Three For Three at 3 AM

This past weekend, I was up at 3 AM three nights in a row. Each night was a different adventure. While it makes for good content, this is not a streak I want to continue.

3 am Adventure #1 -- Friday Night

Friday night, my son Alex was over on Busch Campus at Rutgers with his fellow members of the Highland Park Rocket Propulsion Lab. They got some kind of a grant and use the Rutgers facilities: the 3-D printer and the modeling software and the soldering equipment. These are really smart kids (who also play tennis-- that's how Alex met them). And something went wrong with Arduino mini (a piece of electronic equipment). The wires weren't grounded and they fried the circuit board.

So when Catherine and I got home from dinner with friends at 11 PM, Alex wasn't home yet. We texted and he said that they were trying to fix the circuit board and needed to stay later.

I reminded him that he had Model UN at 8 am at Franklin High School. He had to be up at 7 am. Then I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at 2:30 am. Alex had not come in. I texted him. Things were not going well. He said they might not get done until 4 or 5 in the morning.

This was absurd. I told him he needed some sleep before his Model UN event and drove over to Busch Campus to find him. It wasn't easy. He had to run down the road to flag down the van. And-- though we didn't know it at the time-- we were near the spot where a Rutgers employee had been bitten by a coyote! Just one night previous (at 4 am).

I was so sleepy I missed the exit for Highland Park. Alex managed to get up and put on his coat and tie for Model UN the next morning. Impressive.

3 am Adventure #2 -- Saturday Night

Saturday afternoon, I attended the Rutgers/Ohio State game with my buddy Alec. We drank some beer before the game and then we drank some beer during the game. Then when I got home from the game I ate some of my wife's delicious Thai coconut curry chicken soup (and drank another beer). A little bit later I made a rash decision and decided to have ice cream, with a healthy dollop of whipped cream on top. This is not a combination of food my stomach can handle.

So this one was my fault. I was up at 3 am Saturday night with gas. I fell back to sleep, but couldn't really sleep late because of my son's Model UN event.

3 am Adventure 3# -- Sunday Night

Sunday afternoon, I took my son Alex to the Edison skate park. I brought the dog, so I could walk her while Alex skated. The adjacent fields were covered with goose poop and Lola ingested some. Yuck.

At three in the morning Sunday night (Monday morning?) we heard that distinctive retching sound of a vomiting dog. Lola was puking on the landing at the top of the stairs. Pretty minimal. Probably because of the goose poop. I got her outside and Catherine cleaned up the mess. We put down a towel in case she threw up again.

Thirty minutes later, she did just that. It was just a tiny bit, and she did it on the towel. I waited for a moment, to see if she was going to throw up more (since she was doing it on the towel). Catherine rushed by me, her thought being "get the dog outside." In her mad rush in the darkness, she flung her arm at my face. Her fingernail cut the inside of my nostril. Ouch! She drew blood!

Ian and Alex slept through all of this.

The next morning, I tried to find the spot where Lola defecated in the yard at 3 am. I hate leaving dog poop in the yard, because it always comes back to haunt you. I couldn't find the poop-- because I had stepped in it. I took off my clogs and left them outside.

Then, on the way back from walking her to the park, I tried to find the remainder of the poop and I stepped in it again. Luckily, we got some rain so it was easy to wipe my shoes clean on the wet grass.

During the school day, I learned that a cut inside your nostril really hurts. It hurts when you sniffle, it hurts when you rub your nose, and it especially hurts when you eat spicy food (like the leftover Thai coconut chicken soup that I had for lunch).

Anyway, I am hoping to end this streak tonight. Wish me luck.

Dave the Greek

My friend Alec got a hold of some tickets to the Rutgers/Ohio State game yesterday. His neighbor couldn't attend. The tickets were handicap accessible so we got preferred parking and a pair of seats surrounded by space at the top of the mezzanine (although the stadium was relatively empty-- you could sit wherever).

Ohio State was favored by 53 points. The largest amount for any away team ever. I wanted to be the game-- take Rutgers and see if they could cover-- so I signed up for the FanDuel Sports Book. Apparently if this app verifies that you are from a state where sports gambling is legal, then you can place bets. It took a while-- I couldn't get my computer to verify that it was in New Jersey, so I used my phone. It takes some doing to download the app-- you can't directly download it from Google so you have to change settings and find the file and install it manually. The app is terrible. Slow and glitchy and impossible to find anything.

Before the site tried to verify my location, I loaded one hundred dollars into my account while I was on the computer-- they'll take your money THEN tell you they can't verify your location, so you can't bet your money. Very annoying.

Once I got on my phone, I was able to navigate the site a bit. There's no search bar, so you have to scroll through everything-- super-annoying-- and I couldn't find the Rutgers game. I searched and searched, but no luck. I decided they weren't taking bets because the spread was so huge. So I put my hundred dollars on William and Mary, my alma mater, and closed the stupid app. Even if I lost the bet, FanDuel was supposed to refund me the money-- they do this for your first bet up to $500 dollars-- so you can bet it again.

I placed a bet with my friend Alec-- he was willing to take Ohio State and give me 52.5-- and we drove over. We had a few drinks in the parking lot and then went in. Ohio State capitalized on two quick Rutgers turn-overs and scored fourteen points in the first three minutes. It looked like they were going to cover. But then Rutgers fought back and actually played some football. Unlike Willaim and Mary, who got clobbered. And we met a mutual friend (Sleepy Dan) who informed us they now serve beer at the stadium. Fabulous! He also informed me that the reason I couldn't find the game on FanDuel is that you're not allowed to bet on amateur contests happening in state. So no betting on Rutgers and Princeton. Makes sense, I suppose, but I wish the site had some information about that.

We got some beers. Dan claimed that someone stole his extra beer, which he put on a chair behind us for safekeeping. Then it got real cold. Dan left. Alec and I asked some nice ladies in an apparel stand where the warmest place in the stadium was. They only had a tiny space heater. The older lady put her hand on my face and said, "I'm freezing honey." Then she told us to go upstairs and try to get into the stadium club.

"Walk in like you own the place!" she advised us.

We walked up the ramp, saw the enormous bouncer turn his back to the entrance, and walked through with lots of confidence. We nearly made it to the bar when he caught us. "You can't come in here! You don't have the credentials!"

Alec showed him his ticket. While it got us preferred parking and handicapped seating, it did not get us into the club. As fast as we were in, we were out. Back out in the cold. We made it to the end of the third quarter and then headed to my house for some of Cat's homemade Thai coconut curry chicken soup.

And Rutgers beat the spread!

Today, FanDuel refunded my first bet, plus five dollars. I'm eager to be done with this sports gambling stuff, so I bet it all on the Patriots. I figure Brady and Bellichick wouldn't lose two in a row. I was right. My son was angry with me for betting $100 dollars until I explained to him that getting two bets for the price of one is something you have to exploit, but then you have to take the money and run. I've already cleaned out my account-- so if you add together the $25 I won on Rutgers and the $105 I made on my bet refund, I'm up $130. And I'm retiring from sports gambling (aside from March Madness pools). I don't need that kind of stress.

Stop Reading This and Go See Parasite

If I could tell you one thing, it would be this: go see Bong Joon Ho's new movie. It's called Parasite. The title is both literal and metaphorical (unlike the time I had giant intestinal roundworms . . . that parasite story is completely literal).

My wife and I took the kids Wednesday night. A weeknight movie! I was worried it would stop playing in the theater by my house. The movie began and we didn't breathe for two hours and twelve minutes. Then it ended, we all exhaled, and said-- in unison-- "Wow! That was so good."

Best movie I've seen since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I'm not going to say much about the movie, other than you should see it on the big screen, for the colors. My wife was watching This Is Us the day after we saw Parasite, and it looked so cheesy-- because of the lighting and the color palette (I'm pretty sure the show is cheesy . . . if my wife is watching something like that, I leave the room before I say something offensive).

The only clue I'll give you about the content of Parasite is that it is the ultimate, most epic upstairs/downstairs story ever told. Like Downtown Abbey, without the sucking.

You should also watch Snowpiercer and The Host, two other movies directed by Bong Joon Ho.

And speaking of movies starting with the letter "P", Platoon is streaming on Amazon for free (if you've got Prime) and it's a great one to watch to celebrate Veterans Day. It's grim-- and like Parasite-- it's got a class element . . . but unlike Ho's twisted vision of class mobility in Korea, there seems to be some kind of cathartic camaraderie between Chris (Charlie Sheen) and the lower class gang (King and Big Harold and Rhah). So American. Fist bumps and sing-alongs and communal drug use and such. Despite this, things don't turn out so well for the "crusaders," especially Willem Dafoe's character (Sgt. Elias).

My son Alex said the greatest Vietnam movie ever would be a mash-up; it would start with the basic training in Full Metal Jacket and then move to the Vietnam action in Platoon.

I agree . . . although my kids haven't seen The Deer Hunter yet.

