2020: A Good Year For Reading Books

I read 54 books in 2020-- the most since I've been keeping this list-- and one of those books was The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling, a monstrous time that should count as two books-- and while there are a number of good reads on the list, if I had to pick three favorites, they would be:

Best Literary Fiction:  Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Best Non-fiction: Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

Best Sci-fi: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

and the best detective series would be the first three Easy Rawlins books by Walter Mosley

here's the complete list, happy reading . . .

1) The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston

2) The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch

3) Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré

4) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

5) This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

6) Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

7) Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino

8) A Red Death by Walter Mosley

9) White Butterfly by Walter Mosley

10) Death Without Company by Craig Johnson

11) Best Movie Year Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Rafferty

12) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

13) Dead Men's Trousers by Irvine Welsh

14) The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding

15) The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

16) A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey

17) The Secret History by Donna Tartt

18) Phil Gordon's Little Green Book by Phil Gordon 

19) Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo

20) Harrington on Hold'em Vol I by Dan Harrington

21) The Bat by Jo Nesbø

22) Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, Matt Flynn

23) Hold'em Poker by David Sklansky

24) Harrington on Hold'em Vol II by Dan Harrington

25) To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey

26) Waiting for Straighters by Tommy Angelo

27) American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard

28) Townie by Andre Dubus III

29) Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen

30) The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

31) Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

32) Do Not Resuscitate by Nicholas Ponticello 

33) The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez

34) The Cipher by Kathe Koja

35) Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosely

36) Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

37) "H" is For Homicide by Sue Grafton

38) The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

39) Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Tournaments by Jonathan Little

40) Soccer Systems and Strategies by Jens Bangsbo and Birger Peitersen

41) The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide edited by Michael Craig

42) Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

43) The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

44) Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

45) The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

46) The Peripheral by William Gibson

47) Set My Heart To Five by Simon Stephenson

48) The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

49) A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

50) Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

51) Deacon King Kong by James McBride

52) Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter

53) Agency by William Gibson

54) The Fifth Season by J.K. Jemisin  

Partying Like It's 2020

 

I can't really complain about this New Year's Eve . . . I got the kids to play darts with me while we listened to Beck and "The Chronic" and I drank beer . . . while it's not the Pub, it was pub-like . . . but we're about to consume some homemade ravioli so I think this is going to be an early night.

2020 Winds Down . . .

2020 is winding down in typical form:

1) I wanted to heat up my leftover half-burrito last night and when I opened the aluminum foil I found the roll to be empty-- one of the children finished the foil and then put the box back-- and since foil is required to heat up a burrito ( I wasn't going to risk it in our brand new air-fryer) I had to go to the store and it was busy;

2) though I've only got eighty pages left, I'm not sure sure I'm going to finish my 54th book (2020 was a good year for reading books) because I might abandon it . . . it's a fantasy novel by J.K. Jemisin called The Fifth Season and the subtitle is "Every Age Must Come to An End" and it won the Hugo Award in 2016 so I thought it would be a fitting end to this weird and stunted year but it's a bit too apocalyptic and cruel and depressing . . . though it's set in an alternate universe of fissures and tsunamis and volcanoes and an oppressed group of "orogenes," people with the ability to sense and manipulate the wild and restless thermal and kinetic energy that is par for the course in this world-- they can quiet these disasters . . . or set them off-- now that I'm summarizing, I realize it is a pretty great book-- just painful-- and I will probably finish it because of the last kick in the balls from 2020;

3) it is raining and it is going to rain and it will continue raining until well into the New Year.

It's Never To Late to Listen to Wonder

While I was hiking with the dog this morning (hiking with the dog, online chess, drinking beer, and indoor tennis are my go-to activities during this pandemic winter break) I learned something: 

I have not listened to nearly enough Stevie Wonder

and I learned this from an excellent podcast . . . Lost Notes:1980;

the host is poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib and in each episode, he takes a deep dive into something musical; the Stevie Wonder piece is excellent and the story of "Louie Louie" is mind-boggling-- I had no idea.

Does Dave Possess Agency?

Agency is book two of William Gibson's "Jackpot" trilogy and while it's not as difficult a read as the first (The Peripheral) it is still unnerving because nobody is where or when they seem; the jackpot is only a prize for those who survived this ironically named ecopolitical apocalypse in the near future-- those who made it to the other side of the pandemics and massive climate change and political fallout enjoy a world recovering: low population, greater technology, and some methods of reversing the damage humanity has done; there is also massive quantum computing and through this "server" those rich and powerful enough can send information backward and forward through time-- so it's a time travel story, but even more complicated than Primer . . . no one is where and when they seem-- powerful folks in the future start new "stubs" when they contact and meddle with the past, which they do in drones, with AI, and in various networks-- the perspectives shift rapidly-- you could be in 2136, occupying a drone in 2017-- you could be in 2017, embodying a peripheral in 2136-- and you could be relaying information back and forth, changing timelines in the past and future as you relay information and technology . . . you might be a government agency doing this, a rogue agency, you might be a corrupt plutocrat from "the klept," or even disembodied AI with agency . . . I've read the entire William Gibson ouvre and I trust him implicitly as an author, that's why I hung in with these two books-- and while there aren't giant epiphanic revelations at the end, you get the hang of the way things work (in the same time frame as the characters, often) and I'm interested in how he finishes this subtle exploration of free will and determinism turned on its head.

Xmas 2020: The Weird and the Mundane

On Christmas Eve, we met Catherine's brother and her niece (and her niece's boyfriend and their dog) down at the Asbury Park Dog Beach-- while the weather was warm in Highland Park, it was a different story at the shore and the boys and I were underdressed . . . you might notice I'm the one wearing sandals) and while that get-together had the usual pandemic weirdness about it, Christmas morning felt just like always . . . and I know that this year we're lucky to have it that way and for that, I am very grateful.

Coastal Elite Intellectual Liberal Xmas Snow Creatures

Highland Park is the most liberal town in Middlesex County-- and Middlesex County is a pretty liberal place in itself . . . so we're talking very liberal; Highland Park is walking distance to Rutgers College Avenue Campus, so we have a lot of professors living in town, including two on our block-- the lady across the street teaches computer science classes and she built a snow creature she calls Gnome Chomsky . . . which made me chuckle, and then we had a long discussion about linguistics, universal grammar, and radical politics . . . and then I complimented the snowman that the British mom (one of two moms) and her son were building down at the end of the block and she corrected me and said, "Snow-woman . . . we're making the Venus of Willendorf . . . see the big jugs?" and upon further inspection I did notice the big jugs, so we had a discussion about ancient fertility objects and I recommended the novel Deacon King Kong because the Venus of Willendorf plays a prominent role in my favorite novel of 2020 . . . and that's why we live in Highland Park.

