Holy Mother of Miracles!
Fanatics of Dave know that miracles abundantly manifest themselves when I am present, but this newest miracle is different, it is in fact more miraculous than all other previous miracles combined-- even more miraculous than the miracle of the balls; last Sunday (which many religions consider the holiest of days) I was driving a bunch of kids and parents to a travel soccer game (and I am certain that this blessed event was a reward for my good deed of carpooling) and when we got home, my friend's canvas chair got stuck in my minivan's back hatch, between the latch and the locking mechanism, and-- after much violent yanking and pulling-- the the chair finally came out, but the yanking and pulling must have broken something, as the locking mechanism now wouldn't catch, and so the hatch couldn't be closed; I drove home with the hatch open, and then tried the laying of screwdrivers and pliers to the crippled area, but to no avail, and while I was finally able to pry the little piece inside the mechanism into place so it would catch, but you still couldn't lock an dunlock the mechanism: if you opened the hatch, then you had to go through the whole process with the screwdriver again to get it to catch, which is no way to live your life, so I closed the latch and decided I would let it recuperate for a few days-- mainly because I didn't want to deal with it or bring it to one of those places where you pay some money and they fix your car, but after several days of dragging soccer equipment over the seats and out the sliding doors, I prayed to all of the higher powers in existence and then I lay my hand upon the handle and pushed the button, and-- miraculously!-- the hatch opened with ease and grace, and then I closed the hatch and it locked with ease and grace-- Jesus healed the cripples and the lepers-- but we all know that religious belief can kickstart your immune system-- but I healed an inanimate object, I healed a car!-- my latch was dead and entombed in darkness for three days, and then rose again, full of strength and latchiness, absolving me of having to pay a mechanic money to fix the problem . . . if this isn't a miracle, what is?
How Did Sheryl Crow Get Motivated to Write "Soak Up the Sun"?
The weather has been really pleasant around here for the last few days, and it's made my motivation to write sentences and record music and practice the guitar and even read a book severely wane; I just want to go outside and soak up the sun . . . and this makes me wonder how anyone who lives in a beautiful climate gets anything done, especially artists . . . I know Georgia O'Keefe found her inspiration in New Mexico, but she's probably the exception to the rule; this might explain why most of the movies coming out of Hollywood are crap, as the weather is so good out there that it must be very hard to focus on making a great work of art (and really, how can you connect and empathize with the common man when it's 72 degrees and sunny every day . . . I'm sure Hollywood movie production people start off with the best intentions, revising scripts and shooting scenes, but then it's just so damned nice out that they feel compelled to call it a day and go catamaraning . . . anyway, if the weather wasn't so nice here in Jersey, then I'd start a massive meta-study of great artists in the style of Franco Moretti . . . cross-indexing great works with the location in which they were created, and then see if my hypothesis holds water: that there is a negative correlation between good weather and great art (and if there's someone living in Greenland reading this, and you're stuck inside because it's hailing large chunks of ice, feel free to steal my idea and write the study).
Dearth of These in Central Jersey
Every time we visit Vermont, we envy all the delicious restaurants-- I don't understand why we don't have a hip Mexican inspired counter-service place like Mojo Cafe in our vicinity-- we have plenty of great authentic Mexican food (like the new place in Highland Park, El Sol, which I love)-- but Mojo Cafe is one of those places where someone with excellent handwriting writes the menu on a big chalkboard and they serve local produce and play cool music and have a million different bottles of hot sauce that you can sample, it's a hipster joint, certainly, but the food is really, really good . . . I also wish we had a organic deli like The Moon Dog Cafe . . . there's local produce for sale, amazing baked goods, and excellent and creative soups and sandwiches; I'm not sure why we don't have places like this in Middlesex County, as our population is much denser than Vermont, so someone check out the websites and open something similar . . . thanks in advance!
