Bill Bryson Makes Me Nostalgic For Britain

Bill Bryson's new book The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain has dislodged some memories from my own brain . . . sometime after Catherine and I lived in Syria (which is well documented in a series of rambling email updates) and before I started writing this blog, in the sleep-deprived haze of having a new child, I went to England with some English teachers (in lieu of the teacher workshop days that were being held at school, this was back when those sorts of things were permissible) and stayed in the "charming old wool merchant's town" of Chipping Campden, which is located in the heart of the Cotswolds-- an especially scenic part of Britain that has thatched houses, honey colored limestone buildings, and wonderful walking paths; my memory is shit, which is why I now write this blog, but I do vaguely recall a few things from the trip, besides the endless pints of beer at The Volunteer Inn;

1) on the ride from the airport, everyone was tired from the flight except me-- I had taken dramamine,  and used a neck pillow, earplugs, and a blindfold to block out all stimuli, and I slept like a baby, and so I bravely volunteered to drive the rental car from Heathrow to our cottage-- I assured the crew that I had some experience driving on the left, which was technically true, but I did not tell them that my experience consisted of driving a motor-scooter in Thailand, and I did a poor job at that (and I have enough trouble driving a car on the right in America) and so when we were driving through a roundabout under construction in Oxford, and I got distracted by some licorice, I ripped the passenger side mirror off the car . . . I can't remember how this was resolved in the end, it might have cost Allie a few bucks at the rental car place;

2) on one of our hikes-- Broadway Tower, Stow-on-the-World . . . I can't remember-- I got us very lost and off-the-map, and I nearly killed Linda, one of the teachers accompanying us, as she's a diabetic-- it was getting dark and we couldn't find out way out of the woods, but the funny thing-- in retrospect-- is that I thought she was in desperate need of insulin, and that I would be brought up on manslaughter charges, because I deprived a diabetic of her insulin due to my poor orienteering skills, but she actually needed food, to increase her blood-sugar . . . and as she was about to lapse into a coma, just as we were finally approaching the end of the hike, I comprehended this and told said: "Food? I've got plenty of food, right here in my bag . . . I always carry lots of snacks and bars and chips when I'm on a hike" and if she wasn't so weak from diabetic shock, then she would have punched me;

3) we confidently participated in Trivia Night at the local pub, assuming five English teachers would crush all comers . . . but we were completely unprepared for the depth of English trivia, and couldn't answer any of the questions-- except one about Iron Maiden . . . I think we also may have resorted to cheating, and getting some answers from one of our local pub friends;

4) we visited Oxford, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's house, and . . . Cropredy . . . the oldest teacher in the group, John, insisted we go to the Cropredy because it hosts the Fairport Convention, a folk festival that he loves . . . and the town was lovely;

5) we ate lunch at pubs and dinner in our stone cottage-- this was long before Brexit and the pound was very strong-- everything cost twice as much as in the States;

6) we made many local pub friends-- the town plumber and the town carpenter and lots of other blue collar types, and they were fun and informative and out at the bar every night-- we learned that only honors students read Shakespeare in England, and we also learned that the pub owner's daughter-- a barmaid-- had married an American man, moved to North Carolina, and then returned to England once she learned that his business trips weren't for business at all, they were to meet a male lover . . . he was gay; Sean and I learned this from the pub owner one night, but his accent was very thick, so it took us a while to comprehend what he was telling us;

7) despite the accents, I found it astounding that we were in a foreign country and people spoke English-- remember, Catherine and I had just gotten back from three years in Syria and so met with daily struggles trying to speak a very difficult language-- and so I talked to everyone about anything, on one of our hikes I asked a pretty British lass directions, occasionally gawking at her and the horse next to her, but mainly looking at my laminated fold-out map of the region, and I thought she was blowing me off a bit and the rest of the group was awkwardly laughing . . . apparently I had interrupted her while she was shoeing this large beast and she was trying to concentrate on affixing the shoe to the horse without being kicked and not on how to give directions to the stupid inconsiderate American;

anyway, enough about me-- the new Bryson book is nearly four hundred pages of rambling anecdotes like this, as Bryson traverses Britain from the southern tip to Cape Wrath, the northernmost point in Scotland, and there is history and description, accounts of beauty and anger at modern development, plenty of getting lost and of difficult travel-- I never knew there were so many places in England, especially so many seaside resorts (in varying states of grandeur and decay) and there is plenty of grouchiness and fairly frequent use of the f-word, much drinking of pints and eating of spicy food (with the usual consequences) and a general appreciation of the small things that make life wonderful and the big things trying to destroy this . . . he mainly basks in the wonder of Britain, it's astounding mass of history and historical sites, all situated in on a small island : "there isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of Great Britain . . . it is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden" but-- and he is a man of my own mind, as I like nothing more than getting up early, taking a hike, having a beer, and then going to bed and doing it again the next day-- and so he describes his vision, which is so appropriate after yesterday's election results, as I concur so completely with this, that I am reproducing here-- with periods!-- while conceding that if any American politician said this, they'd be labeled a radical communist:

May I tell you what I'd like to see? I would like to see a government that said "We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness, it produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes."

and Bryson admits that this will never happen, and he's mainly happy with the parts of Britain that are like this . . . I will do the same in America, and enjoy the pleasant parks, good schools, and enlightened people of my town (and enact my vacation dollar ban on all the states that voted for environmental devastation and Trump . . . that leaves plenty of coast, New Mexico and Colorado as western outposts, and Vermont for snowboarding . . . plenty of wonderful places, I just hope they don't get destroyed in the oncoming storm of deregulation).

Alec Baldwin Wins!

My sources tell me that Alec Baldwin is incredibly thankful to the American people, for providing him four more years to lampoon a self-professed presidential pussy-grabbing anti-vaxxer on SNL . . . Tina Fey is also hopeful, as she believes Trump is just the right kind of stupid to resurrect Sarah Palin's political career, and nobody is easier to ridicule than Sarah Palin: Joseph de Maistre said "every nation gets the government it deserves" and this election has proved that true, but let's look on the bright side . . . we're also going to get the comedy we deserve and it will be very very funny . . . here's to four years of absurd satire, plenty of sentence material for Dave, and a big beautiful Pink Floydian wall!

Last Ditch Effort

This will be my last political post about the presidential election (unless have a Bush/Gore situation) and I already did my best to summarize the policy positions of each candidate, and now I must concede that if you are one of four kinds of people-- listed below-- then you should stop reading this and just vote Trump, but if you are NOT one of those four kinds of people, and you are still on the fence and might vote for Hillary Clinton, but feel some trepidation because of the email "scandal," then please take the time to listen to the new This American Life: "Master of Her Domain . . . Name"  or, if you're feeling more ambitious and want something more nonpartisan and much more comprehensive, then go ahead and read "What the FBI Files Reveal About Hillary Clinton's Email Server" in the magazine Politico . . . Garrett Graff read 247 pages of interview summaries of the FBI investigations about Clinton, and while there is some incompetence and some technological bumbling, there is absolutely nothing scandalous in the entire narrative . . . I've decided that Clinton's policies are in line with things I want in our country, and so I'm not going to throw my vote away and support Jill Stein (although my heart is with the Green Party) and so this is it, my sad last ditch effort to convince all you swing voters . . . as I stated earlier, disregard this you are one of the following four types of people, as nothing is going to change your (narrow) mind:

you should vote for Trump, if . . .

1) you are greedy rich person who wants a tax windfall . . . just make sure you're rich enough that you won't need any of the social services that will be cut to generate this handout;

2) you are an angry white racist and/or misogynist; who is also scared of immigrants and thinks we should build a wall to keep them out;

3) you are someone who truly believes Trump will bring back shitty non-unionized manufacturing jobs from China, isolate the U.S. economically and diplomatically, so that-- like North Korea-- we are forced to buy our own crappy products, and this will Make America Great . . . Just Like North Korea is Great;

4) you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes everything is rigged: the election, the FBI, and even the scientific method-- which is why you also don't believe in vaccines and would prefer the return of the plague rather than a society based on rational thought, logic and progress;

happy voting!

Man Juice

My wife stole some hot peppers from a unkempt plot in the community garden-- she said they were going to go to waste if no one took them-- and while I  couldn't definitively identify them-- they were wrinkly, red and pointed, possibly Devil's Tongue or Carolina Cayenne or Hot Paper Lanterns . . . but I did conduct a taste test and they were incredibly hot . . . and I like hot peppers, but these were inedible, and so I infused them in some Espolon Tequila Blanco; I cut up six of them (wearing gloves) and deseeded them, then left them in a mason jar with the tequila for two days, then strained the peppers out, funneled the tequila back into the original container and put it in the fridge (they internet said this would better preserve the vegetal component of the infusion) and then I tried some on the rocks; my lips went immediately numb, I choked, and I nearly spit the stuff out-- but once the ice melted it tasted sort of delicious (although at one point I couldn't figure out what the white strand was in my drink, until I realized it was mucous, which had dripped out of my nose) and now I know how to use this super-powered manly juice: you pour some regular tequila on the rocks, add a bit of water and/or seltzer and then just put a little bit of the infused stuff in-- it's still plenty hot and you still feel plenty manly when you drink it, but then mucous doesn't come sliding out of your nose into your drink (which isn't really a problem anyway, as the tequila sterilizes the germs in the mucous and makes it safe to consume).

