Straight-Edge Psychedelia

My son Ian's latest work of art, made without the use of LSD or any other hallucinogenic (at least that's what he told me).

See You In Heck?

While I loved Enough Said -- Julia Louise Dreyfuss and James Gandolfini are funny and surprisingly understated -- it's kind of weird that this touching and charming little film will be my last memory of the guy that portrayed the giant neurotic Jersey badass Tony Soprano . . . I think I'm going to have to go back and watch the first season of The Sopranos in order to erase the image of "fat" Albert and Eva sitting on the porch together, doing absolutely nothing illegal or violent or depraved, because I want to remember Gandolfini as a looming, anxious and menacing mob boss . . . not a recently divorced semi-slob trying to make a new relationship work despite an odd coincidence (and if I didn't believe in that kind of stuff, I would say it was fated that this this is Gandolfini's last film -- a cinematic eulogy so we remember him as a good guy . . . but, of course, this gets into the weird meta-discussion of the relationship between the roles actors play and their actual personalities, which may have nothing to do with each other . . . but if they do correlate, then Julia Stiles is definitely a major bitch).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Some Restaurants You Should Frequent, Dammit

I'm not going to offer a full review of trader and quantitative analyst turned philosopher and power-lifter Nassim Nicholas Taleb's new book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, other than to say that it is evocative, provocative, bold, brash, learned, and contemptuous -- and if you are at all involved in finance, then you have probably read -- or at least know about -- his previous book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable . . . which explains not so much how financial collapses happen, but how to prepare and even profit from them (as Taleb did with his hedge funds) but I'm using his ideas for more selfish reasons; he often uses the restaurant business to flesh out his "anti-fragile" metaphor, as "restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is anti-fragile, for that reason . . . had restaurants been individually robust, hence immortal, then overall business would be either stagnant or weak," and you can see where this is going -- subsidies and intervention will actually destroy the health of a working system . . . and while logical folks know that opening a restaurant is risky business (though not as risky as urban legend has it) we love the fact that people keep trying, and Taleb explains this in his typical hyperbolic fashion: "in order to progress, modern society should be treating ruined entrepreneurs in the same way we honor dead soldiers, perhaps not with as much honor, but using exactly the same logic" because this person has taken heroic risk that is beneficial to others . . . but BEFORE this happens, please patronize the following restaurants, because they are inexpensive, awesome, and BYOB . . . I don't want them to become fallen soldiers . . .

1) El Gallo Giro 2 . . . a Mexican joint on Route 1 in Edison, just past Open Road Honda . . . they have awesome mole sauce and you can get enchiladas with pork or chicken or chorizo smothered in the stuff, their burritos are ridiculously huge and their tacos and guacamole are fantastic as well, this is our replacement for Taqueria la Juquilita, which changed hands and isn't as good as it once was;

2) Cafe La Terrassa, in New Brunswick, which has a new menu and a new take-out menu . . . this place is amazing, but slightly off the beaten path and never as crowded as it should be, and I will be really pissed off if it doesn't make it, so I am relying on you to eat there (and these reviews are totally unsolicited, as I have received no food, drink, coupons, sexual favors, or preferential seating for my favorable opinions).

Nets: The Reason Why America Doesn't Dominate in Soccer

Statistically speaking, America should be better at soccer; we have a large population and massive participation in the sport, but we can't seem to produce a lot of players who compete at the highest levels of the game, and I have figured out why: we have too many nice goals with nets in them . . . when American kids are milling around before soccer practice, they invariably start shelling someone in goal with dead ball shots from twenty yards out, which is a horrible waste of time -- it's barely soccer-like, rarely happens in a game, and often ends in a head injury -- and so I've banned the practice, my players have to juggle with each other before we begin, but it's really hard because a goal with a net is an attractive nuisance, and so kids can't help doing something totally inefficient which is akin to place-kicking, when they should be dribbling around each other and playing little games in small space  -- street ball -- and so my proposal is radical: remove the goals from the soccer fields and only bring them out on game day, if we do this for a generation, soon enough, we'll be playing like Brazilians (and, as I learned at a SAGE meeting, nets are not even required by the laws of the game).