If You Seek Me, You Shall Find Me (Not Eating Potato Chips)

I'm turning 50 in March, and I'm trying to preempt the stereotypical mid-life crisis-- so I've been running more in an attempt to improve my mile time. This might be an exercise in futility. I'm certainly building up my endurance, and also, by running more, I'm playing basketball less, so preventing injury. But it might not matter.

I'm still heavy. I ran an 8 minute mile in the summer, and I weighed 195+. Now I'm down to 192 or so, but I'm still too heavy to really move around the track. So I've got to shed a few pounds, but I refuse to diet. I do too much exercise. I'm hungry all the time. And I love food. And beer. I try to drink less beer, but it never lasts. Tequila and seltzer is light and less caloric and it tastes great, but it's not beer.

Then, yesterday, my friend and colleague Stacey pointed out that the worst food to eat was potato chips. I did not realize this. I knew they weren't good, but I didn't know just how bad they were. And, if you exercise a lot, they can be useful. They contain potassium. But when you get old, there are better ways to obtain this mineral. And you probably only need a few chips. That's not how I eat chips.

Because I am addicted to potato chips. I eat them all the time. Almost every day. If they are in the house, I eat them. Inhale them. If I stop for coffee at Wawa, I get a pack. I eat them without realizing it. I eat them all, the whole bag, no matter the size.

So I'm quitting them. As best I can. Hopefully, I'll have the same result as Jameis Winston. I will keep you posted.

A Good Run Gone Bad

I got up Thursday morning with the best intentions. I had been up late at the local open mic the night before (there was a guy proficient at beat-boxing) and had drank too many beers and eaten some late-night quesadillas.

No school on Thursday, and my wife was away at the convention: working it. So I was living it up.

Thursday morning, the house was quiet. The kids were sleeping, and I wanted to run off the beer. I loaded Lola into the car, and we headed to the Rutgers Ecological Preserve. There's rarely anyone there, so I can let Lola off the leash (once it gets cold and the ticks hibernate) so she can chase deer and squirrels while I run the maze of trails.

But when we got to the bottom of the hill, at the intersection of Cleveland Avenue and River Road, traffic was at a standstill. I just needed to get over to Cedar Lane, but I wasn't going to do it in my van. So I drove back up the hill and parked near the Birnn Chocolate Factory. Back in the old days, when I could really run, I used to cut through the woods, cross the railroad tracks, and make my way through a playground behind the Cedar Lane Apartments, and this would lead me to Cedar Lane. From there I could make my way into the Ecological Preserve.

Lola and I managed to find our way across the railroad tracks without getting hit by a train (and a number of them passed through) but then we ran out of luck. We tramped through some tick and briar filled brush, but could not find a gap in the Cedar Lane Apartment fence. There was no good way to the playground that didn't involve bushwhacking and a machete. We followed some other unused railroad track, wandered by a hobo tent, and then took a long run alongside what I later learned was the Middlesex County Water Plant. There was lots of construction going on, and a giant fence.

Lola was sort of freaking out, due to the construction vehicles on our left and the occasional passing trains on our right. Though I was listening to music on my phone, I never thought to actually look at a Google map of where I was. I figured if I just kept going there would be a gap in the fence. But then the Water Company fence abutted against another fence and I admitted defeat.

We ran back to the car-- which involved more brush and trail blazing-- and drove home. We ran for another 30 minutes in Donaldson Park, the lovely park right next to my house, which I will appreciate a great deal more in the future.

Peer Pressure Makes It Hard to NOT to Shoot an Elephant

George Orwell wrote what is arguably the best narrative essay in the English language. "Shooting an Elephant" was published in 1936, and its profundity-- both politically and psychologically-- in addition to its vivid subject matter and subtle symbolism make it something special. It's certainly the best thing ever written about an elephant.

Orwell knew all along that he didn't have to shoot the titular elephant. This recently rampaging creature had just experienced the hormonal surge of musth-- the elephant version of heat-- but was now calm. The elephant needed to sow his wild oats, but he couldn't find a female elephant to sow oats with, so he trampled a coolie and wrecked some bamboo huts. It's understandable. But shooting a working elephant is a big deal. Orwell only did it to preserve some semblance of colonial rule.

Eighty years later, Jacob Shell has updated Orwell's piece. His new book Giants of the Monsoon Forest is the definitive and comprehensive guide to "living and working with elephants." The setting is still Burma, which is now known as Myanmar. Elephants still work in tandem with mahouts, mainly in the teak industry (although elephants are also employed as transportation during the flood and monsoon season, and used by paramilitary forces deep in the forests and jungles of politically ambiguous territories).

But the mahouts have learned their lesson about musth. Working elephants are allowed to roam the forest at night, in search of fodder and possible mates. They often interact with wild herds. The working elephants have loose chains on their forelegs, so they can't run away, but they have a certain measure of freedom.

This keeps them happy enough, although they sometimes engage in high jinks to avoid coming to work on time. They double back and hide-- which is absurd for such large critters-- and they stuff their neck bells with leaves to muffle the ringing.

While the dying elephant in Orwell's essay represents the ugly end of the British Empire, the loosely chained elephant in Shell's book symbolizes the difficult and ethically tangled plight of the Asian pachyderm. It's painful to even detail it. Basically, working elephants have a somewhat rough road. The capturing and training period is brutal. The work is hard. They are generally treated well, because they are valuable, but they are not free.

There are only 40,000 Asian elephants left on the planet (there are 500,000 African elephants). Many of these Asian elephants are working elephants. If working elephants were not allowed, the population would drop to precipitous levels.

Animal rights purists would prefer for all Asian elephants to be free and wild, there doesn't seem to be enough forest left to support a thriving population. Ironically, the working elephants may actually be cooperating with humans in order to survive. These are VERY smart animals.

If you don't believe me, read Carl Safina's book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.

One of the things I realized while reading this book is probably pretty obvious, but I had never thought about it. Elephants are NOT domesticated. They're not like horses and dogs. We haven't bred the wildness out of them. When an elephant cooperates with his mahout, the elephant is doing it because it wants to cooperate. They can kill their mahouts or anyone else in the vicinity anytime they like. These are creatures who mourn their dead, have distinct personalities, do medical procedures with their trunks, show empathy towards other elephants and humans, understand up to 100 human commands, and have a language of their own.

Jacob Shell's book is a tough read. It's WAY too much for a layman to learn about Asian elephants, the history of elephant domestication, elephant and human relationships, Burmese politics, the teak industry, monsoons and floods, and political unrest. It's another world, an entirely different universe. And this is just a human perspective of a place on our planet where elephants and humans interact.

Imagine what the elephants make of it.

Slow Horses and Real Tigers

Slough House is not in Slough (but-- the joke is-- it might as well be). Slough is something a of laughingstock location. It's the Scranton of England (and the setting of the original Office). In Mick Herron's fictional spy series, Slough House is where the misfits of the MI5 are warehoused.

I recently read Slow Horses and Real Tigers and enjoyed both of them. I'm not sure I got all the jokes and satire, and I certainly didn't understand the London geography, but it didn't matter. When there's a band of screw-ups, led by a jaded fat man (who might have a heart of gold, if he could stop farting) and they just might show the powers that be what's what, you know who to root for.

Warning: these books are dense. They are not fast reads. You've got to pay attention to Byzantine plots; machinations and and manipulation;, a bevy of characters-- all with secrets-- and a plethora of perspectives. There are seven books in the series, and I'm not tackling another one for a couple months, being an operative takes a lot of skill, memory, and thinking.

Another Long Journey to Genius

We've had a dog in our house since January 2012. First was our beloved black lab and Weimaraner Sirius. He was a great dog, and he died too young (of tick diseases).

Then in May of 2018, we rescued Lola. She was billed as a lab/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, but once we saw a real Rhodesian Ridgeback we realized she might be a faux-desian pitbull. She's a little nuts, but I treat her like the daughter I never had. And she's been vaccinated against Lyme's disease, so hopefully the ticks won't do her in.

Lola turned two today, and she's enjoying something Sirius never had: outdoor lighting. A few months ago, I strung some Sunthin outdoor patio lights on our back porch. Two 48 foot strands. There's even a remote control. All those years of taking the dog out back before bed, and I never did it with any kind of lighting. Sometimes I would take a flashlight. But now we do it in style.

The theme this week is that some ideas take a LONG time to implement. You've just got to hang in there until your brain does something good.

Let there be light!

My Screwdrivers Smell: A Haunting

I was doing a big clean out down in my study-- otherwise known as Greasetruck Studios-- and I decided I would take a crack at solving the mystery of the phantom reeking toolbox.

The haunted article looks like your typical yellow plastic snap-it-shut tool chest.

Aside from the fact that it's inhabited by a spirit . . . a nasty smelling vinegary spirit. It's been that way for many many years. At least a decade. So, inspired by last week's successfully delayed genius, I forged ahead with my exorcism . . . or, if I liked puns, I would call it a stenchorcism.

