometimes we forget things temporarily, and then they return to the surface of our consciousness spontaneously at a later time -- for instance, you'd think that if two kids came into your classroom, politely asked you if you had ever seen a "baby-freeze," and then when you said "no," they made sure of this (you've never seen one on MTV or YouTube? I didn't bother to tell them that I hadn't watched MTV since the mid-'90's . . . the days of The Real World and Beavis and Butthead) and then asked if you'd like to see a "baby-freeze" and then -- when you said, "sure," they broke down into two frozen and contorted positions -- creating a strange tableau . . . one kid with his face on the ground, propped on his arms, his legs in the air, the other kid with his arms propped on the desk and the rest of his body floating frozen in the air -- and they held this pose for twenty seconds or so, and then unfroze themselves, thanked me and went on their way . . . and this all happened at 7:15 AM and then I taught three classes in a row -- three different classes -- which erases my brain of just about everything, and so I never told anyone what happened, and I didn't even remember what happened until several days ago, when I was walking back from a lovely lunch with my wife in Chatham -- without the kids -- and the image came back to me, but I wondered if I had the term right: "baby freeze" and it turns out that's what it's called and I've provided an image or two so you can see it, and if you want to learn, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials . . . but it's harder than it looks (and it looks hard).

I Get Paddled Several Ways (All Deservingly)

Two hours into our ride to Cape Cod, I realized that I had packed my inflatable stand-up paddle-board, but had forgotten the paddle -- and this made me very angry, as I knew I would pay an arm and a leg on the Cape if I had to buy one (I even contemplated using Amazon overnight shipping) but luckily there was a kayak and paddle-board rental place down the street from my cousin's house in Chatham, at the town landing on the Oyster River . . . my Uncle Mike explained how to get there and then warned me about John, the long-winded local who ran the place, and his warning was accurate: not only did I have to pay fifty dollars to rent a paddle for the week, but I also had to listen to an hour of anecdotes while standing in the fog at the dock before I could take the paddle; I heard about his first wife, his divorce, the tax rate, the worth of his two story underground house, his family history, his life on the water, his retirement at forty-four from the "water taxi" business, the chipped windshield on his new pick-up, the dent on the side of his new pick-up, and a particularly long story about how he threw a beer can at Harry Connick junior because he was driving by the Oyster River town landing too fast in his fancy speedboat, creating a wake in a "no wake zone," and then how he drove over to Harry Connick's house (which is on the Oyster Pond) and made his way onto the property -- scaring Connick's kids (who had just seen him throw a beer can at their dad) -- and found Connick in the yard, thrust his hand into his gut (at this point, John the rental guy thrust his hand into my gut and I had no idea what was going on) and said to Harry Connick: "Harry, I'm a big enough man to apologize" and was looking for a hand-shake . . . and he said Connick shook his hand but was not a big enough man to apologize for driving his fancy speedboat too fast in the "no wake zone" but he did say that now every time Connick passes John's rental dock at the town landing, he waves at John (probably because he considers him slightly insane and doesn't want him stalking him) and then -- Thank God -- his cell-phone rang, because I had no idea how to end this interaction, but this afforded me time to escape, and I must say, this was a great lesson for me, paying for the paddle with time, money, and awkwardness  -- my motto with packing used to be "don't worry, if we forget something, we'll buy it, we're on vacation" but from this day forward, I will pack much more carefully.

Bonus Post for RISK Fans!

If you've ever played RISK (The Game of Global Domination) and you want to globally dominate, then you're going to want to read my post about The Eight Types of RISK Players over at Gheorghe: The Blog.

You Shouldn't Wish People Dead (Spoilers?)

