It Is On

My eight year old son Ian and I have a long term bet: he must beat me at ping-pong before he turns thirteen years of age, and the stakes are two pounds of high quality chocolate; the interesting thing is that if I wasn't so proud, I could easily win this bet by simply refusing to play him in ping-pong until he turns thirteen years of age, but of course, I won't do that, both because it would be "cheap" -- Ian's term for this strategy -- and also because I know that my future in athletics is limited, and that soon enough my kids will be able to outplay me at soccer, basketball, snowboarding, and tennis, but even as I age, I should be able to fend them off at games like darts, corn-hole and ping-pong (perhaps indefinitely . . . my goal is for my children never to beat me at these particular games . . . so that long after I am dead, they will have to say to their own children, "you know, I never once beat your grandfather at ___________" and if they lie about this and there is an afterlife, then I will certainly go poltergeist on their asses until they admit the truth, with no obfuscation, and perhaps -- if I am a very skillful poltergeist -- then I will even beat them at these games from the grave (that's actually a fantastic idea for a not-so-scary horror movie . . . a guy takes his family to an isolated Maine hotel for the off-season and goes crazy because he can't beat a trash-talking ghost at ping-pong).

Questions of Grammar

Yesterdays post revealed a thorny dilemma: when you are referring to a scene in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, then do you say the final scene of Of Mice and Men (e.g. the final passage of War and Peace) or do you simply say the final scene Of Mice and Men . . . since Steinbeck has given us a free "of," I chose to be elegant and use it and not put another "of" in front of the title Of . . . and now I've got the word "of" stuck in my head and it's weird, because it's pronounced "uv" and if you say it enough times, it starts to lose its meaning and just sound like some sort of primitive exclamation: uv uv uv . . . and there's nothing on the internet to settle this pedantic absurdity so I will promise to never mention it again (unless someone actually knows the answer).

Tragedy is Often Tragic (Can You Sing a C Sharp?)

I'll never understand why school so often privileges tragedies over comedies . . . kids read Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth rather than Twelfth Night . . . and though Cannery Row is Steinbeck's best novel, that's not the one that is taught . . . and there's nothing worse than a bunch of teary eyed ninth graders listening to the final passage Of Mice and Men, when George has to shoot Lenny, and then explaining to them that sometimes, if you're a really good friend, then you have to shoot your buddy in the head, so he doesn't have to spend the rest of his days in a primitive mental institution undergoing electro-shock therapy and torturous restraint . . . Twelfth Night and Cannery Row are both about parties, however, and I guess pedagogical folks don't consider that educational (unless the party happens in The Great Gatsby, and the result of the partying is the Death of the American Dream, which is suitably tragic and outweighs any possible joy and fun in the book . . . and then there's Lord of the Flies, another fun book full of vines and creepers and tragedy, but at least there's one joke: Jack says he should be the chief of the stranded boys because he is in the choir and "can sing C sharp").

I've Got my Eye on You

All you people who drive into the park (any park . . . I've seen you people in Donaldson Park, Johnson Park, Thompson Park,  Roosevelt Park, and every other park that I have frequented on a regular basis) and sit in your car for a while and then drive out of the park . . . without ever leaving your car . . . I want you to know that I am watching you and you seem really sketchy and whatever you are up to, my dog and I are going to catch you at it and deal with you as we see fit.

Yet Again, Dave is Wrong

Why didn't anyone tell me you can't put non-stick pots and pans in the dishwasher?

You Can't Just Ask People Why They're White

I am a fan of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts, and in an episode about the Spanish-American War he calls Teddy Roosevelt "a heavily imperialistic, racist version of Peter Pan . . . always leading a troop of kids on an adventure" and that Roosevelt "would make Archie Bunker look like a liberal" BUT Carlin points out that you've got to "grade racism on a curve" because racism was such a pervasive part of society . . . and so I think people should go easy on Megyn Kelly -- while she does claim that a fictional character based upon a saint who was either Greek or Turkish was actually white -- she doesn't want to perpetuate any violence against ersatz non-white fictional versions of the icon, and while she is rather vehement about Jesus being white, when he most certainly swarthy and Middle-Eastern in complexion, and was probably even darker brown than Arabs are now (since there was no sunblock back then and he walked around outside a lot) but in the grand scheme of racism, desiring long dead religious figures and icons of greed and consumerism to look exactly as you look isn't such a big sin . . . so with the curve I'll give Megyn Kelly a C-, more for being stupid than actually being racist.