I emptied the tool chest on the porch table, hoping sunlight would be the best antiseptic. It was not. The smell was pervasive, pungent, and did not dissipate.

I had my son Ian confirm this.

I started smelling stuff. Wrenches and pliers and wire-cutters and box-cutters and tape measures and vises and screwdrivers. I finally located the source of the stink. It was the screwdriver handles. I had my son Ian confirm this.

I decided it must be the little rubber strips on the handles. They must have decayed. So I removed them.

It didn't do the trick. The screwdrivers still smelled. So I went on the internet. Apparently, this is a big thing. There are loads of results about screwdrivers smelling like vinegar and vomit.

And the smell is coming from inside the house. It's not the rubber strips, it's the material the handles are made of: cellulose acetate butyrate. Apparently, if screwdrivers with handles like this sit in an enclosed space, and there is the right humidity and bacteria levels, the handles decay and outgas. And it smells bad.

It's not so easy to get rid of the film of butyric acid. I washed the handles with some soapy water and sprayed them with 409, but I think the smell might linger for eternity. My older son, sensing the reek, added two items of his own which have the phantasmagoric funk of teen spirit to the tableau-- his cleats and shin guards.

Here is a table full of stuff which will never give up the ghost, and all of it will head back into the house later in the day. Yuck.

Ten Year Journey to Genius

Every year at the end of October, there is a hellish week of school that combines two things that do not belong together: parent conferences and "spirit week."

For some godforsaken contractual reason we have four days of parent conferences in a row at East Brunswick. Two of these are night sessions, which run from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM. So teachers either stay at school for 14 hours straight, or-- as I do-- run home to other events and that head back to school for a second time to chat with parents. It's exhausting.

In the midst of this awful week of conferences are the events and preparation for the Homecoming football game and dance. Every day at school is some absurd spirit day, Hippie Day, Hall Decorating Day, Hawaiian Day, Twin Day, etc.

The end of this silly and taxing week culminates with the pep rally. The pep rally is very very loud. Only people who are full of pep enjoy it. Football coaches, cheerleaders, and student council folk.. Soccer coaches are generally not full of pep.

Some teachers have drawn the unlucky duty of having to supervise the students in the bleachers of the stadium, where the amplification of pep is at it's loudest. For the last decade, I have been blessed with a quieter duty, what is known as "flagpole duty." Year after year, the same four teachers and I convene at the flagpole, and I rarely see these teachers during the school year, so "flagpole duty" has the feel of a reunion.

The flagpole is at the entrance to the stadium, far from the pep. The other "flagpole duty" teachers and I have the very important job of directing the sophomores to the left and the juniors to the right. The seniors are already seated in the stadium, as they arrived early for their senior class picture.

East Brunswick High School has over 2000 students (and we don't have any freshman in our building) so this means we need to direct 1400 kids in the right direction. We've always done this by shouting and pointing.

"Sophomores! This way!"

"Juniors! This way!"

We get the herds moving in the right direction, the juniors across the turf to the far section of the bleachers, and the sophomores on the perimeter path, to the near section.

But after ten years of this, my brain said, "Enough!" I was taking a walk around the school-- getting prepared for the pep-- and my brain gifted me with an epiphany. This flagpole session, we didn't need to yell, or even talk at all. I went back to my room and wrote the words "Sophomores" and "Juniors" on a large sheet of paper. I then put a marker in my pocket, and carried my half-completed sign out to the flagpole. Once I had confirmed which grade needed to go which way needed, I drew the arrows. And then I sat on the concrete planter, holding my sign, and everyone walked in the correct direction (except one sophomore, who asked me what a "sophomore" was . . . I told him a 10th grader, and he walked in the proper direction . . . and learned some vocabulary to boot).

Everyone is on all the Drugs

Once upon a time, there were opium wars. And reefer madness. The hippies and Timothy Leary did LSD. The disco folks snorted coke, and Marion Barry did crack. The ravers took Ecstasy. College kids wandered around high on magic mushrooms. Junkies and rock stars did heroin. You occasionally heard about some lunatic doing PCP or mescaline or horse tranquilizers like ketamine, but for the most part you could keep track of the recreational drugs people were using on ten fingers (maybe you'd need your toes for pills like Valium, Xanax and Percocet) .

Then I read Methland (and wrote this fabulous review of it) and watched Breaking Bad. Scary stuff. Next came the opioid epidemic, and the ensuing plague of heroin addiction. I read Dreamland and Dopesick. I thought I was well-informed on the state of illicit drug use and abuse in America.

I was wrong. And like to recommend a book that will explain. I think it's a must read for parents and teachers and coaches and psychonauts.

Fentanyl, Inc. How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, by Ben Westhoff, comprehensively covers the new drug scene. And there's no way to fight it. The only way to win the war is Gandhi-like pacifism, in the face of a wave of chemicals so powerful and various that no top-down institution can keep track of them.

Called NPS . . . which-- depending on your SAT verbal score-- either stands for "new psychoactive substances," or the slightly the more advanced "novel psychoactive substances."

Fentanyl analogues such as carfentanil (which is used to tranquilize elephants and rhinos) and acetylfentanyl and benzoylfentantanil.

Synthetic cathinones, such as Meow Meow (4-MMC) and Ice Cream (3-MMC) and Flakka (a- PVP).

Synthetic cannabinoids like Spice and K2 and JWH-018 and 5F-ADB.

Fentanyl precursors, which can be bought from China, so that you can manufacture various new fentanyl cocktails.

And pages of others. But you get the point.

So your heroin, which is hard to make-- you need fields of poppies-- is most definitely laced with fentanyl. Fentanyl is notoriously strong-- a pinhead's worth could kill you-- but it's easier to manufacture than heroin. This is how Lil Peep and Tom Petty and Michelle McNamara all met their maker (fentanyl combined with sedatives, which is a deadly combination). Prince and Mac Miller too.

Westhoff goes to China to investigate where all the precursors are coming from, and he finds it remarkably easy to buy them. Chinese companies will even ship in mis-marked bags, as banana chips or whatever, to disguise them.

The Opium War has flipped. Surprisingly, there's plenty of fentanyl abuse in China, as well, despite the fact that they execute drug dealers there. This is strong, addictive stuff. And nobody knows what they're taking, even the psychonauts that make the stuff.

The only "successes" in this minefield of chemical lunacy have been the harm-reduction agencies like Bunk Police and DanceSafe that go to raves and clubs and festivals and offer chemical analysis of drugs for partiers, so that they know what they're taking, and can make an informed decision. This has worked incredibly well in Europe, where laws allow these companies to operate, but they are not exactly legal in America, because of the Rave Act. In 2017, the United States-- population 326 million-- had seventy thousand drug overdose deaths. The European Union-- population 510 million-- had only 7600.

This book gave me the feeling that everyone is on drugs. The math is crazy. Many of you know the story of Kermit, West Virginia . . . a town of 400 that was prescribed 5 million opioid pills. That's awful enough. But at least they knew what they were getting. This new stuff is scarier: more potent, more random, more volatile, and often quite cheap. I hope and pray my kids figure out a way to avoid it.

This Makes Me Happy

There's an economic success story that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to acknowledge: low wage workers have doubled their wages in the last five years.

Democrats can't talk about this as progress because they are loath to admit that anything good can happen during the Trump presidency. That's silly, because the President doesn't have that much power and influence over the economy to begin with. Trump has hindered the economy with his trade wars and the general insanity and uncertainty around his policy. Markets like stability. That's enough to condemn Trump. 

Republicans can't talk about the success of low wage earners because their wage increase is mainly due to regulated minimum wage increases. This is anathema to dyed-in-wool conservatives. State and federal mandated minimum wage increases-- according to supply-side conservatives-- will destroy the labor market, make people lose jobs, ensure that there will be less jobs in total, destroy small businesses, and redistribute income until we are a socialist commune. Conservative logic dictates that the job market should not be so tight, because of this enforced wage increases. 

But it is. So the Republicans won't bask in the glory of low wage increases because it contradicts their favorite economic theory.

Instead, we get stories of wage stagnation, despite the tight job market. That's because middle class wages are stagnant, and middle class people are the people who matter. They are the voters. And the people who matter haven't seen wage increases, despite the tight job market. 

But income is getting redistributed, and poor people are less poor, and that means they can take part more in the economy. That's a good thing for a lot of people, not just low wage earners. But nobody in politics is going to admit it.

Progress.

Good for everyone except the media and the politicians.

 

Dave's Half-Day Fashion Sense Might Be Half-Baked

This morning-- as a result of telling a co-worker that she was dressed like a real-estate agent-- I was forced to defend my fashion sense. I was wearing my usual black pants and gray golf shirt (unbuttoned, to show maximum gray chest hair).

But there was an unexpected wrinkle. Or perhaps several.