I Give Up: Here's a Bunch of Random Stuff From "Why We're Polarized"

I highly recommend Ezra Klein's new book Why We're Polarized for both liberals and conservatives-- and it should be the last thing you read that mentions national politics for a long while; warning, this post is going to be epically long-- because I dog-eared so many pages in the book and then used the Google Doc "voice-typing" tool to input all the information into the computer and while it was pretty fun to read aloud and watch the text scroll, the post is a total mess; you're not going to get accurate quotations, as I didn't take my time, but I'm going to boil down Klein's words into a sort of plagiaristic of Dave/Ezra Klein that is perfectly fitting for this ridiculous blog medium; while Klein is a self-avowed liberal (and usually a vegan . . . but not when he travels) who co-founded Vox and is a regular on the podcast The Weeds, this book is not a liberal paean . . . it's an explanation and the take-away is this: stop following national politics like it's more than a football match or a soap opera and-- if you truly want to enact political change-- start worrying about your hometown and the things going on in the state in which you live-- Jersey pride!-- these are the things you can actually influence; anyway . . . here is some stuff from the book, partly paraphrased, partly with Klein's wording, and partly insane rambling;

1) America used to be full of ticket splitters-- and you knew plenty of ticket splitters-- so you didn't identify too heavily with either party;

2) policy was a mixed bag . . .  Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush signed legislation raising taxes for instance that would be unthinkable in today's Republican Party-- almost every elected Republican official has signed a pledge promising to never raise taxes under any circumstances; Bush also sign the Americans with Disabilities Act into law and oversaw a cap-and-trade program to reduce the pollutants behind acid rain; Reagan signed an Immigration Reform Bill the today's Democrats venerate and today's Republicans denounce; Reagan supported amnesty for illegal immigrants; President Bill Clinton' stance on illegal immigrants was much akin to Donald Trump's position; Clinton launched his administration with a budget designed to reduce the deficit and an all-out effort to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA . . . he famously ran against the left-wing of his own party flying back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a brain-damaged inmate and publicly denounced the rapper Sister Souljah; in 1965 a Democratic president created a massive single-payer healthcare system for the nation's elderly-- but as liberal as Medicare was in both conception and execution-- it still received 70 Republican votes in the house as well as 13 Republican votes in the Senate; Obamacare, by contrast, was modeled off Mitt Romney's reforms in Massachusetts and built atop many Republican ideas relied on private insurance for the bulk of its coverage expansion and it ended up sacrificing its public option but the legislation didn't receive a single Republican vote in either the house or the Senate;1982 Senator Joe Biden voted for a constitutional amendment that would let States overturn Roe v Wade, etc. etc.

3) Policy and ticket splitting is no more . . . it's ALL identity politics on both sides-- and we're going to have to get used to and live with it . . . or maybe not because you probably don't live near people from the other party: House Democrats now represent 78% of all Whole Foods locations but only 27% of Cracker Barrels . . . it's easy to overstate the direct role partisanship is playing in these decisions, and while it's true that Democrats prefer to live among Democrats and Republicans like living among Republicans, people are still people . . . they look at schools and housing prices and crime rates and similar quality of life questions . . . BUT the big decision they make-- or their parents have made-- is whether to live in an urban or rural area . . . and as the parties become more racially, religiously, and ideologically sorted into geographically different areas the signals that tell us a place is our kind of place heightens our political divisions . . . most Republicans (65%) said they would rather live in a community where houses are larger and farther apart and where schools and shopping are not nearby, while a majority of Democrats (61%) prefer smaller houses within walking distance of schools and shopping; that's a preference that seems non-political on it's face but adds to the stacking of identities; 

4) psychology doesn't predict political opinions among people who don't pay much attention to politics, but it's a powerful predictor of political opinions among those who are politically engaged; unengaged citizens vote logically-- they look at what a candidate's policy will do for them or their community, while politically engaged people vote using identity and emotion . . . that's damn crazy and why the best way to think about the presidential election is to ignore it for 3.99 years and then take a quick look at each candidate's platform and decide which platform is better for you;

5) it's a mistake to imagine our bank accounts are the only reasonable drivers of political action-- as we become more political we become more interested in politics as a means of self-expression and group identity; it's not that citizens are unable to recognize their interests, it's that material concerns are often irrelevant to the individual's goals when forming a policy opinion; 

6) politicians are not equally responsive to all their constituents-- they're most concerned about the most engaged people who will vote for them  and volunteer for them and donate to them and the way to make more of that kind of voter isn't just a focus on how great you are-- you need to focus on how bad the other side is; nothing brings a group together like a common enemy . . . remove the fury and fear of a real opponent and watch the enthusiasm drain from your supporters; 

7) it turns out that there's only a weak relationship between how much a person identifies as a conservative or liberal and how conservative or liberal views actually are; one reason policy is not the driver of political disagreement is most people don't have very strong views about policy: it's the rare hobbyist who thinks so often about cybersecurity and who should lead the Federal Reserve-- but all of us are experts on our own identities;

8) Bill Clinton had the same "draconian" stance as Trump on immigration;

9) one study shows that Democrats and Republicans cared more about the political party of a student vying for a scholarship than the student's GPA  . . . partisanship simply trumped academic excellence;

10) another study found that Democrats and Republicans performed better at math when the math skills helped them find an answer that boosted their ideology-- say gun control for liberals-- and the better the person was at math, the dumber they got when getting the problem wrong would NOT bolster their ideology . . . yikes;

11) it's become common to mock students demanding safe spaces, but if you look carefully at the collisions in American politics right now, then you find that everyone is demanding safe spaces-- the fear is not that the government is regulating speech, but that protesters are chilling speech, the Twitter mob rules the land looking for an errant word or a misfired joke . . . in our eagerness to discount our opponents as easily triggered snowflakes, we've lost sight of the animating impulse behind much of the politics and indeed much of life: the desire to feel safe, to know you can say what you want without fear;

12) Klein summarizes the first half of the book thusly: the human mind is exquisitely tuned to group affiliation and group difference; it takes almost nothing for us to form a group identity, and once that happens, we naturally assume ourselves in competition with other groups; the deeper our commitment to our group becomes, the more determined we make sure our group wins . . . making matters worse, winning is positional, not material; we often prefer outcomes that are worse for everyone so long as they maximize our groups advantage over other groups . . . the parties used to be scrambled both ideologically and demographically in ways that curbed their power, but these ideological mixed parties were an unstable equilibrium reflecting America's peculiar and often abhorrent racial politics; the success of the Civil Rights Movement and its alliance with national Democratic party broke that equilibrium and destroyed the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic party and triggered an era of party sorting; ideological Democrat now means liberal and Republican now means conservative in a way that wasn't true in 1955; partisanship is in part a rational response to the rising party difference-- if the two sides hated and feared each other less 50 years ago, well that makes sense they were more similar 50 years ago, but that's sorting has also been demographic today the parties are sharply split across racial, religious, geographic, cultural and psychological lines . . . there are many many powerful identities lurking in that list and they are fusing together and stacking atop one another so a conflict or a threat that activates one, activates all of the characteristics and since these mega-identities stretch across so many aspects of our society they're constantly being activated in an era of profound powerful social change; a majority of infants born today in America are non-white and the fastest-growing religious identity is "no religious identity at all"; women makeup the majorities on college campuses; foreign-born groups are rising in population and rising in power and they want their needs reflected in the politics and culture; other groups feel themselves losing power want to protect the status and privileges they've in the past when America was "great" and this conflict is sorting itself neatly into two parties; Obama's presidency was an example of the younger more diverse Coalition taking power and  Trump's presidency represented the older whiter Coalition taking it back;

13) an Essential Truth Klein has learned: almost no one is forced to follow politics-- there is some lobbyist in government affairs who need to stay on the cutting edge of legislative and regulatory developments to do their job, but most people who follow politics do it as a hobby in the way they follow a sport or a band; political journalism has to compete with literally everything else for retention; Rachel Maddow is a war with reruns of The Big Bang Theory; Fox competes with Xbox; time spent reading this book is time not spent listening to the podcast Serial;