I Would Fail This Test

If you'd like to work in a South African gold mine, three miles beneath the earth -- then you'll have to contend with the free-fall terror of the "manwinder" -- a contraption which gets the miners down to where they need to be, and you'll have to deal with the creepiness of the "ghost miners," a "rabble of impoverished men" who penetrate the mines, abetted by criminal gangs, and then live in the mines and steal gold ore (they stay down for months at a time, until their skin turns gray -- and folks smuggle down wives, prostitutes, and food for them, in a lucrative black market) and you'll suffer the extraordinary heat and humidity, but before you get to experience all this, you must perform step exercises in a "test chamber" in order to see if your body can cool itself efficiently, and then and only then do you get a 14 day trial period in the mine . . . and my body can't regulate heat very well, so I don't think I'm going to change professions (I'm learning about this in Matthew Hart's new book Gold: The Race for the World's Most Seductive Metal).

Mystery Percentage Uncovered!

One of the great things about Mark Twain is that he achieved the job he desired as a youngster he watched the gargantuan riverboats steam past his home town of Hannibal, Missouri and as a young man he achieved his dream and become the pilot of one of those boats (the romance of it wore off fairly quickly, unfortunately) and so my class was discussing what percentage of people actually become what they wanted to be when they were young (a ballerina, a pilot, a basketball player, an astronaut, a princess, a teacher, a paleontologist -- that was mine, etcetera) but I couldn't find any information on the topic until this morning, and the students and I guess that the number would be low (2% to 10%) but while one article calls the results "depressing" and I'm not sure about the methods of the "Official LinkedIn Blog," I still find it fairly optimistic and reassuring that (according to this fairly small sample of a very homogenous cohort) one in three people achieve what they consider their "dream job" (and although I like teaching, there's no way I'm in that group . . . I wish I could set my own hours and work with my hands and excavate interesting sites . . . but I don't want to roam the desert -- too hot -- I think I'd like to be a plumber).

Seven Books for Reading (with Corresponding Pictures!)

If you like to read books, then head over to Gheorghe: The Blog to peruse my list of the seven best books of the year . . . and even if you don't like to read, you can still head on over because I've included pictures!

Sometimes It's Best to Do Nothing

I lost my little black iPod months ago, but I didn't panic . . . I didn't accuse the cleaning lady of stealing it or blame my children for losing it, nor did I run out and buy a new one or tear our house apart trying to find it  . . . and (miracle of miracles!) my wife recently stumbled upon it, in the oddest place: sitting inside a high kitchen cabinet, perched on the edge of the shelf, amidst jars of salsa, Ramen noodle soup, peanut butter, chicken broth, mac & cheese, and crushed tomatoes . . . I must have needed one of these items and put the iPod down as I grabbed it . . . or maybe not . . . I'll never know exactly how it got there, but this is going to be my new method for finding things that aren't imperative to my life -- just wait until the problem solves itself.

Dieting With Rage and Apostrophe

I withstood the temptation free bagels in the main office, tantalizing heaps of cookies in the English office and a prominent display of Reese's Christmas Trees at Wawa using this simple method: every time I laid eyes on the food, I let loose with a stream of profane expletives . . . in my head, of course, and I directed my angry interior monologue at the stuff I didn't want to consume . . . and while I can't print what I said and retain the good taste of this blog (ha!) I can assure you that occasional cursing is good for your health and well-being (but if you use profanity all the f*cking time, then you become inured to the benefits, so try to watch your mouth unless you desperately need to relieve some stress).

Chestnuts Roasting on a Vaporized Cloud of Rocks and Asteroid

While decorating our tree, the boys and I unanimously decided to forego the Christmas carols and instead listen to this fantastically vivid Radiolab podcast called "Dinopocalypse", which turns the previous theory of extinction on its head . . . according to the scientists in this production, dinosaurs did not shiver and starve to death under a shroud of cataclysmic dust, instead something far more fiery and awful happened when a chunk of the Baptistina asteroid collided with the earth 65 million years ago (although NASA now believes that it wasn't Baptistina, but some other unknown asteroid, but . . . who cares, listen to the podcast because it's extraordinarily dramatic and apocalyptic).

Motivation and Consciousness (and Socks)

After I get out of the shower, on the weekend, I'll throw on some clothes -- but not socks -- and then I'll go downstairs to do whatever . . . but I know that invariably, I will want socks, but I neither put them on then, when it is convenient, nor do I carry a pair of socks downstairs with me, to put on when I will inevitably need them (and Saturday morning, when I realized this ineffective habit, I still did nothing to correct it).

Rashomon and Football

Collision Low Crossers offers an alternative to the typical sport's story; there are no underdogs or last second heroics in this 460 page book, instead there is a level of detail about the preparation, professionalism, camaraderie, complexity, turbulence, violence, itinerancy, and hopefulness of NFL football season that is "transformative . . . powerful and unexpected," not only for the players and coaches, but also for author, Nicholas Dawidoff, as the reporter practically lived with the Jets in 2011, so he could write something deeply reported . . . the book was transformative for me as well, and I will never view professional football in the same way again; Dawidoff explains it best in this passage: "Here they all stood together but existed in efficiently separated little worlds . . .There was a Rashomon quality to how differently everyone experienced much that went on in football . . . the daily interactions and even the games had alternative versions for the various players and various coaches."