Just The Policy, Ma'am

Though I know this is a stupid waste of time, because most people are voting based on what scandal has piqued their ire more-- mishandling email or pussy grabbing-- and apparently network TV has all but abandoned policy discussion . . . but for those few, very silly folks that actually care about what might happen to the country once the scandals are over and done with, I've tried to summarize Trump and Clinton's actual visions for America; I listened to The Weeds episode The Massive Policy Stakes of 2016, and though the folks at The Weeds lean liberal, they are also total policy wonk-nerds, and do a good job of discussing Trump's plans and promises as rational thought, unlike how my friends view his opinions (the random demented rants of a stupid crazy clown-haired racist/misogynist menace) and I also refer to the recent NPR interview with George Packer, who wrote The Unwinding (an incredible account of the gradual unraveling of America's political and financial systems) and now on to the main event:

1) you should vote for Trump if you are anti-immigration, worried about Syrian refugees and Mexican racists and various brown people stealing your job, he's also up your alley if you would like a libertarian deregulation of banking, business, and environmental rules inside our country, and less free trade and more regulations and tariffs for doing business outside our country, you'll probably also like Trump if you're rich, as he's proposing massive tax cuts, mainly for the rich, and a consequential scaling back of social programs for the poor, he also promises to bring back the blue collar factory and manufacturing jobs, which will make his special interest minority group (white folks without a college degree) the backbone of America again, because Trump loves "the poorly educated" and though George Packer thinks his promise to the less-educated white folks is fraudulent and impossible, he also wonders whether Clinton's promise to spend money retraining these workers would work either . . . and nobody is proposing unionization, which makes me sad;

2) if you're a dual earner family, you'll like the fact that Hillary Clinton wants to make our childcare, maternity, and family leave policies more like Northern Europe . . . because America has the worst family leave policies of any developed country, and Clinton wants to bolster our pre-K program and generally make it easier for women and families to work . . . Clinton is tougher on banking regulations than Trump-- though, ironically, she has closer connections with the big banks (I've heard speculation that Trump, who has been denied loans in the past, doesn't want this to happen in the future) and she wants to provide free state college tuition for lower middle class families; reform healthcare and provide it to more people; enact comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path for immigrants to obtain citizenship; she promises she won't raise taxes on the middle class; and she wants to invest tremendous amounts of money into infrastructure, both to create jobs and provide avenues for economic growth . . . Clinton's policies and white papers are detailed and wonky, Trump's are broad, vague, and very short, and while Trump is a typical product of our fragmented media-driven echo-chamber, a polarizing figure that George Packer views as "catastrophic," the problem with Clinton is the reverse, she's a classic backroom politician who wants to make deals and compromises between the two parties using her knowledge and connections, but the country has moved beyond any sort of good-natured diplomacy between the Republicans and the Democrats; the Republicans vow to block all Democratic legislation, deny all Democratic Supreme Court nominees, and to investigate Clinton forever, to obstruct her power-- and the Democrats, view Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, and can't consider the perspective of this special interest group-- uneducated white blue collar voters-- a group that was once unionized, galvanized and potent, and is now marginalized and lost . . . so whatever happens on Tuesday, half the country is going to be incredibly unhappy, and the other half will be more relieved than inspired, and that's not going to change any time soon.

The Nix: A Big Book with a Lot of Stuff Inside (Except Leeroy Jenkins)

Nathan Hill's new novel The Nix is a tour-de-force decade defining portrayal that does for the post-recession twenty-tens what Tom Wolfe did for the '80's with Bonfire of the Vanites, the '90's with A Man in Full and the aughts with Charlotte Simmons, but it's more than hyper-realistic literary fiction-- the multiplicity of tone, from and structure pays homage to David Foster Wallace . . . and you also get plenty of John Irving-like anecdotal flashbacks to the 1968 Chicago demonstrations and riots, which is a hell-of-a-lot to do in one book and a hell-of-a-lot of story to tell, so the book checks in at over 600 pages and while it's often hysterically funny, especially the opening chapters, which detail a satirical World of Warcraft type game and the unlikely players, and an entitled and very persistent college student who has blatantly plagiarized a paper and is attempting to argue her way out of the punishment, and after that compelling and incredibly entertaining kick-off so much happens and there are so many plot strands, that the actual ending feels tacked on and too easy-- but the thing has to come to an end (or does it? War and Peace is over a thousand pages . . . maybe Nathan Hill just needed more pages to get the ending right) and while the actual plot sort of fizzles in its conclusion, the meta-ending is more compelling: a lesson gleaned from video game design . . . people are either "enemies or obstacles or traps or puzzles" and while the characters begin the novel as enemies and then often treat each other as obstacles to success or traps that lead to an existential abyss, by the end, the fictional author in the novel and the actual author realize that everyone is a puzzle, but that solving the puzzle of everyone takes many, many pages and you have to see things from many, many perspectives, from many times and places, and even then it's not enough to understand everyone's motivations and desires, and, as if to further develop this theme, after you finish the last page, if you turn to the Acknowledgments-- and after reading that many pages, I figured I could read two more-- then Nathan Hill does something wonderful to the puzzle of his novel: he lists all the books and articles and radio shows that helped him flesh out all these many many ideas-- Chicago '68 by David Farber and Folktales of Norway and "Microstructure Abnormalities in Adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder" by Kai Yuan and lots of others-- and so he essentially lays the puzzle of the book bare, a brave thing to do . . . although he doesn't mention being inspired by this event, which he certainly was, as it's almost as infamous as the most notorious World of Warcraft moment: Leeroy Jenkins (which Hill definitely should have alluded to, because, when you have the opportunity, you should always allude to Leeroy Jenkins).

The Groundhog Killer Can't Handle Gum

Here is what I learned about my dog today: if I snap my gum while I'm walking him, he turns into a shivering shell-shocked lump of jelly, and has to return home-- in a painfully slow manner-- so he can hide under the desk.

Sometimes Hard Boiled, Sometimes Runny . . .

It comes from a chicken, not a bunny, dummy . . . and, when I do the boiling-- or when I did the boiling-- more often than not it came out runny . . . sad to say, but until a few days ago, I could not successfully cook a hardboiled egg-- I had read this and that on the internet, but the numbers never took hold in my brain, and I often boiled the egg too long and the shell cracked, spitting white solar flares of egg-white into the bubbling water, or once I boiled the egg, when I tried to peel it under cold running water, chunks of egg came away with the shell, and the final product was a cratered, pock-marked mess, or-- what happened most often-- is that I would crack the shell and the egg would still be gelatinous and slimy and I would toss it . . . but those days are over: my wife learned a simple recipe in her cooking class, and not only does it work, but I've figured out a mnemonic device so that I can actually remember what to do, which is equally as important as the fact that the technique works . . . here it is:

1) put the egg in water;

2) boil the water;

3) once the water boils, turn off the heat and cover the pot;

4) let the egg sit in the covered pot for 12 minutes;

5) remove the egg from the water;

and this not only cooks the egg to perfection, but-- for whatever reason-- this method makes the egg very easy to peel, and it's easy to remember because when you buy eggs, they come in packs of twelve, and the number of minutes you need to leave the egg in the water is twelve . . . so as long as you're at sea level (maybe even if you're not at sea level) this is the method . . . buy a dozen eggs, boil the water, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the dozen eggs sit in the water for a dozen minutes.

The Miracle of Norman Who?

Those of you familiar with the life and times of Dave know that I am often at the nexus of miraculous activity (which is odd, because I'm not a spiritual person, nor do I believe in fate, mysticism, or any powers greater than my own intellect) and so, I humbly present to you The Miracle of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Because-No-One-Can-Remember-His-Name; for the past few years, at the end of the Philosophy unit on relative and universal ethics, I've played a short video of the acclaimed cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explaining how technology often solves seemingly impossible moral quandaries . . . and while Pinker acknowledges the value in moral crusaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., he reminds us, that in a utilitarian sense, there are far greater heroes-- and then he mentions one of these heroes in particular-- the father of The Green Revolution-- and he points out that no one knows this guy's name, and I've played this video a few times in the past, and I still can't remember the guy's name . . . but then Steven Pinker says the guy's name and I vow to remember his name from this time forward and I make the class swear to remember his name as well, and then I showed my students the lead article in Wired Magazine, which is written by President Obama and is titled "Now Is The Greatest Time to Be Alive" and I pointed out how similar Obama's piece is to Pinker's video . . . an odd coincidence, because I happened to read the article the night before doing the Pinker lesson-- but not a miraculous coincidence, just a coincidence-- but then, as we were reading through the article, which I had projected on the giant screen at the front of the class, I noticed that Obama mentioned the same guy that Pinker referenced . . . but I didn't notice this on Sunday night when I was reading the article, because-- as Steven Pinker pointed out-- no one can remember this guy's name . . . so, with no foresight or planning, in my class on Monday, both Steven Pinker and President Obama mention the Father of the Green Revolution, who--unfortunately-- doesn't have a very catchy name, but deserves to be remembered as a great savior of humanity  . . . as Obama eloquently puts it: "without Norman Borlaug's wheat, we could not feed the hungry."