14) misperceptions were high among everyone, but they were particularly exaggerated when people were asked to describe the other party; Democrats believe 44% of Republicans earn over $250,000 a year-- it's actually 2%; Republicans believed that 38% of Democrats were either gay, lesbian, or bisexual-- the correct answer is about 6%; Democrats believe that more than four out of every 10 Republicans are seniors-- in truth seniors make out about 20% of the GOP; Republicans believe that 46% of Democrats are black and 44% belong to a union and reality about 24% of Democrats are African American and less than 11% belong to a union; what was telling about these results is that the more interested in politics people were, the more political media they consumed, then the more mistaken they were about the other party . . . it makes sense if you think about the incentives driving media outlets . . . the old line on local reporting was if it bleeds it leads, but for political reporting the principal is if it outrages it leads-- and outrage is deeply connected to identity;

15) people have far more power to influence their mayor, state senator, or governor than they have to influence the national discussion; people should be involved in local politics and be most engaged in the tangible states of the politics nearest to their experience . . . of course you're likely to donate to defeat the politician who serves as the villain in the political dramas you watch rather than some local legislator whose name you can't remember . . . of course the stakes of national politics with their titanic clashes of good vs. evil, the storylines omnipresent on social media and television, dominate consciousness . . . but it's counterproductive;

16) people in America used to identify with their state more than the country-- but this has changed-- and it would have confounded the Founders . . . at the core of this newfound nationalization is an inversion of the founders most self-evident assumption: that we will identify more deeply with our home state and with our country . . . a guy named Hopkins proved this with a text analysis of digitized books-- state identity came up WAY more than national identity until recently. . . so I'm bringing that back: I'm Jersey strong and Jersey proud and Bruce and Bon Jovi and all that shit and the rest of the country can do what it wants;

17) America's political system is unusual in that it permits a divided government and is full of tools minorities can use to obstruct governance; imagine that you work in an office where your boss who you think is a jerk needs your help to finish his projects, but if you help him he keeps his job and maybe even get the promotion and if you refuse to help him, you become his boss and he may get fired; now add in a deep dose of disagreement. . . you hate his projects and believe them to be bad for the company and even the world and a bunch of colleagues who also hate your boss will be mad at you if you help him--  that's basically American politics right now, bipartisan cooperation is often necessary for governance but the rationale for the minority party is to stonewall; it's a hell of a way to run a railroad, but this was our structure during much of American History because one party was usually dominant enough to make cooperation worth it for the minority;

18) famous political pundits Ornstein and Mann mince no words in explaining that while both parties partake in bipartisanship, the Republicans have gone off the rails, to summarize their words: today's Republican Party is an insurgent outlier; it has become ideological extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all the declaring war on the government. . . . The Democratic party, while no Paragon of civic virtue, is more ideological centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashion through bargaining with Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties . . . 

19) crucially the Democratic party isn't just more diverse in terms of its members, it's also more diverse in its trusted information sources and 2014 the Pew Research Center conducted a survey measuring trust in different media sources, giving respondents 36 different outlets to consider and asking them to rate their trust in each; liberals trusted a wide variety of media outlets ranging from center-right to left: ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, The Economist, The Ed Schultz Show, Google News, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, MSNBC, NBC,  The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, PBS, Politico, Slate, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Yahoo . . . conservatives only trusted a handful of sources: Fox News, Breitbart, The Wall Street Journal, The Blaze, The Drudge Report, the Sean Hannity show, The Glenn Beck program, and The Rush Limbaugh Show.


20) Democrats are often derided for playing identity politics, but that is not in truth a difference between the parties . . . Republicans have built their coalition on identity politics as well, but the difference between the parties is at the Democratic candidates are forced to appeal to many more identities and more skeptical voters than Republicans do successful National Democrats construct broad Coalition and that's a practice a cut against the incentives of pure polarisation what national Republicans have learned to do its construct deep coalitions relying on more demographically and ideologically homogeneous voters . . . Republicans, instead of winning power by winning the votes of most voters they win the power by winning the votes of most places

21) Republicans appeal to voters significantly to the right of the median voter but it's forced them into a dependence on an Electra that feels its power slipping away and demands a response the portion it to its fears this is the way in which the parties are not structurally symmetrical and that's why they have not responded to a polarizing are in the same ways Democrats simply can't win running the kinds of campaigns and deploying the kinds of tactics that succeed for Republicans Democrats can move to the left and they are but they can't abandon the center in December 2018 well into the Trump era Gallup as Democrats and Republicans whether they wanted to see their party become more liberal or conservative or more moderate by a margin of 57 to 37% Republicans wanted their party to become more conservative by a margin of 54 to 41% Democrats wanted their party to become more moderate

22) the relevant factor I'm urging you to pay attention to his identity what identity is that article or Twitter thing or video invoking what identities making you defensive what does it feel like when you get pushed back into an identity can you notice it when it happens you log on to Twitter nine times a day can you take a couple of breasts at the end and ask yourself how differently you feel from before you logged on the ID here has become more aware of the ways that politicians and media manipulate us. There are reams of research showing the reaction to political commentary and information we don't like his physical. Are breathing speeds up, are pupils naira, our heart beats faster. Trying to be aware of how politics makes us feel, what happens when our identities are activated, threatened, or otherwise inflamed, is it necessary first step to gaining some control of the process. That is not to say we should become afraid of our identities being inflamed or strong emotion being Force for its to say we should be mindful enough of what's happening to make decisions about whether we're pleased with the situation sometimes it's worth being angry sometimes it's not we don't take the time to know which is which we lose control over our relationship with politics and become the unwitting instrument of others

24) For all our problems we have been a worse and uglier country at almost every other point in our history you do not need to go back to the country's early years when new arrivals from your drove out and murdered indigenous peoples brought over millions of enslaved Africans and wrote laws making women second-class citizens to see it just a few decades ago political assassinations were routine in 1963 President John F Kennedy was murdered on the streets of Dallas in 1965 Malcolm X was shot to death in a crowded New York City Ballroom in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr was killed as was Robert F Kennedy in 1975 Lynette Squeaky Fromme standing about an arm's length from President Gerald Ford aims her gun and fired the bullets fail to discharge Harvey Milk the pioneering gay San Francisco city Supervisor was killed in 1978 President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 the bull shattered rivet punctured alone for much of the twentieth century the right to vote was for African Americans no right at all lynchings were common Freedom Writers were brutally beaten across the American South police had to escort young African-American children into schools as jeering crowd shouted racial epithets and threatened to attack violence broke out at the 1968 Democratic National Convention urban riots ripped across the country crime was Rising the United States launched an illegal secret bombing campaigning campaigning in Cambodia National Guard members fired on and killed student protesters at Kent State Richard Nixon Road a backlash to the Civil Rights Movement into the White House launched an Espionage campaign against his political opponents provoked a constitutional crisis and became the first American President to resign from office by impeachment proceedings this is not a counterintuitive take on American history by the way among experts that is closer to the consensus the varieties of democracy project

25) American democracy was far less Democratic and far less liberal and far less decent than today; Trump's most intemperate outbursts pale before the opinions that were mainstream in recent history and the institutions of American politics today are a vast improvement on the regimes that ruled well within living memory . . . if we can do a bit better tomorrow we will be doing much much better than we have ever done before.

Dave Cancels Canker Sores (Canker Sore Cancels Dave)

Today's sentence is canceled, due to a festering canker sore under my tongue. 

