Let Them Eat Two Pieces of Cake
I'm hoping my wife skips this sentence, because I don't want her to revisit this event and the emotions surrounding it, but I'd like to make a full confession to my readers, for the sake of honest self-reflection; last Tuesday, after a very cold and windy soccer practice, I got home, ate some dinner, and then noticed that there was some leftover chocolate cake on the counter (my grandmother ate dinner with us the previous night and she baked a chocolate cake) and it was very cold and windy at soccer practice, so I had really worked up an appetite and I saw the cake -- two pieces of cake-- and without really thinking, I ate both of them . . . then I sat down to watch some TV with my wife, and when I got up to get a drink, she said "Can you get me a piece of cake?" and I turned and said, "Uh, there isn't any more cake . . . I ate the last piece" and she said, "There were two pieces! And I told you to save one for me!" and, though I didn't hear her say this, apparently she did indeed ask me to save her some cake (she roused Alex out of bed to confirm) and it didn't really matter if I heard her or not because -- as she pointed out-- there were TWO pieces of cake, one for each of us-- and she also didn't buy my story that the cake was dry and she wouldn't have liked it anyway and I did her a favor by getting rid of it, because she had eaten a piece the night before and knew the cake was delicious . . . and the event became a metaphor for my entire self-centered existence and I had to buy her some good chocolate from the expensive chocolate store to make up for my transgression, and then -- the icing on the cake-- the next day in Creative Writing class, purely by coincidence, we read the William Carlos Williams poem "This Is Just to Say" and I had a perfect anecdote for my class (but it wasn't worth the lambasting . . . next time, I'll leave a piece of cake . . . I swear).
Dave Wins the Powerball! And Quits Writing Sentences!
Actually, not quite . . . April Fools . . . neither you nor I are quite so lucky-- I will continue to write this drivel (and I hope you will continue to read it) because I did NOT win the Powerball (and it's not like I'm doing this for the money, anyway, so even if I did win the Powerball, I would continue writing this thing, because the Dalai Lama told me there will be no money, but on my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness . . . so I've got that going for me) but something very, very statistically unlikely happened and I had the perspicacity to notice and the mathematical acumen to figure out just how unlikely this event was . . . I teach Creative Writing, which is an elective that is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors and I usually have an equal mix of the three grades in each class-- no particular grade is favored, but this year I have a thirty person class which contain zero juniors, and the chance of this happening is highly unlikely . . . there is a 66% chance for a class of one person to have zero juniors in it, and a 43% chance for a class of two to have no juniors in it (2/3 multiplied by 2/3) and a 29% chance that a class of three has no juniors in it, and if you continue in this fashion for a class of thirty, you have to calculate 2/3 to the 30th power, which comes out to 0.0000038576077564 (that's a 1 in 259,228 chance . . . which is pretty tiny, statistically speaking, but not quite as small as your chance of winning the Powerball lottery, which is 0.0000000057142857 or a 1 in 175,000,000 chance) and I'm wondering if there is some other explanation . . . perhaps junior schedules this year somehow prohibit them from taking electives period 7/8 . . . or maybe I should run out and buy a lottery ticket and strike while the iron is hot.
Curves and Blocks
We went to Philadelphia over the weekend and took in two excellent exhibits at The Franklin Institute; the first is called Body World: Animal Inside Out . . . it's an impressive collection of plasticized animals in various states of assembly: a giant squids split in half, cross-sections of a giraffe, a massive bull made entirely of musculature, the circulatory system of an ostrich, the innards of a dromedary (one hump) camel, etcetera . . . it's a wild and gross tour of an astounding variety of animal bodies; the second exhibit is called The Art of the Brick and it is lowbrow modern art at its finest . . . the exhibit features many, many pieces of Nathan Sawaya's Lego sculptures, and while the three minute film featuring Sawaya is pure cheese-- he was a corporate lawyer before he dedicated his life to Lego sculptures and he speaks in corny aphorisms, stuff like "my art is a reenactment of my personal feelings" and "everything is creativity"-- the exhibit itself was surprisingly excellent (and packed with people) and Sawaya's representations of past masterpieces (classic and modern) are suggestive and surreal, while his large sculptures are fascinating to look at because of his use of rectangular blocks to make rounded, complex figures (plus, it's fun to guess how many pieces he used for each sculpture, as there is a piece count for each . . . but I wonder if these counts are accurate . . . did he count every piece he used as he used it, or just approximate at the end?)
None Shall Pass
Last Tuesday, Alex and I went to soccer practice without Ian, because he pulled his quad; practice was a bit chaotic because everyone was sharing the turf-- Donaldson Park is a swamp-- and so once Alex and I arrived back home, at ten of eight, all I was hoping for was some warm food and and some quiet times, but this was not the case; we entered the house and Alex went into the kitchen, where my wife immediately called upon him to recite the months of the year . . . and he failed-- perhaps because he was tired and surprised by the question-- and then he was in deep trouble too, because a few minutes previous my wife had discovered a glaring hole in Ian's general knowledge-- he ddin't know the months of the year-- and so after Alex failed she yelled "he doesn't know them either! this is ridiculous . . . a fourth and fifth grader don't know the months of the year!" but it turned out Alex did know them, he just panicked in the heat of the moment . . . Ian, on the other hand, could not recite them, even with some time to think, and so there is a new house rule: before the boys get any screen time, they have to pass a "life quiz" on some basic knowledge . . . the months of the year, the location of Canada and Mexico in relation to the United States, the air-speed velocity of an unladen sparrow . . . something along those lines (and I lucked out, because my wife also demanded that they know each month's corresponding number and I'm a bit shaky on this, but my wife didn't quiz me, and so I got to watch Parks and Rec).
Fitbit Fit
The English Department has gotten a bit neurotic with their eating and exercise habits (this was mainly fueled by a school-wide "Biggest Loser" contest . . . the English teachers lost 113 collective pounds and swept the pot) and the obsessiveness culminated with a bought of Fitbit Mania; instead of working out, my friend and colleague Stacey spent forty-five minutes on the phone with Nike, trying to get them to retrieve some missing data from her Tuesday workout, because the Fitbit line graph was only showing "3000" and she definitely got "7000" . . . I'm not sure what the numbers mean, but I think even Ted Cruz can see the irony and humor in skipping a workout to retrieve digital information for exercise that you know you did, just to fill in a computer graph generated by an electronic wristband that can't be all that accurate in the first place (and I am holding out on getting one of these gadgets for this reason, and still using my low-tech analog method of measuring my work-outs . . . I call it the PantsFit and this is the way it works: I put my pants on, and if they fit, then I know I've been working out enough).
Funny How? Like a Clown? I Amuse You?
I have no problem with Constitutional textualist Ted Cruz enrolling in an Obamacare health plan-- though he staunchly disapproves of the Affordable Care Act and has argued that the plan should be repealed in its entirety-- because his wife is leaving her full time job at Goldman Sachs and and it's the financially practical thing to do: Cruz receives a subsidy for the health care . . . so it makes perfect sense . . . but I do have a problem with him seeing no humor or irony in his actions . . . it's got to strike him as just a little bit funny-- slightly amusing-- that he's willingly participating in the program that he's spoken so vehemently against (but maybe people who interpret the Constitution literally have trouble with tone, symbolism, and subtext . . . I hope he doesn't have to take the PARCC test).
Small Victories
Now that the snow and ice is gone, my dog Sirius and I are totally in the groove-- every morning, I walk him in a loop and he defecates right by the little park on Felton Avenue, which has a garbage can, so I can bag his feces and immediately toss them, thus avoiding the shame of carrying around a warm bag of dogshit.
Is This Blurry? We Might Be Able to Help . . .
My wife found three pairs of prescription glasses in my son's desk drawer-- he claims to have found them "in the middle of the road" and "on the path in the woods," which makes sense, since both of my children will pick up anything they find on the ground (last week, my son picked up someone's mouthpiece off the turf . . . yuck) and so if anyone on the South Side of Highland Park has lost a pair of glasses, we might have them (my wife was annoyed with the two of them and said they should have knocked on doors near where they found them in an attempt to return them, but I definitely couldn't see my kids ever doing something that compassionate and logical).
Fortnight of Health
On Monday, I started my fortnight of health: no weekday beer drinking, no junk food, and -- paradoxically-- no sports or heavy exercise . . . I'm trying to get in shape for Spring Break, as we are going to Vermont to do some snowboarding and skiing, and if I'm sporting a gut, then it's hard to bend over and latch in . . . and I'm also trying to stay uninjured between now and then, so no soccer or basketball . . . my Achilles tendon is sore from playing hoops, and my hip is sore from making a kick save (and a beauty) last week at indoor soccer; but, hopefully, in two short weeks, I'll be slimmer and my muscles will have regenerated, so that I can re-injure myself on the slopes and re-gain the weight I lost (in the form of delicious local Vermont beer).