Famous Last Words (Dave Does Risk Assessment)
You're going to want to read the entirety of this rather long-winded sentence, if only because if I die, then you can say "I told you so"; this week in Composition class, we prioritized and classified our worries and anxieties, and then we took a look at the evidence and determined if there was any logic behind our assumptions; this is a good assignment for high school seniors, with graduation and the real world looming in the immediate future-- and how the students order the things they are concerned about makes for entertaining debates (such as the girl who was more worried about shark attacks than the possibility of never finding true love); to get this going, first I review some basic probability, and then we use specious sources from the internet to do back-of-the-envelope calculations, and, finally, we place our topics in one of three categories (Harmless, Don't Panic, and Red Alert); we learned that the chance of being killed by an meteorite is phenomenally low; same with bee stings and lightning; if you apply to more than five colleges, it's fairly certain that you will get into one; and if you're a guy, there's one thing to be concerned about: passing a kidney stone . . . the project also helped me out with one of my anxieties, a thick tree branch has partially cracked off a tree in my yard-- my neighbor had to point it out to me, as the dangling log is very high up (so I can't use my usual method to take it down: tossing a football with a rope duct-taped to it over the limb and then yanking . . . I did get to explain this feat in class and show my students this awesome picture) but after I did the math, I learned to stop worrying and love the log: there are 1440 minutes in a day, and the children and I probably spend three of them (if that) under the exact spot where the log would hit the ground-- my kids play at the park more than in the yard, and if I'm watering the plants in the yard, then I make a point not to stand under the "death spot," so the chance of one of us being hit by the log on any given day is miniscule . . . 2/10ths of a percent-- to put it in perspective, it's less dangerous than something else I worry about: me or one of the kids getting injured while we are skiing/snowboarding-- the chance of that happening is 6.97 injuries per 1000 visits, or 7/10ths of a percent every time you go to the mountain.
It's Happening Again
I am rapidly turning my newish (2008) Toyota Sienna minivan into my beloved and but heavily abused 1993 Jeep Cherokee . . . three years ago, when I bought the van, it was in perfect shape, but now it is missing a hubcap, there's a big scratch on the side from when I scraped my friend's car in the school lot, and the back latch is broken so you can't open the hatch, so I have to get all my soccer stuff out through the sliding doors . . . I'm worried that soon enough I'll be crawling in through the passenger side and using a boot as a cup-holder.
New Words and Old Rules
The oldest rule of discourse is this: never discuss religion or politics (this rule is slightly older than the second oldest rule of discourse: never speak when your mouth is full) but I'm going to make an exception today; the Lutheran Church near my school has this phrase on its placard: JESUS SWALLOWED UP DEATH FOREVER and while I readily admit that religion has never worked its magic on me . . . I'm not sure why this is the case, but jazz doesn't work on some people and ballet doesn't work on others and I don't want to get into why some rhetorical and aesthetic forms work on some people and others work on other people-- it's just the way of the world-- but I can't imagine how this aphorism would attract anyone to this particular church-- it's a weird and morbid and disturbing image-- and I did some research and placard is taken from a phrase in Isaiah 25:8, so it has its basis in the Bible (but so does the phrase "of these you may eat: locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper" . . . Leviticus 11:22 . . . but you don't see that on any church placards) so I understand where they're coming from, with Easter and the resurrection, but it still seems like a really odd thing to put on a sign; tangentially, on the political front, I learned a new word in Rick Perlstein's book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus . . . this is the first book in his trilogy of how modern conservatism was formed (I highly recommend the second book, Nixonland, and I'm loving this one as well . . . Perlstein writes dense, high energy prose from a tactical perspective on how conservatives got their hooks into America; his third book just came out and I plan on reading that one as well) and the word is normally a religious one: "chiliastic," which is a very specific adjective that describes "millenarianism," or the doctrine of Christ's expected return to earth to rule for one thousand years . . . but Perlstein uses the word in a hyperbolic and secular way (which is certainly his style) to describe how activists perceived the fight between the light and darkness of Communists and the anti-Communists-- anyway, I think "chiliastic" would be a great word to put on a church placard, as it would certainly make people curious about what was going on inside (especially since it contains the word "chili," which evokes heavenly deliciousness).
U-10 Soccer Players Say the Darndest Things (to their mothers)
Not only is my son Ian's travel team (which I coach) playing some wonderful soccer, but they've also got excellent diction and vocabulary; one player told his mom his favorite part of the Sunday's game was "the anticipation," which is a fairly abstract way to enjoy the sport (although he added that his second favorite part of the game was "getting the ball") and another player confided in his mom that he doesn't need words to get his friend to go where he wants him to go on the field, he uses "telepathy" to communicate with him.