The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

Adam Alter's book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked doesn't offer up any big surprises-- it just slowly overwhelms you with the details until you have to agree-- many, many people have behavioral addictions centered around technology and digital connectedness; and the big problem is because addiction is not as character-based as you might think, and much more dependent on the environment-- and we can't escape the bottomless and ubiquitous environment of the internet-- we're going to need to be creative with solutions; while I try to put up the good fight-- I stay off social media-- aside from two blogs-- and I check my email once a day (I was astounded at how many times workers check their email on average . . . 36 times an hour?) but I've adopted some wearable tech-- a FitBit-- and this book helped me understand that one of those gadgets can lead you down some weird roads-- people get really obsessive about their step-counts and their runnign streaks-- so I'm trying to have some days, usually after tennis or running, where I try to keep my steps as LOW as possible-- really rest my feet and legs-- there's no reason to ALWAYS get 12,000 steps-- some days are for stretching or lifting or resting-- and while I'm not a gamer, I got fairly obsessed with low-stakes online poker at the start of the pandemic-- so I removed all those programs from the computer and gave that up-- it's not worth the time-- and now I'm playing a couple games of online chess each day (but only if my kids won't play) and this is a result of Netflix and "The Queen's Gambit" and I'm being very careful not to bingewatch shows-- you have to break the cycle of the cliffhanger by watching the first five minutes of the next episode and then stopping . . . and while these are first-world problems and it's the rare sort who develops a full-blown life-threatenign World of Warcraft addiction, I am hooked on the NYT Mini Crossword-- it's the crack of crosswords and there's no way I'll ever give it up . . . anyway, Alter points our that we've become far too goal oriented, there's too many ways ot keep score, and we've got to be constantly vigilant about this stuff eating up our time-- and the only way to replace one habit is to find another, when the cue happens and you usually play Candy Crush, you've got to have something else-- a ten minute yoga video or something . . . but enough of this: online chess is calling me (I'm also annoyed that my job is now on a screen, so that when I get done with my job, i have little motivation to record music or write my blog-- because it's just more screens . . . but I've set up my physical loop pedal and analog amplifier again, so that I can get back on the guitar and do some layers of sound, without getting back on a screen . . . again, first world problems but that doesn't mean you can't solve them).

Dave (Barely) Beats an Old Man: Charlie Kaufman Doesn't

Yesterday in the indoor tennis league I played Barry, and my scouting report was that he was a good player, but "a grinder, who could hit a winner with his forehand" but did not have a big serve-- this was a perfect match-up for me and I played quite well at the start-- I went up 9 games to 2-- and then Barry informed me that he was going to be 65 years old soon-- 65!-- and this really impressed me; Barry was fit and moved around the court well and had a full head of hair . . . I would have thought he was in his late 50s-- and for a moment I thought that I'd better take it easy on him-- so I switched rackets (with no success) and tried some shots I normally don't hit,  but then he started lobbing the ball instead of feeding me overheads at the net and he came storming back and won the next five games in a row . . . this was both inspirational and promising-- makes me wonder if I'll be able to play competitive tennis for the next fifteen years . . . I sure hope so (and if you want the opposite of this inspirational and promising sentence, watch Charlie Kaufman's new movie-- it's on Netflix-- "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" . . . it's pretty much the most depressing thing about aging and decay I've ever seen-- and I teach Hamlet-- the film attacks the platitude "age is just a number" with unnerving logic, detail shrouded by memory, and wild perspective shifts . . . I really can't recommend it, though I kind of liked it-- unlike my friend Stacey-- but if you do watch, you might want to read an explanation when you're about halfway through . . . it helps).

Meta Worlds Collide!

In the new season of the super-excellent sci-fi series The Expanse, Amos Burton-- who is one tough motherfucker-- finally returns home to Earth (after a long absence) and to his home town of Baltimore . . . his foster-mom Lydia-- who taught him to survive and thrive-- has died; Baltimore is a futuristic version of the same city that is the protagonist of The Wire-- seedy and criminal and impoverished and drug-ridden-- and the kids and I were looking for some signal that the two great shows had some intersectionality; when Amos arrives at his foster-mom's apartment, he is greeted by his foster mom's lover, Charles-- and after some brief conflict, they begin to reminisce . . . but the best thing about Charles is that he is played by Frankie Faison, who played Ervin H. Burrell, the Police Commissioner on The Wire . . . quite a meta-coincidence (or done purposefully by central casting?)

School Is Virtual, But Snow Is Real (and so is cash)

The boys played hooky from virtual school today so they could earn some scratch shoveling snow-- they amassed sixteen jobs (with the help of my wife's Facebook account) so they had to enlist some help-- and while they are out moving from job to job they picked up a couple of extra projects . . . including the school superintendent's driveway-- apparently he didn't give them too much flak for skipping school (I called them in sick . . . cough cough . . . hopefully no one will connect the dots). 

The Avalanches on a Snow Day!

I am giving the new Avalanches album (We Will Always Love You) all the stars that are available: it's smooth and groovy and it's snowing and part of the reason I might be enjoying the new music so much is that I opened and starting drinking the bottle of wine on the counter-- why wouldn't I?-- and it is a very delicious wine . . . but it turns out that this wine was not intended for me . . . it is some expensive kosher wine intended as a Chanukah gift for our neighbors . . . and while my wife called me "exhausting to live with" she finally admitted that there was no way in hell that I could have known that wine wasn't intended for me (unless I read the label and noticed it was kosher and from Israel or saw the gift bag lying next to the bottle) and I reminded that I HAD told her to buy some wine-- you've got to drink some wine when it's snowing-- and so I figured that everything was just coming together for Dave . . . the wine was on the counter, The Avalanches released a new album, and it was snowing . . . so why wouldn't I start drinking?

Celebrity Sighting (Pandemic School Style)

Ian and I were on the way home from playing tennis today and we stopped at Wawa for snacks and the cashier said, "Mr Pellicane?" and I looked down and quickly read the girl's name-tag and realized it was one of my virtual students-- a senior named Jolie-- and I had never met her in person before, so it was kind of like a celebrity sighting, as I only knew her from the screen . . . we were both very excited to actually meet ( and she was a lot shorter in person).

Nostalgia For Aneurysms Past

It's nice to know that though my kids are getting older-- they're fifteen and sixteen now-- they can still bring me back to when they were little tots: it was time for me to drive them to tennis last night and-- just like when they were young-- they weren't a bit prepared; Alex hadn't put his shoes on yet, Ian hadn't filled his water bottle, they had no idea where the rackets were . . . and-- just like back when they were toddling tykes-- I lost my shit, nearly burst a blood vessel in my skull, ranted and raved, and told them that they were spoiled ingrates with no appreciation for the fine things-- such as a ride to go play indoor tennis-- that they are provided on a daily basis . . . it's good to know we can all get back to that reminiscent place from years past (how do you sit there on the couch, playing on your phone when it's nearly time to go, wearing socks?)

Dave Defeats Bud!

This morning, I notched my first victory in the Saturday indoor tennis league; I came from behind to defeat a heavy-hitting, big-serving guy named Bud . . . I learned a few things: I stopped trying to hit his serve back and instead just put the racket in the way and let the ball's momentum do the work; I switched to my lighter Yonex racket because I wasn't getting my heavy Wilson Blade back quickly enough to deal with his harder shots; and I started serving hard to his backhand because if you gave Bud a meatball, he hammered a winner . . . I also tried to subscribe to Bud's mantra: if you're going to double fault, do it like a man.

Pandemic Pub Night: Sleepy Dan Delivers

Sleepy Dan did a fabulous job hosting pandemic pub night at his house last night; we sat around an efficient, miniature smoke-free, phone-controlled Biolite fire pit, he provided materials to make s'mores, and he launched a giant sky lantern that flew over the Raritan and high above New Brunswick.