Welcome to the Decline
For the doomsayers, events like 9/11, the latest financial collapse (and the solution to the latest financial collapse . . . three trillion dollars of quantitative easing) and the melting snows of Kilimanjaro indicate the imminent decline and fall, but I believe that God is in the details and for a simpler proof of the apocalypse, they need go no further than the coffee section at QuickChek, where the great minds of chemistry have spent their valuable time designing a drink with the flavor of "layers and layers of moist chocolate cake surrounded by a sweet marshmallow filling" . . . . the great and ominous signifier is "Whoopie Pie" coffee.
Spring Hates Soccer (and Softball and Lacrosse and Tennis and Fishing and Skateboarding)
At soccer practice last week, the wind was so strong that when we took the balls out of the bag, they all blew away and ended up across the track against the fence-- and then the portable goals blew away, and then cones blew over, and then the little discs blew away . . . and then, two days later-- on the first day of Spring, it snowed six inches and it didn't melt . . . so I am proposing that youth basketball season needs to be a month longer.
High Jingo
Harry Bosch investigates two cases at the same time in Michael Connelly's The Drop . . . a cold one involving a sexual predator and a serial killer and a hot one: the possible suicide of a powerful City Council Member's son . . . the hot case leads to political conspiracy and what Bosch calls "high jingo," which is his term for high-level political manipulation and gamesmanship-- something he and I both abhor-- which is why Bosch will remain a detective and I will remain a teacher . . . neither of us wants anything to do with the world of bureaucracy, administration and "high jingo," and while this means you can't have as broad an effect on the system, it also means that you don't have to compromise your values as often (but you can still use violence and intimidation once in a while to coerce a confession . . . that's just good fun).
If You're Not Careful, You Might Learn Something
Not only did I teach the kids a bunch of stuff at school this week, but I learned three things too:
1) one of my students has a sister with something called Hashimoto's disease . . . I had never heard of this but it has to do with your thyroid;
2) the same student (and a number of other students in this class) experience something called Raynaud's phenomenon . . . this is where your hands turn yellow or white because of an excessive reversal in blood flow due to cold or stress;
3) and then, finally, I learned one thing on the way to school while listening to Gary Walker on WBGO . . . he pointed out that only was Steve Turre a fantastic trombone player, but he was also a "master shellist" and I thought he said "master cellist" but he really did say "shellist," because Turre-- long time trombonist with the SNL band-- can play the shit out of a giant conch shell (check out the video).
Does the PARCC Make Students Puke?
While the PARCC test itself doesn't seem to be too grueling for students (although some kids have been "clicking through" and others have been "napping through" and I heard rumors that one kid wrote his essay in French and another wrote the lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody") the actual administering of the test has been a logistical nightmare for my high school-- you've got kids coming and going at all times of day, classes that start with eight kids and then kids return two at a time until you've got a room full of thirty, classes divided by the kids taking the PARCC, the kids opting out, and the kids who don't have to take it because it's not their day-- teachers aren't supposed to give quizzes or tests for the two weeks of testing and then try to "spiral back" over curriculum that test-taking kids missed -- and this could be anyone because there aren't enough computers to administer all the tests at once, so some kids take it in the AM and some kids take it in the PM, sophomores take it one day, and juniors another, and all the different math levels take different tests, many teachers (including myself) have to proctor at times when they normally grade or plan, and many teachers (including myself) have their classrooms changed for the duration of the test, so kids are wandering all over the school, trying to find their classes . . . the loss of instructional time is enormous, everyone-- teachers, students, and administrators-- has been completely disrupted by this thing, so unless the inherent value in taking the test and the data collected from the test (which is getting more and more skewed by the day, as smarter kids decide to opt out so they don't fall behind in their classes) so unless the experience of this test somehow proves more valuable than all the time and education lost, then I don't think it's going to last very long without some major changes (and-- perhaps because of all the anxiety and frustration produced by the major changes in schedule, there have been two hallway puking incidents during the test . . . yuck).
The Greatest Dramatic Blocking Idea in the History of the Theater
My English class was discussing the fourth scene of Act IV of Hamlet, when Hamlet talks to the army Captain and-- as he watches all these brave men in uniform march off to battle over a "little patch of ground"-- Hamlet laments that meanwhile, despite the "imminent death of twenty thousand men" and "examples gross as earth" spur him to revenge his father's murder, he has still done nothing about King Claudius . . . and I was explaining that Shakespeare really needed this army on stage (or at least the suggestion of an army) as a gigantic prop to make Hamlet feel guilt and shame and regret over his delay, and what a pain in the ass it must have been to stage this-- because Hamlet usually views the army from afar while delivering his "how all occasions do inform against me" soliloquy and one of my students asked me (sincerely) if "they used little people or toddlers as the army so that they would look like they were really far away from Hamlet" and while I've never heard of this being done (and there might be some problems with proportions-- especially if you've got an army of midgets crossing the stage) I told her that if I ever made my production of Hamlet (in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Siamese twins) that I was definitely going to do the scene her way, with a bunch of kids and little people in uniform, marching across the back of the stage through some manufactured fog while Hamlet beats himself up over his procrastination.
The Age of Drones
Drones have officially become "toasters"-- which, in economic terms, are technological items that are so cheap to produce that it's hard to make a profit on them -- and I know this because not only did my friend Alec purchase a drone, ostensibly to take pictures of difficult to reach places in theaters (he designs performance spaces) but mainly to be creepy and have fun, but my son also received one for his birthday (and I had to take a phone-call right after we assembled it and so he rushed into the backyard to try it out, unsupervised, and almost got it stuck in a tree but then I was able to convince him that a better place to fly it might be the basketball court at the park . . . and though it only cost sixty bucks, it works . . . in fact, it works so well that you can even fly it in the house).
New Genre of Comedy?
My son Ian was telling some "your llama" jokes Sunday night-- these are essentially "yo mama" jokes using the word "llama" instead of "mama" . . . and there's nothing more insulting than when someone talks trash about your llama.
Bones and More Bones
If you like hard-boiled mysteries and you like bones, than Michael Connelly's City of Bones is the book for you-- Harry Bosch gets to the bottom of the mystery surrounding a young boy's skeleton, which was found by a dog on a Hollywood hillside-- the boy died from a blow to the head and, according to his skeleton, he suffered severe abuse before he was murdered; the book has it all: detailed police procedural stuff, a tragic romance, action, violence, noir, and even a historic parallel . . . the La Brea woman, a 9000 year old fossilized human found in the La Brea tar pits: her cause of death is a blow to the head with a blunt object, and she's known as L.A.'s first homicide.
Nerds Do Sports
Radiolab's Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich usually nerd it up each week investigating something scientific, but they've recently done two fantastic episodes on sports; La Mancha Screwjob uses professional wrestling to discuss reality, illusion, and the fascinating meta-reality that lies somewhere between the two; American Football visits the brutal ghosts of football past and speculates on the future of the sport . . . including an interview with a football mom who is firmly on both sides of the concussion issue, and her talented and gigantic eight year old son who decided to eschew the game in favor of soccer and wishes he could do some "synchronized swimming" . . . his mom's reaction to this revelation is priceless . . . both episodes are awesome.
Can Someone Lend Me a Monkey?
All the great bands have a song with "monkey" in the title . . . Brass Monkey, Monkey Man, Monkey Gone to Heaven, Shock the Monkey . . . so Slouching Beast has followed suit (and I'd like to do a video for this song, so if anyone has a pet monkey I can borrow, please let me know).
Dave Almost Thinks of Something New and Creative
I was waiting in line at the Autozone to buy some stuff so I could do some work on my car (I needed to refill the washer fluid reservoir, which is right smack in the middle of my wheelhouse as far as car repairs go) and I came up with a brilliant sniglet for the trash you throw on the floor of your car . . . CARBAGE . . . but when I checked the internet, I learned that this term has already been coined . . . so the moral here is that the internet robbed me of my happiness because I had honestly never heard of the term before and thought of it on my own and believed it was equal to my other amazing sniglet: TUPPERAWARENESS . . . but now my self-esteem has been lowered a notch, whereas in a pre-internet world, I could have reveled in my glory, told my friends my new term, and maybe even suggested it to HBO and gotten Rich Hall to read it on Not Necessarily the News.
Students Ruin Everything
I always use my mouth to start peeling a clementine-- doesn't everyone?-- but a student saw me doing this and she advised me that "23 different people touch your produce before you buy it" and so I shouldn't be biting into anything I haven't washed, and while I dismissed her as crazy and explained that my immune system was stronger than anything that could live on the skin of an orange, apparently she's right.
Evil Circus!