I'd like to apologize for my sentence the other day about George R.R. Martin -- it's gauche to wish someone dead just because he wrote a boring book, and it's my fault for finishing the thing, but I will say this -- and I don't even think these are spoilers -- there are two big scenes in A Dance with Dragons that take a nearly a thousand pages of exposition to set up, and each one contains a vital character that there is no possible way in hell anyone except the nerdiest of the nerdiest is going to remember . . . the first is when Bloodbeard presents the head of Groleo to King Hizdahr . . . and you are supposed to remember that this is some sort of retaliation for Yurkhaz zo Yunzak, but mainly I was thinking: Groleo? Who the f-- is Groleo? Am I supposed to know this Groleo? I am supposed to feel a certain way about his severed head? and then in the last chapter (but before the Epilogue) Daenerys, starved and stranded in the Dothraki grasslands, but accompanied by her dragon, encounters the khalasar of Khal Jhaqo, who betrayed her old husband -- Khal Drogo -- after his death . . . but again, I was thinking: who the f-- is Khal Jhaqo? Is this an interesting coincidence? A new character? because I think the last time he was in the series was several thousand pages ago . . . but thank the Seven Gods for the internet -- but if I'm going to have to read the internet every time something happens in the series, then there is something seriously wrong with this series, and upon further reflection, I'm taking back my apology and once again wishing George R.R. Martin dead, so that I don't have to suffer through any more climactic anti-climaxes.

Dog Park Jazz Recommendations

A middle-aged rather distinguished African-American gentleman that I talk to at the dog park has been giving me some good jazz recommendations . . . and I'm trying not to be stereotypical, but he's exactly the kind of guy that you'd imagine would give good jazz recommendations, so sometimes stereotypes have a silver lining . . . anyway, I've been listening to a lot of Robert Glasper and Christian Scott lately.

Things You Don't See Every Day

While driving down South Fifth Avenue, the steep hill that descends to Donaldson Park, my son Ian and I saw three twenty-somethings rolling large logs up the street . . . there is a pile of these logs at the bottom of the street, near the public works building -- I suppose they are waiting to be chipped, but as for now they are free for the taking, but most people take them in pick-up trucks, but these kids were doing it by hand, and sweating their asses off; I assume they were going to use them for stools or burn them or something, but now that I am home, I'm a bit worried, because the skies have gone dark and a thunderstorm in approaching, and if they lose their grip, those things are going to be giant wooden juggernauts, hurtling down South Fifth, smacking into cars, pedestrians, shrubbery, and front porches . . . but I live more towards Second Avenue, so who cares.

I Hate George R.R. Martin and Hope He Dies Before He Finishes His Next Book

I just finished A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin's fifth book in his epic series A Song of Ice and Fire, and while it's not as tedious and annoying as A Feast for Crows, it is still pretty damn boring . . . overly-descriptive and hyper-detailed in a self-congratulatory style that begs for editing -- reading it was more like homework than pleasure, and there is no comparison to the first three books -- which were fast-paced, grim, realistic, surprising, and genre-breaking . . . I finished this one simply to find out what happens, and when I was mired seven hundred pages in, dealing with chapter after chapter of incomprehensible family relationships, bloody flux, and descriptions of provisions, I realized that perhaps I had read more pages of George R.R. Martin than any other author -- over 5000 pages of his prose (I've read a lot of Neal Stephenson and Elmore Leonard and Kurt Vonnegut, but probably not 5000 pages worth . . . maybe Stephen J. Gould?) and I haven't really liked the last 2000 pages of his narrative, but I'm in too deep to quit now, and so I'm hoping that Martin contracts a fatal case of the "pale mare" before he publishes another pedantic volume, and thus spares me from reading it (although I'm sure even if he dies, some hack will take his notes and finish the saga . . . and I'll probably read it just so I'm ahead of the HBO series and don't end up being humiliated in a "Red Wedding Reactions Compilation" video).

Levels of Deception and Subjectivity in Sports

You'll have to head over to Gheorghe: The Blog today to get your daily dose of Dave: I've ranked a bunch of sports on an objectivity/subjectivity continuum and then noted the correspondence between subjectivity of the sport and the amount of deception in the sport . . . this is more fun than it sounds (and I've included some compelling images as well . . . so if you have some time to kill, check it out).