For the Record: Remember These Dumplings, as They Are Tasty

A wee little South Korean leprechaun told me to try O'Food Pork and Vegetable dumplings . . . and if you believe that, then I've another proposition for you (and you're a little bit old to be believin' in leprechauns) but truth be told, it was my son Ian, who thought they looked good and grabbed them when we were at H-Mart and I've posted them here so that I remember to get them next time (as there are a plethora of dumplings at H-Mart . . . oh yes, a plethora).

Deacon King Kong: Read It!

Deacon King Kong is the 51st book I read this year-- 2020 was good for something-- and it is the best piece of fiction I've run into in a long while; I'm not going to write a long review-- just read the thing-- but I will post up my Kindle notes . . . my favorite sentences from this fever dream that's exploded from James McBride's brain-- a fictionalized account of the Brooklyn housing project in which he grew up . . . the year is 1969 and it's all going down in this book, which is about urban decay and revitalization, baseball, drugs, race, language and tall tales . . . it is so much fun, even when it gets dark-- and there's some romance and a mystery to keep the plot cooking . . . the book begins with Sportcoat-- the old drunk church deacon, walking up to a young heroin dealer (who he coached as a child) and shooting him in the ear . . . but really the book begins with the mystery of the free cheese:

“Look who’s talking. The cheese thief!” That last crack stung him. For years, the New York City Housing Authority, a Highlight hotbed of grift, graft, games, payola bums, deadbeat dads, payoff racketeers, and old-time political appointees who lorded over the Cause Houses and every other one of New York’s forty-five housing projects with arrogant inefficiency, had inexplicably belched forth a phenomenal gem of a gift to the Cause Houses: free cheese. 

and then there's some backstory on Sportcoat:

When he was slapped to life back in Possum Point, South Carolina, seventy-one years before, the midwife who delivered him watched in horror as a bird flew through an open window and fluttered over the baby’s head, then flew out again, a bad sign. She announced, “He’s gonna be an idiot,” 

At age three, when a young local pastor came by to bless the baby, the child barfed green matter all over the pastor’s clean white shirt. The pastor announced, “He’s got the devil’s understanding,” and departed for Chicago, where he quit the gospel Highlight and became a blues singer named Tampa Red and recorded the monster hit song “Devil’s Understanding,” before dying in anonymity flat broke and crawling into history, immortalized in music studies and rock-and-roll college courses the world over, idolized by white writers and music intellectuals for his classic blues hit that was the bedrock of the forty-million-dollar Gospel Stam Music Publishing empire, from which neither he nor Sportcoat ever received a dime. 

At age five, Baby Sportcoat crawled to a mirror and spit at his reflection, a call sign to the devil, and as a result didn’t grow back teeth until he was nine. 

Sportcoat was a walking genius, a human disaster, a sod, a medical miracle, and the greatest baseball umpire that the Cause Houses had ever seen, in addition to serving as coach and founder of the All-Cause Boys Baseball Team. 

and then-- in contrast to old school Sportcoat-- you've got the corrupted youth:

you've got the Clemens was the New Breed of colored in the Cause. Deems wasn’t some poor colored boy from down south or Puerto Rico or Barbados who arrived in New York with empty pockets and a Bible and a dream. He wasn’t humbled by a life of slinging cotton in North Carolina, or hauling sugarcane in San Juan. None of the old ways meant a penny to him. He was a child of Cause, young, smart, and making money hand over fist slinging dope at a level never before seen in the Cause Houses. 

and the requisite Italian mobsters . . . this is Brooklyn in the late '60s:

Everything you are, everything you will be in this cruel world, depends on your word. A man who cannot keep his word, Guido said, is worthless. 

and various kind of crime:

“A warrant ain’t nothing, Sausage,” Sportcoat said. “The police gives ’em out all over. Rufus over at the Watch Houses got a warrant on him too. Back in South Carolina.”  

“He does?” Sausage brightened immediately. “For what?” 

“He stole a cat from the circus, except it wasn’t no cat. It got big, whatever it was, so he shot it.” 

Where’s the box?” “The church got plenty money.” “You mean the box in the church?” “No, honey. It’s in God’s hands. In the palm of His hand, actually.” “Where’s it at, woman?!” 

“You ought to trade your ears in for some bananas,” she said, irritated now. 

and superstition:

His wife put a nag on him, see, like Hettie done to you.” 

“How you know Hettie done it?” 

“It don’t matter who done it. You got to break it. Uncle Gus broke his by taking a churchyard snail and soaking it in vinegar for seven days. You could try that.” 

“That’s the Alabama way of breaking mojos,” Sportcoat said. “That’s old. In South Carolina, you put a fork under your pillow and some buckets water around your kitchen. That’ll drive any witch off.” 

“Naw,” Sausage said. “Roll a hound’s tooth in cornmeal and wear it about your neck.” 

“Naw. Walk up a hill with your hands behind your head.”  

“Stick your hand in a jar of maple syrup.” 

“Sprinkle seed corn and butter bean hulls outside the door.” 

“Step backward over a pole ten times.” 

“Swallow three pebbles . . .” 

They were off like that for several minutes, each topping the other with his list of ways to keep witches out, talking mojo as the modern life of the world’s greatest metropolis bustled about them. 

“Never turn your head to the side while a horse is passing . . .” 

“Drop a dead mouse on a red rag.” 

“Give your sweetheart an umbrella on a Thursday.” 

“Blow on a mirror and walk it around a tree ten times . . .” 

They had reached the remedy of putting a gas lamp in every window of every second house on the fourth Thursday of every month when the generator, as if on its own, roared up wildly, sputtered miserably, coughed, and died. 

and there's a shooter in the vein of The Wire's Brother Mouzone:

He wanted to say, “He’s a killer and I don’t want him near you.” But he had no idea what her reaction would be. He didn’t even know what Harold Dean looked like. He had no information other than an FBI report with no Highlight photo, only the vaguest description that he was a Negro who was “armed and extremely dangerous.” 

and a romance between an Irish cop and an African-American church sister:

“I’ll be happy,” he said, more to the ground than to her, “to come back and bring what news I can.” 

“I’ll be waiting,” Sister Gee said. But she might as well have been speaking to the wind. 

the dark side of the drugs: 

Men who made their girlfriends do horrible things, servicing four or five or eight men a night, who made their women do push-ups over piles of dogshit for a hit of heroin until, exhausted, the girls dropped into the shit so the men could get a laugh. 

and, finally, a clash of values that is epic and poetic:

"I’m in the last Octobers of life, boy. I ain’t got many more Aprils left. It’s a right end for an old drunk like me, and a right end for you too that you die as a good boy, strong and handsome and smart, like I remembers you. Best pitcher in the world. Boy who could pitch his way outta the shithole we all has to live in. Better to remember you that way than as the sewer you has become. That’s a good dream. That’s a dream an old drunk like me deserves at the end of his days. For I done wasted every penny I had in the ways of goodness so long ago, I can’t remember ’em no more.” 

He released Deems and flung him back against the bed so hard Deems’s head hit Highlight the headboard and he nearly passed out again. “Don’t ever come near me again,” Sportcoat said. “If you do, I’ll deaden you where you stand.”  

A Slow Developing Crisis . . .

 

All of our avocadoes ripened at once!