I'm proud to say that my fashion tactics totally blew Cunningham's mind. First we traded insults. I disparaged her ruffled brown and burgundy fall ensemble, and she proclaimed that I wore a similar outfit every day. I told her my outfit wasn't similar, it was the same. I was wearing the same clothes I had worn yesterday.

My reasoning was that Tuesday and Wednesday were both half days (because we have conferences in the evening). So I had only worn my clothes for half the time, so I had to double up. Not only did we have half days, but we were also in block scheduling, so I only saw half of my students each day. So they wouldn't realize I was wearing the same clothes. So it was only fair to my students, my clothes, and the environment that I wear these clothes a second time. None would be the wiser (except that I told everyone).

There was another problem I didn't anticipate. One of my students has me two periods a day, in the morning and the afternoon, so she saw me both Tuesday and today, wearing the same outfit.

I still think it's a legitimate reason to wear the same outfit two days in a row. 

Who am I trying to impress?

Like Father, Like Mad Cartographer

Last night, at Frankie Feds-- a thin crust pizza joint in Freehold that you should visit-- my son Alex said something inadvertently resonant. He said it to me, and my wife did not hear (it was really loud-- there was a kid's birthday party, and the kids were young and screaming, and the parents were drunk-- as you need to be when you've got young kids-- and they were screaming over the kids. Two large tables of loud adults and one large table of shrieking children. The wait staff gladly moved us as far away from them as possible, but you could still hear them. Also, everyone had a pumpkin).

Anyway, down at our end of the table, my father was telling Alex and Ian he had an atlas for them-- someone gave it to him-- and Alex made a wisecrack about how many atlases we have around the house (though I've cleaned out my books, I just can't seem to part with the atlases) and then he thought for a moment and asked a serious question. "Could I tear pages out of the atlases and put the maps on my wall? Over the Lego Star Wars?"

Alex has an amazing Lego Star Wars mural on his wall, painted by the artistic sister of a friend way back when he was into stuff like that. But now he's a sophomore in high school.

If he's ever going to kiss a girl, it's probably time to obscure the mural.

My younger son Ian chose a slightly more classic theme in his room: a jungle tree full of stylized animals.

Ian should be fine with the ladies. The King himself had a jungle room.

I made Alex walk over to the other side of our big table and repeat the question to my wife.

"Mom, can I cover my Lego Star Wars wall with maps? We have all these atlases . . ."

My wife laughed. The apple does not fall far from the tree. When she first met me, I lived in a disgusting flophouse in East Brunswick, right on Route 18. It was old-- historic-- with lots of little rooms. A bunch of my friends had rented it for cheap, and we were primitive.  I slept in a sleeping bag on a camping pad. I shared the room with my buddy Ryan. He agreed to my cartographically themed decorating plan.

I raided the old National Geographic magazines in my basement, and I took all the maps. I covered every surface of our room with them. Walls, doors, closets, and ceiling. And for some reason that I can't recall now, I hung all the maps with toothpaste.

This worked.

Sort of-- until it didn't.

Then the maps hung in assorted ways on the walls and ceiling, corners flopping and flapping. And the room smelled like mint. It's shocking that my wife continued to date me, as a room with no mattress, a sleeping bag, and an array of maps on every surface is a stone's throw away from a serial killer's den (maybe not even a stone's throw, maybe closer than that, maybe a shot-put toss away from a serial killer's den).

So Catherine laughed at Alex's request to cover his walls in maps. She had been there before.

I told him to go for it. In my limited experience, chicks who dig maps are cool.

Feral Hogs!

Nothing gets me more excited than feral hogs. So when one of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, dedicated an entire episode to this subject, I was besides myself.

Feral hogs!

The episode was inspired by a Twitter event, as Reply All is ostensibly about the internet and all the weird stuff that happens there. I like to listen to Reply All (and read Wired) in order to get some simulacrum of internet life, without actually having to spend time there.

Willie McNabb made a feral hog based non sequitur reply to the typical gun control debate and Twitter went bananas. PJ Vogt called it an internet "snow day."

Vogt talks to McNabb and a number of other people involved in feral hog America, and he comes to the conclusion that the feral hog epidemic is one of the top ten problems in our country. The hogs are invasive, but old school invasive. The hogs brought over by Hernando Soto, and the Spanish released them into the forest, where they could fatten up and then be killed for food. A portable pork larder. But soon enough the hogs went wild. Hog wild. The rest is history. Feral hogs are incredibly fecund-- they can have litters of up to 14 every six months-- and they are incredibly destructive. They destroy crops and ponds and wildlife and forests. They are large-- normal wild porkers weigh up to 300 pounds, but there are occasionally hogs that are larger, much larger. They are also intelligent, and teach each other how to avoid traps and electric fences.

The paradoxical problem with the hogs is that while most states have loosened hunting laws so that they can be eradicated, this has worked in two directions. Some people tried to hunt the hogs out of existence, but others realized that they are really fun to kill. And so while farmers might be trying to rid their lands of hogs, other folks were just as quickly introducing hogs-- stocking their land with them so they could hunt. But feral hogs reproduce really fast, so the population is out of control. They are estimated at 6 million strong and their range is rapidly expanding.

Vogt talks to the guys that made this video, in order to promote hog eradication-- because of the millions of dollars of crop damage they are responsible for. But the video instead inspired people to hunt the hogs in more extreme and creative ways. You can shoot feral hogs from a helicopter.

Texas nearly started using a very dangerous poison-- Kaput-- to kill the hogs, but there was enough backlash to put a hold on this plan. Kaput kills hogs in an incredibly painful and disgusting manner, and then the flesh is tainted and the hog must be buried, or animals who eat the dead hog might also die.

This is a problem so weird and crazy that it's outside my liberal central Jersey mentality and morality. I'm not a hunter, I don't own a gun, I couldn't imagine shooting any large animal-- let alone dozens in a night-- and I can't imagine thousands of poisoned carcasses, toxic and bleeding from every orifice, littering the countryside. There's no obvious way to solve this problem. There probably needs to be a ban on hunting the hogs, so that people stop introducing them to new lands, but there's got to be a dispensation for farmers and such. Poison seems an awful alternative, unless a more precise agent could be developed. I just can't imagine dealing with this, which is why I don't live in Texas.

In the meantime, there's a weird part of me rooting for the hogs. They're truly American. Invasive, persistent, corpulent, destructive, environmentally obtuse, omnivorous, at home in the country and the suburbs, clever, and willing to use their right to assemble (in groups of 30 - 50).

Emergency Philosophy Lesson: Socrates, Daryl Morey, China, Hong Kong and the NBA

As a teacher, sometimes it's good to plan ahead-- make a syllabus and stick to it, give your students a schedule and some order in their busy lives . . . but there are also times when you have to react quickly and come up with an emergency assignment. An assignment that might not make perfect sense, but you put faith in your students and see if they can figure it out.

Saturday, I listened to a couple podcasts about Daryl Morey and China, while I was running: The Daily and Slate Money-- and went down the rabbit hole into this controversy.

Today, I am torturing my students with the following rambling and insane prompt. Only two of the kids had knew about the Morey tweet. Most students had no clue what is happening now in Hong Kong. Some kids had never heard of the NBA. I'm really interested in what they come up with . . .

Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.

Daryl Morey

The Prompt

From Plato's "Apology"

Socrates: For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the state and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

Using the Daryl Morey controversy,. examine these questions:

What are the consequences of being a gadfly? What are the moral implications? What conflicts might arise? What are the pros and cons of stinging the rump of the state, or any large institution?

Write two paragraphs explaining the controversy, the consequences of being a gadfly, and your ethical position towards the NBA, China, free speech, and the reaction of any or all parties concerned.

What is Daryl Morey's history as a gadfly? What is his stance now? Hong Kong as a gadfly? What does Mark Zuckerberg's behavior towards China have to do with this? What does money have to do with this? Feel free to connect any other gadflies to this issue.

Slate Money "The Economist's Hour" discusses this, mainly starting about 21 minutes in-- this podcast should give you some good ideas. 

James Harden's "Apology"  is pretty much the opposite of Plato's "The Apology." Why? 

You should have a video or audio clip to accompany your paragraph. Be smart. Figure this out.

Why Humblebrag When You Can Brag

Here are a few things great things I'd like to commemorate for time immemorial . . . or as long as the internet lasts:

1) My older son Alex scored the golden goal in overtime last week. He never scores and it was a wonderful shot-- he was a few yards outside the 18 and a cross bounced his way. He took his time, got his knee over it, and half-volleyed it into the far upper 90. 

2) Alex's friend Tyler played me a sweet cross while we were doing a finishing drill at JV practice the other day I scored on a full volley. A cross so good even an old man could volley it in. An even better goal than my son's goal.

3) My younger son Ian finished Ruth Ware's slow burning Henry James modernization, The Turn of the Key. It's an adult-level book, both with pacing and structure. He loved it. It's fun and scary, but often subtle and tricky. He also seems to be doing his reading for school, Catcher in the Rye and The Sun is Also a Star. Being in a sling with a fractured elbow may be helping his literacy.

