Nerding It Up, Tolkien Style

My son Alex, who is in 4th grade, recently finished reading The Hobbit, and he's now deep into the first book of Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and while I must admit this is some impressive and precocious reading, the fact that he's also going to be Legolas for Halloween gives me some cause for concern . . . thank God he's athletic.

I Quietly Make Spelling Suggestion

Though I'm not particularly in tune with the world of the hearing impaired, I would like to make a humble suggestion which I think would vastly improve not only the English language, but American Sign Language as well . . . I think if someone can't hear very well, then you should refer to it as a hearing deaficit (I'm not really sure if this horrible pun will make a difference in how you sign the word, but I'm hoping it does) .

Opposite Day!

For those of you who haven't been taking notes, here are summaries of my two children: Ian is vengeful, competitive, and artistic; Alex is kind, loquacious, and melodramatic . . . and so on Friday, when my wife handed me two certificates, and one was the "Art Achievement Certificate" and the other was the "Character Honor Roll Certificate for Caring," I made the obvious assumption . . . and it's not like I had nothing to go on: Ian won the Art Student of the Year Award in 2nd Grade and Alex is the kid who asks an injured player -- even if he's on the opposing team -- if he's OK, and so I thought my inference was solid but -- miracle beyond all possible miracles -- Alex won the Art Certificate and Ian won the Caring Award . . . and so this makes me wonder if my characterization of my children is all wrong, or too simplistic, but it's too late to restructure things now, so I think I'll forge ahead with what I've got and call this incident an anomaly.

Scary Cetacean

My son Ian's wash pencil drawing of a humpback whale is surreal and almost beautiful, if it wasn't for the glowing red eye.

When You Win, Rub It In

The closest thing to hitting the lottery during a day of teaching high school is when your prep period gets extended for some unforeseen reason (such as the PSAT taking much longer to administer than planned) and the thing to do when this happens is to drop by your friends' classrooms, while eating a snack, and complain about how you don't know what to do with all your free time.

The Rule Gets Bigger and Better

One of the wonderful things about teaching is that you get to expand and develop ideas that you barely fleshed out the year before . . . unlike real life, you get as many chances as you need to get it right; several years ago I extemporaneously introduced this important life rule to my class, but then I forgot about it until last Tuesday, when a number of students who were absent before the holiday weekend came into class and did the typical -- just before class, one at a time, they approached my desk, and asked me "What did I miss?" and once I explained to one student, then another materialized and asked the same question, and this reminded me of my rule, and so I delivered a monologue that I will approximate here:

"I'm going to introduce you to a rule that does not just apply to my class, or education in general; this is a rule that you need to learn if you want to participate in our American educational system, and it is also a rule that you need to learn if you want to participate in our American economy . . . if you wish to move to the woods and live like Thoreau then you don't need to listen this, but everyone else, please pay attention . . . if you are ever absent -- from school, from work, from a team meeting, from a committee -- from any event, and you need to find out what happened at this event from your superior, then when you ask, you must provide some piece of information about what you missed, you need to ascertain some piece of information about what you missed, and include this when you ask your superior what to do about your absence -- and this is to show you care  about what you missed, and so you will approach me and say, "I was absent on Friday but I know we had to read an essay and write a page about the theme, and I was wondering if there's anything else I need to make-up?" and if you don't approach me like this, with some piece of information about what happened in class when you were away, then your failure will be epic and monumental, because there has been no generation in the history of mankind that has been more connected technologically then your generation, no generation where information has been more accessible, whether through Facebook or texting or e-mail, and so your neglect in having any idea of what went on in class is both insulting and irresponsible . . . I realize that in past times, when you needed to beat a drum or send smoke signals, in order to communicate that the plague is coming, or some other horror, that it was much more difficult to share information -- but now you have the wherewithal to at least pretend that you care, it's easy to fake it, and I fake it all the time -- I'm a coach, so I get to miss all kinds of meetings, which is one of the things I love about coaching: I get paid to miss meetings and be outside and run soccer drills, but when I meet with my superiors, I pretend that I am interested in what I missed . . . I say, "I know I missed the diabetes presentation, and what can I do to make this up?" even though I don't care about diabetes, because that's what you do in order to pretend to show that you care," and I know my monologue hit home, because the next day, when a girl who was absent for the monologue asked me what she missed in class, the students erupted in a chorus of "Don't say that!" and then they quickly filled her in on the life-lesson from the day before.

I Would Be a Narcoleptic FBI Agent

I am watching the first season of 24 on Netflix -- but in order to fit this into my busy fall schedule, I've been staying up a little later than normal, and this has taken it's toll . . . I can barely get up in the morning, though I've gotten eight hours more sleep than anyone on the show . . . in fact, if I were Jack Bauer, I think all I could muster would be 14 and then I would need a nap (or perhaps there is a surprise episode, where everyone crashes . . . if you've seen the show, please don't reveal any napping spoilers).

This Market Sentence is More Fun Than Yesterday's Market Sentence

If you watched Trading Places when you were a kid, you probably didn't understand what happens on the trading floor at the end of the movie -- I certainly didn't . . . you might remember that it has to do with commodity trading and orange juice futures-- but now you can revisit the scene and the other financial aspects of the plot in this 99% Invisible podcast, entitled Episode 84b: Trading Places with Planet Money; Roman Mars interviews some actual commodity traders, reviews the legality of all that happens in the film, and plays plenty of clips . . . and now I have a much better idea of how to "sell high, and then turn around and buy low" and I also understand why they had to insert an "Eddie Murphy Rule" into the Dodd-Frank Bill.

If You Are Invested in the Stock Market, Do Not Read This Sentence

Yikes . . . Justin Fox's book The Myth of the Rational Market, which bills itself as a "history of risk, reward, and delusion on Wall Street" is enlightening, but not fun to read -- it has plenty of history . . . chronicling a century's worth of market economic theories, and a huge cast of characters (from Roger Babson to Milton Friedman to Daniel Kahneman to Benoit Mandelbrot) and plenty of delusion . . . with market theories that attributed to swings in value to "spots on the sun" or "animal spirits" or "irrational exuberance" or -- the most popular -- an omniscient and very efficient market . . . but in the end, though the theories of dead economists resurface, and one school of thought quickly succumbs to the next (very much like the field of education) there is still no way to tell the difference between "speculative excess" and an "entirely sustainable boom" . . . in other words, no one knows how to value a stock accurately . . . but though you may lose your shirt in the market, there's still a positive moral in the last paragraph of the book: "the countries that have better-developed financial markets really do better."

Bad Smells Come in Threes

I took a day off last week, in order to get a few things done, and one of those things I needed to get done was the pickling and preserving of all the peppers from my wife's garden, and this turned out to be a more time-consuming and difficult job than I imagined, because the pressure cooker and canning set I ordered from Amazon contained a broken pressure cooker (I should have opened the box ahead of time) and so in order to sterilize and seal my produce, I had to do it the old-fashioned way and boil the jars in pots of water . . . and the canning process is grueling and rather smelly -- lots of boiling vinegar and capsicum -- and once I finished I thought I had made my quota for bad smells in one day, but that was not how things went down . . . I had barely any time between canning and practice, just enough to walk my dog -- The Best Dog in the World -- and because he is The Best Dog in the World, I let him off leash in the park, and he immediately took off running towards a specific spot of grass and began intently rolling on this patch of grass, as if he wanted to absorb the very essence of this patch of grass -- and I thought: what could smell so good that you want to embody its essence? and the answer to that question, if you are a dog -- even The Best Dog in the World-- is rotten meat; some wild animal must have raided the park garbage and found some uncooked chicken thighs and ribs, as that's what Sirius was rolling in, and he was also gnawing on a meaty bone -- which I yanked from his mouth-- and then the stench hit me, and amazing palpable stench, invasive and offensive, a wet stink of decay, and so I dragged him home and tried to clean him with wet-wipes because I had to get to practice, but wet-wipes didn't even dent it . . . so I had to give him a bath-- which he hates-- but even after soap and warm water, he still reeked . . . but I had to leave for practice, so I put the cushions up so he wouldn't befoul the couch and left (when my wife came home, she immediately noticed the awful stench emanating from him, and promptly sprayed him with Febreze brand air-freshener . . . please don't tell the Humane Society) and even when I got home from practiced, I could still smell something nasty -- while I sat at the very desk where I wrote this very sentence-- but I had to go to my next soccer practice, so I couldn't wash the dog again, but then when I got home from Soccer Practice #2, I realized that the smell was emanating from my right cleat, which had fecal matter caked between the studs, so I used Windex Vinegar Spray (ironic!) to loosen the shit and clean the bottom of my cleat, and I don't think there's a moral to this story, but I still wonder why my dog wanted so desperately to roll around in a pile of rotten meat.