Slouching Beast presents "Evil Circus," complete with its own live-action music video; I guarantee it's some of the most evil evil-circus music ever recorded . . . but I'm not quite as keen on the video, which might be more aptly named "How to Make a Three Minute Music Video with Thirty Seconds of Film" but despite the lack of material, I think I got the most out of my son Alex's creepy Halloween mask (and the clown's weapon is a rock-pick, in case you were wondering).
Majoring in Origami
It's unfortunate that it's not a viable career, because my boys are the Wright Brothers of paper airplane manufacture.
Together at Last: Daylight Saving Time and Skewed Data!
My zealous fans know that the only thing I love more than pontificating about skewed data is ranting about Daylight Saving Time and now-- finally!-- this Monday morning these two topics will collide in a perfect blend of peanut butter and chocolate when students across New Jersey take the PARCC test . . . some students started taking the test last week, but the snowstorm prevented them from finishing, so they will finish taking the test after "springing ahead," which is always devastating to high school students, who don't get enough sleep as it is . . . and some kids completed the test before "springing ahead" while other kids will take the entire test this week, as sleep deprived zombies . . . and while the time change won't affect elementary kids quite as much, it will affect their parents, who will be crabby and running late, and that will affect the kids . . . so Pearson either needs to find a way to correct the scores for this anomaly or --better yet-- with all the cash they rake in from their testing and data analysis, they should wage a campaign to eradicate Daylight Saving Time once and for all-- because Daylight Saving Time skews the results of the PARCC! do you hear that Pearson? your data is skewed! . . . this is not a threat, it's the truth-- so get rid of Daylight Saving Time for the sake of our children (and for the sake of testing our children, and for the sake of producing reams of unskewed data about our children so we can rank and place them appropriately).
Murder on a Sunday Morning
I highly recommend this documentary . . . almost as much as I highly recommend NOT being black in Gainesville, Florida when the police are out looking for a murder suspect (fans of the podcast Serial will love this . . . and Murder on a Sunday Morning has a unambiguous and satisfying ending, I promise).
Reunited (or Anthropomorphizing a Coffee Mug)
Once again, I am at the heart of another miracle . . . several weeks ago I misplaced my favorite ceramic coffee mug (green, 20 ounces, embossed with coffee beans) and after angrily searching the school for it, I determined that it was either lost or stolen . . . but then, miracle of miracle, my friend and colleague Liz returned it to me Tuesday morning-- she showed me the mug and she asked "Is this yours? We all think it must be yours," and the reason she thought it was mine was because it had been sitting by the staff sign-in sheet for several weeks with a post-it on it that sad "Lost Cup, Please help me find my way back home" and not only that, but an e-mail was sent out with a picture of the cup, explaining that it was left in the Counseling Department, and the picture was printed and put on the announcement board in the main office-- so every day I was signing a sheet inches from my cup and staring at a photo of it . . . but because I don't really see things (or look very carefully at my e-mail) I never noticed my cup . . . and Liz and the other teachers decided that the only person in the school that would NOT notice their cup when it was on such prominent display was me, and so they brought the cup directly to me, correctly assuming it was mine (and while I was mildly disturbed by the inadequacy of my observational skills, there was a silver lining-- this was an excellent opportunity for me to allude to the classic Edgar Allan Poe story "The Purloined Letter" and thus, I am categorizing this happening as a genuinely wonderful and miraculous event, one step below Moses parting the Red Sea, but several steps above seeing an image of Jesus on a tortilla).
Dave Continues His Crime (Fiction) Spree!
Now I know the reason Michael Connelly sells so many books-- The Fifth Witness makes you feel like you're a lawyer in a big media murder case . . . and while the bulk of the book takes place in the courtroom, there's enough extra stuff to keep things moving: sub-plots and violence and romance-- and right after I finished that one, I started The Black Box, which begins with the 1992 L.A. Riots and takes a convoluted journey to the present, as Harry Bosch investigates the execution of a Danish reporter that was present for the chaos and died in it. . . I will definitely read more of his novels in the future (but not all of them, as he's written thirty-plus books . . . you hear that Harper Lee?)
Great Ideas in Western Civilization
Kitchens should have little trapdoors where you can sweep all the crumbs and junk, so you don't have to use one of those useless dustpan things.
Eleven Years Old and No Worries . . .
My son Alex just turned eleven, and I'm happy to report that the weight of his years is having no effect on his carefree demeanor . . . a friend of mine asked Alex if he was stressed at all about the upcoming PARCC test (because his son was a little worried) and Alex said, "Nope . . . not at all, it doesn't mean anything"-- in fact, Catherine and I are actively trying to stress our children out about school (to no avail) and for a more concrete example of the way they live their lives, I present exhibit A (the photo above) which is a snapshot of the crevice behind Alex's bed-- apparently once he's done eating grapes, potato chips, animal crackers or apples (all of which he is forbidden to eat in his room, for exactly this reason) then he tosses the detritus over his head and it falls behind him, into the crack between the wall and his bed, and then he goes on living his life, Alex-style (and if I were to hazard a guess, it will be many more birthdays before this changes).
Educating the Youth With Facial Hair Part II
It's very important to model what you are teaching-- if you are writing thesis statements, you should write one with the kids . . . if you are analyzing rhetoric, you should show them how it's done-- and if you're showing a clip Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, then you should trim your facial hair accordingly . . . it's just good pedagogical practice to do so (maybe next year I'll dye my hair blonde as well).
The Good Doctor and I Celebrate Another Birthday
My beard grows white, my skin grows loose,
the looming specter tightens his noose,
and if you deny him, he'll cook your goose . . .
let me remind you, it happened to Seuss.
the looming specter tightens his noose,
and if you deny him, he'll cook your goose . . .
let me remind you, it happened to Seuss.
Tales of Wawa
On my way to Wawa, I saw a teenage girl with long dark hair hanging over her face and she was high in the air, sitting cross-legged on the roof of a car, texting away in the cold . . . it was an odd tableau, especially on a deserted suburban street; the next day, when I bought a spicy turkey chipotle sandwich at Wawa, the guy making my sandwich told me I made a "good choice," which made me very happy (probably a little too happy-- what the hell does the sandwich maker at Wawa know about good food?) though I think he was breaking Wawa protocol-- because the reason you get a sandwich at Wawa is the fact that you can order on the little touchscreen and avoid all human interaction (and it turned out that the sandwich was not such a "good choice" . . . I normally bring lunch from home, and my stomach wasn't used to digesting an entire spicy turkey chipotle sub while teaching my 10/11 creative writing class . . . and rule #1 of teaching is that it's no fun to teach when your digestive system is going berserk).
New Music: Girl vs. Death Squad
After a few hiccups, I've got my home music studio up and running again (everything pretty much died in the span of a week-- my DAW software, my operating system, my digital audio converter, and my MIDI drum machine) and I'm trying to record ten solid songs and call it an album . . . I've got a cool name for the project-- Slouching Beast-- and "Girl vs. Death Squad" is the first track I finished, it's inspired by all the Mexican drug cartel stuff I read last summer; for lyrics and more, head over to Gheorghe: The Blog.
Puzzling
I've been consuming loads of crime stuff: The Fall, True Detective, The Skeleton Road, The Fifth Witness . . . so you'd think my investigative skills would be on fleek, but the following mysteries in my life still remain unsolved:
1) two weeks ago, the garbagemen took the recycling on Wednesday instead of Thursday;
2) both my jump shot and my hairline have diminished on the same timeline;
3) even though Rudy was totally cheesy, it still made me cry.
1) two weeks ago, the garbagemen took the recycling on Wednesday instead of Thursday;
2) both my jump shot and my hairline have diminished on the same timeline;
3) even though Rudy was totally cheesy, it still made me cry.
Can You Build a Teacher Bigger, Faster, Stronger?