This Halloween Goes to Eleven

I generally like to rant and rave about the idiocy of Halloween, but my son Ian made this year's sugar-laced festivities a bit more tolerable; we shaved his head Sunday night, so he could be Eleven from Stranger Things . . . I did have to bribe him with a small sum of cash, but it was worth it, because he really is the spitting image of Millie Bobby Brown, and I think he was just as excited to slip into the pink dress Catherine bought at the thrift store as I was to see him in it . . . and, he noted this was a one-shot opportunity: "I can only do this once because next year I'll probably have pimples and a mustache."

Dave Should Be a Future Leader (According to Obama)

I was pleased to learn that Hillary Clinton agreed with me on the importance of Robert D. Putnam's new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, but President Obama trumps her with his reading list for future leaders . . . I've read four of the ten:

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert;

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman;

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo;

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari;

and these were definitely some of the best books of the past decade (read my reviews if you're in need of some hyperbole) and so Obama either really loves to read, or he reads my blog and respects my reviews, or perhaps he's got really good reading advisers-- it's probably a combination of the three-- and I realize that this is a political "signal" to release this list, as it indicates that the President values high quality non-fiction, just as Donald Trump could never admit that reading books is necessary, as it would alienate his constituency and mark him as an elitist intellectual communist, which is why he gets his information from "the shows."

Diving Header > Brain Damage

My son Ian scored his first header goal yesterday-- he launched himself into the air to connect with a line drive corner kick, headed the ball just inside the far post, and landed on his stomach . . . the goal was a big one-- it allowed us to tie a much better team 1-1, and judging by the celebratory jig that Ian did after he got back onto his feet, it was well worth the loss of brain cells.

A Solemn Vow

I hereby declare that next year I will NOT participate in fantasy football, which is not fantastic at all and actually wallows in its mundanity-- the tenderness of Dez Bryant's knee and the merits of Coby Fleener and the injury status of Eric Ebron-- and so I will NOT let these minor thoughts aggravate my valuable and limited consciousness, and, instead, during the time I would have spent shuffling my digital line-up around, I will brush up on my Spanish or learn to play the xylophone or train my dog to skateboard or even simply take a nap, but next fall, I will be doing something slightly more fantastic than fantasy football . . . you hear this Alec?

Dave Loves the Gas Tax (and So Do Economists)

Planet Money Episode 387: The No-Brainer Economic Platform may be four years old, but it's more relevant today than ever-- the show presents a "six plank" platform on which economists from across the political spectrum agree, but the problem is that no presidential candidate will ever espouse these things, as they are political poison; here they are, no particular (or political) order, and I've paraphrased the arguments from Planet Money and added some of my own:

1) get rid of the mortgage interest deduction . . . readers of this blog, who I am guessing are mainly educated, middle class homeowners, will NOT want to hear this one at all, but it's true-- the interest deduction distorts housing prices, it subsidizes mansions and second homes, it encourages people to take risky loans, it doesn't help renters (who are vital when there is a recession because they can move and adjust to changing job markets) and it's generally unfair in its distribution of wealth;

2) reform the tax code . . . eliminate all the loopholes and deductions and, like Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify . . .  this  would put all the accounting firms out of business, but allow the government to do a much better and more equitable job of collecting taxes;

3) eliminate taxes on corporations  . . . progressives hate this one, but it behooves the country to allow corporations to reinvest tax free income into things such as hiring more employees, improving product lines and R&D, instead of hiding it overseas or distributing it as dividends to rich people;

4) decriminalize drugs . . . it's extremely expensive to fight the war on drugs, and it's even more expensive to let underground criminal syndicates collect all the drug revenues . . . plus, it's costly on many levels to keep people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses;

5) stop subsidizing health care . . . health care is not taxed as income for the user, nor is the provider taxed . . . so people who are given health care by their job are incentivized to use as much of it as possible (I have NOT been taking advantage of this, stupidly-- I should be getting acupuncture, going to the podiatrist, getting check-ups and physicals, and generally spending this money that is part of my salary) when there should be various plans, some more expensive, some less expensive, some with higher co-pays;

6) we should stop taxing good things and start taxing things we want to discourage . . . so end the payroll tax and income tax-- because creating jobs and working is good-- and increase taxes on cigarettes and pollution and carbon emissions . . . which is why I'm totally in favor of New Jersey's gas tax increase-- cheers!-- because it might discourage driving, and should help with infrastructure;

sadly, the only candidate who supports several of these measures is Gary Johnson, but he's not into taxing carbon emissions and he doesn't know what's going on in Aleppo . . . and I have an inordinate fondness for Aleppo . . . so I'm not voting for him; anyway, listen to the episode, it's fantastic, especially the fake presidential speeches introducing all these wonderful new reforms, and remember: no one actually wants to fix anything, they just want to act sanctimonious when their candidate trounces the opposition.

Sometimes You Need a Moon Safari

For once Google Play Music recommended exactly what I desired-- though I had no clue that I desired this thing-- an album by the French electronica band Air called Moon Safari; I especially love the first track: "la femme d'argent" . . . and while there doesn't seem to be any straightforward way to translate this song title from French (it seems to mean "silver woman" or "woman of silver" or a "gold digger" or perhaps something less insidious) but since I don't know French, I'm going to pretend the song is eponymous with the album, because this song took me on a moon safari: I was walking the dog in the park and the next thing I knew, I was on the moon, wearing a pith helmet, which is just what I needed, because I couldn't listen to any more election podcast shit . . . and usually Google Play Music just recommends some ersatz band in place of the last thing you listened to, e.g. you like Lemon Jelly . . . so why don't you listen to Mr. Scruff (this is an actual example, and I did NOT take Google Play Music up on the offer to listen to Mr. Scruff) and perhaps the algorithm is slowly learning my taste more and more, and there will be excellent recommendation in my future (unless my wife and kids get on it and sabotage all my carefully cultivated selections).

Ira Glass, Futility, and Politics

The new episode of This American Life preaches to the choir, and will definitely not be heard by people that need to hear it (like the people who live behind me-- they are proudly displaying a Trump/Pence sign on their lawn, the only one I've seen in Highland Park) but the candid sincerity in which Ira Glass investigates the lies propagated by the Trump campaign and sad, almost futile conclusions he arrives at will make you wonder what happened to facts, the truth, and the general knowledge of your average American; the show starts with Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement and he ended it, which is so patently ridiculous that it seems to belie further exploration-- aside from the fact that now 1/3 of Americans believe this "fact"-- and worse than this is Trump's assertion that NAFTA was the worst trade agreement in the history of the universe, because before Trump both Democrats and Republicans believed that trade agreements were good for the economy, created new markets, put money in everyone's pockets (because of lower priced goods) and strengthened diplomatic relations between countries . . . but now, despite the fact that 95% of economists (polled by the University of Chicago) believe that NAFTA is good for our economy and 5% are undecided and zero point zero percent of economists believe that NAFTA is bad for our economy, despite this, Clinton has backpedaled on trade agreements and has entertained the idea that manufacturing jobs might actually return to the U.S. (and I'm sure this is just a public position for debating Trump, but it's still disturbing that he could have that much influence over a policy discussion that anyone with any expertise regards as a no-brainer . . . certainly trade agreements cause some specific economic pain, but it's actually far cheaper to pay-off and retrain the people who lost their jobs than it is to punish the entire economy) and so now you've got both major parties taking a contrary position on trade agreements, when that was usually only a radical maneuver-- remember the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle? . . . anyway, the episode doesn't even get into the email "scandal" and the fact that the Bush administration lost five million emails (or 22 million . . . it doesn't make it right, but politicians get rid of emails and politicians use private emails to communicate to avoid the public records act, so unless you're going toss George Bush and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell and lots of other people in jail, Hillary Clinton does not belong in jail) and the episode also didn't discuss the thing that out-trumps all the other Trump stuff, his anti-vaccine stance: this indicates a complete disbelief in the scientific method, peer reviewed experimentation, and logic in general . . . and while disbelief in global warming is typical right wing silliness (Dan Levin just said that there is NO proof whatsoever that there is global warming . . . pretty bold and incredibly dumb, but who cares) not vaccinating children is extremely dangerous and a possible return to plague times is as good a reason as any not to vote for Trump; I'm considering voting for Jill Stein, despite the fact that the Green Platform is against trade agreements, but that's for environmental reasons-- which just might be the right reason to be against trade agreements (despite the fact that trade agreements help foreign countries, though they often use environmentally unsound methods of manufacture, and while helping foreign economies doesn't make America great,  that doesn't mean it's an awful thing) but then I heard that Jill Stein is an anti-vaxxer, but it seems the accusations that she's against vaccines were taken out of context so she's still a viable choice for me . . . I don't think I'm going to decide until I get behind the curtain, but the super sad thing, the thing that made Ira Glass so depressed in this episode (especially when he's talking to his Uncle Lenny, an 81 year old plastic surgeon who has consumed a whole host of right wing conspiracies and lies about President Obama and thus will vote for Trump) is that even if Trump is crushed in this election, it isn't going to help the cause for truth, logic, the scientific method, and the facts . . . social media and niche journalism have made it so people on the left and the right (and everywhere in between) can find exactly what they want to hear and then believe it.