The Truth About the Truth About Lying

Dan Ariely's new book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone -- Especially Ourselves explains that people are more honest than we should rationally be . . . according to the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC) we should compute the cost/ benefit of cheating and act accordingly -- but we don't do this, in fact, people cheat and rob blind people less, despite the fact that it's much less likely that you will be caught; it's not all good news, however . . . pretty much everyone cheats, but most of us only cheat a little bit -- unless you are truly pathological, you cheat just enough so that you can still confabulate stories about what a wonderful person you are . . . so we cheat more if others around us are cheating or if we are indignant and seeking revenge; we cheat more if we are creative and we cheat more if we think no one is looking, and we cheat for altruistic purposes, but we cheat less if we are reminded that it is our choice or if we are sign our name or take an oath or review morality before we commit an act . . . and while we will never eliminate cheating and lying completely, we can become morally less corrupt by using the convenient "reset" options in our world: confession and Yom Kippur and Ramadan, New Year's Resolutions, taking a new job, turning over a new leaf, and even self-flagellating (the method used by the members of Opus Dei) and while the book isn't going to scare you straight about cheating and lying, the experiments that Ariely conducted are worth the admission price; I promise you'll enjoy the book . . .  but, of course, I could be lying, and not even aware of it, as I wouldn't want to admit that I wasted my precious time reading this, and so if I can convince you to read it as well, then I'll feel like a fabulous person, despite the lie.

Barney Would Have a Hard Time Loading a Musket

One of the joys of coaching travel soccer is driving a van-load of kids to some obscure location (such as Berkeley  Heights) and eavesdropping on their conversations -- this weekend there was much talk of warfare (for example: the Revolutionary War must have been "really boring" because it took so long to load the muskets) and Barney: according to my son, Barney was fired because he "cursed at little kids" and had "cigarettes hidden in his tail," but I checked Snopes and neither of these rumors is true (I'm referring to the Barney rumors, of course . . . the rumor that The Revolutionary War was boring is hard to substantiate one way or another, but I tend to doubt that gangrene, frostbite and septicemia made 18th century soldiers yawn and nod off).

We Are the Wild Ones

The thesis of Jon Mooallem's book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in North America is that preserving the "wildness" of many endangered species may well be impossible, now that human influence is  "bleeding into virtually all the available space," and he uses stories of the Lange's metalmark butterfly, the polar bear, and the whooping crane to show that there is a "fluidity to nature that's not easy to recognize or accept" and how climate change and human expansion is certain to eventually put these particular animals out of business -- but even though there is a certain futility in trying to save them, people do . . . and their actions, though ludicrous (tedious butterfly breeding and counting, airlifting starving polar bears, and dressing in whooping crane costumes and going on a year long epic journey in a caravan of trailers and ultra-light planes, in order to teach the cranes to migrate without having them become accustomed to humans) show an essential human goodness, but in the end, these very wild species may die out, and be replaced by synanthropes -- wild species that coexist with man with relative ease: rats, jellyfish, kudzu, roaches, starlings, raccoons, pigeons, etc, and while these species are likened to "ecological Applebee's and Walmart . . . spreading through nature and homogenizing it, while putting the more fragile mom-and-pops out of business," at least we will have some wildness near us (and judging by how some whooping cranes are adjusting to humanity -- eating seed from bird feeders and corn scraps from an ethanol plant -- they may end up like my least favorite bird, which was once endangered, and now defecates on every golf course in our country, the Canadian goose).

If Men Ruled the World

It's well documented that Team Dude is not doing so well in the standings, but I'm starting to wonder if we ever actually had control of things to begin with; as we roll into the holiday season, I'm trying to imagine how things would be if women didn't control the world . . . there would be no special food, no gift-giving, no costumes, and though the holidays would lack pageantry, there would also be a lot less stress . . . so perhaps we should try to do an official switch, and give the women full sovereignty over politics and business, and give the men dominion over all the holidays, and see if the demand for blood pressure medication plummets.