Elizabeth Green's book Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone) avoids most of the politics that Dana Goldstein covers in The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession and instead focuses on the quest to find out what good teaching is and what characteristics a good teacher possesses; along the way she dispels some myths-- one is that teachers are "natural born" . . . it would be convenient if this were so, because then it would be simply a matter of firing the worst ten percent of teachers (which is a LOT of people-- there are 3.7 million teachers in America . . . it is by far the largest number of white collar workers in any one profession, as a comparison, there are 180,000 architects and 1.3 million engineers) and replacing them with folks that are "born to teach" and then all our test scores would rise, but though there have been plenty of attempts, there are no particular characteristics or personality traits or intellectual capacities that make a good teacher-- as long as you are smart enough, it's something you learn . . . then there are the folks that just think if there were enough accountability and testing, we could figure out where the problems are-- but these sort of data collection set-ups don't actually help teachers improve and generally collpse under their own weight, and on the other side of the coin are the autonomy people, who believe that good teaching results from teachers being completely on their own, free of testing and data . . . but there's no indication that this is the case either; Green goes to Japan, a country that test far better than us in math, and she finds that they use a system very different than ours, where teachers have a lighter class load, but much more time to collaborate and observe colleagues, and then study and criticize their lessons in an intense fashion-- and, ironically, the Japanese learned this system from the United States-- we invented it, but we never implemented it (the book closely observes math teaching and an easy way to spot the difference is that American classes progress in an "I, We, You" fashion-- the teacher demonstrates, the kids work together, and then they try it alone, while Japan works in a "You, Y'all, We" manner, where the kids work on a single problem-- carefully crafted by a team of teachers-- and they work alone and struggle at first, then discuss possible methods with each other, and then have a teacher directed discussion on how they might go about solving the problem) and Green comes to the conclusion that though we've tried some noble experiments (the "zero tolerance" charter schools in impoverished areas and plenty of collaborative programs in certain schools) that we have no national infrastructure for this sort of thing, no shared curriculum and vocabulary in disciplines, and a general incoherence because of state, national, and district mandates (which may or may not conflict with each other) and that more observation (especially by people outside of one's discipline-- which is what is happening now in schools everywhere around the country) is not particularly helpful unless the teacher is a complete trainwreck-- and most teachers are not (in fact, teachers which are rated ineffective one year, have a very good chance of being rated effective the next, so there's a lot of subjectivity in these ratings) and so they need very specific feedback and lesson ideas for their subject area, not more administrative data, but-- as Michael Roth points out in this review of the book, American teachers clock far more hours in the classroom than teachers from other countries (especially successful countries) and so there is no time to collaborate or watch other teachers lessons or team plan, and -- because of the particular American obsession with business and productivity-- I can't imagine our course or student loads ever diminishing, so in a sense, we will remain islands unto ourselves (I am very lucky that a lot of collaboration goes on informally in my department, but it's pretty random and essentially determined by what English teachers you have lunch with . . . which is no way to improve national test scores in reading and math) but you never know, the book is worth reading just for the math ideas alone, which might help you to help your kid with his math homework.
Dave Learns How to Use a Scarf!
It took my me all winter to figure it out, but I finally mastered the scarf-- in order to wear one, I need to first put on a hooded sweatshirt, then I need to wrap the scarf around my bare (and rather thick) neck, and then, in order to secure the scarf in place, I need to pull the hood of the sweatshirt over the scarf-- so it's jammed in there; this method really keeps the scarf up over my chin and mouth and it stays that way-- I walked the dog for an hour down by the river and the wind didn't bother me at all . .. so if next winter is a bad one, and I start posting scarf incompetence stuff again, someone please remind me about this epiphany.
I Don't Know What Women Want, But I Know What ISIS Wants
Though I still don't know what women really want, I do know what ISIS really wants . . . and you can too if you read Graeme Wood's really long and in-depth Atlantic article "What ISIS Really Wants" but if you don't feel like reading it (it's definitely a downer) then I'll sum it up in a nutshell: apocalypse, genocide, slavery, crucifixion, beheadings, territory, a caliphate, social welfare, free healthcare, Sharia law, and-- finally-- a showdown in Dabiq between the jihadists and "Rome," where the Islamic State will be victorious, and then they will go on to sack Istanbul and spread through the world, only to be beaten back by the anti-Messiah "Dajjal" . . . and the remaining five thousand members of ISIS will be cornered in Jerusalem, where--with the help of Jesus-- they will triumph and rule the earth . . . and this is all derived from a carefully considered, radically rigid reading of the Koran and the Hadith . . . so it's not so much to ask for, is it?
Cowardly Swedes in the Snow and the Jungle
It is both awful and compelling to witness a grown man's total humiliation-- I have only seen this once and it is indelibly engraved in my brain . . . my wife and I were hiking up a limestone karst in the Khao Sok region of Thailand, and our leader Nit-- a whiskey slugging ex-tiger hunter turned eco-guide-- was pointing out the jungle sights: boar, elephant, and tapir tracks; trees that had been ripped apart by Malayan sun bears; monitor lizards basking in the sun; hornbills flying overhead . . . it was loud, cicadas and gibbons shrieked and chattered; and we were making our way up a steep section, switchback after switchback-- Catherine and I were at the back of the line; Nit was in the lead, followed by Hans the big Swede, his tall and lovely wife Maude, and their teenage son . . . and one moment we were soaking in all the nature and the next moment was pandemonium . . . first we heard a loud predatory growl and then Hans turned and bolted, knocking his wife to the ground, and he sprinted by his son, his eyes round with fear . . . and finally, right in front of Catherine, he fell face first into the mud, tripped by a log . . . Nit was laughing hysterically, and Catherine and I, with our view from the back of the line, had seen the whole thing: Nit got ahead of the group and just before Hans rounded the turn, Nit did his best tiger imitation, a sharp guttural scream-- and granted, this was tiger territory-- and Hans bought it-- hook, line and sinker-- and took off like a bat out of hell, abandoning his wife and children in a moment of Costanzaesque panic . . . and so, a few minutes later, when we ended the hike on top of the karst, Hans was able to regain his breath, but not able to save face (which was bright red in embarrassment) and Nit couldn't have been happier that he had destroyed this man's reputation . . . this is a moment I can still see as vividly as the day it happened, it was both funny and horrible, but I never imagined what it did to Hans and Maude's marriage . . . until now-- an ex-student sent me an email recommending an international film called Force Majeure because she thought it was similar to this story (which I told in class) and though it takes place in the French Alps instead of the Thai jungle, the film is more than similar-- it is exactly like what happened in the jungle; a Swedish family is eating breakfast outside at a mountain-top ski resort and they see an avalanche headed towards the deck-- and while at first they think it is a "controlled" avalanche, as the wall of snow gets closer and closer, the restaurant patrons move from fascinated to afraid, and then the wall of snow hits-- and the Swedish mom grabs the two children to protect them and meanwhile the Swedish dad grabs his gloves and his phone and then (like brave Sir Robin) he runs away, abandoning his family to the snow . . . and though it turns out that the avalanche was indeed "controlled" and the frightening wall of snow which enveloped the deck was only avalanche "smoke," that doesn't change matters, and minutes later the dad slinks back into the scene and the rest of the movie (this is just the start) is about the consequences of his cowardice-- just like the event I saw, it's painful and terrible to watch (but also impossible to look away . . . check out the clip to get the idea).
How Much Light Do You Need in the Bathroom, Anyway?
Another sunrise, another sunset, another day the new bathroom light fixture stays safely nestled inside its box.
The Fall (Asleep)
The Fall might be a good show-- my wife certainly loves it-- but it's thin on humor and certainly takes things slowly (read as BORING) and this effectively and literally puts me to sleep every time I watch . . . but then my wife kindly summarizes the plot of the episode I missed and we move on . . . and now I've "finished" watching season two and I am very excited for season three, because the skin under my eyes is smooth and wrinkle free from all the shut-eye I've been getting.
Winter Gets Seriously Cold (and Seriously Silly)
It's gotten so cold here that I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to wear a scarf . . . how does one wear a scarf?
Ghost in the Machine/ Ghost in My Head
I'm teaching Hamlet now, so whenever I see that little "remember me" check-box that asks if you'd like a website to save your information, I hear it in the voice of Old Hamlet's Ghost . . . remember me.
Dave (Inadvertently) Appreciates Canada!
Back in 2012, I made a New Year's Resolution to appreciate Canada more, but apparently that's not the kind of thing you can force yourself to do . . . despite my abject failure at deliberately appreciating our neighbors to the north, I'm pleased to report that sometimes you can end up appreciating Canada by accident (which seems fitting for a country with a capital city that no one can identify) and I've been doing just that: two years ago I learned to play Gordon Lightfoot's ominous and excellent song "Sundown" on the guitar (and my friend Rob coincidentally learned it as well) and then a couple days ago I heard a snippet of a song on the radio and vaguely recognized it and wanted to learn it on the guitar and so I looked it up, and it turned out to be another Gordon Lightfoot song ("If You Could Read My Mind") and so I did some research and not only is Gordon Lightfoot Canadian, but he is one of the most appreciated Canadians; for example, but Robbie Robertson considers him a "national treasure" and Bob Dylan wishes his songs would all last forever . . . anyway, I like his lyrics more than I like his voice, but he's a hell of a lot better than Nickelback.
I've Seen the Future and It's Ridiculous
My children had their first Twinkie experience Friday night-- my wife's boss heard that they had never tried the quintessential processed treat and so she bought a box of them in order to corrupt their taste buds-- and my kids spent some time just soaking in the smell before they ate them, and while Alex held his Twinkie under his nose, he said to me: "this is the future, a Twinkie attached to a pair of glasses so it sits under your nose and you can smell it all day" and I almost pursued the discussion, but then I thought better of it and let him enjoy his greasy cream filled treat (when I was a kid, I preferred the Chocodile . . . which is a chocolate covered Twinkie and-- according to Wikipedia-- Hostess reissued them in 2014, but in a slightly smaller "fun-size," which seems like a weird appellation, because with something as delicious as a Chocodile, the bigger the better-- so a smaller version should be termed the "less fun" size).