Late Adopter

Sometimes, when I'm bopping around, I get really happy and think: "My phone plays music!"

Some Stuff on Creativity

I did an assignment in Creative Writing called "Where Do Good Ideas Come From?" and my students had four reading/listening options; I'll list them here, but since you're not taking my class, I'll also give you the thesis of each-- they are fascinating if you're into this kind of thing:

1) "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer: a New Yorker article on how traditional brainstorming does NOT work, and how good ideas are usually  formed through debate, criticism, and the random collaboration of the right kinds of people;

2) Slowing Down: TED Radio Hour, especially the segment "Can Slowing Down Make You More Creative" by Adam Grant: this podcast examines the links between procrastination and creativity, and the problems and pitfalls with efficiency and getting things done early;

3) Song Exploder: Weezer . . . Rivers Cuomo reveals his songwriting process and it is nothing like you'd imagine, especially for the front man of an emo band-- definitely worth listening to, whether you're a fan of Weezer or not;

4) Flash Forward: The Witch Who Came From Mars . . . an investigation on the future of creativity, and how collaboration with computers might boost our creative powers and send our writing process hurtling into unknown domains.

The Test 65: Peppered

I'm going to go out on a limb here: this is the best episode of The Test  we've ever done . . . it contains the most brilliant question ever written in the history of quizzes, a culmination of everything we've learned on this podcast (the question quite possibly ties everything in the entire universe together, an enormous version of Lebowski's rug) and not only that, but we cooperatively solve a pepper-related mystery AND the ladies fall into my cunningly laid pepper-related trap-- and refuse to be extricated--this one is funny, informative, and bizarre: you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll shoot mucous from your nose, and if you're not careful, you might actually learn something (pepper-related).

Which is Scarier: President Trump or a Creepy Clown?

While reality has been scary enough recently: I just learned that Trump is an anti-vaxxer, which is more disturbing than the racism, the sexism, the "grab them by the pussy" and the "nasty woman" and the "Mexican rapists" because it indicates outright ignorance and poses a far greater threat to our country then generally gauche and classless behavior-- the possible resurgence of plagues and epidemics . . . but despite the combined looming threat of President Trump and killer clowns,  the English teachers still got together last night for our Seventh Annual Scary Story Contest, and I think we are actually getting better and better at writing these things (which would make sense) as all of this year's stories were terrifying and consistently well-written; the prompt was "The Cellar" and the stories were various in plot and theme: giant worms, uxoricide (by use of giant worms), a changeling baby with a man-sized nose, a Nazi surgeon/wine connoisseur, a grand Gatsby-esque gala, a haunted house and a complicit landlord, an indigenous tribal ghost payback, and much suffering by children, who were drained, dragged to hell, possibility molested, shoved into an oven and a dryer, burned in fires and generally tortured and neglected; Stacey and I took second, which made us quite proud-- it was a tough field-- and Liz K, always the bridesmaid and never the bride, finally took first place . . . Stacey and I were also pleased that for the second year in a row, our story was deemed the most horrific, and we now know that our combined voice is the only one that is easily identifiable: Cunningham described it as "sort of fucked up and funny."

Use Your Allusions?

Tuesday, a student played a song by Twenty One Pilots in class for a presentation, and this was the first time I heard the band and I told the students that Twenty One Pilots sounded a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel and the class said, "What?" and I had to explain to them about Neutral Milk Hotel and Jeff Mangum, and the next day one of the students, in preparation for "improv night," was dressed all in white: white shirt, white socks, white shorts, white tennis sneakers and a white headband and I told him he looked ready for Wimbledon and, once again, the class said "What?" and I had to explain to them about Wimbledon: the grass courts, the strawberries and cream, the fact that it's a tennis tournament . . . and I think I'm going to stop alluding to things in class, because it's too exhausting.

Dave Commands the Weather Gods to Ameliorate His Foul Disposition

I've got nothing to offer today, I'm still recovering from yesterday's unseasonably warm weather-- which, combined with proctoring the PSAT in a hot classroom to a bunch of angry 12th graders who were being made to retake the test for graduation requirements; a meeting with thirty English teachers in an even hotter classroom, and an un-airconditioned bus ride with a bunch of middle school soccer players, has put me in a sour mood, which will not dissipate until the weather becomes seasonable again . . . so listen closely, weather gods, you need to get your act together and change summer to fall, or I'm going to lose my shit (and take everyone down with me).

Dave = Man?

It was a manly day: I bullied my friend Rob for tweeting this silliness, ran a morning soccer practice, then I took the dog for a bike ride-- without wearing a helmet-- and when I got home, though I was tired, I installed a ceiling fan-- alone and with much profanity-- and I didn't use a grounding wire, after a short nap, I made chili, and then drank some beers and watched some football and ate that chili, and topped it all off by watching the Keith Hernandez Seinfeld episode with the kids . . . in the annals of machismo, this day would have have gone down as an eleven out of ten on the masculine meter . . . had I not pulled a stomach muscle because I was overly vigorous using my new hula hoop.

Rest in Peace, Robert Peace

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs is true story of grit, determination, and social class, and -- oddly-- one of the most interesting plot twists occurs within the narration, but I won't spoil that, just promise me you'll read the book . . . it's a gripping account of why you can take the boy out of Newark, but you still might not be able to take the Newark out of the boy, and while you can obviously enjoy this if you're not from New Jersey-- The New York Times, Amazon, and Entertainment Weekly named it book of the year-- but familiarity with Newark, Sharpe James and Cory Booker will make you appreciate the milieu even more; this is a story for the ages, epic in scope, picaresque in a Tom Jones/Breaking Bad fashion, and a revision of the American Dream that Fitzgerald would have appreciated . . . ten Sour Diesels out of ten.

My Wife Has No Respect For My Cup Holder

I was driving my car, learning about the architecture of the human brain (apparently the difference between the human brain and a desktop computer is that the hardware and software of a desktop computer are separate and discrete, while in the human brain, the hardware is the software, that tangled collection of networked synaptic wires is the whole shebang, nothing is writ large controlling it, the brain simply is itself, hardware and software combined) and while I was thinking these deep thoughts, I tried to put my coffee back in the cupholder, and if anyone appreciates the cup holder, it is I . . . but this time there was something amiss, there was something wrong when put my cup back in the holder, the cup wouldn't go all the way in, and it sat lopsided, leaning precariously, full of hot coffee; so I lifted the cup up and out, put it in the cup holder next door, and then blindly reached down to find the culprit, the thing that was making my driver-side cup holder malfunction, but I kept my eyes on the road, of course, and so when I felt something slimy, I was quite surprised-- I thought I might find a quarter or a miniature golf pencil, not something slimy . . . that was something I should not have felt, and when I lifted this surprisingly slimy thing up for closer inspection, I recognized it as a half of a strawberry, someone had eaten the good part and left the bit with the leaves . . . yuck . . . not only do I detest slimy things, but I also don't really like strawberries all that much, and so I wrapped the offensive parcel in a napkin and drove on, wondering how it got there-- at first I assumed it was one of the children, because they like strawberries and they often leave strawberry halves around the house, but this half-strawberry was in the front left cup holder, which was odd spot for one of the kids to leave trash, unless they were driving the minivan without permission or one of them tossed the half strawberry up from the back seat, which would have drawn attention from my wife, so I decided that she was the most likely suspect, and accused her by phone and she texted back "Can't I blame one of the kids?" which was quite fishy, and she later admitted, under interrogation, that after she had gone to Costco, she dropped a package of strawberries, and they spilled out onto the floor of the van, so she pulled over to clean them up, but she was so hungry that she ate one of them (five second rule, she claimed, which is insane-- I wouldn't eat anything that even grazed the floor of my minivan) and then she tossed the leafy half into my cup holder, knowing that it would not only turn to a mushy pulp, but also make it impossible to place a cup properly into the holder.

