Teenagers Go On Twitter to Escape Old People Who Write Long Sentences

Danah Boyd's new book It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens is a must read -- both for people with kids and people who just want to know what the hell is going on; Boyd extensively researched teen internet habits-- she interviewed teens around the country and also read numerous sociological works on the topic-- and her big ideas are tempered with lots of anecdotes, often in the voices of the teens she interviewed . . . and what Boyd feels these teens are saying is this: we want to hang out with our friends, and that's a lot harder to do than it once was-- as the world is overly circumscribed for our kind, and there is a lack of public spaces where we our welcome, and we have a difficult time transporting ourselves to the few places we are welcome, and no one wants to see a cluster of teenagers anywhere except a high school football game-- and when we're there, we put our phones away, unlike most of you adults-- but most of the time, the best, safest, most accessible, and most convenient place to hang out is on-line . . . and while we can usually monitor and handle what we are doing, it's difficult to hang out in a place where you can't see lurking adults, which is why we often switch forums to where our friends are and the adults are not-- and we are willing to repurpose any forum to suit our needs, which are often social, and we often forget that we are under adult surveillance when we are online, and yes, the same problems that crop up in the real world happen on-line: bullying, racism, misinterpretation, gossip, drama, but adults shouldn't intervene in this world unless they really know the actual context of what is going on, which is often difficult and encoded . . . but still, if adults use their window into the online public space with some subtlety, instead of to only to pry, then it might open up lines of communication which are otherwise often frozen during the teenage years, but the most important thing to remember is that after we do our compulsory day at school and then practice soccer, meet with the Key Club, finish our violin exercises, study for AP Bio, then we go online to be social, not anti-social, and so unless you think we are having problems in the real world, please let us alone in our online world . . . the book is a quick and relatively easy read, and it acknowledges that our networked lives are here to stay -- and neither utopian nor dystopian-- instead they reflect the society at large, and it is up to adults to help children navigate the digital world, even though it is complicated, and adults should not simply rely on the fact that kids are digital "natives," because oftentimes they are not, and need help in understanding the consequences and methods of life on the internet . . .  and I'm going to really test  Boyd's claims this week, as I'm going to photocopy several excerpts and see how the real flesh and blood teenagers in my senior classes react; I will keep you posted of the results.

Dave Has an Emotion Towards Canada!

While I can't pretend that I care about Canada (though I tried my darndest) I at least harbor some emotion towards our nice neighbors to the north (with the capitol city no one can name) and this emotion is jealousy, as Canada now has the richest middle class in the world, a title the U.S. once held . . . and while our rich our richer than the Canadian rich, our poor are poorer than the Canadian poor, so unless you're one of the 1%, you're better off donning a toque, buying a down vest, and learning to enjoy backbacon and poutine (but I'm NOT learning French, that's where I' put my foot down).

Lawyers, Drones, and Funny (Stuff Going on in The U.S. Government)

I am often suspicious that I have no idea how the world works, which is one of the reasons I like to read: I feel as though I'm filling an infinitely large hole in my brain, and this feels simultaneously productive and good and also desperate and futile, and so it made me happy to hear Radiolab's Jad Abumrad make the same assertion during their new podcast "60 Words"; the show explores the consequences of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, a resolution  passed by the United States Congress on September 14th, 2001 for obvious reasons . . . and a resolution that passed with a nearly unanimous vote-- only Barbara Lee had the foresight to see the possible problems with such a vague, broad, timeless fiat; the sixty words have authorized two wars, Guantanamo Bay detention center, and drone attacks, and the two phantom words, which were not in the original sentence, which authorizes the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against "nations, organization, or persons" that were involved in the September 11 attack on the United States, these two words-- which have been inserted by the government to make it easier to fight this war on terror . . . the words "associated forces," and so now it is difficult (even for congress itself) to know exactly who we are at war with, and who we can legitimately attack and kill with a drone (which is where the lawyers come in, when you want to issue a drone strike, you don't check with your commanding officer, first you check with a lawyer to see if it's legal) and while President Obama has attempted to make some inroads at ending the War on Terror, it's very difficult to stop something when the folks you are fighting haven't stopped fighting . . . and so Obama said that he was only going to use drone strikes when there is "an imminent threat" to the American people . . . and so perhaps the AUMF will eventually be repealed, but then there will be some new and powerful words that will insure that most folks have absolutely no idea what is legal and what our government is improvising . . . if you really want to learn more, read this very detailed article by Gregory Johnson called "60 Words and a War Without End: The UNtold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History."

Any Venture Capitalists Out There Willing to Roll the Dice?

I had forgotten how much I hate traditional bowling, but a recent trip to Carolier Lanes reminded me: I hate sticking my fingers in the holes, I hate watching my kids struggle to chuck the ball down the lane, I hate how my wrist and forearm feel later in the day, I hate splits, I hate not making strikes, and I hate reminding my children about bowling etiquette (especially when you've got serious bowlers next to you, which we did) and so, once again, I am loudly and vociferously lamenting the lack of candlepin bowling alleys in New Jersey, and-- if someone will back me-- I am willing to quit my plum teaching job and open and run a candlepin bowling alley . . . candlepin (or duckpin) bowling is fun yet impossible, you get three tries-- which is the magic number-- the ball is small, there are no holes to mess with, the motion is smooth and easy, and it's kids love it twenty seven thousand times more than traditional bowling . . . so how much does it cost to build a bowling alley and who is going to spot me?

Least Rock and Roll Thing in the History of Rock and Roll

My friend John's band played Friday night at Teddy's Restaurant in Cranbury, and though they sounded great, I was very concerned for their image when a waitress delivered a big salad to the bassist, as salad and rock and roll do not complement each other (but they did make up for it later in the show when they drank some brown liquor).

Bring Your Child to Work Day Blues

I invited my children to join me at work on Thursday, but they weren't interested-- and my lack of children disappointed and mildly offended my high school students, as they wanted to meet them, but I can understand why Alex and Ian wanted to pass, as they would have had to get up at the crack of dawn, only to sit in a classroom and watch high school students learn about business ethics and narrative structure . . . I'm sure if I had a more exciting job, if I made candy or manufactured hand grenades or worked in the tiger cage at the zoo, then they would have made more of an effort, but high school is high school and there's no need to rush, as they will learn what it's like soon enough.

Untested and Unsolicited Dieting Strategy: Binge Gluttony

I haven't done any research, but I think it might be better if I eat all the Easter candy in one sitting, rather than parceling it out over several weeks (and I've been starting my day with jelly beans and ending it with chocolate, which can't be good) because I probably won't gain as much weight if I shove it all in my stomach at once, plus I won't be reliant on a sugar rush every two hours to make it through the day.

Luther!

The first season of Luther is fantastic, but be warned: the trope in most police shows is that things get very tense, but the police get there in the nick of time, but in Luther, they never make it.

Next Time Around, I'd Like to Be a Pharmaceutical Company

According to James Surowiecki in this week's New Yorker, the miracle drug Sovaldi will cure hepatitis C, but a single dose costs one thousand dollars, and the full treatment costs eighty grand . . . and your average hepatitis C patient makes 23,000 dollars a year, and 3.2 million Americans have hepatitis C . . . and because the people taking the drugs aren't really paying much of the cost, and insurers are obligated to cover a drug that doctors deem necessary (but insurers have "virtually zero" ability to negotiate price when a drug has no equivalent) a very strange economy has been created (and by very strange, I mean that taxpayers are going to foot the bill for our half-assed hybrid sort-of-subsidized health care situation . . . although, to play devil's advocate, perhaps eighty grand is a bargain, if it means you won't have to treat a person for a lifetime of complications for hepatitis C).

Who Are This Little Creatures Living in My House (and Why Are They Here?)

Jennifer Senior's book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood is entertaining, engaging, and well-researched, but I have to warn you, the book does get down to brass tacks; it asks the biggest and most existential of parental questions: why the hell are we doing this? and reminds us that the modern goal of parenting -- to raise happy, creative, well-adjusted children that can achieve anything they wish-- is rather elusive, compared to "the concrete aims of parenting in the past: creating competent children in certain kinds of work; and creating morally responsible citizens who will fulfill a prescribed set of community obligations," in other words, teaching your kid the family business and the community religion, and hoping it works out for them . . . but those days are long gone, and in the words of Viviana Zelizer, children have become "economically worthless but emotionally priceless."

BearMatch.com

Terri Frana-- a forty-four year old Florida mom who was mauled by a black bear while getting bikes out of the garage for her kids-- needs to get in touch with Troy Hurtubrise, who has devoted a great deal of his life to building "grizzly-proof" home-made armor . . . I learned about Hurtubrise's exploits in a Stuff to Blow Your mind podcast called "The War on Creativity," an episode that reminds us that most great thinkers are ignored or ridiculed while they are alive, but if Hurtubrise's suit could hold off a grizzly, then it should have no problem with a measly black bear (and I'm going to watch the documentary on the subject-- Project Grizzly-- so I can see just how effective the suit is, but judging from the tests in the above video, it's bear-proof).