Best Friends Forever (Aside From a 17 Year Hiatus After You Slept With My Wife)
So in the end, True Detectives is a Buddy Cop Show (Starsky and Hutch . . . Marty and Rust) and if you've got a buddy -- even if you're buddy is obtuse and philosophical and cold and obsessive and damaged . . . or drunk and licentious and hot-headed and undirected-- then you can head into the heart of darkness and maybe come out unscathed (or very scathed, but not so scathed that you can't do another season) and I'm wondering if the design of the mystery was so byzantine, like a Raymond Chandler novel, so that you could just sit back and enjoy the weird relationship between Marty and Rust, and forget about trying to figure out who was abducting and sacrificing children in the swamps of Louisiana (which isn't all that fun to think about anyway).
Snow Schtick
As a high school teacher, you occasionally educate your students, but in between the learning, you need a lot of schtick; Thursday during Creative Writing class, it started to snow and the kids reacted in the typical way: "Hooray, it's snowing! It's snowing!" and usually I allow them a minute or so of precipitation celebration before I make them start doing school stuff again, but not any longer--because I figured out how to nip the snow celebration in the bud; I said to them "an old lady just slipped on the ice and broke her hip, a car accident just happened on the Turnpike, and a stray dog just froze to death . . . and you're celebrating?" and a girl said "stop it!" to me and no one mentioned the snow again.
I Know Why the Enraged Bird Tweets
The New York Times article "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life" investigates how public shaming in a digital forum can lead to very real consequences for the people targeted-- the article focuses on Justine Sacco's infamous tweet and there is no question that what she posted to her small group of followers was fairly dopey, tone-deaf, and possibly racist (Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!) and though Sacco claims she was satirizing the protective bubble that many white people inhabit, she came off as gleefully "flaunting" her privileged life; Sacco tweeted this before embarking on an eleven hour plane ride, and the by the time she touched down in South Africa, she had been lambasted all over the internet and as a result of the frenzy-- her tweet trended at number one-- she was fired from her job, she was told by authorities that no one could guarantee her safety, and employees at her hotel threatened to go on strike if she stayed there . . . and while I agree that people should be very careful what they post on the internet, as it is a permanent and public forum, I also see an irony in this system, where people are pushed to write controversial and edgy things in order to attract attention, and then the very people seeking these controversial and edgy things invoke unbridled indignance at the author, when they were trawling through Twitter to find exactly such things; this reminds me of Howard Stern's mantra: if you don't like what you're hearing, turn the dial . . . if you don't want to be offended, then get off the internet and read something that's been vetted by a professional editor-- satire is really hard to write (especially in 140 characters) and Justine Sacco failed at it, but the people who publicly humiliated her also failed to take the post in its proper context; the medium is the message here-- the tweet was in poor taste, but it was just a tweet, designed to live and die in a moment-- take flight or plummet into the binary abyss-- not haunt a woman for the rest of her days.
Icy Stairs vs. Hannibal Lecter
We just started watching another crime show about a serial killer (True Detectives) and this made me wonder how often serial killing actually occurs-- because if you watch Luther and The Fall and Dexter and Hannibal and The Following (I've only seen the first two on the list-- and that's enough serial killing for me) then you'd think that the world is absolutely overrun with psychopathic homicidal maniacs . . . but it turns out (according to Scientific American) that only one percent of the 15, 000 murders that occur in the U.S. each year are the work of serial killers, and the FBI estimates that there are 25-50 serial killers operating at any particular time . . . which is actually more than I thought, but you should still worry more about getting the ice off your porch steps then the chance that your neighbor has a bunch of frozen heads in the freezer.
Snow > Frozen Ice Terrain
A few weeks back I waxed poetically about how much I love to stomp across Donaldson Park in the snow, wearing my Sorel boots, my trusty canine companion bounding and rollicking by my side, tossing the fresh powder into the air with his snout-- but now that fresh snow has been rained upon, and sleeted upon, and it is frozen into a phantasmagoria of icy slicks, jagged chunks, and crusty shelves; my Sorel boots afford no traction on this stuff, and my back hurts from hiking across the uneven surfaces every morning and afternoon, and I'm not hoping for spring, because all that means is mud and rain, and I'm not sure if more snow will help matters, because the snow will be layered on ice, so the only thing I can wish for is that someone offers me a job in Colorado, where the beer flows like wine and the sun always shines and the snow is dry and powdery and you can just brush it off your windshield with a magazine.
Dave vs. the General Public
According to The Week magazine, there is a growing gap between what scientists believe and what the general U.S. public believes . . . for example: 86 percent of scientists think parents should be required to vaccinate their kids but only 68 percent of the general public believes this; also, 87 percent of scientists think climate change is caused by human activities, but only fifty percent of the general public believes this . . . and while I'm not a scientist, I am noticing that my beliefs don't often coincide with the general public either; for example:
1) it seems like everyone in the general public who has heard of Sleater-Kinney really likes their new album, but I find it kind of grating;
2) the general public is fond of skinny jeans, but I prefer them a bit baggier;
3) the general public seems to really enjoy seasonal decorations, and I think they're a hassle;
4) the general public likes cars with hubcaps, but I don't really care one way or the other (and I tend to lose them because I'm an awful parallel parker);
5) the general public couldn't give a shit how they use "lie" and "lay" but I like to use them properly;
6) and finally, the general public likes to dance at weddings, but I don't know what to do with my hands (or my feet).
Great Ideas in Pub History?
Alec and I are generally full of ideas on pub night, but sometimes these ideas don't sound as good the next morning:
1) last Thursday, I was a bit wound up from playing lead guitar in the Faculty Follies band, and this led to us deciding to form a band (with a rather crass name about a sexual practice that was popular in the '80's and in '80's movies, e.g. Vacation and The World According to Garp) and then make an album and post-date it from the '80's so that people would "remember" us even though we didn't exist-- Pete the bartender/owner shot this one down immediately;
2) moments later someone claimed that the people who are "unboxing" and testing toys and electronics and food and other stuff on YouTube are making "billions," and we wanted in on these untold riches, but realized that most items already have well-followed "unboxers" and so we would need a new niche if we wanted to make our "billions"-- and so we decided we could unbox and test toilet paper . . . I'll spare you the rest of that brainstorming session;
3) and then Friday night we revisited a recurring discussion about Alec's solution to the Washington Redskin nickname controversy-- Alec believes they should shorten their name to "The Skins" and each custom-made super-tight jersey should correspond to the player's skin tone (the numbers would look like they were "painted on" the jerseys in grease-paint) so it would appear that the opposing team would be the "shirt" team and the super-tough Skins would be going bare-chested-- and while I admire the aesthetics of the idea, I think the variety of skin tones on an NFL team (and thus the inconsistency in jersey colors) would make it tough for the quarterback to pick out receivers (and we've never discussed whether the jerseys would have nipples and belly-buttons printed on them).
1) last Thursday, I was a bit wound up from playing lead guitar in the Faculty Follies band, and this led to us deciding to form a band (with a rather crass name about a sexual practice that was popular in the '80's and in '80's movies, e.g. Vacation and The World According to Garp) and then make an album and post-date it from the '80's so that people would "remember" us even though we didn't exist-- Pete the bartender/owner shot this one down immediately;
2) moments later someone claimed that the people who are "unboxing" and testing toys and electronics and food and other stuff on YouTube are making "billions," and we wanted in on these untold riches, but realized that most items already have well-followed "unboxers" and so we would need a new niche if we wanted to make our "billions"-- and so we decided we could unbox and test toilet paper . . . I'll spare you the rest of that brainstorming session;
3) and then Friday night we revisited a recurring discussion about Alec's solution to the Washington Redskin nickname controversy-- Alec believes they should shorten their name to "The Skins" and each custom-made super-tight jersey should correspond to the player's skin tone (the numbers would look like they were "painted on" the jerseys in grease-paint) so it would appear that the opposing team would be the "shirt" team and the super-tough Skins would be going bare-chested-- and while I admire the aesthetics of the idea, I think the variety of skin tones on an NFL team (and thus the inconsistency in jersey colors) would make it tough for the quarterback to pick out receivers (and we've never discussed whether the jerseys would have nipples and belly-buttons printed on them).
Really Explore the Space with the Brake Lights . . . More Brake Lights!
So we were driving home from SpiceZone (an Indian restaurant that is a zone of spiciness) and we got behind a Cadillac Escalade with the largest brake lights I have ever seen-- it was like the car was inside a pair of parentheses (the photo above doesn't do the effect justice, but I couldn't find anything better . . . and if I were a different kind of person I would have snapped a photo with my phone, but I'm not that person).