A Man Compliments My Toes

I was at a party on Saturday night, and unfortunately there was a corn-hole set in the backyard, and this was unfortunate because I am VERY good at corn-hole -- so good that it's a little sad and obsessive, and while people generally compliment my skills or get fired up to beat me, I am sure that they also think that I am a little pathetic, which is true (although the fact that my wife was my partner, and also kicking corn-hole ass, might have made things a little more acceptable) but I can't help it, there's nothing I enjoy more than cutting out the small talk at a party, and instead playing a simple game and drinking beer -- so I've gotten my 10,000 hours of practice and it pays off . . . anyway, I was wearing sandals at the party and my friend Ashley said the nicest thing that anyone has ever said about my feet; he told me, "You have Roman toes" and when I asked what that meant, he said that Romans have a certain kid of toe -- and while I think my toes look perfectly normal, my wife always calls them "weird looking," but "Roman" is a much better adjective than weird, and then Ashley went on to tell me that Romans are often good at spatial activities -- thus my skill at corn-hole . . . and while I'm not sure I buy this -- I think my skill at corn-hole derives from getting bored with chit-chat, an explanatory YouTube video, many hours of practice at the Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip, and the fact that it's really only tossing a bean-bag -- I'm still quite pleased because generally, when people look at my feet, they either turn away in disgust, or say I have "hobbit-feet" because of the amount of hair on them, so "Roman toes" is a step up.

Unassigned Homework

The last thing any teacher needs during exam time is more work, but somehow the Story Contest Crew forgot this, and we had an end of the year contest -- but a Scary Story doesn't fit for the end of the year, so instead we drew six elements from various bags -- and you had to include all these elements in your three-page story . . . this was painful and hard, but I am pleased to say that I was involved in a three way tie for first and lost by one in the run-off (and I would have won outright if Stacey didn't change her vote at the last minute!) because I had an especially ridiculous draw and had to write a story from the point-of-view of a teenage girl to make it work (and some people didn't recognize that I wrote the story, which made me very happy, anyway . . . here is what I drew from the bags: CHARACTER: Buddhist; CONFLICT: restrictive parents; TONE: scandalous; OBJECT: Manic Panic Hot Hot Pink Hair Dye; SETTING: Roller Rink (circa 1985); PHRASE: Oh my God, it's full of stars . . . how would you put them together?)

Hidden Talents

My eight year old son Ian is a hula hoop wizard - he can do two at a time, spin it around his knees, and walk while hula-hooping -- and this got me very jealous and angry because I couldn't do it at all, but I went on YouTube and watched a few tutorials and now I can get it going for a while (although I can't do any tricks . . . it's hard enough for me to keep the thing rotating around my sturdy mid-section).

This Too Shall Pass

My son Ian is a member of "the piggy club," but his brother Alex is not -- despite the fact that many of his friends profess to being members of the aforementioned club . . . Alex says he finds it annoying to talk at length about piggies.

Huge Cement Shoes to Fill

Although celebrity deaths don't usually occupy my consciousness, James Gandolfini's demise is slightly different . . . because not only is he the celebrity representative of my home state (along with Frank and Bruce) but he is also one of the few celebrities that I have met in my life: seven years ago, after a Rutgers football game, Gandolfini went to McCormick's Irish Pub (with the possible intent to score some controlled substances, as he said my friend and colleague Kevin: "I hear this is the most drug infested bar in New Brunswick," but Kevin disappointed him by replying: "I guess not tonight") and then Gandolfini signed up to play pool (after he left, the bartender took the sheet down in order to preserve his autograph) and I was on the table and taking all challengers, so I got to play some pool with Tony Soprano; he was very friendly, but also very wasted . . . so wasted that his handlers had to take him home, and the main point of this rambling tribute is that I was very impressed by Gandolfini's size . . . he wasn't Hollywood fat (like Jack Black or Seth Rogen) he was actually fat . . . big and looming and corpulent, and I appreciate that kind of honesty in art.

It's Not All Books That Are As Dull as Their Readers (But Some Are!)

I started my summer reading with two rather boring tomes, or I find them boring -- which may be a shortcoming of my own brain, but at least I recognize that they are boring for contrary reasons: Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy is Wrong is by Edward Conard, a former managing director of Bain Capital -- and while it paints a rather different picture of the 2008 Financial Collapse than the documentary Inside Job or The Big Short by Michael Lewis (according to Conard, the collapse was a run on the bank, caused by a lack of faith in short term credit, not the fault of CDO's and credit default swaps -- and the government was largely to blame for this by subsidizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which allowed the creation of more and more sub-prime loans . . . his philosophy is: why would banks want to hold mortgages they thought would default, unless forced by the government to issue such loans, and he also blames "irrational exuberance" in the real-estate market . . . some people -- such as this Anonymous Banker --think Conard makes some good points, while other folks hate his guts and think the book is a "serious abuse of facts") and while I think he makes some logical points about how America is competing against 75 cents-an-hour labor overseas and needs to counter this with investment and innovation -- I mainly want to say this is one of the driest, most boring books I have ever read, and any attempt Conard makes to insert humor into the flow is forced and pathetic, and he offers no anecdotes from his time at Bain Capital, nor does he ever address the human cost of the crisis -- he's very cold and cavalier about the lost jobs, lost equity, the evictions, the short sales, and the general decay of the middle class -- so I can hardly recommend reading this thing unless you're really dying to learn more about the economic theory behind the Financial Crisis . . . on the other hand, I am six hundred pages through George R.R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons and this book is SO full of anecdote and detail and description that the plot barely moves . . . and I can't recommend this book unless you're dying to find out more things about the pantheon of Game of Thrones characters -- as it is NOT a thrilling read.