Hot Hot Hot

Lauren Collins recent New Yorker article "Fire-Eaters: The Search for the Hottest Chili" reminds me of the fabulous documentary King of Kong for several reasons:

1) breeding the hottest chilis and trying to set video game records are both exclusively male pastimes . . . and there's a strange machismo attached to both projects;

2) Scoville units and professional Donkey Kong scores are mathematically similar (in the millions) and seem to be set at a similar pace;

3) it is difficult to measure who or what is the best, as there is sometimes a discrepancy between high scores and averages (this is obvious with gamers -- some guys do well all the time, but it's always possible for someone to have the game of his life . . . but it's also true with chili peppers, the heat index of the same variety of pepper can vary by hundreds of thousands of Scoville units);

4) both the universe of the chilihead and the universe of the Donkey King professional contain lots of conflict, infighting, trash talking, good guys and bad guys, and the documentary and the article certainly aren't comprehensive -- they only capture a tiny sliver of an obscure and rich world;

5) Billy Mitchell -- the Darth Vader-esque villain of King of Kong -- has his own line of hot sauces, called "Rickey's World Famous Sauces";

6) neither the documentary nor the article mention me, though I was damn good at the Intellivision game Night Stalker, and -- on the pepper front--  late one night back in 1993 (before any of these ultra-hot peppers were bred) when we were dropping off my friend Mose -- whose father owned a nursery -- he handed me a pepper which he claimed was one of the hottest in the world . . . I think he said it was a Thai hot pepper (which actually isn't that high on the scale pictured above) and this was after a night of drinking and he dared me to eat it, and so I did, but I didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me "burned," instead I jumped back in the car (which my friend Rob was driving) and spent the ride home crying, salivating, and spitting golf ball sized hunks of phlegm out the window.

A Suggestion So Rational It's Spooky

While I can't figure out exactly where America's stands in the World Obesity Rankings, it's certainly near the top, and so I have simple suggestion that will change the cultural zeitgeist and propel us down the path of national leanness and meanness: on Halloween, kids should have to earn their candy, instead of saying "trick or treat," they should be required to do ten push-ups or a few squat thrusts, or perhaps something more athletic -- like a baby freeze; I'm not sure how to initiate this new Halloween requirement, but I think an added benefit will be that Mischief Night will return with a vengeance (as lately, I haven't seen much mischief at all on Mischief Night . . . I'm going to try to get my boys to bring it back).

The Whole Truth And Nothing But . . .

A few days ago there was some skepticism about the veracity of one of my sentences, which one of my readers claimed was an ersatz version of"The Pina Colada Song," and while I will swear on my left testicle (it's genitalia week) that the story is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, according to cognitive scientist Dan Ariely in his new book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, my readers are certainly in the right to question my accuracy -- as numerous experiments have shown that the more creative a person is, the more likely they are to stretch the truth, and even to outright cheat, but no correlation has been found between intelligence and cheating -- and I'm the first to admit that I am more creative than I am intelligent; I see this hypothesis in effect with my two children: Ian, the more creative guy (who Zman called "a young Crash Davis") is an inveterate and incorrigible cheater at all things, while Alex -- who scored perfect on the math section of the NJ ASK and is plowing through Lord of the Rings-- is a rule follower (or at least attempts to be a rule follower) and he is driven insane by Ian's loose moral compass . . . you can't let Ian near the bank in Monopoly, he's never hit a shot in tennis that was "out," and I have told him repeatedly that if he cheated at cards in the Old West, they would have shot him).