Faculty Follies
Once again, the Triennial (not triannual, thank God) Faculty Follies were a roaring success-- teachers, administrators, secretaries and hall-aides performed skits, dances, and other entertaining stuff to a packed house (plus there were videos, including an awesome parody of Serial that Stacey made . . . I was the prime suspect) and while I never physically got up on stage-- it's too weird up there-- I performed below the stage in the "house band" (we called ourselves the SATs . . . not nearly as good a name as The Hanging Chads) and it's too bad Weird Al cornered the market in stupid song parodies, because though we only rehearsed once, we rocked the house; here is our set list:
1) Instagram-- to The Beatles "Yesterday"--
2) It's Fun to Guess on the P.S.A.T. -- to "Y.M.C.A"--
3) Take Me to Lunch-- to Hozier's "Take Me to Church"--
4) You're Not the Only One-- to Sam Smith's "I'm Not the Only One."
1) Instagram-- to The Beatles "Yesterday"--
2) It's Fun to Guess on the P.S.A.T. -- to "Y.M.C.A"--
3) Take Me to Lunch-- to Hozier's "Take Me to Church"--
4) You're Not the Only One-- to Sam Smith's "I'm Not the Only One."
This is My Future (and it's pathetic)
Last weekend was a harbinger of future parenting; my ten year old son was up later than me on two out of three nights: he went bowling with his friend on Friday and didn't get home until 10:30 -- long after I went to bed-- and he was the only one in the family awake to actually see the anti-climactic final play of the Super Bowl (he was angry that we left the Super Bowl party down the street at half-time, but I had a cold and felt like shit, and when we got home, I took Nyquil and still thought I could remain awake to see the rest of the game . . . but I forgot that no man is stronger than the soporific powers of Nyquil).
Harper Lee: The World's Laziest Writer?
Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is publishing a "new" novel on July 14th; Go Set a Watchman is chronologically the sequel to Mockingbird and details the relationship between an adult Scout Finch and her father Atticus long after the controversial trial of Tom Robinson, but Harper Lee actually wrote this story before To Kill a Mockingbird-- Go Set a Watchman contains flashbacks to Scout's childhood, and Lee's editor wisely advised her to write a novel focusing on those flashbacks, and the result is the story that became a staple on middle school curricula across the land . . . anyway, I find Harper Lee incredibly lazy, it's not like she's been polishing this "new" novel for the last sixty years-- she claims that she "lost" the manuscript and that a friend recently "discovered it" (I suppose it's possible that she misplaced the novel, since rumor has it that she's nearly blind, but the most probable scenario is that the royalties from Mockingbird have petered out and she needs some cash to maintain her genteel Southern lifestyle) and so I am warning people not to fall for this ruse engineered by a lazy old bat in a wheelchair (does she even need that wheelchair?) and join my total boycott of this book and the ensuing media events surrounding it; instead, if you're going to read a book by an old bat, then read Skeleton Road by Val McDermid; the book is a fantastic political mystery, and-- more significantly for this particular post-- if you like this book, then you can read one of her twenty-eight other novels . . . so Harper Lee, take that bitter pill and swallow with along with your daily dose of Metamucil-- maybe this prolific literary statistic will inspire you to dust off your Smith Corona, feed in a fresh ribbon, and get back to work.
Shiny Happy People Read Absurdist Fiction
The Happiest People in the World is a novel by Brock Clarke, and the opening took me by surprise-- I've been reading a lot of non-fiction and realistic fiction and realistic crime fiction lately, and I forgot how absurd a novel can be-- the beginning of the book is observed by a stuffed moose head in a local bar: it is a scene of great violence, and then things just keep getting weirder from there; there are CIA agents, a Danish political cartoonist on the lam posing as a guidance counselor, spies in disguise, terrorists, wannabe terrorists, rogue agents, small town lugnuts, disaffected veterans, and all sorts of other folks, interacting at a breakneck pace-- the plot shifts, the point of view shifts, the tone shifts, and-- despite the absurdity-- it's impossible to stop reading, which is a great reminder that if things are structured right, and the sentences are well-written, then a novel can take you on a far wilder ride than a movie . . . I read a lot of this stuff long ago: Thomas Pynchon and Tom Robbins and John Barth and Italo Calvino and Kurt Vonnegut . . . and then I got old and started reading books about economics and technology, so this was a nostalgic trip back to my old reading ways, when I really had no idea what was going on: both in my life and the books that I read.
Stella Gibson is a Better Swimmer Than Gillian Anderson
In the BBC series The Fall, Gillian Anderson plays Metropolitan Police Superintendent Stella Gibson, who is sent from London to Belfast to investigate a string of serial-killer type murders; she is a cold, weirdly sexual, detached character and when she's not frowning or sleeping in her clothes in the office, she likes to swim laps to blow off steam . . . but while Stella Gibson is the sort of person who does everything with crisp and lean efficiency, apparently Gillian Anderson doesn't know how to swim very well; this provides the only humor (at least I thought it was funny) in an otherwise dark and dour show: Anderson's swimming is hectic . . . she breathes frantically between every stroke, her stubby little arms pumping away, her body rigid, her head snapping violently, over and over in the same direction . . . and all this poor form must have contributed to her "frozen shoulder," which is why-- as she explains in this article-- she used a body double for the swimming scenes in season two (so Gillian, since I'm sure you're reading this, here are a few pointers: you want to take as few strokes as possible to cover the length of the pool, slipping your hands into the water they way you would slip them into a glove and turn your entire upper body to breathe-- you should try to point your belly-button at the sides of the pool with each stroke, and don't cross your arm over the center line, reach out and use your forearm as a paddle . . . and you can thank me in the comments).
A Movie Review in Honor of Groundhog Day
You may have heard the premise of Richard Linklater's new film Boyhood: he got the same actors together (Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Patricia Arquette) year after year for short shooting stints and then he stitched the scenes together to make a fantastic coming-of-age narrative with the greatest special effect of all-- the actual passage of time; the movie took twelve years to make, and follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from elementary school to his first day of college . . . and the effect is in no way gimmicky, though it's always exciting to see how everyone looks in transition, but the story carries itself . . . it is the opposite of the great Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day-- where time stands still for God-only-knows how long . . . in Boyhood time is an uncontrollable flash-flood that sweeps Mason's family across Texas . . . and I am always impressed by works of art like this, where the investment of massive amounts of time is crucial to the outcome: I couldn't make it through Finnegan's Wake but I love the idea that it took Joyce seventeen years to write the book and it should take you seventeen years to read it; I am also reminded of Columbine and Far From the Tree, both of which took a decade to write . . . and then, of course, there's Noah, who took a picture of himself every day for six years.
Dave Does the Opposite
In a shocking role reversal, I cooked dinner on Wednesday night while Catherine took the boys to the barber (and she bribed the boys into going for haircuts with a new toy-- a mini-basketball hoop with an electronic scoreboard) and when she got home, dinner was ready but she started assembling and playing around with the basketball hoop: hanging it on the closet door, testing out the scoreboard, unfolding the structure, etcetera and I had to be the nag and tell everyone that they could play with the new toy after dinner, but that I had been slaving over the food and it was getting cold and they were all being rather rude . . . and I'll tell you, it was no fun being the scold, so I'm going to try to go back to playing with the toys around dinner time because getting nagged is easier than doing the actual nagging.
Dave Almost Loses a Nipple
The night after I watched Michael Ginsberg of Madmen cut off his own nipple and present it to Peggy in a jewelry box, because the humming of the office's new IBM computer drove him insane, the very next morning, I was pushed to the brink of sanity by a chirping noise in our kitchen . . . but luckily my wife and I found the source before I had to slice off any body parts . . . the basement fire alarm needed new batteries.
Who's Writing This? Does It Matter?
A few days ago, my wife helped me install a little thesaurus app that works inside Google Chrome-- so that I can simply right-click on a word and it will give me several (various?) synonyms for any word that I type . . . and I am wondering if this makes my writing more Dave-like . . . because I won't settle for an ersatz (artificial?) word and instead I'll find the exact (precise?) word that my consciousness is searching (grasping?) for-- in other words, the thesaurus will be a cognitive tool that will allow me finer-grained, more nuanced access to my thoughts, treating my readers to the most Dave-like experience possible; on the other hand, there is the possibility that right-clicking on all these words is going to make my writing half-Dave/half-Cyborg . . . if the little app plants suggestions in my brain that wouldn't have come up otherwise, then you'll actually be reading a collaboration between Dave and a computer . . . either way, there's one thing that's certain: it's still going to be a bunch of tangential drivel.