New Shit Saturday

Unusual stuff for a pandemic, but my family was doing all kinds of new shit today:

1) I played my first official league tennis match at the East Brunswick Racquet Club; I joined the winter league and I was a bit nervous about it-- I'm a scrappy player but there are some serious holes in my game (Andre Agassi said, "You're only as good as your second serve" and my feeling about that piece of advice is it's not very nice of him to say that) and my first match was against Scott-- a club regular known as one of the better players in this 4.0 league-- and when I saw his serves, first and second, I knew I was in for it-- they were both excellent; he could hit the T or pull it wide and didn't lose much pace with his second attempt and his groundstrokes were very accurate and angled-- I had never played anyone like this before-- but he wasn't big or fast and though I threw away the first four games-- I learned that the net is a LOT HIGHER indoors than the droopy things at our local park-- but I started chasing down everythign and hitting the ball deep to his backhand and getting to the net and I actually took the lead at one point, eight games to seven . . . and this guy was very complimentary-- he said he had never played anyone who could get to all his crazy angled shots (one sequence, I dove to my right, punched a net shot, hit the ground, rolled, got up, and won the point) and though he ended up winning the match nine games to eight (you play for 90 minutes, no sets just games) I'm happy that I gave him a run for his money . . . I think with some practice I could beat him but hopefully, next week's match will be a little less grueling (and I didn't drink all week, in training for this, but I'm going to enjoy a few well-earned beers today . . . you know, for working hard at the racquet club)

2) my older son Alex has been up in his room all day at a virtual Model UN convention . . . he's representing Israel and trying to deal with domestic terrorism . . . yikes . . . I think he does five hours of it on both Saturday and Sunday;

3) my younger son Ian is in the kitchen making homemade rice noodles (as a birthday gift, we are cooking for my wife for two weeks) and in order to do this the boys and I had to take a trip to H-Mart, the quality Asian market up the road, to get rice flour and tapioca starch and some other Asian stuff . . . the store was totally packed-- kind of crazy for a pandemic-- and we had to ask for a lot of help (a Hispanic lady took us to an old Asian lady, who was about to take us to the tapioca starch when a dude cut us and asked where the kimchi was-- and he was standing in the kimchi section!-- there was kimchi literally surrounding him . . . 270 degrees of kimchi . . . anyway, we got in and out with what we needed and the noodles are working out, it's quite a process;

4) my wife and her friend headed down to Kingston and she brought back goodies from the Amish market: cheeses, pretzel and pepperoni rolls, chicken breast, turkey bacon-- the best thing there-- and (of course) whoopie pies.

Dead Etc.

After insulting my Spotify Wrap-up, my friend Neal suggested that I listen to The Allman Brothers instead of the Grateful Dead, and since I'm open-minded and amenable, I renamed my "Dead" playlist "Dead, Etc" and added some Allman Brothers-- and put them on shuffle-- and I was enjoying the Southern style-rock until the guitar started wailing a bit too much-- so much so that it was shooting right through my brain, though I was in the other room, and I said to my wife, "That guitar is TOO high-pitched" and she said, "That's the tea-kettle, stupid."

Nothing Is More Fascinating Than Yourself

Both my older son and my friend Ann were super-excited yesterday and their enthusiasm proved infectious; they were pumped for the annual Spotify wrap-up, something I never experienced-- and while it sounds pretty banal, it's a visual summary of your listening habits over the year, it's actually full of surprises . . . earlier in the year, I fell in love with the Yo La Tengo album "I Can Feel the Heart Beating as One" and it ended up dominating my 23,000 minutes of listening . . . I generally listen to The Grateful Dead and Jimmy McGriff when I need to unwind, and 2020 required a lot of unwinding (the older I het, the more I like The Dead) and The Talking Heads and Tom Petty are mainstays-- I think I will listen to them until my own final wrap-up (as a bonus to this ode to saccharine self-reflection, here's one of the first videos I made to send a message to my Creative Writing class-- in the height of the pandemic . . . before all the Zoom and Microsoft Teams and such).

 

Great (Criminal) Minds Think Alike?

Yesterday, I found out that several Spotify users have plagiarized the name of my favorite playlist-- Tip Top Hip Hop-- and this made me feel both annoyed and vindicated; annoyed because when I ask Google to play it, sometimes it doesn't access my playlist, vindicated because my son Ian told me it was a stupid name, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so it's obviously NOT a stupid name . . . anyway, this led my son Alex and I to collaborate on an excellent Criminal Minds plot: folks are being murdered around the country and while there's no apparent connection, they are being killed with the same gun and the same M.O. and then Spencer figures it out, of course . . . all the people that have been brutally executed have playlists entitled "Tip Top Hip Hop" and the murderer wants to possess the one and only version of this playlist . . . which raises the question: do playlists live on when you head to the great-festival-seating-concert-in-the-sky?

Sad Sporting State of Affairs

This Sunday at 10 AM, which is normally the time I play pick-up soccer at the turf, but you know, the pandemic-- so I was rollerblading . . . and I saw my fellow soccer buddy Guillermo jogging and I waved hello but neither of us was happy . . . it's a sad state of affairs (but I'm excited to start playing in a tennis league next Saturday . . . so I'll get my competitive fix then).

The Queen's Gambit is a Classed-up Cheesy Sports Movie

I thoroughly enjoyed the Netflix mini-series "The Queen's Gambit," even as I recognized sports trope after sports trope; it's a Cinderella story and this scene pretty much summarizes the film:

the protagonist, an orphan named Beth, learns to play chess in the basement of the orphanage with her first mentor of many-- the janitor Mr. Shaibel-- so you get the Rocky-style gritty determinism and training, but, of course, Beth is an intuitive player-- her brain is so active she sees the pieces move on the ceiling . . . she has to resort to tranquilizers and alcohol to calm her busy mind . . . and she passes through many obstacles, suffers setbacks, and finally-- with a sequence of mentors (including the archetypal wise Black lady) she finally learns the Russians' secrets-- they are collaborative-- they study games together and everyone plays-- they advance in chess as a nation . . . but, in the nick of time, her scrappy American friends come to her aid and though she once suffered abysmal defeat, it seems that her brilliance-- which she could only summon with tranquilizers-- can also be bolstered by cooperation and friendship and coaching . . . it's a heartwarming feminist underdog tale that made me weep like I was watching "Hoosiers"-- the acting and imagery is first rate, and the color palette almost feels like "Madmen," it's just as much fun to look at the outfits as it is to root for Beth . . . the writers decided NOT to explain very much about chess at all, and this works-- if you know the game, you might think the speed of play is unrealistic (and it would be good to revisit Jim Belushi's SNL Chess Coach skit) but to watch people actually play chess is laborious, and as an added bonus, now my kids want to play some chess (I destroyed Alex last night, just crushed him right through the middle).

Things For Which to Be Thankful

Due to the pandemic, Thanksgiving felt pretty weird this year, but I still have a hell of a lot to be thankful for . . . sorry, I have a hell of a lot for which to be thankful; here's an incomplete list:

1) Winston Churchill's retort when criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition:"This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put"

2) the fact that my family was able to get together at all . . . it was just ten of us, which leads me to the next thing I'm thankful for;

3) this amazing COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool . . . apparently there was an 18% chance of someone having COVID at our Thanksgiving get-together, which seems like a reasonable risk . . . so pull out this Risk Assessment Tool and you'll be the life of the party!

4) the amazing weather . . . this might be due to global warming, but most of us might be dead long before that's much of a problem, so whatever;

5) the dog beach at Asbury Park . . . my wife and I took the dog there today-- this was contingent on the absurd late November weather;

6) the fact that my kids love to play tennis-- we're getting a lot of outdoor play before the (costly) indoor winter season begins;

7) the fact that our ping-pong table is still in the driveway-- we've been playing every day, crossing our fingers that this weather lasts, and my son Ian is actually getting good enough to beat me (occasionally) 

8) the fact that we've stepped up our ping-pong game to real paddles (Pro Spin Carbon)

9) this astoundingly funky Jimmy McGriff album "Groove Grease," which is excellent writing music and has a racy cover;

10) Jersey craft breweries, such as Cypress and Beach Haus;

11) the fact that my wife has taken up tennis-- I get a lot of exercise when I play with her . . .