It's Good To Be On Fire While Playing Basketball, But It's Not Good If Your Brain Is On Fire

Sassy New York Post reporter Susannah Cahalan tackles the most difficult story of her young career (even more difficult then when she went undercover as a stripper to procure illegal butt implants) in her memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness . . . as best she can, she reconstructs her battle with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis, a wild and malevolent disease that runs her through psychosis, delusions, seizures, convulsions, hallucinations -- bedbugs in particular -- obsessions, lethargy, comatose behavior, loss of verbal ability and social graces, and requires much research to diagnose and a fairly long recovery filled with drugs that bloat her body and slow her mind . . . but she is one of the lucky ones who does recover -- some remain afflicted and some die-- and so she wants to tell her story so that others can benefit, because this swelling of the brain is often misdiagnosed as mental illness, though it stems from a physical swelling of the right side of the brain . . . the book is one of those "there by the Grace of God go I" stories, as the disease has no known cause, and for me (and several of my readers) it has an added dose of reality, as Cahalan recovers at her mother's house in Summit, New Jersey, and visits her boyfriend's sister in nearby Chatham, New Jersey, so while the disease seems to be something out of The Exorcist, the fact that Cahalan has to undergo the scrutiny of "Summit moms" while trying to recover her wits lends the story a suburban surrealism.

Should You Have Known?

Jean Hanff Korelitz's new novel You Should Have Known is taut, claustrophobic and gripping: a marriage unravels, a mystery unfolds, and the book within the book -- an advice book about choosing the right husband with the eponymous title "You Should Have Known"-- takes on an epically ironic role, which might seem heavy-handed if it wasn't so much fun . . . the marriage counselor married a psychopath!

Dave's Fish Joke of the Week

Two fish are swimming along in a school of their brethren and a shark appears and opens its toothy jaws, as if to engulf them all, and the one fish says to his buddy, "Hey, do you want out of this?" and the other fish says, "Of course! What should we do?" and the first fish says, "Close your eyes and follow me" and with that he swims right into the shark's mouth, and his buddy-- eyes closed but using his lateral line sense-- blindly follows into the maw of the beast . . . and then opens his eyes, and as he starts to feel the shark's stomach acid melting his scales he says, "I thought you could get us out of this?" and the first fish says, "I did, I did . . . by "this" I meant a frantic and anxious life filled with anxiety and peril."

Half a Plan

We are going fishing in the Pine Barrens and our goal is to catch a pickerel . . . but once we catch it, then what do we do?

How Many Serial Killers Are There In London Right This Instant?

Luther is a very dark but excellent British police show on Netflix; Idris Elba (who infamously played Stringer Bell in The Wire) is a detective with a checkered past that constantly haunts him, and he inhabits what appears to be a gritty version of modern East London, but is actually a parallel universe where every third person is some kind of sociopathic serial killer (it took me a few episodes to get over this absurdity, but it makes the show run at a rapid clip, unlike the world of The Wire, where it could take an entire episode to get a search warrant).

Irony Embodied

One month ago, I took a day off to take my kids snowboarding -- and I believed I had earned this day off, as I hadn't taken a sick day all year, and so this was my reward for being so healthy . . . and after I drove home from the snowboarding trip, I felt so vigorous and energetic that I went to my Wednesday night basketball game, thinking to myself: though I'm forty-four, I feel invincible . . . I can snowboard all day, and still play basketball at night, I'm made of iron, I'm unbreakable . . . and then five days later I came down with the flu, which led to severe bronchitis, and now, though I'm a bit better, I'm still mired in mucous and have a lingering cough, and though I know in my brain that there's no connection between my boastful thoughts and the virus that brought me down, my heart thinks differently.

What Kind of Burrito Do You Dream About?

Cinco de Mayo in New Brunswick may look like a bit of a dive, but they make my ultimate dream burrito . . .  and it's on the menu, so I don't even have to struggle with Spanish to order; it is called the "El Mexicano," and -- like the elusive Syrian chucker -- it is two great things at once: half of the burrito is smothered in mole sauce, and the other half is smothered in verde sauce . . . and you get to choose what they put inside (I had chorizo) and it is very, very big . . . big enough that when I first saw it, I told Catherine that I would take half home (but, of course, I ate every bite).

Heroin and Hookers . . . but no Heroine

Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers is the bleak and sordid account of a heroin deal gone sour, and it is set against the backdrop of two decaying place: South Vietnam and Southern California . . . the Summer of Love is long gone, the optimism of the hippies has faded into junkie fatalism, and Vietnam is headed towards implosion; the style is a mix of Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, and Hunter S. Thompson, and the plot moves from philosophical to incendiary . . . you can see whay it's on Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels List . . . Stone admits that some of the fictitious adventures in the book were based on the reality of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and that the survivalist Hicks is based on the infamous Neal Cassady, but for anyone younger than those folks, reading this is like looking back at an alien culture that once inhabited our land and then flew back into space.

It's Got Something to do with Pigs

Shane Carruth, writer and director of the nearly indecipherable time travel flick Primer, has now done himself one better and made a completely indecipherable film: Upstream Color . . . I got vibes of Wrath of Khan, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, and Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation . . . though I can't promise you are going to love it, I will say this, though it's a purposefully obtuse story, it's rather easy on the eyes and ears, and it's not terribly long, so give it a shot (and then you can read this insanely long New yorker analysis of what probably happened, and how it might be inspired by both Thoreau and toxoplasmosis gondii).

Some More Parenting Advice

If you're sick and your wife is working on a twenty page graduate school research paper, and you just need your two boys to go upstairs, take their showers, brush their teeth, and get into bed without incident, then one boy will probably race into the other boy's room -- naked -- and pee on his floor (which almost struck me as funny, except that I was sick and my wife was hard at work on her paper . . . my children never choose the right time or audience for their humor . . . they have no timing).

Some Good Reads, If You're On Your Deathbed

During my extended illness (which has transformed from the flu to a wicked cough, laryngitis, and finally -- as diagnosed yesterday-- some severe bronchitis) I plowed through a lot of books: Tim Cahill's ode to Yellowstone National Park (Lost in My Own Backyard . . . apparently, when we visit the park this summer, my family likely to be eaten by a bear . . . or at least bitten by a horsefly) and Duane Swierczynski's psychedelic Philadelphia time travel mystery Expiration Date (as usual, when you go back in time to solve a problem, you're probably going to create a bigger one) and David J. Hand's fairly fun book on statistics and probability, The Improbability Principle and I finally finished Alan S. Blinder's account of the financial crash, After the Music Stopped and followed up the mayhem with Michael Lewis's fast-paced non-fictional financial tech thriller Flash Boys, then I read the later chapters of Jennifer Senior's wise, well-researched, and nonjudgmental All Joy and No Fun :The Paradox of Modern Parenthood . . . I didn't need to read the early chapters because my wife and I have survived those years, but it sounds like the teen years can be quite a strain on marriage, and now I'm in the middle of Robert Stone's novel Dog Soldiers, a bleak and trippy '70's crime novel about a heroin deal gone bad . . . I'd like to thank these books for getting me through some sleepless nights and feverish days, and though I doubt I remember much of them, I'm still going to give them all a big thumbs up (and a big thumbs up to the Kindle, which is a great resource when you're too sick or hopped up on codeine syrup to drive to the library).

Some Parenting Advice

If you tell your kids one place NOT to play, and they've been gone for over an hour, and you need them home, then you go directly to that forbidden place, and chances are that they will be there (because there's no better place to pay than the polluted and muddy morass at the edge of the river).

Funny Thing About Darts . . .

I recently hung a dart board in my basement, and I've gotten into the habit of shooting a few innings whenever boredom strikes . . . and the main lesson here is that it's a lot easier to shoot darts at the pub, after downing a few pints of beer, and I'm not sure if there's any other sport in which a moderate amount of alcohol actually improves performance.

The Hold Steady Holds Steady

I like The Hold Steady and I hope you like The Hold Steady, but their new album Teeth Dreams sounds like one giant super-long Hold Steady song . . . can a band sound too much like itself?

The Spiraling Blue Orb and the Misty Red Fog Will Form an Alliance Soon Enough, Resulting in More Chaos Than Order (From Some Perspectives)

David J. Hand's book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day is an entertaining tour through the logic of statistics and the laws and behavior of large numbers, and it also gives some great advice if you want to be a prophet:

1) use signs no one else can understand ;

2) make all your predictions ambiguous; 

3) make as many predictions as you possible can.

Goldman Sachs . . . Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker?