E.B.White, Nostalgia, the Looming Specter of Death, and Shrinkage (It's Genitalia Week)

At the end of the narrative essay "Once More to the Lake," E. B White recognizes that the nostalgic feelings he has for his old vacation spot are an illusion, and that he is no longer a young boy, but instead has become his father . . . and so when the youngsters go swimming in the cold lake, while rain pours down, and he watches his son "wince" as he pulls the cold, wet bathing suit around his "vitals," E.B. White explains that his groin "felt the chill of death" . . . and a chilled groin is a ticklish subject to explain to a high school class -- so I let Larry David do the heavy lifting and showed the Seinfeld "shrinkage" scene to explain to the females in the class exactly what was going on (and I also advised them to watch how a man enters a body of very cold water, how he pauses just before a certain part of his anatomy gets wet) and then we discussed the difference between "vitals" and a "groin," and how it's much more fun to be young and have vitals, and much less fun to be old and have a chilled groin.

The Origin of the World (It's Genitalia Week)

My son Ian was perusing the book 1001 Paintings You must See Before You Die and he stumbled upon Courbet's infamous work innocuously entitled "The Origin of the World" . . . which is a rather graphic close-up portrait of a woman's genitalia, a rather hirsute woman's genitalia . . . but luckily I wasn't home, and so he asked my wife about the picture and she explained to him what it was and he replied: "Oh, I thought it was a black hole."

Check HER Out

Last week, while I was working out at the North Brunswick LA Fitness, I caught a glimpse of an attractive and curvy blonde girl walking through the main entrance -- and, of course, I ogled her . . . because that's the main motivation for going to the gym, rather than doing push-ups and sit-ups in your living room: you can check out members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if that's what floats your boat) and they might be wearing spandex and a sports bra . . . but the North Brunswick LA Fitness has a dearth of good looking ladies (especially at the times I go to the gym . . . early Sunday morning and three in the afternoon . . . I am mainly scoping out retirees) so you really have to be vigilant to catch a glance at anything worthwhile . . . anyway, when I took a second glance at the attractive woman, who was weaving her way through the various weight machines, right towards me, I realized that I had been ogling my own wife (and when I told her this, she took it as a compliment).

Where Do You Draw the (Fe) Line?

A friend and colleague of mine explained that she was stressed out because her cat had undergone a $1300 operation to clear mineral deposits in her stomach and intestines, and now the cat was going to need the same surgery again -- and there was no guarantee that the cat wouldn't need it again after this-- and so I made the pragmatic suggestion that it might be time to put the cat in a sack and toss it in the river, as cats seem pretty disposable to me, but I was chastised by the rest of the folks in the English office for "not having human emotions," which led me to tell the story of how I had to euthanize my pet iguana (a story I will tell in another sentence) but this conversation brings up a serious ethical dilemma -- how much money should you spend on your pet to save its life . . . and I am thinking that if this discussion happened in the math or science office, if it would have gone down very differently.

Lumpers and Splitters, Grolars and Pizzlies . . .

Jon Mooallem's book Wild Ones tells the story of the nearly extinct Lange's Metalmark butterfly, and it also tells the meta-story of how people react to the story of the nearly extinct Lange's metalmark butterfly; you'd think lepidopterists would stick together, simply to fend off bullies, but apparently they have divided into two camps: "lumpers" and "splitters" . . . lumpers are "comfortable gathering up large groups of different looking butterflies under the same species or sub-species" while splitters prefer "more painstaking divisions," and while this sound like a ridiculous feud, it can have consequences when the federal government is deciding which animals and/or environments to protect under the Endangered Species Act . . . but it mainly makes me think of Monty Python's Life of Brian . . . Mooallem also brings up my favorite sub-species nomenclature dilemma: because of global warming, grizzly bears have been encroaching on polar bear territory, and mating with them, and scientists can't decided  whether to call these hybrid creatures "grolars" or "pizzlies," and while Mooallem wisely avoids chiming in on this debate, I'd like to say that I strongly prefer "grolar bears" over "pizzly bears," and I honestly don't even see how this is debatable-- when I hear the phrase "pizzly bear," I get a psychedelic vision of a pink and yellow dancing gummi-bear, and that's not going to help combat global warming at all.