Serenity Now?

My wife and I noticed that everyone in our house was losing their temper more than usual (aside from the dog, who retreats upstairs when people argue) and after an especially ugly weekend when we both resorted to whacking our son on the ass (on separate occasions) we decided to institute a new system, with two jars and a bunch of "animal counters," and since everyone in our house thrives on competition, we made it a contest . . . Alex and Ian versus my wife and me: if you lose your shit, then a counter goes into the jar, and I am proud to say that I haven't flipped out on my kids for over a week (nine days, to be exact) but I have noticed an inverse relationship between not-flipping-out and alcohol consumption . . . serenity now!

It's All the Same Thing (No New Tails to Tell)

It was 4:14 on Friday afternoon, and I was cutting up old deck boards so I could put them in contractor bags and toss them, when I saw a rustling in the ivy by our fence; upon closer inspection, I found that the rustling was being caused by a cub raccoon -- which was very cute and about the size of a fuzzy chipmunk -- so I called the boys and retreated to the deck, and soon enough -- as I predicted -- a mama raccoon came scurrying down the tree with the big hole in it, and then she did something I didn't expect, she whacked and bit the hell out of the baby raccoon, then walked away for a moment, and waited, but the baby didn't follow, and then she walked back over and used her mouth to pick up the cub by the scruff of his neck, and carried him back up the tree to the big hole, which is obviously their home, so that the recalcitrant cub could learn the definition of nocturnal and write it a thousand times on the inside of their hole . . . and at first my kids thought the mommy raccoon was mean, but when I pointed out that we chastise them for similar dangerous activities -- such as crossing the street without looking or wrestling at the top of the stairs -- they understood what was going on, but I don't think that just because they understand the analogy means they are going to behave with any more common sense.

I Have Achieved a New Level of Manliness

Last week, in order to expedite the demolition of my deck, I bought a "wrecking bar," and never in my life have I felt so macho about a purchase (although I didn't buy the mega-42 inch bar, I went with the medium-sized 36 inch bar . . . I didn't want to get too carried away with myself).

Meta-Anachronism (Another Question of Dave)

How does Tank -- a self-professed child of Zion -- who claims to have been born outside of the Matrix, in reality, make the comment "Hey Mikey, I think he likes it" when Neo is down-loading ju-jitsu and various other forms  of karate . . . how could someone born outside of the computer fabricated reality make an allusion to a 1970's Life Cereal commercial which may or may not have even happened inside the complex computer program enslaving all humans in the film?

Question of Dave #2 (e.g. Jack Nicholson)

How does one avoid becoming a caricature of oneself?

Question of Dave (i.e. Donald Trump)

To be truly considered a man, do you need to go bankrupt at least once in your life?

No Way You're Beating This Statistic (nor would you want to)

It's been very humid lately here in central New Jersey, and so when I try to yank my socks onto my sweaty feet, I'm ripping one sock for every four sock-putting-on attempts.

If I Were a Double Amputee . . .

If I were a double amputee, I would definitely behave exactly like the man described in Erik Larson's fantastic non-fiction account of The Chicago World's Fair of 1894 -- The Devil in the White City; the aforementioned amputee made his way around the fair on false limbs and crutches, and a visitor constantly "peppered" him with questions, and finally said: "There's one more thing I'd like to know, and I'll not trouble ye anymore . . . I'd like to know how you lost your legs," and the double amputee said he would only answer on "the strict condition that this indeed was the last question" and then he told the inquisitive man "they were bit off" and crutched away, while the annoying and curious man yelled, "Bit off? How . . .?"