Sometimes it's Best NOT to Watch Your Children

It's hard for me to watch my boys on the sled hill -- they make one horrible decision after another (they call it "extreme sledding" but it mainly involved a lot of jumping on each other, jumping in the way of sleds, going down backwards, building ramps, not paying attention to other people, walking right up the middle of the hill . . . oblivious to all the other kids sledding, lying in slushy puddles, fitting as many people on a tube as possible, wrestling and shoving snow in each other's faces, and riding down the icy part of the hill standing on their sleds, so that they face plant in horrible ways (Ian lost a tooth on Saturday and scraped his cheek and forehead raw on Sunday) and so I've found the best course of action is not to watch them.

Now That's Juxtaposition!

Nicholas Dawidoff's fantastic football book Collision Low Crossers has the words "recrudescent" and "slapdickmotherfuckers" on the same page!

Ice Is Slippery (Tonka Truck Reux)

I was walking the dog early last Wednesday morning-- all the snow had frozen solid and in many places the sidewalks were coated with a sheet of glistening ice-- so I should have been more aware of my footing, but I was thinking about remembering to send back a Netflix disc that we had left in the blur-ray player and so I didn't notice when I got to a spot where a steep driveway intersects the sidewalk, and I stepped onto a patch of ice, and because of the slope, my left foot shot straight into the air, and it seemed as if I was going to fall backwards and slam the back of my head on the curb, but I whirled my torso around as hard as I could, and tucked, and I managed to spin my body on its horizontal axis while I was in mid-air, so instead of landing on my back, I landed on my arms, which were braced for the fall, but my lower body hadn't fully gyrated in synchronicity with my upper body-- it was slightly behind -- and so I came down on my bad hip, the hip that I injured last spring in a similarly incredible athletic move that did not happen during an athletic event . . . another incident that no one saw, but had their been a witness, would have gone down in the annals of sporting history for time immemorial.

It's Hard to Spell "Kristyna"

Kristyna -- the aforementioned fund raising queen -- not only raises more money for the holiday toy and clothing drive than the rest of our department combined, but she also outdoes everyone in the way of Christmas spirit: she has four Christmas trees in her house, all decorated (the "beautiful" fake one, a live tree "that entered the mix this year" and two little ones . . . which are for her two little children . . . or more specifically, the little trees are for the ornaments her little children made, ornaments which she does not deem worthy enough to adorn the "beautiful" tree).

Deep Breaths . . . Deep Breaths . . . F*ck It, It's Swearing Time!

First, I admonish my child for spending an insanely long time in the shower, and then -- when he finally gets out of the shower -- I notice that his hair isn't wet and, despite efforts to the contrary, I lose my shit.

Can a Good Book Make Me a Jet Fan?

Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football, by Nicholas Dawidoff, is so well written and so full of vivid and insightful detail, that I don't even mind that it's about the Jets; the narrative runs from the extremely familiar -- Rex Ryan rents a giant house in the Outer Banks and he extends "an open invitation to the other Jets coaches and their families to come for a stay, play games like corn-hole toss and washers . . . all he asked was that each family choose one night to prepare dinner for everyone" to things you'd never know from watching football on Sunday: in the 2010 playoff game when the Jets beat the Patriots, it appeared that the Jets were porous against the run, but that was actually "intentional . . . allowing New England a reasonably effective series of runs that distracted the Patriots from what they did best: pass" and the multifarious mysteries of a sport where eleven players are doing eleven different things . . . the 2009 Jets gave up only eight passing touchdowns, but in 2010, when they had two great cornerbacks (Revis and Cromartie) they gave up three times as many . . . was it lack of pass rush? had paired-man coverage become too predictable? was Cromartie jealous of Revis? . . . answers are hard to come by, but the coaches put in 120 hour weeks trying to figure it out, and that's what this book is about -- what goes on during all those hours at the facility, in one sense, the book is barely about the players at all.

Eschatological Ruminations

We looked at several apocalypse tropes in my Creative Writing class last week -- an excerpt from Chuck Pahahniuk's Fight Club; the first pages of a fantastic book about the earth's orbit slowing (The Age of Miracles) and the David Bowie song "Five Years", which is a really long time to think about an impending apocalypse (what would you do? five minutes or five hours is easy, but five years?) and the morning after I did this lesson, I happened to listen to an episode of 99% Invisible called "Game Over" which got me all choked up -- and this was while I was walking the dog at 6:00 AM and shortly after my weeping in the dark, I ran into this big African American dude that I play basketball with (he's a garbageman and was reporting to the public works building, which is next to the dog park) and he'll always talk your ear off -- so I went from picking up dog poop to nearly bawling to removing my headphones and chatting in the dark about his back injury in the span of seven minutes, which is a lot of stimulus for me in the morning and my brain nearly suffered an apocalyptic apoplexy, but I recovered and then played the podcast for my students that day -- the show describes the end of a utopian digital world (The Sims Online) that had a cult following of very dedicated "players" that were really just hanging out and socializing, and there is a wonderful tape of the "DJ," a real human that spun music on a Sims radio station, in the final moments of the game, bidding his online buddies a tearful farewell as the Sim people freeze up, the houses and trees gradually blink out of existence, and finally, a server error message replaces the thriving little digital universe -- and this has made me have a rather selfish thought, that rather than die alone as most of us will, of a stroke or cancer or heart disease or falling down a well, instead I'd rather go out in a major cataclysm: an asteroid, a plague, man-eating ticks from space, whatever . . . because then at least everyone will be in it together (and I'd love to listen to the radio while it's all going down).