On the Rarity of Switch-Hitting Authors

Someone smart and well-read could develop this idea into a full-fledged essay, but I don't have the time or the mental stamina for that, so I'll just offer my thesis and maybe someone will run with it: I just finished the new David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays Etc. and while I loved the essays -- typical Sedaris . . . forays to the dentist, the taxidermist, the British countryside the airport, and the bar car of a train -- I did not love (and mainly skipped) the "etc." which are short fictional pieces in which he wrote in the voices of a woman, a father, and a sixteen year old girl with a fake British accent; this brings me to my thesis: there are certain writers who I will only read their non-fiction, though they may have written novels and fiction; David Sedaris is one of these writers -- I only want him to be himself -- and it is the same with Chuck Klosterman -- I read his non-fiction fanatically but I haven't read any of his novels, not one word . . . I just want him to be Chuck Klosterman . . . it's the same with another favorite of mine, Geoff Dyer -- I'd love to read more by him, but I won't even open his four novels . . . and then there are authors who I will only read their fiction and could care less about their life and actual voice: Elmore Leonard, James Michener, Umberto Eco, etc. and then there are those rare authors who are masters of both forms: George Orwell, Mark Twain, and James Ellroy immediately come to mind . . . and though I often contemplate writing a great sci-fi novel, I think that I am a member of the first category, and probably can only muster the Voice of Dave with any consistency and energy.

Soccer

Soccer . . . soccer soccer soccer soccer soccer . . . soccer . . . soccer soccer . . . soccer . . . sometimes when you say a word too many times, it starts to sound weird.

Jersey Vernacular

I took a day off from school Thursday, and so I was able to walk the dog at a reasonable hour (7:30 AM) and on my return . . . on my way down South Third Avenue . . . I saw another guy walking a dog -- and he was coming right towards me -- and it's always easier to avoid other dogs, because Sirius can be annoying when he's on his leash and meets and greets another dog, because he'll want to posture and play, but as I started to cross the street, the guy -- in his twenties -- said, "Don't worry, I'm going in," and then he walked up onto his porch with his dog, and so I said, "Yeah, my dog can be annoying when he's on leash, he'll drag you . . ." and before I could finish my sentence, he yelled to me: "My dog is an asshole too . . . come on puppy" and then he went inside his house -- and he said this loudly and clearly, and in a perfectly friendly way that only someone with a lifetime of using profanity in public could pull off . . . and maybe he said it because it was raining, and so there weren't any children or old ladies on the street, or maybe that's just the kind of language you can hear early on a Thursday morning if you walk your dog in Central Jersey.

Revenge Porn Solution

The media claims that California's Anti-Revenge Porn Bill doesn't have enough teeth, but there's an easier way to deal with this problem -- every American that uses the internet should be required to submit a nude photo, and also required to update this photo yearly, thus preempting any nude-revenge photos and also watering down all the viewable pornography on the internet to the point where it won't be worth even trying to find anything aesthetically pleasing to look at, saving billions of dollars in wasted time and also saving an entire generation of children from the perils of salacious images.

Yuck

Sunday morning, instead of screaming and smashing it with a thick novel, my wife reached down and picked up a large black hairy spider . . . with her hand . . . her explanation: "I thought it was a Lego."

YouTube and High School Seniors: Perfect Together

The administration has finally unblocked YouTube at my school, and although it can result in pedagogical mishaps like this one, I think I'm cognizant enough to use it as a tool, and not squander valuable class time watching videos of terroristic Brazilian reality shows . . . and I certainly use a lot of video clips in class already, but there's nothing like making a great connection in your brain and then being able to immediately share it with the class . . . here are two recent examples:

1) during Shakespeare's 12th Night, Sebastian -- the twin brother of Viola, the lead, who is in disguise as a man -- is seduced by the lovely Olivia . . . but Olivia has actually never met Sebastian, she has fallen in love with Viola, and the love is unrequited . . . so it is a complete case of mistaken identity; Sebastian has never met Olivia until this very moment, and she approaches him and asks, "Would thou'dst be ruled by me?" and Sebastian takes a look at her . . . and she is attractive . . . and he takes a look at her house . . . and it is magnificent . . . and he sees her ordering around servants . . . and so he says, "Madam, I will" and then she comes back with a priest and he agrees to marry her, and the guys in my class usually understand this wild and spontaneous decision perfectly-- because they are waiting for some beautiful girl to do the same to them-- while the girls think it's a bit insane and impulsive (as one girl said: "What if they don't like the same Netflix shows?") so it leads to a good discussion of gender roles and double standards and what would you do if someone pulled up in a really nice car and they were beautiful and beckoned you to get in . . . and of course the boys say they would get in the convertible with the beautiful woman and the girls say they would think twice about getting in the BMW with the tall, dark, and handsome man, and then -- to further explain this to anyone who doesn't get Sebastian's behavior -- I showed them this clip:



2) and then the very next day, a young lady in my Composition class had the misfortune to be first person of the year to use the word "plethora" in an essay -- and since I teach advanced English classes, this event happens like clockwork, sometime every September, even though I do a lesson inspired by the great William Zinsser about "clutter" -- and there is no word more bombastic and absurd than plethora (other than the word "myriad") . . . and this student used it to describe a bunch of papers, and so I suggested either "pile" or "stack" and then -- after telling her it was "an intelligent person's error" and that someone uses the word every year and not to feel bad, I showed the class this clip -- which always echoes in my mind when I hear the word (and I haven't seen it since college) and, miraculously, the clip holds up . . . the litmus test being that it made a roomful (a plethora?) of serious and smart teenagers laugh out loud.

Someone Always Has It Worse (And He Might Be in the Lane Next to You)

Saturday, I was zooming across the Morris Goodkind Bridge, driving home from Gasko's Family Farm and Greenhouse, with a van loaded with mulch, topsoil, and two Leyland cypresses -- and I wasn't particular happy with plans for the afternoon, which involved some heavy lugging, some digging, and some planting -- but then I heard a loud WHAP and looked over at the car next to me and saw that his hood had flown into his windshield, completely obscuring his view (and shattering the windshield, I'm sure) and, luckily, there wasn't much traffic on the bridge, so he was able to steer onto the shoulder without plunging into the Raritan River, but his engine was steaming and that's no place to be stuck . . . and after seeing that up close, my fate for the rest of the afternoon seemed a lot more palatable.

Form vs. Content

In my Creative Writing class, I teach my students a very important lesson: what you learned in kindergarten is a lie, and it's not what's on the inside that counts . . . in short, sound is more important than sense and form overpowers content . . . and then I play "Delia's Gone" by Johnny Cash and "Good-bye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks to illustrate this -- if the song is in couplets and sounds happy, then even if the content is horrific, the effect isn't going to be tragic -- and then I have the kids experiment with this idea; I have them describe the same event -- usually gruesome and violent -- in both omniscient narrative form and limerick form, so we can note the effect, but before they begin I read them my examples; first a faux-news story about an angry husband who murders his nagging wife with an axe because she makes him clean and organize the shed while his favorite football team is on TV . . . the story is graphic and fairly objective, and then I present the same tale in limerick form, and I am quite proud of my limerick, because it's hard to write a good one with the right rhythm:

A hen-pecked husband named Max
murdered his wife with an axe--
he buried her head
out back by the shed--
and now he can finally relax.

Catching Up On Significant Events

Between school and coaching two soccer teams, I've been too busy to follow the news, but -- luckily -- on the bus ride back from Spotswood, the varsity coach got me caught up on some important global events: bikers acting like wolves; a masseuse acting like a goalie, and a referee and some fans acting like savages . . . and after viewing the following videos, I've decided to stop following world events, and instead continue concentrating on local soccer.