Dave Attell, Artie Lange, and The Menzingers! New Brunswick Was Hopping . . .
Saturday night, on our way to see Dave Attell at The Stress Factory, we passed by The Court Tavern and there was a HUGE line to get in, which I've never seen (especially since bands don't go on until late) and I inquired as to just what was going on and some very happy hipsters said, in unison: "The Menzingers! They usually play much larger places, but once in a while they do a smaller venue!" and while none of us (Stacey, Kristen, Joe, Cat, Mooney, and me) had ever heard of The Menzingers, we were fascinated by the hype and swore we would go back and try to get in after the show; as we walked up to The Stress Factory, we saw a black Nissan Sentra (a rental?) stop in front, and a nerdy-looking guy wearing glasses got out of the car and removed the cone blocking the driveway, and then Dave Attell pulled in . . . we speculated that the guy riding with him was his opening act, and we were right -- his name was Louis Katz and he was by far the best opening act I've seen at The Stress Factory-- but still, you would think the opener would do the driving and the headliner would be in the back seat (of a much cooler car) snorting drugs and consorting with hookers, but I guess both guys live in New York, and Attell offered Katz a ride . . . anyway, Attell was great: smooth, relaxed, quick-witted, and interactive, an old master-- the only time the show ground to a halt was when Artie Lange showed up and did a few jokes and plugged his podcast-- Lange is looking sloppier than ever and his comedy is a bit plodding, especially in juxtaposition to Attell (plus there were some microphone problems) and the night ended with the typical discussion of why there aren't any young break-out female stand-up comics (who aren't lesbians) . . . or, as Stacey pointed out to Kristen, perhaps there are great female stand-ups and you just don't listen to them.
Better Get a Bucket
I thought I was at the end of my crime-fiction binge, but I was able to fit one more "wafer thin" novel into my gullet without exploding like Mr. Creosote-- I read the first Harry Bosch novel over break (The Black Echo) and it is definitely worth starting at the beginning; the plot is wild, convoluted and gripping, and you also find out about why Bosch has been demoted, why IAD is on his tail, and why his sense of humor isn't as keen as that of John Rebus . . . Bosch was a "tunnel rat" in Vietnam, and some of his fellow rats figure prominently in the novel's caper plot; now that I've read a few, I see the general formula of a Harry Bosch novel: there's an investigation that administrators do not want investigated; Bosch gets involved; no one else really wants to follow through the way Bosch does, so he ends up on his own; he is asked to stand down, but he becomes obsessed-- despite the fact that Internal Affairs is watching him for foul-play, breaches of protocol, and corruption-- and he eventually reaches the truth, which is not as neat and/or pretty as he would have liked, and he pays a heavy price for this knowledge . . . but he can handle it because his soul is nearly dead anyway; Connelly's brilliance is in the details-- in the description of the 1970 photo of the tunnel rats, each man's dog tags were taped together to prevent jangling when they went "out of the blue and into the black," and the novel is worth reading solely for the stuff that happens under the ground, in the L.A. sewer system and the spider holes in Vietnam (nearly as good as the Vienna tunnel stuff in The Third Man).
.
Spring Break: Cold Weather and Discounts
Our Spring Break in Vermont had very little to do with spring; the house we rented near Weston was surrounded by deep snow (deep enough that walk around the yard, I had to wear snow shoes to avoid sinking in past my knees) and one night there was a snow storm and the next night there was an ice storm . . . the last day was wild, it warmed up and all the icicles were falling from the trees; and because of two excellent discounts, a good time was had by all . . .