Percentage Breakdown of the First Season of 24

I know I'm a bit behind the times, but I finally finished the first season of the acclaimed TV series 24, and I've computed the exact percentages of all the major tropes and themes . . . here they are:

22% suspense;

14% drama;

16% suspenseful drama;

11% gratuitous Elisha Cuthbert footage;

0% jokes;

5% chasing;

17% hiding;

0% giggling;

10% amnesia . . . seriously, amnesia;

4% furrowing;

7% peeking;

0% Commedia dell'arte.

It's Hard to Spell "Asphyxiate"

I often have to remind myself that I have clever children -- they read lots of books and can do math -- but when we are in the car, and they can't answer simple "trivia" questions such as "Which month starts the New Year?" and "What day is Christmas?" it gets a bit frustrating . . . but they did know the answer to one question: "What did the Indians tell the Pilgrims to bury with their corn seed?" and the answer is dead fish, of course, and my kids said that they remembered this fact because I told them when we were burying their pet fish in the backyard, after the fish committed suicide by jumping out of the tank and asphyxiating (and I would like to point out that I spelled "asphyxiate" right on the first try, even though I felt like I was just typing a random jumble of consonants).

Christmas Shoes (and the Holidays) Cause Me to Behave Badly . . . But I Can't Remove These Things From Our Society

I'm not sure how I avoided it, but I never heard the song "Christmas Shoes" until last week -- the song was a topic of conversation in the English office, because apparently my friend Eric threatens to sing the song to his classes if they don't donate money for the toy and clothing drive . . . and this threat works -- and so some of the women in the office (including Krystina, the fundraising queen) made me listen to the song so that I would become more motivated to raise money for poor children (this was not logical in the least, and I'm pretty sure they knew how I was going to react, but I think they take perverse pleasure in yelling at me) as my students were chastising me for not "trying hard enough" or "offering enough incentives to donate" to which I replied: "If I have to promise to give you brownies so you'll donate some money for impoverished children, then you are all horrible people," and -- predictably -- the song made me angry and deranged, instead of jolly, though I must give the song credit, as it's an amazingly bad piece of art, the kind of thing you couldn't write as satire if you wanted to, and it has sent me full tilt into un-godly materialist consumer culture Xmas ranting season, though I really wanted to scale that whole side of my personality down and try to focus on the nearly non-existent "chillaxing" side of my personality, which perhaps with some nurturing can become more prevalent at this supposedly "wonderful time of the year..

Mind Your PQ

It's only fair that I make a full and candid declaration of my "media bias" to my readers, so they can have some perspective on my opinions -- and so I took an incredibly boring 40 question quiz created by "media bias expert" Dr. Tim Groseclose, who believes that mainstream media is slanted to the left and that this slant is having a major impact on the American mind (though I believe that the mainstream media, like any other corporation, is giving the people the stories they want -- and so therefore a reflection of the American mind . . . because if you want conservative news, you know where to get it) and my PQ Survey results (83.2) indicate that I'm fairly liberal -- somewhere between Joe Biden (80.5) and Hillary Clinton (87.6) -- but the quiz seems very one dimensional; if I were to guess, I think I would be a libertarian in respect to people's rights, somewhat conservative in market economics, radical in terms of environmentalism -- though hypocritical about it -- and socially liberal . . . but now I have no idea what I am (aside from an 83.2) but one thing the quiz does point out is how divided our government is . . . though the questions aren't terribly nuanced or exciting, the voting statistics are interesting in themselves (and I also took this quiz, and it labelled me a Working Class Warrior . . . which is absurd, since I'm an elitist pedantic bastard).

The Goldfinch

Though antique furniture is not my "bailiwick" and though Donna Tartt's picaresque novel occasionally "maunders" along in the metaphysical voice of the narrator (Theo Decker, a.k.a "Potter" according to his Russian buddy Boris, a nickname that is highly apropos) the book is mainly a Dickensian roller-coaster ride through disaster, friendship, a terrorist attack on the Met, art theft, the seedy underside of Vegas, drug addiction, alcoholism, furniture restoration, coincidence, and unrequited love . . . it is ambitious, well-written, and plotted to keep you turning pages, or in my case, increasing the font size of my Kindle so I could finish the book in an insane marathon session (it is nearly 800 pages long and it is worth the commitment).