I Don't Want to Dress Like a Holiday

I usually wait a few days to write about current events -- I like to detach myself and let my thoughts solidify -- but I'm going to tackle this one while the iron is hot; yesterday, three people told me that I needed to "dress like a holiday" next Friday, as part of some school-spirit competition that pits the different departments against one another . . . and while I gamely wore a green shirt last month (although I was still chastised because I didn't score the maximum five points, which would have entailed wearing FIVE green items) I really don't like dressing out of the ordinary, nor do I like celebrating holidays, and so I was going to quietly avoid participating in this part of the competition -- but there is a sign-up sheet in the English office, and apparently people have been reading it closely, and these people noticed that I didn't select a holidays . . . and I sometimes have a hard time judging if these people are actually angry at me, or just joking around -- but one teacher said that "it wasn't fair" and she was going to "tell the school secretary to remove me from the department" and then she left the room before I could figure out if this was real or feigned anger, and now I'm in that weird spot where I might have to not "dress like a holiday" out of principle . . . because I would never force anyone, against their will, to dress like Kwanza or Flag Day or Boxing Day (just a few of the holidays left from which I might choose) and while I should just placidly suck-it-up and dress like something easy, such as Father's Day, there's a part of me that feels like we shouldn't win this competition anyway, since it's not skill based (if it was inter-department corn-hole, I'd be as ardent as they come) and I really wish this entire contest would evaporate and I could just go back to teaching Shakespeare (but not dressing like him . . . as that's always weird and awkward when the teacher comes to school dressed as the historical figure that you are studying).

Arachnohirsutaphobia

After a long day of coaching soccer, I found a dead spider entwined within my leg hair.

Badly Broken

I'm writing this at 7:51 PM on Sunday night, an hour before the Breaking Bad finale -- and I am very excited, as this is a rare occurrence . . . watching something "live" on TV . . .before this, the last television finale I watched in real time was the end of Seinfeld-- but I also have no expectations as to what is going to happen in the final episode; things have broekn so bad, that though I was rooting for Jesse Pinkman to come out of the series alive, the penultimate episode makes me wonder if that's possible (and I was especially pleased to refer to the penultimate episode as "the penultimate episode," after which my wife said, "What?" and I got to explain the word, which I very rarely get to use in context) and so I am just hoping for a fantastic, action-packed episode, with an ending that resolves things --no meta-junk like the Sopranos or St. Elsewhere-- and I liken my mood to that same feeling you have when there are two teams are in the Super Bowl that you don't care about, and so you just want to watch a really good game.

More Past Dave Nostalgia

A student that I taught at the start of my career became a teacher and was hired in East Brunswick during the period I spent in Syria -- and she was coaching softball with my friend and colleague Kevin and made the mistake of confiding in him that she had a crush on me way back when I was her English teacher . . . which Kevin relayed to me (in front of this teacher) but then he also told me her reaction when she saw me again, after so many years . . . she said to Kevin, also confidentially: "What happened to him?"

To Infinity and Beyond

While teaching is a fulfilling and generally entertaining job, there are scary moments of repetition that remind me of Matthew Broderick in Election -- at the start of the movie, there is a time-lapse montage of him running round and round the school track, and then he monotonously reviews the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of our government . . . year after year, class after class; I had one of these moments last Friday, as I walked down the math hallway: I heard two teachers repeat the exact same phrase, in perfect chronological juxtaposition, and their words certainly reflected today's theme: "all real numbers are represented, from negative infinity to infinity" . . . I could almost hear the word "infinity" echoing down the hallway, forever (and while teaching English is a bit more dynamic than math, there are certain jokes and phrases that I use year after year after year, because they work . . . but the price of practicality may be my conscious soul).

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood, and I Took the One With Traffic

While I am driving, I see a lot of folks running alongside major roads -- roads with heavy traffic and no sidewalks -- and usually these roads are adjacent to suburban developments: neighborhoods riddled with winding, low volume 25 mph. streets that would be perfectly safe and pleasant to jog on, and I always wonder why people choose to run on the highway instead of the alternative . . . and so if you are one of these people who run on the shoulder of a busy road, instead of opting for something more serene, can you please explain why?

Good Answer! Good Answer! Survey Says: Stupid!

Last weekend, I walked into New Brunswick with my wife and kids to get some dinner, and we stopped at the Wells Fargo ATM, and my son asked me, "Why is there a headphone jack on the money machine?" which was a feature I never noticed -- but he was right -- there was a 1/8 inch headphone jack next to the little screen, and so I told him the first thing that came into my head: "Well, Alex, maybe if someone is hard of hearing, if they can't hear that well, then they could plug in earphones and hear better" and then continued getting my money, but when I looked up, I saw my wife saw staring at me, with that sad look in her eyes that said: How could I be married to such an idiot? and she said to my son: "Alex, the earphone jack is for people that are blind . . . . people who are deaf can READ the screen, but people who are blind need to HEAR the instructions."

Soccer > Volleyball, Swimming and Musical Theater

In the first days of school, I make a point to learn the names of my high school students and I also try to learn a thing or two about them -- if they play a sport or musical instrument, like to read a certain genre of literature, belong to a particular club or like a certain kind of music -- this comes in handy as a mnemonic to remember their names and faces, and it's also useful when I create hypothetical writing examples, as I tend to use the students and their likes and dislikes . . . but I also end up expressing a lot of my own opinions about their activities and passions, and this year some of my students are volleyball players and swimmers, and though it's not even the end of September, I think I've really given them a hard time about their avocations . . . I've told the volleyball players in my senior English class -- two very sweet, tall athletic girls -- that "volleyball is Fascist" and I don't want to interlock my arms and rotate on command and stand in the same spot and move like  a robot, and that volleyball "stifles the creative spirit" and that if I had time I would write a long essay about how much more expressive and athletic and wonderful soccer is than volleyball, and then I told my swimmers that they might be clinically insane to wake up that early just to splash around in a damp room and that "there is no joy in any sport without a ball" and I'm not sure if the students think this ranting and raving is part of the curriculum or what, but I'm going to try my best to have an open mind about what my students spend their time doing (unless it's participating in musical theater, because nothing is more fun than satirizing musical theater while teaching class).

More Basking and Awesomeness

Some things are more awesome and miraculous than others -- and while this may not be quite as awesome and miraculous as my perfect punt, I think it might be slightly more awesome and miraculous than my ability to update my computer software and pickle peppers simultaneously; for the past two weeks, the JV ball bag has been missing its drawstring, with predictable results . . . balls rolling around on the floor of the bus, balls getting loose in the back of my van, and players having trouble carrying the bag to and from the field without losing a few balls . . . and so I mentioned this to the varsity coach while we were riding home from South River, and he produced the missing drawstring from his bag and, against all odds, I managed to thread that entire drawstring through the mesh channel around the edge of the bag -- no mean feat -- while the bus lurched down Route 18 in rush hour traffic, finishing the task moments before we arrived back in Highland Park, and while I received no high-fives or rousing cheers for my accomplishment, in the end, I know that I made as great a contribution to the Highland Park soccer program as anyone on that bus.

Let's Continue to Bask in Dave's Awesomeness

My incredible punt last week has propelled me to new levels of confidence and motivation, and so on Saturday I tackled two rather involved tasks at the same time . . . and it wasn't until after I completed both tasks that I recognized the post-modern absurdity of doing these two very different things simultaneously: down in my little music studio, I finally got around to updating my operating system from Vista to Windows 7, and then, of course, I also had to update all the drivers and recording software -- this took hours and required constant monitoring -- and while I was doing this, I was also pickling a bunch of peppers from Catherine's garden -- so I was boiling vinegar and doing lots of chopping . . . and my hands hurt from the hot pepper oil, and there were clouds of vinegary steam floating through the kitchen, prompting my children to hold their noses, but I got the job done -- I pickled a dozen jars of peppers, and each jar has some onion, garlic, dill, and ginger in it as well, so I think they are going to be very delicious (but, according to pickling experts, for peppers to reach the zenith of their pickled flavor, you should wait three to six months before you open the jar, which seems a bit extreme) and so I spent five hours on Saturday racing back and forth between the kitchen and a computer monitor, one task as ancient and primitive as they come -- preserving food -- and the other strange and digital . . . and I think I might have succeeded at both (although I won't know for sure until I eat some of the peppers and don't contract botulism).