Alex Does His Impression of David Dunn

When you're napping on the couch on a beautiful fall afternoon, but you want to get motivated, so you can enjoy the day, one of the fastest ways to get upright is to hear your wife say: "Alex got hit by a car . . . he's okay . . . but he got hit by a car"; I went from sleeping to very very awake in a matter of seconds, and I'll spare you any of the anxiety we suffered in the short drive up 5th Avenue to the intersection with Benner Street and assure you that Alex is okay, and lucky for it; anyway, we arrived at the scene and there were police and a crowd of kids-- he was at a birthday party at a friend's house and they were taking  a walk to town-- and Alex was sitting upright on the curb, being questioned by an EMT, and the car that hit him was still there, a gray Honda Civic, and it was the typical story: Alex wanted to catch up with his friends and he took a cursory glance in either direction on Benner, but didn't see a car turning from 5th (there's a tall set of bushes that obstructs the view) and he darted across and this guy turned right, so luckily the car was moving fairly slowly, and even more luckily, it was a small car with a rounded hood and not an SUV, so Alex got hit on the right hip, bounced off the hood and fell on his left side, he scraped up his left hip, abdomen and both his wrists-- but he didn't hit his head-- and after a couple hours in the emergency room, Dr. Pepper pronounced him good to go (I'm sure they placed Dr. Pepper in pediatric emergency because his name is a surefire way to cheer up nervous parents) . . . no broken bones, no blood in his urine, and no head, neck, or spine trauma . . . while they were checking him over, Dr. Pepper asked my son about this particular wound and that particular wound, trying to ascertain what he sustained when he got hit by the car, and Alex had to explain that some of the abrasions were from when he recently was attacked by a swarm of yellowjackets, as he had picked at some of the scabs, and a cut on his hand was from when he fell on a sharp pencil at school, and his ankle hurt from the accident but also when he got cleated at soccer, and I realized that he's taken a real beating this school year, practically auditioning for the Bruce Willis role in Unbreakable . . . and that kids can be really tough, much tougher than their parents-- because I had nightmares last night and didn't sleep very well, but Alex took some ibuprofen and is still sleeping like a baby as I post this . . . the doctor said he'll probably be a bit sore today, especially his hips, and he'll probably skip his soccer game, and I hope he'll look both ways twice now before he crosses the street (and I think the group of his friends who witnessed this will also be a bit more cautious) but in the end, he was excited to have a great story for school on Monday -- I got hit by a car!-- and maybe when he's older, I'll have him listen to The Modern Moloch and try to explain to him how lucky he was, but for now I'll just have to believe that he learned his lesson, and will take his time crossing in the future (and we had plenty of time to think about this and discuss it in the emergency room, because things move fairly slow there, and this also made me realize that we spent the bulk of this beautiful fall day waiting around, because that morning I took the kids to the ski shop for their seasonal ski and snowboard rentals, which is a long and boring process, and the thought certainly crossed my mind in the emergency room that renting snowboards and skis could very well be setting up future visits to emergency room and future discussion about making good decisions and taking your time when you're doing something dangerous . . . but what are you going to do: keep your kids inside all the time?)

Ian Following Instructions . . . With Alacrity

My son Ian may not do a lot of things that we tell him-- e.g. brush his teeth, pick up his shoes, do his homework, practice his trombone-- and oftentimes, even when he does do what we tell him, he doesn't do it with alacrity, he does it SLOWLY, with the intent to passive-aggressively drive us crazy, but I will say this, there is one thing that he always does of which I am an annoyingly repetitive proponent: he runs through the ball on the soccer field, and now whenever I'm annoyed with him for not doing any of the things my wife and I tell him, at least I can look at these beautiful photos of Ian running through the ball, on the way to scoring a big goal (shot by South Amboy photographer Gerry Poland and kindly sent to me . . . thanks!) and I will remember that he does do one thing that I tell him (with alacrity) and that my advice often pans out for him.

If You Measure It, It Will Come

This SNL Skit is not nearly as funny (and not nearly as infuriating) as the real story behind Wells Fargo's fraudulent account scandal . . . Planet Money offers a synopsis that will not only make you indignant, but also make you laugh at the absurdity of Wells Fargo corporate culture, and be prepared for reality to nearly triple hyperbole-- the Wells Fargo huckster in the SNL skit tries to get everyone to sign up for three accounts, but the actual slogan pushed by the executives was "eight is great," and so the bank burned through its young employees, forcing them to call everyone they knew: friends, family, acquaintances, in order to create as many accounts per person as possible--and demonstrate to the shareholders that Wells Fargo was robust and growing-- and I've often mentioned Campbell's Law here, which insured that these underpaid, harried employees eventually started cheating to make their quotas-- and then, of course, the executives labeled them as "bad apples" instead of apologizing for the culture they created . . . there's a lovely moment in the podcast when a district manager urges the young bankers to continue cold calling customers during a botched bank robbery, even while the cops are swarming the lobby and place reeks of shit because the robber crapped his pants . . . and, of course, I'd be negligent to mention the fact that the same thing is going on in schools right now-- we're all "accountable" because we administer common assessments that must correspond to Student Growth Objectives (SGO) and if we don't make the SGP number (Student Growth Percentage), then we get a low score on our summary evaluation, which is in complete disregard for Campbell's Law and the Law of Large Numbers . . . if you want to learn how kids are doing, you don't take tiny samples and attach them to individual evaluations and then upload them to some expensive software-- which is exactly what Wells Fargo did, because they wanted a certain result, and so they learned that if you measure something in that way, then the results will come-- by hook or by crook-- and while Wells Fargo didn't care how it happened because they wanted to encourage fraudulent behavior in order to bolster stock and portfolio values, you'd think that educators would be smarter, and realize the way to look at student success is to measure large and meaningful numbers, like the entire student body, and make the results completely detached from teacher performance, so that experiments with curriculum and implementation could be attempted and assessed . . . anyway, I'm going to switch banks in order to punish Wells Fargo for their misdeeds, and I encourage you to do the same.

Where Are the Children? The Medium Children?

From a distance, it looked purposeful and malevolent-- so many tennis balls hurtling over the fence-- but upon closer inspection, it turned out that the kids in Period 4 PE class were absolutely terrible at tennis, and the multitude of balls flying over the fence were mishits and botched serves . . . the irony is that East Brunswick often wins the county at tennis, and always has some players that are top in the state, but I think this is a consequence of the fact that young people are never medium at stuff anymore, they've either been trained since birth, taken the right lessons with the best teachers, and devoted many hours a day to their passion-- whether it be tennis or dance or violin or robotics-- or they're so daunted by the talented experts, kids their own age but with a skillset so advanced that it makes starting as a novice seem futile, and so they never try at all, resulting in a bunch of high school kids that can't hit a decent wheelhouse forehand, let alone a backhand, a serve, or an overhead smash.

The Test 64: Tattoo You, Me and Everyone Else

This week on The Test, Stacey opens a crazy can of worms and we take a journey through time, space, and permanent body art . . . as a bonus, Cunningham reveals where they've got Jesus, and technology provides us with a real-time crisis that leads to a dramatic ending . . . so tune in, keep score, and if you're not careful, you just might get roofied and end up with a bad tattoo.

Overreaction, Underreaction, or Just Right?

Last week on our day off, Ian and I went for sushi, and when we entered the restaurant we saw a photographer set up at the window table in the front nook of the restaurant, and then while we were waiting for our food, we saw a plate go by, on the way to the photographer, who then placed the plate on the sunlit table, in between a couple of white screens, and took a photo . . . and then I noticed that one of our rolls went for a trip up to the photographer's little studio and then returned, to be placed on our plate, and then they took our Dragon roll up there, on the actual serving plate, and the photographer handled our plate and then the waiter brought it to our table, so I said to the host guy, "Hey you shouldn't really do that with our food" and he said, "Oh, sorry, I'm so sorry . . . we'll make you new food, we didn't want to waste it" and I said, "You don't have to make us new food, but you really shouldn't take someone's plate to a different location, that's kind of weird" and he agreed and gave us ten percent off the check . . . and I'm not sure if my reaction was appropriate because I never had this happen to my food before, but it kind of weirded me out (despite the fact that when I waited tables, I had no problem eating food off plates that had been bused back to the kitchen).

Brangelina: Fair and Balanced?

While it might be difficult to find fair and balanced reporting on last night's debate-- when it comes to Trump and Clinton it's hard for anyone, including the media, to remain unbiased-- but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to find multiple perspectives in mainstream publications; in fact, I was pleased to discover that my local Rite Aid is offering a fair and balanced impulse-buy-register-display on Brad and Angelina's divorce . . . although if you read from left to right, top to bottom (as I did while I was waiting in line) then you can see that the employee who put the magazines on the rack clearly favors Angelina, and allowed her to end with a rhetorical flourish about saving her children.

It Will Be Harder (But Not Impossible) to Read About Zombies During the Zombie Apocalypse

When the zombie apocalypse comes, one of the many things I will miss is the convenience of Hoopla, a free digital media platform which runs through the library, and allows me to download the newest issues of The Walking Dead on our iPad . . . you can download five books a month, so if you like the show, see if your library has this feature and read the comics-- they're darker and more expansive than the show, and as far as graphic novels go, they're easy to consume: you could real all twenty-six in six months, using Hoopla; I also recently read Ghosts, which is written and illustrated by Reina Telgemeier, and despite my vehement skepticism towards the spirit world, I enjoyed this graphic novel as well (and it's perfectly appropriate for kids, unlike The Walking Dead series, which is appropriate for no one).