Goldman Sachs emerges as both a villain and an unlikely hero in Michael Lewis's new book Flash Boys . . . what Goldman did to computer coder Serge Aleynikov was mean-spirited, unnecessary, and illogical, but in the end, the company helps bolster the use of the new IEX market that Brad Katsuyama and a select group of Wall Street rebels create, in order to protect regular traders and investors from the predatory practices of high-frequency traders and "dark pools" . . . the story is just as exciting as The Blind Side, although a bit more technical, and you'll be astounded at how the modern stock market really works: think Mahwah instead of Manhattan.

Are You Reading It Yet?

I'm sure, due to all my hyperbole and ultimatums,  you are well into Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, but if you haven't finished, don't get discouraged, as the book has a slightly upbeat ending-- though the evidence is nearly incontrovertible that not only are we inadvertently killing off species at a unprecedentedly rapid rate -- with climate change, ocean acidification, and a reshuffling of native and invasive species -- but there was probably no time in the Anthropocene when humanity was "one with nature,"as the "pulse" of colonization of primitive people's across the globe went hand in hand with a devastating loss of super-awesome mega-fauna -- nothing makes more more melancholy than the list of animals early North American natives hunted to to extinction (glyptodonts, cave bears, dire wolves, wooly mammoths and rhinoceros, giants beavers, giant sloths, giant camels and llamas, American lions, American cheetahs, etc. etc.) . . . and not only that but we also wiped out our main humanoid competition, the neanderthals, but due to the "leaky-replacement hypothesis" and some very adventurous swinging souls, the good news is that present day homo sapiens posses 1-4 % neanderthal genes -- so the neanderthals aren't totally extinct, they survive inside of us . . . and while there may be no way to stop this sixth extinction, Kolbert admires the folks that are trying, as these are the kind of people who will "give a Hawaiian crow a hand-job," stick their arm up a Sumatran rhinos anus, and cryogenically freeze and preserve the genes of many species just in case we can resurrect them in the future . . . but it all may be too little, too late, but perhaps next time around, in a few million years when creatures have had a chance to evolve diversely once again -- if we are still in the picture-- we will do a better job of it.

Khan Academy . . . Shhhh?

I'm probably not supposed to tell you this but Khan Academy is a really effective, addictive and organized tool to get your kids to learn some extra math -- and it's especially attractive to boys because of the video game type features: points, badges, and unlocking levels . . . but I'm assuming parents are keeping it a secret, in the hopes that their son or daughter will be the only child to reap the benefits, and so here on Sentence of Dave, I'm officially busting the curve (and this is thanks to a fellow soccer parent, who graciously mentioned the site to me . . . if he wouldn't have said something, I still wouldn't know about it).

I Didn't Realize Ira Glass Might Be Insane

I love dogs and I love the radio program "This American Life" and I greatly admire Ira Glass for the depth, detail, and creativity of his reporting, but now I also have to consider that he is a very crazy person who is married to an even crazier person -- Ira Glass is a very busy man, but he essentially spends all of his free time taking care of a troubled dog that attacks people, is allergic to nearly every kind of food, and lunges at Ira when his wife is sleeping . . . this is a man at the pinnacle of his radio career and he can't have anyone over to his apartment because Piney will attack them (he's bitten six people) and while the dog is now eight years old, and has calmed down a bit (sometimes a stranger can look him in the eye and he won't bite him) he still has to move from food source to food source when he develops an allergy (tuna, bison, rabbit, kangaroo, etc.) and so if you are at all a fan of "This American Life" then you've got to listen to this table-turning interview; it's compelling and weird and what Ira and his wife have sacrificed for this dog defies all logic and reason, which makes their behavior either saintly and magical, or completely lunatic . . . and don't just judge by this fairly sweet Newsweek piece, listen to the actual interview with Ira Glass, it's in Act Three of the "Animal Sacrifice" episode.

Due to Extinction, There Will Be No April Fool's Post This Year

I haven't gotten much response indicating that all the people out there in the human race are obeying my command to read Elizabeth Kolbert's book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, and so I am canceling today's April Fool's sentence due to mass extinction (caused by humanity) and there will be no more April Fooling on this blog until the Anthropocene ends, the human race fades away, and the rats and cockroaches explode into all the available evolutionary niches, ushering in a new age of very gross bio-diversity that we will not be around to name (but you can enjoy previous April Fool's posts, as I'm not so hardhearted as to remove those . . . it's not like we wanted to kill all these creatures, right?)

The Flu: A Big Thumbs Down

I am giving this season's flu a big thumbs down (and so next year I'm getting the flu shot, as my wife and children -- who all got the shot -- remained perfectly healthy while I suffered) as this flu's plot was repetitively long (a week? when does the flu last a week?) and boring (fever, chills, fever, chills, ad nauseam) and there were no twists to speak of -- you'd think vomiting and diarrhea would be a bad thing, but I would have welcomed intestinal problems to break up the sweats, aches and glassy eyes, plus an embarrassing and graphic puking episode is always fun to recount here on the blog, but instead all I could do was read for very shorts stints and watch marathon amounts of Portlandia; I must admit, the illness was not a total waste of time, as I did find three things that I will use in school during my minimal reading and maximal TV watching, which I will list here so that I can reference them and add them to my lesson plans when I finally return and so you can enjoy them as well, as they are perfect examples . . .

1: the Brunch Village episode of Portlandia, which is a perfect example of a mock-epic, something we cover in Creative Writing . . .Tim Robbins has a fantastic cameo at "the end of the line,"

2: the Alexandra episode of Portlandia also works in Creative Writing, as the episode satirizes post-modern "art projects," which will connect nicely with the documentary My Kid Could Paint That,

3: and an example to go along with my "logical fallacies" unit in Composition class . . . David J. Hand's The Improbability Principle describes the "cargo cults" of the South Pacific, these tribes saw Japanese and Allied soldiers build airstrips and landing fields during World War II, observed them marching and dressing in a military manner, and then large ships from the sky would come with loads of valuable and exotic loot . . . so when the war ended, the natives "built airstrips out of straw and coconut, and control towers out of bamboo and rope, and dressed themselves to resemble the military personnel they'd encountered during the war . . . they sat wearing carved wooden headsets and duplicated the waved landing signals" but, of course, no cargo planes ever came . . . this is the most vivid example for the old statistical maxim "correlation does not imply causation" that I've ever heard.

No Quarter Needed

Snapshot of the English office over the past week; English teachers (mainly male English teachers) glued to the two computer monitors, intensely concentrating, pecking at the arrow keys . . . some folks (including yours truly) poking at a rakishly angled keyboard, slanted diagonally off the desk, others-- more spatially gifted-- slanting their brain instead . . . and if you haven't guessed, we were playing a free version of Q*Bert, but don't get all up in arms about your tax money, this was pedagogically condoned, we weren't shirking our jobs as educators, in fact, we were being productive, as several teachers were using a recent Grantland article about marathon video game playing called "The Kings of Q*Bert" in class, so this was "research" for the lesson (and during this research, I briefly held the department high score -- which was written on the white board in the office -- but then Kevin overtook me by an unattainably wide margin and so I wisely chose to stop playing . . . unlike the lunatics in the Grantland article).

Book Review with a Side of Hyperbole, Please . . .

If you're only going to read one book this year, it should be War and Peace, but if you're going to read two books this year, then the other one should be Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History; while the message is grim, the writing is clear and engaging, and Kolbert narrates her own adventures in places as far-flung and varied as the Amazon, the Andes, the Great Barrier Reef, Italy, Vermont, and a littered fossil-filled stream in an undisclosed location near a ball field in the vicinity of Princeton, New Jersey to provide a counterpoint to some shockingly depressing lessons and predictions, and while I shouldn't be doing this, because you must read this book, I will provide a thumb-nail sketch of the content . . . before humans, there were five major extinctions, and "as in Tolstoy, every extinction event appears to be unhappy-- and fatally so-- in its own way"; there was the well-documented K-Pg extinction event (formerly known as the K-T extinction event) which wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago, when a huge asteroid hit the earth near the Yucatan Peninsula, but the four other extinction events are more mysterious . . . they may have been because of climate change, shifting continents, habitat loss, and/or ocean acidification (global warming's "equally evil twin") and Kolbert wants to welcome us to the sixth extinction event, the Anthropocene, where all of these forces -- cranked up to a much faster velocity-- are wiping out species faster than we can count them, and there is an apt comparison deep in the book, after Kolbert recounts the story of the brown tree snake, an invasive species that has voraciously eaten every indigenous bird, mammal, and reptile on the island of Guam, and she cites the great nature writer David Quammen for this analogy: "while it is easy to demonize the brown tree snake, the animal is not evil; it's just amoral and in the wrong place . . . what Boiga irregularis has done in Guam is precisely what Homo sapiens has done all over the planet: succeed extravagantly at the expense of other species."