Let's Bask in Dave's Awesomeness

For those of you that visit here solely because you relish Dave's awkwardness, failures, pedantry, and bombast, you might want to stop reading today's post right now . . . because today's post is a tale of success, timing, and perfection; last Thursday, I was running my son's travel team practice at the high school turf field, and there was a lot going on: my other son had practice on the far side of the field, and some high school kids were playing a game of touch football in the middle of the field -- which would have been fine, except that every time they punted the ball it came flying end-over-end into our scrimmage by the goal, and after the third time this happened, I had one of my players bring me the ball -- and then --in the typically grouchy and hyperbolic fashion that I adopt after several hours of coaching-- I yelled to them: "You need to stop punting, because you're not good at it, and you're going to kill one of my players!" and then I held the ball out with both hands, tilted slightly downward and to the left, and launched a picturesque high-arcing fifty yard punt, on a perfect spiral, into the arms of the farthest kid (and I know it was a fifty yard, punt because I was at the goal line and he was at the fifty) and though I was probably a bit over-the-top and obnoxious in my tone with them, because of the  beauty of my punt, they apologized profusely (and later on, I gave them a quick lesson on how to punt a spiral).

Worst Song Ever

I'm pretty sure my friend and colleague Kevin is losing his mind; he forced me to watch the Miley Cyrus video for her song "Wrecking Ball," which he claimed is "a great pop song" and, apparently, he finds the video titillating as well . . . but I didn't find it sexy at all, it her attitude seems awkward and feigned -- and those white undies are matronly -- and, more importantly, I couldn't remember the melody of the tune two hours later (or any of the lyrics except "wrecking ball") and it's not like I'm immune to pop ear-worms, as I had that Kelly Clarkson song "Stronger" song stuck in my head for days.

The Most Annoying Thing I've Ever Said

 Before the words left my mouth, I knew I was crossing into shallow and pedantic territory . . . but I said it anyway; my colleague Stacey was describing the house she is attempting to purchase, and she mentioned that when it rains, water runs toward the house and collects near the foundation; as an experienced homeowner, I was required to say the obvious -- which is annoying enough -- but then I went beyond the pale . . . I told her: "Stacey, you know that water is the ultimate enemy of any house, but -- ironically -- humans need it to survive."

Another Shortcoming of Mine

No matter how many times I say it to myself (Shut the hose off when you leave! Make sure to shut the hose off! Don't leave the water on! Walk past the hose, so you'll remember to shut it off!) when I turn the hose on and leave it at the base of my newly planted arbor vitae, I never  remember to shut the water off . . . my wife caught me Tuesday night, and I felt like I got away with one, because she said, "Please don't tell me it's been on since six this morning?" and I could honestly say "No" because I turned it on after soccer practice (a mere four hours) but she doesn't know the half of it (or maybe she does).

Someone, Somewhere Is Doing the Counting

My children asked me to officiate a race in which they ran across the yard (and back) while simultaneously hula-hooping -- but when I announced that Alex was the winner, my son Ian cited Alex for an infraction of the rules (what rules?) and said that Alex's victory "didn't count."

Where Are You, Past Dave?

Our boss discovered a treasure trove of old photos in the English office; they were from 1999 and they were comprehensive in content: shots of us teaching, drinking at the bar, participating in the charity fashion show, an amazing tableau of the entire department in grungy teenage clothes at the smoker's gate, some photos of me fishing and smoking a cigar, etc. etc. -- and Stacey took a look at the 1999 version of Dave, skinny with a full head of hair -- and she said, "Things might have been different if I was around Dave back then" and our boss said, "Are you hitting on Dave?" and Stacey said, "No, I'm hitting on Past Dave," and I'm not sure whether to consider this a temporally contingent compliment or a barely veiled insult about Present Dave, but whatever it is, it doesn't make me all that happy about what the passage of time has done to the concept of Dave (of course, Past Dave had other problems, which we won't go into, but -- nostalgically speaking -- it's fun to envision Present Dave's brain under Past Dave's full head of hair).

It's True! (Sort of)

When my wife and I taught in Syria, we occasionally found it easier to claim we hailed from Canada, rather than the United States, especially once George W. Bush invaded Iraq . . . though I occasionally tried to be patriotic and explain U.S. policy, sometimes it was just more convenient to avoid the controversy generated by mentioning America . . . and, of course, mentioning Canada was always safe, because Canada doesn't symbolize anything except back-bacon, tuques, Pamela Anderson, poutine, John Candy, and Celine Dion -- none of which is hated enough to incite violence, and the best thing about saying I was from Canada, was that I could follow this lie with the following technically true (but specious) piece of information: "Yes . . . I grew up just outside of New Brunswick."

Nostalgia For Stupidity

My kids love to play twenty questions, despite the fact that they are rather poor at it, and whenever we play -- especially if they are doing an awful job at narrowing down the topic . . . does it live in the water? no . . . is it a shark? no! . . . is it an eel? NO!!! then one of them will laugh and ask "Is it a bunny?" -- and this refers to the time when we showed up way too early to our pool, and had to kill time until it opened, and so we played the same round of twenty questions (or Two Million Questions, as they re-named it) for nearly two hours, even though the animal I was thinking of hopped across our path moments before the game started; my children truly relish the memory of this marathon of stupidity, and it makes me wonder if they'll ever get accepted to college (and if they do, they are certainly going to join a fraternity).

I'd Pay to Hear the Rest

I'm walking to New Brunswick, and I hear one of those snippets of conversation that I desperately want to hear more of . . . a fifty year old woman to a twenty eight year old guy: "So how does your brother deal with his hypochondria?"

Building Character (and Breaking Child Labor Laws)

I coached my first Highland Park J.V. soccer game of the season last Wednesday, and it was unseasonably hot and humid and, unfortunately, we only had two subs -- and I didn't my subs wearing themselves out running balls up and down the sideline, but it is the home team's responsibility to provide ball runners -- so I got my children out of school a little early, dragged them to the game and impressed them into service (and they did have some help from a couple of friends, so it wasn't totally cruel) and while my son Alex and his buddy Alex did a fantastic job, despite the heat, Ian and his friend Ben were atrocious -- they kept playing soccer with the game ball, getting so hot and tired that they couldn't retrieve any of the balls that were kicked out of bounds, but it was hard for me to complain since I wasn't paying them and the heat index was 170 degrees . . . and then, coincidentally (miraculously!) when I met up with the varsity coach the next day (the fields are split) I found out that he forced his two daughters to do the same thing -- despite the fact that they told him they "just wanted to stay inside and do their homework" he made them run the balls for the varsity game, which was on the turf, where the heat index was 197 degrees.

I Loath to Sell Low, and I Loathe Buying High

While the themes of this blog are often tangential and desultory, there is one thing that I always get right: the difference between "loath" and "loathe," and Justin Fox does as well, making excellent use of the verb "loath" in his book The Myth of the Rational Market: a history of risk, reward, and delusion on Wall Street; he is describing Charles Dow's famous and absurdly obvious stock strategy -- buy during upward movement (bull markets) and sell during downward ones (bear markets)-- but Fox explains that "Dow himself was loath to declare when that direction had changed" . . . "aye, there's the rub."

Vince Lombardi Would Not Approve

No sport is more abstract than soccer, and at the high school level there seems to be a preponderance of English teachers coaching it (at least in my neck of the woods and the movie Dead Poet's Society) so you end up with comments like the one my friend and colleague Terry recently gave to The Star Ledger, in trying to explain how his team could completely dominate play, but only score two goals . . . Terry said: "They say it is easier to destroy than create" and while this statement pushes the limits of absurd profundity and bombast in the name of athletics, at least he restrained himself and didn't drop allusions to Shiva and Brahma in the rest of his game analysis.