12) the fact that I can do my job from home right now, without wearing a mask-- while remote teaching is kind of sad and occasionally gives me eyestrain and vertigo, it's a hell of a lot easier than hybrid;

13) a bunch of other stuff, but there's a Zoom happy hour with my fraternity brothers starting in 30 seconds, which I am also thankful for . . . sorry, for which I am thankful.

Happy Weirdsgiving?

Happy Weirdsgiving . . . may your stuffing and gravy contain very little COVID . . . or perhaps this will be a true American Thanksgiving and the native population will be decimated by disease, in the same way that the Native Americans-- through many a Thanksgiving-- suffered from smallpox, tuberculosis, measles and influenza.

The Wailing is an Awesome Movie

The Wailing-- an epic 2016 Korean horror film-- is a cross between The Exorcist and The Naked Gun . . . and the imagery and cinematography, which is astounding and beautiful, is somewhere between Deliverance and Apocalypse Now . . . the movie features angels and demons and all of us bumbling idiots in between, there are shapeshifters and possession, zombies and infection, ghosts and senseless violence . . . but all of these tired tropes are given new life . . . the film is streaming on Amazon Prime, watch it before it vanishes.

A Memory Called Empire

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is big-brained sci-fi and it will take a little while to understand what's going on (I didn't realize there is a glossary of terms in the back of the novel . . . the existence of which often indicates the kiss-of-death for comprehension and readability, but I managed to figure things out without referring to it and I'm an idiot) but I recommend giving it a shot . . . it asks this question:

--how do you preserve your culture and memory when you are on the verge of being subsumed and appropriated by a gigantic galactic empire?

and the mining station Lsel has an answer: proprietary technology that fuses the memories of past people with present citizens, in the form of a neurological implant and a grueling physical and mental process that allows the voices of the past to coexist in the same body as the present person; diplomacy is at the heart of the novel, but there's plenty of action, violence, insurrection, and politics as well; the author is also a Byzantine scholar and the book won the Hugo award . . . it ain't an easy read, but I will probably read the next in the series as well-- and I hope the next book I read is a little easier on my brain (just as writing a blog is a much easier way to preserve memory and culture in a world being subsumed and appropriated by algorithmically polarized social media).

Of Podcasts and Analogies

Joe Rogan is the Bruce Springsteen of podcasting; he's indefatigable and manages to be both a dude and a pro-- a weird combination of everyman and talent . . . here are some recent episodes I recommend:

1) #1566 Nicholad Christakis . . . required pandemic listening-- this enlightened me to the fact that pandemics are nothing new-- throughout history, they have been the norm-- and while this current one could be far worse, it's also not going away any time soon;

2) #1555 Alex Jones and Tim Dillon . . . Rogan does a great job fact-checking and slowing down Alex Jones-- he often sounds like a high school teacher, chastising Jones for talking over him and not connecting the dots . . . but he does it in a pleasant way and allows Jones to actually get across what he's all about, uncovering corruption-- some of which may be based on fact-- and linking this corruption into wild insane global conspiracies that sound utterly insane when you put them under a microscope;

3) #1550 Wesley Hunt . . . Hunt is a black Republican that ran (and lost) in Texas's 7th Congressional District; he's a veteran of the Iraq war and former AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter pilot and he's a great reminder that there are plenty of reasonable Republicans out there-- who are interested in promoting business and creating jobs but still understand environmental externalities-- and have no interest in promoting QAnon;

4) #1554 Kanye West . . . this one takes a while to get going, but it eventually becomes Kanye's beautiful religious twisted fantasy . . . he mentions "God" quite often;

meanwhile, if Joe Rogan is the Boss of Podcasting, Sam Harris is some kind of demanding and complex jazz-- Ornette Coleman-- or perhaps prog rock . . . Harris is the Steely Dan or the Mars Volta of podcasting . . . intellectual, sincere, a little too earnest, and very smart . . . his new one, Republic of Lies, has some excellent logic and analogies about Trump's fight to dismiss the election results:

-- he likens Trump's move to use the courts to challenge the election results to a soccer player late in the game who flops in the penalty box, hoping to be awarded a penalty kick by a clueless referee . . . and he makes the point that the soccer player is acting in bad faith-- he knows he hasn't been fouled but he's going ahead with the ploy anyway-- and the other players on the team and the coaches also know the player hasn't been fouled, but they've got to go along with it as well . . . so Trump is writhing around on the ground in fake pain and everyone on his side is in on the ruse . . . Harris contrasts this with the many liberals who think there is systemic racism everywhere in America-- while he doesn't think this is true (and neither do I, listen to his reasoned take on this) he understands that the liberal who believe this truly believe it . . . they're not faking it and there's more at stake than a game . . . democracy is at stake;

--Harris points out that all this "deception" was all done in plain sight: Trump began setting up the fraudulent claim that mail-in ballots are corrupt early, he tried to defund the post office so they couldn't deal with the ballots, he made no attempt to get the states to begin counting mail-in ballots early, and then he claimed that the results on election night should stand . . . wow;

--and finally, if the Democrats engineered massive systemic voter fraud, they would have also won the House and Senate races . . . he's willing to give Trump voters a "mulligan" and I see his point-- there's no reason no harbor animosity-- the real blame right now lies with the right-wing media demagogues-- who have jumped on the presidential bandwagon-- and all the folks on Trump's team (especially Rudy Giuliani) who are going along with this particularly egregious and high-stakes "flop" in the penalty box of American democracy.

9/11 and the Pandemic

The current Covid pandemic and 9/11 are probably going to loom large in my lifetime-- the significant events that will leave their mark on my consciousness-- and I feel the same about both of them:

1) I've experienced both events from an unusual perspective . . . I was teaching in Damascus when the planes hit the towers, and I am coaching and teaching through this pandemic;

2) I feel like both events are common occurrences that Americans haven't normally dealt with . . . pandemics have been the norm throughout history, and most developing countries (including Syria) still deal with deadly infectious diseases on a daily basis-- malaria, typhoid, yellow fever river blindness, chikungunya, etc-- and many countries outside the US cope with plenty of terrorism . . . so the pandemic and terrorism were both events where we joined the rest of the world . . . I wish my looming significant event was Woodstock but that's not how it's going down.

Home Computer Advantage

A bonus of doing school from my home-bunker is that when I use my iMac, I don't have to remember to click the dreaded "share computer audio" button when I share my screen and want to play a video clip . . . for some reason, Apple computers do this automatically (I don't know why they wouldn't).

First Day of School All Over Again

It was the first day of school all over again today . . . the first day COVID caused remote school-- and I had first day jitters-- I was holed up in my study/music studio/junk room, which has a survivalist-bunker vibe (because of the cardboard boxes, the tools, the do-it-yourself-shelving, and all the cans of dog food) and Microsoft Teams wasn't playing all that nicely with my iMac . . . but I got it together and delivered the goods-- including an especially appropriate lesson on conspiracy theories (unshaven and poorly lit, I looked the part)) and while I missed my colleagues and the spaciousness of my classroom, I enjoyed fast internet, hot coffee, mask-free teaching, frequent snacking, walking the dog on my free period, no commute, time to sleep until the late late hour of 6:30 AM, and a sense of empathy with the majority of my students-- who have been virtual since day one . . . we'll see what I think of this whole endeavor when January rolls around.

Heeeere's David!