One to Live By

If you're an athletic dad, who believes that sports that don't incorporate a ball are joyless and stupid (swimming, cross-country, biathlon, triple jump . . . but an exception made for snowboarding) then you can't have too many of those little portable air-pumps (unless you're the kind of responsible person who takes care of their stuff and knows where they put everything, which I am not).

Kudos to Emily Dickinson

While yesterday's quiz hasn't gone viral, I have: for the past three days, I've had achey joints, glassy eyes, and I've gone to bed at 7:30 PM and slept until the alarm . . . and aside from slogging through work, I've been a shut-in . . . and now I'm running a fever and my eyes hurt so much that I can't read or watch TV, and so I don't have much content today, as my blog depends on my stupid adventures in the outside world, plus occasional reviews of books and movies; the only wisdom I have gleaned from this illness is that we should all appreciate Emily Dickinson's fantastic imagination, as she was a shut-in for life-- before the advent of cable TV-- and she managed to pump out two thousand wonderful poems (without the instant gratification of the internet).

What Kind of Sentence Are You?

Internet quizzes have become incredibly popular, both as a "data mining tool" and a method of humble-bragging on social media, so I've jumped on the bandwagon and created a quiz of my own to promote the illustrious Sentence of Dave brand; answer the following question and you'll find out exactly what kind of sentence you are . . . to begin, simply choose the phrase that best describes your character:

1) charming and slightly manipulative risk-taker;
2) neurotic worry wart;
3) aimless and lazy couch potato;

if you chose #1 then you are an incomplete loose periodic sentence with several gerunds and a subjunctive clause . . .

if you chose #2 then you are a run-on with several appositives, a sequence of anaphora, and a smattering of ellipses . . .

and if you chose #3 then you are an awkward fragment with inversions, synecdoche, and a mixed metaphor . . .

please pass this along to your friends so they can determine "the facts about their syntax" and achieve internet fun and enlightenment like you did!

Poop It Forward

Friday, I took my kids, one of their friends, and my dog for a hike at a local nature preserve that will remain nameless for reasons I will soon divulge, and during our hike my son had to poop but the bathrooms were closed, and so I pointed him towards a good log to sit on, conveniently located near a pile of fallen leaves -- and he went and did his business and called it "the grossest thing ever" and then we hiked for a bit and my dog pooped but we were nowhere near a garbage can, so I bagged it and left the bag on the side of the path so I could pick it up on our way out of the woods and deposit it in the dumpster next to the locked bathroom (but I forgot that we weren't returning on that path and so the bag is still there, on the side of the path, full of poop, and it's my fault) and while all this poop related nonsense was happening, I could occasionally spy through the trees, across Route 1, the chain restaurant where my younger, childless colleagues were enjoying happy hour sans poop, and then, on Saturday night we had a few families over for dinner and the theme resurfaced: our children got sent to bed early because they found several bags of poop in the park and did the only logical thing: they threw the bags of poop at the other kids (and though I think there was some reciprocation, I'm pretty sure my kids started it, and so Alex's totally gross experience of pooping in the woods faded very quickly and had no lasting effect on him, and so now we have a new rule in our house: if you find a bag of poop at the park, don't pick it up and throw it at anyone . . . and, yesterday, to try to cosmically balance the scales of karma, I found the bags of poop in the park my children were chucking, and tossed them in the trash, and though it's highly unlikely that the person who may have hypothetically picked up the bag of poop I left in the woods, and selflessly carried it to a trashcan, just to make the world a better place, is reading this sentence, at least my dedicated readers know that I've paid my debt and evened the score).

Am I a Comic Genius or Just Going Senile?

Back in the '80's, I distinctly remember Robin Williams doing a bit about the ten week conflict in the Falkland Islands; his joke was that when a British newscaster says, "here we are in the Falkland Islands" it sounds like he's saying "here we are in the fuck'n islands," and I've used this bit in class when we talk about George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant," which is about the decline of the British Empire . . . I like to ask my seniors where the last remnant of the Empire is located and then I say (in my best British accent, which is horrendous and Kramer-esque) "the Fuck'n Islands!" and then spell it for them and show them where it is on a map and tell them about the "war" in 1982 between Britain and Argentina over these pathetic sheep-covered windswept patches of grass in the ocean, but I've searched and searched for the original Robin Williams bit and I can't find it or even any reference to it, and now I'm wondering if I made the whole thing up, if I imagined that Robin Williams might do a bit about how the word Falkland sounds like Fuck'n when spoken with a British accent-- or maybe I actually saw a British broadcaster say this on the news in 1982 and thought it was funny . . . and so perhaps this is my bit, but I'm not sure: does anyone remember this?

I Hate Umbrellas and Minor Tragedies

When I visit weather.com, I want to know if I'm going to need hat and gloves, or if I should carry an umbrella (actually, I hate umbrellas, ellas, ellas, and would never carry one) but instead I find myself reading salacious headlines such as "16 Year Old Dies After Half Marathon" and "Honeymoon Ends in Tragedy" so I'm going to switch over to the homelier (but more accurate) alternative: weather.gov.

Another Reason I Should Probably Get a Smart Phone

When my son asked me if a tyrannosaurus rex could bite its own tongue, I wanted to give my boilerplate answer to ridiculous kid questions, which is "That's a really good question, but I don't know the answer -- why don't you look it up on the computer, and then tell me what you find" but we were on a long car ride, so I had to pause my podcast and discuss dinosaur tongues for twenty minutes, and this may be reason enough for me to break down and get a smart phone for our cross country trip this summer.

Slow Ride From Billings to Lincoln (But Worth It)

Nebraska is slow-paced and laconic, but don't let that put you off -- it's an awesome movie: funny, entertaining, and full of arresting imagery and faces that you don't usually see on a big screen; my favorite line is when Bruce Dern, playing Woody the senile alcoholic dad in search of a specious million dollar sweepstakes prize, slips away from his son to the bar . . . when his son attempts to drag him out of the joint, Woody claims "beer ain't drinking."

Will the Streak Continue? Let's Hope Not . . .

My son Ian has come so close to good behavior at school the past two weeks -- both weeks he had good days Monday through Thursday, but both weeks his teacher sent a note home on Friday, and both notes detailed an "f-word" violation; two weeks ago he wrote the f-word on another student's notebook (he claims he was dared, not exactly a great defense) and last week he said the f-word in music class when a fellow third grader "lied about him and left him out" and while this is quite an impressive streak, I'm really hoping it doesn't continue, and I'm wondering if I should pull him out of school this Friday to break the juju.

The Interestings is Interesting

The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer, details the lives of a group of friends that meet as teenagers at an artsy summer camp called Spirit-in-the-Woods; the novel has a Joyce Carol Oates type feel -- Wolitzer is great at capturing the inner lives of all these people, as they grow and change from 1974 to the present, from teenagers into their "thicker, finalized adult selves, with almost no chance for reinvention" -- and while only one of the initial group achieves greatness (as a Matt Groenig-esque animation mogul) this is enough to change all of their lives in strange, subtle and profound ways . . . imagine if your best buddy created The Simpsons . . . or better yet, read the book and see how Meg Wolitzer imagines it, as she is a professional imaginer.

Old and Proud

While the usual inclination in our youth-obsessed culture is to never admit how old you are -- or at least to massage the number a bit -- the opposite is true at my weekly men's soccer and basketball games: people loudly proclaim their age, the older the better . . . as a rolling stone gathers no moss (until it hits another boulder and cracks into tiny pieces . . . and that's how I felt yesterday, after playing basketball and soccer on consecutive days, I thought I had the flu or something, but it turns out i was just old and sore).

Folk Music is Boring (and so are Folk Movies)

The only thing more boring than listening to folk music is watching a movie about a folk musician -- and while I normally love the Coen brothers, their new movie Inside Llewyn Davis is so slow, melancholy, and plotless that I welcomed any time the movie circled back to the "missing cat" sub-plot; I must admit that I didn't finish watching, so something really cool might happen in the final third, but I doubt it.

You Can't Coach Height . . . or Warmth

God knows why, but everyone decided to have soccer practice on Thursday night, though it was below freezing and extremely windy, but I did a truncated session and ended after an hour, and went over to check on my other son -- who was supposed to continue practicing until 7:30, and when I saw him in a drill, shivering, I asked him if he was cold . . . and this was like asking a toddler if he got a boo-boo . . . just saying the word "cold" to my son opened the floodgates; he said "yes, I'm so cold!" and started crying hysterically, so I got him out of there and the lesson is this: it's much windier out on the turf than it is in the driveway.

As American as Basketball and Enchiladas?