Creepy Cutoff

A discussion in my Creative Writing class -- which consists of sophomores, juniors, and seniors-- revealed that the current crop of high school seniors will be the last that remember 9/11 firsthand . . . in my Composition class, we always read Jonathan Lethem's essay "9 Failures of the Imagination" and, in the past, the discussion inevitably turned to where they were when they heard about the attack, and how they processed the information (that is the theme of Lethem's essay: the stages of processing new and tragic information) but next year I will have to ask the kids how they think other people-- older people-- dealt with the tragedy; the event will start to take on the pale, abstract cast of history.

Where the Wild Things Are?

I have been accused of having no discernment in my ratings of books -- everything I tend to review has completely captivated me, and thus I praise the thing to death -- but this is because I work really hard to find books that I like; recently I tried to read Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq . . . and though I can't speak poorly about either book, as I certainly learned something from each, they didn't fully engage me, and so I dumped Jesus in the library book slot, half read, and barely made it through the first chapter of Overthrow, because I had to keep reading the name Queen Liliuokalani . . . and I must say that I do this quite often: take books out of the library because I want to have read them, not because I want to read them (I actually have a book in my house called The History of the Vikings . . . I've never opened it) but I am now fully in the grip of a wonderful book that I will certainly finish in a day or two, it's called Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About People Looking at People Looking at Animals in America and it's got everything I love in it: mega-fauna, meta-media, and monomania; I am currently reading a section about photographing polar bears, and the trickery necessary for a photographer to shoot "an image of nature that's already lodged in our heads" . . . the footnote in this section points out that lemmings don't actually run off cliffs -- the folks at Disney propagated this in the film White Wilderness, where they paid a bunch of Inuit kids to round up lemmings, then forced the lemmings to run on a treadmill covered in snow, and then threw the lemmings into the water, and created the sequence that created the stereotype . . . but Chris Palmer, famous wildlife photographer explains that these folks aren't "evil or malicious . . . you're just trying to get the damn shot so you can go home and have dinner with your family . . . so you put the monkey and the boa constrictor in the same enclosure."

This Is The Same Kid Who Won the "Caring Award"?

Though I was pleased (and also rather shocked) that my son Ian brought home a certificate from the principal inducting him to the "Character Honor Roll" for being "Caring," I'd like to report that things have returned to normal; on Sunday, after Ian's soccer game, we walked home so I could make a couple sandwiches for us to eat while we watched Alex's soccer game -- and I made Ian a delicious ham and cheese sandwich with mustard, and as we walked back down to the park, Ian chomped on his sandwich, complimented my sandwich making ability and waxed eloquently on the very concept of mustard -- how it made everything better, including pretzels and fried pickles and sandwiches and even apples (I questioned this one) and then he told me that mustard was also great because there were so many varieties: yellow mustard and honey mustard and spicy mustard and brown mustard, and somewhere in this conversation I said to Ian that if he finished his sandwich, that it would be his lucky day, because he could have another snack with Alex's team (Ian had already had some cookies after his game . . . both teams do post-game snacks, which I'm not entirely in favor of, I'd rather that treats are contingent upon strong and strategic soccer play) and then we got to the game and Ian disappeared into the trees behind the field for a moment and when I looked over, his sandwich was gone, and when I approached him and asked about it, he said that he "finished it" but there was no way in hell that he finished it that fast, and so I told him I needed to know where it was immediately, because it was a "major crime" to litter with food that might attract dangerous animals, and I was able to strong-arm him into showing what he had done (plus I had the dog with me, who was making a beeline for the spot) and he had thrown the sandwich into a hole under the base of a tree stump, because he was full and wanted to get another treat once Alex's game was finished, and so for his disdain for my time spent making his sandwich, and for his cavalier disregard for the value of food, and for littering in a public place, he had to go until dinner without any snacks and wasn't allowed to invite any friends over for the rest of the afternoon, and I'm wondering if I should contact the principal and tell her this story and see if she'll rescind his certificate and give it to me..

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).