Nerding It Up (German Style)

My family has outstripped Monopoly . . . the house we rent in Vermont has the German board game Settlers of Catan, and while last spring when we didn't have the fortitude to figure out the rules (despite the fact that I had only heard rave reviews about the game) this time the boys and I were determined, and we attacked the game with blitzkrieg furor, and learned as we went, and we all decided that it may be the best game ever (and we even taught mom!) and Catan certainly rivals RISK (while being more cooperative, fun, strategic, random and tactical than the "game" of world domination) and now my kids want it for Christmas, and I want it too . . . but I am wondering if this will send them down a scary path of cardboard chits, lead figurines, multi-sided dice, and larping conventions.

Humblebraggadocio or Idiocy?

I spent two days in Vermont snowboarding without securing the back of my bindings -- and my excuse is that they are rather new, I bought them at the very end of last season and only used them once, and they are a different type of binding (they are Gnu "fast entry" bindings and have a lever you have to initiate on the back to lock them) and I forgot that part of the entry -- so I rode Stratton from top to bottom without being strapped in, and it didn't bother me all that much (aside from the bottom of my right foot hurting from a lot of pronating . . . but then I noticed the lever and remembered what I was supposed to do with it (although the top of one was snapped off, probably because it was hanging loose and got clipped) and so I will leave it to you to determine if you respect me for my exceptional balance or wish to denigrate me for my absolute lack of understanding of my own equipment (and my wife had to help me figure out the lace system in my boots, which I've had for two years, and could remove for the life of me, resulting in some rather loud and embarrassing profanity in a family friendly ski lodge).

Well Earned Treat

Junk food is bad for you, except when it isn't.

Black is Beautiful?

Black Friday uses a positive connotation of the color black -- this is the day when retailers go from "being in the red" to turning a profit -- but Black Monday and Black Tuesday refer to infamous market crashes and use black to refer to the darkness accompanying the event . . . and then, of course, you can be back in black, the man in black, or none more black  . . . it's a very versatile color, or lack thereof.

Rdio Knows Me Better Than My Friends (and Pandora)

How did I survive this many years without listening to Finnish surf rock band Laika and the Cosmonauts?

A Side Dish For Sirius

We braved the storm Wednesday afternoon and motored up Route 87 to our favorite spot in Vermont, and when I took the dog out Thursday morning for a Thanksgiving romp in the snow, he enjoyed a delectable vacation treat: he flushed a mole out of a snow-covered pile of hay, chased it down, and gobbled it up (despite my best efforts to get him to spit it out) and while I was a bit worried that it might make him sick, he suffered no ill effects from eating this shovel-footed rodent, which was certainly fresh, and now I know that we don't need a cat to keep our house free of mice.

Bring the Noise (Algorithm)

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder explains that a little disorder is often more beneficial than organization -- and while we know this to be true in many systems, from evolution to business -- for many people, it's hard to accept this in day to day life . . . we think we need to be more organized, and rarely compute the cost/ benefit analysis of getting organized, and feel guilt over our messiness . . . but sometimes, when things get to clean, we need to manufacture messiness: once cell phone technology got sophisticated enough to filter out all background noise (something engineers loved, because it enabled less transmission of information, and therefore longer battery life and greater channel capacity) the phone companies ended up having to create a mathematical technique (e.g G.711.II) to add"comfort noise" and they had to do this for three reasons

1) when background noise is removed you can hear faint voice echoes, which is unnerving;

2) background noise indicates that the call is still happening, otherwise, whenever there is a pause in the conversation, it sounds as if the other person hung up;

3) at an unconscious level, we desire background noise and the absence of it is disorienting . . . "our brains rebel at the unnatural neatness."

Slow and Steady Loses the Race (When You're Competing Against a Kenyan)

An excellent Radiolab podcast called "Cut and Run" explains why a small area in Kenya produces so many incredible long distance runners (five American high school students have run sub-four minute miles . . . ever . . . while in one class in one school in Kenya, there were four kids who did it) and the program also explains why I get so fucking hot in the summer -- Kenyans generally possess a "nylotic" body type -- tall, slender, and with very long and tapered limbs -- and this body type sheds heat well and people who live in hot and dry climates have often evolved in this manner . . . and I am neither tall nor slender, and my limbs are stubby and thick (Popeye forearms and bulging calves) and while this is good for lifting things, it is NOT good for shedding heat . . . but that's not the only reason that the Kenyans from this region are great runners: for the final piece of the puzzle, you'll have to listen to the podcast, but I will tell you that involves circumcision and a pointed stick (and American runners aren't going to catch up to the Kenyans any time soon, judging by this statistic).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Giving Heuristics the Finger

I finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb's new book Antifragile, and while I can't say it was fun and delightful, like a Malcolm Gladwell, I will say that it is a book you must read -- while Taleb is no great stylist, his thinking is logical, powerful, anti-establishment, anti-intellectual and apolitical -- which is refreshing; while this book frequents some of the same financial territory as The Black Swan, Taleb also ranges far, wide, and crazy with his thesis about systems that gain from volatility versus systems that are fragile, systems that fall apart in volatile times; I love what he has to say about books and technology . . . he explains that probabilistically, they age in an opposite fashion from humans: when you see an old human, you infer that he will probably live less time than a young human, but you should think in the reverse in regards to technology and books -- the longer the item has been around, the longer it probably will be around . . . we are stuck with cars and bicycles and cups and chairs for a long time, and the same with Shakespeare and Homer and Herodotus (Taleb tries only to read books that have been around for a long long time, and he claims only to drink things that have thousands of years of trials: coffee, tea, wine and water . . . he is a wacky guy) and what his philosophy ultimately comes down to is that you can only trust opinions from people with "skin in the game" and so he hates managers and governments and large institutions and pundits (especially Thomas Friedman, who he claims helped encourage the U.S. to invade Iraq, though he himself wouldn't be put in any danger if this happened) and pretty much anyone who doesn't have their own money on the line each and every day . . . he's brash, obnoxious, smart, frustrating, and also offers some diet and weight-lifting tips along with the finance and philosophy.

Two Blasphemous Statements in One Day

I'd choose to visit Philadelphia over New York City any day of the week (and weekends) and while there, I would rather eat a roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and long hots from DiNic's than a cheesesteak with onions from Jim's Steaks . . . so kill me.

An Endorsement of Bar Culture from Jimmy Stewart and a Giant Rabbit

My boss recommended this You Tube video by author John Green to inspire seniors struggling to write their college essays, and not only does it offer some great advice about how to view your life, but it also teaches you how long one million seconds are and reveals the significance of the classic Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey, which is about an affable tippler (Elwood P. Dowd) and his best buddy -- a six foot three inch invisible rabbit (which is the embodiment of a mischievous Celtic "pooka") -- and this film is one of the weirdest I have ever seen; it is oddly gripping, and my kids watched it in its entirety . . . if you like Jimmy Stewart and you're in the mood for something funny and whimsical that also makes you feel good about frequenting pubs and taverns, then this is the movie for you.

Surfing in the Jungle

So my students were working in groups -- connecting this podcast to this article with some help from Neil Postman -- and I was reading nature essays and just finished a vivid one about a trip to Tanzania and an encounter with a hungry lion, and so I yelled over the din to the girl who wrote the piece: "You went on safari! Wow!" and she looked up from the MacBook Air she was using (we have a cart of ten MacBook Airs for classroom use) and answered "No, I'm on Google Chrome" and I yelled, "No, I mean you went on a safari!" and she said, "No, I didn't go on Safari, I'm using Google Chrome" and I yelled, "NO! You really saw lions! You went on a safari!" and then we both simultaneously realized that we were treating the class to an impromptu farce.

Primitive Struggles of Digital Man

Last week, after a year of touting Spotify, I had a sudden resurgence of interest in Pandora -- soccer is over and I actually have some time in my house now, and so I want my computer to spit out jazz guitar and ambient music and trip-hop songs while I do non-soccer things like reading and cooking and helping the kids with their homework -- but then I started to do some research, and there are some other music streaming services that do things similar to Pandora: Grooveshark, iTunes Radio, Google Play and the one I am liking the most so far: Rdio . . . I can't find any definitive opinions on which is the best, and so I am experimenting with all of them, in the hope that I will find one I really like and then actually pay for it (to assuage some of my guilt for pirating so much music in the past) but the big picture behind all this difficult "research" is this: in 2013, you don't need to own music.

Zero Point Zero

When there are clouds in the sky, even if weather.com reports a zero point zero percent chance of rain, it's better to tell your wife that it might rain, because otherwise, if it does rain (which it did) you're going to get an angry phone-call . . . and the fact that the internet says it's not raining isn't going to make her feel better.

Conspicuous Conservation

Steve and Alison Sexton, two young economists (who happen to be twins) have discovered something they call "the Prius effect,": in places that are more "green," if people buy a hybrid car, they tend to buy a Prius -- instead of a Nissan or Honda -- because the Prius is the only hybrid that is immediately identifiable as a hybrid . . . and people in these especially "green" places do this for a good reason: showing your friends, neighbors, and colleagues that you are "green" is financially and socially beneficial . . . i.e. conspicuous conservation and so, in a sense, they are being less altruistic, because they might be buying the car simply to keep up with the Jones's (the Greens's?) and not to save the planet; this brings me to the real reason for this sentence: Saturday morning, I impulsively donated fifty dollars to the Unicef fund for victims of typhoon Haiyan and no one saw me do it (except my wife) and I'm not sure how to remedy this . . . I should have done it at work and "mistakenly" left the receipt page on the screen of the communal computer in the office, but now it's too late for that, so maybe I should I pretend to donate the money at school . . . but that's kind of cheesy, so maybe I'll just mention that I donated the money here on the blog (but, of course, there's no proof that I actually donated the money, aside from my word, which isn't worth very much).