Discount # 1) Okemo Mountain's Spring Skiesta Card . . . this is the best deal going, for $109 dollars you can ski every day from March 20th until the end of the season; the boys and I went to the mountain five days in a row, something I have never done before-- it was the perfect set-up for spring riding-- which is fun, but can be slushy and exhausting-- because if you get tired, you can just leave and come back the next day instead of trying to tough it out, which is never a good idea when there are high speeds, trees, and cliffs involved (our legs were jello by the fifth day, but we took the six person covered lift to the top anyway-- the ride was surreal: the mountain was enshrouded by a cloak of thick fog, the trees were covered in ice, and we were viewing it all through the curved orange plastic of the protective bubble, which was coated with a thin sheen of rime; the limited visibility made for a scary ride down, but we survived and unanimously decided against going for a sixth consecutive day);
2) my wife, inspired by this podcast, asked for a "good guy discount" at the Vermont Country Store in Weston and got ten dollars off a pair of Rieker Daisy clogs that she had her eye on (which were already on clearance . . . think of all the money she saved by spending all that money!)
Discount # 1) Okemo Mountain's Spring Skiesta Card . . . this is the best deal going, for $109 dollars you can ski every day from March 20th until the end of the season; the boys and I went to the mountain five days in a row, something I have never done before-- it was the perfect set-up for spring riding-- which is fun, but can be slushy and exhausting-- because if you get tired, you can just leave and come back the next day instead of trying to tough it out, which is never a good idea when there are high speeds, trees, and cliffs involved (our legs were jello by the fifth day, but we took the six person covered lift to the top anyway-- the ride was surreal: the mountain was enshrouded by a cloak of thick fog, the trees were covered in ice, and we were viewing it all through the curved orange plastic of the protective bubble, which was coated with a thin sheen of rime; the limited visibility made for a scary ride down, but we survived and unanimously decided against going for a sixth consecutive day);
2) my wife, inspired by this podcast, asked for a "good guy discount" at the Vermont Country Store in Weston and got ten dollars off a pair of Rieker Daisy clogs that she had her eye on (which were already on clearance . . . think of all the money she saved by spending all that money!)
The Truth About R2D2
According to my son Alex, the reason R2D2 makes all those beeping sounds is because he only speaks in profanity, and so he's beeping himself to insure that Star Wars is appropriate for kids (this does make sense . . . if I had to spend that much time with C3PO, I'd curse a lot too).
Music For Winter and Spring
Two new seasonal Slouching Beast songs:
1) "Long Winter" is a testament to just how long and brutal this winter was . . . I recorded it back in February and my voice sounds even raspier than usual . .. because it was so cold and dry for so long; check out the bass riff, I played it on my short scale Danelectro Longhorn, and the song was inspired by a Christina Gutierrez line from Serial;
2) "Shining Incident (Averted)" is my tribute to spring, or to making it through the winter without going Jack Torrance on your family . . . while it's not exactly Vivaldi, the vocals are a little more chipper and there's a full-fledged jazz interlude at the bridge . . . happy spring break!
What Doesn't Kill You, Might Make You Dumber, But You Also Get Some Good Stories
Much has been written about the inspirational power and profound consequences of having a good teacher-- but there's a dearth of information on the importance of having a few bad teachers along the way: truly mean people (like my fourth grade teacher) and incompetents and weirdos may not put us pedagogically ahead of Finland and Japan, but these folks do make our kids tougher, more jaded, and provide them with loads of entertaining stories that they can pass along to their own children (I lost twenty-five points once on a test because I didn't have the proper heading . . . and if you had a certain gym teacher in our high school, it was pretty much a forty-minute free-for-all melee with the floor hockey sticks, day in day out . . . and then there was the guy who made the high school kids race around on those little scooters . . . etcetera, etcetera).
There By The Grace of God, Goes My Snowboard
I'm glad I showed some compassion towards a mom and her son who were rudely blocking a main thoroughfare on the ski mountain-- my first impulse was to tell them they were sitting in a horrible location (and it was a horrible location, they were blocking a long flat narrow cruiser trail which you need to ride through with some speed in order to get up the incline to make it to the trailhead) but I saw that she was dealing with a meltdown: her son-- approximately six years old-- had taken off his snowboard and appeared to be done for the day, even though there was a LONG way to the base lodge, so his mom told him to walk down and stay to the side of the trail, and then she turned away so she could see her phone better, in order to call her husband, and in that moment her son dropped his snowboard and it went rocketing down the hill and he went running after it, screaming and wailing and crying, and the mom missed all of it, including the climax, when the board shot over the lip of the trail, catching some air before it plummeted over a cliff and into the woods . . . and I had to be the bearer of bad news-- "Miss! Miss!" I yelled, and then I told her what happened and by this time she was actually on the phone with her husband and she launched into an expletive laced description of what happened, and my kids, who got to watch the whole thing, and really enjoyed it, especially all the F-bombs, but on the way home, we stopped at the ski store and bought a pair of snowboard leashes (which I had gotten out of the habit of using) so that Alex and I would never have to endure that particular humiliation (and not only is it humiliating to have your snowboard race down the mountain without you, but it can also really hurt someone).