A recent study found that negative social media posts can have a domino effect on the mood of readers, sending them into a moody spiral of downbeat posting and grouchiness . . . but the opposite is true as well, and so I'm going to focus on something positive today to brighten the collective soul of the internet . . . while I know the expression is "as American as baseball and apple pie," I think I experienced something equally or even more wonderfully American on Wednesday night: I played basketball for an hour and a half-- a sport that is arguably now more American than baseball-- and then I came home and ate a late dinner of some insanely spicy and delicious home-made enchiladas (made by my Irish wife) while watching "Shameless" on Blu-ray on my giant HDTV . . . sports, deserved gluttony, Mexican food, and a big TV . . . you can't get much better (or more American) than that.

Life Changing Error

Wednesday morning, I reached into my pocket for my cell phone, and mistakenly pulled out my wallet -- so I reached into the same pocket again . . . and pulled out another wallet; I had inadvertently taken my "going out" wallet to school instead of my cell phone, and so now I was walking around with two wallets in my pocket, instead of my wallet and my cell phone, which was silly, but also a great visual gag, so I made sure to tell everyone the story, while enacting it, and the producing of the second wallet generally got a laugh, so I'm quitting my job and going on tour as a prop comedian, like my hero, Carrot Top.

Not Including Sex, Dancing or Defecation

Two things that people make funny faces while doing:

1) shooting darts;

2) opening a jar with a very tight lid.

My Wife and I Take a (Small) Step Upward Towards Adulthood

For the past six months, my wife and I have been contemplating the purchase of a bed (and maybe even a bedroom set) because our old bed, which we brought back from Syria, fell apart -- and we got the rest of our ancient bedroom furniture twenty years ago when my Aunt Theresa died (and that furniture was ancient back in 1993) but we lucked out, and staved off the spending of any money on furniture (why start now?) because at the pub on Thursday night my friend Alec was describing his new bed, which has a padded headboard (actually he was describing how he got heartburn when he drank beer in his new bed while leaning against the padded headboard, but that's another sentence) and I mentioned that Cat and I had been sleeping on the floor for many months, and he said that he still had his old bed -- which happened to be queen-sized-- and he was willing got give it to us for free . . . which is a hell of  a lot cheaper than buying a new bed, so we went out and bought a box spring, tied it to the roof of the car, managed to get it down Route 18 without a mishap, and now we're sleeping up in the air again, like civilized adults, and hopefully this whole spending-money-on-a-bedroom-set idea will fade away like a kid's drawing on a foggy car window.

I May Have Finally Defeated Daylight Savings Time

The only way to short-circuit the absolute absurdity of "springing ahead" is to stay up really late the night before the clocks change, destroying your circadian rhythm, so that you can go to bed at 7:30 PM on Sunday to prepare for the ugly Monday morning wake-up (but even though I did this, I still felt like shit all day Monday . . . which isn't that unusual for a Monday, so I don't know what to think).

The Holy Mother of All Miracles (involving Balls)

Zealous readers of this blog might recall that I am often at the heart of miraculous occurrences -- especially miracles involving balls -- and last Thursday, the gods were at it again, placing me in what may be the most miraculous expression of simultaneity in the history of human consciousness; this all happened in the span of one shortened half day period, the last period the day . . . my friend Stacey was once again searching for a red milk crate full of various balls, and this milk crate of various balls -- which had been missing for seven months -- was usually located under the table in the English office, but it had gone missing way back in September and now Stacy needed the balls for a fun class activity, but after much searching she finally determined that they were long gone, and needed replacing, and so she went down to the gym to beg some balls from the PE department, and while she was down there, on a lark, she inquired about her red milk crate of balls and the PE teachers said that they had "definitely not" seen a red crate of balls, but they did have some random balls that they found -- but they were "definitely not" in a red milk crate, but Stacy looked in the cabinet anyway, just in case, and there it was -- the red milk crate full of balls that was "definitely not" in the cabinet . . . some overly zealous janitor must have taken the ball crate from the English office and put it where it "belonged" down in the gym . . . and while the finding of this crate might be deemed a minor miracle in some circles, I would not pronounce it so, BUT, if you juxtapose this event with what was going on simultaneously in my classroom -- and I mean to the minute -- then this event becomes an integral in a yin-yang shaped whirling vortex of serendipitous beauty . . . and so, while Stacy was seeking the balls in the gym, my friend Laura was searching for copies of Outliers, and so she came down to my classroom because she knew that I taught the book the year before, and I was able to locate a few copies in my cabinet, but I told her that there was definitely a box of them somewhere -- as I had lay witness to the box in the English office with my own eyes-- but I "definitely didn't have it" and Laura said she had asked around upstairs but no one knew where the box was, and so I cursed the name of the amnesiac hoarder who had taken this box of books, and refused to give them to her,  and I promised Laura I would keep my eye out for them (as I wanted them for later in the semester) and that I would smote the person who had them and then she went back upstairs with the copies we found, and then . . . moments after she left, Stacey walked into my room, jubilant and triumphant and told me the news -- she found the red milk crate full of various balls!-- and there was much rejoicing, and then she took a quick look around the mess that is my room, noting that there was a box of dusty soccer uniforms on one cabinet, and she wondered what was in the other box on top of the other cabinet and I said "softballs," and she said, "awesome, can I have a few for the milk crate?" and I said, "sure, they're not even mine, they're Kevin's" and so she got on a chair and took a look inside this cardboard box perched high atop my filing cabinet (Stacey is tall) and then she said, "you idiot, this is the box of Outliers," and she was correct, it was the box of Outliers that Laura had been looking for, the box of books I denied was in my room, and while I was denying that the books were in my room, at the exact same time, a PE teacher was denying that the red milk crate of balls was in the cabinet-- and we were both miraculously wrong in our certainty, and so Stacey and I rejoiced even more over this nested sequence of ball-related miracles, a sequence abetted by the limits of human perception and memory, and by my utter stupidity (and not only that, but my good metal water bottle was inside the box of Outliers as well, so now the universe is resolved and at complete stasis and rest . . . aside from what's happening in the Ukraine).

You Can't Fool the Tooth Fairy (Especially When the Tooth Fairy is My Wife)

The shiftier of my two children, Ian, recently lost a tooth, and he claimed that the tooth came out while he was brushing his teeth and fell down the drain in the bathroom sink . . . but this sounded fishy, and upon further inspection, my wife discovered that he was in possession of the tooth and -- God knows why -- he didn't want to give it up to the tooth fairy . . . but he obviously still wanted the night deposit that the fairy provides so he tried to pull one over on her (he has known for a long time that the tooth-fairy is mom) and after he got caught he cried and cried because "the tooth fairy doesn't give money to liars."

Meaner Girls? The Meanest Girls . . .

Megan Abbott's high school cheerleading novel Dare Me is tense, scary, and threatening; not only did I enjoy the thrilling noir plot, but I also gained valuable insight into stunting, teen anomie, and the art of betrayal (and though I know the cattiness of the rather despicable characters is ratcheted up to an unrealistic degree, it does make me happy that I have two boys and will probably never have to contend with a teenage daughter).

A Very Important Biological (and Moral) Dilemma

Should I feel sorry for my dog because he never gets to have sex-- though he frequently licks his genitals?

Awkward Dave Returns With a Vengeance and Suffers an Awkward Coincidence

Nothing upsets me more at school then when a student disrespects one of the hall aides, especially if the victim of the disrespect is an elderly lady, and so when I saw a student refuse to show the aide at the front door an ID (IDs are required to enter the building) and then walked away from her, I told her I would take care of it and I turned to follow the kid -- and as I turned, I caught him giving the aide the classic two-handed-double f-- you bird, and so I confronted the kid -- and he refused to show me his ID, and attempted to walk away -- and so I blocked his path and things got into that weird gray area where you've lost your temper with a student but you know you're probably not legally allowed to tackle him (but maybe you are?) and so you wonder how you're going to detain him (or you can simply just follow him, I once followed a kid who refused to show me his ID from the cafeteria into the gym locker room, where he attempted to hide in the corner) but luckily, before I completely blew my stack, another teacher showed up and she knew the kid's name -- and so instead of following him, I simply went to the office and wrote him up-- and all this happened before first period, I hadn't even taken my jacket off, so then I had some time to cool-off before my first class -- which is second period, as I have hall duty first period, but I still had to tell this wild tale to my Creative Writing class, but when I was halfway through, one girl said, "You better stop this story now" and I said, "Why?" and she said, "because that's her boyfriend" and pointed to a very sweet girl, who I turned to and said, "You're going out with a guy who gives the middle finger to old ladies?' and she smiled sheepishly and said, "Yeah, but I already talked to him about it, and told him he shouldn't do that."