Required Reading (Especially for the NJDOE)

Cathy O'Neil's new book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy is a must read for anyone living in our digital age; she's uniquely qualified to write this book, as she's an academic mathematician who earned her Ph.D from Harvard, worked for a hedge fund on Wall Street, analyzed big data for marketing start-ups and then became a political activist because she realized that a number of dangerous discriminatory algorithms are opaque, affect enormous numbers of people, and do unseen damage . . . she nicknames these WMDs . . . Weapons of Math Destruction, and she explains how these black box formulas evaluate creditworthiness, college rankings, our employability, our Facebook and Twitter feeds, and-- most significant to me-- teacher evaluations . . . and she spends a good portion of the book on just how irrational, absurd, and insanely unsound the models are that assess teacher performance-- the formulas might work if teachers taught ten thousand kids at a time, but for a class of 30 students, measuring how a kid did on a standardized test from one year to the next is essentially random (all the teachers know this, of course, even those of us who do not possess a math Phd. from Harvard, but it's nice to hear an expert explain the logic of why this is so) but apparently the NJDOE hasn't figured this out, and at the start of this school year, they increased the weight of standardized test scores in the evaluation model from 10% to 30% . . . so now, if a teacher works in a tested grade-- such as my wife-- one third of a teacher's numerical assessment is random . . . even if she teaches math and and can point out the many problems with the algorithm (a sociologist would cite Campbell's Law, of course, and also present a valid argument for why this change is absolutely inane) and I can't explain (without long strings of profanity) how incensed this makes me-- how utterly stupid the people at the NJDOE must all be, to enact this increase-- but I'm hoping that this book indicates a sea change in how we view these algorithms and formulas, and that people will learn enough math to understand how screwed up this is . . . and if the NJDOE changes the algorithm and writes a personal apology to me, confessing that they were totally ignorant of all math and logic, then I'm willing to forgive them, because even Bill Gates got it wrong with his charter school funding, he ignored the Law of Large Numbers and came to the conclusion that small schools were better than large schools, when the fact of the matter is that small schools have more statistical variance than large schools, because they have less students in them . . . so more of them will be better and more of them will be worse . . . but, of course, people may learn the truth and still not do anything about it-- we know that a later start time will improve test scores in high school, but the bus schedule prohibits this, and so kids show up at 7 AM, in a building without AC, ready to learn AP Physics . . . everyone knows this is not the best way to teach kids, but no one does anything about it, instead we purchase new software platforms so we can upload all the spurious data and crunch the numbers-- and there may be enough people in the NJDOE and other administrative capacities who love this idea so much, the idea that we're generating loads of numbers from standardized tests and evaluation algorithms, and they don't care that all the numbers are bullshit, because it's fun to have loads of "evidence" to evaluate and all this data perpetuates the idea that we need to pay people to look at it . . . anyway, I could go on and on, but read the book, it's revelatory . . . and if you don't feel like reading it, you can listen to her discussing it on Slate Money.

The Allusion of the Year!

My children celebrated Rosh Hashanah by inviting a bunch of kids (mainly Gentiles) over to play a two day marathon of "Star Wars Dungeons & Dragons," an exponentially nerdy D&D milieu that my son Alex created; Alex is also the dungeon-master and this drives his younger brother Ian crazy, and so-- as usual-- Ian  was simultaneously causing trouble both in the gameworld and the real world: Ian claimed that Alex was discriminating against him, but Alex countered that Ian was "blowing random stuff up" and "pouring random liquids on people" in the game, and Ian also poured actual real juice on his friend Tibby's character sheet and also pushed his actual brother down the actual basement stairs; after a time-out, Ian returned to the game and immediately went rogue attacked the Death Star, alone, and then attempted to kill the Emperor, without any help from the other players, and he got himself killed for his moronic bravado . . . and so I was recounting this silliness at work and my buddy Mike said: "Nice . . . he pulled a Leeroy Jenkins" and though it's a bit premature, his reference was so apropos that I've decided to award him with the coveted SOD Allusion of the Year Award.

Fantasy Coach of the Year

I finally got a win this week in my fantasy football league, and I attribute this victory to the bulk email I recently sent to all the players on my team:

"Congratulations . . . you have the privilege to be playing for the South Side Locusts fantasy football team this season, and if you perform well enough statistically and I designate you the team MVP, then you'll be rewarded with ten percent of my winnings . . . somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty dollars . . . which I know is a rather small percentage of your actual NFL salary, but still, every little bit helps, especially because you're  probably not going to play competitive football for very long, due to concussions and injuries, and, realistically speaking, it's not as if playing for the South Side Locusts and playing for your NFL franchise are mutually exclusive: padding your stats can certainly help when contract time rolls around, and so when you're debating whether to run out of bounds or go for that extra yard, just remember, there might be fifty dollars in it for you . . . but don't act like an idiot either, because if you get injured, you're really going to let both of your teams down."

I Need to Find Cooler Friends Part 2

In the English Office, my friend Terry was lamenting the state of being married with children, and he said, "I used to get it all the time," and we were excited to hear a vivid description of it . . . we all hoped it was something very salacious, but then he finished his sentence . . . "you know, silent time home alone without the kids."

I Need to Find Cooler Friends

My friend Kevin-- the one who's obsessed with Hamilton-- plays in a Strat-O-Matic hockey league.

The Test 63: Singing the Dogs

This week on The Test, Cunningham presents a quiz on canines, I give a tutorial on how to euthanize a groundhog, and Stacey sings the dogs . . . a weird, wonderful, occasionally informative episode with an ending that is not to be missed . . . if you're into animals that can talk.

Two Kinds of Compliments

There are two kinds of people, and there are two kinds of compliments . . . and I'm dismissing backhanded compliments and sarcastic compliments and fake compliments you give to your kids after they've performed in an elementary school play . . . I'm talking about actual, sincere compliments:

1) it's certainly nice to receive the first kind of compliment, but what designates it as a category one compliment is that it is in a domain with which you have experience and practice, and so it's more expected-- when I compliment my wife on a great meal, she appreciates the positive feedback, but she's a good cook, so it's no surprise . . .

2) the second kind of compliment is more exciting, because it's for something that you're not known for . . . something that you don't have experience with . . . such as: wow, you really euthanised that groundhog perfectly . . . and you can congratulate me now, because while I certainly did NOT euthanize that groundhog perfectly, I did receive a category two compliment this week . . . the bell rang, signalling the end of Creative Writing class, and moments later there was a commotion in the hall in front of my room, and I heard "Fight! Fight!" so I went to investigate, and one girl had another girl by the hair, and she had pulled the victim's hair in front of her face, and she was swinging her back and forth, and the girl with the masses of curly black hair in front of her face-- one of my students-- was going to get tossed into a locker . . . by her hair . . . but I was able to get in between the two combatants and grab the arm puller by the wrists and extricate her hands from the other girl's hair, and once I had accomplished that task-- it's not easy to get someone to let go of a pile of hair-- they took a few more swats at each other, but I was able to keep them apart and none of the blows landed-- and while this was happening, another teacher blew the whistle we were provided last year for such altercations-- and the security guards hustled over and escorted the ladies to the office . . . the next day the head security guard complimented me on a job well-done, the principal and the security team had watched the video, and he said I did a textbook job of breaking up the fight: I kept calm, I didn't use too much force, I didn't throw anyone around, and I kept them from hurting each other . . . and I felt better about this compliment than I would if someone told me I had taught a good lesson about Shakespeare, and so if you really want to make someone feel good, tell them they did a great job at something they don't do every day, such as: wow, you inflated all of your tires in the allotted three minutes, without having to pay an extra 75 cents . . . I bet Usain Bolt couldn't do that!

Schoolhouse Hip-hop = $$$$$$$

I should immediately point out that I am a seriously biased reviewer: I loathe Broadway musicals . . . I don't even like things that satirize Broadway musicals (such as Avenue Q and Spamalot) because the music still sounds like a Broadway musical, even if the lyrics are funny . . . but lately my good friend and colleague Kevin has been obsessed with the show Hamilton, and it seems everyone else on earth has either seen Hamilton or wants to see Hamilton, and all these folks are willing to pay an inordinate amount of money to do this . . . so I decided I would give it a shot and listen to the soundtrack (that's all I could muster, I would never pay money and make plans nine months in the future for musical theater) and I was sorely disappointed; I thought that the music in Hamilton was going to shatter the chains that constrict and restrain the music of a typical Broadway musical . . . I thought it was going to have a real urban, edgy, hip-hop feel to it, but it's actually just a better-produced version of Schoolhouse Rock, didactic and preachy, with plenty of actual Broadway cheese and a tame, enunciated version of rap and R&B music that sounds like a mix between DJ Jazzy Jeff and Oklahoma . . . and it's hard not to laugh at moments that are supposed to be dramatic and powerful-- delivered in a full hip-hop style-- that end up just being silly and anecdotal . . . my favorite is in "Non-Stop":

"the plan was to write a total of twenty-five essays, the work divided by three men . . . in the end they wrote eighty-five essays, in the span of six months . . . John Jay got sick after writing five, James Madison wrote twenty-nine, Hamilton wrote the other fifty-one!"

and I fully admit this negative review might be fueled by jealousy, because Lin-Manuel Miranda actually got his historical rap-musical written and produced, while my masterpiece "Bring Da Sense," a hip-hop biopic about Thomas "Bring Da" Paine and his controversial pamphlet is still unfinished (and Method Man doesn't seem all that interested in playing the role of Paine, which is a major sticking point).

Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Get Stung in the Testicles

Sports can often be a weird exercise in futility: you practice and practice but never get to use your skills in the perfect situation (unlike learning how to knit or draw or play a musical instrument, where practice usually rewards you with a linear increase in skill and enjoyment) but once in a great while, the sporting gods shine their light on a lucky soul . . . and right now the light is shining on my son Ian . . . he plays on the middle school soccer team that I coach, and the team is comprised of 6-8th graders and this means there is a HUGE difference in sizes and development among the players-- Ian is on the small size for a sixth grader (78 pounds) and so when he's next to a large 8th grader, he looks like a midget-- the jersey goes down past his knees-- but he was the only sixth grader in attendance at last Friday's home game (I made him come to cheer on his team) and it was a close one, we were playing better soccer but the the other team (South Amboy) had a free kick specialist who bent it like Beckham used to bend it: he scored two forty-five yard curling spinless rocket shots and they also had a six foot tall Asian kid playing goalie who wasn't that coordinated but swatted down everything we shot at him; it was tied 2-2 in the second half and we just couldn't finish, so I threw Ian a bone and put him up top-- I figured it couldn't hurt and I could give him a few minutes of time as a reward for showing up (the rest of his sixth grade friends were playing Nerf war) and within moments, he got to use every soccer skill I've ever taught him, all in one play-- he ran through a ball forty yards out-- I'm a huge proponent of opening your hips and running through the goddamned ball, instead of stabbing at it-- and then he kept it glued to his body, juggling it on his chest, thighs and feet, then he sealed off a giant defender, faked a shot with his strong foot (he's lefty) and then cut it to his right and shot to the far post with his weak foot . . . it was, as my friend Roman described it, a David and Goliath moment . . . unforgettable and awesome . . . and, as if this wasn't enough, on Wednesday we had an away game against Woodrow Wilson, a middle school three times our size, and once again, we were playing much better soccer but the field was awful, the bumpiest I've seen, and we gave up a handball PK and an ugly counterattack goal and were down 2-1 in the second half . . . so I threw Ian in again, for luck, and two minutes later he snuck over to the far post and one of 8th graders zipped a ball across the box, from the left to right, and Ian-- a lefty-- took it off one bounce from ten yards out and slotted it in with his right foot . . . most kids will take a whack at that ball with their strong foot, and often whiff or knock it over the goal, but Ian kept his composure, used the proper foot, and scored another critical weak foot goal . . . this fired us up and our star player drilled one in from the eighteen moments later and that was enough to do it-- we won 3-2 . . . so good stuff for Ian: two huge goals in twelve minutes of play . . . I'm interested in what he'll do in the game this afternoon, as he insists he's going to score again . . . but I've got another son on the team: Alex-- he's a seventh grader and he's a skilled player as well, but despite skillfully juggling with me for an hour on Saturday, he didn't play very well in his game on Sunday-- not for lack of practice, but probably because when we were at a BBQ on Saturday night, he was attacked by a swarm of yellowjackets and got stung eight times (including two stings on his testicles) and so you'd think the sporting gods would reward him for enduring the stings and still showing up to play on Sunday, maybe give him an easy goal, but instead he was recompensed with a cleat to the ankle in the early minutes of the game, and then-- once he limped back out there-- an elbow to the face, so he was a gimpy bee-stung trainwreck, and while he toughed it out and didn't ask to sit, he didn't play particularly well . . . so you never know how it's going to go out there-- one moment you're the hero, the next you're the goat, and it doesn't always correspond with how hard you practice.

Pronouncement of Dave

Though I'm using an extremely small sample size and only anecdotal evidence, I am officially declaring that the Fitbit Craze is now over . . . the folks in my department are still walking and jogging and doing zumba, but their digital step-counters have ceased to operate and they are not replacing them . . . I think they have come to the collective realization that taking a walk still "counts" as exercise, even if a little device doesn't count the number of steps and post this information on a bar graph.

This Should Be an Olympic Event

Usain Bolt might be fast enough to inflate all four of his car tires to the recommended PSI in one three minute session, but I always fall a few seconds short and have to pony up another 75 cents in order to finish filling the final wheel.

Yesterday Was NOT Groundhog Day

I have a short window of time (30 minutes) between the end of the school day and soccer practice, and my house is right next to the middle school soccer field, so I have just enough time to go inside, change into my coaching gear, and do one or two other random things: sometimes I take the dog for a short walk, sometimes I eat a snack, sometimes I play the guitar or read, sometimes I unload the dishwasher or start the wash, sometimes I make iced coffee, sometimes I read Gheorghe:The Blog, and sometimes-- and this is a new one from yesterday and I hope it doesn't become a mainstay of my after-school-before-practice-schedule-- sometimes I let the dog out into the backyard, grab a bag of potato chips from the cabinet, and while I am opening the bag of chips, I hear fantastical growling and snarling in the yard, so I run out onto the back porch and see that the dog has a large groundhog by the scruff of the neck, shaking it to death, so I grab a wiffle ball bat, sprint down the porch steps, yell at the dog to drop the critter, and swing the bat menacingly (I'm not sure if I was swinging the bat at the dog or at the groundhog, it just seemed like the thing to do) and Sirius obeyed and let go of the groundhog, which fell on the grass and lay there, prone but breathing heavily, eyes open . . . so I led Sirius onto the back porch, brushed the groundhog hair off his legs, told him he was a good boy, and put him inside; then I went back out to deal with the dying animal in my yard-- knowing full well that my kids would be home in a few minutes and I needed to get down to the soccer field ASAP . . . and that's when I realized I should have let my dog finish the job and then made him drop the creature because now I had to finish the job, and I didn't grow up on a farm but I also didn't have time to contemplate much about the deed, and so I went inside, emptied out a cardboard box (Popchips . . . a humiliating casket, but what could I do?) and then went back out to the yard to tend to the groundhog . . . I had hoped that he might have miraculously recuperated and shuffled off, but he was still lying in the same spot, neck and back broken, but alive, so I whacked him over the head with a metal shovel, used the same instrument to load him into his cardboard casket, taped it shut, and drove the box to the park and tossed it in a dumpster . . . minutes later my kids arrived home, I told them an expurgated version of the story, and we went on our merry way to soccer practice.

Awkward Dave Learns Why Dreams are Stupid and Mean Nothing

I had an incredibly "realistic" dream last night that I ran for governor (absurd) and actually won the election (ridiculous) and then, when I went over to the statehouse to start my term, I learned that the salary was abysmally low (which is patently untrue, New Jersey governors are paid the fourth highest salary in the country-- 175,000 dollars) and so I told them that I couldn't afford to do it; it was embarrassing and awkward-- and everyone was really pissed off at me for wasting their time-- and, as a compromise, they made me do the job for a month while they found someone else, and that really annoyed me because I had to drive to Trenton every day, which ruined my summer vacation (also silly, as the next gubernatorial election in New Jersey will take place on November 7th).

The Test 62: History and Futility

This week on The Test, I challenge the ladies with a rather grim thought experiment (thanks to Chuck Klosterman) and while they perform admirably, it might all be for nought . . . so check it out, keep score . . . or don't, because we are all merely grains of sand in the hourglass of time, drifting down down down, towards the neck, and the inevitable drop into the abyss (unless some greater power flips the hourglass over, and we all get another crack at it).
 

Postcards from the Dead

My friend and colleague Stacey has to sort out a morbid holiday dilemma . . . she made a family-photo Christmas card last year, printed a stack of them, but she but neglected to mail them out, and now she wants to use those cards this year-- why waste them?-- but the photo on the cards includes her deceased dog, Norman . . . and so we were trying to figure out if it's weird and creepy to send out a Christmas card with a dead dog on it . . . and besides, she has a new dog (Walter . . . she likes old man names) and it would be rather rude to cut Walter out of the picture . . . and while we never came to a concrete decision on the proper thing to do, the discussion reminded Stacey of the grim death announcement postcard that has resided on the English Office bulletin board for many years . . . no one remembers who delivered the card to the office and no one knows the person the card "fondly remembers" . . . he might have been a student at the school or perhaps he was a substitute teacher or an aid, his identity has always been a mystery, but for reasons of superstition, no teacher would throw the card away; I had long forgotten about this item, but when Stacey pointed it out, I took it down and tore it to shreds, right in front of her face, just to freak her out, and it worked like a charm-- she shrieked and then yelled, "He's going to haunt the shit out of you!" and so I did my usual taunting of the gods and spirits, demanding that they strike me dead with lightning or stop my heart, but neither thing happened, and so it seems that I am immune to spectral power of all apparitions and phantasmagoria.