You've Got to Have Dreams

Erik Larson's non-fiction book The Devil in the White City deals with two dreamers: Daniel Hudson Burnham, the architect and director of the magnificent and monolithic Chicago World's Fair of 1894, and Henry H. Holmes, the serial killer who built a "death hotel" on land in Englewood, near the World's Fair, so he could gas young women, children, and other unsuspecting folks that he pulled into his magnetic field of trust . . . and while one of these men was working for civic duty in order to better a city he loved and the other for evil and perverse motivations that perhaps even he didn't understand fully, they both had the need to build an architectural impossibility to achieve their dreams . . . and they both succeed! . . . Larson does an amazing job of smoothly presenting all the details for both events, details both glorious and heinous -- he did all the reading for you (as evidenced by the bibliography and pages and pages of copious notes) and I highly recommend this book, especially for folks who love architecture, civic politics, urban planning, and serial homicide.

Million to one shot, doc, million to one . . .

If you're the kind of person that enjoys seeing a grown man rolling on the floor in agony, crying profusely while mucous shoots from his nose, then you are probably a bad person who has no soul . . . but you might enjoy this post: yesterday morning, I was making my signature dish (roasted tomatillo salsa) and while chopping a roasted jalapeno, fresh out of the broiler, a seed shot out of the hot pepper and straight into my eye -- under the lower eye-lid, and I couldn't get it out, though I pulled out my eyelid, and dumped water from a two gallon jug all over my face -- but my hands were covered in jalapeno juice, so grabbing my eye-lid just exacerbated things, and the pain got so bad and my vision so blurry that at one point I was on the floor on all fours, moaning in pain and unable to see, but finally I was able to stumble up the stairs to the shower -- but we only have one bathroom with a shower in our house and the door was closed -- and as I tried to open it, my son Alex yelled, "I'm doing number two!" but I didn't care and barged in, stripped off my clothes, and let the water wash over my swollen eye, and I'm not sure if it was the pressure of the shower water or my lacrimal system which removed the seed, but eventually I could tell that it was out of my eye -- and then I remembered that the broiler was still on, and that the tomatillos might get cooked beyond the recommended chestnut brown color, so I started yelling to the boys (Catherine was out getting a pedicure while I endured this suffering) to shut off the broiler, but they couldn't figure it out and so I drunkenly careened down the stairs, shut off the broiler, peeled the blackened parts off the tomatillos and then heroically finished the salsa, which ended up being delicious (though slightly spicier than normal because of the extra-special ingredient . . . middle-aged human tears).

It Was Surprisingly Funny

We saw Joe DeRosa do stand-up the other night at The Stress Factory, and his main theme was: embrace your vices, because the world is so screwed up that if you can face it without drinking and drugs and porn, then there's something wrong with you (and he had wonderful sub-themes about filling the lonely spaces in his life with fast food and the fact that in all eight stages of life, you are never free).

That's How to Perorate

At my mother's retirement dinner on Thursday, Catherine, myself and the boys read a list of The Top Ten Benefits of Grammy's Retirement -- it contained items such as "Now Grammy will have time to take us to the movies that mom and dad don't want to see"and it was a light and breezy counterpoint to most of the speeches, which were generally sappy and emotional . . . which was to be expected in a room full middle-aged female elementary school teachers . . . but Ian got a case of stage-fright when it was his turn to read, and so Alex stepped up and read it for him, and then Ian kept trying to hide behind Alex, and as I finished the tenth item on the list, they got into their typical horseplay and knocked over the heavy wooden podium, which fell backwards and hit the floor with a resounding THUD . . . and though it wasn't planned, it certainly put an exclamation point on our performance.

This Gets the Dave Stamp of Approval

While I normally eschew passing along YouTube videos . . . because I'm far too significant, dynamic and brilliant a thinker to simply be a parasitic purveyor of internet memes-- Sentence of Dave is so much more than that . . . but I think the theme of this particular parody is "meta" enough for me to suspend my elitism about base forms of internet use and pass along, so shed your hipness and enjoy some music that is "pure and honest, bordering on weird and Amish."

Is It So Weird to Do a Little Research?