Birthday Weekend Takes the Cake . . . A Rambling Summary of the Busiest Weekend of My Youngish Life

My wonderful wife arranged a surprise one-night getaway for my birthday last weekend (though I discovered the surprise a bit early, because we share an e-mail) and we met some old friends Friday in Greenwich Village, and my friends were nice enough to meet me in a "Dave friendly bar" -- and so Catherine and I made our way from the Hilton near Penn Station to the High Line, and then walked a bit up there . . . which is phenomenal and highly recommended, and then we hit the Chelsea Galleries-- which are directly below the High Line and which are also patently absurd -- and we saw some really bad modern art and some really scary modern art by David Altmejd, who essentially builds sculptures of horror movies, which is cool, but also begets many questions, such as: who buys this stuff? where do they put it?-- and though we found no answers, we did find some delicious pork and pineapple tacos in the Chelsea Market, and then we found Kettle of Fish, the "Dave friendly bar," which means: cheap, wood panelling, dart boards, pinball, dive-like and similar to the Park Pub . . . except this place was also full of beautiful young people, including some super-models hogging one of the dart boards, which was fun to be near at first but then got more and more annoying, but once Whitney and I got on the other board, no one was able to knock us off, a great birthday present, we won in ridiculous and dramatic fashion over opponents that were probably more skilled than us and did this for a good four hours straight, from 8 -12, until things dissolved . . .  and then after more drinking and pizza, we made it back to the hotel at 2 AM, got up the next morning and took the train home for soccer practice, then got ready for my oldest son's birthday -- he was born a day before me -- and went to Medieval Times, and though I could barely keep my eyes open, it was quite fun, sort of like professional wrestling (and our knight won!) combined with bizarre dinner theater (and Whitney reminded me of the best line from The Cable Guy, which is spot on: "there were no utensils IN medieval times, hence there are no utensils AT Medieval Times") and then we hosted a sleepover for a bunch of ten year olds and then on Sunday morning, I had to wake-up my younger son and his buddy from the sleepover at 6 AM so we could get dressed to play three indoor 8 v 8 soccer games, and then after coaching that insanity, we rushed to the basketball play-off game, as I am the assistant coach on that team, and we won and advanced in the play-offs, and then I finally got to take a birthday nap.

Brilliant Tactics in 4th/5th Grade Recreational Basketball

Things got slightly heated at the recreational basketball semi-finals Monday night -- the league rule is that every player must play two quarters, and most teams have ten players, which makes things easy to keep track of, but the particular team we were playing had been shorting their weaker players minutes all season and our head coach brought this up during the game and so the opposing coach had to play everyone equally, and though this team beat us earlier in the season, we beat them handily this time -- and I was impressed with my coaching partner's strategic use of the rules to make the game fair, but the opposing coach countered with a brilliant counter-strategy: he attempted to have his worst player foul the point guard on our team constantly in the final stretch, so that this weak player would foul out, and he could replace him with a stronger player . . . which, I must admit, is a brilliant plan-- something I would never have dreamed up (I can barely remember to call time-outs).

Two Comedians Walk into a Bar

Dinner table dialogue . . .

Ian: Who had the most children?--

Alex: I don't know;

Ian: George Washington because he's the father of our country;

Mom: that's not funny;

Alex: it's political humor;

Mom: now that's funny.

The Good Doctor Geisel and I Celebrate Yet Another Birthday Together

It's here once again,
it's hard to ignore,
he's one-hundred and ten,
and I'm forty-four.

I Fixed My Car?

Although Zman claims that adding washer fluid to the reservoir "does not constitute fixing your car," I beg to differ -- before I put that fluid into the reservoir, my car no longer shot washer fluid onto the windshield, but after I did it, it did . . . and so I fixed it (actually, I'm willing to admit my logic makes no sense, because nothing was broken . . . this was more like changing a light bulb or putting a new roll of toilet paper on the spindle, but -- more importantly-- I now know that you've got a good three weeks between when the "low washer fluid light" pops up on the dashboard and when you actually run out washer fluid . . . so if you see that thing, it's not like you're low on oil or something important, and you don't have to rush out to get washer fluid).

Tupperawareness Redux

Why did I think I needed this size container for this amount of food?

It's Not Poop Week, It's Hippo Week!

This sentence is more practical than most of the drivel on this blog, as I need to present this example to my students in a few weeks, when we finally wrap up Hamlet . . . so if you don't care about Shakespeare, hippos, feigned madness, and impractical subterfuge, then I give you permission to stop reading this, but for you brave souls, you might learn something fascinating if you forge ahead; once we finish Hamlet, I am going to make the students connect a theme or character or line or allusion from the play to something modern -- a book or movie scene or song or painting that directly or indirectly reflects ideas from the play, and I just stumbled on a wonderful example: after Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that his uncle is the murderer, he decides that the best course of action is to put on an "antic disposition"-- he feigns madness-- as he believes this will allow him unusual freedoms around the castle and also that Claudius won't suspect him of any subterfuge because he's essentially opted out of the political reality inside the castle . . . and while I've always considered this an absolutely ridiculous plan (but artistically very entertaining, of course) I stumbled upon a historical example of feigned madness that turned out rather well for the perpetrator, an adventurer named Fritz Duquesne, a South African Boer soldier, who lived a wild life as a spy, saboteur, storyteller, big game hunter, and heavy-handed purveyor of bullshit and espionage . . . he was also the arch-nemesis of Frederick Russell Burnham -- although they both agreed on one thing, that America should import hippopotami to simultaneously solve the problem of the turn of the century meat shortage and the invasive water hyacinth (and I learned about all this in Jon Mooallem's fantastic article about the attempt to introduce hippo ranching to the Louisiana bayous) but, of course, we never imported hippos, and years later, Duquesne became rather unhinged, and was involved in several terroristic bombings, counter-espionage, and fraud; while he was held in city jail in New York in 1919, he lost his mind, and then the use of the lower half of his body, but the authorities were skeptical, so they stuck pins into his legs and under his toe nails, and Duquesne "never once wriggled or winced" so they transported him to Bellevue, where he sat in a wheelchair in front of a barred window and watched the birds . . . but he wasn't actually paralyzed and somehow withstood the pin torture without revealing his ruse, and day after day he sawed at the bars with two hacksaw blades he had acquired, and finally made a daring and nimble escape, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, hopping a ferry to Hoboken, and then disappearing into New Jersey . . . and he wasn't caught until 1941, when he was discovered to be at the center of the infamous Duquesne Spy Ring, and he went to jail in Kansas and served 13 years of his 18 year sentence . . . so like Hamlet, a wild and artistically satisfying life that could only end in tragedy.

Old People Are Sexy Too

If you like to think about old people having sex, or your mother having sex, or you're just a fan of the Bard of Stratford upon Avon, then you will have to head over to Gheorghe: The Blog today for your daily dose of Dave.

Hippos Trump Everything

One of the things I love about reading is that it offers total unadulterated freedom of choice -- though I may have several books out from the library, and several more sitting by my bedside, waiting to be read, if I hear about something that piques my interest, I drop everything and commit wanton literary infidelity; I read whatever I want, when I want, without worrying about any recourse or repercussions; in other words, I'll break off a relationship with a book at the drop of a hat; this is the opposite of marriage (or my marriage anyway, as I'm pretty sure I'm forbidden to date other women -- not that I'm going to ask -- and I certainly can't engage in this sort of adulterous freedom with TV shows, because if my wife and I are watching a show, and I watch one without her, it's tantamount to cheating on her . . . and that's why when I heard that Jon Mooallem wrote a seventy one page article about the wild and ingenious plan at the turn of the century to solve America's meat shortage by farming hippos in the Louisiana bayous, I truncated all my previous literary relationships-- including getting to page seven in a new translation of Brothers Karamazov-- and immediately bought the article as a Kindle single on Amazon-- hippo farming!-- and it's well worth reading; there's megafauna, scouts, spies, terrorism, politics, subterfuge, feigned lunacy and plenty of hippo jerky (if you want a quick summary, then check out this Wired article on the article). 

How Not to Fix Your Car

When the little light comes on that indicates that your car is low on windshield washer fluid, not only do you have to purchase more windshield washer fluid, but you also have to open the hood of the car and pour the stuff into the washer fluid reservoir (which I haven't done yet -- my big bottle of blue washer fluid has been riding shotgun in my van for two weeks now).

It's Poop Week!

I may not rescue old ladies from burning buildings or dig wells for the indigent, but I did bag and toss at least ten piles of poop at the dog park last week (I think people get lazy about picking up the poop when there is snow on the ground, because it's hard to walk through the deep stuff, but I can't stand seeing a brown pile of poop defacing the pure white snow . . . which is mainly yellow and gray now anyway, from exhaust and dog urine).