This is a really long sentence for a dumb joke

Geoffrey Canada's memoir and call to action Fist Stick Knife Gun is a vivid and intelligent account of life on the streets in the South Bronx by an African American man who grew up there in the '50 and '60s and then, after attending Bowdoin and Harvard, went back to try to curb the violence; much of the book is anecdotal, he explains the rules of the streets, and there is some game theory as well ... Canada explains that when he was a kid, you had to fight, but because of the absence of guns, there were some natural checks on violence -- once the pecking order was established, you knew who you could fight and who you couldn't fight . . . who was too big or too tough, who had friends that would come after you or a badass big brother . . . but the influx of guns changed all that, as "kids with guns see no limits on their power" and often only experience the limits of  firearms when they are dying . . . when Canada was a kid, you only pulled a weapon on kids from outside of the neighborhood . . . and it was serious business to brandish a knife, a broken bottle, or a car antennae, but the culture Canada is trying to change now, with his Harlem Children's Zone program, is one where "America is not number one or even in the top fifteen when it comes, to reading, math, and English . . . we're number one in locking up children" and the streets aren't safer, as a result of this, because we're also number one in possessing guns -- and, Canada points out, the gun industry realized in the 1980's that they could expand the handgun market "beyond white males" by making weapons with names that young people find "enticing, like Viper, and to appeal to their belief that bigger was better" and while this book was eye-opening and frightening, it was a far cry from my suburban youth, almost like a description of a different planet, so I am going to write my memoir of the mean cul-de-sacs of North Brunswick in the 1970s, but I can't come up with a properly dramatic title like Fist Stick Knife Gun . . . all I've got so far is Fish Sticks Nikes Gum.

How to Merge in Jersey

According to game theorists, the most efficient way to play "chicken" is to ostentatiously throw your steering wheel out the window, so that your opponent sees that you have no method of avoiding the imminent collision -- you have to prove that you are crazier than the person you are battling . . . and the most efficient way to merge into traffic in New Jersey, is to not look at the other car . . . you have to pretend the car isn't there, and so when the other driver looks at you, he sees that you are not even acknowledging his vehicle and he is forced to slow down . . . and this works at a four-way Stop as well: no eye-contact, just go . . . the only problem with this tactic is the possibility that the other driver might be using the same strategy, but the twenty seconds you save on your errand is well worth the risk of collision.

Very Pinteresting

Dear Abby: I often catch my wife looking at salaciously gratuitous images like this one on Pinterest . . . should I be worried?

So Real It Hurts

At first glance, Adelle Waldman's novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. seems as if it's going to tread over some very common meta-ground -- a novel about writers and writing -- but it's actually closer to a modern version of Pride and Prejudice . . . told from the male point-of-view, with a dash of the HBO comedy Girls, and I couldn't put it down . . . from the first pages, when Nate runs into a girl he dated briefly, until a prophylactic malfunction led to an awkward decision, where Nate "had done everything that could have been expected of him . . . even though he had less money than she did, he paid for the abortion," right through all the literary references -- including some authors I've heard of but never read . . . Lermontov, Italo Svevo, and Thomas Bernhard" and then Nate's painful narcissism, detachment, and superficiality with other girls; Adelle Waldman nails the male mind, and walks the tightrope between satire and empathy . . . good fun for boys and girls alike.

Old Men Are Good at Something (Just Not Anything Anyone Cares About)

Another Labor Day, another ugly scrum at the family pool for the greased watermelon -- except this year the old folks played against the youngsters, and we trounced them three to nil . . . though they were leaner, better looking, better swimmers, and had more hair, we had an unbeatable strategy which took years and years to prepare . . . we out-massed them: our superior weight made us an unstoppable flailing juggernaut, and our high body-fat to muscle ratio made us far more buoyant than our young opponents . . . and the way things are going, I think we're just going to get better and better.

Do Things Happen in Threes? Do They Happen at All?

Sorry to get metaphysical, but in the last few weeks, I've lost my new hat, my bike pump, and my classic iPod . . . and it makes sense that my iPod disappeared into the same wormhole as the other items, because -- as everyone knows --  mysterious events happen in threes . . . BUT . . . when my wife went into the shed to get some gardening gloves, she found the bike pump -- exactly where I was looking for it (and I really looked) so the pump wasn't missing at all . . . which makes me feel like Dr. P. in Oliver Sacks classic book of case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, and maybe my wife will find my hat and my iPod, but I don't think so, so then there has to be a third thing missing, and I think that missing something was once located in my brain.

Concussions Are Finally Hip

Concussion awareness has grown by leaps and bounds over the last several years . . . in order to coach youth soccer, I must complete a concussion training course and the NFL just settled with former head trauma victims for 765 million dollars . . . but I would like to point out that I was way ahead of the curve on this theme, as I sustained a number of interesting concussions when I was young, and even used one concussion incident as the subject of my college essay (this is probably not surprising to readers who often frequent this blog, as my sentences are often rambling and incoherent, but please bear with me, as Roger Goodell is not allocating any of that money to me, because of our feud) and what makes my concussions so wonderfully cool and ironic is that though I played several years of high school football, I did not sustain any concussions then, instead I knocked myself out in much more creative ways befitting the literary titan that I am: when I was very little, I had a habit of riding my tricycle under the flower boxes on my grandparent's wrap around porch and then standing up . . . my parents would find my little body splayed unconscious on the red-stained deck; in elementary school, on TWO separate occasions, I was running down the hall and the gym teacher, Mr. Weinstein, opened the heavy wood door and I collided with it -- both times I woke in the nurses office . . . Mr. Weinstein awarded me the nickname "Lumpy" for these incidents; in high school, at the state golf tournament, I wore shorts when I wasn't supposed to, and had to race back to the bus and change into a pair of my friend John's XL yellow sweatpants -- which I felt warranted a super-heroic leap out of the bus, but I misjudged the jump and nailed my head on the metal rail that the folding door runs along and knocked myself out cold-- and despite the concussion, I played eighteen lousy holes of golf in blood-soaked clothing . . . but despite my poor play, the upside was that I got a lot of press in the local paper for my courage and idiocy; and then when I was in college at a party in Connecticut, I dove into a deep section of river with the intention of then riding a cooler down the falls, but the deep section of river was actually a huge black rock submerged six inches beneath the water, and if it wasn't for the same friend that lent me the yellow sweatpants, I probably would have drowned,  but he fished me out of the water, unconscious, bloody, and limp, with a chipped incisor . . . but miracle of miracles, as far as I know, none of these head injuries has impaired my cognition in the least.

A Question That Is Making Me Lose Sleep, Hair, and Faith in the First Law of Thermodynamics

Please excuse the zeugma for such a serious matter -- but I can't imagine someone would case my house and then steal one trivial item (unless this is an elaborate practical joke, designed to drive me insane ) and the only other explanation that makes any kind of sense is that there is a wormhole in my shed -- but has anyone seen my bike pump?

What Did People Do Before the Internet? Play Pinochle?

I'm not sure if I would have made it through David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas if it wasn't for the articulate plot summaries at EditorialEyes Book Blog . . . the book consists of six nested stories, and the main character in each story has some connection to the next narrative -- and the chronology runs from an 1850's Melvillean journal to a post-apocalyptic tale set in the far future; the stories themselves would be inventive enough on their own, but the fragmented chain structure and the inventive language in each tale makes the book both masterful and possibly mastubatory . . . it is challenging reading, but with the help of the internet, I had no trouble connecting the dots . . . and this has been the theme of my summer -- I finished Infinite Jest, but I certainly had some very necessary help from the web, and I am watching Breaking Bad in real time and I needed some information from the digital superhighway to explain what happened at the end of episode 11 (Confessions) . . . and while I have never claimed to be the most astute reader or viewer, I am wondering if this is a sea change in how we read and watch . . . I don't remember having to seek to much aid when I read things in high school, college and through my twenties, and I certainly never had to ask anyone for help in explaining Melrose Place (although I did purchase and use a guide when I read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow) but perhaps now the mark of a profound and complex piece of art is that you need to seek other sources and perspectives to understand it . . . and just so there is no misunderstanding, I want to assure you that Sentence of Dave will never help you in that regard, in fact, you'll leave here more bewildered than when you entered.

Dogs and Shakespeare

Our family is dog-sitting for a dog that does not respond to his name -- and nothing is more embarrassing than the "master" trying to grab an evasive dog at the dog park; I felt like King Claudius in the Kenneth Branagh production of Hamlet, when he awkwardly attempts to grab the mad and strait-jacketed Ophelia -- while still maintaining his kingly demeanor -- and she eludes him (2:54 in the clip above) -- the only consolation is that my dog, sensing an opportunity to show off his good behavior, because a model pet, loyal and attentive, in order to show me that he cannot and will not be replaced by an interloper.