4) Alex finished Old Man's War, an awesome sci-fi book that I read this summer. If you confiscate their phones enough, kids can be literate.

5) My wife always brings it in the food department during soccer season. I know a cooking-strike is nigh, but as it stands right now, everyone in my department is jealous of my fabulous lunches and the boys and I are always treated to an excellent dinner when we get home from practice. 

Dave is Empathetic About His Wife's Shortcomings (and she should reciprocate)

My wife moves fast and gets things done. A downside of this is that she sometimes misplaces her stuff.  The very first blog post I wrote on Sentence of Dave addressed this:

I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car.

I'm proud to say that I'm always supportive and understanding if she loses something. She has her fingers in a lot of pies. No time for serene transitions. She doesn't always have time to fully think through where she's putting her stuff down.

We were already having a wild week-- my car was in the shop getting a new crankshaft position sensor (a big job) and so we were down to one car: our Honda CRV. At some point on Wednesday-- a day we had off for Yom Kippur-- my wife lost her keys. She realized this Wednesday afternoon, but in a casual sort of way. She didn't think anything of it until Thursday morning.

Since my car was at the shop, I drove her car to work. My school is farther away. Her school is only two miles from our house, so she planned on biking there. I leave much earlier than her for work, and once I arrived, I started receiving frantic texts.

Apparently, she had really lost her keys-- the whole set. The house keys, the keys to both cars, the keys to her classroom . . . everything. She had looked everywhere. In the dark. In her pajamas. In the garden. In the garden compost. In our garbage. Yuck.

She assumed someone stole them.

This is what she surmised: she had left the keys on the ping-pong table in our driveway. She had been running around, from Zumba to yard work to acupuncture and then back to yard work. Unlike a normal person-- myself, for instance--she didn't take any breaks between these activities. No snack or cup of coffee or moment to put her feet up and read a magazine. Just one thing to the next. And she was sure that someone had filched the keys right off the ping-pong table and this light-fingered scuzzbag was planning on breaking into our house AND stealing both our cars. There had been a few robberies around town recently, so her thoughts weren't completely unfounded.

When she got home from acupuncture, she put her purse on the hook just inside the door, and then went outside for a moment to pick up the weeds and piles of brush from her garden. She had the keys in her hand, but then put them down so she could put on a pair of gardening gloves.

She also complained that lack of sleep from ear pain may have contributed to her miscue.

I tried to make her feel better about the whole thing. We all make mistakes.

But things went from bad to worse.

It was hard for me to imagine. I was at work, teaching class. I had a working car in the parking lot. I had keys, all kinds of keys. But I could feel it, like a splinter in my mind. My wife was in some weird circle of Hell.

What a morning is right.My wife does too many things! She has too many responsibilities! The horror! The least I could do was figure out a way to make her afternoon easier. I put some deep thought into it and came up with a plan.

A heroic plan.

My wife was appreciative about my solution. She told me that she loved me, and I felt good about supporting her in her time of need. She doesn't screw up very often, and when she does she always feels awful about it (unlike me, I've become inured to it).

So I left school early, drove home and unpacked the soccer gear from the car-- as I would have to lug it down to the field on foot-- then went into the crawl space and got the bike rack. On my way out, I smashed my shoulder on the low ceiling. It hurt, but sometimes heroes have to suffer some pain. I strapped the rack on the car and put my bike on the back of the CRV.

Before going to my wife's school, I dropped off the dry-cleaning. I was running some serious errands. Taking care fo business. Getting it done.

I drove the CRV to her school, parked it in the staff lot, dropped the keys off in the office, took my bike off the rack, and rode home. Now she had the car, which would make it so much easier for her to get to the allergist after gardening club. Mission accomplished!

I got home and dragged the soccer equipment down the hill and ran practice.

What a day.

When I got home from practice, I did a thorough search around the house. If I found the keys, this I would increase my hero status exponentially. It got dark. I took out a flashlight and looked all around the front yard. I hoped to see the glint of metal.

No luck.

Over dinner, we discussed changing our locks and purchasing a couple of Club brand steering wheel anti-theft devices. And the cost of fixing the mini-van.

Yuck.

Then Catherine had to run yet another errand-- she had to pick up Ian's allergy prescription at Rite Aid. On the way, she had a thought. In her brain. A thought about me, her loving heroic husband.

She remembered that I like gum.

And that on Wednesday, right before I went running with the dog, I asked if there was any gum in her car. And she said, "Yes. There is gum in my car." And I grabbed her keys, to get the gum. And I had the dog.

And I never came back inside.

She checked the CRV's center console storage compartment-- the place where she stores her gum-- and she found her keys.

I had hidden them. Subconsciously.

It was all my fault (aside from the bike chain, which was such an easy fix-- I can understand that she was in her work clothes and didn't want to get greasy, but still).

I was the cause of all the stress. My wife didn't have her finger in too many pies. My wife was fine. I had fucked up. I had lost the keys. I had caused her all the stress. It was all on me.

My only saving grace was the fact that I had been so kind and compassionate when she had lost the keys (even though she had never lost the keys). When we thought she lost the keys. I had been calm and levelheaded and empathetic. We all make mistakes.

All I could ask is that she reciprocate.

P.S. I remembered about the water bottles this morning, and kept Lola from licking them! A heroic act of remembering, if there ever was one.

Shakespeare vs. Rudy Giulani

The New York Times podcast The Daily recently aired an episode about Rudy Giulani's involvement with the Trump administration. 

At the start of the episode, there was a clip from a speech Giulani made just after 9/11:

RUDY GIULIANI (R), THEN-MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We do not want these cowardly terrorists to have us in any way alter our American way of life. This may go on for some time. We have to end terrorism. I believe the United States government is committed to that. And it's going to require us here in America to go about our way of life and not have them imperil it.

Giulani calls the terrorists "cowardly." He's not the only person to do so. I don't think this is an apt description of a group of of people that hijacked four commercial jet airliners with utility knives and then steered the planes-- kamikaze style-- toward symbolic American targets. While I understand the need to denigrate and insult the terrorists, the last thing they were was "cowardly." It shows a lack of understanding of the enemy.

These people were sanguinary and vengeful and zealous and fanatical and lacking perspective and empathy for other cultures. But mainly, they were true believers, blinded by a certain political position. They were haters, haters of American policy, American military deployment in their Holy Land, haters of American capitalist morality, and American unilateral success on the world stage.

But to call them cowards is to sell them short. It doesn't reflect just how fervently they believed in what they believed. They believed enough to kill and die. In doesn't reflect how dangerous it is to believe in something so strongly that you can't look at other points of view.

Whether it's Islamic terrorists, or our own homegrown right-wing variety of fanatic, you need to accurately assess the motivations of these people. And these people aren't cowards. They are willing to commit violent acts, and often willing to die for their beliefs.

Shakespeare understood this, and Giulani would be well served by re-reading the Bard's most famous soliloquy, the one in Hamlet that begins "to be or not to be."

The context of the speech is that Hamlet is royally fucked up, and he's been royally screwed over. He's been through enough betrayal and heartache that he contemplates suicide. He acknowledges-- correctly-- that his life is a shitshow and that he should probably "take arms against a sea of troubles" and end it. It's "a consummation devoutly to be wish'd."

He doesn't kill himself. In fact, the play goes on another two hours. Hamlet might be a coward-- that's another post-- but more significantly, he recognizes why most people don't commit suicide-- and why he's not going to commit suicide. People don't behave that rashly because of "the dread of something after death."

The unknown.

He doesn't want to rush headlong into the undiscovered country" that "puzzles the will." He's not sure what will happen in the afterlife, "what dreams may come" once his life is over. And he's not going to risk it.

Obviously, he has not heard about the 72 virgins.

Hamlet is religious, but still rationally skeptical. The 9/11 terrorists-- and guys like Patrick Crusius-- do not have this fear. It's scary, how strongly they believe in their convictions. There's no shadow of a doubt in their minds.

Most normal folks-- and even folks like Hamlet, folks that are struggling but still rational-- let their "conscience" turn them cowardly. We lack fervor and unshaking faith, and so our "resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." This cowardice is a blessing in disguise because "enterprises of great pitch and moment . . . lose the name of action."

A lot of these enterprises are downright crazy, and could use reflection and reconsideration. Hamlet takes this to the extreme, and we love him for it.

There are plenty of applicable insults to aim at terrorists. They are rabid and crazed and virulent. But they certainly stand by the courage of their convictions, and that is the problem. They are the anti-Hamlet. They actually complete these suicidal actions, and this -- according to Shakespeare-- is the reverse of cowardly. All us cowards go on living our day to day lives, suffering "slings and arrows," not sure what is to come. That's civilized behavior

Though being devoted is often considered a positive trait, I believe we all need to be a little less loyal, a little less faithful, and a little less principled. It leads down a dangerous road. Instead, let's try to be a little more capricious, a little more detached. Let's be skeptical and occasionally disinterested. Maybe even a little more cowardly. If the terrorists adopted a few of these negative characteristics, the world would be a better place.