Four Ways to Be a Better Student
"How to Fix a Broken High Schooler in Four Easy Steps" is the second part of the Freakonomics two-part podcast on American education and Philip Oreopoulos, who sets up programs to help high-risk students succeed, summarizes four major reasons why students fail:
1) students are too focused on the present-- which describes my own children perfectly, even though I always tell them "think about the future," this simple maxim doesn't sink in-- they live in the moment, without any worry of the consequences of their words and actions;
2) students tend to overly rely on routine, and just keep doing what they've been doing in the past-- and this one does NOT apply to my own children, as they can't establish a routine if their life depended on it (see number one);
3) students sometimes think too much about negative identities-- they focus on what they're not good at or hang around with the wrong crowd (I think my boys might BE the wrong crowd);
4) mistakes are made more often in stressful situations or situations where there's not enough information-- and this is a tough one because my natural inclination is to yell at my kids when they're doing something stupid because they lack information, but the yelling causes stress and they don't listen anyway, so we're caught in a vicious cycle of ignoring them and letting them fail on their own (which they do with flying colors) or telling them how to think and behave, which usually results in yelling and stress and more mistakes . . . so essentially there's no hope as a parent, you can never do the right thing and you just have to hope that by reading lots of comic books, your kids will pick up enough literacy to make it in the world.
1) students are too focused on the present-- which describes my own children perfectly, even though I always tell them "think about the future," this simple maxim doesn't sink in-- they live in the moment, without any worry of the consequences of their words and actions;
2) students tend to overly rely on routine, and just keep doing what they've been doing in the past-- and this one does NOT apply to my own children, as they can't establish a routine if their life depended on it (see number one);
3) students sometimes think too much about negative identities-- they focus on what they're not good at or hang around with the wrong crowd (I think my boys might BE the wrong crowd);
4) mistakes are made more often in stressful situations or situations where there's not enough information-- and this is a tough one because my natural inclination is to yell at my kids when they're doing something stupid because they lack information, but the yelling causes stress and they don't listen anyway, so we're caught in a vicious cycle of ignoring them and letting them fail on their own (which they do with flying colors) or telling them how to think and behave, which usually results in yelling and stress and more mistakes . . . so essentially there's no hope as a parent, you can never do the right thing and you just have to hope that by reading lots of comic books, your kids will pick up enough literacy to make it in the world.
Broadchurch Has Nothing to Do With Dr. Who
Broadchurch possesses all the classic mystery elements: a tragic crime, a troubled detective, and a "locked room" style plot-- except the locked room isn't a room, it's the quaint seaside town of Broadchurch . . . and the mystery is a little more mysterious than usual . . . and David Tennant is a little more troubled than the typical troubled detective (are there any well adjusted detectives out there?) and, most significantly, Broadchurch develops the scenes that most murder mysteries gloss over-- watch it and you'll see what I mean, and be prepared for some emotions amidst the deduction.
Snow > Mud
I know an old lady is going to break her hip and flights are going to be delayed and the roads are going to be a nightmare, but that still doesn't curb my enthusiasm for loads of snow-- it's so much better than walking the dog through mud and goose crap-- I take him down to the river and he gets to bound around, off leash (because there's no one else at the park) and I get to stomp after him in my Sorel snow boots, and the dim winter sunlight reflects off the snow and the water, which makes me very happy, and it all reminds me of the final scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . . . I'm Jim Carrey and my dog is KateWinslet.
Science Isn't Always Fun
The best thing about The Best Science and Nature Writing anthology is that the writers do all the work for you: if you want to learn about the wonders of gene expression, you don't have to pore over exciting medical journals such as Thorax . . . -- instead you can skip the primary-source research and just read David Dobbs' essay "The Social Lives of Genes," which details the incredible power your environment and social ties have over your genes (basically, if you're lonely, your immune system doesn't work very well) but I must warn you, the book is not all fun and games; Maryn McKenna's article "Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future" is downright scary-- infectious bacteria is becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics we have and we can't create new antibiotics fast enough to deal with this problem, so some time in the near future, we're going to loop back to the days when stepping on a rusty nail could kill you-- and that's a minor problem compared to what Roy Scranton describes in "Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene": near the end of the essay he reminds us that "the human psyche naturally rebels against the idea of its end . . . likewise, civilizations have throughout history marched blindly towards disaster, because humans are wired to think that tomorrow will be much like today-- it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things, is not stable and permanent; across the world today, our actions testify to the belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning he seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium."
Like a Sea Urchin in Your Urethra
In The Matrix, just before Morpheus sends Neo down the rabbit-hole, he commends him for his awareness: "you know something . . . what you know you can't explain, but you can feel it . . . you don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad" and his words are both ominous and elegant, a perfect set-up for the bombshell soon to come, but I recently learned from an anonymous source that the Wachowski Brothers ran through a number of alternatives before they arrived at the "splinter in your mind" simile . . . here they are:
1) like a cinderblock in your anus;
1) like a cinderblock in your anus;
2) like a sea urchin in your urethra;
3) like a Khan worm in your ear;
4) like a polyp in TR's nostril;
5) like a hedgehog in your armpit;
6) like a caltrop between your butt cheeks;
7) like a booger in your mustache;
8) like the early-morning gound in your eye;
9) like a donkey in your bathtub;
10) like a splinter in your pinky-toe, right under the nail, and you can't get it out-- even with a pin that you sterilized with rubbing alcohol . . . it is this feeling that has brought you to me . . . do you know what I'm talking about?
3) like a Khan worm in your ear;
4) like a polyp in TR's nostril;
5) like a hedgehog in your armpit;
6) like a caltrop between your butt cheeks;
7) like a booger in your mustache;
8) like the early-morning gound in your eye;
9) like a donkey in your bathtub;
10) like a splinter in your pinky-toe, right under the nail, and you can't get it out-- even with a pin that you sterilized with rubbing alcohol . . . it is this feeling that has brought you to me . . . do you know what I'm talking about?
Innovation: Dead in the Water or a Phoenix Rising?
So most of you are aware that I'm the greatest teacher ever (when I'm not feeling grouchy or tired from pub night or claustrophobic or hoarse from too much coaching or irked by teens and their cell-phones) and my great skill is that I consume a lot of media-- print, audio, and visual-- and just barely understand it, but my subconscious does a good job of making connections, which I only half-comprehend-- and because I have no problem not fully understanding things, I'm willing to present these loosely connected things to my classes, which are full of smart kids, and let them sort it out; I am trying to get them to understand how much style and rhetoric influence an argument (and I am all style and rhetoric, with very little content) and I recently stumbled upon two pieces on innovation that are almost humorous to consume one after another-- though their content is similar, they generate completely opposite tones; the first is a dire piece by Michael Hanlon in Aeon called "Why Has Human Progress Ground to a Halt" and it makes an excellent historical and global argument for why our best days of invention may be behind us (specifically: 1945-1971) and the second is an inspirational gem from Planet Money called "The Story of Ali Baba,"-- the piece offers two success stories of innovation, and in both, the innovators use the Chinese commerce marketplace Ali Baba to directly buy parts that individual inventors have never had access to before . . . ex-Wired editor Chris Anderson ends up opening a drone-building company and Shawn Hector and Steve Deutsch built an automated chicken coop . . . so you be the judge, humans are either treading water waiting for the flood, or living in the most convenient time to innovate in human history.
You Should Print This Out
Ferris Jabr's article "Why the Brains Prefers Paper" presents some interesting evidence as to why reading a book or magazine is better than reading on a screen; there are tactile reasons of course, and people comprehend texts better when they read them on paper (and remember more) and students suffer less eye-strain, stress, and fatigue when they take tests on paper-- as opposed to on a computer-- and they actually score better . . . so this is an interesting rebuttal to the new standardized tests students will be taking on computer this year-- in our school, kids are taking the PARCC test and they will be taking it completely on computer, but there is also a paper-and-pencil version of the test . . . so I wonder if the results between the two mediums will skew the data . . . I certainly hope so, as there's nothing I enjoy more than skewed data (except Campbell's Law . . . which often leads to skewed data).
Platinum Fatigue Part 2
I was making my way through the 2014 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing and I saw an essay entitled "TV as Birth Control" and figured it was on the same topic as yesterday's sentence-- people are so busy watching all these platinum quality TV shows that they don't have time for sex-- but that was not the thrust of the article: apparently, TV (especially soap operas) in developing countries gives women a different view of motherhood, fertility, and women's rights and generally causes a major drop in fertility rates (in the 1970's, the Mexican government used soap operas as propaganda to promote family planning and contraception . . . this is known as the "Sabido Method") and so despite the steamy and salacious associations, soap operas may save the human race from a Malthusian disaster.