Plumbing the Depths of Modern America

Question for Americans: is the consistency of everyone's shower contingent upon no one else in the house simultaneously using the hot water (or flushing the toilet) or is this phenomenon only particular to my home?

Sentence of Dave > Facebook!

A new study by researchers from the University of Michigan shows that frequent use of Facebook leads to feelings of "envy, sadness, loneliness, and anger" and the researchers are confident that use of Facebook is causing these negative emotions, rather than the other way around . . . and the reason why this is true may be because people post an "idealized version of their lives on Facebook," and so when people visit the site it makes them feel lonely and left and out: Facebook makes them feel as if their lives can't compare to what they see on the screen . . . BUT if you visit Sentence of Dave, you feel great about your life, because you're certainly more logical, more confident, less anxious and less awkward than Dave (and you can probably write a more coherent sentence than him, as well, so make the healthy choice and stay away from Facebook . . . unless you're using it to link to Sentence of Dave).

Chinese Roulette (I Dare You To Play)

This is a game my friend Rob from Vermont claims he invented and occasionally plays: he orders take-out from a new Chinese restaurant without consulting the menu, simply by selecting several random numbers . . . so the food is a surprise (and while the Russian Roulette analogy might not be apt for most of us, it is for Rob because he's allergic to shrimp).

Order of Optical Operations (Please Excuse My Dear Opthamologist)

You go to the eye-doctor, and they dilate the hell out of your eyes, so you can't see . . . and then they expect you to pick out a pair of fashionable frames that fit your face?

I Stood Corrected

Next week my son's U-9 travel team will be playing in the Piscataway 33rd Annual Fall Classic Soccer Tournament, and they will be seasoned veterans, as they played their very first travel team games last year, in the 32nd Annual Fall Classic as wee little six and seven year olds; my favorite memory of last year's tournament happened during a wild rainstorm, and not a warm summer thunder shower, this was a cold pelting downpour, but we were playing our damndest, my son Ian pouncing on balls like a wildcat in goal and the rest of the team slogging through the mud, but one boy -- ironically the tallest on the team -- ran over to me on the sidelines and said, "Coach, I'm cold!" and so I told him all I could think of (remember, it was my first time coaching very young children) . . . I said, "Be a man, Danny, it's only rain," but he put me in my place with his reply: "But Coach, I'm not a man, I'm just a little boy."

Family Game Night Strategy

Sometimes early bankruptcy is the best thing that can happen to you in a game of Monopoly.

Sometimes It Sucks to be in Rome

When I taught in Damascus, the high school history teacher had her students personally prioritize the concepts in the Bill of Rights; the American kids invariably had "freedom of speech" at the top of their list and the kids from the Middle East had freedom to practice religion at the top of theirs . . . and when the Arab kids were asked how much they valued freedom to criticize their government, most didn't give this right a lot of significance -- "What do I know about that?" one student said -- and this may explain some of what is going on in Egypt and the Middle East right now -- Walter Russell Mead explains it far better than I could (in two recent essays) -- but in America, though liberals and conservatives have no lack of antipathy for one another, we assume that both parties love America more than they hate each other . . . and thus, democracy works (grudgingly) but in the Middle East, when the "wrong" party won (The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) then the tribes aligned and the bloodshed began . . . and so it may be a long time, or never, that the dream of both conservative and liberal Americans happens in the Middle East, when these countries adopt middle-of-the-road freedoms and values, and decide that free speech, individual liberties, the right to vote, and checks and balances of a democratic system are worth more than tribal grabs for power and oppression . . . until then, it's going to be very difficult to decide who to back and who to fight, but the cost of screwing this up is very high in terms of human cost . . . if you want to get really depressed, read "City of the Lost," in the New Yorker, a description of the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan, which is the second largest in the world and growing every day, hosting the enormous flood of Syrians fleeing the bloody civil war that has ravaged their country.

When in Rome, You Run Over the Geese

I was absolutely appalled by the behavior of a man in a construction pick-up vehicle last Friday evening; Catherine, the boys, and I were on our way to my brother-in-law's wedding in Hazlet, cruising down Route 516, when we came to a line of stopped vehicles -- and at the front was this white pick-up with an orange light on top of the cab . . . and in front of the pick-up was a small flock of Canada geese, taking their time crossing the road . . . and I should have mentioned earlier that the pick-up had New York plates, so I beeped at him, to indicate that he was now in New Jersey, and here in New Jersey we hate our plague of constantly defecating Canuck fowl, and we certainly don't stop traffic to let them wander in the road (and this guy stopped a good fifty yards from the geese, really giving them a wide berth, like they were some kind of endangered hummingbirds) and after I beeped, I tried to sneak past him in the shoulder, because I am familiar with the behavior of the Canada goose, and know that if you drive your car (or bike) straight at them, they get out of the way, but this guy in the pick-up -- this friend of all creatures great and small, turned and blocked the shoulder as well, so that I couldn't get by, and then, before things got really ugly, the geese vamoosed, and I'm thankful that they did because I was working myself into a righteous indignant rage that may have ended in fisticuffs, and I'm not sure my defense would have held water, that the reason I assaulted this guy was because he wouldn't run over some geese, and then he had the audacity to stop me from running over the aforementioned geese.

After You Finish Infinite Jest, You Should Read Chuck Klosterman

I have already pointed out here that while I love to read Chuck Klosterman, he annoys me a bit, because he is such a clear, engaging and relatable writer (for folks of my generation) that his thoughts immediately become my own -- and then I wonder why I didn't think of these things first and clearly articulate them in writing before Klosterman did . . . but, of course, he is a professional and has time to read The Starr Report and books on Hitler, and he has time to rewatch Airplane! and meditate on Kareem Abdul Jabbar and he puts this thinking to good use (along with his comprehensive musical knowledge) in order to write about villains, in his new book I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villians (Real and Imagined) which only took me a day and a half to read (same as his last book) and is the perfect book to read after struggling for two months on Infinite Jest (though I feel like David Foster Wallace and Chuck Klosterman would have got along smashingly), and not only is the book very clever, but it's also very funny . . . after much thoughtful discourse on Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, and Sharon Stone . . . Klosterman then describes Slick Willie like this: "He's the kind of man you could trust to lead the world, but not to drive your wife to the airport."

A Sentence Wherein I Give Chase to a Small Pod of Dolphins on my Paddle-board and Actually Catch Up With Them

I often see dolphins from a distance while riding on my stand-up paddleboard, but I've never been able to close in on them, because dolphins swim fast (and I paddle slow) . . . but last Wednesday morning I gave chase to three cetaceans -- who I am assuming are lazy or crippled -- because I actually caught up to them; they circled my board for a few minutes, curious and close enough to whack with my paddle (not that I go around whacking dolphins with a paddle) and so I have this to report: despite the whole "intelligent and friendly" archetype, dolphins are big and scary in the wild, and also prone to surface behind you and creepily expel air from their blowhole.

An Educated Guess as to What I See in My Near Future

Soccer.

A Question For Your Consideration

Has anyone seen my hat?

I Correct One of My Shortcomings

I recently wrote a post over at Gheorghe: The Blog about how I don't drink enough liquor and how this is rather unmanly of me, but I rectified this situation last Thursday night (with the help of my friend Mickey, who hosted the event) at an informal Scotch tasting seminar . . . or it turned out to be informal, although Mickey joked in the e-mail that the attire was to be semi-formal, and some people didn't realize this was a joke and dressed themselves to the nines . . . anyway, I learned a few things about Scotch (I like peat! I am also a patriot, and like Pine Barrens American Single Malt Whiskey better than I like the real stuff) and I also learned a few things about Highland Park football . . . Mickey had friends in town for their 45th high school reunion, and -- which is a true testament to high school sports -- they could talk about their days on the gridiron like they happened yesterday (I also learned that Highland Park may be the only school in the football universe that calls the odd holes to the right and the even holes to the left).

Mission Accomplished! (Sort of . . .)