Mini-Thursday is Monday in Disguise

We have off this Wednesday for Yom Kippur, and since I'm not Jewish, I don't have to worry about fasting and atonement. It's just a day off. Because of this mid-week break, I declared to my wife this morning that it was "mini-Thursday." 

A cause for celebration.

I explained that tomorrow (Tuesday) is mini-Friday, and that our day off (Wednesday) is a mini-weekend, and then it's normal Thursday, normal Friday, and the regular two-day weekend. An excellent week (or two weeks mini-weeks).

My wife did not buy this. She told me that it was Monday and there was no getting around it. I ignored her, and it cost me.

I got it into my car to go to school, and all the check engine lights came on. One said "TRAC OFF," another cryptically informed me "VSC" and the regular engine block light came on. Then the temperature gauge starting floating from past the H to below the C. Back and forth, back and forth. 

This is not the kind of stuff that should happen on mini-Thursday.

I got to school and found out we had a faculty meeting. I had no idea. And I had to coach a game after school. There are never meetings after school on Thursday, but apparently mini-Thursday is fair game. I talked to my boss and we agreed that I would stay for a little bit and then race home to coach soccer. 

I ran over to the library on my free period, to pick up a couple of reserved books, but the library was closed. On Mondays it doesn't open until 10 AM. Most mornings it opens at 9 AM. But at least my car was driving fine, despite all the cautionary lights. I called my mechanic and made an appointment for Wednesday (the mini-weekend). 

Before the faculty meeting, I ran to the library a second time. Then I watched an especially boring presentation about proctoring the PSAT (which I could ignore-- my son is taking it, so I am not allowed to proctor-- so sweet). Then I raced out of the meeting so I could get home to Highland Park to coach.

On Route 18, my van starting making a weird sound. It stalled out on the stretch of highway through New Brunswick, but I managed to get it going again. Then it stalled again on the hill up to Highland Park. I got it started but it was ugly. It stalled for a final time in the road in front of my house. I was trying to pull into my neighbor's driveway to turn it around, so the van was perpendicular to the road. I had to coach in twenty minutes. Some guy walking by helped me push a bit, but we needed more people. Something about the car smelled really bad. Something was burned out. My van was dying. On mini-Thursday! My son Ian showed up. He's wearing a sling (fractured elbow) so we put him in the driver's seat. We pushed more, to no avail. There was no power steering. Ian couldn't turn the wheel (with his one good arm). Then my son Alex showed up. This was manpower (kidpower?) to get the job done. We pushed the van into a parking spot on the street (facing the wrong way) and then unloaded the car of all the soccer equipment: balls, corner flags, pinnies, cones, my giant coaching bag, etc. We carried all the equipment down to the park for the game. It's lucky I live walking distance to the field. Most coaches would have been totally screwed.

My wife managed to get the car started and drive it to F&F Auto (highly recommended). She said it was about to stall the whole drive, but she caught all the lights. My team played poorly, and my son-- who was the hero of the game on Friday and scored the winning goal in overtime-- didn't get goal-side on a couple of key plays. Yuck. Friday he was a hero, but this was Monday kind of stuff.

I'm drinking a couple of beers now and pretending it's truly a (mini) Thursday night, but it's hard to get into the Thursday night groove. Too much Monday stuff happened. Hopefully tomorrow-- mini-Friday-- will have better karma.

Despite Trump, Things Are Getting Better

The new episode of "Making Sense," a conversation between Sam Harris and Andrew McAfee, is generally positive and inspirational (despite how boring Harris can be . . . you've got to get past his introductory bombast). 

McAfee discusses what he calls "the great uncoupling," which the modern phenomenon of progress with less resource consumption. Bits not bolts. Once upon a time, progress came with incredible costs. The industrial revolution wreaked havoc upon the environment, cities, families, and society. But, according to McAfee, now things are different.

The discussion runs the gamut: technology, UBI, the future of developing world, global warming, nuclear power, and the pros and cons of capitalism. And while capitalism has been getting a bad rap of late, it does seem to be the best way to raise all ships-- as long as there is a responsive government to deal with externalities. And one of the biggest externalities to capitalism and market economies is pollution. Your pig farm may be doing incredible business but if your pig shit rolls down the hill into my backyard, I need to be compensated for my loss. 

Air pollution is one of those externalities, and McAfee explains that there is a legitimate question about such an externality.

Has the Clean Air Act of 1970 gone too far? Are the costs more than the benefits? Are the regulations hurting business and the economy more than they are helping people avoid asthma, lung cancer, and other respiratory diseases?

And he explains that we have definitely answered that question. The answer is:

NO

Especially in New Jersey. But God only knows why, our current pussygrabber-in-chief loves air pollution. He loves it more than big business love it. He loves increased auto emissions as much as he hates California. It's weird, because everyone has to breathe the air, red or blue, rich or poor, immigrant or lily-white Trumpist. I get it when he bends the tax laws to punish the blue states. We're not his people. But the air is for everyone. What the fuck?

While you can't do much about the lunatic in the white house, you can help the problem. Burning wood fires is a major contributor to air pollution as well. I'm sure Trump supporters will react to this with disdain, but it's another externality. If my neighbor lights his fireplace, my kids suffer. So cut it out. Hang some LED lights on your deck like I did, and enjoy clean low wattage smoke-free lighting. And support nuclear power, because despite the excellent entertainment value of HBO's Chernobyl, the next generation of nuclear is the next step in the great uncoupling. 

Last Licks (A Life Lesson)

I walk our dog every morning at 6 AM. It's pitch black. I take her down to the park because the lights by the tennis court are always on, so I can let her loose and usually see where she defecates. Lola loves to chase deer, so when we find a few in the soccer field adjacent to the courts, so I let her loose. It's a little scary when she vanishes into the darkness, but once she runs off the deer, she always returns.

This morning, the deer were on our neighbor's lawn. They ambled away when they saw Lola, but not very quickly. Could they sense she was on the leash? They trotted into the park and we followed them. I shined my flashlight down the hill and into the darkness, looking to see if the deer were there. They were gone.

We went down to the spot, and I let Lola roam a bit. Then, as we were walking home, a group of three runners passed us. Young Asian guys. I had seen them before, but I still forgot what I should have remembered.

We reached the point where the running path met the sidewalk and it happened. Again.. These runners leave their water bottles on the edge of the sidewalk. And it's dark. And they are unattended. So morning after morning, we stumble upon the water bottles, and-- almost every time-- Lola licks them before I can steer her away.

At first I felt bad about this. I wondered if the runners could taste dogbreath and saliva when they hydrated. But now I've decided that it's on them. You shouldn't leave a water bottle unattended in the park! If you do, dog saliva could be the least of your concerns.

I might have to stop these kids and explain this, but I'm sure I'll come off super-creepy. "Hey dudes? If you leave these water bottles here, my dog might lick them, or you might get roofied and abducted by a guy in a van. And no one will ever know, because it's so dark down here."

I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Spotswood Redux

As far as coaching goes, I have a pretty sweet deal. I now coach my hometown JV team. The field is two hundred yards from my house (sometimes I forget the corner flags on the field and run down there the next morning to grab them). My children are both in high school now, one is a freshman and the other is a sophomore, and I am coaching the two of them (and many of their friends). I am lucky as a coach and as a dad. I know this probably won't ever happen again.Many years ago, I coached girls soccer at Spotswood High School with my friend and fellow English teacher Kevin. We would teach our classes at East Brunswick, then race over to Spotswood to coach. Now that I coach for my hometown, Highland Park, we occasionally play Spotswood. It's always nostalgic to head back there, as that's where I spent my formative coaching years. You never forget that stuff-- especially coaching high school girls. They are nuts (and far more civilized than boys).

Last Wednesday, we had an away game against Spotswood. It's always a good test for Highland Park, because Spotswood is out of our division and twice our size. So I was excited for the game. I also wondered if I would remember anyone-- even though I hadn't coached there for fifteen years. 

While I didn't recognize any coaches or administrators, the fields were the same. Both the varsity and the JV took early leads, so it looked to be a nice afternoon. Then my younger son Ian-- who's barely 100 pounds and has been getting killed this year-- got tripped from behind and went flying. The ground was rock hard (lack of rain). I knew as soon as he hit that he didn't land well. His right arm crumpled as it hit the dirt. I assumed it was a bad break.

I jogged out to him-- the injured player jog is the worst jog in sports-- and found Ian was in a lot of pain. He also thought his arm was broken. The trainer checked it this way and that and thought it might be fractured. Then another trainer drove over in a golf cart, and also gave Ian a second inspection. In the middle of it-- I was kneeling on the ground and he was bending my son's wrist-- he looked at me and said, "Is your name Dave?" 

I nodded.

"Didn't you used to coach here?"

Someone remembered me!