Are These Pants Blue or Black?

They should write the color of the clothing on the tag.

I Might Be From Pungudutivu

J. D. Salinger waits until chapter five to reveal that Holden Caulfield's brother Allie died of leukemia-- and this is an excellent characterization strategy-- after reading the opening pages of the novel, you form one opinion about Holden . . . that he's rather whiny and annoying, disaffected and disenchanted, and then you have to totally revise your opinion when you are presented with this new and rather grim piece of information . . . they say that first impressions are everything, but that's not necessarily true, especially if a later piece of information that you learn about someone is particularly relevant; for example: you probably think this blog is a puddle of drivel and you only read it so you can register your disgust with my insipid ramblings, BUT if I divulged that I was not actually Dave, but a ninety-four year old Sri Lankan woman named Ajani who lives in a mudbrick house on the island of Pungudutivu and who loves to post discursive sentences as a pretentious balding American pseudo-intellectual, then this blog would take on an entirely new tenor . . . unfortunately, that's not true . . .  but it does raise an interesting question: what game-changing piece of information would you withhold until the middle pages of your autobiography?

Let's Do the Time Suck Again

When I first enter my classroom in the morning, the amount of time I spend opening difficult to access windows-- actual glass windows that I need to open to let cooler air into my room, which are set up in six columns of three, so that I have to stand on top of the window ledge in order to open the top set-- and then the time it takes to set up the many fans, and then the time I spend opening various virtual windows on my computer, so that I can log in to all the various platforms we use (if we use Google classroom then why did we switch out email to Microsoft Outlook?) is a tedious, inefficient time suck, as I could be grading papers, preparing my lessons, organizing my materials, and writing this blog (which is also a tragic tragic time suck . . . but unlike opening windows, real and virtual, I actually enjoy wasting my time on this . . . or, as is the case this morning, seven minutes of my school contract time . . . please don't rat me out).

R.I.P. Greasetruck Studios . . .

It looks like the desktop computer and digital audio converter in my makeshift music studio have finally bitten the dust . . . I've resuscitated them many times from the brink of disaster, but I think this is it . . . new drivers and updates have done nothing-- luckily, I pumped out one last podcast before everything exploded in a burst of feedback-- and while I'm a little sad, that it ended with a power surge and some kind of short circuit that busted my Steinberg UR22,  I've had this computer for a long long time (and I put it together myself) and I'm excited to finally update my hardware, but now the question is: do I spend the $$$ on a Mac?

Give Us This Nada Our Daily Nada

I recognize the absurdity of a blog about nothing commenting on a TV show about nothing, but Seinfeld is actually about everything (and so is this sentence) and it took a book about nothing to make me realize how complicated and deep my feelings are about a show about nothing; Seinfeldia, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, sports the subtitle "How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything" and this is accurate . . . the book is not some deconstructive analysis of Seinfeld's philosophy, neuroticism and anxious characterization . . . it's more of a history of change, both during the course of the show and during the course of the zeitgeist during the show's run, more of an an explanation of just how difficult it is to write, cast, and maintain a dynamic television show and maintain quality and consistency, week to week, year to year, and even day to day; Armstrong refers to the great moments in the show's history but doesn't overly describe these moments, so the writing is fast and fresh and informative (but probably only totally comprehensible to a true Seinfeld fan) and while the book is a comprehensive history of the show and the alternate universe it created (and the interaction of the Seinfeld universe with the actual universe) it also encourages plenty of nostalgia for people who watched the show when it aired . . . this is a tribute to the last time that network TV was cool, to the last time that there was a true cultural touchstone that everyone shared in a timely fashion (the show aired on Thursday night, and everyone at work dissected the episode Friday morning) and this deeply fond nostalgia about the show has motivated me, in true Seinfeldian fashion, to NOT watch any reruns . . . this is the one great sitcom I've completely withheld from my kids-- we've done The Office and Parks and Rec and some 30 Rock and lots of Community-- but I don't want them to see Seinfeld until they are ready to appreciate it . . . and this book makes me want this to happen soon; anyway, one of the interesting things Seinfeldia explores in detail is that almost all of the plotlines in the show were inspired by real-life anecdotes-- at first they used things that happened to Larry David, and then, when they ran out of Larry David anecdotes, they used things that happened to the ever-revolving crew of writers . . . Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld basically mined the writers for these real incidents and then sent them packing) and so, in this spirit, I'd like to share two Seinfeldian moments that happened to me that were provoked by the show, both of them spongeworthy:

1) I won't mention any names in this story because I'm rather embarrassed by my behavior (a common Seinfeldian theme) but the setting was a high school cafeteria-- I had "cafeteria duty," which means you need to loosely monitor the students while they eat lunch-- and there was a "close talker" in my section-- she was a Spanish teacher and when we conversed, I often had to literally back away from her to preserve my personal space (I do enjoy my personal space . . . in fact, I'm a bit claustrophobic) and this was so pronounced that she would often drive me around and around the lunch table that we stood next to . . . I would slowly back up as she got closer and closer to my face, and the other teachers in our section were English teachers-- friends of mine-- and they enjoyed watching this to no end, as the woman only did this to me, and the two English teachers were Seinfeld fans, of course (as was the close talker!) and so one day, after several months of close talking, I told my friends to find an obscure vantage point where they could observe me talking with the close talker because I was going to make history and stand my ground and we could all see what happened, and so I did it-- despite my claustrophobia-- I stood my ground . . . though I wanted to laugh-- and the two of them witnessed this from the corner of the cafeteria . . . I didn't back up, I stood solidly and she got closer and closer until she was less than an inch from my face, talking away, so close that I could see the specks of saliva on her lips . . . I didn't know what she was saying and I wanted to laugh, and I stole a glance at my friends and they were laughing and then I suddenly felt very guilty and regretful for doing the experiment, because the close talker was a super-nice lady and we were in real life, not a sitcom . . . but still, it was profoundly awesome to see just how close she got to my face, and I'm glad I had two witnesses that bore testament to this insanity;

2) the second Seinfeldian moment will only make sense to fans of a certain age-- Catherine and I often taped the show on VHS, because I went to Doll's Place on Thursday nights, and so on a hungover Saturday morning, we tried to watch "The Betrayal," which is also known as "the backwards episode" and I didn't rewind far enough and we started watching and it seemed like we were at the end, but it was the beginning, and I kept rewinding and fast-forwarding in spurts, not realizing that the chronology of the episode was backwards, taking note of the size of Kramer's lollipop, watching a scene, then attempting to get us in the right place . . . and, in a perfectly Seinfeldian technological twist, we ended up watching the episode in some semblance of the correct linear order, with many stops and starts, before we realized that the entire story was told in reverse . . . so then we re-watched it "properly," noting the irony and absurdity, of course, but not knowing that the Seinfeldian brand pre-9/11 irony and absurdity was on its way out, to be replaced by something darker, and the hypersensitive, super-silly tone of the '90's was about to end, and people my age (46) would yearn for this feeling for the rest of their lives (Beavis and Butthead).

The Test 61: Nicknames

Stacey brings the pain this week on The Test with her quiz on nicknames, and Cunningham and I mainly flail-- especially when we are trying to remember actual names-- but we occasionally guess the common thread, and so will you . . . so take a shot, keep score, and you'll certainly do better than us; and remember Method Man's real name is Clifford.

Throw Caution to the Wind: Don't Look Either Way

I take in pride in entering crosswalks without glancing at the oncoming vehicles-- I'm not going to deign to "ask permission" from a fuel-guzzling, carbon spewing noisy motor vehicle in order to cross the street under my own autonomously ambulatory volition, and if I get hit by a car, fuck'em . . . I'll collect my well-deserved, well-earned settlement; I'll never work again, and I'll cruise around town evoking sympathy in a brand new Jazzy . . . and now there's a study that insures that if I do get clobbered while legally crossing the street, then I'll probably receive a healthy pay-out, as it is most likely that a rich person will commit the crime . . . and I will readily admit that this is one of those studies that I'm eager to pass along because it confirms exactly what I've always believed about how wealthy people behave when they are behind the wheel of a luxury car, and perhaps when I get hit and collect, then I'll "pay it forward," buy a nice car, and hit someone else in a crosswalk and pay them a large lump sum.

Spooky Etiquette

When people at my place of work--mainly women-- are talking about contacting spirits, receiving signs from the afterlife, and decoding messages from dead relatives and deceased strangers, am I allowed to crack jokes, question their sanity, and express my very specifically skeptical feelings about ghosts and the netherworld, or do I have to pretend to believe in that stuff?

Common Kowledge?

Everyone knows that Kilgore Trout is Philip K. Dick, right?

This Is Lame

I'm too tired from Two-practice-Tuesday to think of anything creative and interesting to write, but I did write a piece (with multiple sentences!) for Gheorghe:The Blog a few days ago, so if you need a daily dose of Dave you can head over there and read "#39 on Your Roster, But #1 in Your Heart."