My students found it odd that I was reading Over-Dressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion and when I told them that I was reading it because I was about to go on my first solo clothes shopping trip ever (not that I've never bought clothing before -- but usually just an individual item, and most of my clothes are either gifts or hand-me-downs from my brother, father, and even a colleague's boyfriend, who lost weight and gave me all his fat pants) because all of my clothes, shoes, and belts wore out at once a few weeks ago and so I was in serious need of everything . . . and one of those 30% off Kohls coupons came in the mail, so I went for it -- and it was a disaster, of course; I pulled over a rack of women's nightgowns, nearly walked into the women's dressing room, bought pants that were too long, lost my cart innumerable times, and had trouble finding the items I needed -- and then they wouldn't let me use my wife's charge card (they probably figured: there's no way this idiot is married) and so I had to get my own card in order to use the coupon, and I somehow lost my driver's license in this transaction (though it turned up a week later) and while I learned a lot about the big picture of globalized fashion from Elizabeth Cline's book, it didn't help me at all with actual shopping, and my students thought the only thing weirder than me reading a book about fashion was me reading a book to prepare to go shopping at Kohls . . . but what's wrong with doing a little research?

Dave Writes a Fashion Post!

The moral of Elizabeth Cline's elegantly written expose Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion is grim: "We own more clothes than we can wear, the quality and craftsmanship of our wardrobes is at an all-time low, and the U.S. manufacturing base can't compete on wages with the developing world, costing countless domestic jobs," but Cline does find hope in two places: the first is when she learns the joy of sewing . . . she finds a subculture of folks who won't stand for cheap "fast-fashion" clothes and won't pay inordinate designer prices, so they either make their own clothes or modify the ones they have, and while I don't think I'm going to go out and buy a sewing machine, this book has made me look at where my clothes were made and examine the stitching and material a little more closely . . . and the second place she sees hope is in fair trade companies that are making quality clothes in America with organic materials for a reasonable price (although a hell of a lot more expensieve than H & M or Forever 21) and I highly recommend this book if you are like me and know next to nothing about clothes and fashion, and it might even be interesting to someone who is a fashionista because of Freakonomics-style global take on the topic.

What is the Opposite of Fasting? Gluttony, Of Course . . .

I have put back on nearly every pound that I lost on my brief two-day-a-week-fasting-diet -- not only was I completely wrong about my ability to eat 600 calories every Monday and Wednesday for the rest of my life, but I also think the fasting triggered some reversal in my metabolism and I've been eating like crazy ever since -- I had an especially gluttonous twelve hours last Thursday night all the way into Friday; I ate a late night cheeseburger from The System at midnight on Thursday night (Pete wouldn't even let me in the bar with it because of the smell -- I had to eat it outside) and then the next day at work, bloated and gassy from beer and the burger, I was reminded that I was judging the Foods Workshop Celebrity Cook Off . . . nine courses, in the style of celebrity chefs such as Bobby Flay and Rachel Ray and Masahara Morimoto and Julia Child; the kids finished their dishes in an impressive chaotic rush, food they had ben preparing for weeks and we judged on presentation, taste, and creativity -- and I am proud to say that I was the only teacher on the panel to eat every bite of all nine courses (plus seconds on a couple) we had chicken parm, lasagna with home made noodles, quesadillas, enchilidas, tie-dye cake, butter cake, chcolate eclair, hamburger in an egg roll with dipping sauce (drunk food!) and super spicy chicken and rice . . . and I had to teach the next period and it was 90 degrees in my room and I seriously thought I was going to upchuck on some unlucky student in the front row, but then I took the kids to the library -- which has AC -- to work on their presentations, and I was able to stave off a public vomiting (though I was so full that I couldn't sit down) and I am hoping that I get an invite next year so I can repeat the endeavor.

Kids Don't Know Shit

I can't refer to The Matrix any more in class -- my students haven't seen it-- and when my older son, who was involved in some inane either/or scenario debate with his younger brother, asked (with all sincerity) "Do you mean a pool or a pond?" I (of course) immediately said, "A pond would be good for you" but neither of them knew what I was talking about (so then I showed them the clip, but out of context it doesn't make much sense, so then I had to explain the clip to them, and then I found this ridiculous video . . . maybe I should just give up and only make allusions to stuff they've seen).

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.