Hero to Zero (in ten hours)

Thursday morning I woke up sore but satisfied, as the night before -- at our weekly Over-30 basketball pick-up game, I had one of the best shooting nights of my rather ugly basketball career . . . both my outside shot and my hook shot were on, which is a rare occurrence, and pretty much everything I chucked up went in; my team won five games in a row and got to stay on the court for ninety minutes straight, and so by the end of the night I was not only happy with my athletic prowess but also totally exhausted, and it was with these wonderful memories in my mind, that I went walking the dog on Thursday morning, and when I neared the dog park, I had to climb over a large pile of snow, and though I could clearly see that there was ice on the pavement below, I figured I could keep my balance when I touched down on it -- because I was a great athlete-- but I did not keep my balance-- not even close-- in fact, both my legs shot into the air (similar to this incident, except more spastic) and I landed squarely on my upper back, and then my head snapped back and hit the ice, and I saw stars and lost my wind, and made some weird yelling noises because I couldn't breathe and because it hurt so fucking much, and Sirius licked my face a couple times to make sure I was alive, and I'm hoping that this incident doesn't screw up my outside shot, but I have a feeling that it will . . . or at least I can blame this incident if my shot returns to normal next week (and there is a fairly happy ending to this story: though I felt shaky all day Thursday and my back and neck hurt, I made it out to the pub, and stayed rather late, and while this might not have been great for my liver, when I woke up Friday morning, after four hours of sleep, my back felt fine . . . and my students -- who thought I was going to be feeling it far worse the second day -- were impressed by my resilience; in fact, I may have boldly claimed to one class that I was "unbreakable" and asked a student to throw a chair at me . . . but luckily, this student did not comply with my request).

It's Been a Long Winter

Though I knew it was a bad idea, I tried to pick up and bag my dog's poop with my gloves on, because it was so cold and snowy, and -- of course -- I got poop all over my gloves . . . but, resourceful soul that I am, I used some snow to clean my gloves off . . . the very same snow which drove me to attempt to pick up and bag a pile of dog poop with heavy winter gloves on, an impossible task . . . and now my gloves appear to be clean.

Sometimes the Internet Teaches Me Valuable Things

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a swamp rabbit (and the administration could neither confirm nor deny if this rabbit was in any way related to the "killer rabbit" in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

Serendipity, Baby

Though I didn't plan it, I ended up simultaneously reading Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, by Alex Bellos, and Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine by George Dohrmann . . . and while there is no question that Brazil is crazy about soccer and America is crazy about basketball, the craziness exhibits itself in very different ways: Brazilians are superstitious, zealous, and obsessively festive about their national pastime (soccer fan clubs also participate in wildly gala and choreographed carnival events, where tattooed soccer hooligans organize thousands of costumed participants in synchronized marching and dancing) and creative to a fault with their gameplay, as illustrated by their incorporation of religion into the sport, their use of bizarre nicknames and their attempt at an "autoball" league in the 1970's . . . meanwhile, the story George Dohrmann tells of elite youth basketball players and their sleazy, despicable, but wildly successful coach Joe Keller paints a portrait of greed, consumption, high hopes, wild aspirations, hard work, hype, enormous success, great pressure, and epic failure . . . all in the milieu of middle school . . . the story is by turns compelling and infuriating, but the book is a must read, especially if you coach kids, and once you're finished, you can check Dohrmann's blog to see where the players from the book are now.

Dave Accomplishes His Goal

For the second time this season, I had to coach our rec basketball team alone-- normally I am the assistant coach, but the head coach couldn't make it-- and the goal I set for myself was simple: I wanted to call at least one time-out (the last game that I coached solo I forgot about the existence of time-outs-- probably because of all the years coaching soccer-- and so I did all my strategizing during in-bounds passes and free-throws) and so, though we were well ahead and I had already pointed this our to several players, I still called one time out in the first half, to point out that the other team was running a 2-3 zone, and that our ball-handler should penetrate through the middle, and then either shoot or pass it out to the sides . . . and I've decided that I've got no desire to be Bobby Knight and I will be happy when spring soccer season rolls around and I can go back to chatting with the players on my bench while we watch things happen on the soccer field that are so far away and chaotic that's there's really no reason to yell anything, as no one is going to hear you nor are they going to be able to react in time to adjust to what you say.

Like Finches, Only Wackier and With Guns

The This American Life podcast  "Good Guys" is a mixed bag, but the last story (Act 4) takes a turn into strange territory -- an anonymous soldier sent producer Sarah Koenig a number of recordings he made while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and he describes a group of men who joined the army not for love and country and patriotism, but instead to be able to experience the thrill of killing another human being . . . and while on some level this is disturbing, on another it makes me wonder if humans are just becoming more specialized, the way the finches did on the Galapagos Islands: now you can make your way in this world as a political pundit, a math nerd, an architect, a musician, a professional athlete, and as a killer . . . you can exploit your artistry, anger, rhetorical powers, mathematical skills,  good looks, ruthlessness, business sense, good will towards all humans, or any number of oddball human traits to earn money and gain fame and favor, so it makes sense that the killing niche will find its experts as well, and they aren't necessarily going to be doing it for the "right" reasons . . . in fact, if they are doing it for the "wrong" reasons, then they might be better at it (but also immoral) just like these guys were really good at making money . . . and if the niche exists, just as it would in an evolutionary matrix, something is going to move into it and exploit it, and you really can't blame people or animals or weeds or finches or whatever, if they do.

At Least I Don't Live on Backlick Road

It's hard to be a bad ass when you live on Valentine Street.

There Is No Bizarro Pub

Normally, the dads in my town go to the pub on Thursday night, and the locals and regulars tolerate us well enough, but Wednesday night, with another snow storm looming, Alec and I tried to drum up an early emergency pub night . . . but though we couldn't convince the regular Thursday night crowd of dads to attend, we went anyway; on the way we speculated that there might be a Wednesday night crowd of dads . . . guys we barely knew -- a bizarro version of our crowd -- with perhaps one friend of ours in common who had been moonlighting without telling us about the other parallel, bizarro pub group, but this was not the case; the pub was filled with regulars and locals (and this is the kind of place the opens at 7 AM . . . the kind of place where the regulars do a pot luck every Sunday for football, a real version of Cheers, with a softball team, a dart board, and an owner who grew up in town, owns the building, works the bar, runs back into the "kitchen" to make a burger or a cheesesteak or a fish sandwich . . . a real version of Sam Malone, only fatter . . . but he did play college baseball) and things seemed a little wilder and louder on Wednesday night, there was some dancing in the area that is congested with dads on Thursday night, and the regulars kept telling Alec and I "it's the wrong night!" and "it's Wednesday night!" like we got confused and came on the wrong day and so I'm thinking that when we get ten or fifteen dads in the place on Thursday, we really change the vibe and so it's good to mix it up once in a while.

Sporting Drama is Nothing Like Valentine's Day

I'm not sure which is more outlandish, Sharknado or the second season of Homeland, but what I do know is that I need to temper the emotional roller coaster of Friday Night Lights with a dose of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, because sporting drama gets me choked up and teary eyed (unlike Valentine's Day . . . I was tasked with getting my wife a pair of slippers, and while I finally accomplished this, I had to go to several stores, as slippers are a hot item this winter; the guy at Target said, "sorry man, we're all sold out, we sold eight hundred pairs in three days" but I figured I could make that particular trip count for something-- as I hate going into stores-- so I went from the slipper department to the card department and picked out the perfect card with the perfect sentiment, since I certainly can't express myself (as evidenced by the poor and rambling structure of this sentence) but when the guy rang it up, I found, to my surprise, that the card I chose cost $7.50, which seemed absurd, so I didn't buy it, and had to go to another store . . . and it's not like I saved very much, I think I paid $4.95 for that card, but it was a matter of principle . . . I'm not paying more than $4.95 for a card).

This One Goes to 105 . . . So It's Five Better, Isn't It?

Amazon recently produced an editor's list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime and while I'm not making any accusation, this does sound suspiciously close to my list of 105 Books to Read Before You Die (Which Will Be Sooner Than You Think) and I did some in-depth analysis and I've decided that my list is much better than Amazon's list-- and this isn't only because I just read a rather critical article about Amazon's megalomaniacal economy destroying practices in a New Yorker article called "Cheap Words"-- it's also because I've read 67 of the books on the Amazon list-- which comes out to 67% of the list . . . 67/100 as a fraction, and while there are a few common titles between their list and mine (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Guns, Germs, and Steel; The Corrections; and The Golden Compass) and a few common authors-- Orwell, Marquez, McCarthy, Chandler, and Sedaris-- there is one irreconcilable difference between the Amazon editors and me, and this difference speaks volumes . . . the Amazon editors think you need to read Dune before you die, and I don't.

Easy Doesn't Mean Light

I am still searching unsuccessfully for a light read . . . one of my students gave me a copy of John Green's Looking for Alaska, and I'm a sucker for books about private school, especially if they contain pranks, but even though this book is set at a private school and even though there are pranks, and even though it is an easy read, and even though John Green is entertaining and convinced me to watch the light and fun delirium tremens film Harvey, this book is NOT light at all, but if you are looking for a quick, gripping and rather depressing read, then this book is for you.

Is This So Wrong?