Socrates Would Be a Blogger

Socrates was no fan of the written word; he did not like that writing is immutable, cannot defend itself, and does contain the give and take of a dialog . . . he compares the written word to a painting, distanced from reality, a reminiscence . . . but if he were around today, I think he would approve of a blog-- despite the ugliness of the name-- because of the "live" nature of digital writing -- nothing here in the blogosphere has the permanence of a book, and I can edit things when I want, revise history, remove stupidity, steal ideas and present them as my own, and even occasionally re-title some of my old posts (when I started this project, I titled each post with the date, which was pretty lame, even for me).

The Art of the False Concession

Sometimes I teach my students how to write, sometimes I teach them how to read, and sometimes I actually teach them something important: last week, I realized that my lesson had run too long the day before, and I was going to probably have to move the due date for an essay back a day . . . but I didn't start the lesson with this information, instead I kept the old due date on the board and waited -- because invariably, if you have an assignment due Friday, some brave kid will ask if the class can have until Monday to complete it -- and, as usual, a kid that I also coached in soccer took the bait and asked -- quite nicely -- if they could have the weekend to finish their writing piece, and I took a moment and thought deeply about his request (acting!) and then sighed and said, "Sure, why not" and then I told the class to thank the student for getting them some extra time on the essay and this kid was the hero . . . even though I planned to move the assignment back all along, but this way I was able to give them something against my will - it was their choice, not mine -- and so I told the next period what I had done, and how this was a very valuable skill called "the false concession" and I told them they should practice this on their friends -- instead of saying, "I'm full, does anyone want the rest of these french fries . . . otherwise, I'm going to throw them out" you should wait and when someone asks you for a french fry, you can say, "Sure, they're really good, but you can have the rest" and gift them to your friend, and when you're sitting around with people and you have to get up to go to the bathroom, you should ask the people if anyone wants a drink or needs anything, and then get up, so they think the reason you are getting up is for them, even though you were going to get up in the first place, and then after I revealed these mysteries, I told them to pass the word along to the student from the earlier period about what happened and one girl did this and the next day he was mildly annoyed with me, because he felt duped, but I explained that adults do this all the time and he should learn to do it too (and along with this rule, this may be the most significant thing I'll teach them all year).

Getting It Wrong

A logical guess as to who said "prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" is Yogi Berra . . . but it was actually Danish physicist Neils Bohr, and he certainly hit the nail on the head -- humanity is always getting it wrong, very wrong, when we speculate on how technology and culture will evolve . . . to hear more on this topic, listen to the Freakonomics podcast called Who Runs the Internet?; coincidentally, last week one of my students showed the class the picture above and talked about how he loved looking at old visions of the future -- and, as Clay Shirky pointed out during an interview in the podcast-- we had the imagination to conceive all kinds of wild scenarios: flying cars and floating cities . . . but in all of these visions, women were still wearing aprons and stuck in the kitchen . . . we could imagine a mailman wearing a jet-pack, but not a female lawyer in a pantsuit.

What Do You Call a Baby Doing a Baby Freeze? A Baby Baby Freeze?

My family was in Chelsea Market last Saturday and it was crowded; a young couple with a cute blonde toddler were walking directly in front of us, and as we passed through one of the ragged brick arches, the cute toddler threw herself to the ground and froze, and the couple stopped dead in their tracks and instead of doing what any self-respecting parents would do if their kid was blocking a major thoroughfare: grab your kid by the arm and drag her out of the way, instead of doing this, they began asking her a series of polite questions . . . such as: "Don't you want to get up and walk now?" and "Maybe you should stand up now?" and "Don't you want to come with mommy and daddy?" and so my wife and I almost stepped on her head, and all the people behind us had to similarly hurdle this obdurate baby doing a baby freeze in the middle of the market corridor, and I am wondering if this is a new parenting style, and if it is, then I don't like it (and sorry about the lack of funny image -- shockingly -- there are no pictures on the internet of a baby doing a baby freeze).

Tragically Close

I'm trying my best not to lose my temper with my children, my students and my soccer teams (and this is a tough task, because I'm simultaneously trying to drink less beer during the week) and for the majority of Tuesday, I was successful -- I had a smooth soccer practice with my U-9 team, despite the cold weather and the fact that my older son was in attendance -- but he didn't fight with his brother, and the team listened better than usual, and I was patient about explaining the drills and getting things organized (plus I had a lot of help from the other dads) and my kids were rewarded with hot cocoa once we got home, and then my older son showered and the younger one got into the shower, and I figured I was home free: I had navigated an entire day without raising my voice . . . but fifteen minutes later, when I went to check on Ian in the shower, he was just standing there, doing absolutely nothing -- his hair wasn't wet, there was still hot cocoa on his face, he was just letting the hot water run over him while he daydreamed, and while in retrospect, I can see the appeal of this, I couldn't deal with it at the time, and I may have done some yelling and banged a bathroom door and washed his hair rather briskly, so that some soap got into his eyes . . . and it irritates me that I was so close to making it through the day without losing my shit, but this one little incident, because it happened so late in the day, when my patience has worn itself thin, was my undoing . . . but I will take solace in what Hamlet says to his buddy Horatio, when he realizes that his fate is out of his control: "when our deep plots do pall . . . there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."