Winter is coming, it's getting dark before 5 PM, the pandemic is worsening, and my school has gone all remote so I'll be teaching at home until January 11th-- and my children are also doing school virtually as well-- so we'll all be home . . . for a while . . . I'm getting a Shining vibe about this winter (and I can't even think of an alternative winter-vibe that is fitting . . . Fargo? Dumb and Dumber?)

Modernist Poetry Helps Your Backhand?

I'm nearly done with Timothy Gallwey's classic The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Performance, and while I won't reveal any of the secrets I've learned (because I might have to play you in tennis) I will let you in on one thing: this is probably the only instructional tennis book that refers to T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."

The chances are now even greater that there will be a split between memory of theory and memory of action. (I am reminded of the lines from "The Hollow Men," by T.S. Eliot: "Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ and the act/ Falls the Shadow.")

Dave Encounters Three Dangerous Things

As I was cleaning out our kitchen-junk-drawer I noticed dangerous thing number one:

1) Krazy Glue looks like Chapstick . . . which can lead to this error;

and while I was reading my library book A Memory Called Empire, I created dangerous thing number two . . . I was eating a Honeycrisp apple slathered with peanut butter and:

2) I got peanut butter all over the fore-edge of the book and the page I was reading (which, coincidentally, was about an intergalactic diplomat who died from an allergic reaction) so if someone with a severe peanut allergy checks out the book once I'm through with it, they are headed straight for anaphylaxis;

3) dangerous thing number three happened when I was driving to work this morning . . . I was in traffic on Route 18 and it was raining and foggy and a medium sized spider-- I won't call it large because I've seen large spiders and they are obscene . . . but it was certainly the size of a quarter-- and this spider descended on a thread of silk from the driver side window and was headed straight for my arm hair . . . so I grabbed my lunch bag and swatted at it, but also nearly hit the divider and slowed down-- I was lucky not to cause an accident-- I think I finally got the spider out my window, but I'm not sure . . . we'll see if it's gone on my ride home today.

Twice? Only When It's Double Twenty

For the second time this year, the school where I teach is going completely virtual (and while this will be easier for me and probably simpler for my students-- the hybrid model is really difficult to execute, technologically-- but all-remote schooling going to be really tough for certain special needs students-- especially those that have been attending our school five days a week; I covered a class down in that world yesterday, and those kids desperately need in-person school . . . my younger son could also benefit from some structure-- I got home yesterday and found him making fresh pasta in the kitchen-- which is an ambitious endeavor, especially since he was supposed to be working on some kind of history assessment, which he blew off . . . I guess now I'll be home to keep an eye on him).

Several Pandemic Firsts

A few minutes before our JV team was about to step on the field for today's home game against Sayreville, the opposing coach jogged over to me and told me their team had to cancel-- as his AD had called him and told him that a kid who missed the bus had tested positive for COVID-- and then they beat a hasty retreat to the bus . . . this was the icing on the cake for today's game, which qualified for several firsts:

1) the first time I ever simultaneously coached and attended a faculty meeting . . . I kept one earbud in while I organized warm-ups and chatted with the refs;

2) the first time I ever had a game canceled due to a pandemic when both teams were on the field and ready to play;

3) the first time I ever took a phone call from the school that employs me as a coach while attending a meeting for the school that employs me as a teacher, while attempting to coach my team . . . 

the lesson here is that multi-tasking makes me feel like my heart is going to explode; I'm a one-thing-at-a-time person.

Another Scary Poem

 This one is a bit shorter than my Halloween 2020 special . . .

Two Four Six Eight

Trump is gonna litigate!

Seven Eight Nine Ten

We will count the votes again!

Eleven Twelve

I tire of this.

Escape from New York (After Willingly Going There)

Catherine and I went to NYC today-- we drove in instead of taking the train because covid cases are rising around here-- and the drive was fairly traffic-free--weird-- and the streets were fairly deserted, which I prefer to the normal throngs of humanity (but the economy doesn't prefer this, which is pretty tragic) and after a stroll through Central Park, we went to the MOMA . . . it was mainly empty and quite pleasant to browse all the famous and wacky art . . . then we went back to Central Park by way of Fifth Ave-- a lot fo the expensive stores were all boarded up in preparation for protests, riots, and God-know-what-else, and we encountered some brazen squirrels on a nature trail in Central Park and then we went for a late lunch at Westville Hells Kitchen  . . . best veggie burger of my life-- and then we went back to the lot, took off our masks, and beat a hasty retreat back to Highland Park . . . in time for Ian and I to hit some tennis balls at the lovely and large p[ark right next to our house . . . had to be tough to wait out the pandemic in the city and it's going to be a long winter there.

Both Ends of the Sci-Fi Continuum Distract Dave

In order to distract myself from all this election nonsense, I've been listening to Tom Petty and reading science-fiction; I just finished one of the most difficult sci-fi books I've ever read-- William Gibson's The Peripheral-- usually I'm down with Gibson's prose, but this novel that seems to be about cyber-space and controlling three-dimensional peripheral avatars is actually about quantum information time-travel through a server-- surprise?-- and I was never comfortable with the plot, the characters, or what-the-hell-was-going-on . . . but I made it through and the end finally made some sense (this article with spoilers helped) and then I shifted gears and read one of the funniest, easiest, most entertaining and illuminating books I've read in a long while: Set my Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson-- a screenwriter for Pixar-- who takes a dental bot named Jared on a poignant and cinematic journey through human emotions, culture, and connection . . . it's so much fun that I watched election coverage from 9 PM to 9:20 PM last night and then went and finished the book and fell asleep, only to awaken to more ambiguity, so I'm starting another sci-fi novel: A Memory Called Empire.

Fall Break Coronavirus! Whoo!

Fall Break was off to an auspicious start-- Friday afternoon, I participated in the 9th Annual Scary Story Contest (and took third with my scary poem!) and Saturday Cat and I were about to attend an outdoor Halloween Party when I got a text from a JV player informing me that he had tested positive for covid (and so had his entire family . . . they were getting hit pretty hard by it) and so I switched from party mode to contact tracing mode . . . luckily, the player was very responsible and stopped coming to practice right when his mom grew ill, so the last contact was eight days prior-- but the head coach and the AD and I  still had to make a spreadsheet of emails, inform all the players and the administration, and tell folks that we might have contracted the virus . . . the JV team ended up getting quarantined for six days-- which would be fourteen days from the initial contact-- but it was highly unlikely that there was any spread since we were outside and no one had any symptoms . . . my family got tested, just to be on the safe side-- we went to a fairly grubby old school doctor's office in a desolate strip mall-- lots of old leather furniture, a big fish tank, and yellowed linoleum on the floors-- and we had our first experience with the nasal swab . . . it wasn't too bad (I said I would do it again if someone paid me $20 and Cat and the boys said they would do it again for $5 . . . I said I don't need $5 dollars that badly) and we all turned out negative . . . we got results in 24 hours; hopefully we will get back to soccer at the end of the week; in other pandemic news, I bought a portable cheap exercise bike from Amazon, so we could ride it while we watch TV-- I think it's going to be a long winter-- and for 104 bucks the thing is miraculous, but they didn't ship us the seat, so while we wait for that, we duct taped a bunch of towels to the metal frame where the seat is supposed to go and that works pretty well.

A Bit on the Snout

 

On my way home from school the other day, I was able to snap a picture of an endangered species: the extraordinarily rare, extremely literal, proud and unreserved, completely-on-the-nose, totally lacking self-awareness Jaguar owner (and Jaguar vanity plate owner) who never learned the lesson Chip Kidd presents at the beginning of this TED Talk.