I finally did it . . . on my third try, I finished David Foster Wallace's epic post-modern masterpiece, Infinite Jest . . . but I'm not sure that I actually understood it . . . from my perspective, the book takes a rather clinical look at addiction in it's myriad and nefarious forms . . . but it is also a wicked satire on popular culture and entertainment, AND -- I've done some reading (so not only do you have to wade through the 1000 plus pages of text and footnotes, but you also have to read a bunch of on-line essays once you're through, to make sense of the rather inconclusive ending . . . which becomes more conclusive when you re-read the first chapter again, because the first chapter takes place after the action in the novel) there is an obtuse plot about Quebecois separatists and a terroristically addictive piece of entertainment created by Hal Incandenza's auteur father that has fallen into the wrong hands; anyway, I am glad (Year of Glad) I read it, and I am also glad that I finished it before My Year of the Adult Depends Undergarment, and I also highly recommend reading it on a Kindle, because it is easier to navigate the endnotes (and you can look up some of the recondite terminology, although much of it isn't in a normal dictionary and requires the OED or a medical dictionary).

Summer To-Do Review

Summer break is winding down here in New Jersey, and so it's time to check-in on my Summer To-do List  . . . I did not brush-up on my Spanish while walking the dog, but I did listen to a bunch of Richard Pryor albums and learn how to download podcasts from iTunes, so I'm calling that one a wash . . . I've made some progress recording my album, and decided to tone down the effects and the reverb, so that's a victory . . . I moved the arbor vitae and Leyland cypress from the back property line to the side of the house, and gave the extras to my friend Dom, and the trees are doing well so I'm quite proud of that . . . I did not instal a fence on the back property line, but my wife got a bunch of estimates and got a really good price from one company, so that's a major success for me, because I avoided all the work on that project and it's going to get done, and in a professional fashion . . . I got some shelving units and organized the sporting goods in the study, attended the twentieth annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip, and I have nearly finished Infinite Jest, but I certainly haven't gotten my body fat percentage down to 12% -- in fact, I was nearly two hundred pounds when I got back from the Outer Banks Fishing Trip, so I need to do some serious exercise -- and I did not get new lenses for my glasses or restring my tennis racket . . . and while there is still time to complete these tasks, there's part of me that doesn't want to, because, as David Foster Wallace points out in Infinite Jest, "anhedonia's often associated with the crises that afflict extremely goal-oriented people who reach a certain age having achieved all or more than they'd hoped for," and David Foster Wallace achieved quite a bit on his To-Do list at a very young age and then went and committed suicide, so they guy has some credibility in this department, so perhaps I'll save a few things on my list for next summer (even though not getting new lenses for my glasses is getting rather dangerous).

A Word to the Wise about Mamoun's Falafel

The venerable and renowned Mamoun's Falafel opened a location in New Brunswick, and, while I must admit that their falafel sandwich is incredibly delicious and without compare, you should still be warned . . . when I asked for hot sauce, the Middle Eastern dude behind the counter said, "Let me give it to you on the side" but he did not say: "The sauce is really f*cking hot and I'm going to give you a very generous portion of it in a little styrofoam container, so that you think to yourself this sauce probably isn't very hot . . . if it was that hot, then they wouldn't give you so much of it, because you'd only need a little bit to spice your falafel" and so, following this erroneous logic, I liberally applied the sauce to my sandwich and by the time I finished, my eyes were full of tears and my nose was running profusely (but, of course, I did finish the sandwich, as it was very delicious, despite all the weeping).

An Ode to My Favorite (Politically Incorrect) T-Shirt

I recently pointed out that all of my clothing is disintegrating -- like a giant tub of old yogurt, it's all expiring at once -- and in this batch is one of my favorite t-shirts, and I'm fairly sure there's never going to be a t-shirt quite like this one (it was silk-screened long before Columbine and Sandy Hook) and so I want to memorialize it here for digital eternity: the front of the t-shirt says "SPOTSWOOD CHARGERS SOCCER" and the back has a telescopic circle and cross-hairs and sighted within the cross-hairs are a zebra, a ram, a bulldog, a tiger, and a stallion . . . which are the mascots of the teams that were in our division, which we were obviously in the process of shooting to kill.

Summer of Podcasts

Most of you probably know this, but you can download a multitude of podcasts for free on iTunes (it's especially easy if you "subscribe" to them) and one of my favorites is an episode of RadioLab called "The Bad Show," which takes a look at the dark side of human nature -- and, among other things, includes bits on Stanley Milgram's experiment (a new take!), serial killers, the inventor of mustard gas, and some notably evil Shakespeare characters . . . I especially like the comparison between Iago's explanation for why he manipulated Othello into strangling his lovely and faithful wife Desdemona (demand me nothing, what you know . . . you know) and the explanation of the serial killer Gary Leon Ridgeway -- a.k.a. the Green River River Killer -- who may have killed over ninety women, when his interrogator finally asks him "Why?" Ridgeway tells him: "I needed to kill because of that . . ."

I'm Having Trouble With Step Two

To derive the hygienic benefits of a WaterPik Cordless Oral Flosser, you not only have to purchase it (at the dentist's recommendation) but you also have to fill it with water and use it.

A Deceptive List

My wife found a CrossFit routine on-line, and while I know very little about the program, I have learned this: if you repeat this innocuous little list of exercises three times over in a short period of time (it takes me twenty minutes to complete) you will get very sweaty, pray to a higher power at least once, and be tired for the rest of the day . . . here is the list . . .

1) 10 jump lunges;

2) 10 burpees (a squat thrust with an included push-up);

3) 10 jump squats;

4) 20 sit ups;

5) 20 mountain climbers;

6) 20 calf raises;

7) 30 Russian twists;

8) 30 jumping jacks;

9) 30 high knees;

10) 1 minute plank.

Old School . . . Blech

The last TV show I watched in real time was Seinfeld . . . I remember frenetic discussions of the previous night's episode at cafeteria duty . . . and I also remember when Catherine and I taped "The Betrayal," otherwise know as "the backwards episode" because of the reverse chronology (you could mark the passage of time by looking at Kramer's giant lollipop) but when we tried to play the episode back, we started in the middle, and got confused by the reverse chronology (and the lame nature of VHS technology) and ended up skipping around on the tape and watching the episode forwards in tiny fragments . . . but we just got cable TV this summer -- it was cheaper to get it bundled with our FIOS than to not have it at all -- and I watched the season premier of Breaking Bad on Sunday night . . .  and because it's been so many years, I forgot how annoying it is to watch something in real time: you have to endure commercials and previews, you can't put on subtitles, there's no pausing so you can ask your wife pertinent questions or look up tangentially related details on the internet, and, worst of all, you have to wait until 9 PM to get started . . . I will try to make it through the final season because I love the show so much, and also so I can actually talk to people at work about the current plot twists, instead of running out of the room screaming, "DON'T SAY ANYTHING!" when anyone mentions Walter White, but after this one exception, then I am going back to my Netflix rabbit hole.

Coaching! What is it Good For?

You'll have to head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog today to get your daily fix of Dave; I brandish my vast and sagacious sporting knowledge in a piece titled "Put Me in Coach, I'm Ready to . . . Coach? Coach? Coach?"

Great Show, But . . .

I love the FX show Justified --  U.S. Marshall Raylin Givens has returned to his old stomping grounds, Harlan County (where they know the difference between dynamite and road flares) and his predilection to shoot first and ask questions later makes for some excellent TV . . . but as I watch, there is always an undercurrent running through my mind, and it is this: are there really that many good-looking people in Kentucky?

This One Wasn't as Popular

I am attending a "scotch tasting" event next week, and I'm a little nervous because I'm not a big liquor drinker . . . in fact, all I know about scotch is that it invariably makes me think of the George Thorogood cover of the old drinking song "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer" . . . though Thorogood's lesser known sequel is more appropriate for my unrefined palate: "One Mojito, One Bay Breeze, and One Zima."

This Time I Am Determined to Finish!

I am moonlighting (or daylighting, as David Foster Wallace calls it) a bit on Infinite Jest . . . and I know the last time I did this I ended up quitting the novel -- but it's four years later and I have learned my lesson, this time I am committed, but I just need a little break to read Brett Martin's new book with this double-coloned mouthful of a title: Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad . . . his thesis is that TV has entered a "third Golden Age" and that these new high quality cable shows are like nothing before -- they are neither episodic nor mini-series -- instead they resemble Victorian serialized fiction, like Dickens, and because of this format, they are much more beholden to the writers and creators -- rather than the actors and producers -- than any TV before, and these writer/creator folks happen to be moody, flawed, ambitious and brilliant men, and this personality type reflected in the "heroes" of these shows . . . characters such as Vic Mackey and Walter White and Don Draper and Tony Soprano and Jimmy McNulty.