Bosch vs. Rebus
I think I've reached the end of my detective fiction binge-- in a New Yorker article, Joyce Carol Oates recommended Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin as masters of the genre, so I read a few Connelly books and an Ian Rankin (Standing in Another Man's Grave) and I liked both authors and will read more of them . . . here is my breakdown of Harry Bosch (Connelly) and John Rebus (Rankin) . . . they are both no longer married and each has a daughter, but Bosch's daughter is a chip off the old block (a chip off the old Bosch?) and wants to be a detective like her dad, while Rebus is almost estranged from his daughter; both detectives are old school and willing to bend some rules to get their man, but while neither are corrupt like Vic Mackey, Rebus seems more willing to associate with the underbelly of society to get what he needs; Bosch seems more obsessive and unrelenting (although Rebus can be a bit obsessive as well) while Rebus is more willing to down a few pints or some Highland Park scotch to unwind; both men like music, but Bosch loves jazz while Rebus likes classic rock (and is prone to making Led Zeppelin jokes) and though it's hard to tell, because I read random books in each series instead of starting at the beginning, both men seem to be surrounded by women that they have history with . . . anyway, thanks Joyce Carol Oates . . . if you have any other recommendations, just leave them in the comments.
Do You Drive Your Car, or Does It Drive You?
I drive my Toyota minivan like a 1993 Jeep Cherokee Sport (because that's what I drove for the twenty years before I got the van) but I saw a lady in the high school parking lot with a brand new sporty Jeep with a jacked up frame and removable doors, gingerly poking in and out of her parking spot to avoid rolling one of her giant tires over a low concrete lip (not even a curb).
Nemesis
My dog, who is normally friendly and good-natured, absolutely despises the black poodle that lives on our block . . . it's worse than Maggie and the baby with one eyebrow (and far more embarrassing, this neighbor must hate our dog and hate us as well, he must think we've trained him to be a wild and vicious killer).
Clash of the Titans: Sheryl Crow vs. Maroon 5
We had a heated musical debate in the English office Wednesday, and it wasn't typical (Beatles vs. Stones) or elitist (which Radiohead album is the best?) or hip (I'm too old to make an allusion here) and I'm happy to say I precipitated the discussion, first by bringing up a new singer I like (Courtney Barnett) and then comparing her to Sheryl Crow, and then revealing that while I was cooking the night before, I drank too much beer while listening to Sheryl Crow, because her music-- a guilty pleasure of mine-- always makes me feel a bit giddy . . . one of the younger teachers enjoyed the image of me bopping around the kitchen, slightly tipsy, singing "Soak Up the Sun" (although she wished I was drinking a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy instead of beer) and I was able to fully satisfy the role-reversal because I was also texting my wife and reminding her that dinner would be ready soon and she needed to get home . . . anyway this led to an odd debate where the older folks in the office were lauding the merits of Sheryl Crow, and Kristen the youngster was defending Maroon 5 . . . I'm not sure why she chose to pit Maroon 5 against Sheryl Crow, but it resulted in everyone pulling up songs on their phones and Chromebooks and playing them at once (especially "Move Like Jagger," which even Kristen detests) and while we couldn't convince her that Maroon 5 was awful (she kept defending these hypothetical and unnamed deep tracks . . . "the ones they never play on the radio") everyone else united in the defense of Sheryl Crow, and I think it comes down to this: neither one is Led Zeppelin, but Sheryl Crow has more good songs that Maroon 5, and less awful songs than Maroon 5, and it's way more fun to drink beer and cook while listening to The Very Best of Sheryl Crow (which doesn't even have Steve McQueen on it) but Kristen will never understand this because she associates Sheryl Crow with her mom and light FM, not Lilith Fair.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)