My boys and their friend were building a snow fort in the icy slush last week, and they were obviously preparing for an apocalyptic snowball fight, but I warned them that the snow was not good for that, as it was hard and icy and if anyone got hit in the face with an ice-ball they were going to get hurt and cry, and then-- content that I had done my job as a parent-- I went in the house to relax, but thirty minutes later the front door flew open and my son Ian stormed in crying and screaming because Alex hit him in the eye with an ice-ball, and so I yelled at him for not heeding my warning (though I probably should have yelled at Alex, but Ian was closer) and he yelled back at "You're not supposed to yell at little kids when they get hurt!" and so now I am wondering if it's okay to yell at little kids when they get hurt if you warned them that the thing they were doing was going to result in them getting hurt.

My Wife, Who Is Occasionally Sarcastic, Has Made Our Children Jersey Strong

Last November, after a beautiful hike in Vermont, my wife said to the boys, with complete sincerity: "Thanks, I had a really great day with you guys" but my son younger son Ian didn't pick up the tone, and turned to his brother and said, "I think we're in trouble."

Snakes Can Be Heavy

After finishing George Packer's extremely depressing book The Unwinding, I decided to read something lighter, and so I turned to a book a student recommended called The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers . . . and while I couldn't put the book down, as I wanted to find out if Special Agent Chip Bepler of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife could finally take down Mike Van Nostrand, the brash and blatant kingpin of American reptile smuggling, this book is definitely not light reading: Bryan Christy tells a tale of drugs, crime, corruption boa constrictors full of cocaine melting in a van, environmental devastation, obsessive herpetologists, crooked zookeepers, and a completely overwhelmed Miami division of Fish and Wildlife, with just three agents to cover South Florida, the Keys, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands . . . three agents to "investigate every illegal plant or animal that came through the port of Miami, by plane or by boat . . . three agents to police the waterways against manatee abusers . . . three agents to wade into the marshes before dawn to await duck poachers . . . three agents to watch over the Florida panther, three to stop Mexican restaurants from serving up sea turtle eggs, three to force beachside hotels to dim their lights so that the sea turtles that did hatch could follow the reflected light of the moon to the Atlantic Ocean instead of finding death in the artificial illumination of a well-lit parking lot" and not only that, the book ends with a funeral, but I won't spoil it since Sunswept Entertainment  is making a movie based on the story (and it seems they've turned Chip Bepler into a woman).

Metaphors in a Meta-Metaphor

George Packer's book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America is a gripping and intimate account of what has happened financially and politically in America over the past forty years, told through the eyes of a diverse group of people -- ruined entrepreneurs and liberal activists, Newt Gingrich and Jay Z, Wall Street Occupiers and white trash, Washington insiders and visionary technophiles -- and while most of the book subscribes to the titular metaphor: unless you are one of the lucky ones, the ones that stand with the political and financial establishment, unless you are someone who goes with the political "flow" then you are fine, but the rest of America is unraveling; I warn you, the book is painful to read and it will cause you to feel ire and depression and indignation and outright anger . . . but there's nothing much you can do, you are either in or you are out, and if you are in, then there's no incentive to change things that are bringing you money and power, and if you are out, then you don't have any power to speak of, and you can't muster the energy and the force to fight the lobbies and the banks and Washington politics and Wall Street and globalization and corruption and corporate union-busting . . . but at least along the way, there are a few tangential metaphors that are more fun the the overarching general unwinding of our society; Dean Price, a tobacco farmer's son who is trying to create sustainable agriculture and biofuel in the South,  imagines the American factory farm poultry, those chickens so pumped full of chemicals that they are too big to walk on their own "served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and eventually be seen in Walmart riding electric carts, because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a Supercenter, just like the hormone fed chickens" and Packer explains how they brought judges out of retirement to go about the work of "clearing Florida's of half a million foreclosure cases. as earlier generations had cleared the mangrove swamps that made way for Tampa, and, finally, Peter Thiel -- founder of PayPal and and really rich dude -- uses a metaphor to show the general decline in attitude towards technology: he says that in the 1970's, best of the year sci-fi anthologies were full of stories where "me and my friend the robot walked on the moon" while now the trend in sci-fi is dystopian and fragmented (and The Hunger Games is the perfect analogy for what has happened . . . young folks, who will do everything their parents did, will not have access to the same economy and nation that privileged previous generations, and so they will be fighting each other to the death for the scraps) and Thiel calls this a "tech-slowdown" and he points out that most technological advances that have occurred recently have been in the imaginary binary world of 1s and 0s inside computers, not in the physical world; to summarize, this is an amazing depressing mess of a book without solutions, as it should be, but there are occasional bright spots: the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the perseverance of Dean Price in the face of a politically close-minded and corrupt world.

We'll Never Get to the Bottom of This One

My eight year old son Ian, who we regard as slightly shifty, woke up the other morning with chocolate on his face . . . but he didn't have any chocolate for dessert the night before, and so the only explanation is that he has a hidden cache of chocolate in his room, and that he ate some of it after he went to bed -- but I searched his room thoroughly and couldn't find anything (though we have found secret troves of candy in his room before, and so I had probably cause to conduct this search) and Ian insists that he didn't have any secret chocolate before bed . . . though he did bring up the possibility that he may have ate some chocolate while sleep-walking, and while I don't believe this for one bit, Ian is a tough nut to crack, and I don't feel like breaking out the water-board, and so we're just going to chalk this one up to poor detective work on our part and concede that we will never know the truth.

Hypothetical Soundtrack

If you feel the need to listen to music that evokes a nonexistent 1970's police show in which the heroes adeptly navigate the mean streets of their decaying city, and often have to cross the thin blue line in order to administer justice in a chaotic and amoral world, and then face repercussions from an oppressive and byzantine bureaucracy, a politically minded and data driven chief, and an apathetic force, then listen to The Crusaders album Free As the Wind . . . it's absolutely fantastic: play it straight through, and I promise you'll have a car chase (and more!) in your brain.

To The Guy in the Lexus Driving in Front of Me with Ten Inches of Snow on His Roof and Back Windshield:

You can't see me, because your back windshield is covered with snow, but I would like to inform you that I exist, and also that the snow blowing off your roof is creating a miniature blizzard and obscuring my vision, and though -- besides a small hole in your front windshield -- you've made no attempt to remove any of the snow from your car, I'd like to say that I forgive you, because I have been lazy and inconsiderate at times, and it would be hypocritical for me to feel otherwise.

On Milk Related Things

Last Thursday in the English office, I rejected the tastiness of Chantal's kale and banana smoothie because the consistency was too milky, and this led to the inevitable discussion about milk related things, and the fact that I have never drank a glass of milk, not even a glass of chocolate milk, nor have I ever had a milkshake (Kevin thought this was absolutely impossible and wanted me to provide witnesses to verify this patently absurd statement) and when I claimed that I wouldn't even try Nitro Milk Stout beer because -- though I know it contains no milk-- it has the word "milk" in the title and thus makes me think of milky things, Kevin became determined to penetrate my defenses, and he succeeded . . . he thought of the one thing with "milk" in it that I do love: Neutral Milk Hotel.

Gummy For Men

I am embarrassed to admit that I love gummy candy . . . gummy bears, gummy worms, gummy coke bottles . . . you name it, but I rarely indulge in these festive, colorful treats because I feel absolutely absurd eating them; no adult man can maintain any sort of dignity while sucking on a gummy peach ring, and I think there are other men that feel the same way-- other closeted-gummy-men-- and so there must be a market for macho gummy treats: gummy chewing tobacco, gummy seeds, gummy pork rinds, etc.

This is as Close to Archimedes as I Am Going to Get

I am certainly not a physicist in any sense of the word -- my "eureka" moments are usually very abstract -- but last week, while I was coaching a youth basketball game, I figured out how something works in the physical world; my thought process began during a game when our team was slaughtering the opposition, we were really racking up the points, and what surprised me was how often the shots were falling into the basket -- we always seemed to be getting the roll -- but upon further observation, I found that this was often the case . . . little kids make a fair amount of the shots they put up, if they hit the rim . . . and this is my best explanation as to why this is so: when an adult shoots a basketball, the arc of the ball usually rises far above the height of the basket, and then the ball plummets down towards the rim-- it's like the ball is being dropped from five feet above the basket-- and so if it hits wrong, it's got quite a bit of momentum, so it's going to "brick" and bounce wildly from the hoop, but a little kid shot typically just clears the rim . . . the point where the ball is at an actual standstill -- the apex-- is just above the basket, and so it hits the rim with very little impetus and has a much better chance of remaining on the rim, and possibly rolling in.

Kids Aren't Half As Annoying When You Are Playing Ping-Pong With Them

Nothing makes me happier than the fact that my kids are now proficient at ping-pong . . . cracking a cold beer and knocking that ball back and forth is as mindless and stress-free as parenting gets.