Did You Know?

If you lie on the floor with your head scrunched against a little seat (in order to be in the room with the most A/C) and read for an extended period of time, then the back of your head and your neck can lose circulation and "fall asleep" -- I've had my arms, legs, and butt fall asleep, of course, but I never had this region fall asleep until yesterday, and it felt mildly psychedelic when the rear portion of my skull suffered the dreaded "pins and needles."

Some Things SOUND Fun (But They Are Not)

In an attempt to shed some of the pounds I have put on during summer vacation, I have started doing a CrossFit work-out my wife found on-line . . . and I have learned that Russian Twists, though they sound fun and sexy, are neither.

Outer Banks Fishing Trip Irony

My parents find nothing funnier than my annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip -- because I travel all the way to North Carolina and some of the best fishing grounds on the East Coast . . . but my fraternity brothers and I never fish -- instead we eat fish and drink beer and gamble and generally laze around on the beach, and I suppose actually fishing would otherwise interrupt this excellent break from all routine (aside from going to Tortuga's at 11:15 AM sharp every morning to get in line to storm the bar) . . . and before I left I promised my kids that I would do something fun with them when I got home, and -- of course -- they requested to go fishing.

Not Quite a Sniglet

I'm trying to coin a new word for when you do someone a favor, ostensibly for altruistic reasons, but actually because you need to vacate the vicinity so you can pass gas . . . a "fartvor"?

Outer Banks Fishing Trip XX

Another successful OBFT -- this was number twenty . . . and I am twenty for twenty (as are Whitney and Rob) although I was a bit nervous about making it down there -- train tickets doubled in price and airline tickets are through the roof -- so I drove . . . which turned out to be a good move, because quite a few flights were cancelled, leading to some travel adventures for Johnny, Marls, and Zman and a record number of cars in the Martha Wood Driveway . . . some things I remember: 1) some scatological humor at Whitney's place Wednesday night 2) a new frisbee beach game named KanJam, which caused me a minor injury (bruised thumb) and Chris a major injury (deep cut on the bridge of his nose) 3) several marathon corn-hole streaks 4) a major corn-hole partner defection 5) Whitney sabotaged my blog 6) Rob's new anti-strategic poker move -- named "the betfold" -- you simultaneously bet and throw in your hand 6) good food and drink at The Old Nag's head Cafe . . . and when one member of the group (who will go unnamed) forgot to pay his bar tab, we found out what a small town Kill Devil Hills really is . . . and not to mess with the locals, who might know Bruce 7) Johnny played Cliffy in a fabulous one on one football game 8) the old guys beat the "young" guys two to one in a very short touch football game . . . and we employed the zone 9) a typical game of Pig . . . Whitney hit the trifecta -- three sets of snake-eyes, doubles 3x in a row, and landed on one hundred points exactly - and so got to reante five times in two games 10) Marls and Whitney brought back fifteen rubber sharks from Tortuga's 11) Bruce told another joke too tasteless for the internet . . . and probably a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting because I'm still tired from the trip: thanks again Whitney, and it was great to see everyone.

Lies, damned lies, statistics, and statistics that might actually be accurate and useful.

I learned from a Freakonomics Radio Podcast (Women are Not Men) that while women are catching up and even surpassing men educationally and economically, there are some things at which men still significantly outperform women . . . things such as drowning and getting struck by lightning (men overestimate their ability to swim and they are outside more than women and don't come in during storms) and barely twenty-four hours after I listened to these sobering statistics, I found myself swimming -- alone -- off the shore of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina as a storm rolled in . . . but I didn't come out of the water until it started raining so hard that it hurt my face, and once I got back into the Marth Wood Cottage, where I was spending the weekend with twenty other brilliant W&M men, we discussed what my cause of death would be if I was struck by lightning and drowned, and if we could pad the stats and attribute my death to both causes, but the important thing is that either way, it would have been a victory for Team Male.

Every Man Has His Limits

I'll let my eight year old son win at chess, but not at RISK (there's a limit to my munificence).

I am the Victim of Ironic Netflix Adultery

In Orange is the New Black (Jenji Kohan's new Netflix show) educated white girl Piper Chapman goes to federal prison for a year, and she makes her fiance promise not to watch Madmen while she is doing her time, so that they can watch it together when she is released, but he can't resist . . . and, ironically, the show is so good that my wife couldn't resist watching two episodes without me (but I wasn't in jail, I was at a Red Bulls game, so I guess it's not exactly the same thing).

The Exception That Proves the Rule

The Red Bulls stoppage time 4-3 victory over Real Salt Lake was even more stunning than the Portuguese bartenders at the Madrid y Lisbon . . . four goals in the last fifteen minutes, two of them spectacular; if soccer games were always this exciting, Americans might start to watch.

I May Be Running Out of Thoughts

I'm always in fear that I will run out of sentences to write, and that day may be looming close -- I was driving on Route 18 on Monday and I saw a truck with giant spike lug nuts and thought: are those really necessary?  and then my next thought was: I should write a sentence about how trucks are already intimidating enough and don't need any extra-intimidating accessories, but you can see where this is going . . . I already wrote that sentence, two years ago, and while I'm proud of the fact that I had the perspicacity to check and see if I wrote that sentence previously, I'm worried that the day will come when I won't think to do this (and what's even worse, is that most likely, no one will notice).

Working Out vs. Work

I could get the same amount of exercise digging the arbor vitae out of the ground along my back property line, but I'd rather go to the gym . . . which is sort of sad, that I'd rather exercise for no purpose, instead of getting something done (but I suppose there's no chance of seeing any good-looking women in spandex along my back property line).

It's All Relative

Watching my son Alex do "surf camp" in Sea Isle City last week was scary enough, so I can't even imagine how Garrett McNamara's parents felt when they watched their son careen down the face of a 100 foot wave in Portugal.

Some Balls (Metaphorically)

Last week in Sea Isle City, while I was walking home with some take out food from McGowan's, a twenty-something blonde woman dressed in a black waitress uniform shot across Landis Avenue at a fairly busy intersection on her pink beach cruiser bike, and she was texting as she rode across the main drag, and this wasn't at a light . . . I guess she had just gotten off her shift and really wanted to know what was going on (and she wasn't wearing a helmet, either).

Slavery!

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained may be a lot of things -- including gratuitously violent, profanely offensive, and way too long -- but it's certainly not boring, in fact, it's one of the most entertaining movies I've seen since Pulp Fiction . . . everything you want to happen, happens . . . plus a whole bunch of other stuff: nine phrenologists out of ten.

Some Titles Are Literal and Some Titles Are Ironic

They should tell you this at the start, but instead I learned far too late that the title of Edith Wharton's fin de siècle novel of manners House of Mirth is an allusion to a Biblical quotation from Ecclesiastes (the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth) and so if you're expecting a happy, mirthful ending from this book then you are going to be very disappointed . . . it's a turn-of-the-century version of Mean Girls, without the jokes and the tacked-on happy ending; Lily Bart -- like Cady Heron -- has to navigate the world of the rich and popular, and though it's something of an anachronism to describe them in this way, they turn out to be just like "the Plastics."

True (but boring) Confessions #6

I don't ever floss, until it's three days before the dentist appointment (and I don't fool anyone).

True (but boring) Confessions #5

Before I go coach my son's soccer team, I religiously put two pint glasses into the freezer.

True (but boring) Confessions #4

Sometimes I watch 30 Rock on Netflix without telling my wife, and then the next time we watch 30 Rock, I don't tell her that she's missed an episode -- so unless she's doing the same thing to me, I've seen all the episodes and she hasn't.

True (but boring) Confessions #3

Sometimes when I open my car door, I make contact with the car next to mine (and sometimes I even scratch their door . . . but I never tell a soul).

True (but boring) Confessions #2

Sometimes when I water the garden, I forget to shut the hose off.

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.