My mom was at the game, so she received the chore of taking him to the urgent care for x-rays (Catherine was at Back to School Night). They couldn't tell if his elbow was fractured and recommended an orthopedist. Ian went yesterday, and he's got a small fracture in his elbow. He's in a sling for two weeks.

After they carted him off the field, it was hard to coach the rest of the game (we did pull off a nice victory) but in retrospect, it was good to be there, in the thick of it. There's only a few more years of this, and I enjoy seeing all of it close-up and personal. I'm hoping he makes it back for the tail end of the season, but even if he doesn't, it was still great to coach some games where my kids were passing the ball to each other.

The Last of the Tomatillos: A Narrative of 2019

This had better be the end of summer (not that threatening the Weather Gods has ever been successful or mentally healthy). I really tried to make the most of the hot weather over this  long weekend, but I'm done with it. I strung some lights on our porch, in anticipation of cool fall nights. I used up the final harvest from my wife's garden: I made green salsa and slow cooked pork and tomatillo tacos. Here's the recipe, it's an easy one (if you have a shitload of fresh tomatillos).

I took my son out to Sandy Hook today, to do some surfing. The waves weren't great, but the water was warm. The dog had a great time. We made it home for soccer practice and the turf was scorching hot. Tomorrow we have a game, and it's supposed to be 90 degrees. Thursday, the meteorologists say that fall is coming. I am ready for it. Enough fresh vegetables and hot weather, I'm primed for the mosquitoes and the ticks and the leaves to die. I'm fortified for cold barren dark days. I want the horde of cave crickets in the bike shed to freeze. I'd like some frost on the pumpkin, and some ice on the Raritan. One more day . . . that's all I can tolerate. One more day. You hear that, Weather Gods? One more day . . .

Unemployed! In Greenland!

The other day, a couple of guidance counselors came down to my classroom and explained the ins and outs of applying to college. Once they were through with their very thorough presentation, I said to my students:

"You could go to college . . . or you could read this book. It explains EVERYTHING about the world. And it's a lot cheaper."

I held up Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World.

The book is rather deterministic in its thesis: you can't escape the rivers, mountains, flatlands, harbors, oceans, and jungles in your country. And they will determine how you interact with your neighbors and how you will interact within your own country. You may have great natural resources, but no rivers and easily built roadways with which to interconnect your cities and towns-- which is much of South America. You may be at the mercy of the flatlands to your east, which is why Russia is always mucking about in the Ukraine. You might be-- like South Korea-- constantly worried not only about the threat of war, but also about a massive flood of refugees. In Africa, rivers don't go very far before they plummet downward in waterfalls. In the Middle East, borders were drawn up after World War I and don't correspond with geography (not to mention the Sykes-Picot agreement).

In America, our rivers are navigable and they lead to safe harbors. We also don't have ot worry about out neighbors (unless you're Donald Trump). Canada doesn't have enough people and there is too much desert between us and Mexico for that border to be a military threat.

And as the ice melts, there will eventually be employment in Greenland.

While Marshall's unabashed realpolitik might annoy some advocates of free will, I didn't mind it.

The best thing about the book is it contains lots of maps. I love looking at maps, and I don't have a very good visual memory. I can look at a map, and then two paragraphs later, I'll have to turn back a page and look at it again. Where is Sweden? Oh there it is. Got it. Wait? Where is it?

Big Jay Oakerson Works the Crowd

Going to The Stress Factory in New Brunswick is always fascinating, especially when there are several opening acts. We went this Friday with some folks (most of whom were present for this incident) and we were treated to the entire continuum of comedy. 

If we're talking basketball, then the host-- who did five minutes-- was akin to a pick-up game at the park. Nice hustle, trying hard, but some awkward pauses and all that. Then Zach Martina came on, and it was like a good high school game. Loud, some good moves, a little inconsistent, a few puns, and fairly lowbrow.

Next was Sal Vulcano, from Impractical Jokers. Class act. Like a great college game. Not as long as a pro-set, but accomplished, comfortable, and A list material. He was really funny and consistently entertaining. I recommend him.

The headliner was Big Jay Oakerson, and he was something else. A total pro, he made it seem as if he had no bits at all. He just went to work with the crowd. Several moments into his set-- while discussing relationships with a couple in the front row-- he mistook a woman for a man. You could actually see the gears spinning when he realized he got it wrong, and then he adjusted his material for this ambiguous-looking lesbian couple and got back into it.

Oakerson is the white version of the late, great Patrice O'Neil. He weighs about the same as O'Neil did, and prefers sitting to standing. His refusal to do bits-- aside from his last meta-bit, which is too filthy to recount here-- was so fascinating that my friend Stacey and her brother went back Saturday to see if the show would be completely different. They report that it was (besides the closing bit, which-- unfortunately-- is too filthy to recount here). You'll just have to go and see Big Jay for yourself, and what you'll see won't be anything like what I saw.

Two Great Things About Our Basement Shower

When you utilize our basement shower, not only do you get to avoid the queue for the upstairs shower-- and we only have one shower upstairs and it's soccer season, so that shower gets busy-- but you also get to do battle with spiders while you wash yourself.

As a bonus, there's excellent water pressure, so after you squash the spiders, it's easy to sluice their crushed corpses down the drain.

The Turn of the Page

Ruth Ware's new thriller The Turn of the Key certainly evokes the mood and themes of the classic Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw, but the nice thing about  The Turn of the Key  is that it's easy to read. The Turn of the Screw is as dense as a bowl of porridge, and I'm still not sure I understand what went down. Ware's novel is much more rewarding, and definitely a great book to curl up with in a dark room. There's all the good stuff from the original: ghostly presences, malevolent children, neglectful parents, a Scottish country house, looming sexuality, and a clever governess trying to figure it all out. And there's the added bonus of modern surveillance and a poison garden. It's genuinely creepy.

On a barely related note, I remember back in college hearing Gun N' Roses "November Rain" on the radio and informing my friend Whitney that it was based on a short story by Henry James. He corrected me and told me it was based on a story by Del James.

"Del James? Who the fuck is that?"

We speculated that it might have been a guy Axl Rose met in a bar, or perhaps his plumber. A quick search does bring up his name in conjunction with the song. There's not much else to go on. Del James-- while not as prolific as Henry James-- does have one book to his credit on Amazon: "The Language of Fear." The blurb is perfect . . .

"Del James unleashes an extraordinary collection of snapshots from hell—our hell."

You can see why Axl Rose decided to read something written by this James instead of the other, more difficult one.

Spite is Expensive

Last Thursday, I went to the pub after Back to School Night. It was a long day, and I was a bit wound up (although that is no excuse for my behavior).

We shot some darts and then Paul put five dollars into the digital jukebox. I looked over his shoulder at his selection and noticed he was about to play something awful-- The Doobie Brothers or The Eagles or such-- and so I boxed him out, usurped his credits, and told him that I would be handling the music for the evening.

Because everyone loves Dave's eclectically hip taste, right?

I played "Since You're Gone" by The Cars-- not because Ric Ocasek died . . . I hadn't heard the news-- but simply because they were advertised prominently. I played some Ween and some Pavement, some New Order and a funk instrumental by The Meters. I tried to find some Wu Tang, but the jukebox didn't have it, so I settled on A Tribe Called Quest.

The jukebox played my first selection: "Since You're Gone." Then, oddly, it played an old awful Irish country song entitled "Whiskey in a Jar." And then "Eminence Front,"  a song I like but had not selected. A song Connell had played last week.

Weird. 

And then some other songs that I don't recall, but songs I had definitely not selected. And I saw Paul, out of the corner of my eye, his fist raised in glory. Rejoicing. And I knew what had happened.

Musical vengeance.

My so-called friends, fed up with my condescension and musical elitism, had exacted their revenge. While I was pondering over my eclectically hip selections, they had fired up the jukebox app on their phones, paid for a bunch of credits-- enough credits to push my songs to the end of the line-- and played a bunch of shitty songs. Songs designed to piss me off. 

It cost Connell eight dollars to play "Eminence Front" and a few others. He said it was well worth it.

It cost Paul more than that (not that he cared).

Tom realized what was going on and asked Paul how much he had spent on the original credits.

Paul said, "Five bucks."

"And how much did it cost to disrupt those songs?"

"Eight bucks."

"Huh," Tom said, "Spite is expensive." 

But-- according to my so-called friends-- spite is well worth the money. I've certainly learned my lesson. I've got to tone down the musical snobbery, and just sort of lurk about and insert songs I here and there. I can't bully someone out of the way and steal all their selections. That's uncivilized ( even though in the end, Paul conceded that I did play some good music).

High Heels and a Morning Surprise

There's no question that when you're hard at work, it's always exciting to a get an unexpected text from your lovely wife, especially when it mentions high heels and a dress . . . but there wasn't much innuendo in this strand (also, note the lack of punctuation and spelling error-- she was obviously freaked out). I read between the lines and understood that I was going to be the one to remove the eviscerated dead rabbit from the low-ceilinged shed under the porch, which I might add, is populated with billions upon billions of those creepy long-legged cave crickets.