Maybe The Soviets Were on to Something (Sort of)

I went to dinner with several couples on Saturday night and I was bombarded with TV recommendations -- because we are living in the Platinum Age of Television -- and so apparently I need to watch Key and Peele and Vikings and Ray Donovan and Banshee and Spartacus and Downton Abbey and new episodes of Eastbound & Down and some other shows that I have forgotten (and this doesn't even include the shows that I'm trying to keep up with: Madmen and The Walking Dead and Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Homeland and Portlandia and American Horror Story and Justified and the first season of 24) and it's all too overwhelming for me, and so I think I'm going to have to take a sabbatical from television, but really what I think I want is a simpler time, when everybody watched the same thing; I recently listened to a 99% Invisible podcast called "Unsung Icons of Soviet Design" and while the Russians didn't have much choice -- everyone played the same arcade games, used the same cassette player, programmed the same awful personal computer and knew the same bedtime song . . . and they all knew this song because they all watched the same program every night at 8:00 PM, and saw the same puppets sing the same lullaby . . . and while I don't think it's necessary that we have a Soviet-style oppressive government that designs all culture and technology, it certainly was nice when you could rely on the fact that everyone you knew watched Seinfeld on Thursday night (and discussed it Friday at work).

I Learn Two Things in One Day!

I have been on a podcast binge, and if you listen to enough podcasts, it's hard not to learn something . . . and so while I was listening to an episode of 99% Invisible about augmented reality called "Reality (Only)" I noticed that Roman Mars was talking much faster than usual, in an almost robotic voice -- but this fit the theme of the show, which was about "reactive music": a unique soundtrack that comes from your headphones, an auditory overlay created by and from the sounds around you, mixed and mastered in your smartphone -- but then a young woman explained something about "reactive music," and her voice was too fast and so I took a look at my Ipod and apparently there is a "variable speed" function for people who don't have the patience to listen to a podcast at normal speed . . . and so I fixed this and Roman Mars returned to normal, his voice deep, calm, and collected and then I actually learned something from a podcast, not about the podcast playing device; and I am going to hyperbolically call this podcast my favorite of all time, it is an episode called "The Modern Moloch," which details how automobiles went from hated, lethal contraptions . . . technological demons to which we sacrificed our children (a political cartoon from the 1920's) to a piece of Americana that we always had a "love affair" with; the podcast explains how an auto lobbying group called "Motordom," realized that it was in the automobile industry's best interest for cars to be allowed unlimited access to the city, and so came up with some NRA style logic -- cars didn't kill people, reckless drivers killed people (this brings to mind Neil Postman's rule of thumb, that no piece of technology is neutral) and along with reckless drivers, you can also have reckless pedestrians . . . this was a paradigm shift, as before this the street was a place for kids to play, adults to socialize, work to be done, and carts to move at somewhere around 5 miles an hour . . . and then Motordom brilliantly co-opted a term for redneck -- a "jay" -- and came up with the novel idea of "jaywalking," which was more a term of ridicule than something legal -- and from this time forward, the streets belonged to the auto (the podcast also has excerpts from Dupont's program where they explain that Americans have a "love affair" with the automobile . . . and since it's "love," then we don't have to behave rationally) and while I try to drive as little as possible, because I hate cars, I know that I'm a hypocrite, because I still use my car to get to work, to go on vacation, and often to get around town, when I could walk, and I often wax eloquently about my Jeep Cherokee and fully understand how many of us fondly remember our first shitty car . . . but it still makes me happy to learn that we didn't always have a "love affair" with automobiles, the affair was shoved down our throat by industry and propaganda, and if we try hard enough, perhaps some day we can take back the streets for our children (I think this bucolic vision involves flying cars).

The Time Is Now (For Michael Jackson Covers and Ghetto Goals)

There comes a time in every man's life when he must take all the scrap lumber from under the deck and nail it together in the form of a primitive soccer goal (which might be referred to as a "ghetto goal") but despite the flimsiness, a man must be proud of his handiwork . . . until it disintegrates into a heap; there also comes a time in every man's life when he must cover a Michael Jackson song, and include literal interpretations of the lyrics (in monologue form) between the verses . . . and while I understand that both of these pieces of "art" might be shoddy work, there is no time like the present (lyrics and more over at Gheorghe: The Blog).

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.