Platinum Fatigue
Sometimes, I get so tired and I don't think I can keep it up-- the pace is too fast and I want to close my eyes and just sleep, like forever . . . but then I rise to the challenge and keep on swimming . . . but somewhere, buried deep in my subconsciousness, like a splinter in my mind, there's a niggling thought: I can't do it . . . it's impossible . . . there are too many . . . it's a fool's game . . . there's no way out . . . there are too many good shows! . . . there's no way to keep up! but then I dispel the negativity and think to myself: I am doing it . . . I've watched The Wire and Madmen and The Sopranos and The Shield, Luther and Battlestar Galactica and Breaking Bad and Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Return and Top of the Lake and Portlandia and Deadwood and Orphan Black and The Walking Dead and Sherlock and Louie and Friday Night Lights and The Guild and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I acknowledge that these are the best shows ever made and that we are living in the Platinum Age of Television, and that these shows are better than movies, better than books, better than music, almost better than fornication, and certainly better than any form of entertainment ever created in the entire history of humanity, and I bow down to the show-runners and the show-writers, I applaud everyone for the effort, and I express my admiration and appreciation (and I also wonder how this many different good shows can all make money) but I think I've finally hit the wall, I can't do it any longer-- I grew up on Night Court and Real People . . . I patiently waited all week for a new episode of Cheers-- so this is quality overload-- there's too many choices, something has to give; I've learned to quit fairly good shows (Orange is the New Black and American Horror Story) and while I'm trying to do Broadchurch and Fargo and Black Mirror, it's never enough-- people keep recommending new things: The Fall and The Affair and The Missing and The Return and True Detectives and The Americans and Happy Valley and a bunch more that I've forgotten . . . so I guess I've got to accept the fact that I can't watch them all, and be happy that I'll have something to do when I retire (which doesn't seem likely, considering what's a happening with my pension fund).
Football, Soccer, and the Cinema
Sunday's Seattle/Green Bay game was the first time all season that I watched an entire NFL game-- start to finish-- and while the finish turned out to be extremely exciting, I was mildly annoyed for the first three quarters: Seattle looked inept, and there were a lot of commercials for new movies (which wasn't annoying in itself, I can usually tune out movie trailers but my children and their friend had to do a full review of how "awesome" each movie looked . . . they-- like many folks much older-- are still deceived by the fast cuts and the good music into thinking that every movie will be a masterpiece, simply on the strength of its trailer) but luckily my friend Roman was demoing his new deep-fryer for us, so he kept us all amused through the slow sections of the game with delicious and crispy fried-treats . . . and then, of course, the last thirty minutes of the game were a lightning-paced rollercoaster of plot twists and spectacular plays (and discussions about the rules-- my kids are still at the age where the ins-and-outs of onside-kicks and two-point conversions are riveting . . . and I can get sucked into it as well: I still don't understand why Seattle didn't go for two when they were down 16-0 and they scored their first touchdown . . . but seeing how the game turned out, I guess that's why I'm not an NFL coach) and I will say that it was fun to watch football with a bunch of soccer players (my son mistakenly called the Superbowl "the World Cup" during the game, much to the amusement of his friend, who is a real football fan) and unlike a soccer match-- which would have been long over if it was 3-0 in the rain going into the last stretch of the game, an NFL football game always has the possibility of a cinematic ending . . . and no matter what, there will be "an ending"-- a specifically final chance, an official climax-- unlike the flow of a soccer match, where there is no exact moment you can call the last attempt at victory-- and so I guess we like out sports the same way we like our movie trailers: episodic, fast-paced, explosive, and awesome (and Seattle's fake kick to set-up their first touchdown was extra awesome for me, because it made me remember why I started rooting for the Seahawks in the first place-- I was watching a Giants game in 1979, pre-LT, so it was ponderous-- and at the half they showed Seattle running a fake-field goal play and then throwing the ball to their little Mexican kicked, Efren Herrerra, who scored a touchdown . . . and apparently they did this often, and so, on the merits of that awesome play, the Seahawks became my AFC team -- they were the opposite of the Giants: they had no running game to speak of, except when Jim Zorn scrambled; and Zorn mainly heaved lefty passes at his little wunderkind white-boy wide-receiver, Steve Largent, and-- until they got Kenny Easly in 1981-- their defense was porous . . . it's hard to identify the current NFC powerhouse Seahawks to that AFC expansion team, but it still reminds me that I had a super-excellent Seattle trash can in my room when I was a kid-- the Seahawk logo wrapped all the way around, and I was also the only kid in town sporting a Jim Zorn jersey).
More Ice
Yesterday, my son Alex and his buddy Gary walked down near the river to play on the ice (not on the frozen river itself, which is forbidden for obvious reasons-- I'm not that negligent of a parent-- but there are large frozen puddles near the river that my kids love to play on) and when I went to check on them, the two of them were playing ice hockey-- literally-- they were using sticks they found to play hockey with a puck made from a large chunk of ice; I didn't bother to tell them how funny I found this, as I didn't want to interrupt their game (which they played for a really long time . . . I had to walk back there to remind Gary he had to get home, and I'm thinking this is one of those rare and priceless kid memories that I'm going to need to recall when future teenager Alex does something obscenely obnoxious).
Chem for Dogs
I'm not very strong in my comprehension of chemistry (in fact, I'm downright stupid when it comes to chemistry, as anyone who has taken a chem class with me can attest) and so I'm not going to try to explain why this happens (if you're curious, read this) but apparently, not only does salt melt ice, but it also lowers the temperature of the ice as it melts-- somehow the salt uses energy from the water to cause the melting, and when you take away energy, then things get colder . . . but the interesting part of this equation is that I learned this from my dog . . . the other day when it was very, very cold and I was walking him down at the park, he started bobbing up and down like he had Parkinson's, but then I noticed that he was walking on three legs-- he was holding one paw in the air, and I took a look at the paw and it wasn't injured so I just chalked it up to weirdness and in a moment he stopped, but when I brought this up at the dog park, everyone seemed to understand this principle about salt and ice and they all gladly told me about it (I talked to multiple people about this phenomenon, at different times, and everyone I talked to cited the fact that when you make ice cream, you use salt to lower the temperature of the cream . . . does everyone who owns a dog also make homemade ice cream?) and so my first solution to this problem was untenable: for a few days I carried my dog across the street to the park-- because all the salt collects on that patch of pavement-- but my dog is fairly heavy and I walk him a lot, so that got old quick . . . instead, I bought him some Musher's Secret paw wax and that did the trick . . . and now I can proudly say that my dog taught me more about chemistry than that old bat I had in high school.
When Someone Makes Soup, You Eat It
When your wife slaves all day over a batch of home-made chicken soup, then come dinner, you eat the soup (I made the mistake of making a few tacos with the leftover chicken, instead of partaking in the home-made soup, and she was really pissed at me).
This is My Best Effort
My son Alex passed his stomach virus to Ian and me, and while the really gross part is over, my body is so sore and worn-out that all I can do is sleep and pet the dog.
You Can Pick You Nose But You Can't Pick Your Kids
While my son Alex still habitually picks his nose and eats it-- which disgusts me to no end-- I am also proud to say that he can now execute another, more elegant pick-- the pick-and-roll, which he performed perfectly with his buddy Luke in a basketball scrimmage the other day . . . this was one of my proudest moments as a dad (it competes with watching him proficiently snowboard) because, let's face it, as your kids get older, you're not going to have much influence over their behavior, morals, and/or attitude-- you might get them to say "please" and "thank you" but the rest is a combination of genes and peer influence (read the groundbreaking book by Judith Harris on this topic: The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do) . . and so if all the kids are getting cell-phones implanted in their buttocks, then you're probably not going to convince your kid to do otherwise-- and if you join the party, then you'll just be a weird old wannabe hipster with a cell-phone implanted in your buttocks, so there's just no way to keep up with them . . . really the only way you can have some sort of permanent influence on your children is if you teach them a specific skill, especially if that skill will have a influence on their life in the future . . . I didn't learn to snowboard until I was twenty-two and I didn't learn the pick-and-roll until after that (I was developmentally challenged as a basketball player) and, despite learning them late, both these skills have had a great influence on my life: snowboarding became one of my favorite sports and encouraged me to travel to a lot of places I never would have gone, and I still play pick-up basketball to keep in shape, so seeing my son learn these things at age ten makes me very happy.
January > Teetotaling
I think all of us living in the Northern Hemisphere will agree that January is a terrible time for resolutions-- especially ones that involving eating and drinking less; it's cold and dark and one of the best ways to dispel the winter blues is with delicious food, delicious food preparation, social gatherings, and plenty of booze . . . and so I am proposing we switch New Year's Resolution Season to the first day of spring-- people tend to have plenty of resolve then and there's actually stuff to get done (spring cleaning, home improvement projects, gardening and landscaping, getting in shape for bikini season, etcetera) while in the winter, there's no need to lose weight-- you're wearing layers of clothing-- and there's a whole lot less that needs to be done . . . so let's save the dieting and teetotaling for some time in the future and face the facts: January and February are for eating and drinking until you have a smooth, soft layer of insulation covering your body that will protect you from the cold and the wind.
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