And for those of you that care, the dead rabbit is now in a plastic bag in our trash. I shoveled it out. I'm not sure what got to it, maybe a fox or a raccoon-- or perhaps it was our dog, Lola, as there was a tennis ball placed on top of the corpse--but needless to say, it wasn't pretty (unlike my wife in her dress).

Monday, Garfield Style

I normally don't mind Mondays-- my existential woes usually come to a head on Tuesdays-- but this morning I felt Garfield's curse bearing down on me. I walked down to the park with the dog at 5:45 AM, wearing my Oofos plantar fasciitis clogs because I strained my calf playing soccer on Sunday (probably due to the excessive heat, and some dehydration from drinking too much tequila Saturday night).

Lola was off-leash, as she always is at that time of the morning, but a couple of joggers and another person walking a large white dog came down the hill-- at 5:45 AM! On a Monday! The audacity.

So I had to put Lola back on the leash, and I didn't get a chance to pick up her poop, and while I was searching for her poop in the darkness, I stepped in it. Firmly. With my absolutely vital plantar fasciitis clogs. So now they're sitting out in the sun on the back porch, and I'll have to clean them when I get home.

While I was walking back up the hill, scuffling in the grass trying to remove the dog poop, I saw Garfield, in my mind's eye, laughing at me-- because I thought I was above his "Monday blues" humor. But he got his, and so did Monday.

All Downhill From Here?

Congratulations are in order because I've survived the longest week of the school year: a full five days of coaching and teaching (right in the thick of allergy season) plus an extra miniature workday on Thursday night . . . something in the biz that we refer to as B2SN.

And-- heroically-- after Back to School Night, I made it to Pub Night, where my so-called friends enacted a musical vengeance on me that I will detail in a future post.

Despite the unseasonable heat, school (and Back to School Night) went smoothly, but I can't say the same for coaching JV soccer.

Wednesday, one of my players got a red card for saying something profane to an opposing player, in earshot of the refs and the parents. He did not realize the repercussions of a red card: that I could not sub someone in for him and that we had to play with ten men. Now he knows.

Luckily, we held our lead, and-- even more fortunate-- the refs gave my player a stern talking to after the game and then said they weren't going to report the red card (which would have resulted in a two-game suspension). We need this kid on defense, even if he is a little green at soccer. He's big and fast and wins balls in the air.

This particular player was absent from practice on Thursday, which didn't make me happy, after the incident on Wednesday. As I was loading the equipment into my van, I happened to see his mom jogging in the park. I asked her where her son was-- why he wasn't at practice.

She said, "He wasn't with you?"

"Nope."

"Then I'm sure he was doing something he's not supposed to be doing."

On the bus Friday, I asked this player why he missed practice Thursday. He paused for a moment, and then said, "I . . . I had to help my mom out with a family thing."

"No you didn't," I said and told him when and where I had run into his mom. The perks of coaching in a small town.

So our center back started the game on the bench. I didn't want to punish the team all that much, so I planned on putting him in later in the first half. That's not how it went down.

We were playing on a narrow, bumpy, grass pitch in Middlesex against a scrappy, mainly Hispanic team who knew just how to play the bounces. And there was one ref. Nice guy, but he wasn't moving and he wasn't calling anything. It was schoolyard soccer.

The ball went out of bounds on the far sideline-- well out of bounds near the fence-- and our player stooped to pick it up and throw it in. But the ref wasn't paying attention, he never blew the whistle, and the opposing player dribbled the ball around our stooping player and then crossed it into the box. One of their players tried to knock it into the goal, but the ball bounced crazily, and one of my players grabbed it out of the air, tucked it under his arm, and starting walking toward the ref-- all the while yelling that the ball was clearly out of bounds and it was a Highland Park throw and some other things not fit to print.

This player was my older son Alex.

The ref, correctly, called a PK for a deliberate handball and pulled out his red card. We talked him down to a yellow-- I think he realized he had botched the play as well-- but I told him he was totally in the right to call the PK and card our player. You've got to play the whistle.

The ref also found it amusing when I told him the player in question was my son.

I gave my son (and the other players on the bench) some sage words of advice: when you realize there are no rules, you have to play the game that way. This Friday afternoon, on the pitch, there were no hard and fast rules, and so we had to adjust accordingly. I may have also called my son an idiot.

Our keeper made a great save on the PK, but the other team knocked in the rebound. We ended up losing 3 to 2, all junky goals, but I am proud to say that we adjusted to the mayhem and certainly made the game interesting. The varsity team-- who have been playing magically-- lost as well. Same kind of game. This was their first loss of the season.

Our striker Ben got hit in the eye with the ball, and when my wife went to get him an icepack from our car, she locked her keys inside. And I don't carry the key to her car, because I like to keep things simple. Streamlined. So much for that. Catherine got to ride home on the bus with the coaches and all the sweaty sad players.

Once we arrived home, after the whole nine yards, I told my wife that the rest of the school year would be "all downhill from here" and I meant it in a positive way. She disagreed, but for stylistic reasons. She didn't think I could use "downhill" with a positive connotation in that context. She heard "downhill" and thought the rest of the year was going to get worse and worse. Spiral out of control and decay. But I countered, you don't want to fight an uphill battle the rest of the year. You want to coast. Downhill, preferably.

We've had this linguistic debate before and I'm sure we'll never get to the bottom of it, but I did write a song.

To celebrate the long week, we went to the beach on Saturday. It was crazy hot and the water was warm. The kids surfed, I swam, we all played spike-ball, and the dog drove my wife crazy. We weren't even supposed to have her on the beach, you're not supposed to have dogs on the beach until October-- but I figured: who goes to the beach in September?

Apparently, everyone.

The shore was packed. No parking, festivals everywhere, and the sand was jammed with bodies. Like August. Weird. But kind of fun (aside from the fact that the changing rooms were locked and we had to keep Lola on her leash).

We finally took some heat for having the dog on the beach, but it was just as we were packing up to leave and the cop was really nice about it. I told him we tried to get to the dog beach in Asbury, but the Dave Matthews Band totally screwed us. Then, we ate lunch at 10th Avenue Burrito Co, which is always dog friendly.

It should be smooth sailing from here on out.

Back to School Night Blues

It's impossible to be in a good mood when you know that 12 hours after you show up to school, you're going to do it all again: run through the entire day in miniature, for the parents (although it is fun to see adults stuff themselves into school desks) .

Traffic Cone = Cinema

Heraclitus warned us that "the only constant is change." For many years, the American school system eluded this inevitability, but not this year. EVERYTHING has changed. No textbooks. A new tablet device. We're wireless. And Bluetooth. We've adopted a new learning management system. Canvas instead of Google classroom. OneDrive instead of Google drive. OneNote instead of something else. And there's the looming threat that the winds of change will soon to remove our desktop computers.

Also, I still have stuff on Evernote.

Yesterday, I couldn't even figure out how to play a DVD. Every year, in Honors Philosophy, we read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and then we watch the first thirty minutes of The Matrix. Because it's the best visual representation of Plato's allegory.

But yesterday, I couldn't get the DVD to play. Apparently, Windows has removed this function from its Media Player. People stream now. Have you heard of Netflix? Amazon?

Coincidentally, both of these are blocked at our school. Even if you've purchased the movie on Amazon. So I freaked out a bit (in front of the children) and then I downloaded a bunch of weird free DVD players (and probably infected my desktop with some weird viruses . . . now whenever I use the search bar, it sends me through Yahoo! instead of Google).

Then the tech guy came and showed me that there WAS a player on my computer. The VLN player. The symbol is a traffic cone. It didn't open automatically when I put a disk in, so I didn't know it was there. And when the tech guy scrolled down through my apps and showed me the traffic cone, I wondered: why is orange traffic cone synonymous with playing a DVD? But then he started telling me about all the changes in my future-- they were taking my desktop, my DVD player, my big monitor, and my hardwired internet . . . and so I shouldn't even get used to the VLN player.

"They're not making your job any easier," he said, "and they're not making my job any easier either."

And why is the VLN Player logo a traffic cone? There's an enigmatic explanation on Wikipedia, but it adds more to the mystery than it resolves it: "The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association."

If anyone can make sense of that, please leave the explanation in the comments.

Do You Respect Wood? I Respect Wood

Do you respect wood?

I respect wood, but-- luckily-- so does my wife, so I won't have to divorce her.  In fact, it's my wife who suggested that I run to TJ Maxx with some of our hard-earned garage sale money and buy a a shelving unit made of genuine Acacia wood so that I have a spot for my amplifier and loop pedal.

The piece of furniture is awesome, shelves on hinges, cool looking hardwood, but when Ian and I got it home, we noticed that there was a crack in one of the bottom pieces. So I took my respect for wood and put it to use. I got some wood glue and a clamp, and went to work. Hopefully, it will set.